プロレス Primer
A weekly guide to Japanese pro wrestling.

Newsletter: February 12, 2025

Thanks for checking out the first issue of Puroresu Primer, a free weekly newsletter about Japanese pro wrestling.

This issue covers events between 2/5 and 2/12, including NJPW’s New Beginning in Osaka, NOAH’s Star Navigation Premium in Korakuen Hall, AJPW’s Excite Series Night 1 in Korakuen Hall, and TJPW’s Max Heart Tournament Finals. If you’d like to stay unspoiled, avoid scrolling past the spoiler warning below the match recommendations!

Match Recommendations

NJPW Road To The New Beginning (Feb 3) (NJPW World)

NJPW Road to The New Beginning (Feb 4) (NJPW World)

NJPW The New Beginning in Osaka (Feb 11) (NJPW World)

NOAH Star Navigation Premium in Korakuen Hall (Feb 11) (Wrestle Universe)

AJPW in Korakuen Hall (Feb 9) (ajpw.tv)

Dragon Gate Truth Gate Night 2 at Korakuen (Feb 5) (Dragon Gate Network)

Stardom 14th Anniversary Supreme Fight 2025 In Korakuen (Feb 2) (Stardom World)

TJPW Max Heart Tournament Finals (Feb 8) (Wrestle Universe)

FREEDOMS TOKYOSQUARE In Itabashi Opening (Feb 2)

SPOILERS BELOW HERE

(I’m going to try to make some kind of big image for this to act as padding)

NJPW

I did not expect to have to write this many words about Hirooki Goto

Hirooki Goto defeated Zack Sabre Jr. for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in a 20-minute match, ending in a powerful sequence of finishers by Goto, with ZSJ trying to eke out counters that he just didn’t have any energy left to make. This was a dense, electrifying match built perfectly to whip the crowd into a frenzy while never leaving the ring to brawl or trade Irish Whips into the barricade. This was one of the shortest IWGP (World) Heavyweight Championship matches in modern NJPW history and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s just good booking, man.

There is, in fact, value in having a guy defined by a single failure. You can always, when you need to, bring him back to challenge his demon. It’s an easy story that you don’t really need to build. There will always be part of the crowd who wants him to finally achieve his dream. There will always be a large nay-saying part of the crowd who, upon seeing him fail, will go “well, naturally,” and no one will be that put out by it, especially with a guy like Goto who isn’t quite a “fan favorite” in the way that, say, an Ishii is (it’s probably for the best Ishii has only had two IWGP Heayweight Championship shots in his career; I couldn’t take the heartbreak). But you always have the option to blow some minds.

This isn’t long-term storytelling, not by any stretch. When Goto lost his eighth defense in 2016, Gedo wasn’t thinking “oh yeah, their minds are gonna be blown nine years from now.” You can’t actually claim “it was the right move to repeatedly have Goto get absolutely owned, so we could have this moment today” - there absolutely were several times and places where Goto should have won, and didn’t, and it hurt his standing badly. And NJPW were okay with that because NJPW didn’t need him, they had Okada and Ibushi and Omega and Tanahashi and Jay White and Naito - and, well, you can’t say they had their eggs in one basket, but you can say that maybe they would have been served with another upper-carder or two ready to go, especially as the young guys have faltered in solidifying themselves with a lack of credible challenges to make and victories to attain.

So, why did they go with him now? I’ve been pondering this today. Because the match was incredible, the moment was instantly iconic, I absolutely think this was the right short-term move, but since when was NJPW a company that loved to book short-term crowd pleasers in their heavyweight championship scene?

I don’t think it’s the box office. There was some concern about some of the Road To the New Beginning shows at Korakuen being down versus NJPW’s usual Super No Vacancy crowds there, but it’s worth noting they ran four shows at Korakuen in two weeks on that tour. That tour also wasn’t anchored by any kind of tournament or fly-in talent, and the two shows that were down the most featured title matches that NJPW implicitly said were not important enough to be on The New Beginning in Osaka. They were great matches and were hot in the building, but I can’t blame people for not turning up in droves for a World TV Title match.

Now, Wrestle Kingdom was down this year versus last year by about 3,000 people. Some of that can be chalked up to Wrestle Dynasty the next night - its conceivable some people would only want to go to one show, and it split the crowd a bit. And, listen: I don’t really know if Zack Sabre Jr was the problem here. Sure, he’s not “the guy,” but he’s a guy people like and would like to see beaten. Certainly, big title matches against Shota Umino and Ricochet were never going to move any needles. If you’re looking for reasons those houses were down, you got a lot bigger problems than the blonde guy in the orange trunks.

But hey, you could say that having the title on a big NJPW face might do some business. In which case: is Goto really going to be that kind of draw? They definitely didn’t think he was a decade ago, or they would have gone with him. Goto’s tag team with YOSHI-HASHI, Bishimon, certainly did far better than I would have ever expected, and maybe he showed some exciting box office potential. Maybe the loss in the finals of the New Japan Cup and the IWGP Global Heavyweight shot he got last year were the signs of this.

I’ve written and thrown out some speculation on this a hundred times now, because I keep thinking up different angles and scenarios. Why did they go forward with ZSJ vs Shota Umino if this was the plan all along; why didn’t they have Goto win at the Dome? Did they ever have Umino as the champ coming out of the Dome, and only finally gave up on him when the crowd turned more vicious than ever against him? Did they run out of credible opponents for Zack? Did they not want to give him any wins over young guys, whereas they’d be more comfortable with Goto going over, say, Gabe Kidd? Is that because they’re worried Zack will abscond like Okada did without properly putting over new talent on the way out, while they can trust Goto to put over whoever they want?

Instead of exploring every single one of those angles I’m just going to get on with the rest of this newsletter. I’m sure many other people will be writing about this this week, and I’ll probably have more to say in the next issue.

Before winning the title, Goto was talking before winning about how he really wanted to defend against Tanahashi, Shibata, and Yuji Nagata. Which, if NJPW is really worried about protecting their young guys right now, that’s a reasonable move! No one likes a senior citizen title scene, or else NOAH would be the most popular promotion in the world by now, but they could give the new generation some room to breathe while Goto sticks with his generation. Give Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI and Toru Yano title challenges too, why not?

He’ll be starting off his reign with a defense against Tanahashi on the 3/6 Anniversary show, with Yuji Nagata requesting a challenge after that. Goto will also be facing the New Japan Cup winner at Sakura Genesis on 4/5, so that’s three matches lined up already.

Right, the rest of the show

Of course this main event would happen on a show with like six other angles happening I feel like I need to quickly write up notes on. If you have been waiting to watch this show, I do recommend you give it a full watch; it’s a fantastic show I had a ton of fun watching. Walker Stewart and Clark Connors did a great job on English commentary as well - Clark might not have the best voice for commentary but he’s surprisingly good at timing injections of color commentary in a way a lot of guys have trouble with. This is a restoring the feeling kind of show; this is a “New Japan is fired up and ready with hot new stories” kind of show. This is the kind of show that has me, having spent the last year exploring other Japanese pro wrestling, saying by the end “oh right, this is why this is the biggest company in this country, because they can do things like this.”

First, kind of an aside on one of the only downers of the show, Tanahashi looked pretty awful in his match against Makabe. This is basically what I was expecting from this retirement run and I have to give the guy credit for wanting to do all these singles matches, but he really needs to come up with a match format that doesn’t require him to, uh, move so much. It probably doesn’t help in a match like this where he’s the more mobile of the two guys in the ring. I am very curious what miracles Takeshita might manage to work on their match in Chicago.

Drilla Maloney had an awesome heavyweight “debut” against Shingo. I am not sure I’d ever seen a Drilla singles match before this and it’s hilarious to imagine this dude ever being a junior, just like Shingo was. Brilliant pairing and a great undercard singles match.

Then there was Great-O-Khan vs Shota Umino, which on any other NJPW show would have been the most newsworthy item and instead, as might be appropriate for Shooter, winds up a footnote. The runup to this match was GOK mocking Umino for failing New Japan by being a shitty wrestler, and threatening to take his hair to try to get him to revert back to being a shaved-head Young Lion (in GOK’s mind, the last time he was any good). So GOK, uh, won this match to the absolute delight of this Osaka crowd, and went to shave Shota’s hair (mind you, it wasn’t a hair match, GOK is just being a dick) - and Shota grabbed the electric razor and shaved it himself to the gasps of the crowd. He got the mildest smattering of polite applause as he left the ring. Maybe the crowd will accept his… apology? I gotta say, if they go all in on Punished Umino, I might be here for it. But they haven’t gotten this guy’s booking right for the last couple years, and I’m not sure I buy that they’re going to get it together to the extent they need to.

Naito & Hiromu beat the Bucks for the tag titles. Not much to say here, I guess if you have a guy as immobile as Naito keeping him hidden in the tag scene this year makes sense. I don’t really feel like it’s a waste of Hiromu given that I am generally down on the New Japan juniors scene these days. I do hope they build their matches around character moments and not workrate, though.

Tsuji and Gabe Kidd had a draw after both failed to get up from a standing 10-count in their IWGP Global Heavyweight match. This absolutely rocked and I’m curious whether it is gonna get run back quickly or if this is protecting Kidd as they strap a rocket on him and get him in the main event scene - a New Japan Cup win could do the trick, and I think Goto gritting out a win over Gabe could be a big moment for both. After this match EVIL returned (after having been teased as leaving the promotion, with his profile scrubbed from NJPW’s website) and “expelled Bullet Club War Dogs from Bullet Club,” which, okay, sure, whatever.

I almost forgot to mention that Yuya Uemura, who’s been out injured since the G1 Climax, returned to a huge pop after an otherwise forgettable SANADA vs Taichi match. I almost forgot to mention it because I fell asleep during this match and didn’t actually look up anything about it except the result until now. Anyways, Yuya made the save to keep Taichi and TAKA from getting killed by House of Torture. So with now just DOUKI on the mend, Just 4 Guys is at least back up to Having 3 Guys.

Oh, and (why did so many things happen on this show) Ryohei Oiwa challenged Takeshita for the NEVER Openweight belt after Takeshita’s defense against Oleg Boltin. That should be good! Hoping we see that at Anniversary, but might depend on Takeshita’s schedule - that’s only a couple of days before AEW Revolution.

Other Notes

After El Desperado’s successful defense of the Junior Heavyweight title against Kosei Fujita at Korakuen, a title match against Akira Francesco was announced for the 3/6 Anniversary show. I truly know nothing about post-2020 juniors in NJPW but the Korakuen crowd seemed pretty excited to see Akira. El Phantasmo will also be defending the TV title on this show, no opponent announced yet.

Chris Charlton will be back on commentary for the 3/6 show, per Walker at the end of the broadcast and repeated by F4W (I watched the main event with Japanese commentary this morning so I would have missed it otherwise).

The New Japan Cup bracket is out. I’ll do a closer look at this in a few weeks. Jeff Cobb is on here; there were some concerns about him leaving but he’s at least around for the short-term. Unfortunately, so is Chase Owens. Can’t have it all.

NOAH

Team 2000X

NOAH ran a “Star Navigation Premium” show at Korakuen Hall, drawing a near sell-out crowd that was pretty raucous for a matinee show. The show was a neat mix of a few big angles in NOAH right now: a junior tag league that might actually have some juice, a Kenoh/KENTA tag team that… maybe has less juice than I’d been hoping, and Team 2000X trying to continue their dominant championship reigns. This was probably the best-end-to-end NOAH card I’ve actually watched in full (which to be fair is not a long list, nor is it a high bar to clear given that list); nothing felt like it actively wasted my time in the way NOAH undercards tend to.

We’ll start with Team 2000X, since it’s the biggest thing NOAH has going. This show was primarily built around the big main event of OZAWA vs Galeno - Dr Wagner Jr’s other son, now the only Mexican luchador left in NOAH with former GHC Heavyweight Champion El Hijo de Dr Wagner Jr back in Mexico. OZAWA, who is NOAH’s exciting new heel douchebag and leader of Team 2000X, had incredible hater energy leading up to the show, stealing one of Galeno’s masks on the preview tags and generally being a menace. His new friend and new Team 2000X member Tetsuya Endo was also in the mix defending the GHC National belt against Manabu Soya, who he won the belt off of at the 1/11 Korakuen show.

First, in the midcard, Endo lost the GHC National belt to Soya. This surprised me, given Endo’s supposedly going to be sticking around in NOAH this year. The big angle here was RATEL’s coming out to save Soya from Yoshitatsu and the rest of Team 2000X interfering. This popped the crowd huge, and unfortunately between this and the tag league I think it might be time for me to actually learn the names of the individual members of RATEL’s. The match was great and I am still in the honeymoon period where I enjoy the interference of Team 2000X; I’m sure at some point I will inevitably get sick of seeing Yoshitatsu pull the ref out but for now it’s very fun.

OZAWA then successfully defended the GHC Heavyweight belt in the main event against Galeno. This was a great match, albeit one worked at a big-man pace for Galeno’s sake. The finishing stretch was hot - again with the interference, this time a big Yoshitatsu ref-pull - and it’s clear Galeno is as over as a face is as OZAWA is a heel. I’m not sure what plans they have for Galeno going forward but I can think of some guys I’d enjoy seeing him mixing it up with.

OZAWA, on the other hand, has a challenger lined up: Manabu Soya! They’ll have a championship vs championship match on the 3/2 Memorial Voyage in Yokohama show.

KenKen something-or-other

Kenoh and KENTA had their first match as a new tag team, which is called… KenKen something? I can’t find it written down in English anywhere, and I definitely don’t trust Google Translate with names. But the important thing is, it has a name, so it’s a real team. And with a name like that, I believe more strongly than ever that Sanshiro Takagi, in his role as the head of United Japan Pro-Wrestling, a definitely real job, needs to help mend bridges between NOAH and AJPW to allow my dream team of Kenoh, KENTA, and Kento Miyahara, or KenKenKen, to exist.

Anyways, KenKen-whatever being a real team turned out to be a problem for Kaito Kitomiya, who teamed up with the 800-year old Shuhei Taniguchi in the match. Sure, it was Taniguchi who actually took the pin from KENTA’s G2S (a G2S so incredibly scuffed in execution that Mark Pickering called it a “Busaiku Knee” before correcting himself - sorry, I actually thought Mark & Stewart had a good night on English commentary, but I couldn’t let that one go). But after the match, Kenoh revealed to Kaito that he was leaving Kaito’s ALL REBELLION faction. Now, if you believe the Tokyo Sports article on this, he did this because ALL REBELLION was, in fact, so incredibly successful in its goal of allowing young wrestlers to thrive, that they no longer need Kenoh. However, the way Mark and Stewart talked about it, it sounded like Kenoh was leaving because Kenoh was feeling held back, and left Kaito with a firm handshake and a “sorry that you suck so much, try not to do so in the future,” which Kaito simply agreed to and then left the ring. It’s probably closer to Tokyo Sports’s reporting than the English Commentary’s, but that will not stop me from believing in the latter because Kaito finding new ways to get owned is never not funny.

Junior Tag League

In the draft of this newsletter I did of this before watching the show, I just went ahead and wrote a pithy little line like “life is too short to watch the NOAH Juniors division.” And I still believe that, pretty firmly. But you might want to watch some of this Tag League?

First, I’m impressed with the incredibly obscure British team of Kieron Lacey & Mark Trew, which NOAH seem to have found on their UK tour last year. Lacey is a guy who has his last name in huge text across his ass like he’s in EVOLVE in 2017, Mark Trew is a guy who doesn’t have a Cagematch page, somehow they’re maybe the third-most-fun team in this tournament.

Second, on this card in particular, ALL REBELLION (Alejandro & Kai Fujimura) had an absolute scorcher against Daiki Odashima & Eita. Odashima is a young trainee who only debuted last year, and the crowd popped big when they saw Eita had color-coordinated his gear to match Odashima’s bright red young lion trunks. I have no idea why these guys went this hard but it has me kind of excited to watch more junior tag matches in NOAH, just a real fucked up sentence for me to type out.

AJPW

Saitos & Aoyagis feud

The big angle for this month of AJPW is the Saito Bros’ feud with the Aoyagi brothers. Before reading this section, I highly recommend playing the Saito Bros’ new music video as a background track, it’s… truly something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5QhRfEcHs

There are two big shows, the first of which happened on 2/9 at Korakuen, and featured Rei and Jun Saito defending the AJPW World Tag Team titles against Atsuki and Yuma Aoyagi. The 2/24 show in Hachioji will feature Rei Saito vs Atsuki Aoyagi, and Jun Saito defending the Triple Crown against Yuma Aoyagi.

I think this is a great idea to build back to back big shows around, but they went about it in a weird way: the Saitos successfully defended their tag championships at Korakuen. I was expecting the Aoyagis to take the tag belts to heighten the drama for the singles matches at 2/24 where, presumably, Jun will successfully defend against Yuma. I figured maybe they’d drop the belts back to the Saitos or to another team pretty quickly, but as a short-term story, it made sense to me that it’d be fun to make the Saitos the underdogs - the crowd obviously loves them and they’re certainly not heels at this point, regardless of their stature.

Regardless, I still think the 2/24 matches will be fun. I assume Atsuki will win to set him up for a big 2025 - he spent most of 2024 out with an injury, so it’s a nice comeback story. He’s not in the Champion Carnival (which we’ll get to in a second), but I could see him hanging around the Junior Heavyweight or GAORA TV title scenes while that’s going on.

According to Tokyo Sports this was a record 8th defense for this title. This kinda confuses me because the team they reference as the previous record holders, Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu, appear to have eight defences on Cagematch. Not sure what I’m missing here. I was curious if they were close to the record for longest reign, but at only 317 days vs Minoru Suzuki & Taiyo Kea’s 554 day reign, they’re quite a ways off.

Tokyo Sports also provides a rundown of Kento Miyahara’s postmatch interruption: Kento wants to be the next tag champion, he wants to team with Yuma Aoyagi, and that challenge will happen at Korakuen on 3/9. He would have teamed with DBS Jr., but Davey Boy is off training for the Champion Carnival, so we all dodged a bullet there. Kento & Yuma Aoyagi were a team that held the tag titles in 2023, so they have history (this is before I started watching AJPW, so I am learning as we go here). Yuma losing three matches in a row to various configurations of Saitos is really funny to me; maybe he’ll get lucky on this attempt, or at least get Kento to take the brunt of the damage.

The last note on this match is that Jun Saito had a foot injury requiring him to pull out of the 2/11 and 2/14 shows (Tokyo Sports). The Jun vs Seigo Tachibana non-title match became Seigo vs Kushiro TOKYO Japan, who seems to be puroresu’s universal last-minute replacement.

Champion Carnival lineup

The Champion Carnival lineup was revealed after the intermission of the Korakuen show. Copying here from POST Wrestling:

A Block: Kento Miyahara, Jun Saito, Hideki Suzuki, Shotario Ashino, Kuma Arashi, Kengo Mashimo, XYON, Cyrus, Davey Boy Smith Jr.

B Block: Yuma Aoyagi, Rei Saito, Hokuto Omori, Yuma Anzai, Ryuki Honda, Ren Ayabe, Aigle Blanc, Mike D. Vecchio, Madoka Kikuta

I plan to write up a full preview thing closer to the Champion Carnival dates, but did want to do very short notes on the people here I didn’t recognize from last year:

Not going to attempt to make any predictions about the Champion Carnival yet, but I am happy with those lineups. I like all of ELPIDA being in B Block, that’ll make for some fun stories.

More Korakuen 2/9 show notes

I really liked the Saitos vs Aoyagis main event though it was extremely goofy for the first half. I was a bit worried they’d lose me, but they tightened up after the brawls-and-jokes segment of the match and there were some really good nearfalls down the closing stretch.

My favorite match on the card was, surprisingly, Shotario Ashino defeating Kuma Arashi in Arashi’s 10th Anniversary match. Arashi tapped to an ankle lock, which is a rough way to lose a 10th Anniversary match. Ashino, for once, lived up to the name Master of Suplex, hitting a few nasty ones on Arashi. This was a solid big man fight (Arashi might have the best big boy sentons around) and the best I’ve seen from either guy.

MUSASHI’s defense of the Junior Heavyweight title against Hikaru Sato really didn’t do much for me - Sato had some fun submission sequences but MUSASHI didn’t do much of interest here. Postmatch, Seigo Tachibana challenged for the Junior title with a prerecorded promo… targeted at Sato, who Seigo just assumed would won. Big laughs in the building for this; I’m surprised I haven’t seen this bit done before elsewhere.

Two notes on the tags on this card: Dan Tamura continues to have a weird comedy gimmick where he keeps slapping his tag partners after matches (Hideki Suzuki last month, and now Kento Miayhara, who sold it but got back up and acted like it didn’t happen). Not sure what’s going on there; he repeated the bit on the 2/11 show where he faced Suzuki in a tag, where they had a weird slap/hug exchange that left their respective partners seemingly confused and concerned.

The 4v4 match was an awesome sprint with a hilarious spot where Ren Ayabe pulled HAYATO out of a surfboard stretch by just… gently picking him up and carrying him away. This match served as a preview for Yuma Anzai & Rising HAYATO vs Astronauts for the All Asia tags at the 2/24 show, which I’m really looking forward to.

Dragon Gate

I’m still wrapping my head around Dragon Gate, and didn’t actually think I was going to have a Dragon Gate section of the newsletter this week. That said, I managed to catch some of the matches on the 2/5 Korakuen, and I had to quickly write up the fantastic main event. Just an incredibly fast-paced trios that kept going and going long past when I thought they would be out of stamina, this is what I was expecting from Dragon Gate and was unfortunately missing on the Gate of Bayside show a couple weeks ago. The kind of match where my notes open with, like, jotting down some angles in play and some funny notes on gear, and then by the end I’m just writing “WHAT THE HELL” like three times in a row. So, even if you’re like me and have no idea what’s going on, extremely recommend checking that out.

The big surprise after the main event of the 2/5 show is the return of Yuki Yoshioka from eye surgery. One of the “Reiwa Six” (a generation VoW wrote up in 2023), he spent the entirety of 2024 on the shelf. For a proper deep dive on what his return to Dragon Gate means, I highly recommend the Open The Voice Gate episode recapping the show. He’ll be returning in the Rey de Parejas tournament running through March, teaming with Dragon Dia.

Dragon Gate’s Shun Skywalker is producing a show on 3/24 at Shinjuku Face (POST Wrestling). Not sure if that’s making tape.

Late breaking news from the 2/11 show is that Kzy will challenge YAMATO for the Dream Gate title and the Z-Brats team of KAI, ISHIN, Yoshiki Kato will challenge for the Triangle Gate championship currently held by PARADOX. YAMATO vs Kzy will be on the 3/1 show, not sure if there’s a date for the Triangle Gate challenge yet.

TJPW

The team of Hyper Misao & Shoko Nakajima defeated Pom Harajuku & Max the Impaler in the Max Heart Tournament finals, and will go on to challenge Maki Itoh & Miyu Yamashita for the tag belts at Grand Princess next month. I can’t say I am mad about this result, but I would have enjoyed seeing Pom & Max win the tournament and lose the actual title shot. I was pleasantly surprised by the shine Pom got in this match, particularly from Shoko, and it had me thinking that her shtick could almost work as legitimate offense. The Pom de Justice with Misao draped over the bottom rope was a surprisingly nasty-looking version of a move that looks silly as hell in most cases.

I will say this is a much more interesting result from a story perspective. This is the first tournament win for Misao & Shoko, having gotten as far as losing in the finals in 2023… to Itoh & Miyu. The win leads to their fourth attempt at the tag titles, and their first since 2022. I could see the Grand Princess match going either way: Itoh & Miyu have held only the belts since September but are already short on credible challengers, especially if Daisy Monkey are going to split for a bit to focus on singles competition. Speaking of which…

Suzume retained the International Princess Championship over Jada Stone in a solid match, but her tag partner in Daisy Monkey, Arisu Endo, came out to challenge for the belt at Grand Princess. This is also a match I could see going either way: Suzume is certainly the favorite having only held the belt through a single defense, but TJPW certainly doesn’t mind giving new champions abbreviated reigns. After Yuki Arai’s year-long International Princess reign, maybe moving the belt around a bit makes some sense to liven up the midcard.

On the whole, the show was a solid Korakuen effort, with a number of rookie gauntlet matches filling up the card rather than the usual multi-woman tags. If you want to see some of TJPW’s rookies get some time to shine, I recommend checking those out - Miu vs Uta was particularly good. The show didn’t particularly draw particularly well, but it seemed to be in the usual ballpark of TJPW’s “one-match” Korakuens, like the Tokyo Princess Cup final last year.

Other News

I did see some of the Stardom 2/2 show, including the big Artist of Stardom match that got a lot of buzz because it’s only the second time in the last thirty years that Meltzer has given a women’s match a five-star rating. It’s a very good match! I don’t think it is, like, the second best women’s match of the last 30 years, but you should probably watch it. And you should definitely watch the incredible Saya Kamitani vs Suzu Suzuki match; an incredible sprint of a main event. I hope you like poisonranas.

The DDT D Generations Cup tournament finished its block matches on 2/9, but that got uploaded on 2/12, and I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. I’ll cover that next issue, since we’ll be talking about the 2/24 Korakuen with the finals match on it anyways. In the interim, you can check Dramatic DDT if you want to see the results; I’ve spent the last four days actively avoiding that site since I don’t want to be spoiled.

A new venue opened in Tokyo called “TOKYOSQUARE In Itabashi”. This is basically a garage that got a fresh coat of blue paint - check out the old street view on Google Maps.

This looks to hold maybe 200 people at capacity. The first promotion to run there, DIE, announced 182; FREEDOMS announced 150 for each of their shows; BJW announced 80 for theirs. This basically makes it smaller than Shinkiba 1st Ring but larger than, like, a dojo show or ChocoPro’s Ichagaya Chocolate Square. I’m guessing as fans watching streams and VODs we probably won’t see it too often. FREEDOMS did run a heck of a main event light tubes match with Jun Kasai that they uploaded to Youtube, though, with Jun Kasai getting incredibly busted open and needing a bandage wrap to continue. There’s a couple other matches they uploaded too, worth a watch if you want to see a bit more of the venue.

Mio Momono of Marvelous/Sendai Girls had a UCL tear in her arm and will be out for three to six months with ligament damage. Interestingly, this appears to have happened on the first of two shows she worked on Feb 9 - an Oz Academy card - and she worked the Sendai Girls show later only using one arm. Somewhat easier to hide in a tag team, I guess! Conveniently, her team of Bob Bob Momo Banana lost a championship in each match, which is better than having to vacate. I was beginning to really enjoy that team so I hope she gets back to it as quick as she safely can.

This week in puroresu (2/12 - 2/19)

Not much of note, which is a relief after such a packed week. DDT is running a Sauna Club-branded show on Valentine’s Day, which feels right. AJPW is celebrating Valentine’s with… Rei Saito vs Kuma Arashi on a Shinkiba show, which somehow also feels right.

DDT is also running a weird GLEAT crossover show on 2/15 which could be kind of fun, but it’s not listed on Wrestle Universe’s streaming schedule so I’m not sure if it’ll make tape (maybe on GLEAT’s Youtube membership?). TJPW is doing a Shinkansen match this weekend that’ll be uploaded to WU on 2/19.

As always, you can check the Big Show Calendar to check out what’s coming up beyond this week, and you can check Puwota if you want to see every single puro show happening in Japan.

Thanks for reading this first issue! I am still dialing in lots of things: how much attention I give each promotion, how much detail to go into for every company, how much to focus on results vs news vs previews. Feel free to send an email to puroresuprimer@fastmail.com with feedback.