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

Newsletter: May 1, 2025

This week is all about Bushiroad, with breakdowns of the massive happenings in Stardom and and less-massive happenings in New Japan. We’ve also got a long preview for the rest of the Golden Week shows happening over the next few days.

Match Recommendations

Deadlock Title Fight in Vegas (4/18, DPW On Demand, Cagematch)

Marigold Rising Spirit Night 1 (4/25, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NJPW Wrestling Redzone in Hiroshima (4/26, NJPW World, Cagematch)

Sendai Girls (4/26, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

Stardom All-Star Grand Queendom 2025 (4/27, eventually Stardom World/for now check your local tube sites, Cagematch)

Sendai Girls Satomura Meiko The Final (4/29, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NJPW Wrestling Hizen no Kuni (4/29, NJPW World, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carnival Night 7 (4/26, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carnival Night 8 (4/27, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

Stardom: not a dry eye in the house

All Star Grand Queendom 2025 in Yokohama Arena was the best attendance for a joshi show in at least 22 years. AJW claimed 9850 for a show at Yokohama Arena in 2003, and while this was certainly a worked number, it’s probably not worth wasting too much time debating just how worked - the important thing is this is the best attendance Stardom has done in their existence, and is the biggest number of what you could define as the “modern era” of joshi wrestling.

Stardom drew 7503 to Yokohama Arena, beating their previous record of 5593 at the same venue two years ago. They did this not with stunt booking or bringing in big foreign talent, but with a bunch of excellent-on-paper matches building on and paying off longstanding feuds, rivalries, and storylines. This is a triumph for Stardom, and arguably a triumph for joshi wrestling in general.

You should watch this show in full. It should be on Stardom World within a week or two of this newsletter going up; I’d recommend you track down a copy on your local tube or torrent site before then. Lest anyone tsk-tsk me for promoting piracy here, this is kind of your only option at the moment, as the Stagecrowd site the PPV was originally sold on only allowed purchases and archived viewing for a limited window. The other awkward thing is that Walker Stewart did excellent English commentary for this international PPV, and I don’t think that will actually be made available on Stardom World or anywhere else.

I am, of course, going to run down most of the results here as part of talking about the storylines that started, continued, and ended at ASGQ. Feel free to skip this whole section if you want to remain spoiler-free. And seriously, go watch this show!

What’s next for Saya & Tam

This show was anchored by the massive main event, Saya Kamitani defending the World of Stardom belt against Tam Nakano in a loser-must-retire match, no time limit, no seconds at ringside. They had an excellent, clean match as you’d expect. Like most big Stardom cards, this show had a ton of brutal strikes and high-impact moves, but this match somehow still managed to stand out, including a disgusting, hate-filled slap exchange in the middle that drew blood from Saya’s mouth.

Kamitani - the younger, just-now-fully-established heel - unsurprisingly won this career vs career match against her older rival. Tam Nakano, only 37 years old and eight years into her career, retired.

The post-match promos were an excellent bit of pro wrestling theater. The entire build to this match had been simple: Saya Kamitani hated Tam Nakano for injuring her and derailing her career several years ago, but also loved her for bringing her into pro wrestling in the first place. She was obsessed with Tam - it wasn’t enough to beat her for the championship at Dream Queendom, she also had to take her Stardom career, and finally, her wrestling career. And after finally defeating her, Saya realized she loved Tam more than she hated her. They hugged, they cried, they walked together up the ramp to the back, they posed on the ramp for one final moment together and Tokyo Sports captured one of the greatest photographs in wrestling history. They cried, I cried, the entire crowd cried. This was pro wrestling melodrama at its finest. Thankfully there were live translations on the Stagecrowd PPV, Tokyo Sports has several articles that you can Google Translate for more detail.

There will be people besides me better-suited to writing career retrospectives for Tam. I got here late. But seeing an ace like this retire in the ring - and put make someone on the way out - is always a goosebumps-inducing moment.

As to why she’s wrapping up? We’re still in the dark. You could make the argument that in a very short time she “maxed out” what you can do in Stardom: between 2021 and 2024 she held the World of Stardom Championship (red belt) twice, the Wonder of Stardom Championship (white belt) twice, and the Goddesses of Stardom Championship (tag belt) once; not to mention she held the Artist of Stardom (trios belts) four times in her career between 2018 and 2025. She helped make two major heel stars: her feud with Guliia and her feud with Saya Kamitani. She also worked to get rookie Sayaka Kurara over on the way out the door, though it remains to be seen if that sticks. During her run, Tam was also injured and took four months off between October 2023 and February 2024, at which time she talked about wanting to retire - maybe this retirement is her simply deciding not to risk her health any further (which I can never blame a wrestler for).

Stardom president Taro Okada mentioned in the press conference after the show that even after “retirement,” Tam could join Stardom in an office job capacity. It’s easy to imagine her fitting into a booker or agent role. Okada has been booking Stardom on-paper since Rossy Ogawa’s exit, but there has been some speculation that he’s had a “shadow booker” or several helping him out, given his lack of experience in booking before this role (this VoW article from a few months ago breaks this down a bit).

What’s next for Saya Kamitani? Well, while she might want a bit of a break after laying it all on the line over the past couple months, a working champion’s job is never over: she faces Sayaka Kuraka next. Kuraka was the winner of the Cinderella Tournament last month, and later announced she wanted to challenge the winner of Tam vs Saya. Being a protege of Tam Nakano, one imagines she had been hoping to face Tam, but now she’s stuck facing the champion who not only beat her mentor, but also beat her only a month ago in a non-title match in Okinawa. Kuraka is in fact 0-3 against Kamitani in singles matches in her two-year career, actually debuting in an 8 minute loss to Kamitani in December 2023.

Kamitani and Kuraka have history beyond just the match record, though: most recently, Kamitani attempted to get Kuraka to turn on Tam Nakano and Cosmic Angels in a tag match in February, but Kuraka stuck with Tam. That was the same match in which Kamitani challenged Tam to the loser-leaves-Stardom match at Korakuen that later lead us to this loser-must-retire match. You might think that after Saya vs Tam, we’d get to lay off the heavy emotions in the World of Stardom title scene, but I can only imagine what Kuraka will do to get revenge for her mentor. Heck, we might even get a Saya Kamitani that actually shows guilt and regret for what she’s done - though I’m sure H.A.T.E. will be there to run in and help her work through her doubts.

Mayu Iwatani loses the IWGP Women’s Championship & leaves

Tam Nakano isn’t the only ace who wrapped up her time in Stardom in Yokohama: Mayu iwatani dropped the IWGP Women’s Championship to Syrui after a 735 day reign, and immediately announced her departure from Stardom. A few days later, she announced that she’s joining former Stardom booker Rossy Ogawa’s new promotion, Marigold.

Iwatani was one of the very first Stardom trainees, debuting in 2011. Even though she is younger than Tam Nakano, she has almost double the career length, and has spent that entire time in Stardom. She had been rumored to be out the door several times in the last few years, but stuck around as the leader of STARS and the long-time holder of the IWGP Women’s Championship, which she won off Mercedes Mone back in 2023.

If you talk to long-time Stardom viewers, Mayu, not Tam, is the by far the biggest ace leaving Stardom. While Tam’s ascent was sudden and bright and her time at the top was relatively short, Mayu won her first Wonder of Stardom title back in 2014 and has been near the top of the promotion ever since. She was connected to Io Shirai in their Thunder Rock tag team and later in a trio with Shirai and Kairi Hojo.

At the same time, if you want to talk about someone who has truly “maxed out” what she can do in Stardom, Mayu Iwatani really has run out of stuff to do. She’s a big fish in an increasingly large pond, but, well, that pond has a lot of other newer fish who… I don’t know, are also competing for whatever these metaphorical fish eat. I don’t think Stardom is necessarily trying to push out older talent like the joshi promotions of yore, but I do think they are very interested in getting their current crop of 20-25 year olds in main event ace positions, and I don’t know how many roles they have for wrestlers who have been around as long as Mayu, other than holding this IWGP Women’s Championship (which is now in the hands of 36-year old veteran Syrui).

There was some speculation as to whether Iwatani was bound for America, but she, is rather famously, a bit of a homebody. It is possible she’ll make the Marigold-to-WWE transition as Gulia did before her, but it’s just as possible that she really has no interest in moving.

Iwatani will debut on the 5/4 Korakuen show facing Nanae Takahashi. According to Tokyo Sports (and Google Translate), she’ll be full-time starting on 5/24 with Takahashi’s retirement show at Yoyogi Second Gymnasium.

Footnote, I suppose: the next challenger for Syrui will be Sareee, who cut a promo after the show. No date for that yet - it could be on either a New Japan or Stardom show, though. The next major Stardom show looks to be 6/21 at Tokyo Yoyogi Stadium, so if I had to guess I’d say it’ll happen there (feels too big for a Korakuen).

Thekla’s gone & headed stateside

Thekla had a last-minute match added to this card: she faced Kuraka on a hastily-added undercard match (it was added on the Korakuen only a couple days before this; I didn’t even know this was happening when I wrote my preview last week). The stakes, silly as they were, were that if Thekla won she’d get a match against Stardom president Taro Okada, while if she lost, she’d be forced to join Cosmic Angels.

Well, she lost, but didn’t accept that: she attacked Okada anyways. Okada fought back and ended up firing Thekla at ringside.

Turns out, Thekla is in fact done with Stardom: Fightful Select reported that she’s headed to the US and is fielding multiple offers from companies.

Thekla was never a very popular wrestler among Stardom fans from what I saw; her heel shtick was reasonably effective but she was considered a much worse worker than her peers and seemed “exposed” in Stardom. Considering that I mostly remember her matches for the sheer amount of profanity she used, I am curious to see where she goes and how she’ll adjust to American TV wrestling. It’s possible she comes to AEW in a similar fashion to Mariah May or Megan Bayne, but I have to admit I wouldn’t be particularly excited to see her.

Oh yeah, Maika’s injured

So that’s three wrestlers gone, so why not add a fourth: Maika is out to get surgery on her elbow. This is the surgery known in baseball as “Tommy John surgery,” and that has like a 12-18 month recovery time.

Maika has apparently been working hurt for 3-4 years, and will have a few more matches before departing, because wrestlers are nothing if not stupid devoted to their craft. She’ll wrap up with a match on the 5/6 show in Fukuoka.

Maika is only 30, and I’m glad she eventually got around to getting this surgery instead of just letting it linger even longer, so she can hopefully still have a solid next act in her career after returning. I enjoy watching her wrestle and really liked her loss to Chihiro Hashimoto on ASGQ. She’s only five years into her career, but, like Tam, quickly accomplished a lot and has already held the World of Stardom Championship once.

New champions, old champions, new units, …old units?

So, that’s the biggest show in company history, a rousing success, and also they now have four of their top stars gone. So, probably time for a unit shakeup, huh?

Let’s start with the newest unit: at All Star Grand Queendom, Suzu Suzuki’s life with her new unit, Mi Vida Loca, started off strong with a big win over her former tag partner Mei Seira. This match rocked; it had a No DQ stipulation purely so they could roll out of the ring early on, hit each other with chairs, blade, and then get back in the ring and have a normal match while covered in blood. Great way to set yourself apart on a card that was made up almost entirely of heated rivalries and blood feuds: just have an actual blood feud match. While Suzu’s no stranger to blading, I have to give props to Mei Seira for going for it as well. This ended up being like my second favorite match on the show; I know it’s like the 5th-best by pure Cagematch rankings but I thought these two crushed it. I’m super curious to see where Suzuki goes next with this unit: it feels like they have room for at least a couple more people. It’ll also be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves as a heel unit from H.A.T.E.’s House of Torture-esque shtick.

Mei, meanwhile, is still in Neo Genesis, who had a big rivalry match on ASGQ: Starlight Kid vs AZM. SLK is the leader of Neo Genesis but AZM wanted to vie for that title as well as SLK’s Wonder of Stardom Championship, but came up short in both. Whether AZM will really accept this remains to be seen - right now, she’s looking ahead to her three-way challenge against Mina Shirakawa and Mercedes Mone for the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship in California on 5/9.

SLK’s next defense will be against Empress Venus Nexus’s HANAKO (who won a preshow rumble to win the right to challenge). And man, Empress Venus Nexus seems done: former leader Mina Shirakawa is gone, Maika is gone for months, and now the unit is just HANAKO, Waka Tsukiyama, Xena, and Rian. Oops, all rookies! Maika mentioned wanting to continue appearing at Stardom while she recovers from surgery, so I could imagine we get a short-to-medium story of her trying to hold this unit together before they all split off, but I could also just see them shaking this unit up immediately.

But that’s just one of three units now missing their leader. Next up: Tam Nakano is gone now, so where does that leave Cosmic Angels? I suspect they’ll stick around, since either Natsupoi or Saori Anou could take over as leader (and, heck, have a good-natured feud between the two to see who takes the formal title). Saya Kurara seems like she’s about to get a major push as a member of this unit, and I could see her taking over within a couple of years. That might depend on the crowd accepting her as a “replacement” for Tam, which could be tricky.

But you know who’s really in trouble without their leader? STARS. Mayu Iwatani is gone, and they just had a big inter-unit tag title match with Hanan and Saya Iida (wing gori) defending their tag titles against Koguma & Hazuki (FWC). After the match, the latter two refused to shake the hands of wing gori - not a great sign!

Meanwhile, H.A.T.E. can just sorta sit back and laugh, even if they might still be stinging from their failed recruitments of both Saya Kurara and Suzu Suzuki. But that could change if Saya Kamitani, now the company’s de facto ace, has a face turn this year. I’m hoping they hold off on that for a bit, because Kamitani is so good at “conflicted heel who cries all the time” - the money story here is Kamitani increasingly getting upset at the actions her unit takes to win matches, before the unit eventually gets sick of her newfound conscience and turns. I’d love for them to use Momo Watanabe as the new leader; as far as I can tell she’s been more or less sidelined since turning heel several years ago.

Oh, and just for completeness, I suppose I should mention God’s Eye. I’m not sure whether Syuri winning the IWGP Women’s Championship will do much for them, other than maybe getting some big tag match spots on NJPW shows. That’s a unit that feels stable, but a little directionless.

NJPW: questionable choices abound

New champions on the road to Wrestling Dontaku

Callum Newman is now a two-time champion in the dumbest way possible: he regained the IWGP Tag Team Championship with new partner Great O Khan, replacing the departed Jeff Cobb.

Their match against Yoshi-Hashi & Goto was pretty boring. Much, much less boring, and actually exciting: the previous match on the same show featuring Tetsuya Naito & Hiromu Takahashi facing the new team of Taichi & Tomohiro Ishii. They immediately seemed like an awesome team, and I guess they and the office agree, as Newman and GOK’s first defense will be against Taichi & Ishii, though we don’t know a date for that yet - possibly it’ll be at Dominion in June.

Callum pinned Yoshi Hashi to win the belts, setting up Goto to get revenge for his partner at Dontaku on the 5/4 show. I still think Goto vs Callum is a terrible main event, but I am curious to see how the crowd responds to it. I think Callum actually can have some decent babyface fire, but I’m not sure Goto is the right guy to bring that out.

Taichi & Ishii, by the way, are getting another match at Takataichimania 4 on 5/7, against Zack Sabre Jr & Jun Akiyama. Those shows are usually NJPW World PPVs, but I don’t see this one listed yet. The main event of that is Taka Michinoku vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, so I’d really hope it makes NJPW World (or at least some kind of tape).

Callum & GOK aren’t the only new tag team champions in the company, though: Master Wato & YOH won the junior tag belts off Fujita & Robbie Eagles in an excellent match on the 4/29 show. Highly recommend this, especially if you still (understandably) roll your eyes at the mention of Wato or YOH. Talk about a team that’s more than the sum of its parts. These guys will never hit the heights I once hoped they would, but I’m glad they can have a fun time teaming together and sharing gold.

One singles championship has changed hands as well: El Phantasmo won the TV Title back from Great O Khan, and has now announced his match with Takeshita on Resurgence (5/9) will be title vs title for the NEVER Openweight Championship. Given the 15 minute time limit of the TV title, I assume this will be a time limit draw and maybe end up with ELP demanding they run it back somewhere.

Other news

There’s been some further explanations of the TJP/Cobb beef that I honestly do not feel like going through. The VoW Flagship Plus podcast on their Patreon has a detailed breakdown if you really feel you need to hear about it, but suffice to say: it started as a beef over the United Empire angles over the past year with Cobb not really wanting to be involved at all, TJP being annoyed he was being shoot-undermined as the kayfabe-leader by Cobb going into business for himself, and everyone else just being kind of annoyed at both. I don’t think we’ll see TJP back in NJPW any time soon after Resurgence, but maybe his friendship with Rocky Romero will smooth over any issues he might have now with the office.

Naito had a Tokyo Sports interview where he claimed his issues with NJPW were not about money and that he felt disrespected by NJPW taking his negotiations for a new contract as a formality instead of coming to the table properly. A little spicy, I’m a little surprised he said that latter part just because I assume we’ll see him back on freelance dates sooner rather than later and I’d think he’d want to keep in good standing instead of airing stuff out.

NJPW Resurgence in California (east of LA) on 5/9 appears to be selling horribly, kinda worried that show is gonna get straight-up canceled. Annoyingly, NJPW is also again selling this as a $20 PPV. It’s like their goal is to ensure there are even fewer people watching at home than there are in the building.

Okay, that’s it for the bummers, here’s some good stuff: the Best of the Super Junior blocks have been released. The big questions we had were who CMLL were sending and who was replacing BUSHI: those had the relatively boring answers of Titan and Robbie X, respectively. That said, I did really like Robbie X in the junior tag championship match he was in a couple weeks ago, kinda interested to see more of him in his BOSJ debut.

I am really curious about BOSJ this year; there is zero chance I actually watch every tournament match because I do need some time for non-wrestling activities in my life but I’m gonna try to pick and choose a few shows to get into, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on match recommendations from my friends. It feels like the junior division in NJPW has been very high on match quality lately between Desperado and Robbie Eagles/Fujita defending their respective titles in some great matches, and I’m now, once again, begrudgingly interested to see what YOH and Wato do next.

I’m behind on AJPW

Dumping 4 nights of the Champion Carnival into an already busy weekend was very rude of AJPW. I caught up on nights 7 and 8, which basically just served to narrow the field, but don’t want to spoil myself on nights 9 and 10 because I’m weirdly invested, even if the match quality has had a bit of a downturn (though maybe it’s just that the novelty has worn off a bit). Thankfully there’s only one additional show before the next issue (on 5/6 at Korakuen), so I’ll be back next week with an update as we head into the last two nights of block matches.

Other news

Meiko Satomura’s retirement tour ended the only way it could: her getting three tag match wins in a row and then having an impromptu 5 minute match where most of the Sendai Girls roster beat her up before the time limit was called. God bless joshi wrestling.

She had a great match on the Stardom undercard getting one last grand-stage moment before her retirement at Korakuen. Her retirement match (and bonus followup match) at Korakuen were a blast, with Aja Kong working harder than she has in years (even running in the ring at one point!). Manami looked good as the rookie getting over in the match, even if she had a couple unfortunate timing botches (Meiko herself botched her finisher a couple times in the bonus match; chalk it up to emotion).

I’m excited for the future of Sendai Girls, the roster is strong if small and they seem to have strong partnerships with other companies. As long as everyone can stay friendly, I think those SenJo shows on Wrestle Universe will remain some of the surest bets in wrestling.

Over in Marigold, they have been working an angle with Marvelous and had a great 5v5 gauntlet match on the 4/25 Korakuen that I definitely recommend checking out, everyone looked great in it. It’s a good chance to see some of the Marigold workers you might not see elsewhere, at least not in the short term - some of the experienced wrestlers they pilfered from Actwresgirlz back when they started are very fun to watch, plus I thought the “main event” of the gauntlet, with Marigold rookie Chika Goto vs Marvelous vet Takumi Iroha, was great.

Also happening in Marigold: Jungle Kyona had a 5 minute exhibition match with Nanae Takahashi as part of the latter’s retirement tour, and then announced she was training for a full-time return to the ring, which could be neat! That said, Kyona was famously banged-up and initially left wrestling due to myriad injures, while she’s only 34 and could have healed up well I’m a little worried this run won’t last long.

Puro-adjacent: Deadlock Pro Wrestling ran their two shows in Japan last week; they’re set to go up on the DPW On Demand service on 5/10 and 5/11. This is a great month to check out DPW On Demand: their Vegas show was excellent and both works as a good introduction to the promotion and also sets up several storylines for the Japan shows, and in addition to Vegas and the Japan shows they also have a show going up on 5/25. I sometimes see people complain about the $15/mo price for DPW On Demand considering you usually only get about one show a month; in this case you get four and I think that’s a phenomenal deal considering the usual quality of a DPW show. I left some specific match recommendations above but you should watch this show top to bottom, especially the main which is important context for the Japan shows.

DDT’s Keigo Nakamura had his farewell match last week before his mysterious excursion. He lost to Yuki Ueno in a competitive match, and then tapped to Shinya Aoki in a bonus emergency match in about 70 seconds. I really wonder where this dude is going. He posted a tweet with him getting on a plane heading overseas, so hopefully we find out sooner rather than later.

What to watch (5/1 - 5/8)

It’s Golden Week in Japan, so we have an absolute ton of shows. Technically, Golden Week started on 4/29, though it really starts the weekend before (thus all the big shows last weekend).

NJPW’s Wrestling Dontaku takes place on 5/3 and 5/4 as usual. NJPW has full English previews for both night 1 and night 2, but the tl;dr: night 1 has Tanahashi vs ZSJ, Shota Umino vs Shingo Takagi, and the huge War Dogs vs House of Torture cage match. Night 2 has the final matches in NJPW for Naito and BUSHI, teaming with Hiromu & Shingo vs Shota Umino, Ishii, Taichi, & Taka Michinoku; Yuya Uemera defending the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship against Yota Tsuji; and Goto defending the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship against… Callum Newman. Starting to feel like that main event is gonna feel like an afterthought of this weekend. These shows will air live on NJPW World with English commentary.

NOAH has their big Memorial Voyage show at Ryogoku on 5/3, with a pretty stacked card, with the big OZAWA vs KENTA main event being the biggest threat OZAWA has faced in his GHC Heavyweight Championship run. All belts are on the line here; I’m particularly looking forward to the Jr Heavyweight Tag Championship match with AMAKUSA & Junta Miyawaki defending against the returning luchadors Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane. This will air live on Wrestle Universe with English commentary.

I was going to attempt to write a preview for Dragon Gate’s huge 5/5 Dead or Alive show, but (a) I have not been able to keep up with Dragon Gate at all these last couple months and (b) Case Lowe already wrote an excellent preview at Voices of Wrestling. I will definitely be watching this one; very excited for the cage match.

Also airing live on Wrestle Universe: DDT’s single elimination King of DDT tournament kicks off on 5/6 at Korakuen Hall with the entire first round. The big matches here look like Chris Brookes vs HARASHIMA and Shinya Aoki vs Kazusada Higuchi.

That’s one of many shows at Korakuen this weekend. After burning through five nights of the Champion Carnival last week, AJPW eases off the throttle just a bit for just a single Korakuen show, live on AJPW TV on 5/6.

Marigold also have a big Korakuen on 5/4, airing live on Wrestle Universe. This show has Mayu Iwatani’s Marigold debut against Nanae Takahashi, plus a tag match with Utami Hayashishita & Victoria Yuzuki facing MIRAI & Seri Yamaoka and Mai Sakurai defending the United National Championship against Misa Matsui.

Also running Korakuen this weekend: SEAdLINNNG, Freedoms, Wave, and Marvelous. I don’t think any of these are streaming - Freedoms will be airing on Samurai TV on 5/10, though, with El Desperado in the main event. You’ll be able to find that on the tube sites, at least.

TJPW have a couple small touring shows this week getting uploaded to Wrestle Universe on 5/6 and 5/7. The former show has Suzume defending the International Princess Championship against HIMAWARI, while the latter show has a special TJPW RUSH! elimination match that could be very fun.

If that somehow wasn’t enough wrestling for you, there are two Ryogoku shows from last weekend being aired on Samurai TV on 5/3 and 5/4, meaning they should hit the tube sites soon after. I’ll just drop the cards for those and let you decide on your own whether you want to track them down: Unagi Sayaka Produce Unagi Zekkocho and Lucha Fiesta Especial.

And as mentioned earlier, Takataichimania 4 is happening on 5/7, but I don’t know where it’s airing yet.

This somehow feels like one of the longest issues I’ve written yet and one of the shortest - I feel a little bit bad not having full previews of the NOAH show or Wrestling Dontaku, but after that Stardom stuff I am just wiped out.

I’ll definitely be watching the upper cards of Dontaku, all of the NOAH show, the Dragon Gate show, and catch up on the Champion Carnival, but I’m doubtful I’ll get through anything else before our next issue (sorry King of DDT; I’ll recap rounds 1 and 2 at once in a couple weeks). Thankfully, we have some miserable weather here in NYC keeping me from wanting to actually go outside, leaving me plenty of time for wrestling.