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

Newsletter: May 23, 2025

Had a very busy work week, so this issue’s coming in very late. Usually I start writing these a section at a time as I finish watching shows, but I got started on this one at noon Thursday. Oops.

I had time to catch up on DDT, NOAH, and AJPW, and scraped together a quick preview for Marigold’s PPV this weekend. Haven’t caught any BOSJ yet - going to try watching a bit this week going off of the star ratings and match recommendations I’ve seen around (which I’ll wind up repeating my own recommendations next week). That one Ninja Mack GIF sure is great though.

Match Recommendations

King of DDT Night 1 (5/8, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

King of DDT Night 2 (5/10, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NOAH Star Navigation 2025 (5/18, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carnival Night 14 (5/18, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

Stardom Nighter in Korakuen (5/21, Stardom World, Cagematch)

AJPW: Champion Carnival finals & Sendai card

You may have noticed I don’t have either of the Champion Carnival finals or semifinals in my recommendations above. It was a weird show.

The result is the predictable one: Rei Saito won the Carnival and will face his brother Jun Saito in Sendai for the Triple Crown Championship on 6/1. The Saitos are from the nearby town of Kakuda; lots of people had this result locked in as soon as they saw the Sendai show on the schedule. I had it more or less locked in as soon as the semifinals were set - I thought there was a slim chance of Ryuki Honda going on to the final considering he had a pretty big push with his wins in the Carnival, but it makes sense that they’d hold off on a title challenge or whatever until later this year.

The semifinals were weird. Kento vs Honda opened and was only starting to really find its groove when Kento won on a kinda ugly pin reversal sequence in like nine minutes. Hideki vs Rei opened with Hideki wildly attacking Rei before the bell, then him and Rei slapping the shit out of each other for two minutes before Hideki went down in the corner and failed to get up from a 10-count. It was an interesting idea, but I thought their offensive exchanges looked bad and the crowd was not excited about this match or its finish. They thought they were doing Frye/Takyama and instead they just looked that awkward kind of sloppy where they are hitting the hell out of each other for real but it looks worse than if they were actually working an exchange like normal. Again, interesting idea, just poorly executed.

The finals match of Rei vs Kento wasn’t much to write about. I thought Rei vs Yuma last week was a great match and one of Rei’s best, this was not that. I think the predictable finish really killed it - no one thought they were going to run Kento vs Jun Saito a third time in as many months. The last few minutes definitely had heat as people wanted to see Rei win, so it wasn’t a failure or anything, just not a great match.

The more interesting matches on this show were in the midcard. The All Asia Tag Championship match with Yuma Anzai & Rising HAYATO defending against Aigle Blanc & Mike D Vecchio delivered, even if it wasn’t really a great match: Aigle and Mike did some very fun stupid stuff, everyone was kind of sloppy and tired, and the match went longer than it should have, but I continue to be really up on all four guys in this. Unfortunately, Aigle and Mike are headed to WWE, according to Cultaholic. I’ll miss them.

The show-stealer was MUSASHI defending (unsuccessfully) the junior belt against Seiki Yoshioka. This match also went too long - 23 minutes - but it was really, really good. The sense that I got is that these guys didn’t want to end this match until the crowd was rowdy, and this crowd didn’t want to get rowdy until they thought the finish was coming up, so they ended up going like seven minutes longer than they probably should have since they finally had the crowd. Still, they had some really spectacular moments in this match, like a wild forearm/headbutt exchange while they held hands were locked in a handshake in the center of the ring. Seiki won and Dan Tamura came out to challenge him at Sendai, I am super excited for that match.

The full Sendai card is out, and the big surprise is Xyon sticking around and teaming with Shotaro Ashino to challenge the tag champs of Kento & Yuma Aoyagi. A very weird choice for Kento & Yuma’s first defense since winning the belts off the Saitos back in March. I’m excited for this match but on, like, an ironic level. I guess Xyon and Shotaro did actually execute at least one tag team move together in the trios match they were in on this show, maybe they’ll be a team going forward. Or this is all just an extended preview of the Real World Tag League later this year.

I still like AJPW, but I suspect after Sendai I’ll be refocusing my attention elsewhere for a bit. There is a Korakuen later in June I’ll check in on, and I kinda want to see the junior league they’re running across a few shows in July and August. Make up for my lack of time for the BOSJ.

DDT: King of DDT recap & finals preview

I finally watched the King of DDT shows! It was only two nights of tournament matches so not much to catch up on, thankfully.

Night 1 in Korakuen had some really delightful surprises. The big one was Antonio Honda having an awesome match against Yuki Ueno. I do not think I have ever seen Honda work a serious singles match before. He didn’t even hit the Gon the Fox spot (though he teased it, because he’s if nothing else a master of wrestling psychology). The “must see” tag in my recommendations is maybe a bit generous - I’m not saying this is a 5 star match, or even 4 star - I just think it’s such a rarity of a match and really gives you a great chance to see how good of a worker Honda is.

The other match I loved here was a rematch of Yuya Koroku and Takeshi Masada, who met in the finals of the D Generations Cup back in February. This wasn’t quite as good as that match (obviously different circumstances with two guys you knew weren’t going to win this tournament, versus the finals of that one), but these guys continue to work a heated rivalry that I hope keeps going and going as they rise in DDT. I also hope Yuya gets new gear because, holy shit, that collar looks so bad.

Night 2 didn’t have much on it by comparison. (the same thing happened last year, where everyone showed out for night 1 at Korakuen and took it easy for night 2 at Shinjuku FACE). I did enjoy Ueno vs Daisuke Sasaki a lot and whenever someone pulls a good match out of Sasaki I have to give them props for it.

The semifinals are set to be KANON vs Hideki Okatani and Higuchi vs Ueno. The KANON vs Okatani feud, you may recall, stems from KANON being kicked out of DAMNATION TA in favor of Okatani. Okatani has really come in to his own now - by which I mean he looks like a hot goth boy - and I think he should win this match and this tournament and keep KANON chasing him. Ueno barely surviving being chopped to death by Higuchi and then falling to Okatani, who will have advanced from cheating against KANON, seems like a perfect story.

The only other big match on the finals show at Korakuen on 5/25 is Minoru Suzuki defending the DDT Universal Championship against Danshoku Dieno. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to watch a Dieno match.

NOAH: OZAWA retains against loser Kaito

I find NOAH’s “Star Navigation” branding for their Korakuen shows kind of funny. Some of them are called “Star Navigation Premium” and seem to have bigger matches or angles going on up and down the card, and then some are just called “Star Navigation” and will have, like, one or two big matches and a whole lot of nothing. I sometimes wonder if there’s an actual difference in ticket prices or something: it’s weird to have a brand that’s just “these are the good shows!” without any other distinction.

This weekend’s show was a Star Navigation show, and boy, nothing happened on the undercard, or even in the underwhelming YO-HEY vs Tadasuke match (with YO-HEY successfully defending, and Junta Miyawaki challenging for the 6/3 Star Navigation show).

Thankfully, the sold out crowd here didn’t get let down by the main event, a rather quickly-booked OZAWA vs Kaito KItomiya rematch. This match ruled. I have it as a “must see” because if you want to understand what people see in OZAWA, and get a sense of where Kaito might be taking his perpetual-loser ace character, this is one to watch. It’s a great match for both sides, and Kaito starts teasing what I can only describe as a “Joker face” that implies the split crowds are starting to get to him. I really hope they follow up on this properly, or at the bare minimum give Kaito the equivalent of the infamous Kazuchika Okada “balloon era.” You also got some great reactions to Kaito, getting cheered during his entrance, booed when he got his first offense, and then cheered again by the end of the match.

Kaito’s heat is really interesting. It’s not, like, 2016 Roman Reigns heat. The people don’t reject him in that way. It’s more of a continual disappointment that he hasn’t managed to truly elevate him to ace status, so whenever he does have a great match like this, it seems like he does get a positive reaction. It’s almost worse than if he was just getting consistent boos because then they could just heel turn him; you kinda feel bad for the guy being caught in the middle like this (no wonder it’s, uh, giving him Joker face).

The postmatch angle had Tetsuya Endo quitting Team 2000X on short notice, wanting to join up with Sugiura in a new team. OZAWA was pissed at both of them and called them out for a three-way elimination match on the next Korakuen.

I’m pretty interested in this one from a storytelling perspective. I don’t know how good the match will be - three-ways are always weird, Sugiura does nothing for me, Endo isn’t washed but he’s felt a step slower in NOAH than the height of his DDT run - but they could do a lot of interesting things here. Elimination as a stip makes me think OZAWA retains - unlike the traditional one-fall three-way where there’d be a chance of a shock win with Endo or Sugiura pinning the other - but I really wonder how the Endo/Sugiura relationship works in that match regardless.

So besides that 6/3 Korakuen, NOAH also has their “Monday Magic” series coming up. This is the third or fourth iteration of this Shinjuku FACE residency, which will happen on 5/26, 6/2, 6/16, and 6/23, then a finale show on 6/30 at a larger venue. Past seasons have had some interesting guests from various puro and joshi promotions. No cards for any of these yet, or really any details other than some promo art with a menacing, looming NOSAWA.

Hiroshi Tanahashi is having a produce show on 6/29 that will have him team with Naomichi Marufuji vs Kaito & Oiwa Ryohei. Kaito has not had a great history in his NJPW encounters, and I can’t really see him getting the pin here, but I could at least see Oiwa taking the pin instead.

Dragon Bane & Alpha Wolf are defending the GHC Junior Tag Championships against HAYATA & Yuto Kikuchi of RATEL’S on the 5/24 Yokohama Radiant Hall show. I’ll try to remember to watch this one; Bane & Wolf are a cool team.

Marigold: shut the fuck up Rossy Ogawa challenge

I like a lot of the Marigold roster. I appreciate that (other than this PPV) most of their stuff is just on Wrestle Universe, in pretty decent production quality. I wanted this to be a nice positive section where we talk about the big 1st Anniversary/Nanae Takahashi retirement PPV this weekend.

Instead, I gotta start out mentioning that Rossy, the dumbass booker and hat-wearer of Marigold, randomly went out in an interview and talked about how Marigold’s ace, Utami Hayashishita, could stand to lose some weight. Do you think that he’s happy that this is the first major English-language press Marigold has gotten in the lead-up to this PPV? Do you think his stooge Sonny (the creep who’s on the bad English commentary for Marigold on WU) is like “hell yeah boss, we got Marigold into Whatculture”?

The thing is, the card for this PPV looks pretty good. The main event is Nanae Takahashi’s retirement match against Miku Aono, in which Aono wants to get the credit of beating Nanae in her last match. Nanae hasn’t jobbed much at all on her retirement road, so that would be a pretty huge deal! Their last match was a 15-minute time limit draw, it’d be a great story for Aono to get her win here. Of course, not everyone goes out on their back in Japan (just ask Meiko Satomura), so there’s a lot of drama here.

Utami will be defending her World Championship against MIRAI, who has risen from being kind of stuck in TJPW to being an upper-card staple of Marigold. I could see this going either way as well - it’s a big deal for MIRAI to get this challenge, but they could really make her by having her win.

Mayu Iwatani is facing super-rookie Victoria Yuzuki for her Super Flyweight Championship, which will almost certainly end in a 15-minute time limit draw. The undercard is filled out by a couple of Marigold vs Marvelous matches, with a 5v5 elimination match and a Seri Yamaoka vs Takumi Iroha match.

A good show! And yet no one is talking about this card. The average English-language wrestling fan’s only knowledge of Marigold is that Mayu Iwatani just left Stardom to go there and work for that creep Rossy, and that Kenny Omega talked about Rossy being an asshole on a Twitch stream. Great press. Considering Marigold has also never updated their English-language website since the day it launched, I get that they don’t really give a shit about what fans outside of Japan think.

I figure I’m not gonna buy this PPV. Might find it somewhere later, but I don’t want to give this company money beyond whatever pennies of my Wrestle Universe subscription they get.

Various other joshi updates

Marvelous on Wrestle Universe

You know what I’m gonna watch instead of Marigold? Marvelous, which is now on Wrestle Universe. They have a single-day tag tournament from 5/5 that’s up now that I’m absolutely going to check out. I don’t know if there will be a delayed turnaround for shows going forward, which have traditionally been PPVs - there was a 5/20 show that I think would have already aired as a PPV that isn’t on Wrestle Universe yet, so I guess probably? - but I’m excited to be able to watch this company more easily.

Stardom 5/21 notes

Stardom had a Korakuen on 5/21 that snuck under my radar; I forgot to do a preview of it last week. The only two matches I caught were the two championship-related ones: the Artist of Stardom #1 Contendership match between HATE and MI Vida Loca, and the main event of Starlight Kid defending the Wonder of Stardom title against HANAKO.

SLK vs HANAKO was solid, if not one of the most memorable title matches. They had an interesting thing going on here where HANAKO, of course, dwarfed SLK (5'11" vs 5'0"), but they didn’t just want to have HANAKO be a big heel giant powerhouse here because she’s a rookie with only two years experience, and they want to push her like a rookie rather than like a giant. It’s an interesting problem. They essentially worked this match with SLK constantly countering any attempt HANAKO made to overpower her, which makes sense, but did make the match drag a bit for the first half as a lot of it felt like stalling rather than either wrestler really building heat. That said, the second half was great and the finish was strong.

SLK won, of course, and called out Saya Kamitani and her Wonder of Stardom championship after the match. That said, she isn’t just going to get an immediate title vs title match; her plan is to win the 5 Star Grand Prix to earn her title shot against Kamitani. That would, of course, kick ass. I’m all for this.

The Artist of Stardom #1 Contendership match had a really well-executed double count-out finish on the outside. I thought the match was really good up to that point and it’s definitely worth a watch even with that finish. The finish is gonna lead to a 3v3v3 match in Osaka on 5/24 for the belts. I’ll definitely catch that. Otherwise, not too much of note on the Kyoto and Osaka shows this weekend from what I can see.

TJPW Princess Cup dates & qualifiers

TJPW have announced dates and lineups for their yearly Tokyo Princess Cup single-elimination tournament. They’ve announced the first 12 participants for the tournament shows, which will be on 7/27, 8/2, 8/9, 8/17, and 8/23.

The remaining four slots are going to get qualifying matches. The format for the qualifiers is fairly straightforward: 16 wrestlers (I did not realize the TJPW roster was even big enough for this) will face off in singles matches, and the 8 winners of those matches will face off in another series of matches, and the 4 winners of those will go on to the tournament. They’ll do random draws for both the 1st and 2nd round matches.

This is a good chance for some of the rookies to get “big wins. With TJPW’s glacial booking pace and strict hierarchy of wrestlers, chances for meaningful singles victories on the undercard are hard to come by. Now, I’m sure all four winners will immediately be eliminated in the first round of the tournament, but y’know, at least they got to win this… weird sub-tournament?

These qualifiers will be spread out among the 5/31, 6/7, 6/21, 6/22, 7/5, and 7/8 shows. It’s a good way to juice up the rather dead period before Summer Sun Princess on 7/21. Some of those shows do have some interesting matches already, plus 7/8 is Yoppy’s retirement show, so I’ll be tuning in for the qualifier matches and sticking around for whatever else is on each show that catches my eye.

Dramatic DDT has a full list of all the wrestlers in the tournament and the qualifiers. Personally I’m rooting for Pom, HIMAWARI, Toga, and Kaya.

Hana Kimura memorial show

The yearly Hana Kimura memorial show happened today, apparently making Triller TV as a PPV. For some reason I thought this was something that got broadcast later on Samurai or something, had no idea it would be a PPV, let alone one you could easily buy on Triller. I’ll try to check it out, because the card looks wild. Seigo Tachibana vs Aja Kong? Konami & MiSu vs Chihiro Hashimoto & Shotaro Ashino?? A lot of very cool stuff on here.

Pro Wrestling Evo joshi tournament

Pro Wrestling Evo announced on their 5/22 show that they’ll have a single-elimination tournament for their promotion’s first championship belt. The first round will feature the four Pro Wrestling Evo women (Chi Chi, Soy, ZONES, & Chika) facing off against freelancers and guests from other promotions (respectively: Natsu Sumire, Momoka Hanazono, Aki Shizuku, & Chanyota). The first round will happen on 6/19, not sure when the second round is. I’m going to definitely check this out just because I’ve become such a mark for the Pro Wrestling Evo trainees; hopefully Chi Chi goes all the way. (thanks to leader021 in the VoW Discord for translating the tournament bracket, by the way!)

Sareee-ism 7/14 card

Sareee announced matches for Sareee-ism Chapter VIII on 7/14 (via Fightful). DASH Chisako vs Chi Chi sounds awesome, Natsupoi vs Miku Kanaae sounds good, and Sareee & Takumi Iroha vs Saya Kamitani & Natsuko Tora could be incrediblle. Always can’t miss stuff with Sareee-ism.

Other News

A little NJPW news: the CMLL Fantasticamania card on 6/20 is set. Even with LIJ breaking up, we still have a Hiromu/Shingo/Titan team facing Francesco Akira/Templario/TJP. Yes, TJP is somehow still getting NJPW bookings after all the drama with him and Cobb. The only other big NJPW participation is Yota Tsuji taking on Ultimo Guerrero and Robbie X and Rocky Romero teaming up with Action Andretti and Lio Rush in a match. Rocky and Konosuke Takeshita will also be popping up on the 6/17 CMLL show, though that’s technically AEW participation and not NJPW as they’re teaming with Kyle Fletcher as the Don Callis Family.

What to Watch (5/23-5/28)

The biggest show of the weekend is (sigh) Marigold Shine Forever 2025 (Sun 5/25 2:30pm JST/1:30am ET, Wrestle Universe PPV, full card). It’s 3200 yen/$22. As I said earlier, it’s a good card, but I don’t feel great about giving Rossy Ogawa money.

The other big show is the King of DDT Finals (Sun 5/25 11:30am JST / Sat 5/24 10:30pm ET, Wrestle Universe, full card). Really looking forward to the semifinals and finals matches; hopefully it’ll pick me up a bit after AJPW’s bit of a dud finish to the Champion Carnival.

To wrap up with Wrestle Universe, we’ve got NOAH Monday Magic Prime Time Episode 1 (Mon 5/26 7pm JST/6am ET, Wrestle Universe). This is a mystery card, could be fun or could be really bad!

Wrestle Universe also has various VODs going up from DDT, NOAH, Sendai Girls, & TJPW over the next week.

As mentioned earlier, the Hana Kimura tribute show already happened by the time you read this. It’s probably still available as a PPV on Triller here; Triller usually leaves PPVs up indefinitely as archives.

Another show that already happened is Pro Wrestling Evolution Vol.34 from 5/22, which had Mika Iwata vs ZONES and Shuji Ishikawa vs Takuya Nomura vs Dan Tamura on it. Gonna have to track that one down.

Stardom has shows from Osaka (Sat 5/24, 1pm JST/12am ET) and Kyoto (Sun 5/25, 1pm JST/12am ET), both on Stardom World live. Not too much of note here other than the Artist of Stardom 3v3v3 match in Osaka.

Dragon Gate are airing three shows from Hokkaido live: Night 1 (Fri 5/23, 6pm JST/5am ET), Night 2 (Sat 5/24, 5pm JST/4am ET), and Night 3 (Sun 5/25, 1pm JST/12am ET). Full cards here, though you’ll have to deal with Google Translate. Not much is jumping out at me from the cards, but I’ll try to pass along any match recommendations I hear.

Finally, some little promotion called “New Japan Pro Wrestling” continue to run a tournament called the Best of the Super Juniors. I’ve typed enough so I’m just gonna drop a link to their schedule page and let you sort it out.

This is a very late issue! I feel reasonably caught up on everything non-BOSJ, though, and only the DDT and NOAH shows this weekend really feel can’t-miss.

My goal is to spend a bunch of time this weekend watching BOSJ matches in the background of whatever I’m doing and catching up on the best matches and the overall standings in time for the last couple shows. I’ve managed to avoid really seeing anything about results for the tournament so far. Sounds like MAO vs El Desperado was match of the tournament so far for fans of DDT-style comedy, very happy to hear my guys did well together.