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

Newsletter: June 20, 2025

I’m officially behind on puro again. Blame lucha: I watched the killer CMLL Tuesday show, the great Arena Mexico episode of Dynamite this week, and will be tuning in for the FantasticaMania show tonight.

The list of things I wanted to watch but didn’t get around to: the Sayuri Namba produce show, NOAH Monday Magic Episode 3, Pro Wrestling Evolution’s Vol.35 show with the first round of their women’s tournament, and Daisuke Sasaki’s Charismania II. Instead, I watched… AJPW’s Korakuen. At least it was probably the most newsworthy of those shows?

Match Recommendations

CMLL Martes Populares (6/17, Youtube, Cagematch)

AJPW Super Power Series Night 3 (6/15, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

AJPW Super Power Series Night 4 (6/18, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

AJPW: mixed feelings coming out of Korakuen, but a weirdly compelling junior tournament is coming up

When you have a promotion with a thin roster like AJPW, the nice thing is that if you get really into a guy - purely hypothetically, let’s say, Dan Tamura - then you know you’ll see them on every show in some match, and you’ll probably see them get in real programs and feuds fairly often just because AJPW doesn’t have enough guys to have people sit on the back bench for long. You never have to worry about your guy never appearing on the upper card; when you have a roster this thin they’ll cycle up there out of necessity at one point or another.

The flip side of this is, if you don’t like a wrestler, you will also see them a lot, and you will probably see them pushed. And thus, I found myself watching Takashi - the former Cyber Kong - win both the GAORA TV Championship and the AJPW Six-Man Championship over the 6/14 and 6/15 shows. And I was mad, because this guy sucks, and I don’t want to see him. Maybe there’s some comedy that doesn’t translate that is great, but the thing is, whatever comedy bits he’s doing are paired with the universal language of pro wrestling, and the pro wrestling is really fucking bad. I just don’t want to see this guy anymore.

The undercard of the 6/18 Korakuen show also showed one of the pitfalls, which is that you end up watching the same few factions face off in seemingly identical multi-man matches on every show. This show at least had a couple fun appearances, like a brawling Suwama in the second match, but it wasn’t particularly fun to watch everything before the intermission.

There was one weird big story development in the midcard. ELPIDA - the unit of Yuma Anzai, Rising HAYATO, Ren Ayabe, and Ryuki Honda - broke up after winning a match. First, kinda weird to win the match that you break up after. Ayabe just straight up said “it’s more fun to fight against you guys than with you guys,” which, basically feels like a way of saying “look, there’s only 20 wrestlers on this roster, we need more matchups.” Anzai basically agreed, and said that after he and HAYATO lost the All Asia Tag Titles at the 6/15 show (a great match, by the way, that they really should have just done on this Korakuen and then done this angle!), he was also thinking about leaving. Then, Anzai announced he’ll be out from July and August fighting elsewhere. No details on the excursion yet. Maybe they traded him to the NWA in exchange for Talos. Maybe Hideki Suzuki still has an NXT connection.

I don’t think AJPW’s best wrestler going away for two months is going to do anything positive for AJPW’s in ring quality, but I do think he could be an interesting guy to see on excursion, and I do think breaking up ELPIDA is probably good. I’m not really sure what’s next for HAYATO, Ayabe, or Honda, though.

The show continued with Seiki Yoshioka and Naruki Doi having a solid junior heavyweight title match, with Yoshioka continuing his title reign in a hot match. This was just a solid older-juniors match. Seiki Yoshioka is one of those juniors that will work a grappling and slugging style for a while and then suddenly burst into action with a crazy move and follow up with a dive, which made Doi a good foil - you know Doi is good, but he’s old, and there was a constant question of “can Doi keep up or respond?” Yoshioka did a scary as hell dive to the outside where he slammed his knees off the barricade, but thankfully seemed fine.

Kento Miyahara randomly decided to put his hair on the line before defending the tag belts with Yuma Aoyagi against the Z-Brats unit of Madoka Kikuta & KAI. This kind of gave away the finish - as if it wasn’t already obvious that the invading Dragon Gate unit wasn’t going to win these belts, there was no goddamn way anyone watching would believe that Kento Miyahara would lose his hair. Can you imagine what that dude would look like without it? They’d have to shutter the company by the end of the year. Kento & Aoyagi won in a fun and very hot match, which was interesting. There are a lot of question marks about whether AJPW’s run of good business is going to continue or if the Saitos are fizzling out; but the crowd they draw does seem heavily invested even in kind of obvious, and kind of silly, matches like this.

Hokuto Omori & Talos (the NWA guy) came out to challenge for the tag belts, which sounds like a bad match, but one I will wind up watching out of morbid curiosity.

Finally, Hideki Suzuki vs Jun Saito was much better than I expected. Both of these guys are just such a roll of the dice when it comes to match quality that I just set my bar low and assumed that I would not get both guys showing up, but they really did. Suzuki worked as a dominant grappling heel for a lot of this match, which was perfect - they did not fall into the pitfall of having Jun maintain physical dominance as they have in other matches, allowing him to be a proper defending champion in peril. The back stretch of the match had some really gross elbows, slaps, and strikes that I was not expecting but loved seeing.

The show ended on a rather sour note: Yuma Aoyagi and Davey Boy Smith both came out to challenge for the title, and will face each other for that right. As a reminder: Yuma Aoyagi lost to Jun in February (in a bad match), DBS lost the Triple Crown to Jun back on the 12/31 show (in a bad match) and then beat him in the Champion Carnival (in a slightly better match). I assume DBS is winning this. Maybe on a third attempt they can have a match that could be described as more than “watchable.” Ryuki Honda also came out and stole and ate one of Jun’s usual postshow snacks, so I think he’s somehow in this mix on this as well.

AJPW Jr Festival lineup & dates

The AJPW Jr Festival is a round robin tournament kicking off on 7/17 and ending on 8/2. A block has Rising HAYATO, Ryo Inoue, Hikaru Sato, Seigo Tachibana, Seiki Yoshioka. B block has MUSASHI, Dan Tamura, Atsuki Aoyagi, Fuminori Abe, Naruki Doi.

I don’t know why I’m so excited for this. Like, if I was going to be all into a bunch of junior heavyweight matches, I should have just watched BOSJ. But this really feels like it could be a tournament with a high match quality floor, if a low ceiling. There’s a few matches I am immediately excited for (Dan Tamura vs Fuminori Abe! Rising HAYATO vs Seiki Yoshioka!), but I think a lot of these matches are going to be super fun.

Full cards are up, spanning the 7/17, 7/20, 7/21, 7/24, 7/26, and 8/3 shows. I am assuming that this tournament will have the winners of each block face off at the 8/3 show and we won’t get, like, semifinals as well (would be weird with only two blocks of 5).

The 7/17 Korakuen is, unsurprisingly, the most stacked, with both HAYATO vs Yoshioka and Abe vs Tamura. The last two nights are at Shinkiba 1st Ring, and look a little sleepy. Notably, Naruki Doi and Ryo Inoue don’t have matches on the last night, which makes their chances of winning their blocks seem rather slim. I do think Inoue - who is only 22 with three years experience, and only three singles wins under his belt in AJPW - has a big opportunity to show out in this tournament, and maybe pick up an upset against Sato or Seigo.

Stardom: THE CONVERSION preview

Stardom has a big PPV coming up this weekend, and I wanted to try to just quickly run through what’s on this card, because it looks pretty good!

The big main event is Syuri defending her IWGP Women’s Championship against Sareee. This follows two big events this year: Syuri winning this belt from Mayu Iwatani at All Star Grand Queendom (Mayu’s last match before leaving for Marigold), and Syuri vs Sareee going to a 30-minute time limit draw at Sareee-ISM back in March.

This result of this actually a real question mark (at least, to me). The immediate assumption would be that Sareee would lose because Syuri is only in her second defense (and first in Japan), and Sareee seems to value her freelancer position enough to not want a long-term tie-up with Stardom/NJPW. On the other hand, Sareee is rapdily becoming a well-known name in not just joshi but puroresu and in American fandom, and it could be a very smart move to have the IWGP Women’s Championship on her. That championship exists in a different space from the other Stardom championships - it is intended for freelancers and part-timers who are mostly interested in appearing on the big shows, like KAIRI and Mercedes Mone. Sareee’s Stardom run so far has been her killing rookies on the big Saori/Natsupoi PPV and in Korakuen Hall - which, normally, is the kind of role you’d expect Syuri to have.

Hanan & Saya Iida will defend the tag belts against Natsupoi & Saori, which just sounds like a super good match. Hina will defend the Future of Stardom title against Rian, a rookie who just scored her first pinfall a couple weeks ago, feel like this is a fairly predictable match (which is probably why it’s only second on the show). HANAKO will take on Risa Sera in a singles match - a few months ago, Sera actually announced that she will retire in January, which I missed at the time, so it’s neat to see her have another appearance in Stardom. HANAKO got her start in Prominence shows that Risa Sera ran, so I figure this is very much a “retirement road” match for Risa Sera.

There’s also two big 4v4 tags on this: Neo Genesis take on Mi Vida Loca in a No DQ Tornado tag match in the semi-main event, while HATE will take on God’s Eye, including a returning Ami Sohrei, who’s been out of action for around a year recovering form a torn ACL.

Other news

Tetsuya Naito briefly worked at an ice cream shop but has already been fired, alas.

Marigold’s Utami Hayashishita and Mayu Iwatani have basically both challenged Takumi Iroha for her GHC Women’s Championship. Utami wants a double title match at Korakuen on the 16th, but I think Iroha vs Mayu might happen on Wrestle Magic before that.

Taichi is mad about having to win a play-in match to be in the G1. I’m actually surprised to see Tokyo Sports kinda talking shit on NJPW’s booking this bluntly: they note that it’s weird that Callum Newman got to challenge for the IWGP title but still has to qualify for the G1 and that Ishii doesn’t qualify as the current Strong Openweight Champion. They’re not wrong! Taichi proposes that the bottom of the block would have to qualify next year. That would be… okay, Callum Newman, but also El Phantasmo, who… yeah, El Phantasmo does kinda seem like a guy who should have to qualify for the G1. I guess you could argue the NJPW TV Championship is more prestigious than the Strong Openweight Champion, but that’s a fine hair to split.

Miyu Yamashita was pulled from the 7/11 show on TJPW’s Texas tour, which seems to indicate she’ll be on ROH’s Supercard of Honor PPV that night. Wakana has also been added to that tour. Miyu’s kind of had a foot in the door with AEW/ROH for a while now, with a non-title match against Toni Storm on Dynamite in April and a match taped for ROH a couple weeks ago in Portland. She’s clearly been trying to get hired by WWE or AEW for a while now, which makes sense as she’s totally maxed out what she can do in TJPW (there is basically nothing left for her to accomplish other than putting someone over on the way out).

What to watch (6/20 - 6/27)

Busy week in puro!

I’ll start with the biggest show, Stardom THE CONVERSION on Saturday 6/21 (4pm JST/3am ET). This is on Stagecrowd for $32. The main event here is the big Syuri vs Sareee match for the IWGP Women’s Championship, but the rest of the card looks very fun as well, if not as stacked as some recent Stardom events.

NOAH are running a pair of shows that look very fun: Memorial Voyage in Osaka on Saturday 6/21 (5:30pm JST/4:30 am ET, full card) has a big special main event of Kenoh & Kaito vs KENTA & Marufuji, plus Atsushi Kotoge challenging Junior Heavyweight champion YO-HEY in Kotoge’s hometown. The winner of that will go on to face OZAWA in the main event of the 6/22 Sunny Voyage show in a non title match - that show will be uploaded on 6/24 (full card). Between those, the last episode of this season of Monday Magic airs on Monday 6/23 (6pm JST/5am ET); that has a mystery card as usual but is the last show before the Wrestle Magic PPV, so expect some angles.

TJPW has a pair of shows, one live and one on-demand, with more of the qualifying matches for this year’s Tokyo Princess Cup: the show on Sunday 6/22 will air live (12:30pm JST / 11:30pm Saturday ET, full card), and doubles as the farewell show for ring announcer Sayuri Namba. The 6/21 show will go up on Monday 6/23 (full card).

Speaking of tape-delayed joshi, Sendai Girls have a fun looking show from Sendai PIT airing on Sunday 6/22 (taped Friday, full card). This has Aya Sakura defending the Sendai Girls Junior Championship against YUNA, plus a big main event with super-rookie Senka Akatsuki teaming up with Takumi Iroha to take on Chihiro Hashimoto & Yuu.

And speaking of qualifying matches for a tournament, NJPW has a Korakuen show on Monday 6/23 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card) with two play-in matches for the G1: Ishii vs Drilla Moloney and Taichi vs Callum Newman.

NJPW are also, sort of, running a Korakuen the next day: El Desperado’s DEATH PAIN invitacional on Tuesday 6/24 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card?). The big match here is of course El Desperado putting up the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against Jun Kasai; the undercard seems to be an odd mix of deathmatch, indie, and New Japan guys. But also Rina Yamashita, so there’s that!

Finally, Hyper Misao is running a produce show, HYPE!3, on Friday 6/27 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET). No card for this; these are usually pretty fun but kind of impenetrable shows and I look forward to Dramatic DDT’s writeup.

Various other small shows: Dragon Gate has two streaming shows on 6/20 and 622, AJPW has a tiny Shinkiba show on 6/24, NJPW has house shows with basically identical cards on 6/21, 6/22, 6/26, and 6/27, and Sanshiro Takagi is running another M&A show on Wednesday 6/25 with a very weird card.

That’s all for me this week, got this written up just before Fantasticamania goes live. Thinking we’ll have a big focus on NOAH next week - I’ll be making sure I’ve caught up on both episodes 3 and 4 of Monday Magic going into the Wrestle Magic PPV.