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

Newsletter: July 18, 2025

Very abbreviated newsletter this week, since I have been playing a bunch of the new Destiny 2 expansion and I’m a bit behind on wrestling. Obviously, I watched AEW All In, which with its like 8 hour runtime plus Dynamites before/after sucked up a lot of my wrestling time. I did manage to catch DDT’s Korakuen and one of TJPW’s three Texas shows, and there’s a decent amount of wrestling news to cover here even without a lot of match recommendations.

Match Recommendations

TJPW Live in Houston Night 1 (7/10, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

DDT Rock in Ring 2025 (7/13, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

TJPW: record-setting shows in Texas, TPC brackets, Summer Sun Princess this weekend

When TJPW announced they were running three shows in Texas - two in Houston and one in Dallas, the last one a day after All In across town - it seemed like a questionable idea to me. They had a local promoter, Tokyo Story USA, which is basically a gatcha capsule store in a mall that has weirdly high ambitions (they describe themselves as a “a culture-preneurial platform,” which is one of the worst things I’ve ever read).

Still, money marks and weird local promoters are nothing new for wrestling, and sometimes, they work out. TJPW’s two shows in Houston at POST Houston (the mall that Tokyo Story’s store is in) sold out with around 400 tickets for each, and their Dallas show at an arena across the city from Arlington announced an astonishing 2,540 tickets sold. This is not just TJPW’s biggest audience in the US, this was their biggest attendance anywhere, with Grand Princess 2024 having drawn 2,349 to Ryogoku.

And props to the local promoters: they put in a ton of work advertising on social media, and got the shows local news placements in both Houston and Dallas. I’ve only caught the first show from Houston, but it’s quite the scene: they set up in the mall atrium and use some giant staircases as both GA standing room and the entrance ramps. You absolutely have to see this if you have Wrestle Universe. The show had a lot of fun shtick on it, particularly a lot involving the Buc-ees mascot for some reason, and Maki Itoh vs Miyu is yet another great singles match for those two.

They had some issues preventing live streaming from the Dallas venue, but it got uploaded yesterday and I’m really looking forward to checking it out.

Coming off the successful Texas shows, the drawing was done for the Tokyo Princess Cup, running across five shows (7/27, 8/2, 8/9, 8/17, and 8/23). Dramatic DDT has a full bracket breakdown I highly recommend. I’m really looking forward to this little tournament, though I didn’t manage to keep up with the qualifiers as I’d hoped (admittedly, most of them had such obvious results I didn’t feel obliged).

DDT: Rock in Ring & Wrestle Peter Pan build

DDT had a sold-out Korakuen for their Rock in Ring show, built around the return of idol Kaisei Takechi from THE RAMPAGE for his fourth match. The match itself wasn’t much, just a simple six-man with Takechi teaming with ace Yuki Ueno and veteran Akito vs DAMNATION TA, but he clearly continues to be a draw. After his team picked up the victory, he announced he’ll be back for the November 3 Ryogoku show (Ultimate Party), but plans to appear before then as possible, including at one of the outdoor Ueno Park shows that DDT has been running so consistently this year.

This show served mainly as a setup for DDT’s two-night Wrestle Peter Pan in August, which is their next big show(s). Night 1 on 8/30 will be at Higashin Arena, a mid-size basketball arena in Tokyo that looks to hold a couple thousand people, while night 2 on 8/31 will be at Korakuen.

In the main event, Higuchi retained his newly-won KO-D Openweight Title against HARASHIMA in an unsurprisingly brutal match. Afterward, Jun Akiyama challenged Higuchi for night 1 of Wrestle Peter Pan, and whoever is the winner of that will defend the title against Yuki Ueno on night 2. Guessing that’ll be a couple of big victories for Higuchi, but I look forward to seeing them.

Minoru Suzuki retained the DDT Universal Championship over Shinya Aoki in a match that was, also, unsurprisingly brutal - and by the way, it’s hilarious to have the big idol draw have his match sandwiched between two extremely nasty fights between old men - and then was challenged by MAO for a match at Peter Pan night 2. Suzuki will also be in a match on night 1 against Muscle Sakai for the “15th anniversary of Muscle Sakai’s retirement.” Very good bit.

NJPW’s BOSJ winner (and, sadly, failed junior championship challenger) Kosei Fujita popped up to team with Takeshi Masada against To-y & Yuya Koroku. I thought it was pretty cool to have this match with young, exciting juniors interacting on a level playing field, and it was a fun match. There was a big surprise after, though: while Masada got the win, the budding team of Fujita & Masada was quickly dissolved with the arrival of Masada’s stablemate Chris Brookes and Fujita’s stablemate (and current IWGP Heavyweight Champion!) Zack Sabre Jr arriving to face off. Night 1 of peter Pan will feature Brookes & Masada vs ZSJ & Fujita, a really exciting match.

Dieno is going to have a match against Hiroshi Tanahashi on Night 2 of Peter Pan. This sounds horrible, and am extremely excited to watch it. While Tanahashi settled his lingering beef with DDT at the Super Sasadango Machine/Toru Yano show, this is probably the last chance for DDT to score a win on him on the way out, though it may be moral instead of literal.

Did you know To-y is the DDT Extreme Champion? I sure didn’t. Apparently he won the title off Super Sasadango Machine on a taped show in Niigata. Anyways, he’ll defend against Yuya Koroku on night 1 of Peter Pan. Kinda nice to have those guys have a proper midcard title match instead of being stuck in the rookie zone.

And one last Peter Pan announcement from this show: Jun Kasai’s son, Hinata Kasai, will debut for DDT (and in pro wrestling in general) on Night 1. Heck of a name to live up to.

I probably won’t catch much DDT between now and the end of August. One match to look for, though: 7/27 has Yuki Iino and Yuki Ueno defending their tag belts against Jun Akiyama & Daichi Sato.

Other news

I haven’t watched Dragon Gate’s Kobe World show yet, hopefully able to catch that early next week. I did hear generally good things! (I’ve somehow managed to remain unspoiled thus far, and part of that involves me not reading Tokyo Sports at all, so apologies if that lead to me missing any news stories for this issue.)

Another show I didn’t catch - Sareee-ism Chapter VIII from 7/14. Also heard great things about this, as usual!

NOAH announced a Ryogoku show on October 11, “Wrestle Odyssey.” I thought it was kind of weird that they didn’t have any big shows lined up between now and the New Years show; they have solved that problem. Interestingly, not only is the Korakuen tonight with OZAWA defending against Kenoh is sold out, but the mystery card the following day at Korakuen also only has standing-room tickets left. NOAH seems to be pretty hot right now!

Not so hot: AJPW, who drew only around 800 to their Korakuen this week that kicked off their Junior Heavyweight league. I am going to try to watch this show this weekend, but I’m pretty mad at AJPW right now: they announced they’re bringing in ex-WWE wrestler and accused domestic abuser Odyssey Jones (now wrestling as Oddyssey) for their single-elimination Royal Road tournament (full bracket via FIghtful). I was already thinking of ducking out on AJPW for a bit and this really sealed the deal; I’m gonna be canceling AJPW TV and probably not watching that tournament. I’ll probably watch the rest of the juniors tournament and the Ota City show on 8/3 since my subscription runs through mid-August anyways, but I am annoyed!

Syuri got a teaser video on ROH’s excellent Friday PPV before All In, then debuted in the great All In women’s casino gauntlet match, then announced she’s getting elbow surgery. Grand opening, grand closing. I assume she’s still going to face Athena once she’s healed up. It’s possible this is a relatively minor surgery and not, like, the surgery that has Maika on the shelf for a year.

Emerald Flowshow’s episode this week had another good analysis of a dying promotion, this time GLEAT. Issei Onitsuka, the closest thing GLEAT had to an up-and-coming star, apparently was suspended for a year but chose to instead retire from GLEAT and wrestling, without a lot of clarity on why. CIMA also may be going freelance, which seems like it’d more or less kill GLEAT. Weird, sad company gets even weirder and sadder.

What to watch (7/18 - 7/25)

The NJPW G1 Climax kicks off this weekend! They’ve got shows on 7/19, 7/20, 7/22, 7/23, and 7/25. All are in the middle of the night for US fans except for the 7/20 show, which is at a somewhat more reasonable 1am ET. As I said last week, I’m not ruining my sleep schedule for this tournament this year, but I will try to keep up with some of the big matches.

NOAH has two back to back big Korakuens this weekend. New Departure Night 1 on Saturday 7/19 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card) doesn’t have much going on on the undercard, but is headlined by a huge OZAWA GHC Heavyweight Championship defense against Kenoh. It also has a mysterious X joining Team 2000X for a tag against All Rebellion, kind of curious to see that. The Night 2 show on Sunday 7/20 (11:30 am JST / 10:30 pm Saturday ET) has a mystery card that will be announced after Night 1 wraps up.

TJPW’s big Summer Sun Princess show is this Monday 7/21 (2pm JST / 1am Sunday ET, full card). This is a stacked card headlined by Yuki Arai challenging Mizuki for the Princess of Princess Championship. I’m looking forward to basically everything on this.

Sendai Girls have a great-looking Korakuen on Saturday 7/18 (11:30 am JST / 10:30pm Friday ET, full card). Big matches here are Bob Bob Momo Banana’s return to the ring after Mio Monomo was injured in February and Red Energy defending the tag championships against Team 200kg.

AJPW are running three shows of their Summer Action Series, featuring more of their junior heavyweight tournament. Night 2 will be a VOD uploaded on 7/21. Night 3 from Osaka will be live on Monday 7/21 (5pm JST / 4am ET) featuring two big heavyweight matches: DBS Jr will face Yuma Aoyagi for the Triple Crown #1 Contendership, while Jun Saito will defend the Triple Crown against Hideki Suzuki in the main event. Night 4 on Thursday 7/24 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET) will feature more tournament matches from Shinkiba 1st Ring.

Stardom have their last big shows before the 5 Star Grand Prix kicks off. First is a PPV from Sapporo on Monday 7/21 (3:30 pm JST / 2:30 am ET, full card) with SLK defending the Wonder of Stardom Championship against Saori and Saya Kamitani defending the World of Stardom Championship against Natsupoi. Two neat matches, but feels a little weak for a PPV to me. This will be on Stagecrowd for $30.

Thankfully not a PPV is Stardom’s Korakuen on 7/24 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card). This will feature Bozilla challenging AZM for the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship, HATE (Tora & Ruaka) challenging Hanan & Saya Iida for the tag belts, and Chi Chi’s first appearance in Stardom since her injury.

Sorry for another late newsletter this week, will try to get back to midweek publishing soon. Hoping to catch up on a lot of stuff this weekend!