I feel like I always start these with “wow a lot has happened in the wrestling world” but… well, a lot has happened in the wrestling world!
Probably the biggest recent news is that AEW now has a streaming deal with NJPW! AEW Dynamite and Rampage are going to be streamed live on NJPW World! With Japanese commentary! Unfortunately for non-Japanese fans, this content will be region-locked to Japan (otherwise, I was seriously considering adding AEW to the list of recommendations for listening practice), but, well, I suppose if you get crafty with a VPN, a NJPW World subscription has a lot more value now…
It’s fantastic news for both AEW and NJPW, though, and above all else, it’s great for the Japanese fans, since they’ll have a much easier time following AEW’s stories with more regular translation. Unlike most Japanese wrestling companies, AEW is a lot more talk-heavy (instead of most of the storytelling happening in-ring), so it’s harder to follow along without English fluency, and as previously discussed, they didn’t really have anyone who was equipped to handle Japanese media, so they were under-reported in shupro and other places. Hopefully this will help change that!
It’s also really funny because DDT’s Konosuke Takeshita is about to go on a year long excursion to AEW, so this means that his matches will be featured on NJPW’s streaming service haha.
On the Japanese to English side, Mr. Haku has a ko-fi and a youtube channel now! I’ll link his channel once he actually gets some content up there. He’s expressed an interest in doing a lot of different things, including summarizing stuff from shupro, interviewing Japanese wrestlers from various companies, and various other things. Should be super fun!
The new DDT English translation account also did in fact do a (delayed) translation thread for Hiragana Muscle 6! Watching it was a blast as usual, and I highly recommend checking it out if you have a Wrestle Universe sub. It was a nice send-off for Takeshita.
In other news, I barely managed to finish translating both of the latest TJPW shows before their big show today 
. I’ll split them into two posts so that it’s a little easier to read. Their Korakuen show, which is in a few hours, is being streamed (partially) on youtube, though I believe it’s only the first half hour, and I’m not sure how long the video will stay up.
But first, their March 26 show, featuring Nodoka’s retirement match! Here’s the recap, and here’s Mr. Haku’s delightful translation thread for Nodoka’s last match, featuring some great context that even I didn’t know, like apparently Miyu has basically been living with Yuki and Nodoka??
It was a really good, really emotional match. I thought they did a great job conveying so much history with it, and really making me root for the Bakuretsu Sisters. Nodoka also received streamers from the crowd for her retirement, and it was the first time I’ve seen streamers in Japan since 2020 (it had been so long, I realized I forgot to even mention them in the opening post of this thread). Streamers used to be pretty ubiquitous in Japanese pro wrestling (basically everyone besides NJPW used them). Fans would buy them to throw at the wrestlers during their entrance and such, and it results in a pretty cool effect! Unfortunately they’ve been banned for the past couple years due to coronavirus fears. TJPW decided to bring them back just for Nodoka’s retirement.
After the match, Misao came out and tried to stop Nodoka from retiring by taking Koda (the person who runs TJPW) as a hostage, haha, but Nodoka basically said “sorry Koda, but I’m still retiring,” so it didn’t work. It ended with all of the wrestlers coming into the ring to attack her one last time, and then they all pinned her at the very end.
Right before Nodoka retired, her sister Yuki challenged Shoko for her belt! At first I thought her timing was kind of funny, but then I realized that she was basically making a statement that she was moving on as a singles wrestler now that her tag partner was retiring.
Shoko said that the thinks this will be a fresh start for Yuki, and she thinks it’s a fresh start for herself, too, because the weight of the belt feels different from the last time she wore it. So she’s approaching Korakuen as a fresh start for the both of them.
The other big thing that happened on this show was that TJPW’s two rookie teams, Suzume & Arisu Endo and Yuki Arai & Moka Miyamoto, faced off to see which of them would get to challenge the Magical Sugar Rabbits for the tag belts. Suzume got a similar opportunity last year when Mirai was still with TJPW, but unfortunately Mirai leaving the company kind of hurt Suzume’s momentum, so I’m glad to see her starting to build a nice team with Arisu now. I like Arai and Moka, but I think Suzume and Arisu deserve the chance here (MokaYuki beat AriSuzu last time they faced off, and Arai recently pinned Suzume leading up to her recent title challenge), so I was delighted to see them win!
I really liked how Suzume said that her and Arisu want to see the world as MagiRabbi sees it. She said that MagiRabbi are TJPW’s sparkling tag team, and they’re strong, cute, and radiant, and she wants her and Arisu to be like that.
I doubt Arisu and Suzume will win, but it’s great for them to get this opportunity, and I think the match will be a lot of fun!