週刊プロレス No.２１７５ (from late march/early april, around Wrestlemania)
There’s an interview with SHO which came across to me like a pretty straightforward heel interview, with SHO seeming particularly intent on convincing the interviewer that the Bullet Club / House of Torture version of himself is who he’s been deep down all along.
In Tanahashi’s column he talks about returning to promotional and fan events, incl. one that involved him and two comedian Tanahashi impersonators! He’s impressed that their Tanahashi costumes are homemade and surprisingly up to date with his costume changes, and says he’s happy to be impersonated because like Mickey Mouse he can be in more places than once, though it may cause some to wonder 「今日の棚橋は小さいな」… The interviewer offers for free the name タナーズ if he does events with them as a group in the future.
AJPW’s Champion Carnival is starting up, and there’s an interview with Jake Lee, who won the championship with a harder edge last year and went into this anniversary year on top but had to vacate the title due to an eye injury. The vibe I’d say he has in this interview as a character is “guy being frank and thruthful about the state of the company, and demanding more, but being kind of a jerk about it” if that makes sense. Despite being from Hokkaido he says he doesn’t want to win the title at an upcoming Sapporo show because the stage would be too small.
Yuma Aoyagi says in the metaphorical cafeteria of AJPW and the Champion Carnival, wrestlers like Jake or Suwama or Ishikawa are 定食 but sometimes you get tired of that and he’s a ゲテモノ like チョコラーメン.
On wrestling X tokusatsu watch, for some reason the picture for Aoyagi here has him posing with Daimajin!
The blocks for the Champion Carnival look pretty nice! I enjoyed the one of those I watched, and I’m glad it’s a little bigger of a tournament this time. If time weren’t a factor and if the matches hadn’t all happened like months ago at this point I’d definitely be curious to see how Jake, Miyahara, and Aoyagi would do.
Kenoh talks about Hideki Suzuki in his column and is complimentary of his fighting style, which can connect with the crowd and ゼニを取れる in any era. I feel like he also complains about something or other in a Kenohish sort of way but I don’t have quite enough context to parse exactly what. 
There’s an interview with Tetsuya Endo following his championship win over Takeshita in DDT. He says since Takeshita and him both debuted in 2012 and Takeshita devloped and succeeded earlier than him, some jealousy burnt, and while now he still doesn’t like him it’s at least as equals. He suggests bringing back some of the DDT-ish “まさか” element to the title, and floats the idea of picking a challenger via election, which, of course Yuki Arai would win thanks to SKE fans…
A nice picture of 路上プロレス from that train show a while back! I guess they were on a small private scenic route in Chiba, based on the station sign. don’t gotta blur anything if I crop carefully!
Giulia’s column is about the Cinderella Tournament and how the オーバー・ザ・トップロープルール is it’s 面白いところ. I agree!
The ad for the back issues available on the app shows a snippet from a time in 1989 when (newly elected to real life government, I think) Antonio Inoki got attacked and stabbed in the head by a “暴漢.” Geez!
also there’s a picture of young Minoru Suzuki - as always, with absolutely no noticeable things different from how he looks today.
The history column recounts an odd bit of wrestling history – in 1980, New Japan and All Japan had a softball game against each other! Apparently it was a good day for Inoki, as he struck out Baba as pitcher, hit a home run as batter, and New Japan routed All Japan 22 to 5.
This despite something I didn’t know – Giant Baba had a baseball career before wrestling! Who did he play for? The Giants of course! Go figure.
Suzume and Arisu Endo are interviewed ahead of their challenge for Magical Sugar Rabbits’ tag belts in TJPW. They decide on a new team name and go with “Daisy Monkey,” recounting how they came up with it:
「でいじー」は2人が好きな花の名前で、そこに何を付け加えるかファミレスでずっと悩んでて。そこで奇跡的に2人同時に「もんきー」を思いついたんですよ。
なる。。。ほど？
Assemble, the 女子プロレス combination / benefit show that started during the pandemic tried a proof of concept for a new format: an outdoor wrestling show at a theme park called Lake Sagami Resort Pleasure Forest, where you can bring your dog, so there’s an interview with Akira Hokuto about it, and here she is with Paddington Bear and some puppies:
Mutoh’s column wraps up his comments on the 50th anniversary year of NJPW/AJPW with some pondering the impermanence of life… He says in 焼肉屋 terms, 50 years of continued business is really something, but it’s not like a 老舗店 with a name and secret タレ stretching back to the Edo period - in terms of イズム he feels both companies have changed completely along the way. He says he didn’t know Baba when he went to All Japan and ran the company after Baba died but there was a 匂い that remained that faded by the time Mutoh left, even though nowadays Suwama for example admires Jumbo Tsuruta and Baba and the old AJPW and picked the company for that reason.
In the short industry column, there’s recommendations for NXT 2.0 and comments on what it’s like following a show in a different language (noting there’s more fun in the skits and stuff outside the ring than the matches themselves). Just kinda fun to see the other side of the coin…
The long industry column is about deathmatch wrestler Jun Kasai, who lost a belt in Freedoms recently. It remarks on how the documentary about him last year brought more popularity to him and the promotion, and how of non Cyberfight or Bushiroad affiliated wrestlers in Shupro’s 好きな wrestler reader poll, Kasai ranked the highest at 21. Kasai says ”これやめちゃったら死んだも同然。だから死までやるしかない。”
The included photo is of one photogenic crazy monkey! Content warning: blood (of course)
And the best part is he’d be really really grumpy about that!