Finished translating TJPW’s Korakuen Hall show on June 19, Additional Attack '22! The recap is here. It’s a decently long one!
The main event for this one was between two of my favorite tag teams: the Magical Sugar Rabbits and 享楽共鳴. I was very torn on it, but was ultimately happy to see MagiRabbi retain. They’ve actually managed to work their way through most of the roster during their five defenses so far.
After the match, they talked about how the status quo hasn’t changed (Shoko still has the singles belt, and MagiRabbi the tag titles), but they’ve managed to increase the value of the belts. Then Yuki Arai entered the ring, and challenged for the tag belts on behalf of Saki Akai and herself (they’d won their earlier match, and Arai had whispered something in her ear before they left. She’d suggested that they challenge for the titles, and Saki had agreed).
Arai said that she’s only been here for about a year, which is a very short period compared to her senpais, but during this time, Saki, Yuka, and Mizuki have shown her a lot of cool things up close, which has made her want to become stronger, and makes her want to win. So that has become her motivation: she wants to win against her senpais.
I really liked how Yuka accepted her challenge. She said: “デカい2人には大きい舞台でタイトルマッチやってもらおう.” My translation was: “For two giants, let’s have the title match on a big stage.” Yuki Arai and Saki Akai are both very tall, making them デカい people indeed, haha.
Backstage, Yuka said that there was a lot of pressure. These few lines confused me a bit: “ピンチがチャンスに、チャンスがピンチに？ 表裏一体やった。信じてたけど、中を開けてみないと分からないから.” Here was my attempt: “I can say this now: there was loads of pressure! Crisis into opportunity, or opportunity into crisis? They were the same thing. I believed in us, but you never know until it unfolds.”
Mizuki said that since they lost in the first round of the tag tournament earlier this year, she was really nervous. MagiRabbi have started a bit of a tradition of losing in the first round, despite being probably the strongest team in the company. It kind of reminds me of a running joke of sorts that TJPW has with Miyu always losing in the first couple rounds of their singles tournament.
The interviewers asked them what they have to watch out for concerning their next opponents, and Yuka said the length of their legs, which made me laugh. She said that they both use the same moves, so she’s cautious of those legs.
Mizuki said that she’s fought Saki in battle royales, but never in a proper match. But she has felt her strength, even if only a little, and it was scary. She wonders if Arai still isn’t ready.
Backstage, Arai talked more about wanting to catch up to and overtake her senpais, and then she said: “追い越したいって気持ちがあるんですけど。実力では届かない部分が大きいんですけど、気持ちでは負けてないって思うので.” This part confused me! I struggle a lot with 部分 in these kinds of sentences, because sometimes it’s hard to work with in English, but it just occurred to me with this that maybe 部分が大きい is similar to “for the most part”?
This was my attempt: “For the most part, I can’t reach them in terms of raw ability, but in terms of feelings, I don’t think I’m losing.”
Arai says that she feels confident when she’s with Saki, and she wants to aim for the belts. It’s her first time challenging for the tag belts, so she’s nervous. But they chose a big stage for this, so she wants to seize the opportunity to work out a lot of strategies with Saki.
Misao and Shoko seem to be taking the loss well enough. Misao says that she hopes MagiRabbi’s value increases even more, and when the price has gotten very steep, then next time, she’s going to get their necks.
The last part, もう一度クビを獲りにいきたい, confused me when I read the recap, but it made a little more sense when I looked at the caption on twitter, which spelled it with the kanji and gave Yomichan a better clue how to translate it: 首を取りにいきたい. Yomichan helpfully informed me that 首を取る is an expression that means to decapitate (or depose/topple).
The show also announced a couple big name guests: current AEW women’s champ Thunder Rosa, and Willow Nightingale (who unfortunately will not be able to make it to the show due to visa issues. Miu will be facing Ryo Mizunami instead, which is a match that should also rule).
For folks who don’t know, Rosa actually has wrestled in TJPW before, and won a title there. She was there at the end of 2019 and at the very beginning of 2020, when she wrestled Itoh and won the International Princess title (this was on 1.5 after TJPW’s 1.4 show, and Itoh, who defended her title on both nights, made a hilarious comment on twitter about how she won her title match on 1.4 and then lost the title on 1.5, which makes her basically Okada).
Unfortunately, Rosa was never able to defend her title, since TJPW’s April US show ended up getting canceled due to the pandemic, and there weren’t other opportunities for her to wrestle in TJPW due to travel restrictions. So she vacated the title.
It’ll be interesting to see her in TJPW again, because Rosa’s career is in such a different place now than it was when she was there the last time. Interestingly, her scheduled International title defense that got canceled was going to be against Shoko, and now both of them hold the top titles in their respective companies haha.
Rosa’s opponent this time is Miyu. Miyu mentioned that when Rosa was in TJPW last time, they didn’t fight. She said: “総合をやっているというのもあって、武闘派だなって印象があった.” I struggled with this. This was my best attempt, leaning pretty heavily on DeepL: “Because she did everything so cohesively, I had the impression that she was a martial arts fighter.”
Miyu says that she thought it would be interesting to fight her one day, whether it was under regular pro wrestling rules or special rules. She says that Rosa is the AEW champ right now, but she wants to fight her regardless of that. (They actually translated part of this one on twitter, presumably the work of Mr. Haku!)
Regarding her scheduled match with Willow, Miu said that this will be her first singles match with a foreign wrestler, so she’s really nervous, but will try her best to at least be able to make a self-introduction, like “hello”. Willow has a great smile and amazing power, so she wants to see how much she can do against her. (There’s a translation of part of this as well.)
During the actual show, Miu had a pretty fun match with TJPW’s newest rookie, Juria Nagano. Juria, whose match count is still in the single digits, naturally got crushed. Afterward, Juria said something that confused me both in the recap and in the tweet caption 
. From the tweet: “すごい怪力とパワーというイメージだったけど、闘ってみると本当に怪力すぎてどうすることもできなくて気づいたら上にいたり回されてたりした.”
Here is my very uncertain translation attempt: “She gave the impression of amazing superhuman strength and power, but when I tried to fight her, I realized that she was truly so powerful that there was nothing I could do when I was in the air or being spun around.”
Regarding Juria, Miu said that she assessed her as they fought, and she felt strong. This part of the sentence was a little tricky: “いろんなわらじを履いてますけど、プロレスラーとしても一人前というか、まずは勝ちから狙っていってほしいので.” That first part seems to be a saying that’s similar to “she wears many hats”, so that’s what I went with. Miu says that Juria wears many hats, but she’s a fully fledged pro wrestler. Or rather, for now, she wants her to aim for victory. She wants Juria to keep striving forward, and keep taking on challenges in wrestling.
Those are the matches covered in the recap, but as always, there are some fun details in the undercard that didn’t make it into the highlights.
Arisu Endo and Kaya Toribami was a fun rookie match because neither of them had won a singles match yet. I was surprised to see Kaya take the win here!
I spent a long time trying to figure out Kamiyu and Mahiro’s comments. They seem to be changing their tag team name from Toyo University? My translation disagrees with what the Dramatic DDT blog went with, so I could be wrong about this, but I think their new team name is 東洋盟友 (Toyo + sworn friend), except instead of the word being read 東洋盟友, it’s 東洋盟友? Dramatic DDT romanized it as Toyo Meiyu, but I think that’s wrong . I think they’re playing a bit with the reading of 友 and making a small pun. I translated it as “Toyo Mates”, haha, because the plural worked better in English. I could be completely wrong about this, though! But I tried listening to their comment and heard Mahiro mention something about kanji, and it sounded like she was saying トーヨーメイト.
I was completely lost with this line: “うちらタッグ名をボヤっとさせてんじゃん.” Could not figure out what she was saying at all, haha.
One of my favorite matches in the show was the threeway “love triangle” match between Pom Harajuku, Yuki Aino, and Raku. The match involved Pom trying to turn Yuki’s crush on Raku into an advantage for Pom by bribing Yuki into teaming with her against Raku by offering her a Raku photobook. Naturally, the comments for this one were pretty golden.
Yuki said that she managed to get a not-for-sale photobook, and Pom said she obtained it through a special route. Yuki said that she only did this out of love for Raku, so she’d like to apologize. Then Raku asked if she’d rather have the photobook than the person herself, and Yuki tried to deny it.
Hikari Noa and Maki Itoh’s comments were also really funny. The two of them are really similar people in a lot of ways, but cannot stand each other, and never get along when they’re on a team together.
Hikari said that she has a lot of respect for Itoh, and she’s sorry that she was paired with a champion and lost. Then Itoh said that it was also her own fault for not making the save at the end. Then Hikari said that everything she just said is a lie, and she doesn’t like Maki Itoh very much. (Itoh’s expression after that was pretty good, haha).
I wasn’t entirely confident about translating this: “でも最後にカットいけなかったのも伊藤の責任だから” as “But it’s also Itoh’s fault for not making the save at the end”, but that seems to be how they use the word カット in the match recaps (i.e., breaking up a pin attempt). At least, I think?
And those are all of the highlights from this show! I’m going to work on the press conference translation next, and hopefully will at least get that one done before the big show, even if I don’t quite manage to finish the VOD translations before then.