The 🤼 プロレス thread! Learning Japanese through pro wrestling

I completely agree that they should post the videos with the recap!! Predictably, as a librarian, I’m concerned about the, well, poor archival nature of most wrestling stuff. Tweets and youtube videos and such are just really intangible pieces of media, and it’s so easy for stuff to get lost…

I also would absolutely love for them to include full transcriptions, at the very least. NOAH actually does transcribe them on their own site. Every time I look at it, I’m jealous that TJPW doesn’t do the same :sweat_smile:.

Maybe I’m just a weird person who cares more about post-match comments than the average fan, but in my opinion, they’re pretty essential in order to fully follow all of the storylines… It’s strange to me that more companies don’t realize that. I know that most of them don’t have a dedicated translation team subtitling everything like NJPW does, but I feel like even just transcribing the text increases accessibility.

As far as the video uploads go, with TJPW at least, typically how it works is that shows that air live never have the comments included in the video, but the VOD shows do. I think it’s because the VOD shows are usually edited (they cut out time between matches and add in alternative camera angles and such), so they might as well add the comments in at the end.

I’m not sure why they’re usually filmed from a different camera, but I feel like I noticed the same thing with NJPW when I was still watching (the post-match comments that air live after the main event would be filmed with a different camera than the video of them that gets subtitled and uploaded later).

I sent the DDT site feedback (through their feedback form) in English asking if it would be possible for them to at least include full transcriptions of the comments, but (unsurprisingly?) did not receive a response. I think I’m going to try asking again in Japanese when my Japanese is better. I’ll ask if they could include the videos (or at least links to them) somewhere on the site, too.

That photo made me laugh, haha. Thanks for sharing all of this as always!

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週刊プロレス No.2183 (from mid May)

In Tanahashi’s column they get to talking about Best of the Super Jrs and their predictions for the tournament. Tana adroitly predicts El Desperado vs. Hiromu Takahashi for the finals, with Despy taking the edge. The interviewer, タナ番, complains that’s too 本命ish to be a fun prediction, and himself picks SHO vs. Master Wato in the finals with SHO winning. Then Tana realizes that despite so many 外国人 wrestlers invited to the tournament neither put them in their finals predictions so he replaces Hiromu with Clark Connors in his (with Despy still winning) and then ends the column with a very good ダジャレ: 予想はよそう.

Wrestling factions are fun because you can take a photo with your friends after fighting them to decide who gets to be the leader.

In her column, Giulia chats with a former All Japan Women’s wrestler, Momoe Nakanishi (now Momoe Oe because she’s married to Makoto Oe who does commentary for stardom often, which is how Giulia set this up). One difference between her day and Giulia’s is career start and length was even quicker then - Giulia’s career is 5 years so far, while Momoe started at 16 and says she already was hitting the most fun peak around 5 years in. She also says that wrestlers then were very rough and set their own pace and timing that you just had to keep up with, while Stardom has an impressive variety. Giulia says she wonders sometimes if Stardom fans want “きれいなプロレス” but Momoe says since pro-wrestling’s a fight, Giulia shouldn’t change her style and if there weren’t wrestlers like her in Stardom it wouldn’t be interesting. They spar a little bit too, despite Momoe not having done it in ~17 years.

One tidbit in Kenoh’s column is he says he’s especially gonna lay into Simon Gotch because of his “奇抜な髪型”

There’s a long feature on Stinger but I confess I’m not very tuned into the jr. scene in NOAH so I didn’t read it very carefully…

I like this picture of 享楽共鳴 attempting to count their own fall!

There’s an interview with Ibuki Hoshi about her ambitions in Ice Ribbon in the wake of the many departures, as well as a short column from a reporter speculating on Ice Ribbon’s future. It sounds like, at least, Ice Ribbon has a number of younger wrestlers for whom the power vacuum will make for interesting 成長 stories in the coming months!

In Mutoh’s column they talk about Kojima showing up in NOAH and ramble for a while about wrestling generations - Kojima is part of the “第三世代” apparently, and it sounds like it goes: Three Musketeers (Mutoh, Chono, Hashimoto) → 第三世代 (Kojima, Tenzan, Nagata, Nakanishi) → Tanahashi and Nakamura’s generation.

Looks like they crucified an Ultraman in Michinoku Pro!
That sounds ridiculous but, genuinely, Ultraman gets crucified like, a lot in the actual shows so if anything by doing this they’re respecting the canon.

I appreciate the kanji… pun I guess you would call it? Going on in this Cyberfight Festival ad.

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週刊プロレス No.2184 (From late May)

There’s an interview with Ninja Mack (and/or Ninja Mac as it’s spelled in English here), an American wrestler recently signed to Pro Wrestling NOAH. He says he lives the “ninja lifestyle” and claims he wears his mask all the time, even at home, to the point luchadors would comment on it. He says he visited the Yokohama Gundam and get stopped by security for wearing a mask but he explained he was a NOAH wrestler and it was okay - so he’s glad Japan has respect for pro wrestling.

After his eye surgery, Tetsuya Naito’s been vacationing in northern Japan.
Naito seems like kind of an odd dude. He’s a longtime fan of New Japan, but never seems tremendously interested in watching other wrestler’s matches. But he’s a huge fan of wrestling venues – like there’s an inset in his column that every week spotlights Naito’s thoughts on a particular arena (which I haven’t mentioned just since there’s apparently been 133 of them and I mean, my depth where I would have any context on the subject would surely peter out at 5-10 tops), and so anyway he went to wrestling venues on his vacation, I guess just to look at them. And Hiromu was around, I guess because of the Best of the Super Jrs. tour and did not share Naito’s enthusiasm, but got a vending machine ice cream and left.
I don’t know a lot about Tetsuya Naito but I know he likes looking at professional wrestling venues and Hiroshima Carp games!

There’s a long Mayu Iwatani interview on the occasion of her getting a Stardom grand slam accomplishment completed with the SWA title victory! She’s now won all titles in Stardom, except Future of Stardom which she was never eligible for in its existence. She says they’ve gotten a lot of challenges come in already from people outside of Stardom who want to challenge her for the belt so she hopes to defend it against exciting challengers, but first - a space alien! She says she was worried about turning from アイコン to オワコン so it’s good to have a title belt to prove she deserves to be called an icon, especially with Stardom growing fast enough probably a lot of fans hardly have any impression of her with a belt.
One rough topic she talks about, is apparently she lost her memory during the match with Syuri at Ryogokukokugikan - it sounds like she hadn’t done a missile dropkick in a long time but broke it out there and just hit it not quite right, and ended up in that frightening state where her body was going 100% on autopilot and so no one noticed, but internally she was scrambled and doesn’t remember stuff leading up to the match. It was her first time something like that had happened to her (which the interviewer says is remarkable in and of itself given her pretty long career - oof) and it triggered a small return of her 脱走 tendency she talked about in her book, where she just went away for a week to settle down.
On the subject of Starlight Kid, Iwatani says in the end she’s glad SLK went to Oedotai since it’s brought out an 仕切り屋さん-ness that STARS wouldn’t have been able to provide and she regrets that - “なんかごめんね、とか思っちゃいますよね。” but she hopes fans remember MK Sisters and hope to see them again!

Giulia’s column is the second half of her chat with Momoe Nakanishi formerly from AJW. One interesting thing they share is that both of them performed at New Japan Tokyo Dome shows. Momoe’s was in 2002 and she says the main event was Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Masahiro Chono so she didn’t exactly feel like the star attraction. Giulia’s was in 2020 teaming with Hana Kimura and she talks about being nervous beforehand but Hana psyching her up.
The biggest lesson Momoe recommends for wrestlers today is to 楽しむ as she regrets not having fun with it as much as she should have in retrospect. Especially with the ease of access to negative comments to day, best to focus on what you enjoy. Giulia agrees and says her strategy sometimes is to write a reply to a negative comment and then erase it.

There’s also a long interview with Yuki Arai on the occasion of her one-year wrestling debut anniversary. She says with training included, her time spent on wrestling vs. idoling is probably about 50/50. Wrestling hasn’t distracted from being an idol, but idol shows were less frequent due to the pandemic and are ramping up now. She’s glad to see wrestling fans at SKE48 shows and vice versa.
There’s a number of places where she talks about being touched seeing other TJPW wrestlers (like getting teary-eyed on the train thinking about how cool Daisy Monkey were in their tag challenge match) and some interesting stuff where she considers the possibility of focusing on the tag division in the near future…
The accompanying photos are very cheesy. Is she gonna eat the cakes or not?!

There’s some interviews and impressions from mainly Zero-1 wrestlers talking about the Ohtani benefit show coming up – but I don’t really know very much about Zero-1 still. One part I do have context for is a page about Yuji Nagata and his thoughts – apparently Nagata and Ohtani debuted the same year for New Japan! Initially Nagata felt a bit jealous of Ohtani with his success in the junior division but that reversed when Nagata found success in the heavyweight division. Apparently Ohtani likes to drink and has a tendency to call Nagata late at night to come hang out - including once when a drunken Ohtani called Nagata but Nagata was on tour and was like “… I’m in America right now.”

There’s a short interview with Suzu Suzuki on the occasion of an upcoming deathmatch one-on-one against Prominence leader Risa Sera. She says she’s having the most fun of her career, and gets to do and think about pro wrestling all the time on totally her own terms. She’s gonna beat Risa Sera to show she’s at the top of women’s deathmatch wrestling. As for Stardom, she still has her sights set squarely on Giulia. She also heard that Yuki Mashiro said she wanted to fight her, and she was touched since it reminded her of when she was in Ice Ribbon and said she wanted to fight Giulia who left. Mashiro isn’t the type to be so brash like her so she wants to stoke that fire and convey the message, “anytime!”

And there’s also an interview with Risa Sera! In the past she had talked about retiring after a ten year career, and now the time has come and she’s having too good of a time with wrestling to stop. The #1 thing to change her mind would be meeting Suzu Suzuki and wanting to mentor her and see how she develops. When she started she didn’t think at all that she’d get so enamored with pro wrestling (apparently she started because of going for a part in an Ice Ribbon affiliated movie, go figure) but meeting deathmatch wrestling, and then meeting Suzu are why she’s stuck around so long and now she’d call it a 天職.

In Hideki Suzuki’s column he chats with Tsukushi about her retirment. He highly praises her technique.
He starts teasing her about the finality or non finality of her retiremnt asking if she’ll sell her ring attire and she says she’ll take it home to her parents, at which point he asks “have you heard of Atsushi Onita” (the joke being, Onita has “retired” many many times – I think he still has matches…). She says she isn’t fed up with pro wrestling, she loves it! But she’s 25 and has done nothing but wrestling. And she doesn’t want to be a 30 or 40 year old who doesn’t know how to do anything except wrestle. The interviewer asks if that’s a dig at Suzuki, but he retorts he was a postal worker for 8 years. If it’s really final, it may well be the last time she’s in the magazine and Suzuki says she’ll be a ヲカタ which is apparently sumo slang for someone outside the business (sounds similar to joking she’ll be a mark now).
The included picture reminds me how I have absolutely zero sense of scale at all for people I know about mainly because of these magazines. I vividly remember assuming Ram Kaicho was tall, for example…

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Well… this is going to be a long one. I should probably break out the Details tags…

Magazines:

週刊プロレス No.2185 (from end of May)

Giulia’s column is about Mai Sakurai and her growth and recent new look. Giulia says there may still be plenty to work on, and the 不器用 and 真面目 aspects of her personality aren’t naturally suited for pro wrestling, but she’s excited to train with her, and touched to see how not just her but all of DDM are making the mark on her growth and having their mentoring sides shine through, including the most junior, Maika. And it’s a freebie that Mai got Giulia a tag title shot by pinning Koguma! She thinks her growth and bravery shown so far will light a fire under rival newcomers as well, mentioning Momo Kogo seemed especially shaken and motivated after losing to Sakurai, who was her kouhai in Actwres.
Giulia’s parting comment is a reminder that Sakurai was won over to DDM via Giulia’s “attack her with sledgehammers while wearing scary masks” scheme: そう、そしてこの流れの起点になったのは。。。謎仮面だって事を忘れるなよ, 諸君(笑)。Good point, Giulia! Come to think of it, I wonder if that skeleton terrorizing Saya Kamitani into a coffin match is just Giulia using her patented communication skills to invite her to DDM…

Alex Zayne is interviewed, as he’s been participating in Best of the Super Jr.s and also making a lot of buzz for himself on twitter by documenting himself enjoying Japanese culture while on tour. He comes across very gregarious here. He was apparently a lifeling wrestling fan, starting with Jake Roberts, and being influenced by people like Hayabusa as a tape trader later on. He debuted at 18 in 2005. He briefly worked for WWE recently but sounds like he joined at the wrong time before everyone got fired and he presumably got caught in that, doing NJPW Strong since.
He apparently worked in social media marketing previously, but says the successful use of social media here is a coincidence, he’s just enthusiastic. He gets 日本語上手’d but says it’s machine translation plus some help from Despy. The interviewer also asks him why he’s so into Taco Bell, and it’s because they were the dependable option open late when he would go to the gym after work.

Tanahashi’s column is looking back on a busy May for him, with flying back and forth to America and whatnot. Apparently there was a press conference where Tomohiro Ishii was especially talkative and it turns into an Ishii-themed column for a moment with Tanahashi saying “ボクはいつも石井選手の試合はすごいなって尊敬心をもって見てるわけですよ。” I guess I’ve got something in common with Tanahashi after all!

In All Japan, it sounds like Suwama has regressed (it says losing memory but I don’t know if that’s metaphorical or a literal angle they’re running with) to when he was a heel in Voodoo Murders (which is a nice coincidence for me since it aligns perfectly with where I’m watching along with that Nakamura book), and the headline describes this in kind of a fun way: 諏訪魔は諏訪. Apparently he swapped out the last kanji when he joined Voodoo Murders originally, but never swapped back, so やっぱり…

In less heelish Suwama news, apparently he and Ishikawa are starting a women’s wrestling company called Evolution. It sounds like it will be owned or affiliated in some way with a talent agency called Status and/or All Japan. He doesn’t say who exactly he wants to apply or how many they’ll hire but they’re looking for women to apply who stand out, and can offer a well of experience and an intention to produce All Japan Pro Wrestling style women’s wrestling.
I wonder if this is their answer to like, NJPW and NOAH both having women’s companies now under the same corporate umbrella? Or if it’s a more independent thing? I remember seeing Suwama and Ishikawa turn up in I think an Ice Ribbon show producing matches or a show or something but don’t remember the context.

There’s a paid article with “記事広告” in the top corner (wonder if I’ve ever missed that in other articles?) about a company, CarBell, that’s apparently been sponsoring a bunch of wrestling shows. I think it just amounts to the guy who runs the company likes wrestling so it’s a bit of a vanity thing to get involved that way.
Oddly, it lists the services under the CarBell umbrella, and it’s like, a new car market service, a rentacar service, luxury cars, car subscription, and… in-home pet cremation??
I assume it’s some kind of set-up where you end up paying more for the car than you would otherwise, but I will say “コレCARラ” is a very good name for a “used car subscription” model.

There’s a nice fan drawing of Ibushi…

Kenoh in his column insists the theme this week be CyberFight Festival to advertise it, then immediately launches into a tangent complaining that Sanshiro Takagi did an ad on the back cover of the magazine 土下座’ing asking readers to sign up for Wrestle Universe… right before the site renewal and sign-ups would need to be redone. He also complains about DDT, saying again that it isn’t pro wrestling.

Daisuke Sasaki says in interview that Kenoh is a sad angry man with no friends and tells him to take his salary from Sanshiro Takagi quietly. People coming to CyberFight Festival are going to notice DDT is more interesting than NOAH after all.

In Shoko Nakajima’s interview she talks about how Yamashita and Sakazaki were two people she was always a step behind and so it means a lot to have this match against Sakazaki and overcome them in turn. She calls Yuka ユカッチ and when asked to slot her into her family metaphor (apparently she compared Miyu last time around to a younger brother) she says she’s like an older sister but close in age.
About possible challengers in the 4way match, she says Rika is 怪奇派 lately, and personally speaking she’d most like Miu Watanabe to be the next challenger since they spend a lot of time together in the dojo, but she’d be happy facing and defending against any of them.

There’s some good pictures from the Sera/Suzuki deathmatch. I’m just glad they’re having fun…
Apparently it was a draw, and they’re starting a 10 match series where Suzuki will prove her mettle and challenge Sera again afterwards. Sounds like a fun Prominence version of a similar multimatch deathmatch series Suzuki had in Ice Ribbon.
(WARNING: blood, violence)

Continuing to talk about the Third Generation in his column, Mutoh talks about how the generations after him didn’t really end up the main star of their own promotions the way lots of wrestlers in the past did or tried to do at various points, comparing it to the Edo period feudal principal 一国一城. He cites as examples Inoki, Riki Choshu, and Akira Maeda, and if I’m reading him right at least I can name non-New Japan examples from prior generations like Baba and Misawa off the top of my head too. He says – speaking from experience – it’s better for wrestlers now to not get into management - let the entertainment companies with lots of money deal with that.

In the only mention of the Ibushi situation I’ve caught to date, there’s a page recapping the New Japan press conference. I won’t cover it again, but one part I thought was interesting was the wording used to describe parts of Ibushi’s tweets: “内情を暴露するような内容も含む批判的な発言”

The shorter industry column is Maki Itoh recounting how she lost her phone and credit card in America and panicked. It sounds like they were likely stolen as she was getting out of a taxi at the airport. She went back to the hotel and had no way to contact anyone, but Excalibur found her and helped a ton to get everything sorted, and she managed to coincidentally run into Yuka who she was trying to meet at the airport so it all worked out. Thanks Excalibur!

I don’t really read the parts in the back of the magazine about like, free prizes you could win if you fill out a survey and stuff, but I off-handedly noticed a list of “よくなかった記事” that appears to be results of reader surveys for articles they didn’t like… and in every magazine I had lying around today, #1 is the WWE recap, #2 is the history column, and #3 is the fan art and photos page. And like… first off – I’m offended on behalf of the history column guy. And second of all, why publish that? Surely those results just show that people buying a magazine about contemporary Japanese pro wrestling would, when taken as a group, be less interested in the articles not directly about contemporary Japanese pro wrestling? And in any case all three of those columns have been in every issue I’ve read and have a clear and obvious purpose for inclusion so it doesn’t seem like they’re going anywhere.

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週刊プロレス No.2186 (from early June)

In Naito’s column, he talks about how he congratulated Hiromu on his tournament victory by leaving, but leaving behind a yogurt container on which he wrote the unsigned message “盛りさん、3年連続、4度目の優勝おめでと”, with 盛りさん apparently meaning Hiromu because he 話を盛る’s a lot.
This made me reflect on how like, Tanahashi tells earnest corny jokes, Giulia is slyly self-deprecating and also ツッコミish, Hideki Suzuki is a sarcastic banterer, Kenoh stretches sarcasm so far it turns into kayfabe, and then Naito with his jokes is… inscrutably straight faced.

Giulia’s column is about New Blood, the Stardom shows that spotlight newer talent to the company that they put up free on youtube, and how she has a match with Miyu Amasaki at the next one.

I like this pose they did ahead of the cage match a lot.

I would like to hang out under the giant floating Rikidozan head! It looks fun!

Apparently the 5 Star GP won’t be the only tournament Suzu Suzuki and Risa Sera are doing this summer - they’re in Catch the Wave 2022, for the promotion called Wave. (I saw later on apparently Suzuki, Sera, and Komeyama all progressed)

Kenoh lays into DDT further in his column, saying wrestlers like Takeshita and Endo are held back because everyone sees it as a theater troupe, not a real pro wrestling company, with stars like Ibushi and Omega only being truly recognized once they’d left. He says pro wrestling fans might be able to shrug off their antics and go “well it’s DDT” but that’s not what the general public will do - they’ll just associate pro wrestling with DDT and be turned off of it forever.
He says Sasaki is representing DDT, but Kenoh won’t be representing NOAH, he’ll be representing all of pro wrestling, and he says of Sasaki loses, DDT should disband, and Takagi should quit and be expelled from the industry. If Kenoh loses… Japanese pro wrestling is over.
Pretty high stakes!

There was a Jumbo Tsuruta memorial show (22nd anniversary of his passing) and it looks like Shingo Takagi was there and he took Aoyagi’s trophy so Aoyagi took his King of Pro Wrestling trophy in turn.

This ad for a Nomads event includes the slogan “No home… Yes ambitious!” and something about that phrase made me laugh a lot. I do get what they’re going for! :sweat_smile:
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There’s an interview with Yuka Sakazaki where she talks about her challenge against Shoko Nakajima. They have an intertwined career (apparently once being in a tag team called “みらクりあんず” but I don’t really know why it’s called that or spelled that way) and they have a deep trust as wrestlers although they aren’t necessarily close outside the dojo. She calls her しょこた and says she’s a 仲間 she can rely on. She hopes to be a double title holder and that Rika doesn’t win the 4-way since then she’d have to defend against her and she lost a title to her once already…

Tenryu’s column talks about Jake Lee in All Japan and roughly how he’s an asset but they should be careful about stuff like where Jake Lee encountered Tanahashi at the Korakuen anniversary show and challenged him a bit and Tanahashi suggested he come to New Japan – because the important thing to build is trust in delivering what the star says, so it’s not the kind of match that should be teased if there’s no way to back it up.

There’s an obituary for Tarzan Goto, a longtime FMW wrestler, who died of cancer. I don’t know anything about him, but from the picture, yep that’s a veteran deathmatch wrestler all right.

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週刊プロレス No.2187(from, you know, about a week later in early June)

There’s a two page ad for Forbidden Door and one full page is just Tanahashi’s face. The text is kind of interesting – I suppose that’s the parentheses equivalent of a furigana situation where it’s the kanji explaining the meaning of the furigana rather than the furigana clarifying the reading of the kanji? And that’s why the parentheses is before rather than after?

Tanahashi’s column talks about Forbidden Door and how when he goes to America now he doesn’t have to explain to the audience who he is like in the 00s, and they joke that with circumstances meaning he has to fight Goto for a spot that he thought he’d already challenged for before CM Punk was injured, and it’s going to end up as a match with a guy who’s already come to New Japan plenty, it’s less like a forbidden door and more like he fumbled with the lock using the wrong key on a regular entry door that wasn’t locked in the first place.

This picture of Kenoh in pain and wearing a Gundam shaped hat is surely ripe for use as an emoji.
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I also like these pictures of Shoko Nakajima at Cyberfight Festival.

In All Japan there was a six man tag between past Champion Carnival winners and there’s a lot going on in the included pictures. First of all - Jake Lee’s entrance attire is so much. Secondly, Aoyagi is in both pictures because apparently Minoru Suzuki and Voodoo Murders flavor Suwama opted out of the photo opportunity due to heelishness so Aoyagi and the ref are the stand-ins.

There’s also an action shot of Suzuki slapping Ishikawa. Won’t ever turn down Minoru Suzuki slapping someone.

Another good photo is this one of Lady C applying a giant backbreaker on Saya Iida.

Then there’s a strange multipage, completely wordless photo collage of the Best of the Super Jrs. this year.
It reminds me a lot of um, a middle school yearbook.

There’s an interview with Masato Tanaka in Zero-1 about his winning the belt from Sugiura in a symbolic victory on behalf of Ohtani.

There’s a kinda interesting feature on dojo matches, and promotions that run them and have run them in the past, like NOAH, Michinoku, Choco Pro, Ice Ribbon, etc. Apparently a precursor was a 登竜門 match in SWS, one of Tenryu’s various promotions throughout the year.s

Looks like Tiger Queen got some supervillains in the First Tiger Mask’s promotion: “Darker’s”, comprising of Dark Tiger, Dark Panther, Dark Cheetah. This ネーミングセンス is too complicated for me!

There’s a feature called Harukamania about a wrestler named Haruka Umesaki in the promotion Diana. Apparently she’s positioned as something of a successor to Sareee, who was getting a whole lot of buzz as an up and coming wrestler before she signed with WWE NXT. But she’s making her own name not just trading on Sareee’s. She seems cool!
There’s some comments from other wrestlers, one of them being Mei Suruga describing Haruka as a rival.

The costume column is about Waka Tsukiyama, the Stardom newcomer still shooting for her first win.
An odd detail that only stands out once you mention it is she’s wearing two sets of pants - the skimpier one on top was initially what she was considering but it was too much on its own. She has moon elements (because of her name, duh, though apparently she’s cutting out the moon pose she did at first but doesn’t say why), an impish tail to go with her nickname “コズエンの小悪魔,” and hearts because they’re cute. She says it’s inspired by things like Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure because she aspires to be the kind of wrestler kids can look up to and want to be when they grow up. She says it’s actually pretty revealing but she has the kind of figure that doesn’t come across as overtly sexy even if she wears clothes that are, which worried her in the past but now she owns it.

Mutoh’s column is about マイクアピール. He says that in American wrestling, lots of promos are important to sell the next big show, but in 昭和 era Japanese wrestling, all of it was on TV so if you were watching there wasn’t particularly a next big thing to sell, so the old-school Japanese wrestling mentality he has is to only say things on the microphone when you need to. Even famous catchphrases, like for example, Inoki’s 「1、2,3,ダー」he only started doing in 平成2 (1989-1+2 = 1990). Nowadays though, it’s become an expected thing that the main eventer closes the show and Mutoh doesn’t seem particularly a fan, because he thinks anything to communicate should be communicated via the match, and unnecessary words said after would just be a distraction.
It’s an interesting column to me, because I’d actually been thinking recently about how, although a lot of it is probably just a fun of understanding the language thing, the Japanese pro wrestling thing I most feel changes the show for the better and should be imported to American pro wrestling… is the closing マイクアピール! And just in general having the wrestlers talk after the match (backstage and whatnot) instead of beforehand. I like that it’s a source for emotional catharsis (and sometimes plot advancement) when the wrestlers’ and audience’s emotions are at their rawest.
Anyway here’s a cool young Mutoh.

In the industry column, Satoshi Kojima reflects on his GHC Heavyweight victory, saying the grandslam is a nice thing people around him care about, but it’s not what motivated him, that was to become champion in NOAH and support it. He’s asked if Go’s “I AM NOAH” then what’s he? He considers “I AM KOJI” but settles on “I AM ‘いっちゃうぞバカヤロー’” which the columnist notes is less catchy but spins poetically into noting how Kojima still yelled that catchphrase throughout the pandemic even when the fans couldn’t yell it out too, and how that shows his indomitability.

The ad at the back of the magazine is a casting call for a 実写映画 based on Mayu Iwatani’s book! :open_mouth:
I wonder what that will be like. I could certainly see the base story of a depressed teen running away to become a wrestler being dramatized into something fun. If like, it’s someone literally playing Mayu and like, Rossy Ogawa and stuff that would be weird but could still be cool? I never did see that Stephen Merchant Paige movie thing…

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週刊プロレス No.2189 (from lateish mid June)

There’s an interview with Tony Khan about Forbidden Door.
An interesting thing here language-wise is that for Khan’s words, all the names use their American equivalents. Like he says ニュージャパン and トモヒロ・イシイ and stuff like that, no kanji in names. I suppose it conveys like, a foreign dignitary type of vibe, like he’s American and using American terminology. As opposed to when an American wrestler comes to be a part of a Japanese promotions shows, and their translated interview uses the regular Japanese terminology. Anyway, it’s interesting!
He says he’s never been to Japan but he learned a little Japanese in school and can understand a bit but kanji are hard! Someone tell Tony Khan about wanikani! and teach him to delegate so he has time for reviews

Naito recovered from eye surgery and finished his vacation, sounds like. He met Ace Austin at a show and was fascinated by his magic extendo stick and impressed by his huge thighs. It’s cool that a lot of foreign wrestlers are in the G1, but he thinks it’s a bit too bad there aren’t any Japanese wrestlers who are entering it for their first time.

The big topic this issue is the slap from Katsuhiko Nakajima to Tatsuya Endo that KO’d him and ended the match.
Giulia talks about slaps for her column, saying for her, they’re 大事なコミュニケーションの一つ but they do often throw you for a loop or leave your jaw feeling sore but it usually goes away within a week. She says that fans complaining about the match stoppage and saying 「ちゃんとプロレスやろうぜ」 should take away instead , to borrow a phrase,「これもプロレスだ」. One thing out of it she praises is Nakajima’s conduct after the match as she says 賛否はあるけど, it sounds like he went the route of playing it strong and scary rather than apologizing for it and カッコよくて痺れちゃうのがプロレスラー。

There’s interviews with Tam and Natsupoi ahead of their (great) cage match. It sounds like there’s mutual jealousy dating back to their time in Actwres and including things like Tam getting to tag with KAIRI. Tam says she’s going to draw out the extremes of a feminine ドロドロness as opposed to her similarly bitter and emotional feud with Giulia which had some masculine energy to it in the end. “このドロドロが永遠に地獄の果てまで続きそうだな”

I don’t know why they published a screenshot from Toy Story in this wrestling magazine

In Kenoh’s column there’s a bit where he says in GHC Heavyweight championship matches, he’s 2戦連続無敗. The interviewer remarks that while that is true, those two matches were both draws… and he lost his previous 4 matches for the title… so put another way, he’s 6戦連続未勝利. Kenoh does not appreciate this perspective.

There’s a big feature on Big Japan Pro Wrestling ahead of a deathmatch tournament they’re having.

I like the goofy outlines on these 1970s era covers! They should bring those back.

The history column is about Giant Baba and Andre the Giant and how they understood each other well because of their shared gigantism. The dream match of the two of them facing off never got a chance to happen (although they met plenty of times in rumbles and tags and stuff), but on reflection the columnist thinks that’s a good thing since it’s nice to think of them more as allies.

There was a show called Fortune Dream 7, produced by Kenta Kobashi, in a continuation of something he put on before the pandemic, it sounds like. It looks like it brought together people from various promotions picked out by Kobashi. Most interesting to me is Himeka and Lady C! Apparently Himeka hit Lady C with a Jumping Knee passed to her directly from Jun Akiyama who got it in turn from Jumbo Tsuruta, and she hit Lady C with it and did Tsuruta’s call, thereby overtly echoing Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Giant Baba. I had absolutely no idea Himeka had a connection like that in her background, so that’s interesting to me!

Hideki Suzuki weighs in on the slap – but first he talks about how he got a kitten and had to figure out how to lure it out from under the washing machine. He suggests the column just be about the cat (which I wouldn’t mind) but the interviewer asks him to talk about wrestling please.
Anyway - about the slap and people complaining Nakajima’s slaps are too dangerous he says he sees it as the general public complaining because you don’t get slapped in your day to day life and so it seems scary, and since they’re not the ones involved their opinions aren’t especially relevant anyway.

A nice photo of Go Shiozaki

In the short industry column, they don’t wait for Tenryu’s own column to ask him about the slap. In some very, um, Tenryu-ish opinions, he says that (although he’s just an observer) he thinks Nakajima has nothing to be blamed for, he’s confused why the other wrestlers just stood around instead of covering for Endo and finding a way to continue the match without him, and he thinks Endo needs to extra vigilant about winning and looking strong in the future, like “Hulk Hogan or Triple H” levels, to rebuild his image.

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週刊プロレス No.2190 (from midish late June)

Giulia’s column is her talking to Stardom’s ring announcer 安藤頼孝 (hey, I almost guessed that name reading right!). He says he got his start in 2000 when he was called in in a rush to announce for an All Japan Women’s garage match (after applying some time before). Something fun he’ll do rarely, apparently, is call out ストライク when Mayu Iwatani throws her armband at the start of a match.

In Hiroshi Tanahashi’s column, they talk about the G1 blocks. The four blocks has only happened once before, in 2000, while Tanahashi’s first G1 was in 2002.
Tanahashi’s in C block, so he remarks that he’s 「タナハCヒロC」then.
The interviewer says he wondered if the A/B naming scheme would have been changed this year too. Tanahashi suggests いろは naming instead, so he would have been in は block.
The interviewer says he’s sure Tana would have said 「タナはシのはブロック」 if that were the case…
They give their respective predictions for the blocks and bicker light heartedly again about them, but of course the predicted winner of the tournament as far as the column is concerned is Tanahashi.

All this joking around reminds me of another Tournament related Tanahashi goof a while back I forgot to mention: he joked that with Ace Austin around, backstage if someone called out エース! they’d both turn their heads!

There’s a nice fan’s drawing of El Desperado. Cute!

There’s a GLEAT related feature here.

The history column is kinda interesting - he talks about how a foreign wrestler, Rip Tyler, bragged to him about being probably the only professional wrestler with no divorces, and how at the time he thought that was ridiculous but just was like “それは素晴らしい!そうかもしれませんねえ” since he seemed proud of it. But he saw in Tyler’s obituary he was still married and had been for 40 years, and he understood the pride better then, speculating that 昭和 era American wrestlers marriages without divorce may well indeed have been below 10%.
Anyway the point of the article is to talk about a notable happily married wrestler, Tatsumi Fujinami, and how Inoki had a major seat at Fujinami’s 1981 wedding to his wife Kaori, and how that was the first, maybe only time Inoki directly referred to Fujinami as a successor.

There’s an interview with Yuki Arai and Saki Akai ahead of their tag title shot against Magical Sugar Rabbits in TJPW. Arai says she’s when she’s next to Akai and they’re both キラキラing she’s “100培くらい” more confident than she is normally. And their names and general backgrounds (i.e. both from Kyoto) are so similar it must be fate. The name they’re going with (though it doesnt’ sound super final?) is 令和のAA砲.
They attempt to list each other’s positives and negatives about each other on a whiteboard (or :blossom: and :question: points about each other as incl. in the picture although it’s barely visible) - Akai says Arai’s professionalism really impressed her like when she didn’t eat much food at a big dinner where they first interacted. And Arai’s initial response when asked about her impression of Akai is “え。。。優しい?” which Akai jokes is like when a friend asks you about their boyfriend and you struggle to find words. But she elaborates that Akai was easy to talk to and welcoming from the start. Akai says that with her path through DDT, she didn’t really have female senpais in the sense of people actually signed with the same promotion, so she wants to provide what experience she’s accumulated to Arai. Like she said she got enough negative comments when she started that she was worried about Arai processing the same thing, but she impressed her by being unfazed by it - Arai says she’s made a point since starting idoling to try to read comments written by people earnestly wanting her to read them, and actively ignore ones written without that in mind at all. That seems like a good way of thinking about it to me!
if they win, they’ll want to defend the belts in Kyoto, and Arai wants to celebrate at Akai’s house.

There’s an interview with Chigusa Nagayo about her being inducted into the Pro Wrestling EVE Hall of Fame in the UK, where she was inducted and Takumi Iroha and VENY had a match. It sounds like she really got a kick out of it! She seemed to be pondering a lot the “entertainment” side of wrestling and wanting to lean into that heavily, and making sure wrestling changes along with the times. Apparently she’s training for a return to the ring because Maria in Marvelous challenged her.

The costume column is about Miyu Yamashita!
One odd detail about her costume is the してるようでしてないベルト - there’s a part on her costume that kinda looks like a belt and has loops for a belt but she doesn’t wanna keep track of a belt so there’s no belt.
You may wonder what the design on the front of her costume means – apparently she just asked the designer for a design that “doesn’t look like anything” and “doesn’t seem to mean anything” so.
It’s weird to see a glimpse of her before this kind of costume – apparently she switched over in 2016 (and debuted in 2013)


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Mutoh in his column talks more about マイクアピール and I covered the gist already but some kinda interesting tidbits is he all but literally says “back in my day” about how gameshows used to take their time on a single question and now it’s back-to-back trivia questions one after the other and it goes to show how society has sped up like how shows are back to back one after another and so the マイクアピール needs to be in there now to sell the next show to keep the cycle moving quick. And he says he relies on catchphrases and key points. The phrase プロレスLOVE for example apparently originated from the media, not from him.

The short industry column has some more interesting background to Himeka’s Jumping Knee! Apparently when she was an idol, as a 全日本プロレスの応援大使 she got the move from Jun Akiyama as the only woman to inherit it. But additionally - when she was in Actwres during a top championship match, the move broke the jaw of another wrestler, Reika Saiki, which led to her extended absence and eventual retirement earlier this year (she’s the one whose retirement ceremony was in TJPW fairly recently). So out of guilt and fear she’s avoided the move since, only breaking it out in modified form in the match for the red belt against Syuri and now at Kobashi’s show. It sounds like that guilt is something she’ll always carry with her in some form - since even if it wasn’t intentional or her fault, it’s a big thing to know that it happened and wonder if your impact in pro wrestling will be a net negative because of it - but it’s also made her more careful and vigilant as a wrestler.
So anyway, it’s move with multiple levels of story behind it, and layers to add in the future!

Finally, there’s a new Ice Infinity Champion! As the tournament has been won by Saori Anou. She’s a freelancer, not signed to Ice Ribbon, but that name recognition can bring attention to a promotion where multiple young wrestlers shined in the tournament and where now the only signed wrestlers with more than 5 years of experience are Tsukasa Fujimoto (who’s not wrestling for an indefinite length of time) and Hamuko Hoshi. Although Fujimoto’s not wrestling, she remains as staff and she’s watching all the shows at every event, and she compares it to when Ice Ribbon was starting out and everyone was new.
The tournament had a fun rule where if matches went to a 15 minute time limit draw, the wrestler with the shorter career would advance in the tournament. The one who made it to the finals was Yuki Mashiro. (It does sound like Ice Ribbon could be a really good venue for 成長 stories right now - in my head I realized I was assuming all the departures was a sign of something badly managed under the surface and maybe young wrestlers would be better off leaving too, but thinking back over it it does seem like it was largely a bunch of coincidental life circumstances and creative differences about specifically deathmatches.)
They’re apparently looking to hire new trainees, as well. I don’t think I’ve seen the version of the logo with the ring before? I wonder if they’re phasing out the ice cream cone?


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I’m caught up now! I think for only the second time? I wonder how long it will last…

I have thoughts about recent wrestling shows but will leave those for another date…

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Wow, you got a lot of reading done! Thanks as always for sharing, and congrats on catching up!!

tamu_believes_in_you

The MiraClians! Unfortunately their team was before my time, so I can’t explain their name :sweat_smile:. They were actually the inaugural champs when TJPW debuted the tag titles in 2017! I find their team interesting because despite being ex-partners, there isn’t any bitterness between them, though they’ve both found, I guess, their true tag team soulmate, and it turned out it wasn’t with each other. But they’ll still work together from time to time when they have opportunities to during matches.

The seeds for the Magical Sugar Rabbits’ tag team actually began when the MiraClians were still together. I can’t remember who Mizuki was tagging with at the time (it was either with Riho, or with Mizuki as the original flavor Itoh Respect Army (as opposed to the NEO Itoh respect Army, which was formed later after Itoh disbanded the original faction due to her jealousy and insecurity over Mizuki having more success than her)), but she and Yuka realized they had a connection when both of them were with other partners, and, well, that was that.

The Magical Sugar Rabbits are the only team to have held the tag titles more than once (though NEO Biishiki-gun has held them with three different combinations of wrestlers).

There was actually this amazing match in 2020 (I thought they uploaded it to youtube, but I just went looking for it and had no luck, so I guess not…) where, leading up to Yuka vs Mizuki for the Princess of Princess title at the first Wrestle Princess show, Yuka and Shoko teamed together against Mizuki and Itoh. The match just blew me away in terms of how you could see the relationships between all four participants shift over the course of it. It can be watched here on Wrestle Universe (starts around 1:09:55).

Incredible, ahaha.

Definitely agree about this. Backstage comments are so important, and I think it’s a really cool reward for the winner of the main event to close out the show! AEW actually sort of does this a lot of the time, from what I can tell, but it very rarely makes it onto TV. But there will be footage circulating (sometimes shot by fans, sometimes uploaded by AEW themselves to youtube and such) of the wrestlers basically closing out the show. It’s sad to me that this part doesn’t get to air typically. Personally I think it’s a better ending then some random beatdown :sweat_smile:.

I noticed that NJPW does this in the subtitles for comments from foreign wrestlers as well. Like, when Zack or Tama or someone says their (Japanese) opponents’ names, it’ll often be written in katakana in the subtitles instead of with the regular kanji. Generally they’d translate NJPW as like 新日本, though. It’s an interesting translation choice.

I’m kind of shocked he’s never been to Japan, considering the fact that he’s very wealthy and also has been a huge puro mark for years. Apparently he was a fan of the Golden Lovers back when Kenny was still a babyface.

Yeah, I’m not exactly sure how to translate this one, though I think I’ve seen others refer to it as “Reiwa Ban AA Cannon”, so that is what I have been going with. As far as I can tell, they’ve decided to stick with it, or at least it’s what all of the recaps use.

I didn’t know the story of her inheriting Jun’s Jumping Knee! It’s a shame that things turned out sad, though… That’s unfortunately part of wrestling as well :pensive:.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about it, too, but Yappy made some posts on twitter about how the environment now is actually a lot better, and she feels very positive about it, and the wrestlers who are there now feel good about the company’s future, in contrast to the doom and gloom from some fans. So that made me a lot more hopeful.

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Finally (almost) finished the Summer Sun Princess translation! This show happened on July 8. Here’s the recap. I’m still working on the non-dialogue parts, but I got through all of the post-match comments at least. I might be back with follow-up questions, though, depending on how the rest goes :sweat_smile:.

This was TJPW’s first show with cheering and streamers being allowed again! It was endearing to watch the new rookies be so slow at cleaning up the streamers, due to a lack of practice. The recap starts with the main event, Shoko Nakajima vs Rika Tatsumi for the Princess of Princess title, so I’ll start there.

They definitely had me believing that Rika was going to take this, despite me knowing in my heart of hearts that there was no way it was going to happen (hey, the rest of the show was full of shake-ups! they could have another one here!). I loved her missile hip attack from the top rope to the outside, and just her general brutality. Rika is an interesting wrestler to me because I don’t consider her to be particularly a favorite, but her big matches always get me invested.

But alas, it was not to be. Shoko managed to pin her, ruining her dreams of being the 狂い咲き champion. As Rika started to leave, Shoko called out to her. She told Rika that she was strong, and then she said that as the champion, not only did she win today, but she’s going to keep winning, so she looks forward to meeting Rika again further down the road.

Backstage, Shoko said that when she met Rika, she was a really fragile girl. She got injured a lot, and had a lot of close calls. But today, that Rika is nowhere to be found. Not knowing what Rika is going to do scares Shoko, but this Rika is very strong and robust.

Shoko said: “ベルトを巻いてから防衛し続けてるんですけど、東京女子はもっと成長しないとダメだなって思わせてくれる環境です,” which confused me. I think this means: “TJPW is an environment that makes me want to grow even more.”? Here’s the video.

Shoko goes on to say that since she won the belt, she wants to keep winning with the intention of defending the title against everyone. She also hopes to win the Tokyo Princess Cup, and there is also TDC Hall on October 9. She’s aiming to wear the belt a second time at Ryogoku Kokugikan, and she wants to make a lot of dreams come true.

Backstage, Rika said that today was the big match on the highest stage, so she went out there with the intent of having the best match in her career. Shoko said that she was strong, but she realized that it still wasn’t enough. But her spirit isn’t broken, and she’s going to keep going. She felt her love for pro wrestling all over again, and she wants to fall in love even more, become completely absorbed in it, and once again appear as Rika Tatsumi the champion.

The semi-main event, the tag title match, Yuka Sakazaki and Mizuki vs Saki Akai and Yuki Arai, was my favorite match in the whole show. It also broke my heart, but, well, such is wrestling.

I went into this match so confident that MagiRabbi would win and retain the belts. That confidence started to shake halfway through. And then that moment at the end when Yuka dived into the ring to take the Finally herself so that it wouldn’t hit Mizuki… That was one of those wrestling moments that I knew would live in my brain forever. I was still thinking about that as I watched the ref count the final pin.

After the match, Saki said that MagiRabbi is strong, and she thinks if her and Arai challenged them 100 times, they’d be no match for MagiRabbi 99 of those times. However, although they might be inexperienced as a tag team, Arai has incredible potential. The fact that they drew the winning ticket this one time out of 100, that was due to Arai’s innate luck or her pull. Saki’s intention was to lead, but Arai also supported her in part. She said that from here, it gets hard. Now they’re in a position of being chased. She said: “明日から追われる立場として、どんどんその先を走りましょう.” “From tomorrow onward, as they start to chase us, let’s keep running.”

I really liked this because it pointed out I think what was so devastating about that match, which is that MagiRabbi really should have had it, but they lost everything in just like 30 seconds at the very end. Maybe if Yuka had disrupted the Finally kick by shoving Arai out of the way instead of taking it herself, she’d have been able to save Mizuki in time.

In Arai’s comments, she said that there were many difficult moments, but her lovely senpai was nearby, and Saki saved her many times. Arai thinks that today, she showed her best performance yet. But winning the belt isn’t her goal. She wants to do her best to keep growing and pull TJPW along as a member. She feels like she’s carrying the weight of the history of her senpais who have held this belt up until now. She doesn’t want the belt to be disgraced while she’s holding it. She also says that since none of the other members of SKE have become champions like this, she wants everyone to see the belt.

Yuka said that she was just one millimeter, two millimeters short, and she lost her belt. But “マジラビは永遠に不滅なんで” (from the video caption). I really liked that line. I translated it as “MagiRabbi is permanently indestructible.”

Her next line in the caption gave me a little trouble. She said: “荒井ちゃんも私の意地悪にもくらいついてきて、これは化けるなと思いました.” I might be missing a little context here, because I didn’t fully get it. Here was my best attempt: “Arai-chan stuck by me even though I was mean to her, and I thought she would be able to improve dramatically.”

Mizuki said that she’s frustrated, but a loss is a loss. But today’s match, and the fact that they defended the belts until now, these absolutely aren’t negatives. She’s going to use this as a springboard. She said she was going to space, but she’s going to do what she can to fly around the world first.

When I translated this, I wondered if that meant she was hoping to do an overseas tour, and sure enough, it seems the answer is yes! They just announced that she’s going to be coming to the US to wrestle Emi Sakura at Deadlock Pro Wrestling on August 6! Should be an awesome match. (Deadlock is truly getting to book some amazing joshi talent this year…)

This wasn’t covered in the recap, but Yuka also said that having a wrestler like Saki Akai holding the belt and participating in TJPW is going to be a step up for the organization. She thinks it’ll be a catalyst for them and will make TJPW more interesting.

This is kind of a funny thing for her to say, because Saki Akai hasn’t participated much in TJPW, but Sakisama very much has. Akai is actually serving in a similar role here, where she’s mentoring a less experienced wrestler through tagging with her. It has proven to be an excellent formula in the past, and this version has a different enough flavor, I’m excited to see where they go with it. It’ll be interesting to see wrestlers with an extensive history with Sakisama, like Misao, have possible opportunities to face Saki Akai…

(The two are very much treated as different people in kayfabe, but there is sort of a meta awareness present in a lot of the booking.)

I’ll end the tag titles match portion with this amazing photo from the recap that took my breath away when I saw it:

Next up, Miyu Yamashita vs current AEW women’s champion, Thunder Rosa! This was a fun one because it was actually Rosa’s return to TJPW after two years. It’s also an interesting match because in many ways, it paralleled the exact situation that led to the whole Forbidden Door thing in the first place: the AEW world champion came to Japan to fight the ace, and if the ace wins the match, they’ll earn themself a shot at the AEW title.

If you want to watch this one, AEW actually uploaded it on youtube! It features AEW’s commentators and not Chris Brookes and Akki, alas, but the match itself is just as good. If you want to watch this and be unspoiled, stop reading here.

Miyu ended up having much better luck than Tanahashi had back in NJPW in January 2020, which feels like worlds away at this point. The ace managed to beat the AEW champ and earn herself a title shot. We still don’t know when this match will be happening, but it’ll be exciting!

After the match, Rosa spoke in English and said that it was fun, and having a match with someone with that much experience, it just makes her better. She said that she’s not going to lose the title like last time, and reiterates that Miyu gets a title match whenever she wants.

Miyu said something that confused me in both the recap and the tweet caption. From the tweet: “2年半越しにロサが戻ってきて大きい団体のベルトを持ってきてくれて嬉しいし、そんな気持ちが乗っている中、勝てて嬉しかったです.” Here was my attempt: “I’m so happy that Rosa came back after two years with a belt from a big organization, and with all of those feelings riding on it, I was happy to win.”

The part I struggled with was そんな気持ちが乗っている. I tried looking it up, and 気持ちが乗る appears to refer to being in a state of heightened energy. So I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it here :sweat_smile:.

Miyu goes on to say that there’s a part of her that wonders if she only won because it was at her home. But she is still getting stronger. She says that if she can challenge for the belt, she wants to go to the U.S. not as a representative of TJPW, but simply as a wrestler.

The final match covered in the recap was Maki Itoh vs Alex Windsor (from Pro Wrestling EVE) for the International title. I’m not really familiar with Alex, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but the match was fun! The result was quite a shock!

After the match, Alex said (in English) that she’s taking over the world, and she’ll take the belt wherever she wants to. The video of this one is fun because she hassles Mr. Haku a little bit, because he’s there as her translator. I appreciated the shirt he was wearing, haha.

Itoh said, “なんで自分はいつも弱いんでしょう。もっと強くなりたい.” “Why am I always weak? I want to become stronger.” She mentioned that she has another overseas excursion in August, so she has to switch gears and fight against wrestlers from around the world. It may take some time, but her only choice is to work hard to become stronger. It has been a long time since she has tasted this frustration. She’s grateful, and she’s going to move forward to the next step. When the time comes, she will challenge.

The video caption adds: “今日だけは落ち込もうと思います.” I translated this as: “Just for today, I’m going to be down in the dumps.”

And that’s it for all of the matches with title implications! With TJPW, though, that’s only half of the fun. Here are some notes from the wrestlers’ comments concerning the other matches:

Moka Miyamoto and Juria Nagano, both rookies with karate backgrounds, faced off in a 空手対決! I actually wasn’t quite sure how this would go. I thought Juria might have a chance, actually, despite her career being so short. But I never should have doubted Moka!

Moka said that she was excited to see that Juria’s karate was strong, but her strikes were so powerful. But this was pro wrestling, and although Juria might be better at karate than she is, she has been doing this for longer than Juria has, so she absolutely didn’t want to lose, and was happy that she won.

Juria said that in the karate showdown, she wanted to get her first singles victory, so she’s disappointed that she lost. She had been doing 正拳突き, but this was the first time she was on the receiving end, and 正拳突き hurts so much. I wasn’t quite sure how to translate 正拳突き :sweat_smile:. I might just romanize it, honestly.

Juria finishes with: “正拳突きでダウンとれるようなパンチ力を身につけたいなと思いました.” I struggled to wrap my brain around this one a bit. I think I understand the Japanese, but putting it in English made me question my understanding. Here’s what I went with: “I wanted to learn how to punch with force like taking down an opponent with seikenzuki.”

The eight-women tag match featuring Aja Kong was fun as always (Aja loves to appear in TJPW for their big shows, usually teaming with Raku, who is her favorite). After the match, the wrestlers mostly talked about cheering and streamers being back.

Nao’s line here confused me: “声援ってこんなに力になるんだなっていうくらい、やってやろうっていう気持ちになる!” A little bit too much going on there for me to figure out :sweat_smile:. My very unsure attempt was: “Cheering makes me stronger, and it makes me want to give it my all!”

Kaya mentions that the paper tape got her right in the face, and Nao says “愛だからね!” “It’s love!”. Misao says that she wants to team up with Aja next (she tried to defect during the match, but it did not work out for her).

Yuki similarly confused me: “みんなが今までにない声量をぶつけてくれるのでテンション上がりまくったし、負けないように闘わなきゃなと思いました.” Here was my attempt: “Everyone was cheering louder than ever before, which raised my spirits, and I felt like I had to fight not to be outdone.”

Aja said that she was able to mark her return to TJPW with a victory. In the next tweet, she talks about getting to do a new Oyasumi Express with Raku (this involved Aja carrying Raku in a piggyback). Yuki and Pom commented: “あれはヤバい…” (“That was dangerous…”?). Aja says that her knee is in good condition, so she wants to continue to be invited to TJPW if there’s any occasion. She had a lot of fun!

The next match was Miu Watanabe vs Ryo Mizunami, who was filling in last minute since Willow Nightingale was unable to get her visa figured out in time to make it to the show. Ryo is one of my favorites, so I was really looking forward to this one, and it was awesome!

Ryo had nothing but praise for Miu afterward. She said: “ぶったまげました!” I think this was basically “I’m floored!”? Then she said that Miu is amazing, isn’t she? Ryo thinks we haven’t seen everything from her yet, and she still has lots of room to grow. She may have lost today, but the audience got the message. She’s a wrestler with amazing hidden potential and possibility. Ryo is looking forward to seeing where she goes from here.

Miu said that she simply thought “Mizunami, you have amazing strength”. Because the fans called out Miu’s name, even though it hurt, she told herself to get it together. At the very least, she was able to accomplish her goal of doing the Giant Swing. She wants to power up some more and do her best so that she can beat Ryo.

The next match featured Hikaru Shida, another guest from AEW, this time tagging with Hikari Noa against Kamiyu and Mahiro Kiryu. It was a fun one, especially since Shida in TJPW has a bit of a mean streak that we don’t get to see as often in AEW.

After the match, Hikari said that she had the most awesome time fighting alongside Shida, and she’s delighted that they could have a match where both of them had weapons.

Shida said that Hikari seemed to have more fun than when Shida fought her in Ryogoku, and she thinks she finally met the real Hikari Noa. She wouldn’t mind teaming up with her again, or facing her again.

Kamiyu’s comments confused me again, as is typical :sweat_smile:. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what she was talking about at the beginning. She said: “神奈川に藤沢の次に有名な寒川っていうところがあって、そこから生まれてアメリカに行った凄いチャンネーらしい.” Here was my best shot: “There’s a place in Kanagawa called Samukawa, the second most famous place after Fujisawa, and having been born there and gone to the U.S., she seems like an awesome girl.”

Then Mahiro comments that that’s how Kamiyu acknowledges Shida… Kamiyu responds by saying that they’re going to turn Toyo University from a third-rate university into a first-rate one, and Mahiro tells her to quit it.

I feel like I’m missing some context here? Or my translation is very off, or something :sweat_smile:.

And finally, the last remaining match, which was probably my second favorite! This one was Riho and Arisu Endo vs Suzume and Mei Suruga.

Lots of history in this one. A lot of it was before my time. For folks who don’t know, Riho spent a good chunk of her career in Gatoh Move, where she was basically the ace. I believe the entire time she was there, she was the only person who held the singles title in the company. Mei is currently mostly based in Gatoh Move, where she, alongside Baliyan Akki (who was on English commentary for this show), are essentially the current Gatoh Move aces.

This match was actually one where I’d say you might be better off watching with English commentary, because both Chris and Akki know Mei very, very well. Akki is her main tag partner, as the Best Bros, and the two of them held the Gatoh Move tag titles for quite a while until Calamari Drunken Kings (Chris Brookes and Masa Takanashi) won them off of them. Chris and Mei are bitter enemies. So, as you can guess, Chris and Akki don’t exactly provide the most unbiased commentary during this match, haha.

But, interestingly enough, Mei and Riho aren’t really the main focus here. This match is really about Suzume and Arisu. Suzume and Mei formed a sort of connection when Suzume fought Mei during her anniversary show (I still haven’t seen this…), so that was sort of the first inkling of them realizing they had a connection.

But Suzume’s main tag partner is Arisu, of course, as Daisy Monkey. I didn’t realize until this match, but I think this might be their first time actually facing each other all year? Since they started tagging regularly, at least. And TJPW spent a lot of the year really building their team, so them fighting now feels extra charged.

I was amazed that I had actually managed to forget that their careers are somewhat close in length (Suzume has over a year’s head start on her, but Arisu is steadily gaining ground, experience-wise), making them rivals in addition to partners. And boy, you can really feel that rivalry here! I think this is where TJPW really, really excels. I love the way that they balance those feelings of close tag partners, but also desperate rivals who really, really want to win, at any cost. Lots of wrestling companies do this, but in TJPW, usually they can fight like this and still remain just as close (if not closer) afterward. I personally find that very relieving :sweat_smile:.

In any case, Arisu tries very, very hard, and she almost manages to get the upset here, but in the end, Suzume proves to still be the stronger of the two.

After the match, Riho says that it gave her some fresh motivation to fight someone with whom she has a connection. She said that Arisu said that she’s frustrated, so Riho hopes she’s going to become an even greater wrestler.

Arisu says that she had a lot of emotional attachment in this match, so it was frustrating to lose, but it was fun and she learned so much.

I really liked how Suzume’s comments sort of seem to echo theirs a little bit. She says that in a match where all of the wrestlers were connected with a red string of fate, there’s a lot of emotional attachment. I loved her use of 赤い糸 here. She says that it was a big deal that she was able to face Arisu. She thought she might lose at the end, and she was so frustrated, she cried.

Mei’s comment confused me. She said: “いつ鈴芽ちゃんと組む日が来ても万全のメイのサプライズをお届けしたいなと思います.” Here was my attempt: “Even if the day comes when I can properly team with Suzume, I want to deliver a perfect Mei Surprise.” I couldn’t quite figure out what she was saying here, though the “surprise” might be a reference to their tag team name, Mei Bee Surprise.

In the next video, Suzume says that she will fight with the intention of surpassing Riho, and also surpassing Mei.

And that’s everything from the comments! Whew!

There were a couple other neat announcements from the show. They announced that TJPW’s next all-women audience show is going to be held at Korakuen with free admission! I hope they’re able to have cheering for that show, because the previous all-women fan shows that they’ve done were held within the past couple years when cheering was not allowed. It’s awesome that this one is going to be at Korakuen, though. It sounds like it’ll be a proper big show!

They also announced that Max the Impaler is going to come wrestle in TJPW! I’m super excited for that! For folks who aren’t familiar, Max is a transmasculine nonbinary wrestler in America who has worked in ROH and made a few AEW Dark appearances, in addition to working the indies. They’re super cool and should make for a fun styles mix with TJPW’s typical style.

Next up, the Tokyo Princess Cup! Which is starting very soon! I’m aiming to get each translation for those shows done within two days, but we’ll see how that goes…

There are some other non-TJPW things I wanted to post about, but I’ll save that for another post :sweat_smile:.

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I’d say more along the lines of “TJPW is an environment that makes me think I need to groe even more to be successful.”
東京女子は → Tokyo Joshi is…
もっと成長しないとダメだな → if I don’t grow/improve (成長 is used a lot in the magazine and whatnot to refer to wrestlers’ growth as wrestlers) more, that’d be ダメ → I need to grow/improve more.
って思わせてくれる環境です → …an environment that makes me think the middle thing (in a good way, like it challenges me to keep improving).

I mean, “stuck by me” but only if you mean in the sense of like, how a defender in basketball sticks by the person they’re covering.
A moment that stuck out to me a lot in the match was when Yuka hubristically chucked Arai right back into Arai’s own corner for her to tag out. So it sounds to me like Yuka’s saying Arai kept after her despite stuff like that, and that’s what led Yuka to realize the match could turn around the same time you did.

A minor tweak is I’d say it’s less like those feelings are riding on the match, and more like Miyu is riding high on those emotions during the match.

When I watched the backstage comments on the day I saw the shirt and thought “I bet I know who that guy is” :slight_smile:

The gist is Miyamoto took her down with just a 正拳突き, and she wants to improve her punching ability to be able to do that too.
正拳突きでダウンとれる → to be able to score a down / knock your opponent down with a 正拳突き
正拳突きでダウンとれるようなパンチ力 → punching power like / such that you’d be able to score a down with a 正拳突き.
So that’s what she wants to attain.

The wording in the video is maybe a bit clearer:
“私も、負けないような、正拳突きだけでダウンできるようなパンチ力を身につけたいなと思いました”

I’d say, like, “cheering makes me want to give it my all, to the point that I was shocked how much strength it gave me!”
The transition that may have gotten lost in the long string of grammar would be the っていうくらい, which I’d say would be roughly “to the point that I’d say (the thing that came before)”

I think the 負けない here is just talking about the match. :sweat_smile: I guess “I have to fight to not lose the match” sounds weird in English, but I think she’s saying the cheering boosted her spirit and perseverance to fight and go for a victory in the match.

I think I remember watching the backstage comments on the day and thinking “well I don’t know what that was about but oh well I’ll figure it out if there’s a question about it” :sweat_smile:

My suspicion was that she was talking about herself - but she’s from 藤沢. I googled “寒川 レスラー” and got an article about Shida so that closes the case and as a bonus explains why she made the point of saying Samukawa is less famous than Fujisawa. (I don’t get the impression either place is particularly famous)
She’s talking about her impressions of Shida, and in a Kamifuku-ish way describing Shida in a way that sounds similar to herself and then saying she sounds amazing.
In retrospect - the “志田さんをそうやって認識してるんですね……” part is Kiryu figuring out what Kamifuku is saying herself and going like, “oh, so that’s how you’re perceiving Shida-san”

I’d say the いつ connects up with the 来ても later on, and clarifies the meaning as: “whenever the day may come that we tag again, I want to deliver a perfect Mei Surprise!” She’s reflecting that she doesn’t know when/if they’ll get to tag again in the future, but if/when they do she hopes it’ll be great.
(and yeah I think the surprise part is either just referring to the team name or maybe it’s something Mei says in other contexts too)

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I wanted to post about some non-TJPW stuff that has also been happening recently.

First up, here’s another interview from Mr. Haku! This one is with former Stardom wrestler Sumire Natsu, who is a very interesting person.

One note on these interviews is that Mr. Haku said that all of the wrestlers he’s interviewing are doing these interviews because they have international aspirations. So definitely keep an eye out for them appearing in other countries besides Japan!

There have been quite a few high profile wrestlers from Japan coming to America (and the UK) to work the indies this year. TJPW has been sending loads of their wrestlers on excursions, with Miyu, Itoh, and Yuka coming over to work AEW and other shows, and Mizuki having at least one appearance scheduled at Deadlock. Plus with Takeshita’s continuing excursion, and former Stardom wrestler Jungle Kyona scheduled to make appearances over here as well.

The other things I wanted to mention concern negative industry things, so I’ll hide the details for both.

Michael Elgin seems to have finally burned his last bridge in Japan.

Apparently he got arrested for shoplifting protein powder?? Can’t say that’s how I expected his career to end, but I also can’t say I’ll miss seeing him at all. He seems to be out of NOAH in the short term, likely the long term, because I believe his options were to either serve prison time in Japan or leave the country and never come back, and I think he chose the second one. Basically the whole wrestling world has been united in dunking on him, so if you hear anyone on NJPW commentary or elsewhere joking about protein powder, it’s almost certainly a reference to this.

In any case, NOAH has gotten easier to watch, though I’m still waiting for them to do something about Hajime Ohara…

And on another note:

Kota Ibushi's injury is not healing well.

I was worried about this after a comment Kenny said in a recent stream where someone asked which of the Golden Lovers are closer to making an in-ring return, and he said that Kota’s shoulder is in pretty bad shape.

Kota himself basically confirmed this on twitter not long afterward. He also alluded to having plans for creating something (a stable? a promotion? an organization?) that will benefit wrestling, even if he himself is unable to make his own return to the ring. He’s still optimistic that he’ll be able to come back eventually, though, but it might take a long time. He also is very firm about not wanting to work at NJPW anymore, and says that he’s going to say more about them after he quits.

Here’s a summary with all of his tweets about it and translations.

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negative industry stuff

Lol, good riddance!

I do not at all want to dig into such a raw situation and cause you or anyone to spend more time preoccupied with it, so please feel free to completely ignore if that might happen!! And I’ll try to keep my comment as short and innocuous as possible,

But geez, translating a subject that’s really important and where all the context is impossible to come by because of twitter + an industry we’re not a part of + that industry is built on lying to the public, seems really difficult huh!

(Spoilering the next part since I failed to try not to articulate the specific language point I was getting hung up on - WARNING for chance of rabbit holing into splitting language hairs about a bummer situation!)

I just spent a long time looking through that whole timeline and trying to answer the question for myself: “do I think Ibushi is saying that he has never met Ohbari face-to-face still, and that therefore the 2 times mentioned in the press conference were both outright lies, or do I think Ibushi is saying that he and Ohbari were not personally acquainted with each other before all this and he was therefore offended by Ohbari’s chummy demeanor and avoidance of what Ibushi felt was important when they did meet?” and came to the conclusion “I have no idea.”
My gut about the situation said one way, the translation said another, my understanding of the grammar and context said “…maybe??? I dunno???”

My initial feeling about the press conference was it felt genuinely like an account of an upper management suit who thought it was a situation he could smooth over with glad-handing, and thought he had successfully done just that, while being completely wrong on both counts because it was much deeper and rawer than that for Ibushi and that managerial tone was only ever going to rub him further the wrong way (once the meetings were over and he had time to think over how he felt about them).
So especially in the necessary lack of context, it is hard to let go of that initial feeling, which I think is a lot of why I got sucked into the question (since that impression is completely wrong if Ohbari fabricated the meetings entirely) and why it’s hard to answer for me.

I think my feeling at the end of the day is it does sound a lot like Ibushi’s saying he never met Ohbari in person, but it doesn’t make sense to me why Ohbari’s play would be to go with a blatant lie (as opposed to ‘just’ truth-stretching and choosing favorable framing) in that case given the situation, or why Ibushi wouldn’t say extra clearly that those meetings never happened as reason #1 not to trust the press conference, and with the way specific tweets are worded, I’m not sure that I can rule out the other possibility, as the most definitive stuff is like “I was X at the press conference when ABCD, and also when Y even though I (have?) never met him” where it’s difficult to parse the temporality in the grammar or “I’m not acquainted with him at all!” where it’s difficult to say if that means he never met him at all or just never did regularly or on any personal basis.

And it doesn’t help that there’s a tweet reply of a native speaker asking for clarification on the same point…

So yeah, I admire the clarity and work put into all those translations, especially about such a tough subject! I’d be stuck second-guessing myself and too afraid of wording it slightly the wrong way and giving someone a mildly wrong impression.

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negative industry stuff

Yeah, it really is. For what it’s worth, Joe’s translations (not these specific ones, but for other tweets) have also been corroborated by Kuma, who is a native speaker. He said that Joe’s translations are accurate and trustworthy. Joe also has years and years of experience specifically translating Kota, as he’s read both of Kota’s autobiographies, listened to all of his podcast episodes, and has translated dozens of interviews and other things, so he’s fairly well-versed in Kota’s way of talking, in addition to just closely following his career over many years.

Of course, it’s definitely still possible to make mistakes, especially in these circumstances, and with a highly context-dependent language. The translator I feel most comfortable trusting with Kota’s Japanese is Michael Nakazawa, who is a close personal friend of Kota’s, but he is (understandably) not touching these tweets…

Regarding the supposed meetings with Ohbari, the sense I got is that Kota might be referring to his claim that NJPW tried to fire him over LINE without talking to him in person, which Kota has been consistent about and which Ohbari has denied. It does seem clear that the narrative being pushed by NJPW is outright lying a lot about working closely with him and the company being on good terms with him.

The meetings discussed in the press conference, to me and my friends at least, seemed very heavily kayfabed. The sense I got is if Ohbari did meet him, it was very brief and did not address any of the actual concerns that Ohbari said were addressed. Kota is also upset that they did not do the press conference with him present. He wants them to do a live one so that they don’t have the opportunity to edit it however they want.

But yeah, it’s unfortunately a really sticky situation where we are still missing a lot of information. I suppose we’ll probably find out more once Kota is free of his contract and can talk more openly. It does seem clear, though, that NJPW has made repeated efforts to make it look like everything has been smoothed over when it very much hasn’t. Considering the stuff they already lied about (saying that Kota wanted to return to wrestling sooner when he repeatedly made it clear that he wasn’t ready), it wouldn’t surprise me if they lied about the meetings as well.

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only a little bit more negative industry stuff

Yeah, on some level whatever meetings happened if any clearly didn’t register as having any import to Ibushi and didn’t work to make everyone happy, so I suppose it’s the same difference.

I think your read makes a lot of sense!
One thing that still confuses me is if the New Japan management’s goal with the press conference was to kayfabe the public into thinking the situation was cleaned up, it seems like a weird strategy when the problem at hand for them is a guy breaking kayfabe and telling the public a situation needs cleaning up - if they think that guy might still do that.
That makes me want to still lean a little bit “they thought they were cooperating with Ibushi and had reestablished trust, and were gravely mistaken” (which isn’t necessarily much better!) but who knows – I could easily be naively reading too much good will into a corporation’s actions, or underestimating the legal restraints they have (or thought they had) on what Ibushi can say and the power of a friendly seeming press conference to influence marks like me, or just misreading the situation entirely.

Thanks again for the clear and cordial discussion about it, anyhow!
I’m unplugged from the wrestling social media grapevine more and more lately to avoid spoilers for shows I haven’t seen yet (and never had friends who were also into wrestling) so I appreciate the bits of background of the type of things that for better or for worse don’t make it into shupro! :sweat_smile: (though I hope it doesn’t feel like an obligation!)

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continuing the discussion

Yeah, it does seem odd, but then again, there are plenty of fans who don’t follow Kota on twitter, and plenty of English speaking fans who have absolutely no idea whatsoever that any of this is going on, so it makes sense from that perspective that NJPW would try to bend the narrative to the best of their ability.

Unfortunately, judging by a lot of fan responses, plenty of people are eager to discount accounts like Kota’s, as well as Karl Fredericks’, because their NJPW fandom comes before their support of the performers, and they seemingly don’t want to consider that the wrestlers might have serious reasons for speaking out against the company.

The main thing for me is that it was more than just a press conference; they also tweeted out birthday announcements for him, merch and other promos, and promoted matches and such involving him, especially in conjunction with Forbidden Door, despite knowing that there was no way he was going to be involved. Plus with Tana doing the Kamigoye…

There’s just such a stark difference between what the company is presenting and what the actual person is saying, on multiple counts. I think they’re trying to ensure that when he does leave, it makes it look like it was one person acting irrationally, and that they were trying to do everything “right”, but he was the one being impolite and erratic.

No problem! I’m… very plugged into the wrestling social media grapevine, for better or for worse, so I hear quite a lot. I’m very strict about sourcing stuff, though, so with most of the stuff coming through to the English-speaking world about the Japanese wrestling scene, I automatically don’t trust it unless there is an actual verifiable source (Meltzer and Sean Ross Sapp and co. don’t count). Kota tweeting openly about all of this is one of the very rare occasions where we do have an actual primary source instead of secondhand info being transmitted by people who don’t speak any Japanese, so I give it a lot more weight.

(Small complaint about the wrestling rumor mill)

I am… very sick of western fans who know absolutely nothing about TJPW and DDT talking about those companies and the wrestlers as if they have some deep knowledge of what’s going on there. The latest rumor that bothered me was some people saying that Shida was scouting the wrestlers in TJPW while she was there in order to bring some of them to AEW.

Miyu in particular was named here, which is frankly ridiculous, because if you’ve followed TJPW/DDT over the past couple years, you’d know exactly who scouted her for AEW, because it was a literal plot point in her match at DDT Ultimate Party in 2019. Kenny (who works very closely with AEW’s women’s division, though he does not have booking power) specifically said that he wanted to fight her to see if she would be a good candidate to bring to AEW. He met her years ago, actually, and he and Kota helped her with her kicks when they were still in DDT. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I’m sure we would have seen her show up in AEW in 2020.

Not to mention the fact that Sanshiro Takagi has talked about wanting to bring TJPW talent to AEW loads of times, before they had an official partnership, even. It’s just really frustrating to me that people ascribe all of these ulterior motives to Shida’s actions and her bookings in Japan when we have no actual evidence that she is working as a scout for AEW at all. It just feels like a lot of fans trying to make themselves feel smart by discerning the inner workings of the industry when they don’t even have a basic understanding of the surface level details about TJPW and DDT that are available in English, even!

So yeah, basically I think it is very fair to avoid the wrestling social media grapevine, because half of the time, the information that circulates on there has no actual source besides like: “well, there was a reddit comment that said this.” I won’t even get into the many false Kota Ibushi rumors that circulated for years, like the rumor that he has a rich family… :sweat:

I’ll try to keep posting more stuff here that I think is worth mentioning! Obviously, most of my concerns are over labor issues and abuse in the industry, but there are some positive things as well that are worth sharing, too :blush:.

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週刊プロレス No.2191 (from a couple weeks ago, the week following and including Forbidden Door)

In Naito’s column he says he didn’t watch Forbidden Door partly out of grumpiness since he wasn’t on the card. He says when he heard about Hiromu not being able to make it he was surprised and texted him “huh, where are you right now?” with the response “in Japan.” at which point he did not follow up any further. He says normally he ignores Takagi’s travel stories, but this time he might actually pay attention since Takagi got to tag with Sting.

There’s a pretty funny interview with Suwama - he insists that this new/old Voodoo Murders heel version of himself is a completely different person than Evolution Suwama, so while on paper Suwama is a record 7 time triple crown champion, this upcoming championship match with Jake Lee will be an attempt to win the belt for the first time, since he never held it when he was in Voodoo Murders. This bit extends to the point that when the interviewer asks about that joshi wrestling endeavor Suwama recently gave a press conference about, Suwama says that was someone else and you’ll just have to ask him.

The cover of the magazine this week is about a wrestler named Fujita “Junior” Hayato who returned in Michinoku Pro to win the Tohoku jr. heavyweight championship after a 5 year absence including a long battle with cancer. He says he’s happy to be alive and in the spirit of no regrets, even challenged Hiromu Takahashi and Kenoh.

Giulia talks about moving, which it sounds like she’ll be trying to do in the near future. Her old apartment sounds pretty bleak. One wrestling-related aspect is she talks about how the road from the train to the apartment involves 凸凹 roads and stairs and pedestrian bridges and it really sucks coming back from tour with bags while tired and in pain, so she’ll be looking for a place with a quicker and easier walk from the train station.

Some good pictures from Tam vs. Natsupoi!

This is the self-confidence I feel whenever I eat bread

The history column is interesting - it talks about Haku’s start in wrestling. Apparently he was a sumo wrestler who had to quit sumo along with some other Tongan wrestlers due to a dispute, and he was scouted by All Japan where Genichiro Tenryu had also at the time recently transitioned from sumo to professional wrestling. Early ring names there were Tonga and Prince Tonga and anyway he had a long and varied career and now his sons Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, and Hikuleo are all involved with NJPW.

In Kenoh’s column he says Mutoh’s retirement is “いいニュース” and it’s 「引退ロード第1弾じゃない。”脱・武藤”の始まりだ。」He says there’s no active wrestler with the kind of name recognition to the general public that Mutoh has, but he will be happy to fill the gap that he leaves behind.
He also recalls a Michinoku Pro show in Tokushima (a bit far from Michinoku huh) that he went to when he was a fan, and he was happy to see Mutoh, but some goober ダサいマスクマン kept getting in the way – given it was Michinoku, was it The Great Sasuke? Nope! He was a bit like Sasuke, but he wore orange and yelled “いっちゃうぞバカヤロー!” - that’s right, it was “ザ・グレート・コスケ,” Satoshi Kojima under a Sasuke mask. Kenoh says after he wins the championship he will grant The Great Kojisuke a spot on the opening card of NOAH shows.

There’s the short article about Rika Tatsumi training undergoing 滝行 to hope for victory in her title match in TJPW. She says it was surprisingly painful and she narrowly bested the waterfall, lasting about four minutes. She’ll definitely win the match now.

There’s also a short article (it’s mostly pictures of her at the beach) about Maki Itoh returning to her hometown of 福岡県小郡市. It’s a pretty small, out of the way town, and she left to pursue an idol career and hasn’t really been back since school days. Apparently she doesn’t have much sense of it as a hometown since when she was there she had no friends - she suspects because she was too cute and everyone was jealous and mean so she retreated internally. She says coming back affirms that she made the right choice (since she is the cutest in the world after all, so of course she has to leave and travel bigger places) but she’s glad to not just be from Tokyo since it prompts her to work harder and she can be a superstar when she comes home. And if anyone offers she’ll be a 観光大使.

朱崇花 catching the eye of the camera mid chair shot makes for a fun photo.

Speaking of 朱崇花, there’s an interview with Chihiro Hashimoto, double tag + singles champion in Sendai Girls, ahead of her title defense against 朱崇花. She’s been focusing on defending the tag championship for want of challengers, but the match with Asuka should be an exciting and interesting match. She says they have similar roots since they both apparently did レスリング and watched Ayako Hamada and decided to become pro wrestlers from that.
She recently turned 30 and she’s feeling positive about it. She says the red dress she’s wearing in the photoshoot was a gift from Meiko Satomura a long time ago that she picked out now to represent Sendai Girls red as the champion.
A lot of cool wrestlers in the shot from the press conference for the event! I feel like at this point I’m surprised when Suzu and Risa aren’t involved in a joshi event rather than the reverse.

The costume column is about Master Wato – I was kinda hoping to learn why his costume is quite so blue, but it just says it’s his favorite color, which I gathered. Apparently on one of the レガース there’s a hidden cat mark, so watch out for that and if you spot it you may be blessed with good luck.

In Hideki Suzuki’s column, he says he popped for Minoru Suzuki and Chris Jericho interacting, but otherwise Forbidden Door was “within expectations.” He’s a lot more excited and interested in talking about the NJPW and Stardom joint show announced for November 20th. He says he’s a “古い人間” but in principle he’s fully supportive of intergender matches, saying he wants to see stuff to shake up his “古いタイプの人間” expectations. Even if there’s just mixed tags rather than direct competition, there’s lots of exciting possibilities for wrestler and faction combinations, like Himeka and Okada, Giulia and Naito, Starlight Kid and a top junior, etc. It ends with an extended joke about how he’ll contribute his valuable WWE Thunderdome experience of seconding as a complete bystander to Giulia and DDM generously for free with an implied joke that he probably asks Giulia to cover for drinks and stuff a lot.

The short industry column is about Tatsuya Endo’s return after the KO that was such a big topic in a previous issue. He sounded shaken and humble and regretted showing weakness as champion but will treat it as a reset and hopes DDT fans internalize that it wasn’t a mistake on Nakajima’s part, but a lack of 耐久性 on his part and couldn’t be helped.

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Incredible, haha. I haven’t really watched much AJPW, so I think I’ve only seen one of his matches, but I can respect a good bit.

I love wrestling because everything is frequently infused with hidden meanings, but then half of the time, the reason for something is actually just this simple, haha.

I’m impressed his expectations were that high, because I think most of us going in were quite pessimistic :sweat_smile:.

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Some mostly belated impressions of various wrestling shows and such:

General feelings

It might have been obvious from all those magazines, but I confess my interest in pro wrestling is at a high water mark lately. I think making more of an effort this year to look forward to shows rather than catching them when I hear that they’ve gone by has been really successful, and that + this thread and learning more about TJPW + having read enough of those magazines that I feel like I have a decent grasp on the state of the industry very broadly + realizing afresh what little language barrier still remains with those older shows, all adds up to some built up enthusiasm and admission that maybe I am a pro wrestling fan after all, and an interest that feels like it’s less tied to particular promotions or directly about specific things going on.
It was especially strong when I realized tournaments were coming up and that I was in a very tournament-receptive mood at the time actually, so I marked a bunch of shows on my calendar and made some 星取表 (including a 5 Star GP I won’t get to use for a little while) and then read all those magazines.
The tide can certainly ebb again! And I wonder if I’ll really have endurance for all those tournaments. but I work from home, and round robin tournaments do make excellent background noise to try to stay focused, since they’re always interesting enough to sustain a glance or two while thinking about something else but rarely like, can’t-miss entertainment. So that’s my plan for most/all of it (except the 5 Star GP) but I usually always get sick of whatever I use in that timeslot pretty quickly too…
But on the other hand, I wonder if the accumulated knowledge and language barrier dissolving will smooth out the peaks and troughs a bit and make for a more regular approach of at least catching big shows when they happen. I guess we’ll see.

I think probably the top storylines I’m most interested in at the moment are:

  1. Who’s going to win the 5 Star GP?
  2. Shoko’s title defenses
  3. what’s the deal with the skeleton
    (with an honorable mention to the continuing suspense about when/if/how crowd noise will return - not really a storyline but still)

Prominence 旗揚げ戦〜はじまりの紅炎〜

I finally got around to watching The Prominence 旗揚げ show! I did end up watching it as background to getting work done, as commentaryless shows definitely have it tougher for me these days and it just didn’t seem like it was going to happen a different way.

I do think my enthusiasm for deathmatch wrestling is more limited to as a fun variety aspect of a larger show, than for a show where it’s mainly all about that, but I’m glad they’re doing what they want to do, and Risa Sera and Suzu Suzuki are at their coolest doing deathmatches so I hope they get to keep doing that and be succesful at it!

One thing I feel vaguely guilty about is I still haven’t actually internalized the names of any of the other Prominence members apart from those two. Sera and Suzuki show up constantly in shupro (Suzu might as well be the main character of the magazine apart from the regular columnists), and they’re clearly treated as the main guest attraction when they turn up all the time in other promotions, so I mean, I do feel like it’s kind of not my fault that I’ve internalized the other three as comparatively an afterthought… I wonder if there’s a storyline or something they could be involved in that would help with that.


NJPW BEST OF THE SUPER Jr.29 (first four shows)

The El Desperado interview in one of the magazines reminded me that – although I know what the finals of this tournament are and who won already – there are actually a lot of matches I would like to see from it, namely, uh, the El Desperado ones.

So it kind of ended up a steam valve for my tournament enthusiasm and a proof of concept for my “day of tournament matches as background noise for the main nose to the grindstone part of the work afternoon” and it’s worked so far! I’ve enjoyed the tournament shows and felt like I got more work done during them than I would have without, while the extent of my actual watching them is mostly just fleeting impressions and then rewinding to note the finish in my chart of a match that I completely ignored.

My most positive impression so far is maybe Francesco Akira - I’d seen him a little bit I think in AJPW (so he must have spent at least some of the pandemic in Japan?) and so was curious to see more, and I like his double knee to the back finishing move (and when Despy dodged it and he went flying) and that he’s got some plucky likability amidst United Empire who generally… do not have that.
I’m reserving judgment on Ace Austin (I like purple but am not drawn to stage magicians so it’s a bit of a wash but he seems talented) and Alex Zayne (not a look for me really but he seems nice) but the impressions are more positive than I was maybe expecting for some reason.
Despite Wheeler Yuta being the one I probably most wanted to see I feel like I’ve ended up being 100% busy during all of his matches so far.
(And TJP just makes me feel sad about the Cruiserweight Classic but that’s not really his fault)
And so anyway – catching more wrestlers to have impressions of like pokemon has been a fun element of the tournament.

There’s some matches ahead that I feel like I would want to like, actually pay attention to and watch… but also these are probably just going to be upstaged by current shows anyway, so I don’t know when or if I’ll actually continue.


Stardom NEW BLOOD 3

This is a free show!
Since it doesn’t have commentary, it got the background noise treatment, but it seems like a cool thing! Almost like… the Stardom equivalent of AEW Dark? I say, not having actually seen any AEW Dark. But like that impression I guess of a free youtube show with some established stars but mostly new people, assorted guests and undercard people. I think Stardom’s slate of rookies is actually super cool right now, and the guests are cool too, so it’s a good show!

MIRAI vs. Suzu Suzuki is the match that most threatened to steal away my attention entirely out of all these shows I’m talking about that I used as background noise.
Waka’s attempt at psyching Ram Kaicho out via inverting her face paint was… interesting…
And although I unfortunately was too busy to actually catch much of Giulia vs. Miyu Amasaki, it seems like between this and a nice set of documentary videos (interesting to get a look at the “プロテスト”) they’re positioning Amasaki as a potential near future star. (complete tangent but I was thinking a bit before this about how probably there’s relatively few like, “it’s just a normal name, but sounds cooler” type ringnames in Japanese wrestling compared to American wrestling, and then it turned out Amasaki is exactly that)


TJPW SUMMER SUN PRINCESS '22

Crowd noise!! I got very emotional whenever any wrestler reacted to the crowd noising, which I think was a very good state to be in for a TJPW show. Miu Watanabe especially seemed touched, and a small bit that really got me was when Sayuri Nanba was starting to practice cheering with the crowd instead of clapping, and when she said something someone in the crowd yelled はい as a response and she was taken aback and had to regain composure for a second.

It was also really interesting to see the intended full effect of certain flourishes, like Yuka’s swinging arm pose scooping up all the streamers, or Maki Itoh’s shout to the audience.

A minor thing I caught in the commentary that made me laugh because of this thread was when 2 of the commentators got 東洋盟友’s name wrong in different ways, and the third commentator then spelled it out fully for them including explaining which kanji to use. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I had never heard of Alex Windsor before, but she seemed super cool! I’m glad that her winning means we’ll presumably see more of her.

The tag match was awfully good - I already mentioned the moment that stuck out to me most (Yuka chucking Arai back into her corner). I’m surprised such a newly formed team was able to get the better of the rabbits and their bond! :open_mouth: But it’s a clear story and an interesting one so we’ll see where it leads.

Having mainly only seen Ryo Mizunami from an AEW show (I think one of their early PPVs?), it was super cool to see her in front of a receptive audience with commentary who knows what her deal is. I remember the commentary at the AEW show at the time being kind of confused at her goofy showboating during what they expected to I think be a serious title match, but here just hearing “みんなのアニキ” immediately made it 100% click into place for me and had me yelling “アニキ!!!” in support like a 龍が如く side character! She’s cool and dependable and fun, just like an アニキ would be! Because she is your アニキ!! Duh!
(for that matter, come to think of it… being glad to see women who’ve wrestled for AEW wrestle for a fully receptive audience and commentary team could probably apply to a lot of wrestlers on the show, including maybe even Thunder Rosa…)

Yay, Shoko!


Stardom MidSummer Champions 2022〜真夏の王者たち〜

I thought this was a great show!

I thought the Natsupoi defection to Cosmic Angels was really well done! I was wondering to myself beforehand why in the world such an emotional feud would go from a cage match to a regular one-on-one to a group tag match, so I really should have figured it out in retrospect, but it caught me by surprise! And the move makes a ton of sense – Giulia did think of her as a pet (and I bet I could go look up the shupro citation to prove it), and we could clearly see Tam does care about her when she rushed back into the cage to check on her, and Natsupoi’s clearly very talented but felt static in Donna Del Monda so it freshens up her character while giving Giulia more reasons to be bitterly angry at other people over situations caused largely by her own mistakes, and plus on top of it all the ポイ捨て suplex on the apron to cause a ring out is like, an A++ spot for that kind of turn!
The one major bummer is definitely Maihimepoi (and Himepoi) ending – I’ll really miss her riding on Himeka’s shoulders to the ring. But hopefully it’ll make for a nice emotional reunion someday.
One other minor comment - I think I’m noticing the former Actwres girls are noticeably better at acting during the dramatic scenes like this one. :sweat_smile: Goes to show, I suppose.

And the other stuff was all really good too!


AJPW 2022 Summer Action Series (the one with Suwama vs. Jake Lee)

I got tempted into watching an AJPW show because of the coverage in the magazine.
The dynamic at the top of the card in AJPW of Lee, Miyahara, Suwama, and Aoyagi, seems honestly very good right now, because they’ve all got charisma in a completely different way than all the others do.
But AJPW is tough… the name and the 50 year history I think make the lower budget presentation hit a lot harder. Like if the split had gone differently and modern-day Noah was called AJPW and vice versa, it would make perfect sense and be fine. But in this timeline the gap is unfairly amplified I think. This particular show I watched is a Korakuen show, so it’s not a huge presentation by any means, but the less slick video player, complete lack of editing (like pointing a camera at a projection for pre-match videos), and rougher edges like when the camera completely fails to catch Yuji Nagata’s facial expression when he’s presumably doing his signature 白目 to the commentary’s frustration, still all felt a bit rough… I feel like when TJPW or Stardom go with less polished VODs for smaller shows they still manage to make what is there feel polished in its own way. But I suppose it’s unfair to criticize the company not backed by a sprawling entertainment firm on that kind of thing.

And in any case I enjoyed it!

A couple wrestlers I hadn’t seen before who made an impression: a very old guy who wrestled as comedically as a frail old guy we all hope doesn’t die (this was apparently Masanobu Fuchi and wikipedia claims he’s a co-booker), and Yusuke Kodama who was like… an odd middleground between a slimy goth side movie character and a buff babyface professional wrestler? In not really a bad way?

And I mean I’d seen him before but Kento Miyahara is so good - he’s just never not hamming it up or showboating, it’s great.

Oh and it turns out Yuma Aoyagi has a little brother who’s like a slightly smaller Aoyagi. Neat!

Yuji Nagata and Tiger Mask were there (the former with the full Pirates of the Caribbean intro to his theme! Do they still do that in New Japan? I guess I’m not really sure… another entrance here had Danger Zone so I’m imagining infringement wasn’t a concern of there’s) confusing me a bit further about the influx of New Japan wrestlers into other promotions recently.

And I thought the main event was fun. When I watched a Champion Carnival in 2020 I extremely did not “get” Suwama, but now being decently more aware of why he’s a big deal, and having seen him at Wrestle Kingdom 1 (which I’ll talk about whenever I get around to finishing the last few matches) and with this fresh silly coat of Voodoo Murders paint (and with “Voodoo Murders” being such an incredibly silly albeit slightly culturally insensitive probably name for a heel wrestling faction), I was a lot more receptive here, although he is still on the older and slow side than young and chipper…
And I’m curious about Jake Lee – he honestly reminds me a bit right now of 2007 Shinsuke Nakamura, who was doing some kind of like, “dark messiah” thing. In the sense that Lee’s definitely got charisma and he’s made a big recent change to start to bring it out more, but maybe he could still use an additional element or bits of growth or two to 100% fully click into that all-time gimmick that’ll stick with him forever. Or of course, it’s entirely possible I just haven’t noticed that he already has those elements yet since I’ve only seen this one match, really.
One moment I especially liked in the match was when Lee went to spear Suwama into a table, and Suwama countered by just tossing the end of the table up into Lee’s face. I don’t think I’ve seen that before!

And Suwama won which surprised me! I don’t… know if the Voodoo Murders thing has THAT much legs to warrant taking the title off of Lee so soon, especially with it already bouncing around quite a bit this year due to injury and stuff… but I guess we’ll see!

I was sufficiently entertained to not immediately cancel my renewed ajpw tv subscription in regret, at least.


NOAH DESTINATION 2022

A bummer with this one is I happened to see the results of the main event in a couple places (a tweet and the thumbnail to Kenoh’s youtube video lol) before I watched the show, and… it was really the only match I actively cared about on the card. :sweat_smile:

A pity, as I think the problem with me and NOAH shows right now is definitely that they absolutely have the length and production of a big, major, show, and have a lot of talented people on the roster, but they just don’t have a high density of wrestlers I’m like, actively personally 憧れている’ing, you know? Even Kenoh, who is probably the one I’m most interested in, is more of a “he’s funny and good at his job” rather than a “oh man, he’s so cool and I feel deeply that he should win” type of deal.
So I definitely lost a lot of steam by the last few matches, unfortunately. I guess I’ll try to avoid spoilers better, or watch the show quicker next time!

Thoughts I did have:

That set is so slick! I don’t remember if the last big Noah show I watched (which I think maybe was also at Budokan?) had the giant sign (probably?) but it looks great! And they made such good use of lighting and fire.

Elgin not being around was a pleasant surprise of course, and I’m glad that whatever the exact details are it’s not an injury or something like that so I don’t have to feel at all bad about it.

I haven’t seen Timothy Thatcher before, but he seems like a good partner for Suzuki! A couple of old-school wrestling weirdos.

Kitamiya with the Shibata-esque post-headbutt blood ooze was rough! I hope that’s all fine!

I had read in the book about Showa wrestling themes I mentioned that Mutoh used to come out to Final Countdown so when they actually played it that was a nice surprise and I got a little bit of the emotion vicariously!


NJPW G1 Climax 32 (first day)

Let’s uh, hope this one goes better than last years!! :grimacing:

I’m not tremendously excited about this one, and the four blocks seem like they increase the predictability of the individual sections (like if anybody but Okada is advancing out of A it would be a ridiculous surprise). Something I’ve been thinking positively about the 5 Star GP, that there’s truly no one in it I’d be like, disappointed if they won the whole thing, is also… not really the case with the G1.

But again – background noise, and it was good for that today.

I haven’t seen Tom Lawlor before - it was an interesting first impression?
I like Okada and his fancy new trunks, and I like Jeff Cobb but the combination of the two is very very stale to me at this point. I wonder if there’s something they could have done to make it come across more like a heated feud or rivalry if they knew they might have this many matches? Like – I genuinely don’t even know what Okada as a character cares about except winning in a general sense, so I feel like he really needs a super intense foil and Cobb just seems like a pretty nice guy who also wants to win.
I liked Jay White loudly complaining about how hot it was in Sapporo at the start of his match. Wrestling in Japan right now doesn’t sound like a ton of fun with the heatwave.
The promise of ZSJ and KENTA promos does counterbalance somewhat just how much ELP and Ospreay are going to be talking about their penises in these backstage interviews…


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It’s a little late, but I finished the translation for the first day of the Tokyo Princess Cup on July 16! Instead of finishing one show translation in two days I ended up with two half-finished show translations in two days :sweat_smile:. I’m hoping to get the next two finished before the next round of the tournament, but we’ll see…

Here’s the recap for day one.

A little bit of context that might help with this tournament is that Miyu Yamashita has actually never won the Tokyo Princess Cup in the nine years of TJPW’s existence. It’s a running joke that she does terribly in tournaments. I think it’s actually really clever booking because Miyu doesn’t really need a tournament win to establish her, so it gives other wrestlers more time to shine. We’ll see if this is the year that her tournament curse finally ends…

The main event on the first day was Hyper Misao vs Miyu. Miyu has actually already lost to Misao in this tournament, in 2016 (though Miyu beat her a few years later in 2020). Because of that earlier loss, Miyu was dreading facing her again, and called it a “くじ運が悪い” (unlucky drawing) when she found out who her first round opponent was going to be.

In the match itself, Misao started out by saying that she was going to do this “正々堂々” (fair and square) and shaking Miyu’s hand, but… as the recap describes it, “これは三味線だった.” I was a little confused what it meant by calling this a shamisen, but one of Yomichan’s definitions for 三味線 offered some clarity on this: “「―を弾く(=相手に調子を合わせたり、適当なことを言ってごまかす)」”. I translated the line from the match recap as “this was all a deception.”

EDIT: It just occurred to me that I could translate this as “played her like a shamisen” as a bit of a riff on the English idiom “played her like a fiddle.”

Misao tried a bunch of tricks, including taping Miyu’s legs together to neutralize her kicks. But in the end, she wasn’t able to beat the ace, and Miyu took her out with a Crash Rabbit Heat, which is a move we haven’t seen from her in a while.

On the mic, Miyu said that she thinks Misao is the most difficult opponent in the tournament, so she’s happy to win. Next she’ll be facing Raku, who is also a formidable opponent (:thinking:). Every year, with each tournament, the young wrestlers get stronger, and the bar gets higher, but this is the year she’s going to win.

Backstage, Miyu talked about how when she found out that she had Misao in the first round, she thought she was in trouble. She says that she always felt weak when it comes to tournaments, but this time she felt confident. This line in the twitter caption confused me a bit: “今回は強気・強気でパミにどんなことされても勝つつもりで闘って.” I was a bit thrown off by the 強気・強気. Here was my attempt: “This time, I was confident, and I used that confidence to fight with the intention of winning no matter what kinds of things PaMi did.” (PaMi is Misao’s nickname. It comes from the “パーミ” in “ハイパーミサヲ”).

Miyu said that her legs were tied, and Misao was just getting stronger. There were some really close calls. For this reason, beating PaMi in the first round was huge. Next is Raku, who will also be a difficult opponent in terms of type, so if she can get past this point, she’ll feel better about her chances. Then she said: “一人ひとりしっかり相手して倒して今年こそ優勝したい.” This part confused me. Here’s my best shot at it: “But I will fight each and every one of my opponents and bring them down. This year, I want to win the whole thing.”

I thought it was funny that Miyu considered Raku to be a formidable opponent, considering, well… Raku does not have the greatest win-loss record, let’s just put it that way. But it’s true that Miyu isn’t really used to wrestling Raku’s style of match, just as Misao’s style isn’t really Miyu’s typical wheelhouse either. And if there was any time for Raku to get an upset victory against the ace, it would be now…

Miyu also talked about using Crash Rabbit Heat again. I couldn’t figure out this sentence in this part of her comment: “久しぶりにクラッシュ・ラビットヒートを出したけど、これじゃないと倒せないと咄嗟に出た技かなと.” I believe I’m missing some context, and also the negatives are a little tricky for me :sweat_smile:.

Miyu also explained why Misao is difficult to deal with. She said that the thinks Misao will be even more prepared next time. She thinks Misao is analyzing her, so from her perspective, she’s still a formidable opponent.

Misao pretty much confirmed that, haha. She said that she thought her Yamashita counterplan was flawless, but Miyu was still a monster. This line was a little tricky for me, mostly because of the ブーン sound effect: “あと少しで倒せるってところにきたと思ったら、急にブーンって。” This was my translation: “Just when you think you’re about to beat her, suddenly whoosh.” (I’m guessing she’s talking about the rush of air from the Skull Kick?)

Misao said (from the twitter caption): “山下さんモンスターでしたね。全部の引き出しを開けてもダメでした。でも私の夏はまだ終わりません。山下実優のデータベース、バッチリ入りましたので他の選手と闘う時に応用させてもらって、東京女子のランキング上位目指して頑張ります.” I translated this as: “Yamashita-san was a monster. I emptied out my entire toolkit, and it still wasn’t enough. But my summer isn’t over yet. I’ve hacked into the Miyu Yamashita database, and I will put it to use against the other wrestlers when we fight and aim for a higher spot in the TJPW rankings.”

The other match covered in the recap is the newly crowned tag team champ Yuki Arai vs Mahiro Kiryu. Arai was able to beat her senpai here (although beating Mahiro is not the most difficult thing to do :sweat_smile:). Alas, no tag team title shot for 東洋盟友…

After the match, Arai said that last year, she lost in the first round and was unable to advance, but she won the tag belts last week in Ota Ward, and this year she wants to do her best to achieve results in the singles division as well.

Regarding her next round match with Hikari, she said that they’ve fought on a team together loads of times, but she’s never had a match with Hikari, so she’s an unknown and scary opponent. But she thinks it would be awesome if she could beat Hikari, so she’s going to do everything she can to win.

Mahiro said that Arai has gotten really strong since her debut, becoming champion at Ota Ward the other day. She said: “私はキャリアは上ですけど挑む気持ちで闘いました.” I couldn’t quite parse the second half of this. This was my attempt: “My career is longer, but I fought in the spirit of challenge.”

Mahiro thinks that Arai’s tenaciousness has grown, and she regrets that she couldn’t bring her down. She says that she knows she has to win not only for her own sake, but also for everyone who supports her, so starting tomorrow, she’s going to focus her energy and do her best.

Shoko Nakajima vs Haruna Neko was not covered in the recap, but was also a tournament match. Neko got… a little bit obliterated :sweat_smile:. She said that as expected, Shoko was strong, and she couldn’t do anything about it, but she hopes she can feed on this frustration to help her grow.

Shoko said that next she’ll face Mizuki, and Mizuki has been among the top four regulars for about two years, and she’s a formidable opponent, so Shoko wants to be even more consistent than she was today.

Concerning Neko, she said: “私は出し惜しみなくやったので、そこをどう受け取ってくれているかだと思います.” This line confused me. Here was my attempt: “She fought without holding back, and I think that’s how I received it.”

The other tournament match was Pom Harajuku vs Moka Miyamoto. I was excited to see Pom get the win! She… does not win often in TJPW, so it was fun to see her move on to round two. I realized for the first time when reading the recap that her finisher, the Pom de Justice, is written ぽむ・ど・じゃすてぃす. I’m surprised it’s not in katakana! This was my first time encountering a ぃ.

Moka said that this year, she really wanted to get through the first round and advance to the next, but she lost, which is really frustrating. She’s going to get stronger and do her best to beat her senpais.

Pom said that Moka is getting stronger, so she was anxious, but this summer of 2022, Pom also can’t lose, so she did her best and she won! Next is Suzume, who she’s never had a singles match with, so she’s not going to be careless, but she’s going full speed ahead!

And that’s it for that show!

Ideally I’ll have the next one done by tomorrow, and then hopefully I can finish the last one in time… There was actually a Tokyo Sports article published after the last show that went slightly viral in the international joshi fan community because of a DeepL mistranslation, which I’m very proud to say I was able to figure out on my own before anyone else shot down the unsubstantiated rumor, but I’ll get to that when I post about that show, haha.

It’s kind of strange realizing that in the post-DDT English Update twitter account world, I (and the readers of this thread) now understand more about what’s going on in TJPW than probably like 98% of their international fans who cannot understand any Japanese :sweat_smile:.

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I think it’s maybe just emphasis. She just says that word twice in the video to intensify it and I suppose that signals that clearer than just squishing them together or using a comma would.

XてYてZしたい would be like, “I want to do X, Y, and Z (in that order)”
So she’s talking about how she wants to face her opponents one-on-one, woman-to-woman, defeat them, and this year especially/at last win the whole thing.
(which is substantively just the same as “I want to participate in this elimination tournament and win it” but hey)

I believe she’s just saying she thought suddenly in the moment that if she didn’t use the move she wouldn’t beat Misao (and so used it), even though it had been a long time since she used it.

Nope! She’s talking about Miyu’s life gauge regenerating like a second phase of a final boss :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
image
ブーン
image

I would say that rather than Misao entering a Miyu Yamashita database, she absorbed a Miyu Yamashita database into her own. (and indeed, in the video she says “山下実優のデータベース、バッチリ私の中に入りました”) .
In the match it self during her usual time with the microphone she was talking about consulting a ハイパーデータベース, so knowing that, and 入 being used for data entry a lot (and accumulated unconscious reading experience) made it easier for me to naturally parse here that if X is the subject of 入りました, it’s going into something, not the reverse.
If she’d just said データ rather than データベース it probably would have been significantly clearer.

I would say the idea is like (to use too noticeable and intense an inserted metaphor for it to count as a translation), “By career length I should be the one looking down on her, but I fought feeling more like David than Goliath”
She fought feeling like the was the one having to 挑む a more established opponent (along the lines of the reverse of the feeling a while back when Kamiyu expressed being happy to be the one standing in the ring for challengers to approach for once)

The reporters not being mic’d in these make them too hard for me to make out, and she’s answering a direct question here so I’m confused also. I think he asks something about what she said at the 会見 so I went back and watched the comments from her and the others in her part of the bracket at the seed-drawing but still can’t tell exactly what he asked.
But I think what’s maybe happening here is the “(猫には)” in the transcript is more like connective tissue than a change in subject.
“(猫には)私は出し惜しみなくやったので” → because I fought (Neko) without holding anything back (lit. without being stingy)
“そこをどう受け取ってくれているかだと思います” → I wonder how (Mizuki) is taking what I give out. (or the other opponents in general, or what she wants the audience to feel, or something else entirely)

A grammar thing I’d point out is that (despite my not knowing exactly what it’s saying), with “そこをどう受け取ってくれているか”, isn’t past-tense, and also the person doing the 受け取って’ing is different from the person wondering this, because of the くれている
“how is (that thing I’m doing and just mentioned) being received (for me by someone else)?”
I think she does in the seed-drawing talk about wanting Neko/others to learn and grow and try hard so maybe that’s where the くれている comes in - like she hopes people/someone will watch and learn from her not holding anything back and she wonders if they are.
Something in that ballpark at least!

Also, this doesn’t have anything to do with language notes but I noticed Shoko has a tendency to end her thoughts with “と思っています” and then make this slightly embarrassed face waiting to see if there’s follow-up questions:
image
image
and anyway I just thought that was a fun characteristic trait to watch out for in her promos.

The next step is then the strange realization that you forget sometimes the language barrier was ever there at all… Like, “why are these posters asking this? It said plain as day in [untranslated thing X]! … oh… right.”

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Finished translating day two of the Tokyo Princess Cup! This show was on July 17. The recap is here.

Only one of the matches made it into the recap: the main event, Rika Tatsumi vs Kamiyu.

I’ll admit, I was on Rika’s side for this, but mainly because I have an ulterior motive: I really want her to face Mizuki :sweat_smile:. I don’t think I’ve seen them have a singles match since I started watching TJPW, and with Rika’s crush on her and all… It would just be interesting, I think, haha. (I’m also rooting for Mizuki to take the entire thing. I don’t care that she’s already won twice, and fairly recently. It’s her time!! :triumph:)

In any case, Rika vs Kamiyu surprisingly felt very close. Kamiyu has really raised her stock this year, I think. But unfortunately for her, it was still not enough.

Rika’s comments on the mic were a little confusing to me. She said: “かみーゆ(上福)、執念深くて何度も立ち上がってくるから、負けてられないと思って…。負けたかみーゆの分まで勝ち進もうとは思いません。私は勝手に背負ったりしない。私は私の道を突き進みます.” I think her first sentence basically means: "Kamiyu (Kamifuku) is so tenacious; she gets back up over and over again, so I thought she couldn’t be defeated… "

The second one was where I ran into real trouble. Here’s how I translated the rest of the paragraph: “I don’t intend to advance and win on behalf of Kamiyu, who lost. I’m not going to carry her on my back. I’m going to forge my own path.”

Mostly the かみーゆの分まで part was confusing to me :sweat_smile:. At first I thought she meant that she didn’t just intend to advance until Kamiyu, but then that didn’t really make sense with the rest of what she was saying. I wasn’t super confident on the next sentence, either, which didn’t help.

Backstage, Rika said (here’s the twitter video) that in a tournament, you never know what’s going to happen. She couldn’t lose her first match, so she attacked Kamiyu mercilessly. Somehow, she managed to get this important win, so she will keep building on it. If she keeps winning and advancing, she’ll be able to face even stronger opponents, and she’s really looking forward to it, but her feelings are already acting up. She says she’s the kind of person who gets more fired up the more frightening her opponent is, so she’s awfully looking forward to it. This is the year that she’s going to hoist up the trophy!

Kamiyu said that Rika’s level is still high. She had a title match recently, and Kamiyu thought she was very strong. Kamiyu said: “トーナメントは1回戦で負けちゃうことが多いけど、昔のゆきを考えてみたの.” I struggled with this, but ended up going with: “I’ve lost in the first round of tournaments loads of times, but I started thinking about the old Yuki.”

The next quote from her is really funny, so I’m going to include the full thing (from the tweet): “昔はリカさんが高いところからケツを落っことしてくる技がめっちゃ怖くて。尻から逃げがちの自分がいたんだけど、今日はあの尻を受けた上で頑張りたいなって思って。尻から逃げてた自分が尻に立ち向かう人になってて、そこはよかったなって思う.”

Here was my translation attempt:

I used to be so scared of Rika-san’s technique of attacking with her ass from a high place. I was inclined to run away from her butt, but today I thought I’d tough it out and receive that butt. I’ve gone from being someone who runs away from the butt to being someone who faces it head-on, and I’m glad about that.

I got a bit lost with her last line in the recap. She said: “負けちゃったんで、海行って気合入れて、来年の夏に備えようと思います.” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the middle part of the sentence. Was she saying: “I lost, so I’m going to channel my fighting spirit and go to the beach and prepare for next summer”? It would be a very Kamiyu thing to say :sweat_smile:.

For the other tournament matches, Arisu Endo lost to Miu Watanabe. Arisu said that she couldn’t surpass her performance last year, but she did the best that she could do, showing her best self now, so she has no regrets. If she has another chance next year, she’s going to do her best to win and advance to the next round.

Miu said that no matter who advances (Shoko or Mizuki), they’re both so strong. Then she said: “でも自分がすごい思ってるのは、私たちの世代が先輩たちを超えていける夏にしないとなって.” I think this says: “But what I really want is for this to be the summer where my generation surpasses our senpais.”? Then she says that she won her first match this time, so she hopes to surpass her senpais and get results.

Kaya Toribami lost to Yuka Sakazaki. Kaya’s whole comment was another one I wasn’t quite sure on. She said: “今回正直勝てるかっていったら厳しいカードではあったので、勝ち負けよりも、ちょっとでもユカさんに本気を出してもらえるような技を出してもらえるようにって、負けない気持ちで頑張った.”

Here was my attempt:

To be honest, it would be tough to win that match, so win or lose, I tried my best to show a serious effort against Yuka-san and fight as if I wasn’t going to lose.

Yuka said that losing the wonderful tag belts shocked her to the core, and she was trying to forget about it. A tournament is the perfect thing to help you forget, so she’s ging to try to release her frustration here.

The other match that actually felt like it could go either way was Yuki Aino vs Nao Kakuta. I was pleased to see Nao get the win, though I was sad for Yuki because she sure has had a rough year…

Yuki said that she wanted to challenge Shoko for the belt again, so it’s really pathetic that she lost the first match. She can’t reverse what she already lost, so she will create another opportunity to challenge on her own.

Nao said that today she kept her mind calm and was determined to advance past the first round, so she’s happy to have won. The interviewer asks what if Miyu wins, and it’s the same matchup as last year (Miyu eliminated Nao in the first round). Nao says that climbing is not the only way to get over a tall wall, you can also smash it down, or slip through to reach the other side.

And that’s it for that show!

Miyu’s actually about to have a very interesting week ahead of her, because it was just announced on AEW today that she’s going to be facing Thunder Rosa for the AEW belt next Wednesday. I think she’s also hosting a wrestling seminar with Konosuke Takeshita at an indie event this weekend? (Ace and ace…)

Obviously, what’s going to happen is Miyu is going to beat Thunder Rosa and come back to TJPW to finish up her TPC as AEW champ :triumph:. Here’s how Nao Kakuta not only gets her win back, but gets an AEW title shot and then goes on to become AEW champ—

smart_hazuki

If all goes as planned, I’ll be back tomorrow after translating the third show from last weekend!

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The part I would say your translation is missing here (largely because it’s the part that’s most snipped down in the transcript) is the sense of like – she’s not going to selfishly act like she’s going to strive for victory for Kamiyu’s sake / in her stead, like she doesn’t have the right and pretending like she did would sorta denigrate the pain Kamiyu and her fans would be feeling for the tournament loss. It’s the “勝手に” that gives it that sense in the summary version and without it it sounds sorta cold, like she was pondering whether to win in Kamiyu’s stead and was like “nah screw her” :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Just for fun, here’s the full version (of this part of the speech, there’s a little more after about there being one more day of the 3-day run of shows), parts in the summary bolded:

なんとか、なんとか勝ってました。かみーゆ、物凄く執念深くて, 何度も立ち上がってくるから、やあ、私も負けてられないと思って…凄かった。ありがとう!ね、私、なんとか、初戦突破したわけなんですけど、負けたかみーゆの分まで勝ち進もうとは思いません。(she says 思いません a bit like a punchline and the crowd chuckles, since it’s a little unexpected of a conclusion to that thought)。一番悔しいの、負けた本人だし、その子を応援するファンの人だと思うから、私は勝手に背負ったりしない私は私の道を突き進みます.

Yeah, if the confusion is from trying to figure out how this part is a complete thought, it isn’t really separate from the next part! It’s clearer from her tone of voice in the video (the period in the transcript may camouflage it) but the “昔のゆきを考えてみたの” is her starting to tell the story about how she used to be scared of Rika’s butt and now she isn’t.

Like it’s a “y’know I’ve lost in the first round of tournaments a lot, but come to think of it compared to the old me, [tells story that shows progress]” type of thing.

yep!

I would say it’s like, “what’s really on my mind, is that I need to make this into a summer where our generation show we can surpass our senpais”
There’s a bit in between this and the next part in the video where she elaborates further and talks about how Moka and Arisu so far for example have both been elimated along seniority lines, so she especially wants to beat one or more senpais in the tournament because of that / to show it’s possible.

I would say it is less “I tried my best to show a serious effort against Yuka-san” and more like Toribami tried her best to get Yuka to show a serious effort, at least a little bit. The もらえる is the key there.
Also I suppose it’s sort of the same thing, but I would say 負けない気持ち is less like “as if I wasn’t going to lose” and more like, “without giving up” / “with an indomitable spirit”

P.S. this is a 100% total tangent but the extreme difficulty of the tournament slot for Toribami reminds me of how during the random draw to see where everyone ends up in the tournament bracket, I remember genuinely thinking for a moment “this system of having Sayuri Nanba shuffle the envelopes seems foolproof! How are they going to work the bracket??” only for everyone to immediately run off camera after picking an envelope before opening them. :sweat_smile:
Bummer Toribami’s luck was so bad huh!

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I managed to finish the third TPC show translation!

But first, a few things:

I wanted to share this twitter thread of Miyu Yamashita match recommendations! All of them are available on youtube, and if I remember to do it, I’m going to go through and add at least a few of them to the sorely neglected TJPW section in the match recommendations at the beginning of the thread (one of them is actually already there).

The other thing I wanted to share is unfortunately bad news. Mizuki has a fever and is off the July 23 show. As a consequence of that, she had to forfeit her scheduled TPC match with Shoko :pensive:.

despair_kagetsu

However, as a replacement match, TJPW is doing Yuka and Shoko vs Rika and Miu, which should be exciting! A rare MiraClians match, after we were just talking about them!

I’m bummed because I was pulling for Mizuki to win the tournament this year, and was really looking forward to the possibility of getting Mizuki vs Yuka and/or Rika vs Mizuki. I’m going to be rooting for Miu now instead, I think! Though I did wonder about the possibility of Shoko winning the entire tournament and nominating Mizuki to be her opponent…

It… bodes a little poorly that Japan is undergoing a covid spike right as multiple companies have round robin tournaments kicking off…

worried_AZM

But, well, maybe they’ll be luckier than the companies which currently have covid absences right now…

On that cheery note, here’s TJPW’s July 18 show :sweat_smile:! The recap for this one is here.

The main event of this one was Hikari Noa vs Yuki Arai. I was actually nervous about this one, despite being pretty sure that Hikari was going to win? She’s comfortably above Arai in the rankings (TJPW doesn’t have official rankings, but one of my friends keeps a spreadsheet going that ranks TJPW and Stardom wrestlers based on their win/loss records. It started as a parody of AEW’s rankings, but then we realized it was actually really fun to have haha).

For the record, the stats said that Hikari had a 91% chance of beating Arai, which felt about right, but with Arai’s push… well, you never know! Poor Raku has only a 2% chance of beating Miyu :pensive:.

In any case, Hikari beat Arai! Possibly securing another tag title shot for Free WiFi? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

After the match, Arai said that she won the tag belts, so she wanted to show her strength and move up, even if only a little bit, and she’s frustrated. But even though she’s really disappointed, she wants Hikari to win the tournament. If there is a next time, she’s going to do her best to show an even stronger Yuki Arai than she did today.

The version of her comments on twitter had a line that I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around: “他の選手と比べて試合数も経験も足りてないのでそれもあったのかもしれないし、もっと頑張れってことだと思う.” Here was what I went with: “Compared to the other wrestlers, I haven’t had as many matches and don’t have as much experience, and since that’s the case, I think I need to work harder.”

The interviewer asked about next year, and she said, “こんな状態で言うのもなんですが、優勝したい.” This was a mixture of me not fully understanding the Japanese and also not quite being able to figure out how to translate it. Here was my attempt: “I don’t know if I can say this in this situation, but I want to win the whole thing!” I think she’s basically saying that it’s weird for her to say this right after she lost and just got eliminated, but I wasn’t quite sure.

She also apparently said something that didn’t make it into the twitter caption or the recap, but which launched a full day of unsubstantiated rumors in the international wrestling community. Here’s a screencap someone tweeted of a reddit post with a DeepL translation of a Tokyo Sports article. The machine translation made a rather bold claim that TJPW had decided to send Arai to AEW!

I thought this seemed a little fishy, so ended up tracking down the original article. I didn’t look at the whole thing too closely, but it seemed to be just speculation to me. I ended up attempting a proper translation of the offending sentence at the end of that first paragraph: “巻き返しのために荒井が「武者修行」を希望したことを受け、団体側は米AEWをはじめとする海外団体に送り込む方針を固めた.”

Here was my rough translation:

Arai’s wish to “travel about to gain skill in combat” in order to make a comeback was received, and the organization has established a policy of sending wrestlers to overseas organizations, including to AEW in America.

Dramatic DDT essentially confirmed my interpretation on twitter later, and I felt very good about being able to debunk the rumor myself! It would be great, though, if people stopped sharing DeepL translations of articles to reddit… :sweat:. Maybe if I get better at Japanese, I can start a twitter account a few years from now dedicated to debunking TJPW rumors stemming from machine mistranslation :sweat_smile:.

But, that digression aside, back to talking about the show.

Hikari said (here’s the video) that she was barely able to win. She was really nervous after the singles match with Arai was set. Arai is growing more and more rapidly, and Hikari can’t let her surpass her. She thinks she won with just that feeling today. Yuka is next, and she’s a senpai whom Hikari really admires, and is Hikari’s ideal wrestler. Hikari thinks that if she can get past this point, she’s close to winning the tournament.

The other tournament match was Miyu vs Raku. Raku tried some innovative offense in this, trying to psych Miyu out when she made her entrance by bringing a pillow into the ring and lying down. But her rollup attempt after that was unsuccessful, and Raku didn’t have much luck with the Oyasumi Express or any of her usual tactics. Alas, that 2% chance of a shock victory was not to be, and Miyu got her with a Skull Kick… Maybe next year, Raku :pensive:.

I liked how the recap described Misao as a 曲者(くせもの) when talking about the opponents Miyu defeated. Miyu started out by saying, “もういけるんじゃないかと思ってます.” It was a little tricky for me to figure out. I went with: “Let’s go for it again.”

She said that Nao is next, and Miyu beat her in the first round last year, but she thinks Nao has been getting stronger and stronger since then. Without relaxing her guard, she’s going to bring her down, and is going to keep her momentum going more and more.

The recap had a little bit extra that wasn’t in the twitter caption. Here was the line in the recap: “気持ち的には乗ってきてるんで、気を抜かずにしっかり倒して、もっと勢いづいていければなと思ってます.” I couldn’t figure out what was going on with “気持ち的には乗ってきてるんで”.

They also ask Miyu about Raku (which is only quoted in the tweet caption, not the recap), and Miyu said that Raku was tricky, wasn’t she? Then she said “初めてですよ.” which I translated as “for the first time” at first, but that didn’t make sense, so I think she’s talking about the beginning of the match? Miyu went on to say that Raku was doing things like lying right in front of her before the bell.

Raku said that Miyu was really strong. It had been a long time since her last singles match with her. Her first singles match with Miyu was something that changed her life. She said (embellishing with wording from the tweet caption) that when she has a singles match with Miyu, it’s often a turning point in her life.

She said: “だから今日も自分の中ですごい人生の分かれ道の“あっち”にいけたかなと思ってます.” This was a little tricky. My attempt at translating was: “And so today, too, I think I was able to get to ‘that side’ of the forked road in my life.” Raku said that she lost, so she’s going to keep persevering.

And that’s all from that show!

I managed to get them all done in time after all, though I’m very tired :sweat_smile:! Thanks again for all of your help, rodan!

A small translation aid actually finally arrived in the mail yesterday: NJPW’s English teaching book. Between the time I ordered it and the few months it took to get here, I quit watching the company, which is a little awkward… It does seem decently handy, though! I’ve already gotten a few translation ideas from flipping through it.

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