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 
.
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…
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 
! 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 .
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… 
. 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 .
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 .
I liked how the recap described Misao as a 曲者 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 ! 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.