週刊プロレス No. 2132
I’ve forgotten most of the details of what’s in the beginning of the magazine (mainly a long Naito/SANADA interview and the regular columns), because that’s all overshadowed by what to me at least is far and away the most interesting thing in the issue:
A big long overview, history, and celebration of Ice Ribbon in honor of its 15th Anniversary!
Like the one for Stardom’s 10th anniversary earlier in the year, this was a really interesting read that filled in a lot of gaps for me. It also makes me think I should consider resubscribing to the Ice Ribbon niconico channel now that I’ve got far, far more context than I did when last I gave it a shot.
Here’s the gist I took away history-wise:
Ice Ribbon began in 2015 when Emi Sakura, then working for 我闘姑娘, went looking for strategies to increase the number of shows they could run, settling on… getting rid of the ring.
By putting on mat wrestling shows, they could run at more and smaller venues, and running more shows meant more money, so Ice Ribbon started as an avenue for that, before the original parent promotion folded and Ice Ribbon became its own thing and branched out into more usual kinds of pro-wrestling.
Emi Sakura led the promotion and was lauded, but decided to leave, with two wrestlers set to take over for that loss: Tsukasa Fujimoto and Hikaru Shida. Fujimoto would go on to take over running the wrestling side of the company (including the match-making), and would be lauded with the same industry prize Sakura won before her, while Shida would decide she would prefer to see where the skillset she’d gained could take her instead and is now a former champion in AEW.
Other stars like Risa Sera and recently Suzu Suzuki have been built up, and with from the beginning a willingness to try new things, build stars, and stream on the internet, the promotion may be well positioned to weather the corona crisis.
There’s an interview with Fujimoto and the guy who I guess runs the parent company (Hajime Sato), and it sounds like according to him at least, Sakura’s departure was mainly just because she wasn’t as interested in the business management side of things as the company grew and that led to disagreements. It sounds like Fujimoto handles the wrestling side of things and the booking but finds the latter stressful (and apparently they’re often late in getting show cards to the magazine reporters). They float an idea for as the number of shows increases, delegating booking responsibility to different wrestlers on different days to relieve some pressure and get different people experience (but I don’t know if they try this).
There’s a list of 5 大事件 (positive and negative) from Ice Ribbon’s history:
- Sakura and Fujimoto winning the 女子プロ大賞 9 years apart
- Sakura suddenly leaving
- Tsukushi arrested - Tsukushi is a wrestler for the company who was originally a kid’s wrestler (an unusual joshi wrestling thing where teen or even younger trainees sometimes wrestle at shows), and while this just says she “トラブルで逮捕,” I looked it up and apparently she may have tried to stab Kagetsu?! Geez. I guess it didn’t amount to anything seriously more than teen trouble that’s now in the past, though. That type of thing being (however mildly) in the public eye seems like a not great aspect of that part of wrestling.
- Giulia’s scandalous departure - this was covered in Stardom’s history too, but it sounds like Giulia leaving Ice Ribbon without warning via tweet really made waves.
- Suzu Suzuki getting a solo shupro cover at 17 (I feel like it’s maybe a little self-indulgent of the magazine to make the cover spot sound THAT important… even if wrestlers do seem to talk about it a lot…)
And they picked out 5 memorable matches:
- Emi Sakura vs. Nanae Takahashi at Ice Ribbon’s first Kourakuen show, 2009.8.23
- Tsukushi vs. Kurumi - main eventing Kourakuen Hall as middle schoolers?? 2013.3.31
- Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Arisa Nakajima - two presumptiva aces battling twice for two championships on the same card, 2014.12.28
- Risa Sera in an iron woman deathmatch gauntlet, 2017.11.14
- Maya Yukihi vs. Suzu Suzuki for the ICEx∞ championship - plucky young Suzu as a glimmer of hope in the midst of Corona, 2020.8.9
As well as a list of 5 major championships:
- ICE×∞ - the promotion’s top championship. Apparently originally it was the Icex60 championship with the idea it would be a jr. belt for wrestlers under 60キロ, but it later got opened up to everyone, hence the name. Helpfully, the magazine provides the reading: 「アイ・シー・イー・クロス・インフィニティ」. That… is not what I had guessed.
- トライアングルリボン - a singles championship, not a trios belt, but you can only defend it in triple threat matches! No gender or weight restrictions.
- IW 19 - a belt defended only during online streams, regardless of whether there’s a live audience or not. The match time limit is 19 minutes and the count-out time is 19 instead of the usual 20. Currently used as the belt for P’s Party, their regular livestream.
- インターナショナルリボンタッグ - the tag team belt. Intergender and men’s tag teams can challenge for it too.
- Fantast ICE - a belt where the champion gets to decide the match rules. Risa Sera achieved V10 (10 defenses) with it in a variety-filled reign. Apparently the ICE here is an acronym too - 「ふぁんたすと・あい・しー・いー」 (I wonder if there’s any reason they gave this reading in hiragana but the other in katakana??)
There’s a bunch of other interviews (including a short one with Shida reflecting on her time in Ice Ribbon), pictures, fun profiles of various wrestlers, and basically an ad for the Ice Ribbon dojo in Warabi, Saitama, complete with Yuuki Mashiro showing you how to get there from the train station. Sounds like they run regular small dojo shows, and there’s a lot of description about signing up for training, with one of the referees as the head coach and Suzu and Yuuki subbing in on set days. Seems like it would be a nice place to have in the neighborhood.
There’s an interview with Suzu and Risa talking more about deathmatches and how Suzu was inspired to do them from watching Risa. I love how Suzu’s wearing a lizard shirt:
… since a previous issue documented her love for her pet lizards:
There’s an interview with ガチャ王国, which seems to consist of two extremely tough wrestlers (Rina Yamashita and Akane Fujita) whole-heartedly supporting Yuuki Mashiro because she’s so cute and nice. Seems like a really fun dynamic (even if I’m still a bit confused how the ガチャ part fits in exactly). They insist it’s an 王国, not a ウニット.
And finally, a magazine editor writes about how Fujimoto has great leadership and especially is a fantastic scout for talent, using Giulia as an example of the latter. Rookie Giulia looks so strange in the included photo with Fujimoto:
Apart from all that, Giulia’s column is about using social media as a wrestler, and she talks about how it’s part of the job to rile things up on there, but there’s some fans who get way too caught up in it and it’s a big problem. She compares that kind of fan to a child picking up a loaded gun - not realizing the danger in the tool they’re wielding.
I’ve always wondered about Stardom’s constantly giving huge trophies to extremely tired wrestlers after winning matches, but come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever seen what’s actually written on them. I don’t know what I expected.
There’s a fun interview with Mizuki and Yuki Arai about the then upcoming princess tournament in TJPW - with Mizuki having won the previous 2 in a row, and Arai a plucky newcomer entering her first tournament ever (she says she got third in a tennis tournament in school but it was just a really lucky seed she didn’t actually win any matches).
There’s a showcase of male wrestler’s new wrestling T-shirts. Not gonna lie… they all just look like wrestling t-shirts to me…
There’s some commentary about what’s selling well, and apparently the strength of 絆 makes LIJ merch and Dangerous Tekkers merch do well. And also O-Karn sells well, apparently due to his effective social media use?
Takagi’s shirt says “GOIN NA MY WAY” on the back, which is supposed to convey “強引なMY WAY” sure…
The costume column is about AZM, and her costume is meant to look near-futuristic, and is inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion (although apparently she’s not an intense fan of the anime or anything like that) - and y’know, I hadn’t noticed but now it seems really obvious with that color scheme. Similarly, I hadn’t noticed the logo that spells her name.
Mutoh’s column is more about moonsaults (did he do another one??). Apparently his doctor said after he used the move again 「男と男の約束破ったな」and he really really shouldn’t do tons of them since it risks not being able to walk again given just how messed up his knees are.
He talks about how he started doing it originally just because it was something simple and impressive that only he could do, as especially in America when he was wrestling there, no one else was doing them. And I think he says he didn’t do body slams because it’s not a move you take without trust that he hadn’t accumulated yet as someone just passing it through in a way.
He felt like he’d saved up enough like, good knee power, to break it out this once or twice. And he says that while a good showman doesn’t say “please don’t look forward moonsaults from me for my sake” he can say “I will have matches where that don’t need moonsaults.”