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

I think “we decided we’re ready” is completely fine for 覚悟が決まりました in a vacuum. A slight flavor thing I’d point out in context though, is after that line from Raku, the crowd goes “おぉ?”, while after Aino says 勝てると信じてます they go “おぉ!” and applaud.
Given the context of like, when a wrestler shows up in this fashion after the main event, you know they’re there to challenge for the belt but you’re still excitedly waiting for them to say it outright, those reactions lead me to the conclusion that 覚悟が決まりました doesn’t make explicit the implied challenge. They’ve decided their resolve for something, and Raku hands the microphone to Aino to keep explaining exactly what it is they’re resolved to do. Conceivably still at that point the 覚悟 that was 決まりました’d coulda been like, the 覚悟 to retire or something.
So the slight nitpick is “we decided we’re ready!” rather than something like “we’ve decided…” might give away the game a little too soon! Not that that suspense is as important in a transcript anyway though…

A couple other quick nitpicks with Aino’s line – I would personally go with “pushed me forward” rather than “given me a push” just because of the wrestling connotations with the latter, and probably “if Raku’s with me, we can beat” rather than “together with Raku, I can beat” just because figuring out pronouns to use is always painful but “we” seems most right to me here because she’s emphasizing their togetherness.

“I want to show the belt” might sound a little more natural here than “I want the belt to see”

yep!

yep!

The one thing I’d say here is I don’t think the かんじ is the challenger’s feelings so much as like, their vibe. I’d say Akai is saying that in other circumstances she might get mad and attack if someone challenged her in such a… Raku-ish manner. But TJPW makes her nicer so she was able to accept that Rakuishness.

I would put it more as like – she’s clarifying that it’s not that (ABCと思ってないのね) she wants to challenge for the belts relying on Aino’s strength, but rather that (XYZと思います) she wants to challenge as equals, with both of them contributing an equal amount.

Yours makes it sound a little like she wants Aino to tone it down and be less powerful when the match comes. I’d say it’s rather a clarification of mindset with regard to the challenge.

She seems genuinely a bit touched by the last part of Raku’s comments although there’s a brief cut so maybe she was just about to corpse…
image
hey, they’re wearing each other’s shirts. Cute!

I would say the その気持ち is the stuff Raku just expressed – Aino is touched to hear (just now in the comments) Raku express her feelings about wanting to challenge for the belts together as equals.

One minor thing here I’d say, is in the original she says “そんならく” rather than just Raku, and that そんな I would say colors what she’s saying as in like, she’s talking about the aspect of Raku where she doesn’t say very much but what she says is sincere and touching (that Aino was describing in the last sentences). I would maybe tweak this to be “In that way, every word…” rather than just “every word…” to try to represent that.

I went with “pushes forward” in an earlier nitpick and I think it would sound a little more natural here.

I think DeepL did ok. She felt 申し訳ない and ありがたい about AA Cannon’s 器の大きさness, which seems to mean like, being willing to put up with stuff, and plus there was a bit of something else they felt, which they complete the sentence for eachother, they were fired up.

“there was something that set me on fire” doesn’t really pass my English language reader’s not-sounding-strange test. :sweat_smile:

I think you got there. Weblio has this among other definitions for 固まる - “考えなどに柔軟さがなくなり、進歩・発展が止まる。” and if your パソコンが固まった it seems it フリーズした.

I would probably tweak “I was frozen” to “I froze for a moment” or “I was frozen at first” or something. “I was frozen” on its own sounds slightly odd to me in English for some reason but I guess I don’t really have a clear justification so maybe I’m overthinking it.

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週刊プロレス No.2202 (from early September, the end of the N-1 Victory)

In Kenoh’s column, he complains that Kazuyuki Fujita is no longer a 野獣 but a 家獣, and also complains about Hideki Suzuki’s comments in the last issue, but his comments lack 説得力 since he lost to both and he yells at the interviewer for mentioning it. He may not have won the N-1 but he’s glad he was in it and he’s still calling out both Keiji Mutoh and Great Muta for a title match.

Great O-Khan is interviewed following the G1 Climax, and he says losing was the goal all along, and United Empires’ busier schedules than the winner is proof that it was the wise path, with preparations now complete for a revolution (and someone from United Empire will definitely win next time).
He criticizes FTR for not defending the IWGP tag belts.
He says Shupro not giving him a standout award for his G1 performance like they did last year is just because they’re stingy and jealous, as he’s being recognized by two veterans in upcoming matches, as he’ll team with Great Muta, and he has a singles match against Yuji Nagata for Nagata’s 30th anniversary. He says he doesn’t know how Nagata is as an amateur wrestling coach, but when it comes to raising pupils and 後輩, Nagata completely sucks. They all turn out evil! Which goes to show there’s a putrid core to Nagata’s (amateur) wrestling and no one should learn from him. The joke being, of course, Great O-Khan was trained by Nagata. The interviewer acknowledges Nagata’s trainees do seem to often turn out heels after excursion… and says under his breath that it would be really annoying if anyone else turns up who refers to themselves as 余.

In Hiroshi Tanahashi’s column, they talk about that G1 special show that was outside (but under a roof) and they talk about things like how in the pre-dome era, shows sometimes got rained out, or joking how if it had been windy the shupro guys’ papers would have scattered and they would have needed to talk longer to stretch out this column and fill the lost space. Odds and ends like that.
The bit they run with the longest, is they both get enamored with the idea of somehow wrangling an outdoor show with Mt. Fuji in the background, and Tanahashi hitting a high fly flow at sunrise. Surely a magazine cover worthy vista if ever there was one.
Also, for some reason Tanahashi promises that next time there’s an outdoors show (there are none currently planned), he’ll debut short tights. The interviewer is skeptical.

In Giulia’s column, she talks about Rina Yamashita following her surprise appearance in Stardom. Giulia walks through their history: Rina was the reason Giulia got into pro wrestling (as a fan) and she got power from her hero Rina’s matches when she was exhausted going to cosmetics school while working at a cabaret club. Come to think of it, this is really similar to how I talk about Nakamura and weirdly, probably would have been roughly around the same time too since we’re the same age and she debuted more than a year after I fully got into wrestling. Go figure!
She says her last singles match with Rina was in 2019 half a year before Giulia left Ice Ribbon, and it was a match she’ll never forget because Rina told her not to use words like 憧れ because if you step in the ring, it’s タイマン, and she intended to heed that and made it a fight, but after the match Rina “ファン時代の頃のように、私をお姫様抱っこしてきた” and Giulia remembers she felt a profound mix of emotions from the pain of losing to embarassment and joy and made a strange face. She swore then to someday defeat Rina, but then she went to Stardom and now much later here we are with a match set where they tag together.
… I actually never got around to canceling my Ice Ribbon channel subscription it’s not much money and… it seemed mean with the year they’ve had so I went and watched this match! It’s really good - fully a one-on-one fight between equals like she describes, but you can tell I think they’re enjoying themselves. Alas, however, I forgot that the Ice Ribbon channel videos cut away the second someone wins, and so I did not get to see what that お姫様抱っこ business was about, and the closest to the 変顔 I saw that she described was in the backstage video in the digest version.

Kento Miyahara in AJPW is interviewed ahead of his tournament-won title challenge against Voodoo Murders-flavor Suwama at AJPW’s anniversary year 日本武道館 show. He sees Suwama as a representative of a particular era, and feels he needs to win to represent not just any one era like Mutoh-era All Japan, or Suwama-era All Japan, but the past, present, and the future.
His strongest 武道館 memory is annoyance at not being included in the group photo at the end of NJPW/AJPW/NOAH All Together there in 2011, as he was just a newbie in a battle royale, so he’s going to channel that into making up for it and winning there.
Said picture is included, and it’s a fun game of who you can recognize! Although my poor shot of it increases the difficulty I’m sure… I’m right in the middle of 2011 in those old NJPW videos I’m watching for that Nakamura book, and so that helps! I never would have recognized Go Shiozaki otherwise! I also had no idea SANADA used to be All Japan. Beyond obvious ones, I think I can spot KUSHIDA, All Japan era Mutoh, Ibushi, the top of Prince Devitt’s head, Taguchi, Bad Luck Fale, Muhammad Yone, and all in a group on the right, Naito with young lion era EVIL, Hiromu, and El Desperado (my picture cut off Despy, sorry! I’m pretty confident it’s him anyway…)

Then there’s an interview with Suwama, and a comedian guy, Bibiru Ooki, who’s gonna be involved as an ambassador for the show, and who has a Jumbo Tsuruta impression apparently. Ooki says someone once asked him for - not his own but rather - Jumbo Tsuruta’s signature, because Tsuruta had died and so Ooki was at least someone doing Jumbo Tsuruta things in the public eye so it was the closest the fan could hope for.

There’s a teacher/student interview with Taka Michinoku and Maika on the occasion of Taka’s 30th career anniversary. Taka says his mentorship of Maika wasn’t the longest but was one of the deepest that he’s had. Although she’s signed to Stardom and not affiliated with Taka’s promotion Just Tap Out any more, she felt a sort of responsibility to spread JTO’s reputation by being successful elsewhere. However so far while signed to Stardom she hasn’t won a singles championship - she won the Future of Stardom Championship and Artist of Stardom Championship while she was still signed to JTO. Taka says he thought her title shot against Saya Kamitani recently in her hometown was gonna be it, but alas… You and me both, man.
They talk about a New Blood match coming up with confusing faction allegiances, as it’s sort of JTO vs. Stardom, as it’s Tomoka Inaba and Aoi from JTO vs. Maika and MIRAI from Stardom, but Maika’s former JTO, and Inaba recently joined God’s Eye which is the faction MIRAI’s in but she used to be in DDM with Maika… anyway – Maika’s precendent of having won belts in Stardom while being part of JTO bodes well for the promising Inaba.
They talk about Taka’s anniversary show and it sounds like Maika would have been open to being involved but I don’t think it came together. She wants to have a singles match against Taka again some day, as they had one before and she lost - Taka says he’s never lost a mixed-gender singles match before so he’s hesitant, but someday.
NOTE: I was wrong about when that fourway match was scheduled for (or conceivably it changed) as it happened on Taka’s anniversary show, so I must have misinterpreted that part of the discussion. I also forgot to mention some stuff about Maika’s Michinoku Driver.

There’s a match report on Hikaru Shida defending the Regina di Wave championship against Emi Sakura on AEW Dark Elevation and I thought it looked neat so I watched it! It is neat! Boy, Excalibur + an uninformed heel wrestler is a real mixed bag of a commentary team though.

There’s a page of (probably not paid) promotion for a a comedian’s book: 有田哲平のプロレス哲学. It sounds like it’s probably about incidents throughout his life where lessons learned from being a fan of pro-wrestling came into play somehow. It sounds like it may well not be particularly interesting to someone not familiar with the author and not interested in hearing about his life… but I confess I have bought this book just because I was ordering that New Japan history book anyway…

The history column is about the 1972 first arrival in Japan of The Sheik (the original, not the Iron), who was 46 at the time, and made a big splash against Seiji Sakaguchi, despite losing all three falls (albeit at least one due to violent disqualification). The author then talks about how Abdullah the Butcher and Tiger Jeet Singh were both relative newcomers and took this in as a sort of 悪の young lion, essentially adopting The Sheik’s entire deal as their own to be extremely successful heels in Japan, but the author says there’s no pro wrestler who starts out entirely free from パクリ, and if anything it’s those two’s good fortune that The Sheik never came to Japan until he was 46 and so it would be a fresh act in their prime.

Apparently Michinoku Pro held a 駐車場プロレス show in the rain. What exotic locale will they think of next!
Apparently the specific parking lot is the Michinoku Pro Dojo’s parking lot, which surprised me because the pictures included are very green, but I googled it and It seems like Michinoku Pro is just in the middle of the woods (picture from google maps but it looks like more or less the same parking lot in the magazine pictures). I regret making fun of the idea now, it seems like probably a weird fun time.

It looks like Hikari Noa had ridiculously nice weather in London! And nearly missed her flight home.

Rina Yamashita’s cool, huh.

warning: cool

The topic for Keiji Mutoh’s column is factions! He says roughly it makes sense that there’s factions in pro wrestling since tag matches are unique to wrestling, the match count is very high compared to other sports and the like, and you can’t succeed alone in pro wrestling. He says in Japan the tag matches build to the single matches, but in America it’s the opposite because there’s the singles match and then your buddies run in to help and it escalates to larger matches (which seem like maybe a bit dated of an impression to me, but hey that does certainly happen more often in American wrestling)
The first faction he joined was nWo and he forgets if Great Muta or Keiji Mutoh joined first (interviewer says Muta). He expresses some surprise that the only factions he’s been in in his long career are nWo and BATT… but remembers M’s Alliance (which the interviewer acknowledges is forgotten about recently).
Speaking of BATT, Mutoh says that originally, the name was picked by NJPW’s PR department, and the acronym’s English meaning made no sense, so Don Frye came up with a new final English name, meaning 「垣根を超えた悪ガキども」, which was… “Bad Ass Translate Trading.”
… I laughed for a long time imagining the conversations that must have happened at the time leading Mutoh decades later to think that that finalized name was native-speaker written and approved.
The interviewer asks Mutoh why Don Frye joined BATT anyway when he was in the opposing Team 2000, but Mutoh essentially says “why the hell would I remember that! w”

This picture of Mochizuki punching Kenoh isn’t graphic, but somehow… my brain reads it as body horror.
It’s like a really goofy looking version of the defibrillator scene from The Thing.
blurring it, I guess??

The short industry column talks with a couple of SKE48 members about Yuki Arai, the idol from their group who wrestles in TJPW.
One says she was surprised to see Arai’s impressive stage presence when she’s known her for years and it clashes with the “living off of Uber Eats” vibe she remembers. The other says she would give pro-wrestling a try if Arai called her for help, and mentions a tv show called 豆腐プロレス that I guess involved idols doing wrestling? and she got a fear of getting too muscular from pro wrestling because of that but she insists in a hypothetical way that if and only if Arai needed her pro wrestling help she’d train and give it a shot.

The end of the magazine column talks about how Kaito Kiyomiya won the N-1 Victory, but in an amusingly shuproish fashion, the column focuses instead entirely on the semifinalist, Hideki Suzuki, as if we didn’t already have plenty of opportunities to talk to and about him in this magazine.

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週刊プロレス No.2203 (from early September)

The cover this issue featuring Suzu Suzuki and Saya Kamitani is particularly good.

I like the melodrama of this picture of Meltear and the caption.

Giulia’s column is about Natsupoi, who betrayed Giulia midmatch to leave DDM and be a tag team with Tam. Giulia refers to an interview with Natsupoi where she said she didn’t want to be seen as just 綺麗, instead wanting to show the kind of ドロドロした女の闘い where everyone ends up in emotional and physical tatters that Tam’s especially good at. Giulia is confused since if people were seeing her as just 綺麗 wouldn’t that have been because of her own actions? And Tam and Natsupoi have been throwing around the word 革命 a lot as a team but Giulia thinks that’s the kind of thing onlookers should say after you do the amazing thing, not something you self-designate beforehand. They want to Reiwa’s answer to Beauty Pair and release a CD, well Giulia says がんばれ and if they do ジュリアにもサンプルくれよ. Giulia wonders how serious Natsupoi is about the ドロドロness vs. 綺麗ness when she’s talking about her favorite pasta and stuff. “なつぽいの根っこに、きったねぇ感情は本当にあるのか?”
She says she knows better than anyone Natsupoi’s a great wrestler and she still thinks of her as a trusted ally, so she asks Natsupoi to quickly wipe that away so she can bare her teeth like Tam.

There’s an interview with Kaito Kiyomiya following his N-1 Victory uh, victory in NOAH.
It focuses a lot on how he’s coming into his own in terms of finding his own style of movement in the ring, and how he’s accepted passed-down moves from Keiji Mutoh. For example, he hit the Shining Wizard in the tournament normally sometimes (and was looking for opportunities to hit it in matches he lost), but he also innovated a modified Shining Wizard of his own in the match against Masakatsu Funaki, and won the tournament final using that modified Shining Wizard (which involves a head grab – kind of unhelpful comparison included below). He asks shupro for help naming the move, and it sounds like there’s a hashtag where you could tweet suggestions: #清宮海斗シャイニング技名
He sees the challenge against Kenoh as a generational battle and he sees it as his only shot to win that responsibility-laden top ace spot in the company.

Kenoh goes on a real tear in his column!
He was angry in a press conference and he’s angry now that shupro and the media are carrying this Kaito Kiyomiya “スーパースター化ストーリー”, saying it’s purely a money incentive and NOAH and ABEMA must be paying shupro to sweeten the narrative.
He complains about the magazine cover with the tagline 「清宮海斗は驀進します!!」, since it’s only because Kenoh himself didn’t advance that Kiyomiya was able to advance so it should be 「清宮海斗は驀進させます!!」and besides, there’s no way Kiyomiya can even read the kanji in 驀進!!!
The interviewer says “驀進します!!” is a quote from Keiji Mutoh following his his G1 Climax victory in 1995, so there’s resonance. Kenoh says well that just goes to show the Shupro staff are Mutoh fans who had to make up for Kiyomiya stammering and saying nothing of note after his victory so they had to pull from Mutoh to fill in the gap since Kiyomiya doesn’t even know what 驀進 means in the first place so it’s not like he could come up with that himself.
Kenoh complains that Kiyomiya’s blond hair is ripping him off and says if he wants to inherit Mutoh’s legacy so badly he should shave his head, grow a goatee, and be sure not to skimp on the eyebrows.
Kenoh says Kiyomiya just isn’t at Mutoh’s level yet, more like the level of a school play. He lacks ダーティーさ and 女もくどけねぇよな (the interviewer interjects that on that front Kenoh hasn’t been especially successful himself…).
Kenoh also says Kiyomiya’s new Shining Wizard sucks. All 2988 “(満員)” クソヤロー in attendance must have been thinking “that got a three count⁈”
Kenoh says it doesn’t matter how beautiful the story is, he’ll take a Shining Wizard in the ring and still crush Kiyomiya and take the Mutoh succession story for himself.

There’s a page from a press conference with Mutoh and Chono announcing Mutoh’s final retirement match will be at the Tokyo Dome in February. It doesn’t look like there’s any details included, but he’s going to try to bring in lots of people from all over. He compares his ideal retirement to the end of the manga あしたのジョー.

There’s also a page from a press conference about the finale for Tatsumi Fujinami’s 50th career debut anniversary tour (which appears to still not be a retirement somehow) where he’ll face Hiroshi Tanahashi in a singles match for the first time in 20 years.
Is it just me or does Tanahashi’s hair look especially… Tanahashi-y here?

In Naito’s column he talks about his first show with crowd cheering allowed again. It’s funny, I remember at the start of the pandemic picturing the return of crowd cheering coming with like, a big celebratory Shupro cover and stuff, but now I feel similarly to how Naito expresses it here, of trepidation wondering how it will go, being touched people remember the cheers, and wondering how it will be once crowd cheers and full capacity are allowed, while knowing other wrestlers who have gone overseas have gotten that experience already.

There’s a big feature on Jun Akiyama (hey, topical!) on the occasion of a 30th career anniversary show in his honor. Parts of this I didn’t follow well enough to reproduce since I’m far from a Jun Akiyama expert. But he’s teaming with Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Tetsuya Endo against Yuji Nagata, Konosuke Takeshita, and Shunma Katsumata. He says that out of active wrestlers, Nagata and Kanemaru are top ones that spring to mind when it comes to wrestlers who have influenced his career trajectory, and Takeshita and Endo have both accepted moves from him.
He says he doesn’t have a set idea of what pro-wrestling should be to him, possibly because he wasn’t a pro wrestling fan growing up and so didn’t enter it without preconceived notions. To him the “professional” part of professional wrestling is very important, and ultimately it’s just about going on there and putting on the best show for the audience paying to watch you.
Asked which of the 四天王 most influenced him, he first mentions Toshiaki Kawada for fighting style and match awareness and such. Then he talks about the Pro mentality he got from Misawa and Kobashi, saying that you simply never heard from either of them that they were in pain. The one time he heard 「きつい」from Misawa was about half a year before his death, so he must have been suffering much more than he let on, but the mindset was you had to go out there, and you should just assure yourself you’re imagining any pain. Once a wrestler (Makoto Oishi) broke a hip bone so by that mindset Akiyama got mad at him and told him he was imagining it, but, you know, his hip was broken so he wasn’t imagining it. Along similar lines Akiyama says he has trouble taping small injuries, because he knows that if his opponent had a taped up body part, he would target it as a weakpoint, so it feels like doing the same would be showing weakness, and his body is likely worse for wear for it. It’s a mentality that no senpai directly told him to have, but he learned it from watching them, and that’s perpetuated still.
He also took up cigar smoking from Giant Baba’s influence - he asked Baba once why he smoked cigars, and Baba answered 「吸って、フーッと煙が出ると、嫌なことまで一緒に吐き出せるような気がするんだよ」and many years later in his 40s he thought about Baba and gave it a shot and found it was indeed relaxing as Baba described, and he just thinks Giant Baba was very cool. Cigars have significantly risen in price though.
There’s a page then about specifically his relationship with Yuji Nagata - it sounds like they met in high school as they were both involved with amateur wrestling, but went their separate ways, and then Nagata debuted as a pro wrestler to little fanfare, but Jun Akiyama debuted alongside Kenta Kobashi at Korakuen three days later as a pretty big deal. It sounds like New Japan’s answer to that debut for All Japan was Manabu Nakanishi (who wrestled in the olympics), and Nagata’s touched that Akiyama followed along with his career and not just Nakanishi’s, although the two were always for different companies and Nagata’s current activities in AJPW have still missed Akiyama since he’s in DDT now.
A specific match mentioned as a famous one involving both of them, was this 闘魂vs王道 themed match in 2001 with Shinya Hashimoto and Mitsuharu Misawa at the opening show for Zero-1, after which they kept in touch to the point of even suggesting one second for the other at a match, even though that wouldn’t really have flown with their companies.
I watched the match, and holy crap yeah! It’s great! Really cool dynamic with the four of them throughout and I love Hashimoto getting mad at Akiyama to the point of just continually chopping at him. I’ve never seen a promotion use dutch angles in their camera work like that before… I guess it really was 2001

There’s a nice match report of the final まっする show. It says there may be a revival if things come together someday, but for now that’s it.

There’s a match report from the 3rd anniversary show of a promotion called OSW - Osaka Style Wrestling. It seems like it’s Osaka Style in the sense that it broadcasts from Tokyo. I’m not sure what this tells me about Osaka.

The history column this week would be incomprehensible to me if I hadn’t coincidentally been reading about the incident it’s providing background for just the other day. I’ve noticed watching those older NJPW shows, that they almost always have an interviewer present in the ring for the start of the post-match promo, and knowing that + that post-match promos in general weren’t always nearly as common as they are now, I was curious to try to find out when the present day format of the winning wrestler just talking got solidifed - especially since Wrestle Kingdom V ends with Tanahashi just talking and it’s way, way more natural than the always stilted interview format from the other shows I was watching, so I was wondering if maybe Tanahashi’s charisma was partly to thank for the current format.
Anyway, I didn’t actually manage to find that out, but the wikipedia page for in-ring promos included a description of a famous incident in the 1980s, when Rusher Kimura, who was in the middle of a bitter feud I think related to 国際プロレス folding and getting absorbed into New Japan, opened his answer to an in-ring reporter’s question with 「こんばんは」 the surprising politeness of which caused the crowd to laugh, and for jokes to be cracked about it forever after.
The columnist, Nagare, says I think that Kimura’s stiltedness may have been due to having just returned to Tokyo after training in a remote location for a while, and he shares a story where they shared a taxi once and Kimura kindly and politely offered Nagare the front seat, as Kimura would be smoking and didn’t want to bother anyone. So it also just shows Kimura’s polite and considerate personality shining through. And anyway, it sounds like the incident was beneficial for his career in the end.

The “Champ Talk” column features a promo from Tam Nakano, freshly crowned Goddess of Stardom Champion with Natsupoi, and she says this tag team with Natsupoi feels great and is keeping her going in pro wrestling. As Giulia mentioned, they want to be Reiwa’s Beauty Pair and sing and hold a solo live Budokan show, and she wants to inspire the hearts of all girls, everywhere. She says she didn’t feel comfortable as a leader, but gets huge strength from Natsupoi, like before their title match she wondered 「大丈夫かな?」 and Natsupoi squeezed her hand and said 「大丈夫だよ」. So together they can accomplish their cosmic-scale goals.

There’s a pair of interviews with Miu Watanabe and Suzume about Suzume’s upcoming challenge for Mius’ International Princess Championship in TJPW.
Watanabe considers them both the same generation, although either way you slice it one is 1 higher than the other, but it evens out (Suzume is a year older, but debuted a year later). Miu says she won a tag championship a long time ago but many people probably don’t remember since tag belts don’t leave as much of an impression as singles belts do. She hasn’t been overseas but sees others like Hikari Noa return to fanfare and wants to try it too, but there’s a catch - 英語がホントにダメなんです. She says she got bad grades in English in high school and grew to dislike her teacher and resolved to get a job without needing English… but oops, here we are! So she wants to apologize to the teacher in retrospect. She says though that overseas fans respond well to her drawings, so 最悪絵-based communication is one 逃げ道…じゃなくて可能性 at her disposal.
The interviewer unfairly asks her to close out the interview in English, which she does:

え、えーとですね…アイ・アム・ミウワタナベ。アイ・ベリー・ベリー・ガンバル・ジャパニーズ!日本語入っちゃった(笑)。えーと、マイ…ファイト!…ファイト?私、頑張る!これできっと大丈夫です!

English really oughtta absorb ganbaru as a loan word to make this kind of thing easier huh
Suzume also hasn’t been overseas, and also insists she’s hopeless at English, like worse than everybody else, but notes that she isn’t sure but sometimes seeing Watanabe give English promos backstage makes her think maybe she could do a little better than that. The magazine does not make her try.
The number one thing to worry about for Suzume fighting Miu is of course the fact that she can easily be picked up and whirled around. So she just has to think really hard and come up with a way of making sure that doesn’t happen and she can win.

In Genichiro Tenryu’s column, he talks about AJPW’s 50th anniversary show. He thinks Kento Miyahara challenging Suwama is an exciting battle of generations and AJPW’s identity, as Suwama is 生え抜き and led the company for a long time, while Miyahara is an outside wrestler (having started in Kensuke Sasaki’s Kensuke Office promotion) but has self-confidence from being a very big deal in AJPW for a while as well, so it’s a compelling storyline. He thinks though that Suwama should drop the Voodoo Murders revival thing, since it’s unnecessary and just distracts from that compelling dynamic. He wants to see AJPW avoid trying to be NJPW and protect its unique 老舗ののれん atmosphere, which it sounds like involves fans less looking for 殺伐 and more a 独特のあたたかさ and passion for pro-wrestling.
He says if Giant Baba were alive, he’d say 「もう50年かぁ」with a cigar in his mouth, before getting agitated during the matches and drinking 10 cups of coffee.
Apparently Tenryu is hospitalized for a spinal injury - he says the recovery path is set and he’ll be in front of everyone again soon.
He also talks a little bit about Kazuchika Okada and says he must be feeling a ton of responsibility as leading the company and a new dad to boot. He says he’s pretty much a complete package but if there’s anything to work on it would be that his speaking is plain (he’s not wrong) and so he recommends that Okada watch rakugo and theater and such in his time off to practice exciting communication.

The costume column is with one Pom Harajuku from TJPW. The main こだわり with her costume are the plaid pattern and asymmetry. I never noticed there was a giant P for Pom on her top hidden in plain sight! When she last updated her costume, she kept certain elements and the basic concept, originally inspired by the kind of clothes that might be sold at ラフォーレ in Harajuku, but otherwise completely changed everything at once, and she plans to do that next time too, sometime around the end of the year. She also definitely wins the award for fanciest pose.
On a mildly interesting note, her hair and shoes are different in the close-up pictures compared to the main picture. I wonder why those would be taken on different days? Maybe the main one is stock?

Hideki Suzuki in his column talks about the IWGP Women’s Championship that’s been announced. It’s been a bit 賛否両論 reception-wise, with the interviewer raising the point that one arguably point against it is Stardom already has tons of belts. Suzuki says if it were him winning the tournament, he’d unify it with another belt like AJPW when they made the Triple Crown. He says in general criticism is well and good but the promotion shouldn’t listen to outside commentators too much - it’s not like live musicians have their fans pick the setlist, or baseball federation managers have fans pick game orders. So if they have a direction they want to go in and work to achieve it, it’s all good.
He says he has a recommended wrestler for the tournament: 氷結. This appears to be a joke reference to some stuff he did in Ice Ribbon, where I think the joke was that 氷結 sounds like an Ice-related sumo wrestler’s name, so there was a 3-way match with him and a sumo wrestler he brought in and called 氷結, and then there were some 氷結相撲 matches he did (similarly joked about when he interviewed Tsukasa Fujimoto in the column a while back).

There’s a Michael Nakazawa report on AEW All Out 2022! Oh boy!
There’s breathless coverage mainly focusing very heavily on The Elite winning the Trios championship… with a little box in the corner saying that 3 days later Tony Khan stripped CM Punk and The Elite of their championships, “理由は特に語られなかった。”
Amazing.

The short magazine staff column follows a train of thought from the author’s musings on a trip out to an AJPW show, through relating various incidents in their life where they experienced power harassment (before it was commonly called that), such as when a boss made them clean up a mess, or yelled at them for picking up a lunch that was the same as it always was, or threw things at them when they apologized on the phone.
The author says this is just idle musing on a day when there wasn’t any particular material for a column, and it doesn’t come across like they’re like, subtweeting anybody in particular, but who knows.

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So spoilers for the NJPW x Stardom show but Kenny Omega is challenging Ospreay for the title at Wrestle Kingdom. The reason I bring this up is during Kenny’s promo I actually found myself picking out a fair few Japanese words. I find his Japanese really easy to follow for some reason. Not sure if it’s just me or if that’s a common thing with him

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His two AEW matches were wonderful!! He’s really doing a lot to cement his reputation of being my favorite old man in wrestling.

I’m happy to see Takeshita getting an AEW contract (on top of his existing DDT one) and getting to live out his dreams, though I’m also a bit worried about him, because he’s following in Kota Ibushi’s path there, after Kota had that dual DDT/NJPW contract in 2015. Unfortunately for Kota, it ended up super burning him out physically and mentally… I hope things go better for Takeshita, though I think AEW’s schedule being a lot lighter than NJPW’s should help with that.

It was also nice to see Takagi come along with Takeshita and Jun to AEW, though I was disappointed they didn’t give him a match! Apparently they told him if he’d brought his gear, they would have let him wrestle, haha. So maybe next time!

Takagi gave Tony Khan one of his 大社長 shirts. This shirt was actually one of the first wrestling things I was actually able to read after I started learning Japanese.

I love them so much :pleading_face:. Raku tweeted this after their match, and it honestly completely floored me. Since twitter seems likely to go down at some point, she said: " 愛があれば大丈夫だ!" And then shared this image:

I was able to read it in the discord embed pretty much effortlessly, which always feels good!

This is incredible, haha! That’s our super rookie.

Kenoh’s column always cracks me up. I saw someone on twitter suggest that he face Orange Cassidy, and I think that might actually be my ultimate dream match for both wrestlers?

I remember hearing that detail about Miu struggling with high school English! Honestly, for someone who’s not at all confident in the language, she does a very admirable job of trying her best regardless, which I find genuinely inspiring.

As for her art, I love it so much, haha. This is what she drew during hers and Yuka's drawing competition at the fan club show. It made me laugh uncontrollably ahaha.

I totally think that Suzume is probably right about being able to do English promos better than Miu. It would be hard to find someone who is worse at them :sweat_smile:.

We might be on track for a new Pom costume coming up soon… :eyes:

Ah… oh dear…

That’s awesome about picking out a fair amount of words in his promo! I’ve also found Kenny’s Japanese to be a lot easier to follow (Chris Brookes’ is as well). I have a lot less trouble with his Japanese tweets than I do with Kota’s :sweat_smile:. I’m a bit spoiled lately, though, because my friend has been going through and translating loads of old Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi interviews, so I’ve just been reading his translations instead of attempting to read them in Japanese, haha. If anyone is interested in reading them, they’re here.

As far as Kenny vs Ospreay goes, well, I… can’t say I’m excited about the match. I’ve been afraid of that match happening since late 2019 :sweat:. Kenny is one of my top two favorite wrestlers, but I can’t stand Will Ospreay (mostly due to some of his actions in the past and how poorly he dealt with getting his past behavior called out during Speaking Out, plus the lack of any actual reckoning for his involvement in making the pro wrestling industry a worse place for women).

So on top of my general negativity towards NJPW these days for the labor issues stuff, that being the match makes me even less excited to see Kenny back doing anything in the company, though naturally I will watch the match anyway… :pensive:

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First off, I want to share the TJPW poster for イッテンヨン 2023! I just think it’s really neat!

It’s encouraging that Misao is in it, because I hope that means she isn’t retiring at the end of the year…

I got the November 20 TJPW show done in pretty good time! I got nervous when I saw the table for the contract signing at the beginning, but then both of the contract signings were half in English, haha!

The first contract signing (transcript here) was for Millie McKenzie vs Miyu Yamashita for the EVE Championship.

The main thing I had trouble with was Miyu’s line here in the first paragraph: “ミリーとはスペイン、イギリス、日本とターン・スパンで3回連続で闘うのは私の経験の中でも初めて.” I wasn’t confident that I understood what exactly she was saying :sweat_smile:.

Yamashita: “I was able to come back to Japan with a belt from EVE. Thank you very much! I’ve fought Millie in Spain, England, and now Japan. It’s the first time in my experience that I have fought three consecutive times in three different places. So I’m really excited, and just like me, she’s someone who comes right at you, so I have to defeat her soundly. This will be my first title defense, so I want to settle it in the TJPW ring.”

Millie: “Hello. Thank you for having me back in Japan. I’m very happy to be back here. And I’m excited to show you all how I’ve improved. I’m fighting for the Eve Championship, which is my home promotion in England. It’s my home promotion, therefore I have to bring the championship back home. Miyu is one of my best opponents. She has beat me, however, I have beat her. So, it’ll be a challenge, but I need to bring the championship back home.”

Namba: “You wrestled last month in Spain, and last week in England. What are your impressions based on the last two singles matches?”

Yamashita: “She’s very strong and can take a lot of punishment. She gets fired up when she fights. In that respect, I’m going to do my best to win by surpassing her in determination and the ability to take a hit.”

Millie: “Uh, very dangerous kicks. I have to watch her kicks. Very, very powerful. As I said, Miyu is one of my toughest opponents, and in Spain, I got the victory, however, in England, Miyu beat me. And that is not fair! I’m angry! So, this time, she will not win again.”

Namba: “Yamashita, if you successfully defend your title, you might have to go back to England for another title defense.”

Yamashita: “I think that by continuing to overcome big enemies in a Japanese ring as I hold the belt, I’ll be able to show you all something new, and I’ll show myself something new, too. Right now, I’m only thinking about beating the opponent in front of me, which is Millie. I want to be able to defeat the opponent who stands before me in the future.”

Namba: “Millie, do you want to win the belt and take it back to England?”

Millie: “It’s not a choice that I win this match. I HAVE to win this match. I have to bring the championship home, to where it belongs.”

The other contract signing (transcript here) was for Billie Starkz vs Yuka Sakazaki for the Princess of Princess championship.

Right off the bat, Yuka confused me, haha. I think I might’ve managed to figure it out after thinking it through? She said, “皆さん見ての通り、こんなにかわいいビリーが日本に来てくれて東京女子の歴史の中でも上位の出来事になると思うので目に焼き付けてください.”

Sakazaki: “As you can see, the super cute Billie has come all the way to Japan, and I think this show will end up being one of the top events in TJPW history, so please mark down the date.”

Billie: “I’m very excited to be here. I’m very excited about our match, too, and I can’t wait for the fight we’re going to have.”

Namba: “This is your first time facing each other, but have you watched tape of each other’s matches?”

Sakazaki: “Of course I have. She caught my eye because it’s not an exaggeration to say that she’s one of the most promising up-and-coming wrestlers in the American indies right now, and plus she’s really cute.”

Billie: “I’ve also watched tape of Yuka. She’s so impressive! I’m definitely into the fight when I’m going to be in the ring with her later. She’s very, very good at what she does, and I’m glad to be here on my first trip, wrestling one of the best that TJPW has to offer.”

Namba: “Sakazaki, is it difficult to defend the belt against a foreign wrestler?”

Sakazaki: “She’s someone from outside of TJPW and it’s our first time facing each other, so it’ll be difficult because she might not move how I expect her to and I can’t read her thoughts, but I’m also looking forward to that. I’m just curious.”

Namba: “Billie, you have faced Yamashita and Itoh. What do you think of the Japanese wrestling style?”

Billie: “The intensity is unmatched. That’s something I can’t find in America that I can find in Japanese women. They’re so powerful, and I love it, I love it so much. And I’m so happy that I get to experience it again, wrestling with Yuka. Thank you.”

The main event was Yuka & Miyu vs Millie & Billie, with Millie getting a pretty huge win over Miyu! It has been a few years since I’ve watched Millie wrestle (I saw a few of her matches back in like 2019, when she was pretty young herself), so it was nice to see her again.

The post-match was quite possibly the first one of these I felt I was able to fully understand as I watched it, haha, owing to the fact that almost all of it was in English :sweat_smile:.

Millie: “I won again! It’s Billie’s first time in Japan.”

Billie: “I’m so happy to be here.”

Millie: “Thank you again for having us. But, we love Japan so much, we’re gonna make sure we keep coming back here. So at Korakuen, we will both walk away as champions!”

Miyu: “I cannot speak English. So I will speak Japanese.” (in Japanese) “Next time, I absolutely will not lose! I will defeat you.”

Yuka: (in English) “Next match, exciting!”

Millie and Billie’s comments were also all in English! Here’s what they said:

Millie: “Like we said, I said we’d win, I said I’d beat Miyu Yamashita, and I did. And in her own country. She beat me in EVE. Not again, not again. This is just a taste of what’s to come. I’ve proved that I can do it now. We’ve proved that we can do it. So next week, we will win.”

Billie: “It was a lot, a lot. I was very overwhelmed with how much fight Yuka brought, with how tiny she is. She’s a fighter. But, I’m taking home the Princess of Princess Championship November 27, and there’s no question about that.”

(It’s always been your dream to wrestle in Japan. What did it feel like going out there?)

“Oh, it was amazing. It was everything I wanted it to be, and I feel like it can only get better from here. I just hope everybody enjoyed the show that I put on for them, because I truly enjoyed the experience I had.”

(So, you’re going 1-on-1 next time. Do you think you have her figured out through this match?)

“A little bit more than I did. It was a bit shocking, being in a ring. It’s much different than studying tape. But I think I have more knowledge going into the title match next week.”

(Millie, you seem to have Miyu scouted out very well, blocking her Skull Kick. So, your strategy actually worked in the match. Does that give you even more confidence going into the match next week?)

Millie: “Yeah, I think I definitely needed a confidence boost after losing the EVE match on my home turf. But, I lost to that kick, so that kick is not happening again, I’ll make sure of it, because that kick is very, very powerful, and I do not want that damage.”

Billie: “It’s deadly.”

Millie: “I know!”

In Miyu and Yuka’s comments, I was confused by what Miyu said at the start: “結果的に自分がやられて悔しい部分があるし、ジャーマンを食らうと動けなくなるので、その隙に攻め込まれてやられてしまったので、もっともっと蹴りでね。スパンが短いので見破られていた部分もあるので、時間はないけど焦らず勝てるようにやりたい.”

Yamashita: “Concerning the result, I’m frustrated that she got me. After I took that suplex, she used that opportunity to attack since I couldn’t move, so I did a lot of kicks. Because it was such a short span of time, there are some things I’ve overlooked, so even though I’m out of time, I want to win without being hasty. I teamed up with Yuka-chan for the first time in a long time.”

Sakazaki: “It’s not the first time, is it?”

Yamashita: “Isn’t it? Since Osaka.”

Sakazaki: “Oh, right.”

Yamashita: “I have a good memory! It’s the first time since Osaka. We worked well together. But we lost.”

Sakazaki: “We worked well together?”

Yamashita: “We did! That was fun. We lost, though.”

Then Yuka said, “やっぱり日本に来て結果を残そうとしているからエネルギーもすごいし、ここに懸けている部分がすごくて。なのでこちらも相乗効果で楽しく試合できたので、次の後楽園でお互いタイトルマッチあるけどやることやって、東京女子のプライドを賭けて.” I got a bit lost in that second sentence in particular, haha :sweat_smile:.

Sakazaki: “They have a lot of energy because they came to Japan with the desire to get results, so they’ve staked a lot on this. We had a fun match with synergy, so we’re going to do what we do and put our TJPW pride on the line in our title matches at the next Korakuen show. Yamashita’s representing EVE, though.”

I think I was able to understand everything in the second part?

(You finally faced Billie in person)

“Even though she’s just 17, she has a solid physique and good balance, and I could feel her momentum. She’s amazing now, but just think about how incredible she’ll be one, two, three, or four years from now as she gains experience.”

(Today was a tag match, but will the singles match be different?)

“Yes. I think there’s a different way of fighting in a singles match.”

(She blocked your Skull Kick)

Yamashita: “She did block it, but I still have things I haven’t revealed yet, so I’m going to defeat her without giving in.”

And there we go! I think that’s everything until the Korakuen show on the 27th? I’m actually taking next week off at work, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to make pretty good progress on that show and not fall too far behind!

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Well, I’d say kind of yes and no.
The bare facts behind what she’s describing is certainly this:


i.e. that she fought Millie McKenzie in Spain, then the UK, then Japan.

I don’t know that I would technically precisely agree with the translation
“It’s the first time in my experience that I have fought three consecutive times in three different places.”
however. After all, (although this is a bit unfair) technically if she was on tour with one other TJPW wrestler she probably technically fought them three consecutive times in three different places before!

I think something that dodges delineating more tightly what factors about it made it a first might be more precisely accurate, like “I’ve just had a span of three matches with Millie in three countries: Spain, the UK, and Japan… the first time I’ve experienced something like that!”
That’s a narrower statement than “first time I’ve fought three consecutive times in three different places”
but I would say it’s the whole chunk of “ミリーとはスペイン、イギリス、日本とターン・スパンで3回連続で闘うの” that’s a first in Miyu’s experiences, and it’s about her describing the specific especially strange situation and then remarking that it was novel, rather than precisely delineating the limits of her prior experience.

Also – I notice now from the cagematch result, that the 3rd match is actually later in the show!
So techically at this stage it’ll be a first for her to complete the span! The third match hasn’t happened yet! (a bigger problem with my translation than yours, admittedly)

Something about her phrasing in the video seems a little clearer to my ears, but I think she’s saying more like – this signing today, representing Billie’s arrival, is a momentous event in TJPW’s history, so remember it.

目に焼き付けてください seems more like, well, like “please burn it into your eyes” and she puts a 今日は in there too in the verbal version. So I think rather than even the match being the momentous part, so remember the match, it’s more like Billie being here is a big deal, so remember this.
(with the connection made in the transcript form a little less explicitly, but it’s how the clauses connect - as you can see Billie’s arrived, I think [it/this] will become a major event in TJPW history, so burn [it/this] into your eyes!)

I watched the match at 2x speed (which was oddly fun lol the speed actually helped a surprising amount to connect the dots on the physical story being told) and that strengthened my impression that the もっともっと蹴りでね ending is more like – the lesson learned. Like:
“XYZので, better kick her a bunch more huh”
In the match the german suplex Millie hits on Yamashita is quite late in the match, she gunned for it early on and clearly was not winning the match the way it was going, with Yamashita kicking her many times beforehand, and hitting it was what turned the tide, with Yamashita afterward only managing one successful kick and one blocked kick on her before Millie got the pin (and Yamashita is visibly less mobile in terms of ring control, lingering for a bit after a broken up pin where earlier in the match she would have been able to capitalize more quickly).
Which is to say the match bears out her report, that Millie capitalized on Yamashita’s fatigue and lack of mobility caused by eating that german suplex, and for next time Yamashita should press the kicks even harder to prevent that from happening again.

Also, I could definitely be wrong about this one, but It think I would maybe say the スパンが短い is about like, the span between matches, and that the 時間はない is about how there’s little time until the championship match next week. Like, perhaps roughly, there’s surely things she’s overlooked too, but although there’s no time anyway, she’s going to endeavor to not rush into the championship match and make sure to win it.

Something went wrong here, I think.

Rough truncated back and forth since the body language may help:
Yamashita says about teaming with Yuka, 久しぶり
image

Sakazaki says そうだね、初めてじゃない
image

Yamashita says (small head shake) 初めてじゃない, 大阪以来
image

Yuka: そうかな
image

I would parse this as roughly:
Miyu: “it’s been a long time.” (assertion)
Yuka: “yeah… isn’t it the first time ever?” (questioning assertion)
Miyu: “what, no! Just the first time since Osaka” (reinforcing original assertion)
Yuka: “Hmm I guess so” (acknowledging assertion might be true)

The:
初めてじゃない?
初めてじゃない.
part
I think got mixed up in yours. (Which I mean, is fair! :sweat_smile: especially without the transcript including tones)
The “It’s not the first time, is it?” seems like… it’s sort of trying to be both sense at once?

Like, I would put the two options (both used) for “初めてじゃない” as:
Isn’t it the first time?
and
It’s not the first time.
But “it’s not the first time, is it?” is like both of those combined. Which is a good attempt at a dodge! But I don’t think really an option.
Also, I think in the translation it got mixed up with “the first time in a long time” for 久しぶり as well: The translation “it’s the first time in a long time” → “it’s not the first time” → “isn’t it?” is confusing if you really try to disentangle it.
But Miyu didn’t assert “it’s the first time” she asserted it’s “久しぶり” so that entanglement with the phrase “the first time” isn’t there in the original. So it’s clearer in the original that 初めて is a contrastive assertion to 久しぶり and that therefore the meaning is “it’s the first time in a long time” → “isn’t it the first time, period?”

Incidentally, I think it’s possible they’re both wrong :sweat_smile:
If cagematch is to be believed, it seems like as far as I can tell they’ve teamed together in total around 15 times, and it seems like the one in Osaka had one or two since then:


The reporter’s chuckling so they may likely be joking, anyhow (and/or there could certainly be something I overlooked)

My only note is I would say I think the synergy is as in like – synergy with the visitors’ energy. I think it’s one of those cases were the なので shows how it connects despite the period put in - They X, so we also were able to synergize with that and X.

There’s a bit that I assume didn’t make it into the transcript where she says like, she does do tag matches but she tends to think of herself as a singles wrestler, so, well, [the answer translated].

That isn’t really a translation note, I was just amused that by omitting that the transcript appeared to make the question and answer “will the singles match be different than the tag match?” “yes. Singles matches are different than tag matches.” :grin:
BUT in thinking about that… I do wonder if maybe she’s talking about her opponent? Like it’s the first time she’s fought her, right? So maybe the 戦い方 are like, her opponents’ ones that she hasn’t shown?
Eh I dunno, it’s probably a reach as it wasn’t my first instinct listening and there doesn’t seem much to support it. It might just be a bland question :sweat_smile:

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TJPW sprung another contract signing on us, so there was one last thing to translate before November 27 after all :sweat_smile:! I ended up actually really loving this one! I think this might be one of my favorite things I’ve translated this year?

Unfortunately Raku had to pull out of the tag title match due to testing positive for covid, so Pom stepped up to fill in for her! The benefit of having a polycule… They did a contract signing for the new team configuration, and it was great! Lots of good stuff here! I got it done fast because I was pretty invested in it :sweat_smile:.

Here’s the official transcript, and here’s the video. Arai started us off:

Arai: “This will be our third defense, and I’m nervous because I’m still not used to this, but I want to show the strength I’ve gained from my previous defenses and use it to beat Yuki-san and Pom-san and defend my belt. The two of us are going to work together and do our best so that we can celebrate New Years Eve with these belts.”

In this next part, Akai’s first sentence gave me a bit of trouble: “一緒に京都大会に凱旋してメインを締めくくったあとに挑戦表明されて決定して、その時とカードはいろいろあって変わってしまったんですけど、挑戦者には変わりないので意識はまったく変わってないです.”

As did her last sentence: “ぽむ選手もこういう形で挑戦者になった以上はハプニング、アクシデントを味方につけるのがプロレスラーだと思うので、この状況の2人がプロレスラーとしての芯を見せてくれるのか楽しみにしています.”

Akai: “After the main event of our triumphant return show in Kyoto, the challengers declared their intent and the match was set. The card has changed since then, but the impression I get from the challengers hasn’t changed at all. Concerning Aino, I’ve been watching her now and then since her debut, but lately, when I watch her wrestle on Wrestle Universe, I feel like her ‘Burning’ catchphrase applied more to her old self than the present. I don’t feel like she’s as much of a threat when I watch her recent matches. Since she became a challenger in this way, I think Pom is someone who makes use of unforeseen events and accidents, so I’m looking forward to seeing the two of them show us what’s at their core as pro wrestlers.”

Yuki: “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to challenge with Raku, who declared our intent to challenge in the first place, but challenging for a belt just isn’t something you can do at any time, so I didn’t want to let the opportunity I had with Raku go to waste. So when I thought about Raku’s regret that she couldn’t be here, as well as my own feelings, I had to challenge now. And because Pom stepped up, we can challenge together with Raku’s feelings!” (Pom starts crying) “I’m grateful to Pom, and I’m also grateful to Akai-san and Yuki-chan for accepting our challenge. So, with the power of Raku, Pom, and Yuki, we will beat the champions! Please watch us!”

This next part from Pom honestly floored me. Most of it was also a very long, rambly sentence, haha, which I had a bit of trouble with! I think I got there? “すごく仲良しなんですけど、ユキさんはユキさんはぽむと仲良しで組んでて、うちが一緒にいっていいのかなって悩んでくれたと思うし、らくさんもぽむのことを考えてくれたりしたと思うし、ぽむは2人がそうやってぽむのことを考えてくれたりして、ベルトに挑戦しますってなって2人が巻いているところを見たかったし、ここにらくさんにいて欲しかったんですよ.”

Pom: (crying) “I know that Raku-san and Yuki-san were working hard together to challenge. We’re very good friends, but I think Yuki-san was worried about whether it was okay for us team together as close friends, and I think Raku-san was also thinking about me, and I was also thinking about the two of them, and I’m challenging for the belt that I wanted to see the two of them win, and I wanted Raku-san to be here! But since I’m here instead of her, I want to win the belt and divide it into three parts so that we can all wear it.” (crying) “That’s what I regret the most, that Raku-san isn’t here!” (crying) “I can’t say anything, so I have no choice but to do it, together with Yuki-san, and with Raku-san.” (crying)

Yuki: “Yeah, let’s do it together. Divide them into three parts?”

Pom: “Yes! I’m good at cutting cakes!” (crying) “I think I can do a good job.”

Yuki: “How about we stand back-to-back and wrap the belts around all of us that way?”

Pom: “No, no! I’ll split them neatly into three. So that we’ll all be equal.” (crying)

I’m usually of the opinion that most wrestling companies have too many belts, but this made me honestly wish that TJPW had trios titles so that the 三角関係(さんかくかんけい) could win them without having to cut the tag belts into three…

After that, Pom says… another long sentence that gave me trouble, haha! She said: “今までそういう機会がなくて、まだまだデビューしたばかりだからという年数にどこか甘えていたみたいなところがあったと思うんですけど、こういうチャンスも実力のうちと思うので、4周年にもなるし、ぽむちゃんも大人のレスラーだよというところを見せなさいと神様に言われたのかなと思った気がしたので、このチャンスを掴みたいと思います.”

Interviewer: “Pom, you’re challenging for a belt for the first time in your career, right?”

Pom: “Well, it’s my fourth anniversary. I hadn’t had an opportunity like this up until now, and in some respects I was taking advantage of the fact that it had only been a couple years since I debuted, but I think this chance is within my abilities. It’s my fourth anniversary, and I feel like God told me to show that I’m a grown-up wrestler, so I want to seize this opportunity.”

Interviewer: “Aino, how do you feel about Akai’s comment that she ‘doesn’t feel ‘Burning’’ from you?”

Yuki: “It’s really frustrating to be told that, but I don’t think my fighting style has changed, and I’m always doing my absolute best. But to be honest, there’s a part of me that feels like I don’t know what’s the best way for me to move forward right now. Part of me feels like I have to change something. I’ve never fought Akai-san. I’ve thought, ‘she’s a wrestler who’s strong and beautiful and attractive and gorgeous,’ and ‘I want to fight her someday’, but after she won the tag belts with Yuki-chan, it felt like this ‘gorgeous squared’ strongest tag team suddenly burst into existence. I think being gorgeous gives you the power to attract people, and it’s a power that is far away from me. So I’m thrilled to be able to fight opponents like that while I’m searching for what I’m lacking at the moment.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to translate the interviewer’s next question: “愛野選手はぽむ選手の気持ちを聞いて.”

I also think I figured out Yuki’s response, but the long sentence at the end was tough: “今までもぽむと組むことも結構あったので、やりやすいパートナーではあるんですけど、突拍子もないこととかしだした時に私は放置していたというか、自分もついていくことを諦めていたんですけど、今回、2人で挑戦するので、そういうところに自分も対応できるように頑張って、力を合わせて闘いたいなと思います.”

Interviewer: “You listened to Pom’s feelings.”

Yuki: “Pom is someone who’s always doing outrageous things. That’s one of her good qualities, and it’s a part of her that I really love. I’ve teamed up with Pom quite a bit, so we’re easy partners, but when she’d start to do something crazy, I’d leave her alone, or rather I wouldn’t play along. But this time, since the two of us are challenging together, I’m going to try my best to respond to her and fight together.”

In Akai’s next response, I mostly had trouble with the tense and plurals/singulars and all of that :sweat_smile:. She said: “私は会見でもすごい緊張して始まる前に震えていたんですけど、リング上でのマイクの後や、会見後にプレッシャーに圧し潰され泣いたりとかはしていたんですけど、カメラの前でそこまで感情を出せたことがなかったので、いい度胸して十分強いと思います.”

Interviewer: “To the champions, you saw the team of challengers be moved to tears.”

Akai: “I’ve been so nervous at an interview that I was shaking before it started. I’ve cried after cutting a promo in the ring and after interviews when the pressure has gotten to me. But I’ve never been able to show that much emotion in front of a camera, so I think she has some nerve and plenty of strength. I can’t express myself that way, so she seems to have a very strong core.”

I wasn’t quite sure about Arai’s response here: “ぽむさんはよく闘うことが多くて、いつも追い詰められて怖いなと思ったんですけど、今日泣いている姿を見てもっと怖くなりました.”

Arai: “Pom has fought me a lot, and I thought she was scary because she always corners me, but after seeing her crying today, I’m even more afraid. She’s a little scary…”

Pom: “Huh?”

Akai: “We’re scared.”

Then Yuki says, “威嚇が成功した。ポケモンでそういうのあるから.” I’m guessing she’s talking about the new pokemon games, but I haven’t played them and wasn’t exactly sure what she was referring to, haha.

Yuki: “Your intimidation worked. There’s something like that in Pokemon.”

Interviewer: “Compared to the previously arranged opponents, will this team be easier to fight? Or will they be harder?”

Akai: “I was a bit wary of Raku because I’m not good at her kind of tempo, but Pom spilled her heart out today, and I think that’s phenomenal. So I’m not sure… but we’re champions, so we just have to accept their challenge and drive them back, and that’s how we build up our strength. What do you think?”

Arai: “Our opponent has changed, but what we do hasn’t.”

Akai: “Being challenged is the same either way, huh?”

Arai: “We will do our best at our own pace, just as we have been!”

And that’s it!

There’s so much I loved about this interview. I thought Akai’s point about Yuki not really embodying her “Burning” catchphrase lately was interesting, and that Yuki acknowledged that she’s sort of looking for a new direction (especially after her sister left…).

It was also really amazing how Pom crying basically completely changed Akai’s mind on her. I love it in wrestling when wrestlers cry, and I love it even more when that, specifically, is the thing that impresses a vet (I’ve already talked about Jun Akiyama with Kaito Kiyomiya in 2021… :sweat_smile:). Pom’s tears seemed to touch Akai here in a similar way that Kaito’s tears touched Jun back then. It seemed that Akai ended up more impressed with Pom than she did with Yuki!

The reason for Pom’s tears honestly floored me. Especially since this is her first title shot since she debuted, and we just passed her own debut anniversary, which are both pretty big deals! But despite all of that, her only concern is for Raku, and she’s really upset to be getting the title shot instead of her. She’s remarkably selfless.

There’s kind of a blend of genuine emotion here as well as some humor, which is very TJPW, haha. Pom used to always say on her birthday that she was turning 3 years old, and she sort of references here immaturity here.

But yeah, I thought they did a great job setting up this match with very real stakes despite the last-minute change. I’m not… especially optimistic for Pom and Yuki’s chances, but I will be cheering for them regardless!! :triumph:

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I think this is perhaps a transcription ミス.
I think she says 挑戦者ってことには変わりない
not 挑戦者には変わりない.
And the video version “ってこと” much more clearly means like, other things have changed but the fact that there’s challengers hasn’t. Rather than the transcript version which reads more like “the challengers haven’t changed” (which is obviously confusing in the situation). Akai stumbled over her phrasing a little bit there and then sped up to make up for it so perhaps the live transcriber just missed the ってこと.

I would disagree with attributing the ハプニング、アクシデントを味方につけるのが part to Pom here.
It’s not Pom who does that, it’s プロレスラーだ.
I’d say the train of thought is like, roughly “Since Pom became a challenger this way, well - I think it’s imperative for pro wrestlers to make opportunities out of accidents, so I’m looking forward to how both challengers show their core as pro wrestlers.” Like it’s an A + B = C type of structure I’d say. Point A is Pom became challenger by happenstance, point B is I think pro wrestlers as a rule / inherent part of being a pro wrestler must make good use of happenstance. Therefore C, I look forward to seeing what Pom (and Aino for reasons already mentioned) is made of as a pro wrestler.

I would disagree I think with the “but I think Yuki-san was worried about whether it was okay for us team together as close friends” part.
I would describe it I think more like – we’re still pre-card-change at this point, in Pom’s narrative, and she’s saying that Aino was thinking “ユキさんはぽむと仲良しで組んでて、うちが一緒にいっていいのかな” as in like – she may have been teaming with Raku but she was thinking about Pom and worrying about Pom being left out / thinking it would be better with Pom included, that kind of thing. So Pom’s saying she was touched by both of them thinking of her even as they were starting to challenge for the belts as a pair themselves.

For the first bit, I don’t know exactly what’s in the transcript, but I would say “Well, it’s my fourth anniversary.” is a bit off with the tone of the video, as she either feigns asking or genuinely asks for confirmation about the fourth anniversary in both directions around her.

It connects up a little I think with the next part in the train of thought:
今までそういう機会がなくて、まだまだデビューしたばかりだからという年数にどこか甘えていたみたいなところがあったと思うんですけど
where here, I would say it’s less like “I was taking advantage of the fact that it had only been a couple years since I debuted” – and more like, “A part of me was consoled by the number of years being low enough I could still feel like ‘I just debuted!’”
Like Pom’s saying her main mode up to now is not really tracking the years and not feeling bad about a lack of opportunities like title shots by still figuring “hey, I just started!” That kind of sense.

I’m probably be confused from the transcript too, but I guess it’s because it’s one of those “comment on X please” type of questions (with X in this case being “that stuff Pom said just now”), and he kind of peters out a bit. It sounds like maybe he finished it with どいう意味 and they maybe react because it’s a bit funny and makes it sound like he’s asking like, what was she talking about (if that is what he says), so he amends it to just like, ぽむ選手に対してど…
He’s definitely going for (and gets across) “comment on Pom (and that stuff she said) please” anyhow.

looks all right to me!

This was one of those lingering “I feel like it’s maybe this other way…” cases where then I look at the video and happily that suspicion is confirmed by extra words peppered in there! :sweat_smile:
She’s describing her general, regular reaction before and after 会見. I was suspicious that might be the case from the ていた business rather than ことがあった type stuff which would have been more exactly what you have in the translation…
… but she says いつも about both in the video! So yeah, suspicion confirmed, and she’s describing examples of her regular experiences around interviews/in-ring promos (rather than describing specific especially memorable examples)

Looks like there’s an ability called いかく that’s localized in English “Intimidate.” I wonder if “your Intimidate worked” or “your Intimidate ability worked” would be too much… certainly it fits a little better into her sentence in Japanese if that is what she was referring to. The way she says it does give me very familiar “I’m going to make this private joke about a phrase from a game even though I’m the only one here who’s played it and it will just be confusing” vibes :sweat_smile:

I agree! That press conference likely just convinced me to make sure to make time to watch the show!

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I got… a little more than halfway through the translation for the November 27 Korakuen show :sweat_smile:!

First off, before I forget, here’s (non-twitter link) an interesting essay comparing TJPW’s overall booking style to AJPW’s King’s Road style. I don’t really have enough AJPW background knowledge to talk about the accuracy of the comparison haha but I do think it has some interesting things to say!

And here’s (non-twitter link) a fan manga based on a translation of Lulu Pencil’s pre-debut twitter diary posts in 2019. It made me miss Lulu Pencil a lot, but it’s very good. I hope she comes back to wrestling some day…

Now, back to TJPW…

Shupro unfortunately didn’t transcribe most of the comments to this one, so I mostly had to make do with just the twitter captions :sweat_smile:.

At the beginning of the show, Wakana Uehara announced that she’s going to be continuing with wrestling as a TJPW trainee! Here’s what she said:

Uehara: “I really appreciate the incredible support during Yume Pro Wrestling. Today, I have something I’d like to announce. I, Wakana Uehara, am going to continue wrestling! Thank you so much for your warm support. I didn’t know anything about pro wrestling at first, but as I tried my hand at it, a love of pro wrestling grew within me. I still have work as a TV personality and as an actress, but you only have one life, and I never want to give up. I want to follow the path I believe in. That’s what I decided. And that path, the path I believe in, is to keep wrestling. I’m going to work with all my might to do my best in the warm TJPW environment, so please support me!”

They also announced Mizuki’s 10th debut anniversary match, which will be held this month. She’s going to be teaming up with Rika vs Yuka and Nao!

Shupro didn’t give me much here, haha. Here’s all that it had for what she said: “坂崎に関しては「組むことはあってもあっても闘うことはあまりない、ここは自分の心を鬼にして」、角田は同じ転校生組という理由から。そして気になる辰巳に関しては「瑞希のことを初めて推しって言ってくれたので」とのこと.”

I had trouble with both of those lines :sweat_smile:. Here’s what I had for them:

Concerning Sakazaki: “We’ve teamed up, but we haven’t faced each other much. I’m hardening my heart here.”

Concerning Tatsumi: “It’s because she was the first person to call herself a Mizuki fan.”

Wakana also gave comments backstage. The main line I had trouble with was this one: “タレントをやりつつだとナメていると思われるかもしれないけど、それを思わせないぐらい実力をつけて励んでいきたい.”

Uehara: “The more I challenged myself, the more I fell in love with pro wrestling.”

(Who do you want to face?)

“I want to face Shoko Nakjima one day, after I’ve developed my skills. People might look down on me for being a TV personality, but I want to work to get better so that they don’t think that.”

The first match was Suzume vs Yoshiko Hasegawa (a.k.a. Yoppy), an ex-Actwres GanPro rookie. It was a rare chance for Suzume to take the lead in a match.

This was the line I was most confused about in Yoppy’s comments: “2019年にデビューしてて、私が再デビューという形でなければ鈴芽さんは同期で、その時から魅力だなと感じていたので.” I’m not entirely sure about Yoppy’s history, but I think she sort of started and stopped wrestling, which would maybe explain this? But I dunno.

Hasegawa: “I debuted in 2019, and if I hadn’t debuted again, Suzume-san would be in my same class, so I’ve felt drawn to her ever since. Today is her birthday, so next time I want to fight her and win on my birthday.”

Suzume said:

Suzume: “This match at the Korakuen show was my first match with Hasegawa, and the impression I got from the match is that we’re similar to each other in some ways. I think we both gained experience through facing each other. I got a birthday victory! I hope I can show you a new version of myself from now on!”

Misao and Shoko had a handicap match (thanks to the card getting rearranged due to Raku’s absence) against Kaya, Mahiro, and Neko. Misao and Shoko pulled TJPW’s booker Tetsuya Koda into the match (sidenote: I noticed that Japanese fans were calling him “TK” on twitter, haha, which momentarily confused me because that’s a common nickname people use for AEW’s president Tony Khan…), but he did not last very long.

After the match, Misao and Shoko said:

Misao: “It was a 2 vs 3 handicap match, but we don’t care; we’re always ready to fight! At the beginning, was Koda-san able to show his love for TJPW?”

Nakajima: “Tetsuya Koda! There might be an unexpected shortage in the future! Be prepared!”

The main thing that tripped me up in this was 不足の事態. Google told me that it’s commonly a typo for 不測の事態, so I wondered if that was what was happening here, haha :sweat_smile:. But I think she’s referring to the fact that they were unexpectedly down a wrestler?

I had a fair amount of trouble with Mahiro’s comments: “なんだ最初の甲田哲也は……。戦力になっていたかというと、戦力にはなってなかったんだけど……。でも心が乱された……。享楽共鳴が強いからこそ最初のあれなんだったんだ……。この怒りは甲田哲也にぶつけます……!”

Mahiro: “I lost… What was that with Tetsuya Koda at the beginning… I didn’t know what kind of fighting ability he had, and it turns out he didn’t have any… But it threw me off balance… Kyoraku Kyomei is strong, but that at the beginning, well… I will take out my anger on Tetsuya Koda!”

Rika and Miu faced the karate duo of Juria and Moka, which unfortunately did not go well for the rookies.

Afterward, Rika and Miu said:

Rika: “We’re both been improving on our own, and that’s good, isn’t it? Our dream isn’t just to aim for stepping out onto the global scene together.”

(The title match has been decided)

Miu: “Ittenyon was the day I debuted, and as announced at the beginning of the show, I’m facing a foreigner… did you see the photo of her? I’m a little nervous, but I’ll definitely defend my title!”

Next part:

Rika: “I want everyone who seems unassuming at first glance to show a lot more of themselves like Moka. I want ‘NagaJuri’ to show us who she is, too.”

Moka and Juria comments:

Moka: “I work well with Juria-san, so I hope we can team up and get more wins together.”

Juria: “Daydream is very strong and Moka-san took a lot of punishment, so I want to practice more because I think we can win if our karate tag team can show something even cooler and do some stronger moves.”

Next was Arisu vs Mizuki. I absolutely loved this one! I think it’s my favorite Arisu match yet. Really, really great performance from her. I almost thought she had it!

Arisu commented:

Arisu: “Starting today, I have a new entrance theme. It’s called ‘My Way is the Rainbow’, but I think my way is still the rainbow whether I win or lose. Mizuki-san said, ‘take on the challenge with love,’ and I was able to give it everything I had. Next time, I will try even harder and do my best to win!”

Mizuki commented:

Mizuki: “She didn’t get her first win, but she’s still smiling. I often wonder how she’s really feeling. When I saw how desperate she was to win today, I thought that deep down she must be feeling frustrated. With that frustration and her typical cheerfulness, I’m sure she’ll be able to win.”

The second part didn’t even transcribe anything, haha. This is all the caption gave us:

In addition, a wildly enthusiastic fan barged in during Mizuki’s comments. Here is the whole scene. Please check it out.

The next match was a match that seemed designed to torture poor Hikari, pairing her with Itoh, whom she doesn’t get along with, against her own tag partner, Nao, and Itoh’s occasional partner, Kamiyu. This one had some pretty entertaining bits during the match where Kamiyu tried to trick Itoh into taking photos with her with her phone. Naturally this ended in betrayal.

Just one short line caused me trouble in Itoh’s and Hikari’s comments. I included the Japanese above the one I struggled with, haha:

Itoh: “To be honest, I’m disappointed. I won’t team with her again.”

Hikari: “Itoh-san helps me a lot.”

伊藤「いい気持ちしちゃうじゃない」
Itoh: “You’re making me feel good, huh?”

Hikari: “I’m happy that we were able to tag together. I don’t like you very much, but I want to win with you someday.”

Itoh: “I take back what I said before about never teaming with you again. Let’s work together until we win!”

Kamiyu and Nao’s comments were overall baffling to me. I’m not quite sure what the 東スポ競馬 even is, or where exactly they’re going with this. Maybe a 70% chance it’s an Uma Musume reference? :sweat_smile:

Kamifuku: “Week after week, we’ve been doing the Tospo Keiba!”

Kakuta: “It has already been a year! Did you know that?”

Kamifuku: “After watching us fight like that, you should immediately register for the Tospo Keiba and become a paying member, and never miss out on our glamorous allure!”

And finally, for the three title matches, shupro has actual transcriptions!

The first of the three was Millie McKenzie vs Miyu, which I enjoyed more than I expected.

Backstage, Miyu said:

Yamashita: “I won. But I don’t want to do it again, not with Millie. …No, I’m kidding. We’ve fought in Spain, England, and Japan, and today was the final match, so I’ve surpassed her. But the fight between Millie and I isn’t over. I don’t want it to end. There are still a lot of countries we haven’t fought in yet. We may meet again somewhere, and I’d like us both to be stronger when we fight again like we did today. This was my first title defense, and it was in Japan, so I had a lot of people supporting me and I didn’t want to lose. I’m very happy that I was able to defend the belt with that feeling.”

(She read your finishing move pretty well)

“Millie has fought a lot of different wrestlers in a lot of different places.”

Then I had a bit of trouble with this line: “今回ホントに短いスパンでやってるので、自分もミリーがこう来るなっていうのは何度か読めたんですけど、それ以上に蹴りを読まれて.”

“This time was such a short span, so Millie could predict once or twice when she shouldn’t approach, but she read my kicks even more than that. I thought it was a bit of a close call, but I overcame her with my power.”

Shupro actually didn’t transcribe this next part, but her entire comment seems to be in the twitter caption:

(Overseas defenses?)

Yamashita: “Of course. I managed to win the EVE belt in England, and just like today, I’m happy to be able to invite wrestlers from overseas to come have a match at my home, TJPW. As long as I’m holding this belt, I want to take it global.”

Millie’s comments were in English! Hooray!

Millie: “I let myself down. I’ve let EVE down. I am disappointed in myself, but if I’m going to lose to anyone… Miyu, she’s incredible. So, I’m disappointed, but she deserved to win.”

(She did mention that this was the rubber match, but you wrestled in three different countries, and there are a lot of other, different countries, for you to wrestle again in, and she’d be more than willing to wrestle you again)

“Yes, yes, I would love that. I’ve learned a lot from wrestling Miyu. I’d say she’s my best opponent. But I’m annoyed with myself. I’m annoyed… That kick! It gets me every time! But next time, I’m gonna come up with a better plan. So, we’ve had a lot of matches, so I will study and focus, and get better, and the next time, I will win.”

The semi-main was the tag title match! I really, really loved this one. I loved all of the Raku references, and Pom really did an amazing job. The crowd was so behind her! She’s had quite the past year in TJPW, honestly, and I’m excited to see how 2023 goes for her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to win the tag belts here :pensive:.

The end of the match had a fun surprise, though, which is that Max the Impaler and Heidi Howitzer are going to be Reiwa AA Cannon’s next challengers! Really looking forward to that! They had a fun video promo that interrupted Akai and Arai’s victory promo.

After the video, Akai said:

Akai: “This is for Ittenyon…”

Arai: “Huh? What do we have to do with any of this?”

Akai: “It’s probably about the tag belts… I heard her say ‘pink.’ It seems that our challengers at the Ittenyon Korakuen Hall show have been decided. But don’t worry, the champions overcoming countless difficulties is what makes the belts shine more and more.”

Then she said: “イッテンヨン、無事にこれを守り切っていいみなさんのプロレスはじめを、私たちのベルト姿でスタートさせましょ.” I got a bit confused here, haha.

“At Ittenyon, let’s defend our belts safely and start off the year of pro wrestling for everyone with the belts in our hands.”

I also wasn’t quite sure what Arai meant by this: “私も腹を括ったので.” I think she was referring to having prepared something to say? But I wasn’t sure.

Arai: “Yes! I also prepared something. I want the first match of 2021 to end on a happy note to start the year off well, so please give me your support!”

Akai and Arai’s backstage comments:

Akai: “The original card was different, but after some unforeseen difficulties, we ended up with the match we had today. When she cried at the press conference, I was honestly irritated. I thought it wasn’t really the atmosphere befitting a championship belt. But when she stepped in the ring today, she was a true athlete and a wrestler. It was fun to come together and have a match.”

Then she said: “愛野選手に関しては自分に似たものを感じていて、ちょっと後輩にゆずっちゃうところ、彼女の性格の良さでありレスラーとして弱い部分があったので今日そこを確認したかったんですけど.” I got really confused by this sentence, haha.

“As for Aino, I saw a bit of myself in her in that she gives a lot to her juniors, and I wanted to confirm her good character and her weak points as a wrestler. But she was strong and self-possessed enough to stand toe to toe with me. I want to face both of them again, and I also want to face Raku, who was originally supposed to be in the match. Until we have that opportunity again, we’re going to protect our belts, and make it happen.”

I was a bit confused by Arai’s second and third sentences here: “ぽむさんは前回京都大会でも闘っていて。いつもけっこうスネを中心に追い込まれてしまうので、今日もけっこう…やっぱり強いなというか。追い込まれた時の強さがホントにすごくて、今日も何度も危ないところがあったんですけど.”

Arai: “I fought Pom-san at the last Kyoto show. She always corners you and targets your shins, and today, well… she was pretty strong. Or maybe I should say she was really super strong when driving me into the corner, and there were many times today that I was in danger. But I also really wanted to finish the year with the belt. I’m glad I was able to defend it safely.”

The second part of their comments was easy enough:

(Your next challengers have announced themselves)

Akai: “In all honesty, they just made the challenge. We never said that we’ll accept it. But… as long as someone says those words, we have no choice but to accept. Part of me is relieved that the match for Ittenyon was decided so early, though we didn’t have any advance warning. But I often face opponents who are much bigger than I am, so I think that part is something that I can teach. However, watching that video just now, that one didn’t seem to use any words to communicate. Do you have any pets?”

Arai: “I have a toy poodle at home.”

Akai: “Really? I have a cat. If we can find a breakthrough there…”

Arai: “Is that how you feel? Words…”

(You’ve seen the Impaler before, right?)

Akai: “We’ve crossed paths before a show before, but they were departing like a typhoon. Take care not to get caught up in that typhoon. But we’re champions. As champions, we have to take on any type of opponents, repel them, and become greater as a tag team.”

And poor Pom and Aino… Their comments were very sweet but also sad :smiling_face_with_tear:.

Aino: “We lost…”

Pom: (while crying) “But, I was able to fight together with Yuki-san and Raku-san… it was so much fun.”

Aino: “No, stop that!”

Pom: “It was fun!” (crying) “Also, it was really encouraging. It was my first time challenging for a belt…”

Aino: “I’m glad.”

Pom: “I wish I could have worked just a little harder, but…”

Aino: “Stop saying that!” (crying) “We lost, but I’m glad that we were able to fight them with everything we had.”

Pom: “Next time, let’s challenge for the tag belts together with you and me and Raku-san.”

Aino: “Let’s do it. All three of us in the ring. We’re going to do it!”

I see that Pom shares the Dark Order’s vision for the tag belts, haha (the Dark Order wanted to challenge for the AEW trios belts with four people…).

And that’s all that I have for now! The entire other half of the translation is for the main event. I’m hoping to finish it within the next few days, ideally!

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I also don’t have enough background knowledge, but I agree it’s interesting!

kinda rambling thoughts about it

I think for me something I’m struck with about the subject is the like, uniquely hard to encompass nature of pro wrestling promotions from a booking/storyline perspective.

Like, the timescale is years/decades of content that’s virtually exclusively intended for live or nearly live consumption, so it’s hard to take enough in to have an authoritative perspective on any one promotion in the first place.

And then on top of that, there’s individual character concerns to juggle as well. Like my first reaction is still that having Yuka and Miyu, confident badasses who were both there at the start of the promotion, just makes a generational wall storyline a natural fit in a way that wouldn’t make sense if your biggest star senior were Mayu, who’s obviously great but also a bit of a goober whose (deservedly) most lauded trait is how she gets beaten up all the time :sweat_smile:. And by the same token Giulia causing a ruckus or Utami being extraordinarily strong out of the gate (and a likely wall for someone else to overcome in her own right down the line) seem like good fits for them as individual characters too.

And then on top of that, the chaos of circumstances over time! Like I wonder if current Stardom would be as stark a contrast to TJPW if Io and Kairi hadn’t gone to WWE or that match hadn’t happened and fractured Stardom’s management. I have no personal conception really of what either promotion was like before like 2020, but looking at the stats, it seems like when the World of Stardom Championship was about as old as the Princess of Princess Championship is now, Io had more than 3x the defenses of anybody else (24), with the next most being Nanae, Kairi, and Yoshiko. I don’t think any of them leaving was a planned storyline change from the start, just how the cards happened to fall.

And all that stuff I’m synergizes with each other! I’m sure there’s a lot of chicken and the egg type questions in how everything ends up playing out.

Which isn’t to disagree with the article, or to say promotions or eras of promotions can’t be described, or that booking philosophy plays no part in that. I just always think it’s interesting how much is at play!
I suppose like, a tv show has to deal with all that same stuff too behind the scenes, but the presentation as an authored, complete A->Z end product makes it a lot more reducible (and even then I still have a hard time saying “the writing on the show is X” instead of “I think the show is X”).

I do think the generational wall storyline is a strength and a charmpoint of TJPW right now! But I do also think that the “anybody can come prove their mettle here” vibe of Stardom right now strengthens their champions too in a different way, and they’re doing a remarkably good job having wrestlers of every experience level feel like they’re meaningfully growing over time, even if the method is less rigid. The path from faction member and protégé to faction leader and mentor, for example, I think can be extremely effective, and doesn’t strictly need to involve the top titles at all.

Anyway, I don’t really have a point. :sweat_smile: Other than I guess that all of the many factors going into TJPW’s sense of stable build so far are remarkable.
Neat essay!

A note from the video about the “I’m hardening my heart here” but with the full speech it’s like, “… so I’m hardening my heart here (haha) but I thought I’d like to fight Yukachi”

Similarly, I dunno how much you want to incorporate from the non directly quoted bits, but the part about her being 同じ転校生組 with Nao she does say, it’s just paraphrased here by shupro.

A fun detail not included in the transcript about the Tatsumi part is Mizuki leads into it by saying like, when she looks back, みんなさん (the collective audience) was always there by her side cheering her on, so wouldn’t it be great if she could tag with the audience! So instead, she’s tagging with Rika since she was the first Mizuki fan so to speak.

They’ve truncated this part too in the transcript. There’s an extra question in between the two you have here, and more importantly, another reporter asks a question between the last two sentences, so that explains why the タレント part may have confused you - it’s not connected with the Shoko answer.

(there’s a couple more omitted questions after that part too)

Yes, I’m not familiar with her history either but it was a theme the commentary talked about a lot.
Her twitter bio does a good explaining it:

Reborn and restart!2019年11月6日後楽園ホールにてプロレスデビュー。2021年1月怪我・病気の手術のため欠場。長期欠場を経て、ガンバレ☆プロレスに所属。2022年8月13日再デビュー!

Presumably, yep! About both.

『不測の事態』とは、予測できないような展開や思いがけない出来事、突然のアクシデントや想定外のトラブルという意味です。

(source)

There’s some truncated here… One element of their bullying of Koda is cajoling him to show his love for TJPW by helping them out in these unforeseen circumstances, so they close with
愛を示せ!and a hand gesture for hearts that’s apparently of recent Korean origin. They did this threateningly at him after the match as well (I remember since commentary mentioned it and with this and the money pose at Stardom Gold Rush I was learning a lot about hand gestures for a bit there)
image

Rika’s been touched by みずぴょん’s あつい気持ち and promises that the day will come to be known as ドラっぴょん (I think, something like that definitely conveying :dragon: :heavy_plus_sign::rabbit:) 's anniversary day since they’re going to be a long-running tag team from now on and they will not only win but they’ll have an あつい抱擁 in victory as well. Mizuki promises none of that

Yeah in the sense of like — she was intentionally being a bit of a jerk to Hikari, since they don’t like each other,and then Hikari was just really nice to her while being sad in loss, so Itoh’s saying it like, in a flustered/taking affront sort of way. Like, “hey! You’re being nice to me! That’s gonna make me feel good, I’m only human! What the heck!” That kind of thing.
image
image
It’s like a little mini story of Hikari’s sincerity converting Itoh over from open resentment to begrudging tag team respect (until they win one anyway).

It looks like they’re being 100% literal :smile:
They both have appeared in a bunch of videos on Tokyo Sports’ horse-racing youtube channel

(東スポ競馬 is just Tokyo Sports Horse Racing with Tokyo Sports contracted).

inexplicably 東スポ-themed tag team cross over when
image

I can see how you got there (gotta love な), but I think it’s more like
ミリーがこう来るな
is what 自分も
何度か読めた’d
Like as in, “Millie’s going to approach this way isn’t she.”
I think she’s saying like, I (Miyu) read Millie’s moves some too, but she read my kicks even more.

I think that’s probably the sense she was going for… there’s apparently an Xをはじめとする meaning to like, be a representative of something. But probably I think she was going for what you wrote and it just didn’t come out 100% clear.

I might spice up “eveyone” for いいみなさん with like “all these nice people” or something though.

I think it’s more like – she was initially intimidated by who’s going to be their opponents, but 私も腹を括ったので is her making up her mind that she too is steeled and ready for the challenge like Akai

I think it’s more like,
the ちょっと後輩にゆずっちゃうところ she feels is in common between her and Aino,
she sees as a 性格の良さ and a レスラーとして弱い部分, and so she wanted to check that impression in the ring.

I would say the けっこう is less attached to the strong, like a kind of softening “pretty strong” (since she’s remarking that Pom really was strong), and I’d say it’s more like, partly maybe filler/softening the phrasing like “like”, and partly “いつもけっこう X happened, 今日もけっこう (X happened too)” and she’s just figuring out how to phrase the (X happened too) part – there were points where she was like やっぱり強いな, when she got cornered, when she was in an 危ない spot.

そういう感じ is a lot more like something like “like that(?)” than “is that how you feel?” I’d say.
Like a 感じ isn’t someone else’s feelings as in emotions, it’s the feeling one gets from something. Like its vibes or the general idea.
Like if I were having trouble explaining something I might be like gesture gesture “そいう感じ。” like gesture gesture “you know, that kind of thing”
Or I might use 感じ to describe the impression I got from someone’s haircut, or something like that.

So I’d say Akai is implying that like, since Max doesn’t speak, and they’re both familiar with dealing with their pets who don’t speak, that may be an advantage…
And Arai is agreeing with surprise like “oh, it’ll be like that? ok” kind of a 感じ.

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週刊プロレス No.2204 (from mid September)

This issue came with a pull-out poster with Yuka Sakazaki on one side and Shoko Nakajima on the other. Two guesses which side I put up…

There’s an interview with JONAH (formerly and uh possibly futurely known as Bronson Reed) after he participated in this year’s G1 Climax.
He says he was a lifelong wrestling fan, citing as childhood favorites Shawn Michaels and… they’ve printed here ブレッド・ハート. I don’t know who Bread Hart is, Shupro! He also cites Shinya Hashimoto a couple of times as a reason he was excited to come to Japan and participate in the G1.

The theme of Hiroshi Tanahashi’s column is Karl Anderson, ahead of Tanahashi’s challenge for the NEVER Openweight Championship which Anderson holds. They talk a bit about Anderson’s history, from apparently sleeping under the ring at the LA Dojo for lack of money, to being a memorable wrestler for his abilities, particularly as a tag team specialist, in the 00s/10s. Since he left for WWE in 2006, when Tana was more at his peak than he is now, he hopes to live up to and surpass the Tana that’s fresh in Anderson’s head in memories.
The co-columnist, タナ番, shares an odd little anecdote where he was drinking with Yujiro Takahashi and ended up with some Bullet Club people, and at the time Bad Luck Fale had just beaten Shinsuke Nakamura for the Intercontinental Championship, but didn’t get a Shupro cover for his troubles, and so Fale was hassling タナ番 a bit about that like “what, no cover for us gaijin?” even though it wasn’t his call to make, and Anderson I guess defused it, giving タナ番 a mild pro-Anderson feeling.

There’s an interview with Jack Morris, who participated in this year’s N-1 Victory. His background is he was a professional footballer, and I was a mildly amused that although he is Scottish, the word exclusively used for the sport here is サッカー. But anyway, an injury made him reconsider whether he really wanted to continue with that sport, and since he was a lifelong pro wrestling fan due to the influence of his older brother, he ended up transitioning to pro-wrestling, finding that his sports experience made the physical element no problem, but the psychology element is difficult but rewarding. At first he planned to be a power wrestler, but seeing AJ Styles and his success made him reconsider, and now he aspires to be that kind of adaptable wrestler who can have a great match with anyone.
He debuted in 2017, and says that his career so far has been pretty much just UK shows with no major career highlights or splashes of note up to now, so when NOAH solicited for foreign wrestlers he was shocked to be selected and determined to seize the opportunity. Sounds like he’s enjoying Japan and the opportunity a lot and is staying to try to revenge his losses in the tournament and perhaps challenge for a title…

Kenoh’s column just talks about various things happening in NOAH shows currently. Sounds like NOAH shows are doing well, and Kenoh attributes that naturally to his championship but the interviewer says probably the biggest influence is Mutoh’s retirement road…

Giulia’s column is about Fuwa-chan, a celebrity and youtuber who is set to maker her pro wrestling debut for Stardom. Giulia says she had a tough match the day it was announced, and afterward she had a bunch of messages from her little brother, making her worried maybe something had happened, but he was just excitedly asking her about the Fuwa-chan news.
She mentions that some people have a gut reaction of 「プロレスをなめるな!」 when a non-wrestling celebrity announces a debut like this, but Giulia says that it’s a great opportunity to bring eyes to the promotion and besides, Giulia herself debuted only 2 months after she started training 「けど別にプロレスナメてなかったよ(笑)。」 She says what it comes down to is the individual’s willingness to put in the work, and she’s heard from Stardom staff that Fuwa-chan is a herself a wrestling fan, and picked Stardom herself, having watched Stardom for a long time, and she even sent condolence flowers and gifts to the office following Hana Kimura’s passing. She also has sports experience, and is managing Hazuki’s rigorous instruction. So Giulia thinks people complaining on social media should settle down and not worry about it, as anyway if the wrestlers themselves feel like they’re being looked down on they can handle it themselves. There’s tons of wrestlers with a second job, and everybody works hard.
Off-topic but you know, I’ve been noticing for a while that although the title of Giulia’s column is ジュリアのお騒がせ症候群, all the wrestling opinions provided therein seem completely thoughtful, level-headed, and diplomatically stated. (Not a complaint!)

All of the stand-out pictures this issue are from… one particular match.
WARNING: blood, deathmatch stuff

I actually haven’t gotten around to watching this match yet, because I was stymied when I idly went to look for it in the past because it doesn’t come up if you search for 葛西純 on NJPW World, because it appears to be only on a PPV not included in the subscription, タカタイチデスペマニア. I think I am taking the opportunity to make up for that now though, because that match looks probably worth 3,000 yen.

The history column is about an incident set in the era following the closure of 日本プロレス in 1973, when 新日本プロレス、全日本プロレス、and 国際プロレス all coexisted in relative stability, each with a weekly television show. And in this context, 国際 had a long-standing relationship with 全日本, but that was inexplicably dashed in 1978 when the head of 国際, Isao Yoshihara, was shown in the news shaking hands with Antonio Inoki (founder and head of 新日本), despite having a bunch of 全日本 wrestlers in a 国際 tournament. This understandably angered Giant Baba (founder and head of 全日本), and scuttled a long-lasting relationship for the apparent only small gain of some appearances from 新日本 wrestlers. The columnist, Tomomi Nagare (this is just one of those names I’m going to gratuituously mention frequently to remember better the unusual name reading), says you could argue this was an 遠因 for 国際’s shuttering 3 years later in 1981, and we can only speculate what Yoshihara’s reasoning for the handshake was. The author feels like it must have been a pre-meditated, intentional affront against Baba for some reason. But on the other hand Yoshihara reportedly told others later on that he just wanted some New Japan wrestlers is all and it was immature of Giant Baba to be angry about it. It doesn’t sound like Nagare is buying that excuse though.

There’s an interview with Yuna Manase, ahead of a title challenge she’s announced for ねらわれた学園2022 against Hartley Jackson for the スピリット・オブ・ガンバレ世界無差別級王座.
(Sidebar: Ganbare Pro Wrestling’s ネーミングセンス is really throwing me for a loop. I guess they just name events after movies?? I’ve seen ねらわれた学園! It’s a really wild and fun Nobuhiko Obayashi movie! Recommended! I have no idea what if anything it has to do with the event. It looks like they’ve got events named after like, Gunhed and Punch Drunk Love and Twin Peaks. I guess it does make me more interested in checking out what the show is like??)
Anyway, it’ll be a mixed-gender singles match but it sounds like to Manase isn’t intimidated and it’s just natural, after all, it is 無差別級 and Ganbare only has the one title. Sounds like she’ll live, and although she fought Jackson once in a Zero-1 match and describes being senton’d so hard shee peed, she’ll enjoy it and can win, and thinks it would be more interesting if she won so she wants to achieve the more interesting outcome and draw more eyes to Ganbare.

There’s an interview with Chilean luchadora Stephanie Vaquer, who wrestles mainly for CMLL and has amassed four championship belts from promotions in Mexico and the US. She’s looking to add a 5th, challenging Saori Anou, for Ice Ribbon’s top championship, the ICE×∞ Championship.
She says she’s a longtime fan of Japanese women’s wrestling, citing Mariko Yoshida as a particular favorite, and so she’s excited to be in Japan for the second time, and is enjoying very much things like authentic ちゃんこ and can read a bit of hiragana. So although she’s scheduled to return to Mexico soon, she definitely wants to be back and wants the Championship as a kind of passport to guarantee that 100%. She wears ram-style horns during her entrance, originally because she’s an Aries, and since Aries is the first of the Astrological signs, it fits with her “プリメーラ” identity because she’s often the “first Chilean wrestler to do X” etc.
There’s a note from Tsukasa Fujimoto who fought her in Mexico saying like, “she’s tough! Anou’s in a ピンチ!”

The costume column is about NJPW’s Hiromu Takahashi. He says that his extremely ド派手な gear is a conscious decision to lean into that and make an impact in audiences’ minds, since his small build wouldn’t draw attention on its own. His current leather jacket (with the band logo for Suicidal Tendencies on the back) is apparently a one-of-a-kind piece bought for about30万円 in New York. ラッカーフリークス does the spray art on his pants and apparently he used to describe the kind of 感じ he wanted but now he trusts them enough to just let them have at it entirely. Apparently the singer Sachiko Kobayashi is his costuming rival and he wants to outdo her in the flashy outfit department.

Keiji Mutoh’s column continues the discussion about factions. It’s a bit meandering and I didn’t super follow it. They talk about stuff like BATT’s surprisingly short tenure in New Japan because he left for All Japan shortly after its formation, and how he took along with him Satoshi Kojima even though Kojima was on BATT-rival faction Team 2000.

The industry column at the back talks about AJPW’s 50th anniversary show that happened, with comments from a referee, Kyohei Wada, who worked as ring staff at AJPW’s founding and has referee’d for 40+ years (interrupted a bit, but mostly for AJPW). There’s what amounts to a sort of miniature AJPW history column, as it talks about how Giant Baba died in 1999, and after him his wife Makoto Baba was in charge and there was the exodus that founded NOAH, then she brought in Keiji Mutoh who changed a lot of the feel, then Mutoh left with another big group of wrestlers to form Wrestle-1, then Jun Akiyama returned to run the company, before leaving last year for DDT and now someone named Tsuyoki Fukuda runs things. So AJPW history has been roughly 26 years with Giant Baba and 24 years now without. Wada says that it wouldn’t have been surprising if AJPW didn’t last after Baba, as it sounds like Baba didn’t intend for it to outlive him in the first place. But that longevity is important and to preserve it they must not be afraid to have the 51st year be the start of a new AJPW.
It sounds like at the peak of the 四天王 era for AJPW, they were running 日本武道館 6 times in a single year, a feat that was never possible even when Giant Baba was an in-ring star. Now though, this anniversary show was their first one there in over 18 years. It sounds like the #1 thing Wada attributes to that success of the 四天王 isn’t an in-ring quality (he says the in-ring quality now is the same as it was then) but a knack for humble trial and error, describing 四天王プロレス as a conscious realization and rectification of the fact that constant ego-driven disqualification-type results to prevent stars taking losses was driving away fans. That ability to notice mistakes and rectify them is what he recommends for today’s top stars.
It sounds like this 日本武道館 is in a way, the last Giant Baba AJPW show, in the sense that this is the last time they can bank on saved-up goodwill from the Baba legacy to drive a show like this. It’s up to not just current star and champion Kento Miyahara but everybody who steps in the ring to steer the direction ahead and find out if AJPW will be a frequent visitor to the Budokan once again.

4 Likes

I laughed twice at this, haha! You’re, uh, probably not wrong about “formerly and probably futurely”… And ブレッド・ハート…

There is only one man I know with a bread heart:

bread_dad


In other news, I finished the last half of TJPW’s Korakuen show! By which I mean the last match :sweat_smile:.

The main event was Yuka Sakazaki vs Billie Starkz for the Princess of Princess title. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I was expecting! I think I can see what Yuka sees in Billie.

Unsurprisingly, Billie lost, though she put up a good fight! Afterward, Miyu came out to challenge, though she had to bribe Yuka to get her to accept.

I did… kind of alright with the post-match, I think? It was pretty straightforward.

I struggled a bit with the beginning of Yuka’s first comment on the mic: “かわいくねー! あんな顔なのに、プロレススタイルは全然かわいくなくて。やっぱり途中で動きが鈍くなる部分とかもあるような、強い気持ちいい打撃が入ってきて.” That last sentence in particular, I really wasn’t sure about :sweat_smile:.

Sakazaki: "Not cute! Her face is cute, but her wrestling style isn’t cute at all! After all, she came in with good strong blows that slowed me down during the match. At the beginning, I wondered if I lacked fighting spirit, or if I was going to drop my guard and get taken in by that cute face of hers, but it didn’t turn out like that at all. Billie has fought young men and big women in the United States, so I think she’ll be a great big star in the future.”

“Thank you so much to everyone for coming to the show today. And everyone watching on Wrestle Universe, too. I think this was a very high-profile show. Please tell us what you thought about it on SNS and at the merch table!"

At this point, Yamashita enters, but Sakazaki ignores her and says, “That’s it!” Despite this, Yamashita steps into the ring.

Sakazaki: “Why are you coming up? I was about to leave.”

Yamashita: “Wait just a little longer. Yuka-chan, congratulations on your title defense. I’m sorry for barging in right after you finished, but” (holding back Sakazaki, who is trying to leave) “please listen to what I have to say right now. At Ittenyon next year, please have a singles match with me and put your belt on the line. Pretty please?”

Sakazaki: “You are Miyu Yamashita, right? We’ve known each other a long time, so naturally… I refuse.”

Yamashita: “Don’t leave! You’ve known me for a long time. It’s Ittenyon, right? Please put your Princess of Princess belt on the line!”

SakazakI: “No way!”

Then Miyu says: “どうしたらやってくれます? 逆に.” I had to read this a whole bunch of times to figure out I think what’s going on. Miyu accidentally messes up her くれます and あげます, doesn’t she?

Yamashita: “What will you give me to get you to do it? I mean, the other way around.”

Sakazaki: (in response to a voice outside the ring saying ‘a box of sweets!’) “Yes, I think I need some sweets.”

Yamashita: “Okay, okay. Then, how about cookies?”

Sakazaki: “Are you stupid? You’re trying to give me the same thing you gave me last time.”

Yamashita: “Then senbei? You like them, don’t you?”

Sakazaki: “I don’t want it. I prefer the black bean ones.”

Yamashita: “Okay… a melon!”

Sakazaki: “A melon?”

Yamashita: “It’s sweet, right?”

Sakazaki: “A Yubari King cantaloupe?”

Yamashita: “Yubari King.”

Sakazaki: “Ah… still no.”

Yamashita: “Okay, okay! Cream puffs! Cream puffs!” (inviting the crowd to chant)

Sakazaki: “…That has custard, huh?”

Yamashita: “Yes.” (in response to a voice outside the ring saying ‘double!’) “Double!”

Sakazaki: “Hmm… Well, I’ll wait until I see it.”

Yamashita: “Don’t decide here. I’ll get it to you right away.”

Sakazaki: “Will you bring it tomorrow? You’re going to be the one to deliver it, right?”

Yamashita: “Yes. Please!”

Sakazaki: “…Well, okay, then?”

Yamashita: “Okay, she said okay! At Ittenyon, please face me for the Princess of Princess belt. Thank you!”

Then Yuka says “…ます.” I’ve never seen this before, so I wasn’t exactly sure what she was saying, and had a little bit of a hard time googling it haha.

Sakazaki: “…Yes.”

Yamashita gives her a strong handshake. Then she stays for the photo opp before leaving.

Sakazaki: (with a dissatisfied expression) “Well, it can’t be helped. It’s cream puffs. That’s fine. All right. Then the title defense for Ittenyon is… decided? That’s it. We’re going to be gaining more and more and more momentum toward the end of the year, so please keep following us!”

She closes with: “Let’s go! Enjoy!”

In Yuka’s comments, I think I got most of it:

Sakazaki: “I successfully defended my belt. All right! Having so many kinds of interesting wrestlers come to TJPW, I really think that’s one of our assets. I hope we’re able to satisfy everyone with our matches, and also make ourselves happy. I’m so happy that I was able to defend my belt! But like I said on the mic, Billie is strong, and I know she’s wrestling in tough matches over there.”

Then she says: “やっぱり…すごいやっぱりって言ってる” and I got a bit stuck, haha.

“As it turns out… I totally called it.” (smiles) “I knew she was strong. And because of that, I want to have another match with her in the future, if we get the chance.”

In the second part, Yuka says:

(Concerning Yamashita)

“I got caught. I was like ‘why are you coming?’ Well, I can’t help it. She baited me into it with cream puffs. I think she’s a different Yamashita than when we fought before, and I think she’s become a really interesting wrestler, traveling around to different countries and holding that belt. It can’t be helped, but… I’ll defend the title against her at Ittenyon. Yuck!”

(Why are you so reluctant?)

“Because she’s Miyu Yamashita, right? I just don’t like the words in her name. I wonder why? The reason is just because she’s Miyu Yamashita.”

(Did you already have a challenger in mind for Ittenyon?)

“Right now we have a lot of overseas wrestlers coming and going, so I was in a bit of a mood for something like that again. Besides that, there’s Miu. I didn’t think Yamashita would come. The worst match came to me.”

Her last answer was a bit confusing to me. She said: “アイツはよく試合中に笑うんですけど。前闘った時はそんなに印象…これほど笑ってはなかったイメージなんですが。なのでその笑顔を見た時に私がどう思うかですね。それで結構変わってくるかなって気はします。なので対策っていったら、怒りのボルテージを上げておくことですかね.”

(What is your plan to counter Yamashita?)

“She often smiles during matches. When we fought before, I didn’t think she was smiling quite as much. So it depends on how I feel when I see that smiling face of hers. And I feel like it’ll change quite a bit. So, if I take any countermeasures, it’ll be to raise her anger to a higher voltage.”

Then Billie’s comments were in English! Hooray!

Billie: “This was a crazy experience that I will never forget. I’m so happy that I was able to come to Japan, this is truly—I’m living my dreams! I’m so happy right now, it’s insane. I hope this is not the end of me coming to Japan, because it has truly become one of my favorite places to wrestle. And I’m so thankful that here, on my very first trip to Japan, I’ve main-evented Korakuen Hall. Which, I believe I’m the youngest to main event in Korakuen Hall, to date. I’ve made history! I just hope that I made everyone back home proud. I’m carrying the name of Indiana on my back, and I will forever represent my home. Thank you to Yuka, and she deserves to be champion!”

I was like “there’s no way she’s the youngest person to main event Korakuen”, and sure enough, shupro’s translation specified “外国人選手”. This is not what she said, but it is probably what she meant :sweat_smile:.

Miyu’s comments were pretty straightforward, I thought?

Yamashita: “Somehow, Yuka-chan accepted my challenge at Ittenyon. For me, challenging for the Princess of Princess belt is really important, but even more than that, I always want to have a singles match with Yuka-chan. Recently, the number of people on the roster has been increasing, and the number of singles matches I get to have with the initial members: Nakajima, Rika, and Yuka-chan, has been decreasing. So every singles match is precious to me. The match at Ittenyon was decided, and… I haven’t had a (singles match with Sakazaki) since Saitama last year. That match was really special, of course, but even though I won it, I still have some regrets.”

Then she said: “その分においても、私はいまEVEのベルトを持ってますし、ミリーっていう強い相手を倒せて勢いっていうのは持ってるつもりだし.” That “その分においても” at the start was very tough for me! I really didn’t know what to do with it.

“But, putting all that aside, I have the EVE belt now, and I have some momentum from beating a strong opponent like Millie. This match with Yuka-chan, I felt within myself a strong desire to face her.”

And in the second part, she said:

(Both of you are champions, but is the Princess of Princess title the only one at stake?)

“I think so. We will have a singles match with just the Princess of Princess belt on the line.”

(Is Ittenyon still a special stage to you?)

“Yes, it is. We’re doing more and more venues that are bigger than Korakuen, but the January 4 Korakuen show is the place where I won the Princess of Princess belt for the first time. Because it’s a very special place, Yuka-chan somehow agreed to it. I think it’s really special that we can have that match with the Princess of Princess belt on the line.”

(It’ll also be the first time in three years that you will have a match with Sakazaki at Korakuen)

“We’re both getting stronger and stronger… Yuka-chan as well as I. When I watched the tournament this year and saw the match between Miu and Yuka-chan, I really felt like I had to work harder, too. I thought to myself that Yuka-chan is my eternal rival, and she’s someone that I always want to beat. Time has passed, and even though it has been three years, I think we’ve both been evolving. I think we can show a different fight since that match, and I think we have to surpass it.”

Honestly, I was a bit lukewarm on a Yuka vs Miyu title feud, but Miyu’s comments on it sold me on the idea more. It’s the same kind of stuff that Shoko was saying all last year, about how there are more wrestlers at that high level now, so there are less big match spots for the original four. And the Miu vs Yuka TPC match specifically being part of Miyu’s motivation, in the way that it was for Shoko… I feel like Miu shook all three of them in a way that is going to have lasting reverberations…

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Ahh, there it is! I was pondering for a while what the perfect Bread Hart joke to make would be, but got stuck on “the crust there is, the crust there was, the crust there ever will be.” Yours is much much better! :grin:

It’s a pity the transcription I assume went with a parenthetical here. This isn’t physically happening (they’re both standing at opposite ends of the ring at this point and Yuka isn’t motioning actively to leave), and I really like Yuka’s deadpan "断る"s. I dunno if you want to stray too much from the transcript but it seems like:
“Please listen to what I have to say” → “No.”
could be closer / funnier.

This is really really picky, but for “イッテンヨンだよ?”, I don’t know if “, right?” feels exactly right to me. The だよ is still asserting strongly it’s イッテンヨン, the questioning tone/mark (if that’s what was in the transcript) is with よ more I would say like “(so what are you going to do about it?)” than “(right?)”
I would probably slightly prefer “It’s Ittenyon!” Not really a big deal and neither is exactly perfect though.

Your reasoning had me convinced for a moment, but I don’t… think so… どうしたらやってくれます I think would mean like, “how can I get you to do it for me” like どうしたら is how and if I やってくれます, I receive you doing something for me. so “how can I get you to do it for me?” which makes sense in context.
Whereas if I やってあげます, I’m doing something for someone. But here, Miyu doing something for someone isn’t the end goal that she’s having trouble with, so どうしたらやってあげます? / “how can I do something for you?” doesn’t make sense, I think.
I googled the phrase for an example, and found a yahoo answers page that uses the phrase どうしたらやってくれます to ask about like, how to get a boyfriend to play a thumb game with them, I think. Which seems about in-line with what Miyu is asking (but with Yuka instead of a boyfriend and an important championship match instead of a thumb game)

My guess is the 逆に is about how like, she’s turning the tables on the negotiation. Like instead of cajoling her she’s asking how to butter her up.

My guess is it’s an extremely half-hearted echoing of Miyu’s よろしくお願いします!ありがとうございます!
Like what she would be saying here if she felt good about the match was something like that ending in ます but because she’s very wary it just ended up “'ます…”
That’s my guess anyway! Or she trailed off. She says it very unnaturally either way so I don’t think it’s a complete unit.

Haha, she’s just noticing she’s been saying やっぱり a lot in this promo!
Like やっぱり - hey, I’m sure saying やっぱり a lot! - (back to what I was saying)

This one has the same nitpick I made earlier about “,right?” and it’s a good example I think of what I meant since her tone changes super suddenly and pronouncedly here! Like her answer has a very “DUH??, it’s Miyu Yamashita!!” sort of tone that I don’t think is conveyed with “, right?”

For this bit also I think my feeling is the 名前の単語だけで is like, “Miyu Yamashita” as a word only (beyond what it signifies). Like something like “just the sound of her name is unpleasant to me”

I think the reporter asks with the context of like, “looking at recent matches of hers, do you have plan to counter Yamashita?”
And so I think that Yuka’s saying like – her impression watching Miyu’s matches recently is that (in contrast to further back matches she had with her) Miyu smiles a lot during them now.

Also I think it’s Yuka raising the voltage of her own anger, probably. (since the おく connotes like, preparing in advance. What’s the countermeasure to maybe being thrown off guard by a smiling Yamashita → steel herself with rage beforehand so it has no effect).

I guess I don’t really have justification for it, but I think you got the sense right.

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Also, some brief thoughts on various shows I’ve watched, for my own notes. (I guess I don’t need to post these, but hey)

Stardom 第12回 ゴッデス・オブ・スターダム・タッグリーグ

I… haven’t actually been watching this!
I made a 星取表 and watched the opening show, but beyond that nothing… I’ve been following the various storylines running through it fairly well on twitter though, and it seems like a really fun tournament! I remember saying some time ago that Stardom didn’t have consistent tag teams, and I don’t think that’s really true anymore, because any tag team division with FWC, Meltear, Black Desire, and Maihime in it has an extremely solid core foundation, and then there’s plenty of fun on top of that of various combinations and tag team outfits (like Giulia and Thekla’s team, Mafia Bella looks super duper cool, and the odd couple learning to be work with each other storyline between Lady C and Mai Sakurai looked like so much fun). I should endeavor to watch at least say, the Korakuen show(s) and the final because I bet they’d be a lot of fun even if I know how it ends.


NJPW Battle Autumn '22

I watched one show from this tour: the one with that Tomohiro Ishii / Ren Narita match that sounded real cool. It was cool! Although I think I was working at the time and got distracted…
The biggest thing I remember from that show was cheering being okay, and watching Young Lions get cheers for the first time! I think there was a thing where like… Nakashima maybe? Was pulled in to like, be the Sayuri Nanba style “super cool 選手” for the crowd to practice cheers and boos on, and it was oddly really touching.


NJPW Wrestle Kingdom IV

This is the 2010 イッテンヨン and I decided to just watch the whole thing on my slow Shinsuke Nakamura career retrospective, pretending that the TNA-related matches (that are the only ones not on NJPW World) don’t exist.
At this point these Wrestle Kingdom shows still heavily have involvement from other companies (if I knew that was basically the norm rather than the exception I mighta been less shocked about that NOAH crossover earlier this year). In this case, there are a lot of NJPW vs. NOAH matches, like Tiger Mask vs. Marufuji, Tanahashi vs. Shiozaki, etc. I think I enjoyed most of these, although honestly I don’t have specific memories (maybe I was doing something else).
One thing I do definitely remember: there’s a match with old-timers on here where Abdullah the Butcher gets a hold of Iizuka’s Iron Finger. Momentous!
Also – this is a little embarrassing, but in my head, not really knowing anything about him, I thought Muhammad Yone’s name was like, a joke, for a funny disco man. You know, like, “Muhammad, よね?” But here he has the same name and is more like, an angry cornrows fighting man. So I was completely misinterpreting that.

The highlight for me was definitely the Shinsuke Nakamura match! It’s with Yoshihiro Takayama, and this process of looking back through these enhanced it a lot for me because it was easy to see the echoes and import of their match together that launched Nakamura’s career trajectory as a super rookie, and how different this match is now that he’s an established equal fighting Takayama on his own terms instead of desperately eking out a win. Takayama is also a great big wrestler - he’s SO intimidating.


NJPW Wrestle Kingdom V

This is the 2011 イッテンヨン and again, I watched the whole thing pretending the non-njpwworld TNA matches didn’t exist.
I actually surprisingly super enjoyed this one! Out of all the older/non-contemporary wrestling shows I’ve watched (including all the old WWF and WCW shows I watched the year I got into wrestling when I had way too much freetime and a WWE Network subscription I wasn’t jaded about yet), this is the first one that I feel like passed the marker from “enjoyable from a filling-in-history perspective” to “enjoyable as just a really good show.” There’s been individual matches that have passed that line, obviously, but usually especially with those WWF/WCW shows, there’s some not great or mediocre and low-context elements preventing a show from cohering without the element of “this is important to today’s landscape which I’m actively following.” And this is just close enough to the NJPW I know and got into, I suppose, and the general quality is high enough, that it just slipped past into the “just enjoying wrestling” part of my brain.

Part of that is definitely because the card’s filled with first appearances (in this set of shows I’ve been watching!) of some exciting names! The Jr. Heavyweight title match for the show is Prince Devitt vs. Kota Ibushi, Kenny Omega is on a lower card match, Tama Tonga is there in a very “Superfly” gimmick I didn’t know he had pre Bullet Club, La Sombra is there, and there’s a jarringly Goto-y “岡田かずちか”

Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki (and Jushin Thunder Liger being around) also reminds me how much I miss matches with them being reliable big matches. I ~ LOVE ~ peak swirls and rooster tail hair Minoru Suzuki.

The match that sticks out most in my memory though, is again the Shinsuke Nakamura match. His match against Go Shiozaki here, I thought was great! Nakamura is in Chaos and has the Boma-ye by this point, and while I’m usually not super conscious of limb-working storylines, I thought Go Shiozaki trying to disable the Boma-ye by chopping constantly at Nakamura’s knee worked great here, and made me appreciate Shiozaki more.

The last element I liked about the show was – I mentioned this a little elsewhere but – this is the first show of these NJPW ones I’ve watched (and still only – the ones I’ve watched since, including partial ones, they go back to how it was before) where at the end of the show they just give Tanahashi a mic instead of having a reporter there to blandly ask questions prompting the stuff he would just say anyway. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the style today, but the interviewer version almost always feels awkward to me, and there’s little better in wrestling than just Tanahashi talking from the heart to a super vocal crowd and ending with 愛してます.


Stardom 広島女神祭り~きんさいスターダム~

You know, I sometimes like to pretend to myself that by watching a lot of shows quite late, I’m protecting myself in a way from bad things happening, with the logic being that if something truly horrible happened on a show I probably would have heard about it beforehand or they wouldn’t show it at all.
Anyway, this isn’t to that level or anything, but it does put a lie to that line of thinking on a smaller scale, since I was idly browsing twitter enough to have figured out who won all the important matches on this show beforehand, but I hadn’t heard about the very unpleasant injury on the show. So while I enjoyed the show okay, it was definitely heavily hampered by that worst of both worlds situation, and by far my most lasting memory of the show is the injury, where Saya Kamitani went for a phoenix splash and landed at a bad angle, missing, so she went for it again and landed at a bad angle again, this time landing her knee DIRECTLY on Mina Shirakawa’s mouth. While obviously I feel bad for Shirakawa in that situation, honestly I felt as much or more bad for Kamitani, since I have to imagine that was one of those “whoops! One more time! Oh fuck I didn’t stop and think and I made it exponentially worse” type of situations, and that has to be a way worse and more guilt-inducing feeling since you can point exactly at that momentary decision as where things went wrong – all while involving a move tied directly to her wrestling identity, that exclusively gets used at already incredibly tense and exhausting moments. Just really rough all around!! It made me realize: A) Oh right those moves where the person taking it just lies there, still involves trusting that someone flinging their entire body at you really really precisely is gonna nail that perfectly, and B) as much as I like post-match promos, it does add another thing the performers have to keep track of and be responsible for… It wasn’t fun watching them both still go through the planned promo interaction while obviously shaken by how the match ended…

Anyway, Syuri and Maika definitely did their best and helped raise the spirits after. I’m also glad Natsuko Tora’s recovered!


Stardom Gold Rush 2022

Is this the first one of these they’ve done? I feel like I have a vague memory of something money related in the past… The one way I will whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment that Stardom is “fast-paced” is the way a show like this will come and go in the space of like a month, tops, like “HEY WE’RE DOING A MONEY TOURNAMENT NOW OK JUST SO YOU KNOW.” The big drama definitely simmers, but the small “here’s what we’re doing this week” dramas go by real quick.

The main thing I think about the Gold Rush tournament is it’s weird that storyline-wise, Giulia was the only one with a concrete and laudable end goal for the money, but Stars won – like… yay these protagonists I like a lot won the money!! But I wanted to hear more about that cool employment company idea??
One thing I like about Stardom trying these gimmick matches is it seems like they aren’t afraid to mess around with the rules to see what sticks, in this case with that “press the button to raise and lower the money ball” rule, which was kinda fun but seems like a lot for the wrestlers to keep track of, leading to the very choice impromptu “symbolic remaining plastic half of the money ball” match moment. That’s definitely the thing I’ll remember from this show. In an endearing way!

It’s a little weird in retrospect that KAIRI/Kamitani and Syuri/Hayashishita were overshadowed by the silly moneyball match! I remember liking them. It’s still a pity the KAIRI title shot got delayed from when it was originally slated - the IWGP championship coming up made it clearer no titles were gonna change hands.

Hanazono seemed fun.


TJPW All Rise '22

I enjoyed this show! I find with the middle-size TJPW shows I enjoy them plenty but don’t tend to have much specific to say about them.
With this one, the thing that stood out to me the most was how well TJPW spotlights visiting foreign wrestlers. I was really impressed with how well the three commentators provided context for Millie and Billie. Maybe it’s just since I still had that AEW Dark Regina di Wave match that I watched in the back of my mind, but I really enjoyed how all three commentators felt knowledgeable and informed and could each provide slightly different perspectives on why, for example Billie Starkz is a big deal and will be a future star so this match is important. There’s a lot of ね!s back and forth as they provide info. Really nice! I also enjoyed Yuka having to be bribed into a challenge acceptance.


NJPW/Stardom Historic X-Over

I recall I was originally going to watch this as like a special occasion wrestling day following Gold Rush… but I didn’t realize it was still a timed PPV at the time (and I had a headache all day that day anyway), so I ended up putting it off until after All Rise. Since my sleep schedule doesn’t remotely line up with showtimes in Japan, I kinda wish watching shows live wasn’t the main carrot on a stick to go with the PPV version, if they’re gonna go with that model. But I guess I don’t know what carrot I would put in its place, and it is probably fair I guess to not put every single thing instantly on the subscription sites…
I enjoyed this a lot overall I think! Trying to compare it to another NJPW crossover show in recent memory, I think this felt a lot less like, “special one-off festival day” type of vibe, than Forbidden Door was… and I actually think that was to Historic X-Over’s benefit. Because while Forbidden Door counter-intuitively kinda broke my AEW PPV stroke, since instead of “it’s continuing from the last show, which I bought and had a great time with!” now I feel “the last AEW show I watched was Forbidden Door, a one-off that I thought was pretty fun but probably not as good as just a NJPW (or AEW) show ultimately” and then I don’t get around to buying the PPV – so Historic X-Over… kinda just feeling like a regular Stardom or NJPW show, doesn’t have that drawback. If that makes sense.
I was trying to think what it felt like, and I think it felt like… like 75% of a regular NJPW show and 25% of a regular Stardom show, that got mixed together a little. Since at least in the back half, it sure felt like they were weighting things a little heavily towards NJPW. Which I mean – if the goal was to make a show with a gender ratio aligned to the expectations of American fans, knocked it out of the part with 3:1 amirite!! But truly though if I’m grumpy about anything it’s that I learned a lot about like, whatever the United Empire is doing, but all the ongoing Stardom storylines seemed to be subsumed into the crossover matches – like a NJPW fan would surely be forgiven for not getting that Syuri/Giulia was the most important story thing going when they were paired with Lawlor and ZSJ.

… But I did enjoy the crossover stuff. I knew we’d get a double manji-gatame Zack Sabre Giulia moment and was not disappointed! (although I slightly wish she stayed in her Spider Web version instead of transitioning to his – I think the Spider Web is just the coolest). The Starlight Kid and El Desperado in matching masks were incredibly cool, and Hayashishita and Tanahashi doing air guitar together was incredibly cool in a completely different way. The gender interaction stuff I thought was mostly ok - like I liked that El Desperado is exactly the kind of character to hassle Natsupoi and still seem cool somehow. Taichi/Tam is a really weird dynamic though.

They should have Iida or Super Strong Stardom Machine win a Ranbo one of these days. They both put in so much work! They should have Iida win a bunch of matches one of these days, just in general. That’s what I think.

So I felt mild to pretty positive about the show, but I thought Mayu/KAIRI was really great and tied everything together! I was rooting for Mayu, but with a match like that you really can’t go wrong either way. KAIRI vs. Tam should also be one hell of a Wrestle Kingdom main event amirite! – I can already feel that frustrating “hey this seems like it should be way more prominently featured” feeling simmering… that’s still the one main thing I like about the separated promotion model, quelling that feeling.

Oh yeah! P.S. I was gonna mention the commentary positively – Miki Motoi and Milano Collection AT both on color commentary are a dream team in my book, and I liked that it wasn’t structured at all like “here’s the NJPW commentator, and here’s the Stardom commentator” since they’re both completely knowledgeable about either.
I was a little miffed when they swapped out Motoi for Tanahashi though!
Also – seeing Waka Tsukiyama on English Commentary made me tempted to switch over to that a little! That would surely be fun.

P.P.S.: I completely forgot to mention the Ospreay/Umino US title match! I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think Shota Umino is probably the first returning young lion where I can remember him specifically (at least in name) as a young lion when I was watching, and it seems like there’s a whole lot riding on him being cool, so I guess it’s a good thing he’s a Death Rider har har. I’m glad he does seem like he’s got the makings of a star.
I was curious if maybe in kayfabe he wasn’t Red Shoes’ son, but it was part of the drama of the match and they talked about it directly on commentary, so nope. I don’t want to impugn anyone’s impartiality, but I feel like if I were the International Wrestling Grand Prix, I probably wouldn’t sanction a match where the referee was one of the wrestler’s dad, no matter how red his shoes are.


Stardom in Showcase Vol. 3

Boy the way they do streaming shows does not play well with these Stardom in Showcase shows! This time they uploaded it as a single video so I thought for a brief moment maybe it would be uncut, but then the very short runtime betrayed that it’s got the “cut all pre and post match” worst type of archive video editing style applied to it. Perhaps someday I will know what is behind those airhorns that they don’t want us hearing… But again I’m just not time-aligned with the live shows and it feels weird to go out of my way to buy a PPV when I’m already subscribed and it wouldn’t even be live.
I thought it was pretty fun though! I have no specific memories. I mighta been a bit wrestled-out by this point…

P.S.: on further reflection, I remember that I enjoyed the paint-heavy hardcore match with Prominence a lot, and I thought that the 髪切り match where the winner gets the haircut (from a collaborating stylist) was a neat twist on the concept. There were plenty of fun soccer-related antics as well.


NJPW G1 CLIMAX XXI ~THE INVINCIBLE FIGHTER~

I watched the whole final show of this 2011 edition of the G1 Climax. It was a pretty good time! There’s two Shinsuke Nakamura matches, against Minoru Suzuki (which features Suzuki looking scary with a profusely bleeding nose post-Boma-ye), and Tetsuya Naito, which were both really good, especially the latter (I loved the missed Stardust Press into immediate Boma-ye to the back of the head spot!), and the show is bookended by two Shinsuke Nakamura / Hiroshi Tanahashi matches (on different, relatively minor shows where I only watched those matches) that are so good I’m pretty sure I own an entire non-fiction book talking about them (in the latter one Tanahashi loses a front tooth early on, and the crowd is going absolutely wild by the end of it).
And hey, there’s a Golden Lovers match! As they challenge for the jr. tag belts against Apollo 55, the team of Prince Devitt and Ryusuke Taguchi.

One thing that shocked me during the show, was I spotted a familiar face:


The head of Bushiroad is in the front row, a year or two or so before they buy NJPW outright. If I’d been more observant, I would have notice the huge “Bushiroad presents” attached to the name of the show, as looking into it, Bushiroad was a major sponsor of the tournament so clearly they were already giving NJPW lots of money and eventually buying it wasn’t out of the blue… but my headcanon is definitely that it was this moment of delight at being front row to a Toru Yano / Giant Bernard spot that clinched the decision.

Something else I was amused by on the show is there’s a wrestler just called “Strong Man” who is probably the most ridiculously muscular and out of proportion professional wrestler I’ve ever seen, which is really, really saying something. That’s not remotely my aesthetic, although he seemed fine enough as that I guess, and here beats Hirooki Goto, which I also find amusing.


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This is an amazing thread! Note sure how I missed it until now.

I’m starting to get into Ice Ribbon recently. Watching it makes me wish I was fluent in Japanese which is good motivation!

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Welcome! :slight_smile:

One Ice Ribbon-related post I remember that you might be interested in is this one with a Shupro feature for Ice Ribbon’s 15 anniversary running down its history. I keep meaning to get more into Ice Ribbon but haven’t really gotten around to it, even though some of my favorite things going in wrestling originated there!

Welcome! And welcome to the forums! :blush:

I haven’t seen much Ice Ribbon, though some of their shows look really neat! It’d be great to add Ice Ribbon to the info section at the top of the thread, but when I drafted the post initially, I didn’t know enough about it to add it :sweat_smile:. Feel free to add it (or anything else!) to those posts!

And, yeah, feel free to post about any Japanese pro wrestling here! And don’t get scared away by the long posts! The thread is a little TJPW heavy because I accidentally ended up becoming a fan translator for it this year and I’ve been getting some extensive help from rodan on the translations :sweat_smile:, but I think almost all of us watch at least a few companies, haha.

I can definitely confirm that wanting to understand wrestling is great motivation for learning Japanese! It has repeatedly inspired me to really push myself to learn more.

Finished TJPW’s December 3 show! Short and sweet one this time! It’s 甘い in a very literal sense.

Kamiyu teamed with Millie McKenzie against Shoko and Suzume. The backstage comments to this one were hilarious because Millie spoke in English, and then Kamiyu translated for her. I wondered how faithful Kamiyu’s translation was, and, well…

naitoyikes

Kamifuku: (in English): “We won!” (to Millie): “How were your TJPW days?”

Millie: (in English) “I loved it. I’m so grateful to be back here, and hopefully… I’d love to be able to come back, I’m so grateful for the opportunity, and I want to prove what more I can do here.”

ミリー「(上福が通訳)また日本来たいし、日本もサッカー勝ったことだし波に乗ってんじゃね? 東京女子に帰ってきて何回目かだけど、またサッカーがあるたびに呼んでください」

Kamifuku: (translating for Millie) “I want to come to Japan again, and Japan also won the soccer game, so I’m just going with the flow, huh? I’ve come back to TJPW I don’t know how many times now, but please call me whenever there’s soccer again.”

Kamifuku: “From Yuki: I really hope that everyone is healthy and happy, and I sincerely hope that Millie-san is able to leave and return home safely.”

I had a bit of trouble with Kamiyu’s middle chunk of lines there, but I understood enough of it to laugh, haha! Fun bilingual bonus with this one!

The main event of the show was the only other match with comments. The match was a six women preview tag: Miyu, Itoh, & Moka vs Yuka, Hikari, & Arisu.

After the match, the winning team spoke on the mic:

Yamashita: “It feels like it’s started. After Korakuen, I brought her a box of cream puffs, with the challenge at Ittenyon attached. Today, having that match with Yuka-chan, I felt the beginning of that exhilarating excitement.”

Itoh: “That’s great!”

Yamashita: “For sure. But Arisu and Hikari are also really strong, and Moka and Itoh are getting stronger and stronger. I’m the EVE champion, though, so I want to do my best not to lose.”

Itoh: “Congrats!”

Yamashita: “Thank you! Do you have anything to say, Moka?”

Miyamoto: “It has been a long time since we’ve been able to wrestle in Yokohama…”

Yamashita: “You’re right, it has been a while. Itoh, do you have anything to add? You went to America, right?”

Itoh: “Yes, I did. Oh, I’m going to Malaysia next week! Because of that, I won’t be here, sorry.”

Then Miyu said, “久しぶりの横浜で、もう年末に…なってきてはないか。でも近づいてきて.” I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with the “なってきてはないか,” haha.

Yamashita: “We’re in Yokohama for the first time in a long time, and it’s already the end of the year… Well, it’s not here yet. But it’s getting closer. Looking ahead to Ittenyon, I’m going to do my best, and for the remainder of 2022, we’re all going to work hard. To close, Moka is here, too, so the three of us will do it together, okay?” (to Moka) “Nice smile, great job!”

They close with: “Limits?” “Don’t set them!”

In her post-match comments, Miyu starts by saying, “私はいろいろシュークリームの押し問答がありましたけど、まぁ承諾してくれて。そこからの初めてユカちゃんと絡むということで、久しぶりに絡んで始まった感というか.”

I was a bit confused by the 初めて in the second sentence. I couldn’t quite figure out what/when she was referring to. I think everything else went okay, though?

Yamashita: “We had a long back and forth over the cream puffs, but, well, she agreed. That was where I first feuded with Yuka-chan, so this feels like beginning anew and feuding with her again for the first time in a long time. We don’t have much time until Ittenyon, but I’m really excited. Of course, there are some things I have to take countermeasures against, but today, I think I started off just feeling excited. I was able to win! Well, WE were able to win, thanks to my teammates. I want to keep my momentum and win the belt at Ittenyon, and I’m aiming for becoming double champion.”

Miyamoto: “Today was a 6-women tag match, and teaming up with these two has given me a lot of encouragement. I really want to become stronger, too. I’m going to work even harder!”

Itoh: “Itoh will be in Yamashita’s corner, at Ittenyon.”

Yamashita: “Wait, before that, I just remembered something. In Hamamatsu, I have an EVE title match, against Rhio who is coming from England. Last time she came to TJPW, I was in another country and I didn’t get to meet her. So we’re facing each other for the first time, and the match was set very quickly. That’s happening before Ittenyon, so I have to psych myself up. If I don’t overcome this, I won’t be able to become a double champion, so I want to do my best.”

Itoh: “I won’t be there next week.”

Yamashita: “Hey! You should come!”

Itoh: “I’m not going!”

Miyamoto: “I’ll go!”

Yamashita: “Please!”

Itoh: “It’s okay, Moka-chan. You don’t have to force yourself.”

Here’s the second part:

(This is your first match against Rhio?)

Yamashita: “It’s the first time, yes. I met her the last time I was in England, but this will be my first time fighting her.”

(What was your impression of her?)

“Well, I totally haven’t seen any of her matches. When it gets a little closer… I mean, it’s already happening next week…”

Itoh: “Hey, I had a title match with her!”

Yamashita: “Really? Tell me about it later.”

Itoh: “She’s just big and really strong. That’s all I can really give you.”

Yamashita: “I’m going to go home and watch that match, and come up with a plan. So I don’t have any impression of her at the moment.”

In the other team’s comments, the last part of Yuka’s first line confused me: “今回は負けちゃったけど、おのおの力つけていこうかなと思います.”

Sakazaki: “I feel like the three of us were a good team. Thank you. We lost this time, but I think we should all work on improving our strength.”

Hikari: “I really wanted us to win the first preview match together. Whenever Yuka-san has a preview match, I’m never able to be useful.”

Sakazaki: “That’s not true!”

Hikari: “I’m really frustrated. But I’m still going to follow after Yuka-san.”

Sakazaki: “I’m glad, about today. What a relief!”

Hikari: “Arisu-chan did her best, too.”

Endo: “I’m often asked to wrestle in preview matches, even though I’ll definitely lose. It really makes me feel like I have to keep growing.”

Sakazaki: “But, you know, it’s also good experience to face someone who is preparing for a title match.”

Endo: “That’s true…”

Sakazaki: “It all adds up.”

In the second part, I think I got the first half:

(You got the cream puffs, but are you feeling optimistic about the title match?)

“No, not at all! But I can’t give back what I already ate. It can’t be helped, so I will do my best.”

(Were they good?)

“They were delicious!”

Then Yuka says, “なんかシュークリームって中にぶちゅって入ってるじゃないですか。なんかはみ出んばかりのカスタードが上にドーンって乗ってて、心ばかしのシューの皮の部分が乗ってて.” I can tell that she’s describing the cream puffs, but couldn’t really figure out a lot of the specifics, haha. DeepL actually had some pretty good metaphors in there, so I just used what they had without really knowing how accurate it is :sweat_smile:.

“There’s just something about the filling in cream puffs, isn’t it? There was a big dollop of custard on top, and a hearty portion of puff pastry wrapped around it. Proportionally, it was about 120% custard. I was totally satisfied. It was so good! There were four of them, and I gave one to Yamashita. They were 120% custard!”

Translating this made me really, really crave cream puffs…

And that’s it for this show!

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I would maybe nitpick that “going with the flow” could be more literal here – I think “riding that same wave” would be literally the same and would convey the meaning better - like I think the idea is being sympatico somehow with Japan’s national team who won helped contribute to her victory today.

In 行ったり帰ったり, the 行’ing and 帰’ing are separate. And she says また and makes this going-back-and-forth hand gesture:
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So I would say rather than hoping Millie san safely leaves and returns home, it’s hoping Millie san safely leaves and comes back sometime.

I think you’ve got the feeling. My impression is the もう年末に…なってきてはないか。is commenting
/ confirming with the others on how it’s already the end of the year, and then でも近づいてきて is softening it, and that merits a quicker confirmation.
Only mentioning anything here at all just because I don’t think the “Well, it’s not here yet” is literally there and so mentioning it in case that was for the “なってきてはないか。” I think it’s two beats, like something like “It’ll already be the end of the year… isn’t it? Well, getting closer to it anyway.”

For そこからの初めてユカちゃんと絡む, I think an Xの初めてY would be a Y that’s first X, like an example I found is a book called パパからの初めての手紙/“First Letter From My Dad.” So in this case I think it would be the first time she’s 絡む’d with Yuka starting from a cream puff negotiation.

After that, watching the video I don’t think she’s got a fully formed train of thought as it seems like her tone noticeably changes as she thinks of something. So it ends up kinda different between the video and the transcript I’d say – the 始まった感 part in the video is in reference to like, the match they just had rather than the verbal reasons before it, since she mentions 前哨戦.
I feel like there’s three ideas that didn’t quite hook up to each other directly:

  1. it’s the first time she’s 絡む’dwith Yuka そこから,
  2. It’s the first time she’s 絡む’d with her in a while.
  3. it feels like it’s begun, the 前哨戦 have begun

and so it just kinda ends with the というか in the transcript.
That’s my impression anyway.

Out of curiosity, did you mean “be in Yamashita’s corner literally”? It sounds like she says 応援行くto me which sounds like maybe she’ll just (showing up to) cheer for her, in which case it might not be the best expression to use when there’s a literal corner she could be in :sweat_smile: - but I’m not really sure (and I don’t know who usually seconds for whom) so if it was meant literally that’s fine.

I think that seems fine

I think she’s talking up the cream puffs she got like saying – 大体, cream puffs are like this, with something inserted in the middle:
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but the cream puffs she got are like this:
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… with a huge dollop of custard ladled onto an open pastry…
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… and then a little thing of pastry put on top to simulate what in your average cream puff would be the original top/lid of the pastry.
So you open it up and are like “dang! This is proportionally 120% custard!”
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大満足!
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A thing I think I’d correct specifically is I would say the 心ばかしのシューの皮の部分, is like, a token of a piece of pastry. Rather than a hearty one! It seems like 心ばかり is most often used a as a phrase for like, talking down a gift you’re giving someone. And in any case it certainly seems like she’s emphasizing the relative smallness of the pastry in comparison to the custard!

Her description seems accurate!
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I know what you mean… I might have to stop by Beard Papa’s this weekend…

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