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

I watched way, way too many wrestling shows over the past few days, haha. Sounds like you also watched some, @GoldenAzazel? What were your opinions? I’m going to write up a bunch about the standout matches for my wrestling journal, so I’ll have more thoughts forthcoming. As it stands right now, these are the specific matches I have things to say about (though there were plenty of other matches I enjoyed!):

3.30 Kota Ibushi vs “Speedball” Mike Bailey (GCW Bloodsport)
3.30 Chris Brookes & Yoshihiko vs Mao & Shunma Katsumata (DDT)
3.31 Magical Sugar Rabbits (Mizuki & Yuka Sakazaki) vs 12100000 (Maki Itoh & Miyu Yamashita) (TJPW)
3.31 Moonlight Express (Mao & “Speedball” Mike Bailey) vs East West Express (Jordan Oliver & Nick Wayne) (GCW vs DDT)
3.31 Kazusada Higuchi vs Starboy Charlie (GCW vs DDT)
3.31 Pheromones (Danshoku Dieno & Yuki Iino) vs BUSSY (Effy & Allie Katch) (GCW vs DDT)
3.31 El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Komander (ROH)
3.31 Kota Ibushi vs. Joey Janela (GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break)

I started doing the translations for the shows, and the first one was for the TJPW match at WrestleCon SuperShow on March 30! I didn’t actually watch this one because I had enough on my plate with the other stuff I was watching, and I didn’t want to get a Highspots subscription (I think this is where it was?).

But they uploaded two comments videos for it, so I thought I’d try my hand at tackling the translations, though I had no shupro transcripts to help me for these, so I was mostly on my own. Scary!

I’ll spoiler guard these because it’s a super recent show:

Kamiyu/Aino/Mizuki/Shoko/Misao:

Mizuki: (in English) “America, HAPPY HAPPY!”

All: (in English) “HAPPY HAPPY!”

Misao: “We won!”

All: (in English) “Hero! Hero! Hero!”

Nakajima: (in English) “I am Big Kaiju!”

Aino: “That was exciting, huh?”

All: “Exciting!”

Kamifuku: (in English) “Yeah, so please watch FIRE TV tomorrow.”

All: (in English) “Tomorrow!”

Aino: “FITE TV, watch it!”

Kamifuku: “Sorry, did you hear FIRE TV? It’s FITE TV.”

Mizuki: “It’s FITE TV!”

Kamifuku: “FITE TV, make sure you have it right, I’m so, so, so sorry. FIRE TV, what even?”

All: (in English) “FIRE!”

I wasn’t at all confident about Kamiyu’s last two lines there, haha :sweat_smile:.

Raku/Miu/Rika/Hikari/Nao:

Rika: “The match is over! We got beat up, but we got everyone really excited! We’re really happy to meet fans from all over the world!” (in English) “Thank you so much!”

Hikari: “I want to come back again.”

Rika: “But, there’s also tomorrow. Everyone, watch on WRESTLE UNIVERSE, or maybe come see us!”

All: “We’ll be waiting!”

There was a lot I wasn’t quite sure about here, too :sweat_smile:.

It’s extremely funny to me that both sets of wrestlers got the name of the platform hosting their PPV wrong in different ways, haha.

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So far I’ve watched Bloodsport, DDT Goes Hollywood, RoH Supercard of Honor, NXT Stand and Deliver, and Wrestlemania night 1.

I really enjoyed Speedball v Ibushi from Bloodsport, and Takeshita v Yuki Ueno from DDT.

RoH I didn’t think had a bad match on the card, and WM was pretty good too. Owens and Zayn v The Usos was tremendous.

I need to watch the TJPW show and GCW v DDT now

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The first part sounds to me like “ファイヤーティーヴィーって言うた”
言うた rather than 言った seems to be a kansaiben thing, but I could see someone as slang-intensive as Kamiyu (and around enough kansai people in TJPW) saying it probably (or I’m just mishearing of course). In any case I think this is closer:
“oh - I’m sorry, I said FIRE TV! It’s FITE TV!”

FIRE TV, what even?

It sounds to me like she says here “ファイヤーティーヴィーはあれのわ” as like, explanation for her mistake - she mixed it up with the amazon smart tv brand:
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I’d put it as like, “FIRE TV is that other thing!”

The other one earlier in the line her starting to laugh kinda interrupts it and makes it to hard to be sure but I feel like she’s just apologizing again for accidentally saying the wrong thing, since it sounds like it ends in a て that would go into the ごめんなさい. Not sure exactly what the verb would be if so though.

Hikari: “I want to come back again.”

I’m not sure exactly what she says here, it doesn’t sound straightforwardly like また来たいですね but I’m not sure exactly how, and it sounds like Nao responds to the ね with a straightforward また来たい so probably it amounts to that anyway…

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週刊プロレス No.2220 (from December 2022)

There’s an interview by Michael Nakazawa with Kenny Omega following his announced challenge for Will Ospreay’s IWGP US Heavyweight Championship.
It’ll have been 4 years since his last match in NJPW, why come back? Omega says it’s because he’s disappointed watching New Japan since he’s been gone since it’s been lacking something - him, and the sheer adoration the fans showed him, as though he were a god amongst mortals on the roster. Also they’re paying him a lot.
He says no 外国人選手 stepped up while he was gone, and Tanahashi lost his championship in his first defense. There have been good things too of course - his 親友 Kota Ibushi won the IWGP heavyweight belt and fulfilled his dreams, for one.
They talk about a 2015 match in PWG between Omega and Ospreay, and Omega casts Ospreay then as a boy finding himself in front of a god he reveres, and admirably confronting him head-on, instead of turning and running or prostrating himself in supplication.
Omega says the difference between him and Ospreay is Omega has been declared the best in the most magazines, the most countries, and from the most world championship reigns, out of virtually everyone on earth. Ospreay lacks that basis, and yet he’s still under the impression that he’s the best. Omega says he’s not going to try to make Ospreay understand that distunction because Ospreay is stubborn and doesn’t have the brains to understand it at all, but he intends to take back what’s his (the US title) and make no mistake that he didn’t feel the need to do that when Cody or Juice Robinson had it - there’s something specifically irritating about Ospreay having it. Omega says he’ll win the belt and it will be his personal property and choice of defence and where to go with it will be up to him. There’s no one who stands out as possible defenses, but there are people who are mistakenly under the impression they’re at his level.
The interviewer asks about Omega’s 盟友 Kota Ibushi (who is out injured) and Omega says さすが Shupro for making sure to ask about Ibushi, when New Japan interviews don’t touch on him since he’s a sensitive subject right now. Omega talks about the emotional toll and anxiety caused by major injuries, and says that whether Ibushi returns to the ring or not, he’s got charmisma, and to Kenny he’s a 特別な存在 and he will continue to support him no matter what form that takes. Then it just says that he continues to say something in a whisper.
There’s an included supplement Nakazawa report about Kenny giving him supplements to give to Ibushi when Nakazawa sees him in Japan. “ウィル・オスプレイに向けて殺気立っていたケニーではありましたが、飯伏さんのことになると、笑顔になるケニーでした。”

There’s an installment of the infrequent spotlight feature on regional venues, this time about 唐津市文化体育館 in Saga Prefecture in Kyushu. Karatsu has been collaborating with New Japan for tourism PR, so this focuses on a NJPW show there. The squid logo is pretty slick! From the picture I thought I recognized the venue as the one from the 5 Star GP with especially awful acoustics, but I was wrong - that one’s in Nagano, this one just looks a bit similar.
The Karatsu mascot 唐ワンくん is shown attending, and according to his website, he was conceptualized as he is because 9 towns formed to form one (ワン) city in the form of Karatsu. His hat is that of 小笠原長行 a former feudal lord of the area, and his paw pads are the 波多 family mon, also originating in the area.


In Tanahashi’s column, they talk about Tatsumi Fujinami, like how the name of the column, Dragon Note, originally derived from him (“well and I was born in the year of the dragon” Tanahashi adds). They joke more also about Tanahashi’s promise to quit the column if he’s 6th or worse in the 好きな選手 rankings, saying if that happens they’ll just restart it as 新 Dragon Note or 飛龍手帳. But they should get the real Dragon’s blessing, and Tanahashi gifting Fujinami a nice wine is mentioned as a possible strategy for getting a warm reception from him.

There’s a news item about Jake Lee leaving AJPW - big news!

In Giulia’s column she talks about Syuri, who she has an upcoming World of Stardom match with.
She reflects that since she wrestled two years before Stardom, and it’s been 3 years in Stardom, already more than half her career so far has been here. And the most important allies she made in that time are Maika and Syuri who she founded Donna Del Mondo with. Syuri especially, has comparative heaps of experience and is endlessly nice and supportive, smiling and encouraging Giulia when she came up with ideas and helping her out time and time again. “朱里って絶対良い奥さんになるよなぁ…って(笑).”
“戦友が亡くなった時に,” Syuri came and stayed talking with her from 5 in the morning, and she worried for her more than anyone when Giulia was out injured. “朱里は、スターダムでジュリアを支えてくれた柱で、屋根で、土台だった。” And as アリカバ Syuri taught Giulia how fun tag team wrestling could be, and Giulia would have been okay if that team lasted indefinitely.
Since they’ll be facing each other now, Giulia will have to put everything on the line to challenge and surpass Syuri, and that will be the way to repay all that Syuri has given her.
As champion, Syuri’s been saying she’ll show everyone a 朱世界 but Giulia’s expressed confusion at the vague meaninglessness of what that actually means. The answer Syuri provided to her at a press conference at last, was that 朱世界 is about Syuri pulling her opponents past their limits and letting them shine through Syuri’s victory in a match that resonates in the hearts of the audience.
Giulia is disappointed in this answer. What self-respecting pro wrestler would be happy to shine through the grace of their opponent? Syuri is simply so strong that her personality lessens her opponents through this intended kindness. Giulia, in contrast, will stand at the top to make herself shine, and she has zero interest in Syuri letting her shine. “ジュリアの光を全部消しに来いよ。そうじゃなきゃやり甲斐がねえんだよ。”

In Kenoh’s column, he talks about an upcoming Kongo show, and says everything about it everything about it is exemplary.

See now Onita knows how to do explosions.

The Inoki memorial column this week is with Yoshiaki Yatsu, a pro wrestler who started as an olympian, and still wrestles occasionally despite his right leg having been amputated.
Sounds like Inoki scouted him originally, and while he didn’t always respect him in life, recently he’s reflected positively on the resolve Inoki showed.

In Genichiro Tenryu’s column he talks about Historic X-Over… He reflects on it as a sign of changing times, contrasting the Inoki-founded strong style centric New Japan of old, with the mixed-gender matches on the show. His main point seems to less be about inherently being against mixed gender wrestling (it sounds like he involved women in his promotion WAR, albeit he says as a last-ditch promotional tactic in a tight spot as promoter) and more wanting that NJPW-ness to be preserved, saying that times may change but what Japanese fans want at their core doesn’t so much, and although he hasn’t seen the video just pictures and he doesn’t know what the sequence was like, he thinks Tanahashi fans would be disappointed to see that Maika backdropped him, and the mass media will see it and go “ah so that’s what pro wrestling is like huh.” He says he may well just be behind the times and it’s important to be be broad-minded but “新日本プロレスを守ってほしい.”
About the returning Shota Umino, Tenryu says that “海外遠征から帰ってきた選手が団体のプッシュを受ける,” but it’s up to the wrestler to capitalize on it and gain entry to the top group of stars. His advice to Umino is to watch over not just his own matches but other people’s matches, and abosrb as much advice as possible, from his dad, etc.

The costume column is with Kaito Kiyomiya of NOAH. It’s certain a flashy costume! and a flasher pose…
Apparently the green and yellow stuff running down his arm forms a hidden “KAITO KIYOMIYA” - I sort of see it…?

In Keiji Muto’s column he talks more about entrance music, saying he doesn’t himself have こどわり around them, preferring to think of the match as what he’s selling rather than the presentation around it, but he feels some attachment to the theme songs made for him when played in other contexts and stuff.
At one point he expresses admiration for people like the Crush Gals who mix both the music playing and the wrestling, and compares it to a show he watched as a kid - Kikaider! I’ve seen Kikaider! It’s very funny to me to imagine kid Mutoh marking out over Kikaider’s guitar entrances.
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The Editor’s Eye column is about… Haruna Neko from TJPW! The editor in recent interviews with Arisu Endo and Pom Harajuku noticed that everyone on the TJPW roster currently has achieved their first self-won match, and noticed that now the furthest from a victory is Neko, who last won November of the previous year. Not having had an opportunity to interview Neko before, they interviewed her for this column. It sounds like she’s characteristically マイペース and low on ambition, and asked about the win/loss situaton she replied “焦ってはないです。”
It sounds like she learned about pro wrestling through the manga プ女子日和 and got really into TJPW from that, and started to want to participate in that “かわいい子たちがあんなにバチバチに闘ってるの” and started going to DDT’s プロレス教室 and from there became a TJPW trainee via Yuu.
It sounds like she was interested in the backstage side of this kind of show production from school, and had doubts about why she would want to be on the on-stage side of it too, but she picked her stagename “because I like cats” and is now glad that the character exists.
She says since she started from a TJPW fan perspective, she doesn’t really feel like a senpai and doesn’t really have the goal of promoting herself, she just wants to be acknowledged as being a part of it too. In terms of possible title shots, she says for the tag belts she would need to find a partner, and if it were a singles championship she’d probably barf from the stress.
The editory sees flashes of fire in some of Neko’s matches and would like to see more of that and Neko rise to a big stage in her own way in time.
(I’ve been thinking for a bit that I have a real hard time picturing pro-wrestlers with the second jobs that I’m sure a lot of them have, or what impact that might make on their in-ring career, but Neko is the #1 person I assume must have another gig of some kind and is fine with that)

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Finished the translation for the PPV in L.A.! Lots of it was in English, so it was a bit easier than usual, except for a certain two someones…

Overall, I really enjoyed this show! Fite commentary notwithstanding… I could not believe that the commentators talked over Namba giving the announcements in English, and the Up Up Girls giving their intros in English, too… We missed an ENGLISH train of the day…

It was fun to see how excited the fans got about the TJPW wrestlers, and it was funny to me because the fans clearly understood the company better than the commentators. The comms team didn’t know the name of Free WiFi’s finisher or any of the Toy Storys, smh!! :triumph:

First was Daisy Monkey vs Free WiFi, which was fun! Free WiFi got booed a bit more here than they typically do in Japan, which is entertaining.

I don’t think I had trouble with Nao and Hikari’s comments:

Kakuta: “From the moment we entered, there were chants like ‘Free WiFi!’ and ‘Daisy Monkey!’, and I was so happy I felt like I was going to cry… I’m really happy about the warm reception, and the fact that we were able to win and make DENPA RYOKO happen.”

Hikari: “I was alone during my first trip overseas to England, and at that time, I was full of anxiety. This time, I was able to have a match in the U.S. with the TJPW members and my beloved tag partner, and we won! One day, there will be Free WiFi not just in Japan, but throughout the world!”

Kakuta: “We’re going to BiBiBiBi!”

Hikari: “It was fun! I hope we can come back again.”

I think I got almost all of Suzume’s and Arisu’s comments:

Both: (in English): “We are Daisy Monkey!”

Suzume: “We came to America!”

Endo: “We’re here!”

Suzume: “We lost, but I had so much fun! How was it?”

Endo: “It was too much fun! I’m a bit disappointed that I lost, but everyone was cheering!”

Suzume: “They even threw streamers for us. I’m so, so, so happy to know that there are so many people overseas who love TJPW. We’ll be back!”

Endo: “We’ll come again!”

Suzume: “We’ll be back!”

The only thing I wasn’t quite sure about was that shupro had “待っててねー!” for Suzume’s last line, but I heard her (and Arisu) repeating “また来るねー” instead :sweat_smile:. I wasn’t sure what to trust…

After that was Janai Kai vs Kamiyu, which was a short but fun one!

Janai’s comments were in English:

Janai: “Kamiyu, yeah, welcome to America, huh? Hey, maybe next time. Maybe next time in Japan, you’ll see me again.”

I think I got Kamiyu’s comments (shockingly)?

Kamifuku: “Even though I came all this way to L.A., even though my beloved Zac Efron might be watching, I lost to a girl with natural makeup. Mortifying. Something I noticed is that she wrestles barefoot, but her nails are too simple, and she uses polish instead of gel nails. Someday, when she comes to Japan, I’ll take her to a nail salon. Prepare yourself, and let’s go to the nail salon together.” (in English) “Bye bye.”

Then Misao and Trish Adora (wearing the Misao shirt Misao had talked about giving her after their last match!) teamed up against Raku and Yuki Aino, and Trish got to become a hero! :pleading_face:

Misao and Trish’s comments afterward (in English) were a delight:

Misao: “Winner, winner, winner! Yay! Trish, thank you! I love you!”

Trish: “I love you! First time superhero! First time.”

Misao: (handing her a mask) “Present for you!”

Trish: “Oh, for me? I’ll keep it forever.”

Misao: “Hyper Trish.”

Trish: “Hyper Trish!”

Misao: “We saved the U.S.! We saved the U.S… Thank you!”

Trish: “Yes, thank you!” (whispering excitedly to Misao) “Hyper Trish!”

Misao: “Hyper Trish!”

Trish: “Hyper Trish!”

Misao: “We’ll tag again. We’ll tag again?”

Trish: “Yes, again!”

Both: “Again, and again, and again, and again, and again!”

Misao: “Thank you! I love you! All big children!”

I think I got Raku and Yuki’s comments!

Aino: “We lost… It’s disappointing. But it was so great, they were crazy about us!”

Raku: “Yeah! They were chanting ‘Yuki!’ so much.”

Aino: "And the streamers. What is it?” (in English) “Paper? Thank you! I’m so excited. It was fun! Thank you!”

Raku: (in English) “Thank you!”

Aino: (in English) “See you…”

Raku: (in English) “…Next time?”

Aino: (in English) “Next time!”

Raku: (in English) “Next time!”

Gonna include a small translator’s note about 紙テープ, I think.

Then Shoko and Miu faced down Wasteland War Party, which was fun! And wow, Miu is over in America :sweat_smile:.

Max and Heidi’s comments were in English:

Heidi: “I am tired, Max has been better, but we won! We were victorious! Wasteland War Party, still the strongest out there. Unfortunately, Heidi Howitzer has some business to take care of in the Wasteland next month. All those cheeseburgers aren’t gonna eat themselves. But the Wasteland War Party warlord over here? Still hungry for those tag belts. So while Heidi Howitzer is out making a mess, getting sloppy, Max is going to be hunting joshis. Right, Max?”

Impaler: “Pom! POM!” (growls)

Interestingly, Max calling for Pom ended up resulting in them getting booked in a match together… in a tag team! I’m really excited for that because it’s a fresh twist on their dynamic.

Shoko and Miu’s comments were funny because poor Miu struggled with the English, haha.

Nakajima: (in English) “Loser!”

Miu: (in English) “Uber?”

Nakajima: (in English) “Loser!”

Miu: “'What’s ‘loser’? Well, we lost, but America was fun!”

Nakajima: “You’ll regret this!”

Rika faced Billie Starkz and successfully defended the International belt!

I got most of Rika’s comments:

Rika: (in English) “Billie is awesome! TJPW is awesome! All TJPW fans are awesome! Very very exciting!” (in Japanese) “I’m so happy to come to the U.S. for the first time and make my first defense. I want to increase the value of the belt even more, so I want to fight a bunch of different opponents.”

The only thing I wasn’t quite sure about was how to translate the 子 in this sentence: “そしてこの子と、ハリウッドの看板とかで写真撮りに行ってきます”. (Arisu actually used the same word to refer to boxes of rice crispy treats in a tweet, and a friend asked me to explain it, and I realized that I could not :sweat_smile:. Is it sort of like how we’d say something like “I bought two boxes of these bad boys”?)

“And with this thing, I’m going to go take pictures at the Hollywood sign or something.” (in English) “Very very THANK YOU! See you again!”

Billie’s comments were in English:

Billie: “Your International Princess Champion is a monster. I’ll give her that.” (laughs) “I haven’t had that great of an opponent in a really long time. And I love a good fight. And she sure did give it to me. She deserves to be a champion. She’s a fighting champion. She’s what TJPW deserves. I hope to be like her someday.”

I loved the main event tag title match between Itoh/Miyu and Yuka/Mizuki! I really, really wanted MagiRabbi to win, but thought there was no way it would actually happen, so I was THRILLED :pleading_face:. Mizuki is the first ever double champ in TJPW!! :sob:

It’s so deserved!! She truly has helped carry both the tag and singles divisions in the company, and I’m so glad her work was recognized. I also found it so satisfying for her to have that big singles title feud with Yuka and then come out of that even stronger as a tag team :pleading_face:. I think the match itself justified their win perfectly. Itoh and Miyu simply aren’t as cohesive as a tag team as Mizuki and Yuka are, and they couldn’t overcome them.

Mizuki cut a promo afterward that was mostly in English, sort of :sweat_smile:. Mr. Haku translated it, though for once I didn’t really need his translations.

Mizuki: (in English, mostly) “Very, very HAPPY HAPPY! I love you! Very, very thank you! We are Tokyo Joshi, TJPW! Meet you, HAPPY HAPPY!”

Sakazaki: (in Japanese) “Hey, everyone in TJPW, come on out!” (in English) “TJPW, always!”

(The members of the roster gather in the ring, and Nakajima starts a “joshi” chant. There are “please come back” chants from the crowd)

Nakajima: (in Japanese) “Thanks!”

Mizuki: (in English) “Thank you!” (in Japanese) “We’re so happy to be able to meet you all in America. TJPW will come back again, OK?” (in English) “Thank you! Response, OK?”

They closed the show with “Eat hamburger, and—” “HAPPY HAPPY!” in English.

I realized when watching it back that the crowd seemed a bit confused, so I’m thinking of including a translator’s note here explaining some of what Mizuki was trying to say, like “response” is referring to the “call and response” that they traditionally do to end the shows, so she was trying to ask the crowd to yell “HAPPY HAPPY!” after the 英語版で「ハンバーグ食べて」.

MagiRabbi’s comments were short and sweet:

Sakazaki: “That was good!” (in English) “You say HAPPY HAPPY!” (in Japanese) “The tag belts have returned to MagiRabbi.” (in English) “Yay! MagiRabbi is number one!” (in Japanese) “We did it!” (in English) “Thank you!”

Mizuki: (in English) “See you again!”

Sakazaki: “Coming soon!”

Itoh’s and Miyu’s, on the other hand… :sweat_smile:. I think this was fully half of the work of translating the entire show? I think I did surprisingly okay, though? Maybe?

Yamashita: “Let’s do our best next time.”

Itoh: “No, no…”

Yamashita: “Let’s keep at it. We’ll persevere next time. Did we die today? Are we done?”

Itoh: “It’s over, right?”

Yamashita: “No it’s not!”

Itoh: “It’s over.”

Yamashita: “It’s not over!”

Itoh: “Yes it is.”

Yamashita: “We’re not dead. We’re still alive!”

Itoh: “So what? It’s over!”

Yamashita: “If we lose, we should go on to the next one.”

Itoh: “Okay, then where are we going? I can’t do this anymore.”

Yamashita: “This isn’t the end!”

Itoh: “Yes, it is. Why do you get to decide?”

Yamashita: “Then why do you get to decide that we’re done?”

Itoh: “It’s Itoh’s rules!”

Yamashita: “When did we decide the rule that it’s your rules?”

Itoh: “I decided it just now.”

Yamashita: “There is no rule!”

Itoh: “It’s over!”

Yamshita: “It’s not!”

Itoh: “It’s over!”

Yamshita: “It’s not!”

Itoh: “It’s over!”

Yamashita: (in English) “Not finished!”

Itoh: (in English) “Finished.”

Yamashita: (in English) “Not finished!”

Itoh: (in English) “It’s gone!”

Yamashita: (in English) “It’s not finished!” (in Japanese) “There will be a next time. Did we lose the belts? They were just taken from us. It’s very sad and frustrating."

Itoh: “There won’t be another chance!”

Yamashita: “Yes there is!”

Itoh: “When? No one knows. Because you’re not coming back (to Japan), are you?”

Yamashita: “I don’t know anything! I don’t know what the future holds!”

Itoh: “I don’t know either!”

Yamashita: “I’m not dead yet!”

Itoh: “Then what?”

Yamashita: “Don’t cry. We just have to get strong again. Right? It’s not the end, right? We just need to get strong again…” (cries) “You were losing all the time at the beginning, weren’t you? You lost, and you got stronger and stronger, didn’t you? Seeing that, I always thought you were so cool. Because that’s how you are, fighting with you is so much fun, and teaming up with you is so much fun. So that’s why I don’t want this to end. We’re still standing, and we’re alive. It’s not over. We have to aim for the belts again. We have all of those people who support us.”

Itoh: “Can we aim for them again? Can we win the belts again?”

Yamashita: “Yes. So it’s not the end.”

Itoh: “Really?”

I wasn’t quite sure I understood what Miyu was saying here: “そう。お前らしくないだろ? 自分だって私らしくないって思ってるんだろ?”

Yamashita: “Yes. It’s not like you, is it? And you’re thinking it’s not like me, right? If you lose, you can stand up again. We’ll get strong again, even with MagiRabbi… No, I want to defeat them. We’re always losing. Losing, winning, losing, winning, and just when I think we’ve got the belts, we lose immediately. We need to get strong again. That’s in your nature. This is not the end for us. We’re gonna get stronger and stronger, and we’ll get the singles belt and the tackle… Wait, not tackle…”

Itoh: (shoving Yamashita in the shoulder) “Hey!”

Yamashita: “I meant tag!”

Itoh: “What the hell, tackle? I get it! I will definitely take back the tag belts again with Yamashita. I’ll make sure of it. No matter how many years it takes, we’ll definitely get them back.”

Yamashita: (in English) “Never give up!”

Itoh: (in English) “Never give up!”

Yamashita: “Limits?”

Both: “Don’t set them!”

And that’s probably the last 121000000 comments I’ll have to translate for a while, so hopefully by the next time they tag together, my Japanese will be better, haha.

I always worry about them breaking up after every major loss, so I’m glad that it seems like they’ve agreed to keep trying with their team. Honestly, I think them having to work harder to beat MagiRabbi is a better story, anyway. I also love that Miyu is so inspired by Itoh :pleading_face:.

That’s it for now! Probably the easiest set of comments I’ve done for a major-ish show :sweat_smile:.

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Suzume says また来るねー at 0:33, and then Arisu says 待っててねー! (and afterward Suzume says またね!)
roughly,
“we’ll be back!” → “wait for us, ok?” → “''til next time!”

Yeah I mean, she’s definitely talking about the belt, and I’d say both are humorous personification to emphasize the preciousness of the object in question, so maybe something like " now the belt and I are gonna go take pictures at the Hollywood Sign!" or somesuch.

Nitpick, but for よっしゃ! (which it sounds like she says to me), I think like, “All right!!” would be a little more natural.

I’d say it’s more like roughly “Even you think it’s not like yourself, right?”
From Itoh’s perspective, thinking 私らしくない would mean not being like me - Itoh.

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Finished translating TJPW’s April 8 show! Just noticed that they have a transcript of the comments up on the recap page for some reason? It would be nice if they kept doing that…

This show also had a contract signing at the beginning (transcript for that here)!

I was confused by Nao’s very first sentence, haha! She said: “私は「瑞希さんに挑戦したいです」という気持ちを伝えた時点で瑞希さんは夢を叶えてて.” Is she talking about Mizuki’s dream or her own dream here? :sweat_smile:

Kakuta: “When I announced my desire to challenge Mizuki-san, she had already achieved her dream. So I said, ‘I want to beat Mizuki-san and stand ahead of her,’ and then she became double champion in Los Angeles. But being the very first person to challenge double champion Mizuki-san as she stands now, I just feel overwhelming emotion. So I think I was correct to say that ‘I was the one whose heart was moved the most.’”

Mizuki: “I’m back! This is my first time being on the champion’s side in a singles match, accepting a challenge. I feel the heart-pounding, trembling anticipation of the first time, and I’ve challenged for that belt many times myself, so I also understand how the challenger feels.”

Then Mizuki said, “奈穂ちゃんが「心が動いた」と言ってくれたけど、「奈穂ちゃん、動かしちゃったのか…」という自分の気持ちもありつつ、届けたいところに届いたなという気持ちもあるので.” I wasn’t quite sure about this sentence, especially since I think the crowd laughed at one point, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, haha.

“Nao-chan said her heart was moved, but even though I wondered, ‘Nao-chan, were you really moved?’, I also felt that I had reached the place that I had wanted to reach. I’m in top form right now, so I’ll take on her challenge.”

Namba: “I would like to ask the two of you a few questions. Is there any aspect of your opponent that you’re wary of and will be watching out for?”

I wasn’t quite sure what Nao was talking about with 騙す and 駆け引き here: “いつも騙されているので。駆け引きしてくるじゃないですか、すぐ。一緒に試合をしているといつもすぐ駆け引きをしてくるので、騙されないようにしようと思います.”

Kakuta: “She’s always deceiving me. Soon, she’ll be using her tricks, won’t she? Whenever we have a match together, she always plays these tricks, so I’m not going to be fooled.”

Mizuki’s response also confused me: “すぐ騙してくるじゃないですか。すぐ駆け引きしてくるじゃないですか。でも私は奈穂ちゃんの見たことのない顔を見たいなと思うので、スイッチを入れ続けたいなという気持ちと駆け引きしてこないで欲しいなという気持ちと、私は駆け引きしようかなという気持ちと.”

Mizuki: “I’ll be deceiving you soon, huh? Playing tricks, huh? But I want to see a side of Nao-chan that I have never seen before, so I feel like I want to keep activating that switch and don’t want to play games with her, and I feel like I do want to play games. I think Nao-chan is really scary after that switch has been activated, because she’s a terror and a devil, so I’m going to be careful.”

Namba: “Mizuki, you’re defending your title for the first time, and Kakuta, you’re in the main event at Korakuen Hall for the first time, so do either of you feel any pressure?”

Kakuta: “My feelings are already leading the charge. I have a feeling that I’m going to win Mizuki-san’s belt by acting impulsively now. When I announced my challenge, the audience said positive things like, ‘show us how you look with a belt,’ and ‘we’re cheering for you,’ and their support gave me another push. But right now, this is something I must do for myself, so it’s not a situation where I can carry the pressure of anyone else’s feelings. So I don’t feel pressure at the moment. I want to surpass myself. I just want to show a new version of myself.”

Mizuki: “I felt the pressure the moment Yuka-chi handed the belt to me after I won it from her. I decided I was going to overcome it, and that’s why I’m here now. It’s a mountain of pressure. But if I don’t change that, I won’t be able to bring excitement to everyone. And there’s no point if I’m not having the most fun, so in order to bring that excitement to everyone, I’m going to do my best even while carrying all that pressure on my shoulders.”

The only match that had post-match comments was the last one, but I did get Mahiro’s apology, I think, haha! She said, “この春、中学3年生になったばかりの琉那を投げてしまって…”

Mahiro’s apology: “I threw Runa, who just started her third year of junior high this spring…”

The main event was sort of a double preview match, since both Pom and Nao will be challenging Mizuki soon! I’m really excited for Pom and Max the Impaler teaming up, haha. That’s extremely an “only in TJPW…” kind of wrestling story development.

I really like how Mizuki and Nao sort of bring out a different side of each other. I could be wrong, but I think their title match will be the first time the Princess of Princess title has been defended in a match with two wrestlers who both came from outside of the company.

In any case, Nao won the preview match, granting Pom a main event victory. Mr. Haku is on vacation and did not live translate for this show, so I was on my own with the post-match promo:

Pom: “Nao-san, you did it!”

Kakuta: “Thank you. You’re so kind. I’m happy!”

I wasn’t quite sure about the best way to translate this: “でも、本番は来週なんで、いまこんなグッチャグチャだけど、グッチャグチャのドロドロになってもみんなにベルトを取るところ見せるから(涙)応援に来てください.”

“But the match that really matters is next week. I’m a mess right now, but even if I become an ugly mess, you’ll all see me win that belt, so please come and support me.” (cries)

Pom: “I’m definitely going!”

Kakuta: “Let’s do our best! Let’s say thanks, and everyone will come back again next week.”

Pom: “I’m definitely coming!”

Kakuta: “You better come!”

They close with: “Thank you so much for today!”

Here’s the video for Pom and Nao’s comments:

Kakuta: “Having this person here, she really saved me. They took us to the limit. It was really tough! But today’s match gave me some good ideas looking toward the singles match with Mizuki-san. I can’t think of a good way to put it, but my feelings are in good condition today? Mizuki-san said she was in good shape at the contract signing, but I feel that in the match today, I was a step ahead of her. It was thanks to Pom-chan’s help.”

Pom: “Really? I was also strengthening my support energy heading into the tag title match.”

Kakuta: “Great! Then it was a good day for both of us, huh?”

This part was a bit confusing, haha. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were trying to do with the letter poses (normally Pom does a “P”. But why E and N?), or what Nao meant by “合ってる? 向き.” I also wasn’t quite sure what point Nao was trying to make about her gear.

ぽむ「(ポーズを取って)Eでした」

Pom: (posing) “I was an E.”

角田「最後みなさん気付いてくれました? (ぽむが)Eだったから私はNだったんですよ。合ってる? 向き」

Kakuta: “Did everyone notice at the end? (Pom) was an E, so I was N. Did we match? Did it work?”

ぽむ「合ってないです」

Pom: “No, we didn’t.”

角田「逆でした。やっちゃったね。そういうところなんですよ。調印式の時も(コスチュームの)下めくれ上がってたし。頑張ります」

Kakuta: “It was the opposite. I did it. That’s the point. Even during the contract signing, (my gear) was lifting up and down. I’ll do my best.”
(The tag title match was set very suddenly)

Pom: “I’m not at all confident, so I’m wondering what I should even do. But if they’re on my side, I think we’ll be strong. I dunno, but if I mega-refine my support powers, I think I’ll be able to control them. I’ll do it like I’m piloting a Gundam. I’m going to do my best!”

Pom’s comment about controlling Max like a gundam totally made me laugh, haha.

Here’s the video for Mizuki and Moka’s comments:

Miyamoto: “I lost… I’m really disappointed.”

Mizuki: “Despite the result of the match, I think I was able to push forward.”

This chunk confused me a bit, and I wasn’t quite sure that I got it: “もかちゃんと組むのも楽しいなって思ったんですけど、奈穂ちゃんの決意というか、勢いというか。意地みたいなものがすごく感じて、これはホントに気を引き締めて私も立ち向かおうと思いました.”

“I thought it was fun to team up with Moka-chan, but Nao-chan’s determination or momentum, I really felt her stubbornness, and it made me tighten my own focus and face her down.”

Miyamoto: “I saw Nao-san and Mizuki-san’s willpower, so it inspired me, too, and made me also want to do my best.”

(What about the tag titles?)

Mizuki: “For the time being, I’m ignoring them. There she is, scoping me out.” (discovering Pom behind the media team) “She’s been aiming for the belts this whole time.” (to Pom, who came to steal the belt) “Huh, you’re happy taking them like this?”

Pom: “Well, now… what was taken was taken, so.”

I wasn’t quite sure what Mizuki meant here. Maybe she’s being sarcastic? Or maybe I’m totally wrong about the subject of the first half of this sentence :sweat_smile:? “頑張った末に取ったらめっちゃ嬉しいで(ぽむは素直に下がる)守ります.”

Mizuki: “You’ll be so happy to take them after working so hard.” (Pom meekly backs down) “I will protect them! Because I share them together with Yuka-chi.”

(In the back and forth with Kakuta, you lost yourself and got violent?)

“There isn’t anyone with that kind of fighting style in TJPW. She really pushed my buttons, or maybe I should say it reminded me of the fights I had before coming here. I feel like she’s the kind of opponent who brings out my stubbornness. I’m always flippantly saying ‘Nao-chan, Nao-chan,’ but when it comes to the match, I don’t want to lose, and when she pulls my hair, I want to pull hers in response. I think she’s the kind of person who makes me act like that.”

For this question here, “お互いのバックボーンが刺激し合ってる?” I wasn’t 100% sure how to translate バックボーン (since “backbone” doesn’t feel like it works in English…), so I sort of triangulated from 意地 (which has backbone listed as one of its meanings) and went with “obstinacy.”

(Does your mutual obstinacy provoke each other?)

“I don’t know. I think I’m very much a dyed-in-the-wool TJPW wrestler, but the things that won’t go away aren’t going to go away. I wasn’t really aware of it myself.”

And that’s it for this show! Next up, Korakuen!

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Ummmm… I think what happened here is that in the video I think she says
瑞希さんは夢を叶えててって
like with that last って signaling she’s talking about what she was saying at the time.
and then the part
だから私は「その瑞希さんに勝ってその先に立ちたいです」と言った
should be
「だから私はその瑞希さんに勝ってその先に立ちたいです」と言った

Like I think she’s saying roughly “at the time I said that Mizuki fulfilled a dream of hers and so I wanted to beat her and stand ahead of that Mizuki”
but connected the clauses in a way that ended up ambiguous and the transcriber cleaned it up in a way that didn’t fully help with that.
I think, anyway.

I would say it’s more like –
奈穂ちゃん、動かしちゃったのか…」 isn’t so much “were you really moved?”
as it is: “Oh… I moved you, huh?”
Like – “Xのか” is more like, “it seems like X and I’m confirming that yes, X?” and the 動かしちゃった shows she wasn’t intending to do it.
So the crowd was laughing there because it’s sort of an extension of the running bit about Mizuki’s coldness to Nao - Nao was like “you moved me so much!!” and Mizuki felt like “:neutral_face: oh I did huh… wasn’t really meaning to move you…”

The other thing I would say is that with the つつ the conjunction is a bit more contrastive than just “also” - like I’d put it more like “while I felt X (cold towards Nao), I also felt Y (glad to have triumphed).”

I found an example of what she’s probably talking about, from the 3/26 show:
They both have an opposite partner restrained:


They exchange words, and Mizuki says something to the effect of they’ll both release after a せえの
to which Nao confirms and agrees.
せえの…

奈穂が騙された!

From デジタル大辞泉 via Weblio about 駆け引き:

1 商売や交渉・会議などで、相手の出方や状況に応じて自分に有利になるように処置すること。「―がうまい」
2 戦場で、時機を見計らって兵を進めたり退(ひ)いたりすること。

Which sounds to me like either using words and negotiation to get what you want, or like, tactics in the sense of army maneuverings. I would say it’s the first definition in play here - Mizuki uses her charisma stat and words to bluff Nao into bad situations to her own advantage.

my attempt:
“I’m always fooled by her, so… she’s going to try to talk me into something right away, isn’t she? When we have a match together she always talks me into something that doesn’t end well for me, so I’m going to try to not be taken in.”

I think the joke here is that she’s answering the question the exact same way as Nao and thereby already starting to befuddle her pretending that Nao’s the wily one.

“She’s going to try to fool me right away, isn’t she? She’s going to talk me into something isn’t she?”
(said very sarcastically)
image

I think if she were directly talking about herself 騙す’ing it would be 騙していく rather than 騙してくる.

Then this part:
スイッチを入れ続けたいなという気持ちと駆け引きしてこないで欲しいなという気持ちと、私は駆け引きしようかなという気持ちと
describes three feelings, all linked with と:

  1. スイッチを入れ続けたいなという気持ち
  2. 駆け引きしてこないで欲しいなという気持ち
  3. 私は駆け引きしようかな

Mizuki feels she wants to keep pressing Nao’s buttons so to speak (to get never before seen facial expressions out of Nao), that she doesn’t want to be taken in by Nao’s wiles, and that perhaps she’ll try taking in Nao…

She’s playing heavily into the innocent but mischieviously manipulative rabbit role here, manipulating the dastardly 駆け引き into something that comes across as something Nao is likely to do and Mizuki only maybe would do, for innocent reasons. While Nao is the straight man / Elmer Fudd role in this scenario…

Looking at the end of the show, the beginning of the last match predictably has an example of Mizuki’s charisma tricks (although Pom ended up the target rather than Nao), with the whole business of convincing Pom to give back the belts nicely:
image

The only part I wasn’t sure about was the verb - after puzzling over it for a bit… I think she says “放り投げて”?
Same meaning though! (maybe sounds a little rougher than just 投げて)

No better ideas are immediately coming to me, at least!

The way she says this I would say has an air of like “Yeah you really should be sure to come (because you’re booked on the show, you know that right)?”
image

Pretty sure it’s an E/いい pun…
I think that one’s gonna need a translator’s note…

This second E though is the transcriber mishearing - should be P.
The N is for Nao - like how P is for Pom.

This screenshot doesn’t really need to be here I just think it’s an especially cute moment. :sweat_smile:
image

Lol, looking at the next bit, actually the screenshot is useful! :grin:

This isn’t about the N and P lining up, it’s about the N being backwards.
image

逆でした。。。
image

Here she gestures to her boot so consulting the video and playing spot the difference I guess what she’s talking about is whatever this thing is was on wrong:


I’d quibble with the tense here, I’d say it’s more I can push forward.

I would tweak it to be:

“I thought it was fun to team up with Moka-chan, but whether you call it Nao-chan’s determination or her momentum, I really felt her stubbornness, and it made me resolve to tighten my own focus and face her down.”

Yeah, it’s Mizuki being cheeky again with a taunt.
image
image
image

I wouldn’t say it’s sarcasm comparing Pom taking the belts here to winning them after working hard for it - I would say she’s offering that as an alternative, like sort of along the lines of roughly “win them from me and see how good it feels then!”

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P.S.

This might have been clearer with the surrounding context anyhow, but I noticed and thought I’d mention additionally, that I’d say this part’s like more along the lines of “I screwed it up huh. It’s that kind of detail (that I need to work on)” or like “it’s the little things…”

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週刊プロレス No.2221 (from December 2022)

There’s a very long interview with Minoru Suzuki following the announcement of Suzuki-gun disbanding.
Sounds like he’d been thinking about it for some time, and the main reason is avoid stagnation and seek new experiences.
He says to him his best bout is always his most recent match, and the accumulation of experience going into making each show special for the audience some of whom might see just this one match of his in their lives is very important to him.
He also says he won’t retire until he’s “at least 100” because he wants to stop when he runs out of things he wants to do, and pro-wrestling is nothing but things he wants to do.

There’s an interview with Katsuyori Shibata ahead of a 12.28 “Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye X 巌流島” event (巌流島 here being the name of an MMA promotion co-promoting the event, named after the island famous for duels, rather than the island itself) where Shibata is scheduled for a UWF rules match to prevent blows to the head.
Shibata still calls Antonio Inoki 会長 and intends to show 闘魂 in the ring as his form of mourning and paying respects. They talk a bit about the state of his clearance when it comes to matches at this stage following his return from a nearly dead injury some time ago, and it sounds like it’s very fuzzy and there’s various opinions but he wants to wrestle.
They talk a bit about how his signature simple black tights look follows in Antonio Inoki’s footsteps and how that look isn’t associated with New Japan the way it used to be. For Shibata it’s about having the confidence to let an uninformed audience member know that you’re the strongest one in the ring by showing it rather than through a flashy costume.

In Giulia’s column she talks about the card for the Stardom 12.29 両国国技館 show.
Giulia says the Mina Shirakawa’s injury has given her a sharp rise, as it’s shown her seriousness and resolve, and brought her surely closer to the white belt, so she’s one to watch as she returns at the show.
For the Artist of Stardom match, Giulia says she has a hard time seeing Prominence losing and says about them “プロレスが上手い、強い。隙が無い。” Then jokes “お前ら吉野家かって(笑)” which appears to be a reference to the slogan for Yoshinoya being "うまい、安い、早い.
Giulia frames the Goddess of Stardom championship match between champions Meltear and challengers 7Upp as “プロレスをやるために生まれてきたって感じのチャレンジャーと、他のいろいろんな夢をあきらめて、プロレスで這い上がってきたチャンピオン。果たして勝つのは…?”
Giulia mentions pre-Stardom she fought Haruka Umesaki and that at the time she strongly resembled Sareee.
About the Wonder of Stardom match, “私達にしかできない、極上の女の闘いを見せる。”

There’s an interview with Saya Kamitani ahead of her Wonder of Stardom Championship defense against Diana’s Haruka Umesaki. She compares Umesaki’s symbolizing and defending Diana to her defending the belt, so they’re each bringing something important to them in a way. She looks forward to getting hit with Umesaki’s strong elbow (granted to her from Sareee).
She mentions the match with Himeka filling in for KAIRI as a match on her long title defense road that made a big positive impact to her own confidence internally.
They talk about how she hasn’t performed the Phoenix Splash since she injured Mina Shirakawa in the mouth with it. The interviewer mentions wrestlers in the past like Io Shirai or Ricochet who retired popular high-risk aerial maneuvers for risk/wear-and-tear reasons. Kamitani talks a lot about how people have said to her (including Shirakawa) to keep flying, and others have criticized the risk, and it sounds like she strongly recognizes that it’s her choice to use the move or not and that it being a signature move that she may be unique among female wrestlers in being able to perform over 20 minutes into a grueling title match gives it compelling reasons to be used. But also the fact that it’s a move she practices countless times and she still injured someone hardly makes that training fully reassuring, and while in this case the injury in question was broken teeth, if she imagines continuing to use the move and causing a permanently life-altering injury (like to the eyes), she would feel that she wouldn’t be able to continue wrestling at all after that. And so she’s internalized that to just brashly declare “飛び続けろ” would be too reckless. In any case, all of this makes going up to hit a phoenix splash a truly unique experience.
She intends to beat the white belt defense record, become the white belt 絶対王者, and carve her legend into Stardom.
Asked if she says she’s interested in the red belt, she says no, she’s focused on the white belt right now. (but she watches red belt matches back after the fact and does feel some sense of competition but feels she and the white belt can’t lose).

There’s an interview with the “ウワサのミイラ女” Mina Shirakawa, theatrically bandaged up in an A+ pre-match press conference bit to build for her return from this mouth injury.
Despite the bandages… it seems she is able to talk to the interviewer.
She says after the injury her face was swollen square, like “半分ペヤング” (I think comparing her jaw in size/shape to a yakisoba package?). She couldn’t chew food, it hurt, and he jaw wouldn’t open. So since she’s not all healed up now, she figures there’s no need in showing the public her face yet. So if you’re interested in what’s under the bandages, come to the 両国 show.
Asked if reflecting on the injury made her feel fear towards pro-wrestling, she says not at all, just regret. Not about the phoenix splash - mind you (since she got her shoulders up before the three) but at the match having to be ended and at needing to recover and quickly crush Kamitani. The experience has only deepened her feelings for the white belt and now she feels that her need for the belt transcends money or anything else about the job. … But “フェニックスは怖い(笑)”。 She says she was able to tell the trajectory was off from her vantage point and that moment (of Kamitani coming down wrong about to hit her) is burned into her memory and has shown up in her dreams…
Mina Shirakawa’s dad is apparently a ”自分一代で築いた成り上がり社長” so it sounds like they’re well-off and so the injury did damage to expensive teeth straightening (”何百万もかけて矯正”) her parents had paid for. And her mom tearfully asked her to retire, while her dad (strict about work) while watching the her backstage promo said 「いつもの未奈ですね。泣きながらで何を話しているかわかりません」 (?!) although she interpreted it as 「こんなことで折れるなよ」というエール.
She feels though that the injury has only strengthened her resolve. And that reflecting on it put truth to what she ostensibly already knew she was risking - like “oh I really am risking my life for this” and concluding that she really does want the belt that much and that therefore there’s nothing to do but to keep at it.
She mentions regret and frustration at her efforts not being recognized (with one small example mentioned - when she joined Stardom she got a small photo in shupro, while Natsupoi in Stardom the same day got a double-page spread…).
They talk about Tam supporting her after the injury which was already covered in that editor’s column last time (sounds like Tam also picked up her teeth from the ring…). She says that her decision to give the backstage comment was motivated by what she’d learned from Tam and, in contrast to wrestlers who think it’s best to just leave with no comments after a loss, she feels that she’s a pro-wrestler and since she bore everything to the audience up to that point it would be wrong to leave them worried. She says her and the Stardom Official account’s twitter followers increased after that as her visibly injured backstage comments made big waves. But she doesn’t think it was anything extraordinary, just a normal thing to do.
Asked about Unagi Sayaka who’s been on her ギャン期 tour while this has been happening, Shirakawa says it will perhaps be less like Pink Kabuki (their tag team name) meeting each other again and more like the two of them bringing what they’ve respectively been doing to the table. And it sounds like Shirakawa has promised a surprise of some kind…
Shirakawa says she’s the only one allowed to blame Saya Kamitani for the injury. As pro wrestlers, the injury for her is a clear minus (missed matches, halted momentum, not being able to eat, etc.) that physically at least (“メンタルはわからないけど”) Kamitani experienced none of. But the focus shouldn’t be on who was injured and who injured whom, but rather on how Shirakawa will overcome this obstacle and crush Kamitani. So her feeling is “しっかりフェニックス・スプラッシュを飛んでみろよ” and more than that her goal will be to beat Kamitani. The Phoenix Splash might be scary, but after all it’s just as scary for Kamitani herself. And Shirakawa sees it as a battle of wills to see if Kamitani will overcome the fear to hit it, and whether Shirakawa will overcome the fear of receiving it. The interviewer says it sounds like everybody from the audience to the cameraman will also be afraid… Shirakawa says well anyhow it remains to be seen how the match would go - perhaps she’d be able to successfully wear down Kamitani enough to prevent it at all.
She wants Kamitani to properly defend the belt since there’s no way she should be satisfied with this last defense.

In Kenoh’s column he talks about the upcoming New Year’s Show, and spends a while kind of rambling about how after the 四天王 era Jun Akiyama more or less established his own era in All Japan, and in Noah Naomichi and Marufuji set their era with the “丸KENブランド” and he talks about how rivalries are important in wrestling, and it’s a roundabout way of saying that he and Kiyomiya have had a storied rivalry, so the interviewer says ah I see what you’re saying, your rivalry is going to be a ”清宮海斗&拳王ブランド…略して海王ブランドですね!” but Kenoh retorts that of course not, stupid, it’ll be just be a 拳王ブランド because that rivalry will end here in his victory.

There’s an interview with Kento Miyahara, the Triple Crown champion in AJPW, and he comments on the departure of Jake Lee (along with TAJIRI and Izanagi). Sounds like he’s not worried about it whatsoever, as he says the gap will quickly be filled with heated up competition for their spots in AJPW and the departed wrestlers will swiftly be forgotten about. He says he has no particular emotions about Jake Lee.

There’s pictures from Michinoku Pro’s 宇宙大戦争17.
色々なことがあったそうですね

There’s an interview with Masahiro Chono on the occasion of Round 2 of that Wonda Coffee promotion where cans of a particular line of theirs are decorated with old shupro covers. Genichiro Tenryu was the spokesperson for the first round last year, now it’s Chono. ガッデム!
There’s various bits of conversation about coffee - like how wrestlers drink it a lot to wake up and foreign wrestlers are surprised at how prominent canned coffee is, or about how Chono is notoriously frequently late and on occasion gave tour bus drivers canned coffee in apology for delaying departure, or how despite how you might think he would take his coffee black, he likes it with milk and sugar. There’s also a bit of reminiscing about fellow coffee can stars, Antonio Inoki and Bruiser Brody.

The history column is about when Antonio Inoki won Tokyo Sport’s 「プロレス大賞MVP」 award for the sixth and last time in 1981.

The costume column is about Hanan, of Stardom. She’s 18 but debuted in 2017 and her two younger sisters, Hina and Rina, also wrestle in Stardom.
When she debuted she had a “sporty” style costume because of her judo background, but it’s ended up “フリフリ” and she says since this will likely be her last costume while before she graduates from school, she wanted to make it like, her ultimate かわいい系 costume before going for more かっこいい系 after graduating, and she got ideas for it from doing a maid cafe for her school culture festival. She picked twin pigtails to emphasize the schoolgirl look (but would be too embarrassed to actually use the hairstyle at actual school).

In Hideki Suzuki’s column he talks about the upcoming match between Shinsuke Nakamura and The Great Muta. He says in his (very) brief time in NXT he met Nakamura just once, with a group of the other Japanese NXT wrestlers. He says Nakamura and Asuka have a staying power he lacks. They talk about how with Nakamura and Muta just the entrances will be a spectacle on its own (not wrong about that!), and he compares Nakamura’s transformation into his current persona to, in a way, Muto’s transformation into Great Muta.
Since this is the last column of his before the end of the year, he offers the closing words: “ちゃんとプロレスやろうぜ” (which, I believe, if I’m remembering my column discourse from a while back correctly, is here sarcastic, an echo of what stereotypical smarks yell at wrestlers)

The column at the end of the magazine has pictures and updates about Shinjiro Ohtani’s current condition following his major spine injury early in the year. Sounds like he is paralyzed from the neck down but the first phase of rehabilitation has completed and as he goes into the second phase he’s hoping to get to be able to thank everyone from inside the ring. There’s some description recounting a flurry of hospital transfers and surgeries early on that sounds awful, with COVID and the hectic nature of going between hospitals meaning that his wife didn’t see him until several days after the injury (and still from afar) and there were times when his family wasn’t sure who to talk to at which hospital to learn about his condition. But it sounds like he has noticeably been more 前向き with his breathing situation improved, and being able to operate a phone with his mouth and jaw, and is more willing to release photos and updates of his condition. And he has nothing but warm and positive things to say about pro-wrestling and the fans who have donated. His closing message includes:
「ケガをしているボクが言うのはおかしいかもしれませんが、胸を張って言わせていただきます。プロレスを信じ、そして頼ってください!プロレスは絶対に裏切らない!ボクは必ず皆さんの前に帰ります。今後ともプロレスをよろしくをお願いいたします!

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Finished translating the April 15 Korakuen show! It looks like they transcribed some of the backstage comments on the recap again, but not all of them. Sadly, shupro doesn’t have the fully comments, either :pensive:.

The first match was Moka vs Kaya! It’s neat seeing how much both of them have grown. I didn’t have transcripts for the comments, but they were short enough, I think the twitter captions pretty much covered everything?

Here’s Moka’s comment:

Moka: “I’ve had a lot of singles matches with Kaya-san, but she has grown so much, I’ve resolved to grow a lot so that she won’t overtake me!”

And Kaya’s:

Toribami: “I lost… I lost our last singles match pretty badly, but compared to that match, I had the impression that with a little more persistence, I maybe could have won. I want to do my best so that I can beat Moka-san in our next singles match! I’m frustrated!”

Next up was a tag match with the newest and youngest rookies. Daisy Monkey teamed up with Runa against Yuki Aino, Neko, and Haru.

I think there might be a little bit missing from the twitter caption for these, but hopefully nothing too major. Here’s for Haru’s team:

Yuki: “I think it’s really awesome that (Haru) was able to attack her senpai Suzume to this degree, in her fifth match since making her debut. Her low crossbody is great! I’m happy to team together. We’re practically Bakuretsu family, so I really want us to win the next one!”

And Runa’s team:

Suzume: “We did it! Teaming up with the brand new Runa-chan and facing Haru-chan was so much fun, and I felt like I had to be their big sister. I’m going to do my best not to lose even in new-ness!”

Endo: “I’ll do my best, too! I’ll become a junior high student!”

The next match was a very rare match where all of the Up Up Girls were on the same team! They faced Kamiyu and Itoh who were teaming up with Wakana and Toga. Toga’s making waves with her elbow strikes already, and I didn’t get the hype for them in her first match, but I totally see what people are talking about now.

This is when we start to see some things getting left out of the twitter captions, haha :sweat_smile:. But here’s Toga and Wakana’s team:

Kamifuku: “(Itoh) lost her voice in exchange for glory.”

Itoh: “You have to lose something to gain something! Toga’s stiff elbow strikes and Wakana’s dropkick were good!”

Kamifuku: “Let’s go eat shaved ice at SWANDIVE!”

Uehara & Toga: “Yes!”

And the Up Up Girls:

Miu: “Shino, how was teaming up with the four of us for the first time?”

Shino: “You were so strong…”

Hikari: “I thought it was nice to be able to fight with everyone as the Up Up Girls for the first time in a long time!”

Miu: “I really hope lots of people come to our first solo show on June 10 at Shinjuku FACE!”

Raku: “Please come!”

The next match was Shiori Aoki’s debut as a referee, and I ended up really loving this match! She had quite the test ahead of her, haha, with Misao and Shoko not making her life at all easy. I thought they did a great job building this match around Aoki, and it was fun talking to one of my friends who’s training to become a pro wrestling ref to see what they thought of Aoki and the match as a whole.

The comments for this one had a full transcript. I think I got the first part of Aoki (and the losing team)'s comments (interestingly, shupro had her name written as 青木さん, but it looks like the official recap leaves off the honorific. Interesting how the editorial standards differ so much, haha):

Aoki-san: “Today was my debut as a referee, so I was super nervous, but the amazing crowd called out ‘Aoki!’ for me, and I felt very comfortable refereeing.”

HIMAWARI: “I lost today, but the next time you referee for me, I’m going to win.”

Arai: “Next time, huh? But they said that I was bribing her. Was that bribery? If it was, I think she was pretty impartial, so I’m going to stop treating her to dinner.”

HIMAWARI: “So it was a bribe!” (laughs)

Arai: “No, bribe or not, we lost, so.” (smiles)

HIMAWARI: “That’s because I was holding us back, so… please buy me dinner.”

Arai: “So that’s how it is. I bribed the wrong person.” (laughs) “Next time, I will treat my partner to a meal so that she’ll build up her strength and do her best. We’ll work hard next time!”

In the second part (all of the sounds from Pom happening in the background in this were killing me, haha), I was confused right away by the first question! The interviewer said, “話があったらまたやる?” and I wasn’t sure what he was asking :sweat_smile:.

(If you can say it, will you do it again?)

Aoki-san: “Yes, hopefully. I felt more comfortable standing in the ring than I thought I would. It was a different kind of heart-pounding feeling than I’m used to. But if I do it again, I want to show everyone a powered-up referee.”

(How did you feel it was different from your usual activities?)

“When I was refereeing, the crowd would cheer for every single thing I did, and I feel like this is something unique to pro wrestling. It makes me feel good.”

(What is Aoki-san’s score today?)

Arai: “Today she has scored… 200 points.”

Aoki-san: “Thank you!”

Arai: “She was amazing. Her movements started to get a little beautiful. I thought she must’ve trained hard.”

HIMAWARI: “She did that cartwheel, huh?”

Arai: “Did Kiso-san teach you that, too?”

Aoki-san: “Sure did. I demonstrated some of Kiso-san’s teachings.”

Arai: “You’re already his apprentice. You have matching hair, too.” (laughs) “You’ll continue to follow Kiso-san.”

(Did you feel that she had an aptitude?)

“Yes, I really felt that. She was mega awesome.”

青木さん「すごい言うね(笑)」
Aoki-san: “You’re saying a lot.” (laughs)

I wasn’t quite sure how to translate Aoki’s response there at the very end…

I think I got Misao and Shoko’s comments:

Nakajima: “Wow! Did you see that? Oshirin, a.k.a. Aoki! You’re a pretty good referee, aren’t you? We can make her one of us, huh?”

Misao: “Yes! At the beginning, I was wondering how it was gonna go, but the second match was awesome. To prove it, we’re winning.”

Nakajima: “Yes! There are god-like referees, like Shiro Abe. You should try imitating him; check him out on YouTube. He’s really good.”

Misao: “And then you’ll become an associate of Kyoraku Kyomei.”

Nakajima: “We’ll be waiting!”

Next up was Pom and Max the Impaler’s first match as a tag team, facing Yuka and Mahiro. This match was an absolute delight, haha. Just so many good moments. The crowd was going nuts over it, too. I loved all of the little moments of care that Max showed Pom, despite, well, everything else about Max. They were rough with her and yet also clearly cared for her, setting up Mahiro so that Pom could hit her finisher, and even going so far as to hold the ropes for Pom on their way out of the ring.

Shupro didn’t transcribe the comments for this one either. Here’s all that I had for Yuka and Mahiro:

Sakazaki: “Max was scary… There aren’t many folks like that in America… They’re a creature from space…”

Mahiro: “Scary… Whatever I hit them with, their reactions were completely different…”

Sakazaki: “Next I have the tag title match as MagiRabbi. I was able to see their teamwork, so I’ll be taking countermeasures. I’m back in Japan!”

I actually tried very hard with Pom and Max to fill in the gaps with this one! It was, uh, not easy! There were a few things I didn’t catch, and other parts I wasn’t quite sure about. Here was my best attempt:

Pom: "I won, y-yay?! Eek… I’m s-scared now, but maybe we really became friends, SO… We’re a good team, huh?” (in English) “Best tag team? Yay!” (in Japanese) “At this rate—tomorrow we have the idol festival, and then Osaka. We’re going to win and become tag champions! Yes! What happens if—eep—what happens if we lose? Don’t ask me! Uh, check it out, we match!”

Impaler: (growls)

Pom: (screams)

The semi-main event was Vert Vixen vs Rika for the International belt. The most exciting part of this one for me was Suzume coming out to challenge Rika afterward. I’ll definitely be rooting for Suzume to win! Then Rika can challenge Mizuki. Please. It must happen.

I had a bit of help from Mr. Haku on the post-match stuff:

Tatsumi: “Somehow, I was able to achieve V2! Vert-chan was physical and powerful, an amazing wrestler. I was able to go to the U.S. with this belt, and now I’ve returned to Japan and defended it. From this point on, I want to go on even more interesting travels with this belt, so I want to defend it a bunch of times. Everyone, please keep following me!”

(Suzume enters the ring.)

Suzume: “Congratulations on your defense! For me, being a professional wrestler, it just wasn’t something I could do; it was impossible. But it was you, Rika-san, who changed my life. Maybe it’s impossible for me to win the belt. But now that you are the one with that belt, because it’s you, my life can change again. Once again, I found myself thinking that I could do something impossible. Will you let me challenge you?”

Tatsumi: “Of course!”

Suzume: “Thank you so much!”

I had trouble figuring out what Rika was saying here, haha: “こんな熱い思いを聞いて、受けないバカはいないよ.”

Tatsumi: “Hearing such passion, I’d have to be an idiot not to accept your challenge. Then, with the power vested in me as champion, it’ll happen at the next Korakuen show on May 5. Let’s face each other here with this belt on the line!”

Suzume: “Thank you!”

(After a handshake and a commemorative photo, Suzume leaves.)

Tatsumi: “There are even more things to look forward to. Now I’d like to say thanks and finish up here. Thank you so much!”

In Rika’s post-match comments, I got the first sentence:

Tatsumi: “For my first defense, I crossed the ocean and went to America for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was really exciting, and I managed to defend my title.”

Then I got a tiny bit tripped up on this chunk: “今日また帰ってきてタイトルマッチ、初防衛戦はなかなか初めて絡む未知の選手とやる怖さがめちゃめちゃあったんですけど、今回また少しずつ学んだというか、対策というか、慣れてきたかんじがあって.”

“In my first defense, I was really scared to face an unknown wrestler for the first time, but in this match, I learned a little more, picked up some strategies, or I guess I should say I’m getting acclimated. But she was strong! Vert, thank you so much.”

I also wanted to make sure I went with a good translation choice for Rika’s answer here, haha: “やっぱり私はこのベルトと面白い、めちゃくちゃなこと、ハチャメチャなことをしていきたいので.”

(About Suzume declaring her challenge)

“Well, I want to do interesting, messed-up, crazy things with this belt. I have to defend the belt countless times to do that. I was thinking that I wanted to fight a lot of different opponents, so Suzume coming forward there, the feelings she conveyed were amazing. Besides, she stole a win from me in the Princess Cup tournament last year. Here, I want to properly repay what I owe by putting my precious possession on the line.”

(Just like your first defense, you showed respect to your opponent after the match)

I wasn’t sure about Rika’s answer here: “なんか、海外の選手だから我が我が…ってイカれたやつらの巣窟なのかなとかちょっと思ってたんですけど.”

“Somehow, because she’s a wrestler from overseas… I was wondering if we could have our own lair of crazy people.” (laughs) “Maybe that’s very Japanese, having a pro wrestling match where we can respect each other. I also felt really happy. Thank you!”

(Do you feel that you were able to understand each other’s feelings through the title match?)

“Yes! I feel like I am making so many friends!”

Vert’s comments were in English!

(How was your match today?)

Vixon: “Today I had a match against Rika Tatsumi for the International Princess Championship, and, oh my gosh, it was incredible! It was hard-hitting, it was fast-paced, and it was everything that I wanted. It was everything that I wanted for my debut here in Japan.”

(How was it wrestling in Tokyo Joshi Pro for the first time?)

“Wrestling in Tokyo Joshi for the first time is an absolute dream come true. Especially here, in Korakuen Hall, this is a very historic place. It’s somewhere I wanted to wrestle since I first started wrestling! And the fact that I’ve had the privilege and the honor to wrestle for such an incredible, worldwide company, not just in Japan, a worldwide known company, I could not be more grateful.”

I got the first bit of Suzume’s comments:

Suzume: “I’ve wrestled many times for the right to challenge for that belt, but each time, I couldn’t reach it, and each time, I felt frustrated. In some respects, I was thinking that it was impossible for me to hold that belt.”

This sentence was a bit tough: “だけど今回は用意されたチャンスじゃなくて自分の意志でリカさんへの挑戦を決めました.”

“But this time, I decided to challenge Rika-san not because I had planned for this chance, but because I was asserting my own will. I felt that it was impossible, but the most impossible thing in my life, becoming a pro wrestler… I had managed to make that happen. I really want to defeat Rika-san and achieve the impossible, wrapping that belt around my waist.”

(The champion has designated the next Korakuen Hall show)

“Yes. I’m just going to go with this feeling.”

The main event was Mizuki vs Nao, and I loved this one! Really fun match, and probably my favorite Nao match I’ve seen so far. I kept thinking of those comments she made in shupro months and months ago where she talked about Natsupoi and Anou both getting shupro covers, and feeling pressured to perform well, too…

Mr. Haku covered the post-match for this as well, which was helpful. I got the first big chunk, I think:

Mizuki: (hearing the cheers) “Hey! You’re chanting ‘Mizuki, Mizuki’ now, but you’re late! All I was hearing was ‘Nao!’ and ‘Kakuta!’” (cheering for Mizuki increases) “I’m being spoiled.” (laughs) “It felt a bit funny for Nao-chan and I to be fighting in the main event, but I was really happy. It was thanks to all of you watching, and everyone who gave Nao-chan that push and directed me with your gaze to accept her challenge, so thank you so much! I wanted to bring out many expressions from Nao-chan that hadn’t been seen before, but she brought them out of me. I want to keep up this relationship with Nao-chan where we beat each other up. And now that I’ve defended my title, I remember from Namba-chan’s announcements that I have another title match set for May 5 at Korakuen. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but it seems like she’s a huge person."

Wasn’t sure about this part, though: “いまそれがドワーってきてます.”

"That’s coming up soon. But first, Yuka-chi, come into the ring. Thanks for seconding me. Next week, we have a tag title defense right off the bat…”

Sakazaki: “It’s really bad. The Impaler is crazy scary!”

Mizuki: “What are we going to do? Run away?”

Then Yuka said, “ちょっとイヤやな。でも、ぽむさえやってまえばよ.” I wasn’t sure about her second sentence there.

Sakazaki: “I don’t like it. Not one bit. But, if it’s just Pom, we can do it.”

Mizuki: “Leave Pom to me.”

Sakazaki: “I’m looking forward to it!”

Mizuki: “Yes! There’s Osaka, and there’s Korakuen, and there are lots of matches in between, so please come and support us, everyone! I’m still simmering with frustration after getting kicked so much, so I’m going to go now and be soothed by meeting everyone. I want to eat hamburger steak, so let’s close with the usual.”

They closed with “Eat hamburger steak!” and “HAPPY HAPPY!”

In Mizuki’s comments, I got the first part:

Mizuki: “I was always on the challenger’s side with this belt, so this was my first time defending it, and in the main event at Korakuen, and honestly I was super, super nervous. When the match started, I was really excited about the fact that Nao-chan was my opponent, and I really felt that I didn’t want to lose, and I got stubborn. I’m really glad that my first title defense was with Nao-chan out of everyone in TJPW.”

Then they asked about the facelock she used, and I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, by this: “なんかもう…無理矢理。もうここで取りたいって思って、無理矢理いきました.”

(The facelock at the end was different than usual)

“It felt like I had no choice. I wanted to win here, so I forced it.”

(You have the tag title match next week, and a singles match two weeks after that, so your strict schedule continues)

“Yes. I’m the type of person who has to clear everything that comes up in front of me one thing at a time, so for the time being, I’m focusing on the tag title match next. After that, I have another singles title match… When I think about it, I get really overwhelmed. I like to crush everything that’s in front of me one thing at a time, but Yuka-chi said that it’s super scary, so I’m really anxious. I’m scared!” (laughs) “I’m planning on going into it with a fun, happy aura."

Mizuki’s busy schedule also means a busy schedule for me as translator, with all of those title matches (and inevitable press conferences and such)… :smiling_face_with_tear:

Nao’s comments were a bit long! I got the, uh, first sentence:

Kakuta: “Thank you very much.” (wiping away her tears) “I said that my heart was moved the most during Mizuki’s match, and I was able to take that feeling and challenge her right away.”

This part confused me, especially the 日本語が at the end. Could not figure out what was going on there at all, haha: “正直、時間が経ってみて、どれくらいこの無冠の私が最高峰のプリンセス・オブ・プリンセスってベルトに挑戦すること…日本語が”

“To be honest, now that time has passed, someone like me, who has never won a championship, getting so far as to challenge for the belt at the top of the mountain, the Princess of Princess belt…” (bitter smile) “I really wondered how many people would support me and cheer me on. But looking toward the title challenge, as the days went by, the audience was really positive, and they gave me a push. There were a lot of people who said that they were waiting to see me with the belt. Today, lots of people came to the venue and said that they were watching women’s wrestling for the first time in a long time, or that they were coming to see my match for the first time in a long time. Not being able to live up to their expectations, and being unable to fulfill my dream once again… it’s frustrating. But when I listened to the cheers in the venue, the audience called out my name so many times. So, even though the result wasn’t great, I was able to do my absolute best. Because the cheers and the power of the audience are incredible.”

This sentence was confusing: “期待させて応援してもらって、また次もお願いしますっていうのはアレなんだけど…でもこれからも変わらず応援してほしいなって思うし.”

" I know that’s just like saying ‘please keep hoping for me and supporting me next time as well,’ but… I hope you’ll keep supporting me without wavering. In the end, no matter what happens, I’m still not sick of wrestling… I think it would be easier if I could give up, but I can’t give up yet."

I was also a bit confused by these last two sentences: “もっと頑張ろうと思うし、瑞希さんが初めて笑顔で楽しかったって言ってくれたので。また何まわりも大きくなって、瑞希さんの前に立ちたいと思います.”

“I’m going to work even harder, and for the first time, Mizuki-san smiled and said that she had fun. So I want to get better and stand in front of Mizuki-san again.”

After the interviewer’s next question, her first two sentences here were really confusing to me: “なんか、それも周りから言ってもらえることの方が多くて。無意識ですけど、たぶん自分にそういうものを重ねれば重ねていくほど、精神的に負荷がかかるだけだから.”

(How was it standing on a stage like Korakuen Hall in the main event?)

“That’s something that a lot of people around me have said. It’s unconscious, but maybe the more that kind of thing gets repeated, the greater the toll it takes on me mentally. I tried not to be conscious of it. But standing in a singles match in the main event at Korakuen Hall as a pro wrestler, that’s not an experience that just anyone can have. I think I was given a very valuable opportunity. I’m going to try my best to win next time.”

(Were you able to move someone else’s heart just as yours was moved at Ariake?)

“I hope so. But there are people who came to tell me that my title challenge made them want to watch women’s wrestling again. That’s an undeniable fact. If I keep going, I think there will be more and more people like that.”

Whew! Lot happened in this show!

There’s a presser for the tag title match that also happened, which I don’t think I’ll be able to publish in time for the actual match, though as far as I can tell, the match is happening on a VOD show anyway, so there’s not really any reason for particular urgency there… :sweat_smile:

What’s funny is that with TJPW, just because it’s a VOD show doesn’t mean there won’t be a title change. I remember very vividly when Itoh had the International belt the first time, and she defended it against Hikari on ittenyon 2020, then lost it on January 5 the very next day on a VOD show where she fought Thunder Rosa…

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Popping in to say that I’m delighted that this thread exists. Improving my understanding of what’s going on in TJPW is precisely why I’m learning Japanese!

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I’d say these and the two before are all just slightly cleaned up and summarized but not missing anything additionally informative.

I also loved that match! The false finish at the beginning from forgetting about the starting bell was especially good!

I would say it’s more like “if the opportunity arises” or maybe “if you’re saying ‘next time’, then” than “if you can say it”
I think in the video he’s “また” as the kind of 話 the conditional is about. So like, if また is on the table / being talked about / that kind of thing I’d say.

The 是非 here is more like “definitely” (although I can see why you’d err on the side of softening it with how you’ve worded the question currently)

Her sentence here gets claps from Himawari and a ヤバイよ from Arai, so I think this could be intensified.
In general I would say 気持ちいい is less “comfortable” and more like – the sensation feels good.
Like if a character in a movie shoots a gun for the first time and says 気持ちいい they’re on the path to being intoxicated by violence.
Or, I would say it frequently comes up in sexual situations, along the lines of uh, the first example sentence from weblio’s source:

「それ気持ちいい」と彼女は満足な調子で話した。

HIMAWARI in an aside (roughly) compares Aoki’s feeling here to like, more what an athlete would say than a referee.
And so I’d say roughly why they react to the comment is it’s the kind of thing a pro wrestler would say when they step into the ring for the first time and get hooked on that feeling in the way that pro wrestlers tend to do.
My attempt: “Standing in the ring felt really good. Even more than I thought it would.”

Unless there’s something cut off, I think this is maybe the transcriber conveying that they laughed at Arai’s over-use of すごい in her phrasing just then. Since they kind of devolve into laughter and HIMAWARI and Arai talking about that - I don’t really hear Aoki exactly say anything.
Maybe with your translation of the previous part an equivalent would be like “‘Mega awesome’…? (laughs)”

The part left out is roughly, after
“Next I have the tag title match as MagiRabbi.”
Yuka continues like “Max… Pom’ll be no problem, but Max…”
With Mahiro interjecting “Pom’s teamwork with Max though, was awfully strong.”
(abbreviated a bit myslef).

I think this is good! A gap I can fill in is before “Eek”
I think she says
やばい、どうなっちゃうかかも
which I’d attempt to translate as like roughly “Oh my god, what’s going to happen to me?”
And for the “I’m s-scared now” she talks extremely fast but I think what she’s repeating is like, even Max looking at her now is terrifying.

I think this ended up sounding like the “it” is Rika’s defense, rather than becoming a professional wrestler. I would put it like “For me, becoming a professional wrestler just wasn’t something I could do; it was impossible.”

Yeah I think this is a good rendering of it. Literally I would say it would be like, roughly, “there’s no one in the world who’d be such a fool as to hear passionate thoughts like this and not accept”

It sounds to me like she says
もうわけわかんないまま
which I think is more like – she still doesn’t understand it.
I’d maybe put it as like “it was a blur” or “I still haven’t processed it”

These seem okay

The direction is wrong here, he says the respect is 相手選手から
And her ああ、ねぇ~ reaction is very like, “OH, I know right?” in a way that wouldn’t fit if it was a comment about something she did.
image
image

Vertvixen bowed deeply after the match like, a lot. So they’re commenting on that.

In this part she’s talking about why that respect shown was surprising - she had an impression of wrestlers abroad as being like, a pack of 我が我がってイカれたやつら - like, super ego-driven / selfish / disrespectful forceful types. (but that expectation was belied by these opponents being so respectful)
image

The distinction she’s making is between the kind of title shot that is set up through a stipulation like “if you win this tournament you get this title shot” vs. the kind of title shot you get by wanting it and asking for it.
用意されたチャンス wouldn’t so much be a chance she prepared as it would be like, an arranged chance.
Also, in 挑戦を決めました I would say it’s not that she decided to challenge for the belt, as it’s the 挑戦 itself that was decided, not the intent.
Roughly, “this time the right to challenge was clinched not through a pre-arranged opportunity, but through my own will.”

Yeah I’d say the ドワーって gives it a sense of like, title defenses rushing in faster than she can control, like water pouring in from a leak or whatever.

I’d say ちょっとイヤやな is in response to the suggestion of running. “that’d feel a bit bad wouldn’t it?” or “I don’t wanna” or something like that maybe.

As for でも、ぽむさえやってまえばよ.
That’s like “But if we just take out Pom… (it’ll be fine)” Like - we don’t have to run away, we can just beat up Pom! (i.e. win the match by targeting Pom).
There’s some kansainess in やってまえ - I think it would be やってしまえ non-dialectized, so like, if we やる Pom thoroughly.

I doublechecked the situation – looks like she has Nao in her normal face lock,
image

then rolls over and applies a new variation where she grabs Nao’s left hand to lock it in. (and that’s when the commentators react at the newness)

Checking weblio, the sense given for 無理矢理 is interesting since it isn’t quite how I pictured it:

無理と知りながら、強引に行うさま。「ドアを—こじ開ける」「—に飲ませる」

Based on this context, that 1. she wasn’t in trouble when she hit it, and 2. the sense given is about like, forcing out an action against resistance (like forcing a stuck door open)…
… well it’s still hard to translate…

An additional comment, with context I found to back it up: I believe the thing she wants to 取りたい is the lock itself, not the match. I think 取る is a verb used for applying locks.
Some evidence I found is this post explaining the difference between a german suplex and a “backdrop” (confusingly it appears “backdrop” can mean a different thing in English, but this is talking about a “backdrop suplex”)

バックドロップは真後ろではなく半身分、横にずれ自らの首を相手の脇に入れ(ヘッドロックを取られた形)腰辺りを抱き後ろに投げ落とします。

This is describing a backdrop like Dr. Death’s here:
image

And Dr. Death is pictured in what the yahoo answerer described as a “ヘッドロックを取られた形” (the position of being held in a head lock)

Which is all to say… I think what she’s saying is like, she wanted to lock Nao in right there, so the modified form was a way of forcing that to happen.
My attempt from all that: “Somehow… I forced it out. I wanted to lock her in once and for all, so I forced it out.”

I would say it’s like – “I lost track of my what I was saying” or “my words are getting jumbled” or that kind of thing. Like, she doesn’t have the 日本語 at the moment to finish the thought :sweat_smile: I think probably it just sounds odd in English since we’d probably happen to say something more general like “words” when expressing the same thing.

She’s trying to get to the thought she expresses after that with a new start with どれほど - presumably どれくらい earlier was meant to connect up to talking about wondering how much people would cheer her in that situation like the どれほど does, but she got the train of thought in trouble with a long clause describing that position and abandoned ship.

This one I picked up from these translations since it’s come up a few times in the past but the アレ here is like a vague, negative word.
“that is X” would be “あれはX”
but “Xはアレ” would be roughly “X is crummy” or along those lines.
I maybe kinda like “isn’t the best” here as a similar way of like, euphemistically criticizing something without literally criticizing something.
“I know that to receive all this hope and support and to ask for the same again next time isn’t the best, but…”

These are (because of the し and the ので) both reasons for her not being able to give up yet in the last sentence - she feels she needs to work even harder, and for the first time (presumably after the match) Mizuki smiled and said that was fun. (So she can’t give up)

まわり is a counter for sizes, so I suppose また何まわりも大きくなって would be to grow some sizes bigger.

I think she’s saying like – It being her first 後楽園 main event was more something that people told her than something she was aware of, but people repeatedly talking about it likely accumulated and weighed on her mind.

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I’m so glad! Sometimes I feel a bit bad that this thread has become so TJPW-centric, haha, since other Japanese wrestling is perfectly on-topic, too, so it’s nice to hear that other folks appreciate it! TJPW was (obviously) a major motivation for me as well!

It’s kind of funny, though, because something I’ve noticed when watching other Japanese wrestling (well, non-DDT other Japanese wrestling) is that TJPW promos are actually a lot harder to understand than, say, NJPW or NOAH. The last NOAH show I watched, I realized that I basically understood everything being said in the ring without really needing the comms team to translate, and that’s because NOAH stories are pretty straightforward, haha. Lots of “I’m going to win the belt”, “I’m challenging next” and all of that.

I’ve picked up most of the ways of saying those things through doing these translations for over a year. But in TJPW, they’ll say that, and then it’ll be couched in all sorts of nonsense, like cream puff bribery, or keigo (Mahiro…), or “hmm, well I don’t really like you that much, so”. And usually I’ll catch the “I want to challenge” part and then miss the actual core of the sentence haha until I look at the transcript :sweat_smile:.

So all of that is to say that progress might be slow, but you will gradually get there as long as you keep working at it! Despite how much work it has been for me, I have found it very rewarding, and I definitely have more appreciation now of the characters and the stories than I did before I started learning the language!

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I’m very very new to Japanese, but I’m finding in the early weeks that a little TJPW knowledge is going a long way - knowing Free WiFi absolutely helped with び (that’s a wifi symbol if you squint, right?), and わ and ね are obviously Suzume (wa-sp?) and Neko Haruna.

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週刊プロレス No.2222 (from December 2022)

This issue comes with a 2023 calendar. I actually used the 2021 one from Shupro, but I don’t think there was a 2022 one, and I’m so behind I bought a different calendar to use this year. Oops!

There’s an interview with Kazuchika Okada ahead of イッテンヨン.
He says he hopes to make Antonio Inoki an NJPW fan in heaven through his matches. Asked to describe what 闘魂 and Strong Style mean to him he says ”闘いっていうことですよね。闘う気持ちというか。” and talks for a bit about inheriting the past but not being conscious of having to live up to it, since probably peoples’ memories will look on any era with rose colored glasses. He thinks Ospreay/Omega is going to be very interesting, and Nakamura/Mutoh will be too, it makes him (half jokingly) invite Nakamura to have a match at the Dome too (hey sounds good to me).

In Hiroshi Tanahashi’s column they reflect on 2022. Tanahashi says this felt like it went by the fastest out of recent years, while 2020 went by the slowest because of matches being halted. The interviewer タナ番 compares Tanahashi to a Keiji Muto type role with NJPW now since he did a lot of notable matches outside New Japan, like teaming with Kento Miyahara for the Korakuen Hall anniversary show. They talk about the US title stuff Tanahashi was doing earlier in the year, and it’s an opportunity for them to riff some more on the 禁断の扉 phrase (it will never, ever, ever come up in this column without Tanahashi making jokes about whether he unlocked it, or left it open, or failed to open it, etc.). He at least helped unlock it, and Ospreay/Omega coming up would seem to show the door is open, but Tanahashi’s match with CM Punk never ended up happening…
They recall when Tanahashi told Jake Lee at a crossover show to come over to NJPW, and joke that Tanahashi bears some responsibility for Lee now having left AJPW, although it’s up to Lee whether or not that will result in him appearing in front of Tanahashi again, but the seed is planted… (he hadn’t shown up signed to NOAH yet at this point).
タナ番 asks for 予言 for 2023, and Tanahashi says he would like to challenge for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. タナ番 says that’s more of a 目標 than a 予言, which Tanahashi ignores. They talk for a bit about what his fastest path to fulfilling that goa would be - Tanahashi has no ideas in mind so タナ番 suggests the New Japan Cup, but says the fastest would be to challenge the winner at the Dome in the ring (but Tanahashi says he doesn’t have the courage for that), and if he beat Naito in his tag match at the Dome that wouldn’t be a bad basis for a right to challenge.

Jiminy, quite a picture of Minoru Suzuki and Tomoaki Honma from a Just Tap Out show.
(WARNING: blood)

The caption describes this entrance from a Stardom christmas show as “トナカイ・詩美” on a horse.

In Giulia’s column she recaps her 2022:
MIRAI and Thekla being revealed as the ones in that somewhat nonsensical spooky masked invader affair and joining DDM, Prominence invading Stardom and Suzu gunning for her, Mai Sakurai joining DDM, splitting up with Syuri as Syuri founded God’s Eye taking MIRAI with her, Natsupoi betraying DDM to join Cosmic Angels, and winning the 5 Star GP. Not to mention her first hardocre match, getting to team with her idol Rina Yamashita, and Nanae Takahashi and KAIRI returning to Stardom.

Kenoh’s column is also about looking back on 2022 and looking forward to the next. He had a lot of title matches in 2022 (apparently 8 or 9 depending on if you count a tournament), and asked about his most memorable one he says the new year’s show where he defended the GHC National Championship against Kaito Kiyomiya on his birthday, and then afterward had to end the night at McDonald’s doing an interview for this column…
He started his youtube channel in 2022 and he insists this is broad mass media outreach to new fans that will surely be responsible for large attendance to the upcoming new year’s show.
He says change is in the air in the pro-wrestling world with stuff like the end of Vince McMahon at WWE (ah…) and he expresses concern that live attendance won’t recover in a stay at home era when cheering and stuff is more and more allowed again, but masks and concern of buying a ticket and then getting a fever and having to stay home not going way any time soon. (with a small “発熱” based ダジャレ in there about like, that hypothetical fan developing a fever vs. shows needing to “heat up”). He says that it’s not possible for a purely streaming service based promotion to survive, since live gate is so important. And he says the only people who reliably come to shows anymore are “バズーカみたいなカメラで撮影を楽しむ女子プロレスファンのエロ親父.” He says the #1 thing to do is to drive live attendance as much as possible on social media and streaming services.

The Inoki Memorial Column this week is with – the magazine has his named written here as “Saimon Kelly” so I guess that’s what I’ll go with, but I’m most familiar with him from past English sources as Simon Inoki, Antonio Inoki’s son in law (although I believe he’s now divorced and therefore doesn’t go by “Inoki” anymore).
Apparently their families were very close, and when he was a kid they even lived in the same apartment for a time, and Inoki took him to shows and stuff. He recounts his memories of Inoki’s declining health and death. Apparently Inoki liked casinos a lot, and in something of a gamble convinced Kelly to be NJPW 社長 from 2005-2007. Nowadays he works for WWE it sonds like, and played a role in getting Inoki into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Sorta interesting online poll about men’s promotion’s popularity is printed here (although the sample size doesn’t seem large enough to reeeaaaally mean anything). I feel like I remember screenshotting the same poll last year - I wonder if anything changed.

The Champ Talk column where a champion gets to do a promo each week, basically, is this week with Sendai Girls World Champion 朱崇花、talking mainly about having won it from rival Chihiro Hashimoto and how important that is.

In each issue there’s a list of all current champions across about 30 Japanese promotions, and it’s one of those things that’s kinda neat to have but I usually don’t pay attention to, but for whatever reason this week I thought it would be slightly interesting to see, since it lists the Nth champion and # of defences, what the biggest numbers for those are right now. And anyway, the Asia Tag Championship in AJPW is on its 117th defense (which makes sense - I believe that’s the oldest active championship), Nah of course it’s the DDT Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship, as Saki Akai is apparently the 1558th champion, and Saya Kamitani is the champion with the most defenses right now at 11.

In the history column, Nagare says expresses the opinion that the year Antonio Inoki shined the most in his wrestling career was 1974, and recounts a story of being too deferential to argue against a more senior colleague who said Inoki’s pre-NJPW era was better. Nagare says that the key thing Inoki had in the early NJPW period that makes it shine brighter than his 日本プロレス Young Lion period, was “色気” due to the responsibility and 悲壮感 of needing to succeed to make his newly founded promotion stay afloat.

This match report says a dog pinned two people. Also Saki Akai is “キング・オブ・パンストシスト” for 2022, and Sanshiro Takagi had to buy 47 copies of Danshoku Dino’s book (to his own profit).


Miyu Yamashita has an interview where she talks about TJPW’s イッテンヨン 後楽園ホール show, and how it’s ended up as a special tradition, which will be on its 8th iteration in 2023, and Yamashita will have main evented 6 of those shows. She says Yuka may have had to be bribed into it with a cream puff, but she’s the type to bicker up until the point the match is decided but then once it is go into it with full resolve, so Yamashita will have to steel herself and although she’s used to it, the specialness of the occasion means it’s difficult for nerves to fully be settled.
Looking back at her matches on the show, she picks her 2018 match with Reika Saiki as the standout one for her, since it was when she won her second Princess of Princess Championship. It sounds like her first was especially difficult for her because it was her first championship and she was the inaugural champioship, so the sense of pressure was very high for her and it felt more like a release than a disappointment when she lost it, and she was in a place where she couldn’t picture herself as a champion again. So when she won it the second time she felt released from that trauma.

There’s an interview with Suzu Suzuki of Prominence, reflecting on the year (which was obviously a huge year for her). She says at the start of it when they’d just left Ice Ribbon there weren’t bookings coming in for her and she was worried she’d have to get a バイト, but now through Prominence’s own shows, her matches in Stardom, and various other matches across even more promotions, she’s handily fulfilling her goal of living off of pro-wrestling, and she’s learning from each and every match. Asked if it’s tiring she says of course it is, but she’s more or less recovered with some yakiniku or a sauna, and she feels very strongly the will to 頑張る when interacting with fans and reflecting that being フリー it’s up to herself to make money.
She says she’s looking forward to the Yuki Mashiro retirment match, and she’s doing it for Mashiro, not for Ice Ribbon, and she says that her match with Giulia in the 5 Star GP was able to wipe the emotional slate clean but since it was a draw she wants to have another match on the biggest stage possible.
At the end of the interview, to the interviewer’s confusion, she compares herself to the Fast and the Furious franchise: “鈴木すずはプロレス界のワイルドスピードなので。” (ワイルドスピード being the Japanese localized name for those movies)

2022 Wrestling Grand Prix vote counting is in progress but not complete, and there’s some interim results for some awards but it looks like all the winners are the same as the final ones would eventually be.

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週刊プロレス No.2223 (it’s 2023 at last!)

For obvious reasons, this issue is low on features and interviews and very heavy on match reports.

Naito’s column was recorded on December 30th, so it’s not about Wrestle Kingdom. They talk about 鈴木軍 disbanding and its remarkably low rate of betrayals and the like. Naito says from his perspectie he didn’t like that putting Suzuki in the faction name meant that it seemed to set a limit on the other wrestlers from rising above him, but their abilities and personalities shone through anyway. He highlights DOUKI as 鈴木軍の置き土産, and he says that if DOUKI does well from here people will remember Suzuki Gun well, and if he doesn’t they won’t. Asked if he’d scoop up any of the Suzuki Gun members, Naito says since he doesn’t like 上下関係 he wouldn’t want to recruit anyone older than him or senpais, but otherwise he just say he’ll be interested to see where they go.
Reflecting on his 2022, he says that if he were to pick 漢字一文字 to sum up his year it would be あと一歩 since he was involved in a number of title matches and tournaments but didn’t quite seal the deal when it came to victories. The interviewer points out that isn’t really 漢字一文字. Naito tries bargaining for a 漢字二文字 but “一歩” on its own doesn’t make sense, so the interview suggests settling on calling it 一言 rather than 一文字. Naito says his goal for the next year is to fight hard enough to return to the Tokyo Dome main event in 2024.

In Kenoh’s column, it’s time for 「拳王的プロレス大賞2022」, the criteria for which are solely “拳王をいかにワクワクさせたか.” The winner for MVP is… (he does a drum roll) Unagi Sayaka! He was impressed with her tour around to promotions, especially in her willingness to not just be a big visiting attraction, but to fight anyone and everyone in regional shows, big shows, against stars and newcomers, etc. He says at first he thought she had left Stardom (“but I guess it seems like I was wrong about that”) and he doesn’t understand the meaning of ギャン期 very well, but he understands it personally as sort of a 反抗期 and thinks there’s センス in オブラートに包む’ing the relationship with Stardom that way. He’s impressed with how successfully she’s made herself a topic on twitter and stuff too.
For 殊勲賞, he picks Suwama. The interviewer assumes it’s because of restarting Voodoo Murders and winning the Triple Crown Championship, but Kenoh says no, idiot, it’s for scouting a super rookie prospect: Yuma Anzai. It sounds like Kenoh himself was scouted to Michinoku Pro from college, and he’s involved with his alma mater Meiji University’s martial arts club so that kind of network and scouting is important to him. He apparently “to find the second Yuma Anzai” recently visited the 中央大学レスリング部, at the university where Suwama, Sakuraba, and Jumbo Tsuruta went to school, and provides a picture to print in the column of him next to the sign that he took “not to mark the occasion of 明治大学日本拳法部で中央大学に行った or anything.” The interviewer responds: “in other words you took it just because you’re a strange person, huh.”
For 新人賞 he picks Fuwa-chan (saying the picks he made a few weeks ago were just predictions for Shupro’s grand prix)

There’s a whole six pages of recap and pictures of the Muta/Nakamura match. One interesting inclusion is a transcript of the backstage comments, including the amusingly nonsensical bowdlerized version of Muta’s regrettable barely intelligible homophobic English promo: “He is good. Shinsuke good. Maybe he is clear. He is perfect baby.” complete with explanations of what he’s apparently talking about in parentheses - apparently this means Shinsuke is 素晴らしい、クリア、and 完璧. I guess that’s one way of handling it…

Dang, the Shiranui even looks cool in pictures…

Syuri tearfully putting the belt on Giulia is definitely one of my favorite recent post-match moments.

Giulia’s column is about her winning the Red Belt! She talks about how close the match was to hittin the time limit (9 seconds) and how neither of them held anything back. She says when she got home she put the belt on her desk and just took it in, excited about what the future could hold with it, and newly appreciating the feelings of past champions that went into it.
She says she especially hopes to show her vision of pro-wrestling and its diversity to the audience, talking about all of the different wrestlers who have turned up in Stardom from other promotions recently.
Apparently she recently had her aura read as part of a television show or something, and the person told her to become a model and to bring in audiences from outside of wrestling. Giulia says she doesn’t know how to become a model, and it was presumably just a 社交辞令, so she’s not taking it particularly seriously but she does hope to do things that reach people who aren’t aware of pro wrestling and show them 今のプロレスが面白いものだ.

Looks like ブリバト, the team of Mizuki and SAKI reunited at SAKI’s 10th Anniversary show for Color’s.

The history column this week is about the development of Antonio Inoki’s 卍固め. Nagare says in December 1968 at a 後楽園ホール show, the 若獅子 Antonio Inoki hit a hold similar to a cobra twist, taught to him by coach Karl Gotch based on the Octopus Hold used by some wrestlers in Europe. It sounds like media at the time called it a “ブドウづる固め” (grapevine hold) or “タコ固め” (octopus hold), and so it was determined they needed a set name for it. It sounds like postcards flooded in with suggestions, including “Antonio Special” and “かんじ絡め”/”カンジカラミ” after his real first name. But 卍固め is the one that stuck and Inoki resolved to win a match with it, which he did in a tag match teaming with Giant Baba in January. Archive video doesn’t survive of this though, so the first extant video of Inoki’s 卍固め is a black and white tape from February 1969.

Champ Talk is with GCW Ultraviolent Champion Rina Yamashita, with some fun tidbits like belatedly noticing her match announcement had “Championship” written on it and realizing that meant she had a title shot.

DDT’s year end show looks like it was a fun mix of silly serious business and emotional serious business.
I also didn’t know Saori Ano had a tag match with Yuki Arai and Saki Akai in DDT…

That one pizza wrestler showed up in GLEAT apparently.

Some nice pictures from Yuki Mashiro’s retirement match.


The Zero-1 new year’s show began with a video message of encouragement from Shinjiro Ohtani.

Looks like a championship match between Hikaru Shida and Risa Sera in Wave featured suitcase-based offense.

At the start of Hideki Suzuki’s column they talk a little about his past year (it’s been about a year since he was abruptly fired from WWE, and he didn’t have a match on the NOAH New Year’s show but he did get to the finals of the N-1 Victory) and he’s a little salty at people online calling his wrestling style 華がない.
Then they talk about his 弟子 Giulia winning the top belt in the top women’s promotion, and he says that winning the red belt isn’t the finish line, he wants to see Giulia tell a story with her reign going forward, and he thinks she’ll be up to the task. He says he was looking up Akira Hokuto recently, and he was surprised to realize that she never won the red belt (meaning the WWA World Single Championship) (side note: I didn’t know that the world championship being red was a thing in AJW too, but knowing a little about Rossy Ogawa I am 100% unsurprised to learn it), and his point is that championship records fade but the stories told don’t. And in contrast he says that Syuri won and defended the red belt and won year-end awards, but “厳しい言い方するとそれだけだったじゃないですか。”
Asked what new things he might want to start in the new year, Suzuki balks on starting a youtube channel which he’s been mulling over, and he requests that readers send a postcard or fax to the Shupro offices to suggest stuff for him to do. The interviewer suggests social media or media, but no, Suzuki insists it must be postcards or faxes only.

The Editor’s Eye column talks about a third era-changing sign that occured in 2022 (in addition to Antonio Inoki’s death and Keiji Muto’s retirement announcement): the 60th anniverary of Rikidozan’s death.
There’s a bit of an interview with Rikidozan’s son, “Rikidozan Jr.”, Mitsuo Momota, also a pro wrestler. And they talk a bit about his son (Rikidozan’s grandson), Chikara, (the names in that family going 力道山/光浩 → 光雄 → 力 with kanji reusage is giving me “noble family in a Yokomizo novel” vibes, and come to think of it I suppose the larger than life patriarch and tragic murder do too… I wonder if anyone’s written a mystery novel about a pro wrestling family?) who it sounds like is also a pro wrestler but isn’t currently signed and based on social media seems to be enjoying life with his wife.

The end of the magazine column is an interview with Takaaki Kidani, the head of Bushiroad, about the status and future of the two Bushiroad-owned promotions, NJPW and Stardom. Kidani says “新日本の2023はおもしろくなりますよ” and says that the static feeling of the top Japanese wrestlers in New Japan will change, that they’ve relied on Okada too much, and that Suzuki Gun disbanding promises faction shakeups. He says that things generally haven’t changed since 2017, and the influence of COVID is part of that but things will change in 2023. He also says he wants to proactively negotiate with other promotions abroad and in Japan.
About Stardom, he talks about that new tour bus. Everyone in stardom management loves to talk about that bus. He says he thinks Stardom may have a few too many wrestlers, as the various stories may be difficult for audiences to follow (hmmm). He says in terms of audience numbers, there’s the barrier of 1000, 2000, 3000, etc. They broke 1000 even with 後楽園, and they’ve broken 2000, and it sounds like the 4.23 show in 横浜アリーナ (apparently the first women’s pro wrestling show at that arena - or one that big? - in 20 years) is an opportunity (and a need) to break the 3000 barrier and then some. (I am currently on social media blackout until this show is uploaded to Stardom World so I do not know what happened on it and don’t tell me).
NJPW and Stardom are the top men’s and women’s promotion in Japan respectively, and Kidani says 「コロナはもう関係ない。」

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週刊プロレス No.2224 (from January)

In Tanahashi’s column they talk about how with Shibata having a match at Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye and Nakamura having a match with Great Muta, both of the other 新闘魂三銃士 have been in the spotlight in big ways recently. They’re both highly complimentary of the the Nakamura/Muta match and its ending, and there’s an amusing exchange where Tana is like “is it okay to spoil it??” and the interviewer/co-columnist タナ番 is like “it’s fine, it was on the cover of the magazine last week.” They say that Nakamaura crying made a big impact. Unlike Tanahashi, who cries all the time. Tanahashi expresses that Muta with the mask does lack some evilness and impact compared to the old facepaint Muta but he was really impressed by Nakamura. Tanahashi realized, incidentally, that the age gap between him and Shota Umino (21 years) is smaller than the gap between him and Muto (14 years).

Giulia says she watched the big wrestling shows at home with a highball and “トリュフナッツ” (a brand of mixed nuts apparently). The match that most caught her eye was naturally the IWGP Women’s Championship match between KAIRI and Tam Nakano, which was short but fierce. She especially noticed (with some vexation) that she thought bitter rival Tam Nakano came across very cool, because her strength, in victory or defeat, is that 泥臭さ of exhausting it all physically and emotionally in a match.
She mentions Mercedes Mone ang her glamorousness and almost CG seeming hair. And on the subject of 外国人選手 she talks about Xia Brookside and Mariah May arriving in Stardom. She says that DDM has Thekla, but she とにかくイカついのが好きだし, and her favorite Japanese movie is 大日本人 (Big Man Japan, directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto – geez I forgot about that movie… 2007 was the year I really started watching movies so I remember seeing it around on metacritic and stuff but never saw it. I should see it now that I wouldn’t just process it as “Japan weird” and know who Matsumoto is) so Thekla isn’t really the same vibe as these two…
Giulia talks about how pro wrestling in the 70s and 80s was heavily 日本人vs外国人 focused, and she mentions an abbreviation for the World Cup I don’t remember seeing before, W杯, as an example of sports as a vehicle for national pride.
Now it’s a different era, and she says プロレスの魅力は非日常。 It’s a place for the extraordinary that’s meant to give people hopes and dreams and move them, and glamorous 外国人選手 can be a big vehicle for showing that extraordinary world.

In Kenoh’s column, he talks about the NOAH New Year show, and particularly his title match against Kaito Kiyomiya. He expresses very strongly that he wanted to depict a clash of worldviews that would live up to the GHC name built by the likes of Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama, Yoshinari Ogawa, etc., that would grasp hearts even if the name value of Muta/Nakamura was greater. He says though that the クソヤロー who don’t know anything about wrestling probably just fixated on a particular dangerous spot, where he hit a falcon arrow from the corner to the apron (which it sounds like was criticized online). He says that there are tons of moves he wouldn’t hit on anyone except Kiyomiya. He’s had 11 singles matches with him in 5 years and countless tag matches, and in pro wrestling you need a trusting relationship, which he has with Kiyomiya (as an opponent): 「肉体と肉体、魂と魂で会話を重ねてきた者同士しかわからない闘いがあるんだよ。だからこその攻防だ。プロレスには信頼関係が必要。その点において、オレは清宮を人間としては大嫌いだけど、対戦相手としては誰よりも信頼してる。」
He says he hit all of his moves exactly as he was aiming to, but he lost. On 1.1 Kiyomiya was stronger than him. Next time, he’ll hit the falcon arrow from the top corner post to the apron!
He watched the Muta/Nakamura match on Wrestle Universe and enjoyed it but declines to compare it to his match, that’s for the クソヤローども to decide. He talks a bit about Naito and the burgeoning feud with him to end the column.

There’s a feature they’ve done each year I’ve been reading at the start of the year where they recommend young wretlers to watch in the coming year, with this week being the men’s edition.
The two I recognize are Yuto Nakashima (The NJPW Young Lion with the surprising name reading) and Yuma Anzai (the AJPW super rookie Kenoh talked up last week). Nakashima apparently got into lots of ケンカ at school, and so when he saw pro wrestling as a kid, with people hitting each other with chairs and stuff, he was like “amazing!” and smiled with glee but also cried because it meant there were people stronger than him (is this guy a shonen manga protagonist?). He decided he wanted to become a pro wrestler and heard that Tanahashi graduated from the same middle school. He took the NJPW entrance exam twice but didn’t make it either time, and he did MMA matches and would say in promos for that he was going to become a NJPW star, and that went around on the internet and someone from Bad Luck Fale’s New Zealand Dojo reached out like “if you’re serious…” and so he ended up going there. For his card in the new year he wrote “Giant Killing” since he’s got a chip on his shoulder and wants to supplant those who came before him.
As for Anzai, he’s got a (amateur) wrestling background and is a hot prospect with lots of expectation behind him, debuting on the AJPW 50th anniversary show. Since then he’s gone toe to toe with Minoru Suzuki, and even got a pin off of Suwama in a tag match during the prestigious AJPW tag tournament. His next goal is to get his first singles victory.

There’s a small news item about Rin Kadokura retiring from Marvelous to move to Canada, as her new husband Kennosuke Sasaki (son of Kensuke Sasaki and Akira Hokuto) got a job there. She said she doesn’t know how many years it will be down the line, but she would like to stand in this ring again someday.

The Inoki Memorial Column this week is with longtime NJPW announcer Kero Tanaka. It sounds like Inoki was often receptive to Tanaka’s ideas about NJPW presentation and thought thought highly of him that way. Tanaka says the one stipulation Inoki gave him was to absolutely not smile or grin in the ring, which was in line with Inoki’s serious attitude towards the ring. Asked about specific memories of announcing Inoki that stand out, he mentions announcing his name for a memorial show in October. He nearly died from COVID, and when he last saw Inoki, Inoki said 「お互い生死をさまよった仲だな」. Tanaka had dreamed of one day standing again with Inoki in a packed Tokyo Dome, but perhaps someday he’ll at least fulfill the packed Tokyo Dome part.

The editor’s eye column uses the topic of wrestlers crying to talk about Waka Tsukiyama and chat a little with Mina Shirakawa about the internal Cosmic Angels dynamic now that Shirakawa is running Club Venus, as well as helping train Tsukiyama and needing an interpreter for Brookside and May.

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Oh dear… :skull:

I’m kind of surprised that NJPW 1) acknowledged this, and 2) has more or less actually lived up to it so far this year.

I wish the joshi companies would be as proactive as the men’s wrestling companies in trying to make their stuff more accessible to English speaking fans, honestly. From what I’ve heard from friends who still watch Stardom, the amount of officially translated/subtitled stuff has actually decreased in recent months, despite half of their subscribers being from overseas, and with the amount of content they put out, they really need to hire a lot more people…

I remember from back when Mr. Haku still ran the DDT eng update account that apparently half of his followers were primarily there for TJPW, so I feel like the English-speaking base for TJPW probably is higher proportionally than the English-speaking base for DDT, too, though clearly they prioritized hiring someone for English support for DDT and not for TJPW. Then again, the guy who currently does the DDT English account was doing unofficial live translation as a fan, first, and maybe if he hadn’t stepped up, they wouldn’t have hired anyone…

I keep thinking that there’s got to be a TJPW fan out there who is better qualified than I am to be doing translation, but I thought that for over half a year and no one stepped up, so maybe the reality is that there truly isn’t anyone who is both willing and able to do it :sweat_smile:. It sure would be nice for them to hire an actual professional, though. I think maybe they don’t realize how important it is for western fans.

Aww, this is sweet :pleading_face:. I think I’ve talked about it before, but Kaito and Kenoh have one of the most interesting relationships in wrestling to me. They clearly love and trust each other a whole lot, and their rivalry feels really unique to me because of how close to the surface that love and trust is, despite it all being couched in traditional wrestling rivalry terms.

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I finished translating the April 18 press conference for the tag title match at the uh, show that already happened :sweat_smile:. It’s a pretty fun presser, though, so totally worth it.

The format for this one was very different than usual, so it caused me some amount of trouble because of that haha. Here’s the official recap, and here is the video.

Here’s how it started:

On April 18, at Shosen Book Tower in Akihabara, Tokyo, a contract signing was supposed to be held for the Princess Tag Team Championship match, Mizuki & Yuka Sakazaki (champion team) vs Max The Impaler & Pom Harajuku (challenger team) on April 22 at the Edion Arena Osaka No. 2, but Max was absent. With ring announcer Sayuri Namba presiding, the three wrestlers each signed their names. As they waited for Max, who had been informed of the time and place but still had not arrived, the other three wrestlers gave their comments first.

The photo captions are short enough, I’ll include the original Japanese with each of them, haha.

▲マックス不在に嘆くぽむ

▲ Pom laments Max’s absence

▲マックスの部分が空欄で調印が済んだ

▲ The contract signing finished with the space for Max’s signature left blank

Here’s Pom’s comment:

Pom: “Before I got here, I really thought, ‘we’re totally invincible!’ ‘we’ll definitely win the belts!’ But Max didn’t show up, and I’m so anxious that I don’t really want to do it anymore, but I think they’ll come to Osaka. Definitely, if Max is there, we’re the ‘strongest most invincible team’, so we’re not going to lose.”

Got tripped up by a familiar difficult to translate culprit… “やばーい”.

“I’m freaking out. I’ll do my best. Max, come on! Where are you?”

Yuka and Mizuki’s first comments were both a bit confusing to me :sweat_smile:.

坂崎 マックスいなかったら、ぽむ弱小すぎて余裕でしょ(笑)。ほぼマックスみたいなところはあるので。(瑞希に)大阪観光楽しもうな。

Sakazaki: “If Max isn’t there, Pom is so small and weak, we can relax.” (laughs) “It doesn’t look like Max’ll be there, so." (to Mizuki) “Let’s have fun sightseeing in Osaka.”

瑞希 うん。まずこれはいなくて成り立つんかなっていうのはあるけど。

Mizuki: “Yes. Are they even likely to show up? I have my doubts.”

Pom: “I won’t do it if they’re not there!”

Mizuki: “But Pom-chan said she’d do it, so it’s alright if it’s 2 on 1. As long as Max isn’t there, we have nothing to be afraid of.”

Sakazaki: “We really can relax, huh?”

Mizuki: “It’s really convenient.”

Sakazaki: “Thank you!”

Pom: “If they were here, our strength would be infinite!”

Mizuki: “But they’re not.”

Pom: “They’ll come to Osaka! They will definitely come!”

Sakazaki: “Oh really?”

More exposition…

The three wrestlers’ finished expressing their enthusiasm, but Max still had not arrived. It was decided that they would wait for the time being and go ahead with the Q&A section in the meantime.

Wasn’t quite sure what to do with “余裕 mode”, haha (the rest of the grammar is a bit tricky to translate, too. The longest sentences are the hardest to understand, but I feel like it’s always the shortest ones that are hardest to translate…).

▲マックス不在にマジラビも余裕モード

▲ Due to Max’s absence, MagiRabbi are calm and composed

More direct comments:

ーー “On April 15, at Korakuen Hall, it seemed like you were a good pair?”

Pom: “As unthinkable as it was before, we’re really super close friends. Our bond is already the strongest. Maybe the best friends in the whole world.”

ーー “Did they return your hair ornament?”

Pom: “Ah… well, I haven’t gotten it back yet…”

ーー “If you win the belts, will they return it to you?”

Pom: “Yes, I think so. I might possibly want it back. I’ll put them all on.”

ーー “What if the Impaler does come to Osaka?”

Sakazaki: “Well, if they come, they come. And it’s a title match, so…”

I think I did alright on the non-dialogue part of the next chunk of exposition:

Suddenly, Max appeared, growling. Ring announcer Namba asked for them to sign the contract, but Max bit it off and threw it across the room. As soon as they saw Pom, they carried her out, disappearing into the streets of Akihabara.

Namba’s part was super tough, though: “難波リングアナはボロボロ調印書を手に「これはヤル気のあらわれ、サイン以上にインペイラーだよって、気持ちのこもったアクションを。サインそのもの以上のことがここに刻まれました。なので、正式なタイトルマッチとして認定しました」とその場を収めた.”

Holding up the tattered contract, Namba said, “This expresses their willingness, and because it’s the Impaler, it’s more than a signature. It’s an action full of feeling. More than a signature itself was inscribed here. So this match will be recognized as an official title match.” And with that, she put the matter to rest.

Various photo captions:

▲マックスがうめきながら登場

▲ Max appears, growling

▲マックスに調印書へのサインを求める難波

▲ Namba asks Max to sign the contract for the match

▲調印書を眺めるマックス

▲ Max staring at the contract

▲調印書を食べるマックス

▲ Max eating the contract

▲調印書を投げつけるマックス

▲ Max throwing the contract

▲ぽむを連れ去り秋葉原に消えたマックス

▲ Max kidnapping Pom and disappearing into Akihabara

The last chunk went mostly alright, though I wasn’t quite sure about the best way to translate とんでもない in Mizuki’s part:

Namba asked MagiRabbi, who remained in the room, to give comments.

Sakazaki: “Wow, they’ve got Pom Harajuku, huh? The first time she challenged for the tag belts, she was taking Raku’s place, and this time as Max’s partner, she got kidnapped.” (laughs) “We’re facing an interesting opponent, so I’d like to make it a match where MagiRabbi is also interesting.”

Mizuki: “It feels like something unthinkable is happening. But this is our first defense since we won the belts. It feels outrageous from the very start, but I feel like if we protect the belts here, we’ll be able to open a new door. So we’ll just… we’ll try our best!”

And with that, the interview was adjourned.

One last caption:

▲取り残された王者組はボロボロの調印書と記念撮影

▲ The remaining champion team poses for a photo with the tattered contract

And that’s it for the presser! The VOD show has some comments, which I’m planning on also translating once the show goes up and I’ve had a chance to watch it.

The fan club show this weekend was a lot of fun and I highly recommend watching it if you get the chance! We were lucky enough to get a live translation thread from Mr. Haku for it. Otherwise, it’s a very steep listening comprehension challenge, haha (I only caught bits and pieces on my own :smiling_face_with_tear:). There aren’t any post-match comments for it (these shows are only like… semi-canon at best), so I won’t be doing my own translation for this one.

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