Pro Wrestling WAVE is one of my favorite wrestling promotions. I have yet to see a show live. I get my WAVE fix from purchasing DVDs and seeing the GyoA webcast of their weekly TV show which airs on V☆Paradise. This often means that matches I watch are clipped or out of sequence. Today I will share with you something a little different. This is a complete show recorded off NicoNico. I want to thank RealHero for uploading this. This is the closest you can get to attending a WAVE show without being in Japan.
Mika Iida & Misaki Ohatta vs Mio Shirai & Yuu...by JAHMAL1111
The show starts out with some sort of music that apparently the folks at NicoNico are afraid they will get sued over so they cut the music. NicoNico does this kind of thing a lot. I once watched a DDT show where 2 of the wrestlers were big fans of a certain Idol group. Hearing that group had the same effect on them as spinach has on Popeye. It was hard to follow this gimmick on the NicoPro broadcast as Nico cut the audio anytime the the idol music was played...but I digress. Anyway it is interesting to see how a WAVE show starts. The image on the TitanTron reminds of when there is angel attack in Eva. While I highly doubt that "Decisive Battle" was the music playing I can't get the music out of my head now. They play the opening titles on the Tron in front of the live crowd. They all clap in time. All the wrestlers come out and take a bow and Shida cuts a promo.Then they all go to back. Mio's music hits and it time for the 1rst match. It is a tag match. Mio Shirai and Yuu Yamagata enter the ring. I guess Mio's theme is either public domain or owned by WAVE, as they play it. I don't know whose music Misaki Ohata and Mika Iida come out to because Nico once again cut the music. I am assuming it was Iidas because from the little bit I heard it didn't sound like Maxium the Hormone. Great Match. Watch the video.
Next up is Tomoka Nakagawa vs Melanie Cruise. This match felt like it could have been part of a SHIMMER taping. I especially loved Tomoka's interaction with the crowd. Once again that in itself gave it a SHIMMER feel.
Next up is the semi-final. It is 6 woman tag. Cherry, Hikaru Shida & Kyoko Kimura vs. Ayako Hamada, Sakura Hirota & Shuu Shibutani. Once again Nico cuts the music. I really wish they would add some generic music like they do on the DVD releases. This is another great match. Fast and funny. I love how Sakura carefully folds her shirt only to have one of the other girls mess it up. I wonder if I buy a shirt from her at the merch table if she would fold it so carefully? Cherry come to the ring with a copy of the Iron Ladies Mook. Hikaru Shida, Cherry & Kyoko Kimura do a lot of body building poses in this match. All three of them were featured in this book for those who don't know.
Now it is time for the Main Event! It is an 8 woman tag team 3 out of 5 falls match. The participants are Kana, Moeka Haruhi, Rina Yamashita & Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Kaho Kobayashi, Natsu Sumire, Sawako Shimono & Yumi Ohka! There is an added stip. The winner of each fall can pick there partner for the DuelShock Tag Team Tournament. Lots of great stuff here. I don't really want to spoil the match so watch the vid. After the match GAMI come out and set up the tourny.There is a real funny part where Melanie comes out from the back and demands to be part of the tournament but GAMI can't understand her as she is speaking English. Cruise also has trouble because she doesn't speak Japanese!
This years teams are Las Aventureras (Ayako Hamada and Yuu Yamagata), Classic Gals (Cherry and Shuu Shibutani) Revolucion Amandora (Tomoka Nakagawa and Kyoko Kimura) Plus Minus (Mio Shirai and Misaki Ohata) the current and defending champs, Sakuragohan (Sakura Hirita and Mika Iida.) The new Tag teams will be Kaho Kobayashi and Kana, Hikaru Shida and Natsu Sumire, Dynamite Kansai and Fairy Nipponbashi, Melanie Cruise and Moeka Haruhi, Rina Yamashita and Sawako Shimono, and Tsukasa Fujimoto and Yumi Ohka. The tournament will be single elimination style. It starts on September 23rd. Before the tourny starts though Sakuragohan will have to defend the belt against PlusMinus. The winner of the match will be propelled into the semifinals while the loser will have to start the tourny at the bottom!
The Duel Shock tournament looks awesome this year. I look forward to getting the DVD of the event when it officially released!
It was a Puroresu Booty Battle this past Thursday
Night at Tokyo’s Shinjuko Face arena. That was the venue for Hikaru Shida’s
first ever self-produced show—Go! Ass Train!
It was one of the wrestling event’s I was most excited about this
summer. It is also the first of two
events. Although I wasn’t able to attend
it in person (alas I do not live in Japan) I was able to catch a video digest
of it on Samurai TV.
From the clips I was able to see, the show looks incredible.
It makes me even more excited about seeing her next self-produced show.
KAZUKI and Kaho Kobayashi defeated Cherry and Micro
in the 1rst match of the evening. Next
up was Arisa Nakajima vs Kyusei Ninja Ranmaru.
Shida may have a lot in common with Nakajima. Not only are both rivals of Kana, both
seem to have trouble with Ranmaru’s shenanigans. I just recently watched an
episode of Sexy and Comical Pro Wrestling WAVE, where Hikaru herself wanted to
ignore Ranmaru’s ninjitsu (much to the boo’s of the crowd) and had to told by
Kana and Yumi Ohka to”play along with her.” All of Ranmaru’s “magic” couldn't keep
JWP’s Ace from getting the 1-2-3!
Tomoka Nakagawa’s road to retirement included a ride
on the ass train as she and Syuri defeated Kagetsu and Rina Yamashita. The
fourth match of the evening saw Kengo Mashimo defeating Atsushi Maruyama.
Now it was time for the main event. Who has the greatest butt in all of Pro
Wrestling? Would it be the self-proclaimed
“Ass Craftsman”, Hikaru Shida and her partner Masato Tanaka or would it be the “World
Famous” Kana and DDT’s Kenny Omega! From the clips I have seen this match looks
amazing. It had great wrestling, comedy
spots, high flying, and brawling into the crowd. In the end, it was Kana that proved that she
has the greatest posterier in all of pro wrestling when she made Hikaru tap out ! Shida was not happy about that at all. This match looks amazing. I can’t wait to see the entire 25 minute
match. I hope Shida rushes this to DVD
and brings a copy to SHIMMER for sale…for the time being I will have to make do
with this 7 minute digest from Samurai TV.
The main event of her next show,
Hikaru will take on Kana in singles action.
I look forward to it.
The Reina de Reinas championship is the women's world title of the Mexican wrestling promotion AAA (Asistencia Asesoría y Administración ) It has been around since 1999 and it is currently the only women's only championship in AAA. Reina de Reinas basically translates into " Queen of Queens Championship "Not only is a a belt that is defended in traditional singles matches, there is also an annual tournament, where the winner is crowned the champion! On November 27, 2012, when AAA held the tournament in Tokyo Japan in association with Pro Wrestling WAVE.
Tsukasa Fujimoto/Misaki Ohata -vs- GAMI/Tomoka Nakagawa. *WAVE Tag Title
The winner of Sexy Star vs Blake vs the winner of KAGUYA vs Fabi Apache *Reina de Reinas FINAL*
The matches that evening were broadcast both on Mexican and Japanese Television. I have found video of both the AAA broadcast and the WAVE broadcast. It is interesting to see how different companies view the same material. Personally I prefer the WAVE broadcast as it includes almost all the matches, while the AAA version only includes matches with AAA wrestlers involved. One thing I do like on the AAA broadcast is, the documentary style video package showing the wrestlers in Japan and general build for the Reina de Reinas tournament. While I enjoyed that I was disappointed the AAA coverage did not include the Kana vs Yumi Ohka or Ayumi vs Syuri.
Still It is always interesting to see how two different companies view the same event. I was reminded the differences from watching NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom II and watching TNA's Global iMPACT...even though they are essentially the same event....
The best wrestling match of the week arrived early! I probably should have bought a ticket to Slammiversary when they announced it was in Boston, but TNA has been rather hit an miss for me this year and I was waiting for them to announce the card. I became very excited when Gail Kim was given a match. I become even more excited when TNA announced it was a last Knockout Standing match! I just knew it was going to be good! I really wanted to see it live, but unfortunately while Boston Has decent public transportation, I couldn’t figure out a way to get back to home after the show :( If TNA had announced it earlier I might have been able to get a hotel room, but as it was last minute, I ended up having to watch it on PPV.
Now if you know me, then you know I am a Gail Kim Mark, but I am not marking out when I say that Gail Kim’s match stole the show at the PPV. It was awesome! It was so good, that it I couldn’t concentrate on the next match. It was hard hitting. Both women looked like they wanted to end each other careers. Gail pulled out the flying dragon and applied the figure four on Tarell around the ring post. Taryn got her receipt on Gail by putting Gail in ringpost figure four after Gail went her sideways splash and hit a chair that she wedged in the corner! Both women took huge bumps. The bit were Taryn went for a cross body and Gail countered her with chair was awesome. Taryn at one point tried to spear Gail but Gail got out of the way and Terrell went through the ropes and landed face first on the entrance ramp!
As a Kim Mark I would have preferred Gail to go over, but I can’t say that Taryn winning the match is bad. TNA has done more in building up Taryn Terrell then they have with just about any other Knockout except maybe Gail Kim herself. A lose for Terrell might have killed her momentum, while, Gail is still the big bad of the KO’s and a lose doesn’t change that too much for her.
The rest of the PPV was good as well. It made me very excited for Thursday, which unfortunately was a huge letdown. I was really hoping that TNA would do something with the Knockouts, but I guess TNA creative didn’t expect the match to as incredible as it was.(then agin TNA dropping the ball isn’t anything new. As one show is live and TNA then pretapes the next weeks show right after, I can tell you that things don’t sound too exciting for next week either. No Gail on either show. I am hoping she will be back at the next taping. The question is did this finish the feud? If not where else can it go? Monster’s Ball?
Sunday was a great night for women’s wrestling as not only was there Slammiversary on In Demand PPV, there was also Evolve 22 on iPPV. Evolve featured one of my favorite grapplers, Mia Yim. I have saw Mia Yim in one of her earliest matches and I knew right then that she was headed for greatness and every time I have seen her she has gotten better and better. The match was Mia Yim vs Ivelisse Velez. The match was good. It was a little shy of 10 minutes and had a lot of back and forth action. I think you can still order the replay.
It was a pretty good week because not only did the week start out with Slammiversary and Evolve, but both Oz Academy and Pro Wrestling WAVE had shows this week. Right now my two favorite promotions are WAVE and OZ. WAVE has a weekly ½ hour webshow while Oz has a monthly 2 hour show that airs on GOARA TV!
The main event of WAVE was cosplay tag team match with Kana and Ryo” Aniki” Mizunami vs Yumi Ohka and Mio Shirai. It was a pajama match, in which all the girls had to wrestle in their PJs. Back when WWE RAW was doing their guest host gimmick, every divas match was a costume match catered around whoever was the guest host. Because every match was like that, I don’t think any of the girls enjoyed it, but when it isn’t a regular occurrence, it then becomes rare and special, I think the girls probably enjoy it. It certainly looked like they were having fun with it. Kana is amazing. She can do anything in the ring. While known for her stiff style, and technical wrestling skills, it is interesting to see Kana in a light, fun comedy match. A couple of great comedy spots in the match is where Mio is facing off against Aniki and is brandishing her stuffed cat like a pair of nunchaku and when Kana is wrestling Yumi. Yumi is blocking Kana’s kicks with pillow like someone holding a punching bag during a training session!
I can’t figure out which match stole the show at OZ Academy! Pretty much the entire card was awesome! I wish they hadn’t clipped the 1rst match as I am a big fan everyone involved. If you’re going to shave a match for time constraint then please don’t post the time of the match. If you post graphic stating the match time was 13:09 and the show has only been on the air for 5 minutes then it just makes me feel like I am missing all the good stuff. But other than that it was great.
02. Hikaru Shida vs Mayumi Ozaki - (OZ Academy...by SenorLARIATO The 2 best bouts were Aja Kong vs Ayumi Kurihara and Mayumi Ozaki vs Hikaru Shida. Ozaki vs Shida was just amazing. For those who have never seen OZ before, think ECW but with women. They fight into the crowd every show and this match was no exception. Shida even got busted open! I have always like Hikaru Shida but I didn’t expect this type of match from her. Kurihara vs Kong was incredible as well. Ayumi is sporting new yellow and orange gear. Kong is so big Kurihara was grounded for much of the match, but Ayumi was still able to give Kong the urange several times! This match was very good and very exciting but I liked Ayumi’s Dress Up Wild Fight against Mayumi Ozaki a little more. Both matches are incredible!
Originally that was going to be it for this entry…but I got busy and didn’t upload so I guess I will talk about the following week as well… Well this week wasn’t so hot in my opinion. TNA might have been great at Slammiversary but failed to impress me on iMPACT on the following weeks. Instead of following up on the great action told at Slammiversary, TNA opted instead to continue the Mickie and Velvet angle. One June 6, edition of impact Micke dodged Sky because she was already signed for a match against Taeler Hendrix. It was a decent match but I really wanted to see where they were going with Kim and Terrell. The men’s action was bland as well. The main event between Jeff Hardy and Bully Ray was O-K but it had a lame finish. The next week on iMPACT was worse. They didn’t even have a Knockouts match…just an inring segment between Mickie and Velvet. wouldn’t have been so annoyed by this if there was an actual women’s match on the show as well. I am fine with the building of match. Infact I applaud and approve of the girls not only a storyline, but I want to see action in the ring and it would be nice to see two storylines active at the same time. There was a time when TNA routinely had 2 women’s matches per show. It is not like there is not enough women on the roster to fill 2 segments.
Now I hear this was a big couple of weeks for the WWE Divas. Supposedly there was lots of build to this Sundays Payback PPV and lots of stuff going on in NXT. But I didn’t watch it, so I can’t comment. Given that WWE has done so little with the division in the past couple of years and WWE Diva fans are so starving for something to talk about, the cynic in me, thinks the fans are making mountains out of molehills, but back when Gail and Melina were still in the WWE I so wanted their feud to go over that I read way too much into everything that happened. Although if you ask me, Gail Kim vs Melina was still the best feud in WWE in the year 2011 even if it got no coverage, only played out on HouseShows and Superstars and barely anybody remembers it.
The week was not a total bust because Pro Wrestling Wave delivered as expected. This week started out with a fun comedy match between Ayako Hamada and Kana vs Ranmaru and Apple Miyuki. At one point in the match Ranmaru uses her ninja magic to make Hamada dress up like a school girl. Hamada tags Kana in and Kana has to wrestle wearing an AKB48/school girl outfit. I think Ranmaru might the funniest person in all of puroresu. Is just me or does everytime that Ranmaru says, "Oh My God!"in English do you just burst out laughing!
The match itself is very solid. There is a reason that Kana and Hamada are known as two of the best to come out of Japan. WAVE followed that with Mio Shirai vs Leon. This was a grat high flying match! The last match was another tag match. This time it was Toshi Uematsu and Ran Yu Yu vs Moeka Haruhi and Shibutani Shu. Another solid match, although the 1rst two were my favorites in the program.
I am not certain what lies in store for next week. I know that Pro Wrestling WAVE will be great as it always is. Pro wrestling WAVE can be watched here http://gyao.yahoo.co.jp/p/01034/v00013/ Although you will need to go through a proxy to watch it.
It has been close to a fortnight, since I viewed the final SMASH. It was a great show. I really enjoyed it…. But at the time it didn’t hit me…that it was over. I was stunned when I heard the announcement on February 10th that Tajiri was breaking up SMASH. At first I didn’t believe it, but then I saw the press conference and I knew it was true. It was announced shortly before SMASH.25 which was to be their biggest show. Still for me it was a long way off. I was still very excited about seeing the previous show (WE ARE SMASH) where the main event was Kana vs Tomoka Nakagawa. It had happned on January 19th and it wouldn’t air on TV for a month. So for me at least I still had SMASH to look forward to.
SMASH was my favorite wrestling promotion. One of the many things I loved about SMASH was Tajiri booked the women as well as he booked the men. Unlike the WWE and TNA, the Joshi (women’s wrestling matches for those you not in the know) often got multiple matches on the card. Quite often they were the main event. Many of those matches were as long as men’s matches and were given the same build up. The thing is while I like women’s wrestling, I also like men’s wrestling. Usually if I want to see a great women’s match I would have to watch a woman’s promotion… it was great to be able to watch a promotion that had both.
I actually 1rst discovered SMASH almost by accident. I was trolling for torrents and a stumbled upon a Download for SMASH.4 I knew it was Tajiri’s new promotion and I was excited to see Tajiri. I am a huge Tajiri fan and I was excited to see a new Tajiri match. AKIRA (whom I knew from new Japan) had a match on the card. So did Isami Kodaka. He competes in crazy deathmatches…so you know that his match was going to be good. And the main event of the show was Kana vs Syuri! I was already a fan of Kana so this was a win/win for me. Several matches featuring guys I like, and a main event match with my favorite Joshi. And although I didn’t know it at the time, I would also discover 2 other Joshi that would become my favorite---Lin Bairon and Syuri! I had to download it. It was the best wrestling I saw that month.
--> Still, as I live in America… it was difficult to get… but I was hooked. I already wanted to see SMASH.5 I found out where and when it aired on TV and I discovered website that posted shows recorded from that station and I also discovered places that rented Japanese TV shows on DVD-Rs. And SMASH seemed to get better with every show. Many of my other favorites like Sabu, Ultimo Dragon, Makoto, Tomoka Nakagawa, Serena Deeb, Finley and SuperCrazy joined SMASH. And I became a big fan of StarBuck, Hajime Ohara, and Michael Kovac. By the time SMASH.10 happened I had worked out a system where I was confident I would not miss any SMASH. I started scanning the website. I would like to say reading the website…but I fairly illiterate when it comes reading Japanese and often times google translate gives you gibberish at worst and at best you get Engrish…but I followed the website anyways. I watched the press conferences on youtube. I even read the results a (tried not to spoil myself but I often couldn’t wait) and went to the SAMURAITV website to find out when it would air on TV.
I discovered SMASH at a time when my frustration with the WWE and TNA were at there highest. I often felt at that time (and unfortunately I still do today) that watching RAW is a chore. But there was a time when I was so excited about the WWE that I couldn’t wait for the next episode of RAW to air. While WWE nor TNA didn’t excite me in that way---SMASH did. I literally was so caught up in the storyline I couldn’t wait to see the next SMASH. And when you consider that my Japanese is only so-so it speaks volumes of how well the show was put together.
I knew SMASH was over when I talked to Kana at SHIMMER...but it didn't seem over to me as I had yet to see the show. I watched it on 3/21 and enjoyed it...but it is today when I am hit with the realization that SMASH is done :( How will I get my monthly fix of Kana, Tajiri, Makoto, Lin Bairon, Hajime Ohara, Jessica Love, StarBuck, Syuri, AKIRA, and Ultimo Dragon :( At least Tomoka Nakagawa and Mio Shiria are heavily featured in OZ academy. (Which like SMASH is another show I have grown confident I can catch each episode of.)
The final SMASH match was AKIRA and Tajiri vs Starbuck and Ohara. After the match was over, Tajiri announced his intention of starting a new promotion. I am anxiously awaiting more information on this. I hope that I will enjoy this new Promotion as much as I enjoyed SMASH. I hope that Tajiri brings in all my favorites into this promotion I hope I am able to find video of it as easily I did for SMASH. Time will tell. So, goodbye SMASH. I will miss you. WE ARE SMASH FOREVER!
