Takumi Iroha vs Sora Ayame, Marvelous 4/6/2025
Sora Ayame is the other rookie of Marvelous, having had her debut just in December last year. And well Iroha is obviously a monster so you can imagine how this goes. Ayame only has forearms and dropkicks, neither of which phase Iroha, and Iroha very much treats this like she is playfighting her baby sister until she decides to crank up the violence and beat the shit out of Ayames chest with really nasty kicks and chops. Ayame has no chance in hell but she just keeps plugging away. You know exactly how this guys but this match is executed extremely well with Ayame getting a few great hope spots. There is plenty of awesome struggle, with Ayame unable to even get in a body slam or the basic slam off the top rope on Iroha. At one point Ayame went for the Senka Akatsuki style shoot pin and it got an awesome reaction. Way better than you expect your typically rote rookie squash to be.
Leo Isaka vs KAMIKAZE, Marvelous 4/6/2025
I did not expect to see KAMIKAZE main eventing a joshi show in 2025. This man has been around forever, and he comes out looking to have the body shape of Giant Baba, and kind of moving like Giant Baba. The match is pretty fun. Clearly KAMIKAZE is limited at this point, but they make the most out of it. Much of this is built around Kamikaze busting out cool reversals into the abdominal stretch, and Isaka having a few different ways to get out of the abdominal stretch. Isaka can't get the bigger man off of his feet etc. Isaka really sold this as a challenging bout agaist a tough old coot and that's what makes this really fun. KAMIKAZE even busts out some gnarly Jumbo esque backdrops was great and when he goes to the top rope for his moonsault it elicits and appropriately shocked reaction from the audience, and when the hits that moonsault perfectly still it's just awesome. Really just a cool match built around a guy with obvious limitations but still figuring out how to make it entertaining for 15 minutes. Everything here felt like it mattered and the match had a clear purpose and build and for that it was better than other more athletic matches.
Meiko Satomura vs Takumi Iroha, Marvelous 4/10
Solid, hard hitting pro wrestling that delivers exactly what you expect. Satomura still looks close to on top of her game, knowing exactly how to hit her spots in an unpredictable manner. Iroha is probably the one woman on earth who is most poised to become Satomuras successor. She has style, she has the cool kicks, she has Chigusas blessings. Clearly she has the firepower too to take chunks out of Satomura, and Satomura still has the vigor to smack her back down, and that makes for a really fun dynamic. I think I would like Iroha more if she stopped slapping her thighs so damn much but she was really laying her kicks in here. There are some cool moments - Satomura doing a nice job working a headlock, checking a low kick from Iroha, throwing open handed strikes etc and builds really nicely from Iroha looking like a bullied child to Iroha finding her confidence and finally flipping the fuck out and punching Satomura in the face. Very good and another nice entry in Satomuras great final run.
CHANGO vs Leo Isaka, Marvelous 4/10
Yeah nevermind all that, here's CHANGO! Fun showcase match for all the slick stuff CHANGO can do and some amusing heel tactics. That weird bodyscissor over the ropes he does is so cool, and I also liked his slick dive set up and odd angle kick from the ropes, for an 'do cool stuff all the time' guy I like him a lot because he paces his stuff well and everything is with purpose. Isaka is a perfectly fine technico. He is a generic somewhat pretty junior with a bowlcut, so there's probably a ceiling to how much I can like him as opposed to the ruggedness of a genuine character like CHANGO, but he can also bust out some slick stuff. It helps that he's facing a murderers row of really interesting wrestlers recently.
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