Rydeen Hagane vs Chie Ozora, Pure-J 4/5
Pretty fun, I continue to dig Rydeen Hagane big matches. And Chie Ozora turns into a really serious wrestler when in a big match. Good big vs little match here with Chie barraging Hagane with her offense, cool quick dropkicks and armbars. You really got the sense Ozora was giving everything she had and her wild eyed determination was fantastic. There's not really any other wrestler around that I know of doing the face painted monster thing and while Hagane is no Aja Kong, she is pretty good in her own right. The match had a few great moments i.e. Hagane powering out of the hanging armbar which was a great simple monster spot. I also liked that Hagane finished the match fairly quickly. Ozora gave her best shot but once she was caught Hagane made pretty quick work of her. It's a different vibe for a title match and I would like to it more often that a big match doesn't get all drawn out for no reason.
Shinya Aoki & Keigo Nakamura vs Minoru Suzuki & Akito, DDT 3/29
Aoki and Suzuki grappling was pretty fun. Can't imagine Suzuki looking much better in 2025 honestly. He still tries, god bless him, and Aoki does some freaky scarecrowd submissions and such. Aoki is obviously really fun to watch grappling and I am sad Mutoha ended before we got to see him have a match there, however unlikely that may have been. The rest of the match was alright, but pretty much a standard indy fare. Nakamura displays some cool athleticism, but in the case of things like his bridge roll over, it looks cool, but I am not sure it makes sense. That seems to be the theme of a lot of pro wrestling in 2025, doing things to show that you can do them, not because they make sense. Akitos thing is all about attacking someones legs, and he does have some cool leg attacks, but Nakamura spends pretty much 0 effort on selling it. I get that being a selling nazi is kind of pointless, but still, you don't have to rub it in my face that you are putting no thought into what you are doing. I know Akito had a ton of awesome looking grappleriffic matches with Yasushi Sato in the past which made me interested in watching him grapple with Shinya Aoki, but sadly that doesn't happen at all in this match.
CHANGO & Kengo Mashimo vs Shiori Asahi & Takuro Niki, 2AW 4/6
CHANGO vs Asahi is a pretty banging match up. I've always enjoyed Asahi, thought he had cool spots and above average fundamentals, but he might be on his way to becoming a godhead now. He's in a kung fu suit now and wrestling like he devoured Kenichiro Arais soul. Their matwork was great, lots of both guys slipping into armlocks in slick ways, Asahi even busted out his old banana split submission with CHANGO countering in cool fashion. CHANGO wrestles a lot like Tajiri, very slick with lots of unique spots, he's really fun to watch.They settle into Mashimo & CHANGO attacking Asahis arm, which lead to this cool armbreaker/sleeper hold battle, which is a basic spot but they really made it look amazing here. The finish settles for CHANGO vs Asahi again, with CHANGO having some awesome counters for Asahis signature sweep kicks that look great. Mashimo and Niki pretty much just do very generic indy wrestling here, its alright and doesn't take up a big part of the match, you could've pretty much edited their sections out and ended with a kickass CHANGO vs Shiori Asashi match, which really needs to happen on a Mutoha revival show or something.
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