Yu Shimizu & Yuta Oya vs Ali Najima & Hajime Enshu, Sportiva 11/19
Best Sportiva in a while, for 2 reasons: 1) we get some cool Najima/Oya matwork at the start and it's always awesome to see Oya grapple it out and b) an unusal level of disdain between Najima and Shimizu, and thankfully they settle out to deliver a hot finishing stretch between the two that is packed with everything you can ask for. Enshu very much exists in this match, apparently he's a 40-something year old guy who was briefly an AJPW rookie in 2010s and only came back to wrestling last year after a +10 year hiatus. Interesting backstory aside he is a not very impressive skinny old man wrestler, though he can lay it in here and there, and we do get to see Oya judo throwing his skinny ass, so that was cool, and then he doesn't get in the way anymore. Shimizu vs Najima is just great. Obviously these are two very straight forward hard hitting pro wrestlers and they do clock each other with their kicks and elbows good, but the really impressive finish is built around submissions. All year we've seen Shimizus rear naked choke and Najimas achilles hold built up as killing moves so seeing them scramble out of those here was a really sweet piece of long term wrestling storytelling, and the surrounding wrestling was impressive. Finish was actually great too. If Sportiva at some point ends up giving us a singles match between these two I'll be delighted but for now this was a really nice stand-in.
Tomoki Hatano vs Shota Marlon Miwa, HEAT-UP 5/25
This was unexpectedly good. I've only known Hatano as the less impressive, less scummy tag partner of Yu Shimizu. But in this match, he was breathing the spirit of the scum bastard as he basically made it a point to be as evil to his opponent as possible. Really uncooperative looking matwork where Hatana threw the skinnier Miwa around and scrambled for chokes, hard brain scrambling elbows, shrugging off his kicks and just being a total prick. Just the first half of this was like 20 times more interesting than the average indy match due to sheer uncooperativeness and a disdainful nature. Shota Marlon Miwa has the dubious fame of being the first German-Japanese pro wrestler, he is a kind of skinny lanky karateka, he sells his ass off and his kicks are really fun which is all you really want from a karateka. His axe kick and big jumping leg lariat are awesome, so when you have an awesome leg lariat you are an awesome wrestler in my book. Hatanos enzuigirs were also impressively hard kicking, catching Miwa right in his skinny neck. Really good uncooperative little match.
MARU & Ayano Irie vs Marino Saihara & Yukina Uehara, AWG 11/24
A lot of pretty badass wrestling here. MARU continues to look like a killer as she's constantly inflicting punishment, biting, pulling hair, waffling people with a chain and killing them with double stomps. The chain stuff is cheap but effective and the surprise chain attacks are fun, and I am even fine with the comical amount of ref distractions, and it always looks punishing. There was also some great stretch muffler work here. Initially Uehara scrambled right out of the hold, so later MARU goaded her into throwing kicks just to catch her leg and go for the move again. It's super simple stuff but it's a lot of fun and somehow very few wrestler are smart enough anymore to do things like that. Uehara and Saihara were also pretty great here dishing out punishment constantly barraging people with kicks. Uehara seems to be turning into a good wrestler now, even her somewhat goofy hip attack hit hard, and she's just a ton of fun, imagine Torrie Wilson blasting people with credible shoot kicks. One thing that stands out here was the smart use of transitions, it never felt like I was just watching people run through their offense. They settle into a Saihara vs Irie finishing run which is surprisingly white hot. Irie had some problems executing stuff early on, but she held up pretty well against Saiharas UWF style barraging her with big boots from every angle. Saihara is a super reliable wrestler too just constantly putting the heat on people with shoot kicks and submissions and her suplexes. It's simple, straight forward wrestling that hits hard. There were also some great dramatic saves including Uehara just running in and braining Nagai with a BattlARTS-worthy high kick. Just great action. The finish is Saihara nailing Irie with a jumping knee to the face and then throwing her with a huge deadlift German which is one hell of a finish in 2025. I have no explanation for the greatness of AWG, they draw small crowds, which mostly seem to be uncles that seem to be there to look at the pretty girls, yet they keep putting on these banger matches that are more straightforwardly enjoyable than almost anything else I'm seeing in 2025.
Mari & Act vs Haruka Ishikawa & Kyoka Iwai, AWG 1/24
Great tag, which was refreshingly different. Basically, Mari and Act are the top heel act in AWG and Ishikawa and Iwai are a pair of lesser evils. Haruka Ishikawa was going after Mari like an absolute pitbull here, just an absolute demon, and in turn Mari would maul her with some really violent kicks. Iwai likes to hit people with a gimmicked umbrella, so Mari shutting that down quickly and Act giving her a taste of her own medicine was good. Mari and Act toyed with their opponents for a bit before Ishikawa and Iwai gained control in a smart spot. After that it was just a relentless as they tried to take down Mari with Mari having great violent retaliations. Heck, there was a chair throw in this that felt like one of the most memorable things I've seen in a while. The one slight let down is the finish, since they were setting up the upcoming Mari/Ishikawa title match. But this is a great prelude to that, as convincing and intense as you can ask for any match to be mostly thanks to Haruka and Mari.
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