Assorted 19 O Clock Girls Pro Wrestling

 Chii Tomiya vs Makoto, Ice Ribbon 12/10/2010

This is from the 19 O’Clock Girls Pro Wrestling era. Basically Ice Ribbon just livestreamed dojo matches every week. This was way way better than you’d expect a match like that to be, as they basically went all out to have a great 10 minute TV match with no audience. Starts out very good with both of them showing some slick mat wrestling. Tomiya has really fast ankle picking takedowns and Makoto also looked good exchanging holds and making fancy escapes. It’s just really solid, targetted wrestling with purpose. I always like when every move has a follow up, i.e. Makoto would target Tomiyas back further after locking in a boston crab. Cool transition where Makoto tries to do further damage to Tomiya outside of the ring, but Tomiya is able to hit a Dudley Dog into a chair. Tomiya then climbs onto a poll and hits a diving stomp to Makotos mid-section. Tomiya proceeded to further attack the mid section, with an angry Makoto in turn attacking her mid-section too in retaliation. Finishing run had some really awesome rewindworthy submissions and pin counters with both of them really sinking deep into Fujiwara armbars. There were cool transitions, unique spins on more standard move, good pace, believable offense from both of them. Great intro to the world of 19 O Clock Girls Pro Wrestling.

Nanae Takahashi vs Sayaka Obihiro, Ice Ribbon 12/10/2010

Yeah, another really good 10 minute match. By far the best I’ve seen Obihiro look – not that I’ve seen a ton of Obihiro. From what I know, she’s seemingly a comedy character in recent years, but she was fighting hard here. Starts great with Obihiro stopping Takahashis onslaught by latching onto her leg, leading to some cool stubborn grappling. The match story is simple: Takahashi would blow Obihiro a way, and Obihiro would desperately try to latch onto any kind of advantage. When Obihiro got a basic sleeper she really went for that sleeper like she wanted to choke out Takahashi more than anything else in her life. Takahashi is great here – putting a ton of force into basic moves like a dropkick, shoulder block or back suplex, and punishing Obihiros audacity. Even the blown spots kinda worked for the story of the match, and the Ice Ribbon complicated pin housestyle works pretty well for an underdog story. Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun here.

Chii Tomiya vs Hikari Minami, Ice Ribbon 6/1/2011

This was two talented wrestlers going really really hard and having a match that was just off the wall with unique ideas and some amazing wrestling. I’ve never seen Hikari Minami before, but she looked good – quite athletic in fact. She had no problem doing springboard dives, basing for Tomiya, doing slick counters and engaging in some wild shit outside the ring. I’ve no idea if her falling off the rope to the outside was intentional but they continued so seamlessly in their chaotic rhythm that I want to believe it was. They do some pretty fun stuff outside the ring, going into a full on lucha sequence with leapfrogs and legsweeps on the floor, which is pretty unique and worked really well. Tomiya ends up hitting a tornado DDT into the ring bell and then using the hammer in a unique spot. Tomiya is looking quite great in these old webcam matches, just relentless constantly going for flash pins, cool takedowns and submissions. Minami brings quite a bit to the table too. I love how they put a lot of gruesomeness into things as basic as a crabhold. Finishing run had so many unique and cool counters. Tomiyas Jungle Clutch has to be the greatest flash pin I’ve ever seen and then Minami reverses it and it’s real jaw dropping stuff. So good, I’m so happy this stuff survived the Ustream apocalypse because it’s tremendously fun.

Tsukushi vs Emi Sakura, Ice Ribbon 4/10/2011

Hey – it’s a no ring match! It seems to be held in an elementar school… maybe an amateur wrestling room, but there’s also a blackboard on the wall. Anyways! This match is great shit! It’s another for the category of ‘how hard can you go when you have no ring’. They do it all here. And the match had a good teacher vs student story, too. You may hate Emi Sakura, but when she wants to go she’s pretty undeniable. This had a ton of good wrestling, cool submission work, and it was almost an entirely serious and hard fought match. They put considerable struggle into things like Tsukushis bow and arrow hold, nifty things like Tsukushi using the Pallo Special to get into a Tiger Suplex, and lots of cool counters and moments and both of them waffling each other pretty hard. The atmosphere with all the schoolkids watching is pretty fun and this is really a breathless match. All serious, with the exception of one moment where Tsukushi lead an army of school children to roll over Emi Sakura, and even that was kind of fitting.

Ice Ribbon Club Ice Ribbon Match Vol. 2 3/30/2022

 Adversity Nine: Tsukasa Fujimoto vs Kaho Matsushita vs Saran vs Nao Ishikawa vs Yuuki Mashiro vs Asahi vs Ibuki Hoshi vs Totoro Satsuki vs Tsukushi

Adversity 9 baby. I really really enjoyed the 2011 version of this crazy concept, so I was really curious what the 2022 Ice Ribbon roster would do with the concept. To remind: This is a double gauntlet match, everybody fights each other, twice, in about 72 consecutive singles matches each with a 1 minute time limit. And for the most part, yeah this is really good! Basically 8 rounds of grueling hell sprints that got incredibly intense in parts. The thing with the 2011 match was that the weakest wrestlers would get moved to the back, here it was the other way around with everyone facing the weaker opponents first and at the end having to survive against Tsukushi and then Tsukasa Fujimoto. That made the dynamic a bit different, but still really interesting. The format is great because it makes any basic pinfall, roll up or boston crab into credible nearfalls. And you get these intense, unique moments like the almost amateur-like forcing of a pinfall, or having to survive a boston crab. So anything can finish, and everyone is in out of the match quickly enough to not get exposed, and when they have to face the gauntlet each individual character shines.

So like with most modern joshi I am hardly familiar with the kind of wrestlers that Ice Ribbon had in 2022. I vaguely know Tsukasa and Tsukushi. Tsukasa is a good ace figure with some hard kicks and works well as a tough final test for everyone, she was also hellbent on hitting people with the Japanese Ocean Suplex, but I was surprised by the kind of violence Tsukushi brought. She’s under 5 feet tall but was really brutalizing people, crushing faces with sick low dropkicks, trying to drill through people with double stomps. Her double stomp to poor Nao Ishikawas spine was especially evil as Ishikawa had just spent a minute surviving a boston crab. I’m pretty sure she also kneed someone in the throat at some point.

Of all the wrestlers I didn’t know I think I liked Satsuki the most. She’s just a big old tank and having her in there to crush people with splashes and slams is a nice different vibe to break up the dropkicks-and-rollups generic joshi stuff that many others in the match were doing. Thought her segment was really impressive as she worked some great stuff with everyone, I also got a kick out of when she submitted someone by simply squishing them when they attempted to backslide her, really unique and made perfect sense. Ibuki Hoshi is a fun chopping machine and Asahi had some cool submissions. The others were a lot more basic and generic, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and had some moments but didn’t stand out in a major way. The one negative standout was Mashiro who really took out the intensity with her silly bullshit a few times, unnecessary in a match where everyone else was working hard to keep the intensity high for like 70 minutes, even when she tried to wrestle seriously she wasn’t much good, she hit some dropkicks where even the commentator was yelling that she’s not hitting her target at all. Also Saran is like 13 and the others weren’t going easy on her at all which made her gauntlet part quite insane, though she did get a kind of epic rush at the end, pretty unique and one of those ‘pro wrestling is real as fuck’ moments that you only really get in Japan. In total this wasn’t as good as the 2011 match but definitely still really good. The wrestling didn’t reach the same heights as you didn’t really have any Emi Sakura-Hikaru Shida-Chii Tomiya type in the match to elevate things to that level but the intensity was great and there lots of great moments.

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Ice Ribbon ADVERSITY NINE 6/25/2011

 

Adversity Nine Match: Emi Sakura vs Hikaru Shida vs Chii Tomiya vs Tsukushi vs Kurumi vs Mochi Miyagi vs Mary Naito vs Maki Narumiya vs Dorami Nagano

This match had an insane stipulation. It was a gauntlet of double round robin singles matches with a 1 minute time limit, with everybody facing everybody for 1 minute each, two times. So that means what you get here is 72 consecutive singles matches in a bit over an hour. That is the kind of insane thing that I absolutely have to check out, and it was absolutely worth it because this ruled and absolutely worked in every way.

A big part of why the match works so well is the set hierarchy and entry order. The wrestlers are ordered from strongest (Sakura) to weakest (Nagano). The clue is that everybody faces each other twice. So, Nagano has to start facing the strongest wrestlers, but after surviving that, the following round the weakest wrestlers are added back to the end of the gauntlet. That means even the high ranked wrestlers would get in trouble, because after facing 8 opponents in a row not getting beaten by the weakest wrestler in the group would be challenging even for them. After going through so many opponents it becomes challenging to not get tapped by even a basic Boston Crab, and that is really compelling.

Another reason for why this match works so well is that everybody here had a character and they were all working their own separate stories. The main goal was clear – for the weaker wrestlers, survive the gauntlet taking as few Ls as possible, and then try to beat the stronger wrestlers later when they have to face you at the end of the gauntlet. For the stronger wrestlers, pick up as many Ws as possible and then try not to lose to weak ass Maki Narumiya or Dorami Nagano. Before watching this I was not familiar with the 2011 Ice Ribbon roster at all. I know Emi Sakura, I vaguely know about Shida and Tsukushi, I didn’t really know anyone else, but watching the match I got really into almost everybody here. You had someone like Shida, who is a badass who can tap out everybody and drop bombs, and then you had the likes of Maki Narumiya with nothing except a good overhand chop and a torture rack. Watching someone like Narumiya fight really hard and try to get a W despite her limitations was really cool. Everybody here brought something unique to the table, and because of the 1 minute format everyone could just get in, try to win, and get out before getting exposed. There was also plenty of stylistic variety - you had the surely badass Shida with her straight forward armbars and knee strikes, the slick technician Chii, the explosive rookie Tsukushi, the more surely power moves of Kurumi or Miyagi, the basic rookie moves of Dorami Nagano etc. I’m not sure if I would want to watch someone like Mochi Miyagi or Dorami Nagano in a normal match but in this setting they were really cool because they played part in a bigger story and freshened things up. The only wrestler who looked downright shitty was Mary Naito, even that can be kind of forgiven because she was never in the ring very long and in some case just got in to lose in 10 seconds.

Because of the 1 minute format, flash pins and submissions became important, which is always nice because it means you get more than just bomb dropping. Ice Ribbon is kind of flash pin central, and there were some really cool ones. Hikaru Shida was by far the biggest badass in the match, she was acing this thing tapping everybody out with cool out of nowhere armbars. I was also surprised by Chii Tomiya, who looked like a really slick wrestler with cool flash pins and a variety of ways to finish her opponents. Emi Sakura is of course the big boss and she played that role to perfection, and when it was time to go hard she did go hard. The first few gauntlets here were compelling due to the story being told with a few great moments and payoffs, but the last couple rounds when it was Tomiya, Shida and Sakura going through the gauntlet were some of the finest wrestling I’ve ever seen. The ‘any move can finish’ factor really made this edge of your seat stuff and there were some awesome counters and upsets, without going overboard. Watching the top ranked wrestlers try to survive the weakest opponents was fascinating. Tsukushi was really young here, and while her execution wasn’t perfect she’s a cool wildcard with her slick flash pins and high energy, also kicked Sakura flash in the face at one point. After the gauntlet is done the two wrestlers with the best score face off for another round to settle it and it’s a really cool ‘throw the kitchen sink and try to win’ scrap. Really one of the most unique matches I’ve ever seen, it was shockingly well put together, told a great story with wide cast of characters and delivered some awesome wrestling while the match time flew by. It’s the kind of insane thing that I would like to see tried again, although I think it can only really work in joshi. Emi Sakura, you are a whacky genius.

 

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