Hello SquaredCircle! Welcome to our Weekly Discussion Thread!
What have you watched lately? Seen any great matches? Have suggestions for things to watch? Anything not getting covered in other threads that ya wanna fill people in about? Questions about promotions, wrestlers, ‘the business’ or more?
Feel free to post below!
(Reminder, this thread can and will contain spoilers for possibly any show. Spoiler tags are not required in here, but if the show just happened try and keep spoiler talk it to its respective discussion thread for the first day).
Oh very cool. I’ve actually been considering giving the Google Translate app or something similar that can translate speech a try lol.
I would honestly prefer just subtitles to gaijin commentary. I went back and watched Historic X-over 1. Thought I might as well seeing as there’s only been two so far and watched the English commentary. And while it was nice getting an English break down of Mayu Iwatani and Kairi’s backstories for example, those commentators were such fucking dorks lol.
I think it has the same problem for me as English commentary for Mexican stuff has been in my experience so far. They don’t come across as part of the show but rather tourists or outsiders, or fans, which I guess they are. So I don’t believe them when they start putting on their ‘emotional’ big fight Michael Cole voices.
It’s better than nothing but if Stardom were to ever get English commentary or at least show hosts, I would way prefer if it was someone homegrown that can speak English, even if it’s not perfect English, over Americans or Brits that come across more like people who post in wrestling forums than a part of the show.
I know we aren’t gonna get it cause they aren’t play-by-play/color commentators nor do they really have the skills at it (yet 👀) but I’d love to see them have shows called by some of the wrestlers that are fluent in English (Mina, Waka, Momo Kohgo) plus the foreigners like Xena/Thekla/etc. Not gonna be worse than the NJPW guys at least lol
Based on what I’ve seen so far, Thekla would immediately add a strong language rating to the show lol. She could definitely work as the heel commentator that makes excuses or looks the other way when someone does something bad though.
I’d still love to actually learn Japanese though. I say that but my life is basically full of unfinished projects and plans with no action lol so, we’ll see if that ever actually happens. But one thing that I still feel like I’m missing out on that subtitles and commentary will probably never fully cover is all of the shit talking in the ring. Which there is a lot of. And a lot of these women seem fucking hilarious.
Which right now, makes Thekla’s chirps especially funny because it’s a rare time I can understand exactly what someone is saying. The latest one I just saw was her saying to the ref “why are you always on my ass, bro?” None of the audience reacted but I thought it was fucking funny.
Hope you don’t mind but I just want to come back to the commentary thing now that I’m done with the 7 Golden Week shows (I actually didn’t end up skipping through much at all, so it’s taken time). But I’m realising that as a noob, bad English commentary is actually better than no English commentary. At least when you’re first getting into it.
I’m thinking of how when I watched NJPW for a while a few years ago, by now I would’ve known everyone’s name by memory and probably also their motivations and shit. Those commentators were actually ok when they’re just being wrestling nerds with stat sheets and bullet points and not trying to do the Michael Cole big match voice and acting like they’ve been friends with these people backstage for decades.
But on the Stardom side of things, the majority of my viewing has now been without any commentary at all and without any match graphics or graphics of any kind (and if there are match graphics, it’s a 50/50 if you’re even going to see a wrestlers name in the Latin alphabet). So I’ve been switching to another web page throughout that has the match card written down but is pretty inconsistent in listing faction associations and champions.
So while there’s definitely wrestlers that I can name on sight, it’s taking me much longer to get to the point where I don’t need a quick reminder of someone’s exact name or the spelling while I’m watching. But I’m getting there.
Just wanted to say, I’ve sightly changed my mind regarding commentary since last time. I think these no commentary shows will be more enjoyable once I know everyone properly but as a noob, a bit of English is super helpful.
I’d say that’s understandable. I’ve been watching for about 3y so my own experience won’t match a new watchers. When new wrestlers come along I get the benefit of just need to learn 1-3 new names at a time, you’re stuck with most of a full roster’s worth of learning atm lol.
The Stardom website’s roster page was one thing I had to cross reference like crazy trying to memorize peoples names (even if the name is in kanji, the page url is in English so you can see their names there easily) and learning who goes where faction wise, if you have not visited yet.
(Mind you unlike NJPW who lists everyone who ever blinks inside a NJPW venue regardless of company affiliation, freelancers aren’t listed on Stardoms page so people like Tomoka and Azusa Inaba aren’t listed despite being on almost every show for a year now, as they work for JTO).
I’ll get around to checking out official pages and stuff, for now though I’m just trying to avoid spoilers. I’ve already spoiled one future feud between members of the same faction (at least I hope it’s still in the future and not even further back because I am for damn sure looking forward to it now) while trying to look for translated promos on the Stardom YouTube page (and failing).
So for now, I’m still doing this mostly blind and probably reading into feuds and dynamics a little bit and making up my own head canon based on what I can piece together. But once I’ve caught up or am close to it, I do intend to do some more thorough research and bookmarking of good resources.
If you don’t mind me asking YET ANOTHER question. I think you mentioned that when management changed, 6 wrestlers walked. Am I past that point yet or is it still coming? And if it is still coming, do you mind telling me who it is that walks so that I don’t get too attached or anything?
Never worry about asking!
Rossy was fired February 5th (and his planned booking continued for a month or two). The wrestlers who left to join him in Marigold left on or around *googles* the third week of March so you probably already missed them cause I think you said you were starting a month or so after that, but it was:
(Everyone else in Marigold came largely from AWG, Ice Ribbon, or other rando indies like the gaijin ladies).
Ah so it’s definitely already happened from where I started. All Star Queendom was April 24 I think. Glad to know because a little bit of worry has been creeping in while I’m starting to figure out who my favourites are. Like, I would be devastated if I lost Yuna Mizumori now after just finding her. She gives the impression that she’s having the absolute time of her life every time she’s out there. Her and Jody Threat from TNA would be a bonkers tag team.
I definitely recognise a lot of those names, so they do seem like fairly high profile losses though. But I might catch them soon elsewhere. Not gonna do too much more exploring until I can name the Stardom wrestlers without jumping between web pages. But while Stardom and TJPW are the main two on this website, I have also spotted Sendai and Marigold floating around. So I’ll probably at least check it all out eventually.
Yuna is fantastic! She came in from (iirc) Chocopro (which is another one, free on youtube, fantastic, but nontraditional, you’ll get it, it’s where Emi Sakura of AEW usually is as she owns it) and had to earn her way into Cosmic Angels as Tam was quite harsh on her, but she’s now basically in the position of the main one who recommends new members to the group. When they do trios they frequently have split up with Yuna leading the ‘junior members’ team (to Tam leading the seniors).
Sendai my only interactions with really are when they come to Stardom/New Blood shows or vice versa, but DASH Chisako, Mika Iwata, Chihiro Hashimoto and Manami are all great. Manami you’ll see of in the 5STARGP as she participated iirc, Mika Iwata you’ll see later in the year as she has a program with Saori Anou of Cosmic Angels that goes back and forth.
Marigold aside from who I mentioned have some good people on the roster (Chiaki, Chika Goto, Amarei Kouki, Miku Aino, Natsumi Showzuki several of which have won and traded around titled by now). The other half of the roster does vary. One of the non-Japanese women on the roster tried to do a Michinoku Driver that was so horrid 2 weeks ago that even Taka come on social media and told her to not fucking do it cause it looked like shit lmao
Edit: Oh and Marigolds website is flame broiled arse. Aside from the schedule page its not updated since last may lol
Tam Nakano is another one that has been intriguing me a lot, probably because she was the first one I saw that was involved in an obvious non-title storyline. The ‘kawaii’ thing really doesn’t do it for me but watching her go from the end of some sort of odd couple relationship with Aja Kong to picking up a stray Starlight Kid, she seems much more interesting than the ‘kawaii’ lets on. She also comes across to me like she may possibly be missing a marble or two lol. And while I’m at it, Natsupoi also comes across as much more of a wild child than first impressions would give. It’s actually hard to pin anything down to a subculture and have certain expectations as far as Japan goes lol. Because you’ll have someone in a white frilly outfit with a ‘kawaii’ gimmick coming out to symphonic metal entrance music and acting generally unhinged. One of my favourite Natsupoi moments so far was watching her have a good munch on someone’s arm at ringside, then looking at the camera with crazy eyes and wiping her mouth lol.
Also one of my immediate favourites before I even knew much about her. Love her style, entrance music and general attitude. She gives me video game character vibes lol. Like she would fit well as a Tekken character.
I also just want to also mention, because where else am I going to get this all off my chest. But the potential feud that I saw and am now very much looking forward to involves Syuri & Ami Sohrei. Both also immediately caught me from the first show. Honestly if I could ever get to see Syuri vs Ami Sohrei vs Lady C vs HANAKO, I think I would be in heaven. But Syuri vs Ami Sohrei will be more than enough to sate me for now (please don’t say I’ve already missed this).
Honestly though, at this point there’s rarely a match where I’m not rooting for at least one person in each corner. Unless it’s Oedo Tai. I love them but they beat up (and often steamroll) all my favourites so I also hate them lol.
I have heard about this promotion before and from what I understand, it’s one of the more wild and wacky promotions as far as storylines go. Probably right up my alley and I definitely need to check it out too.