​3/31 card & notes:

• Miyu Yamashita (champion) VS Miu Watanabe (challenger)

• YukiNikki [Ryo Mizunami & Yuki Aino] (champions) VS Daisy Monkey [Suzume & Arisu Endo] (challengers)

• Yuki Arai (champion) VS Yuki Kamifuku (challenger)

• Magical Sugar Rabbits[Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki] VS Emi Sakura & Chris Brookes

• Maki Itoh VS Minoru Suzuki

• Kyouraku Kyoumei [Shoko Nakajima & Hyper Misao] VS Aja Kong & MAX the Impaler

• Rika Tatsumi VS Masha Slamovich

• Shinkenkusho [Moka Miyamoto & Juria Nagano] VS Wakana Uehara & Toga

• Andreza Giant Panda & Kaya Toribami with Neko Haruna VS Raku & Harajuku Pom

• Ami Yumoto & Nao Kakuta VS Mahiro Kiryu & HIMAWARI

• Shino Suzuki, Chika Nanase & Kira Summer VS Haru Kazeshiro, Runa Okubo & Uta Takami

notes

• Tokyo Joshi will return to Ryogoku after a one year break as it once again plays host to Grand Princess. It will feature 11 matches. Recently, this has been Tokyo Joshi’s biggest show of the year.

• The main event will be a PuriPuri championship match pitting champion and undisputed Tokyo Joshi Ace, Miyu Yamashita defending the title against rising star and unofficial team leader of the Up Up Girls (Pro wrestling) idol unit, Miu Watanabe. This will be Yamashita’s 4th defense of her 4th title reign title and Watanabe’s second time challenging for the belt in her career. She previously unsuccessfully challenged for the title in 2021 during Rika Tatsumi’s championship reign. From early on in her career, one of Miu’s biggest goals was to defeat Miyu Yamashita and while she was able to topple ToJo’s ace during the 2022 princess cup, Miu doesn’t feel that this was a defining win. This is understandable since Yamashita didn’t seem to be taking her seriously during the match and was trying to pull more of a fight out of her. It backfired on her as Miu was able to dodge a skull kick and catch her with her teardrop finisher. However, during the 5 on 5 battle at the 10th anniversary show it was Miu that took the final the final fall from shot by Yamashita. In their preliminary matches Miu hasn’t been able to take a single win from one of Yamashita’s teams. Nevertheless, Miu is confident in herself and her skills. She easily matches Yamashita in terms of physicality but the question is does she have the mental grit to outlast Yamashita. Yamashita has noted Miu’s vast improvements throughout her career and all the hard work she puts in during training and is excited about the match but she plans to win and its as simple as that for her. Yamashita’s edges here are her kicking range and her experience as champion. She’s managed to defend the PuriPuri title more than any other champion in ToJo but Miu’s edge is that she’s both hungry and has the ability to overpower Yamashita in most situations. Miu has great instincts and has on countless occasions used her intuition paired with her strength and agility to escape some of the most perilous situations imaginable. She will have to use those natural skills to navigate through Yamashita’s fearsome offensive capabilities. While Yamashita is most well known for her powerful kick based striking, she has talents in many other areas including a solid mat game, various go-to submissions and numerous power moves. Not only that but Miyu is extremely excited about the match and its known that she becomes that much stronger when facing strong opponents. Will the ace fell yet another contender or will Miu manage to do what few others have and topple the pink striker?

• This year’s winners of the “Futari wa princess MAX HEART” tag team tournament were Suzume and Arisu Endo also know by their tag name: Daisy Monkey. To do it they had to defeat historically one of the strongest tag teams in Tokyo Joshi, Hakuchumu. Now they have the right to challenge the current tag champs, Ryo Mizunami and Yuki Aino. Interestingly, the very person that Aino pinned to win the vacant belts in the three-way tag match, was Arisu. This gives Daisy Monkey both momentum and drive to win the match. Not only that, but there’s also the point of synchronization. Where Daisy Monkey are consistently pairing up at Tokyo Joshi, the current tag champs are only occasionally are able to pair up due to Mizunami’s commitments in various other promotions. But with all these advantages there’s still the looming problem that they’re going up a team with individuals with more experience and a massive strength advantage over the two of them. Suzume and Arisu are small and fast, usually using their momentum to power their strikes. Mizunami and Aino are far bigger than either of them so they, especially Arisu, might have difficulty executing some of her regular power moves, particularly on Mizunami. They will have to speed up and strike hard and avoid getting snatched up in power moves by the members of YukiNikki. Mizunami and Aino on the other hand are looking to stop Daisy Monkey in their tracks and keep them from zipping around the ring. This will be YukiNikki’s first defense of the belts. Aino has stated that she plans on keeping the belts through the trip to America and wearing it on her return to her hometown in Okayama for her sister’s crowdfunding wrestling show. However, they say its harder to keep the belts than it is to win them. Let’s see if that’s the case here.

• Kamiyu has challenged Yuki Arai for the International princess title, or as Kamiyu likes to call it: “Tiffany”. The theme of this match appears to be self-confidence. For Kamiyu, even though she challenged, she’s always said that she hates being in title matches. She hates being in tournaments and she hates being in singles matches because of her nerves. However there are things she wants to do with the belt. Her last title run was also marred by the pandemic lockdown. So instead of battling against international stars, she ended up battling as she put it “country bumpkins”. For Arai. When she thinks of the International princess belt, Kamiyu is the image that comes up. She doesn’t feel that she’s been able to put her stamp on the title. Compounding with this is the fact that she’s never beaten Kamiyu. And, while it may not end up having any significance, it should be noted that she last fought for the international title when she challenged Maki Itoh 2 years ago at GRAND PRINCESS ’22 also at Ryogoku. A battle which she of course lost. Just one more point that may just scratch at Arai’s confidence level. Looking at the match itself, these two brake down very similarly. Both women are tall and have offense centered around booting their opponents with their long legs. Both women also have a strong connection to retired DDT wrestler Saki Akai with whom they both respect greatly. Kamiyu will sometimes make use of Akai’s “Saki-cutter” as an homage to her and Arai will sometimes make use of Akai’s Rookie award kick. The major difference between the two’s in-ring ability boils down to experience and personality. Kamiyu debuted in 2017 compared to Arai’s 2021 and while Arai tends to act in a very upstanding and honorable manner, Kamiyu has a penchant for being wily and make use of illegal tactics. Will either of their personalities or mind-sets heading into the match effect the outcome? Look forward to this one.

• This match announcement was a huge surprise. MajiRabi reuniting wasn’t so much of a shock as the announcement of their opponents: DDT wrestler Chris Brookes and the head of the Gatoh Move promotion, Emi Sakura. Though Chris is primarily considered a DDT wrestler, he has been an integral part of Gatoh Move shows beginning almost from his arrival in Japan. He is also well acquainted with Tokyo Joshi often providing English commentary for their bigger shows. He first appeared in the promotion as a fan and supporter of Maki Itoh and was quickly added to her new faction “Neo Itoh Respect army” which she had created after her parting of was with Mizuki. He has had a number of other interactions with Tokyo Joshi as well, but this will be his first time participating in a proper Tokyo Joshi show as a wrestler. As for Emi, she has connections with both Mizuki and Yuka. Emi was one of Mizuki’s wrestling trainers and Mizuki often participated in Gatoh Move shows early in her career. Even winning Gatoh Move’s tag titles with her then partner SAKI. Emi’s influences can clearly be seen throughout Mizuki’s wrestling style. Yuka and Emi’s interactions date back to the AEW world eliminator tournament. The two faced off in the bracket semi finals of the tournament with Yuka managing to get a victory over the veteran wrestler. The two have had a couple other skirmishes in AEW since that time. This however will Emi’s first time entering a Tokyo Joshi ring. With Mizuki still a full time Tokyo Joshi member and Yuka only having recently graduated. The Magical Sugar Rabbits will likely have a strong hold on the crowd in this match but between Chris and Emi, they will hold either height, weight or power advantages over both members of MajiRabi. Which of these advantages will prove to be more beneficial?

• Some may remember a few years ago when Maki Itoh formed a “friendship” with Minoru Suzuki before their 6 person tag match against Eruption when she visited Suzuki’s shop, PILEDRIVER, and buying a number of things in order to bolster the relationship. Things broke down somewhat as tensions flared between Suzuki and former DDT wrestler Yukio Sakaguchi, with Maki becoming irritated with Suzuki’s brazenness and lack of adherence to her commands. So the two had a bit of a tiff. But seemingly have since patched things as just recently Maki once again visited PILEDRIVER with an offer for Suzuki to tag up to give the fans at GRAND PRINCESS a big match to look forward to. Suzuki thought that was nice, but counteroffered with what he was an even bigger match: Maki Itoh VS Minoru Suzuki in a singles match. Maki seemed hesitant at first, but with a bit of cajoling Suzuki managed to poke the bear in the correct place and Maki quickly did an about face and even proclaimed that she would end his career in the match. In reality however, Suzuki has advantages over Maki in almost every category; size, strength, experience, et cetera. Maki’s only advantages will likely lie in speed and agility and only a slight advantage at that. It’s been a long time since Maki has been this outmatched inside the ring. It harkens back to her early career when all she could rely on was desperation and her indominable spirit. She’s going to have to remember how to pull from that side of her personality again. Survive and outlast the terrifying veteran and exhaust him. This seems like the only chance she has for victory.

• When we last left our heroes at Summer Sun Princess ‘23, the heinous Aja Kong, furious that love and peace had triumphed in Tokyo Joshi, cruelly took her frustrations out on PaMi’s crime fighting vehicle, the Hyper Mi GO. Damaging it beyond repair. Now she has returned to Tokyo Joshi to once again battle the hero and the kaiju and she has brought in MAX the Impaler to try to help. However, in the interim, not only have PaMi and Shoko become a stronger fighting pair, but also a new more powerful Hyper Mi GO 2 has been developed. After trial runs at the January 4th Kourakuen show, the new high tech battle bike should be more than ready to dole out a coldspray can’s worth of JUSTICE to anyone that might try to disrupt the peace and love that exists in ToJo. Aja and MAX had better be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.

• Masha has traveled all over the world for wrestling. She’s had numerous battles with all kinds of different opponents, but has she ever fought a dragon? And a crazy one at that. Now she has her chance as she’s set to face off against Rika Tatsumaki. Masha’s last appearance in Tokyo Joshi was, interestingly enough, a battle with MAX the Impaler that ended up in a no decision. However most of her interactions with Tokyo Joshi or its Wrestlers have involved Miyu, Maki or Yuka. So, this will be an entirely new experience for her. Rika is a far more cerebral wrestler than those 3 and rarely does her wrestling take a straight forward form. She’s not above using underhanded tactics, misdirection, mind games and anything in her environment, including those wrestlers helping at ringside, to achieve her goals. Masha is sturdy and has experience wrestling hardcore matches in addition to standard match forms, so we’ll see if that built up durability coupled with her accumulated experience all over the world can help her in taking out Rika.

• This will be Juria Nagano’s penultimate match before her retirement in April. As with her Ryogoku Kokugikan debut at the first GRAND PRINCESS in 2022, Juria will partner with Moka Miyamoto as Shinkenkusho faces off against Wakana and Toga. Recently if feels as if Wakana and Toga have been pairing regularly so its not going to be as simple as Moka and Juria beating some fly by night pairing of wrestlers. Wakana and Toga have clearly developed some cohesiveness due not only to their more regular pairings in matches but also their training together behind the scenes due to them being in the same trainee class. Also to consider is the fact that the Wakana-Toga team has a more diverse dynamic than does Shinkenkusho. Toga is a power striker and Wakana is more a general wrestling technician. Conversely, Juria and Moka are both precision strikers. They’re dangerous, and their teamwork is excellent, but their scope is limited. If either Wakana or Toga are can ground them and lock them down, it’ll be difficult for Moka or Juria to respond. If not, Shinkenkusho’s superior striking will likely inevitably overwhelm the rookie team.

• A monumental match has been set to take place pitting the worlds largest wrestling panda, the world’s most Harajuku style cute wrestler, the world’s most bird wrestler and the world’s sleepiest God all in one ring and a cat at ringside. That’s right, Andreza and Kaya will battle Raku and Pom in bout bound to be discussed for ages to come. There are numerous unknowns in this match up that make it completely unpredictable. Do Raku’s lullabies affect pandas? Would she be able to climb Andreza’s large body to execute the Oyasumi Express? Will the panda be able to handle Pom’s powerful shrill shouts? Can Pom get enough height to execute the Pom de Justice on Andreza? Do birds and pandas even get along well enough to perform successfully as a tag team? Will Haruna get involved? How will the cat affect the match? This is one you won’t want to miss.

• The second match of the show will be the debut of the newest Tokyo Joshi rookie, former AKB48 member Ami Yumoto. Yumoto mad a surprise announcement about her pursuit of a wrestling career in a press conference late last month. Her connection with Tokyo Joshi stems from a friendship made with Nao Kakuta during a stageplay in which they costarred. Due to that friendship, it was also decided that Nao would be the former idol’s partner in her debut match. Thus the match for Ami’s debut at GRAND PRINCESS was made and Ami and Nao will face Mahiro and HIMAWARI. While this is Ami’s wrestling debut, she is not a complete stranger to the ring, a number of years ago, a television drama was broadcast which centered around wrestling and starred many of the members from the various 48 branded idol groups. The production of this drama took place during Ami’s AKB48 tenure and thus she landed a role in the program. Actresses who were involved in the show were coached and advised by wrestlers in order to help make the matches look more authentic. Due to this, Ami too received some wrestling coaching at this time. Another interesting facet to this match is Mahiro and Nao once again facing off. For whatever reason it feels as if these two are often in opposition of one another in the ring. The most heated example of this was at Wrestle Princess 4 where they battled to decide the next holders of the then vacant Princess tag belts. Which one will take home bragging rights in this match?

• The opening match will feature many of the rookies that have debuted over the past year in 6 woman tag competition. Normally you would expect the teams to be split so that the rookies that debuted in 2023 would face off against the rookies who debuted in 2024. However, that’s not the case. The lines have been divided by age and not experience. Runa, Haru and Uta the youngest members Tokyo Joshi at 15, 16 and 16 respectively will face a team of rookies all of whom are 20 or older: Shino, Chika and Kira. Haru will likely take the role of team leader for the U20 team since due to Runa’s absence due to her entrance exam studies, Haru has the most match experience of her group. Conversely, Chika and Kira both debuted recently and only have a handful of matches between them and thus its likely that Shino will be team commander for the over 20 squad. There have only been glimpses of what each of these rookies can do, but its looking like these rookies are likely to fall into the following dynmics: Haru and Uta are leaning towards a speed and technical style of wrestling. Runa appears to be heading down the road of a striker. Prior to her hiatus her forearm shots were becoming a highlight of her matches. Shino looks like something of an all arounder with a slight lean towards technical wrestling. Its hard to gauge Chika and Kira with so little mat time but Kira looks to have the makings of an all arounder with a lean towards power wrestler and Chika may end up being a pure all arounder. What will these 6 show us at GRAND PRINCESS and will any end up standing out as leaders of the pack.

• Wrestle Universe has gone through some changes. Firstly, as of March 22nd, the price of the monthly service has increased from 900 yen to 1,298 yen. However, the price increase comes with additional content from new organizations such as Michinoku Pro, Real Zero1 and Sendai Girls as well as increased lives shows and monthly bonuses such as signed digital portraits. A Wrestle Universe app is available on iOS and for android. You can get more information and find links to download the app here. If the app is not available yet in your country, please check back later. The regions where it is downloadable is steadily increasing.

• Voice actor Kenichi Suzumura has been recruited to provide narration for the video intros at GRAND PRINCESS. Suzumura is a prolific voice talent that has been providing his vocal talents to animes, games and more since 1994. Some of his more notable roles include Shinn Asuka in the Gundam Seed universe, Zack Fair in the Final Fantasy VII related games and anime and Sogo Okita in Gintama. The members of ToJo who list anime or games as one of their hobbies (which is practically all of them) are very excited about this announcement.

• Hakusan of Kotatsu Studios as well as Gaia Hox will be providing English commentary for the show.

• Marika Tani who is graduating from the idol group SKE48 the same day, will provide guest commentary for the show alongside play caller Haruo Murata and analyst Sayaka Mito.

• SKE48 will also have a small performance during the show 5 members across multiple teams are scheduled to perform: previously mentioned Marika Tani, Marin Sakamoto, Ruka Inoue, Oka Suenaga and of course Yuki Arai. This will be the first time that SKE48 has performed at a Tokyo Joshi show outside of Nagoya City where the group is based. If their past performances are any indication, the show will consist of around 3 songs and some talk time. For those attending the show, please note that photography and videography are not allowed during the SKE48 group’s time in the ring.

• Though noted briefly above, once again, Juria Nagano will retire on April 13th. GRAND PRINCESS and her retirement show at Kitazawa town hall will be her final two appearances as part of the Tokyo Joshi roster. Juria stated in January during her retirement announcement that she felt going forward she wouldn’t be able to devote the proper energy to continue wrestling while trying to further her work as an actress and continue her nursing career. Also, her inability to work due to her injury last year and the continued limited use of her finger were factors in her decision. She had a strong in ring presence and a memorable wrestling style. Although her career was not long, she will be missed by many fans

• Earlier in March, Nao Kakuta announced that she plans to graduate from Tokyo Joshi and retire in July of this year. Nao debuted in Actwres Girlz in 2015 and wrestled there until 2020. At that time she announced her intention to part ways with the company and set out on her own. In late 2020, Nao began to wrestle as a regular on Tokyo Joshi shows. Since that time she has become a valued and beloved member of Tokyo Joshi’s mid card. For over 3 years she’s chased bunnies, mangled cats and left her boot print on many memorable moments in ToJo. She’ll be greatly missed when she leaves, so be sure to enjoy the remaining 3 months she has to their fullest.

• For those attending the show, please remember that photography before, during and after the show in the arena area is allowed and videography via smartphone is also permitted. Any video content uploaded to social media must be kept within 1 minute and avoid using entrance or exit music. Posts that ignore these requirements can be subject to removal. Photography and videography in the merchandise area is prohibited. Photography and videography during the SKE48 performance is prohibited.

• Wrestle Universe members attending the show who show their tickets and Wrestle Universe ID’s at the appropriate table in the merchandise area will be given 2 special GRAND PRINCESS ’24 not for sale post cards. Universe members can also participate in a aluminum button lottery were winners are awarded a Polaroid picture of the wrestler of their choice from those available. Purchasers of arena area tickets will also be given a special not for sale portrait book if they show their ticket at the appropriate table in the merchandise area.

• A special pre GRAND PRINCESS ’24 gathering has been planned for the day before the show. 2 shots, 3 shots and special sign boards will be available on the day. More information can be found here.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new GP2024 show pamphlet as well as the fouth volume of the “Visual complete” booklet which compiles numerous posters created to hype various Tokyo Joshi matches over the past year, both with a preorder bonus of one random signature, available for a limited time. Also available are entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts, photobooks and more. More GRAND PRINCESS related merchandise will likely be added a few days after the show has finished. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

• Mizuki (champion) VS Miyu Yamashita (challenger)

• Rika Tatsumi (Interntional Princess champion) VS MAX the Impaler (NWA Women’s Television Champion)

• Free WiFi [Hikari Noa & Nao Kakuta] VS Toyo Meito [Yuki Kamifuku & Mahiro Kiryu]

• Maki Itoh VS Nyla Rose

• Saki-sama, Mei San-Michelle, Martha & Yukio San-Laurant VS Shoko Nakajima, Suzume, Harajuku Pom & Antonio Honda

• Aja Kong, Raku & Shino Suzuki VS Hyper Misao, Wakana Uehara & Toga

• Moka Miyamoto VS Juria Nagano

• Arisu Endo, Kaya Toribami & HIMAWARI VS HARUKAZE, Riara & Yoshiko Hasegawa

• Haru Kazeshiro VS Runa Okubo

• Tokyo Joshi will enter Tokyo Tama Mirai Messe for the first time as it plays host to WRESTLE PRINCESS 4, one of Tokyo Joshi’s 3 yearly big shows. This 4th iteration of WRESTLE PRINCESS will feature 10 matches.

• As always, unforeseen circumstances may cause the card to be altered from how it currently appears.

• Ever since Mizuki defeated Sakazaki at Grand Princess earlier this year, Miyu has had the desire to challenge her for the title. However, until now the timing hadn’t worked out due to Miyu’s extended pilgrimage. Thus, Miyu needed to win the Princess Cup to ensure her ability to challenge Mizuki for the title. Miyu and Mizuki have a bit of a complex relationship. In private the two are good friends an often hang out, but inside, Mizuki has an extreme dislike for dealing with Miyu. The record between these two is quite interesting. In singles competition, Miyu has bested Mizuki a few times more than Mizuki has she. However, Mizuki has consistently been able to pin Miyu in various tag encounters they have had, including recently when she was able to catch Miyu with Aquamarine. Nevertheless this will be Mizuki’s toughest test to date as she once again takes on ToJo’s Ace. Mizuki is an excellent wrestler. She is well versed in mat grappling, reversals, high speed attacks and high flying. She’s surprisingly durable for her size and shouldn’t be underestimated. That said, even though she’s able to withstand more punishment than one would expect, she still has a limit that is lower than Miyu’s. Miyu while not as fast or agile as Mizuki, if she connects, she can do double the damage of Mizuki or more with a single attack. This puts Mizuki on a clock. She needs to find a way to either catch her or avoid or somehow weather Miyu’s attacks long enough to deal the damage she needs to keep Miyu down for a submission or count of three.

• A unique battle will take place in the semi final slot in which a vicious sadistic monster will participate and MAX will be there too. Rika Tatsumi and MAX the Impaler will both put their titles on the line and someone will leave the match as double champion. Rika will be defending the International Princess title. It will be her 5th defense of the belt. MAX is defending the NWA women’s television title. For MAX it is the 4th defense. This will be the first time an NWA title is defended in Tokyo Joshi. There is a huge difference in size and strength between the two competitors. MAX relies on seemingly endless berserker like strength. Rika’s power lies in her technical ability and her ability to analyze and dissect her opponents. Wearing them down until she can finish them with either her missle hip, figure four or dragon sleeper. The question is can Rika last long enough to execute her strategy.

• Early in the summer, due to an injury sustained to Yuka Sakazaki, the then Princess tag title holders, the Magical Sugar Rabbits relinquished the titles. Since that time the titles have remained vacant with ToJo needing to focus on their big annual singles tournament, the Princess Cup. Now with the tournament in the rearview mirror, ToJo management set up 2 triple threat tag team matches with some of the most prominent tag teams in ToJo. The first of these matches was won by Free WiFi, the team of Nao and Hikari who have been teaming since nearly Nao arrived in Tokyo Joshi. The second match was won by Toyo Meito. A team formed through Mahiro and Kamiyu’s mutual bond of attending Toyo University. Both these teams have an interesting history with the tag titles. For Free Wifi, this will be Hikari’s fourth attempt to capture the titles, yet this will be the first time she’s made a repeat challenge with the same partner. She previously challenged for the belts with Miu Watanabe and subsequently with Natsumi Maki. For Nao, she is now in her 9th year as a pro wrestler and due to numerous factors, she has, during her career, never been able to capture a title, earning her the epithet “mukan no joou” or “the uncrowned queen.” Nao and Hikari have managed to develop a trusted partnership though they will occasionally punish one another for their own amusement, even in the midst of battle, they have developed into a powerful duo and would make exemplary champions if they are able to defeat Mahiro and Kamiyu. Kamiyu and Mahiro of Toyo Meito share a similar history. Kamiyu has challenged for the tag belts on numerous occasions and with several partners. This will be her fifth attempt at the crown and her third teaming with Mahiro. Kamiyu and Mahiro have had their troubles but seem to be united in their quest for the belts on this day. The two teams not only have a storied history with the titles but with each other as well. Kamiyu especially has a deep past with both Hikari and Nao. During her time capturing and holding the International Princess title, she had both strong words and strong battles with the pair. You can expect an intense battle as one of these teams will be crowned the next Princess tag champions.

• Maki and Nyla will have their first singles match at WRESTLE PRINCESS 4. In Maki’s time in AEW, she associated with Nyla a decent amount. She has both tagged and fought with her. However a singles opportunity has never appeared until now. Nyla is a large and powerful fighter. Due to this, it can often be difficult for many wrestlers to effectively fight her due to being unable to lift her for their regular offense. Luckily for Maki, most of her main move set relies not on picking an opponent up, but wrenching them down with DDT’s. But unfortunate for Maki, Nyla’s legs are so big and muscular that Maki may have difficulty applying her various crab holds. So long as Nyla stays focused and doesn’t get cocky, Maki may have a difficult time with this one.

• A full contingent of NEO-Biishikigun member are scheduled to appear at WRESTLE PRINCESS 4. Seeing so many members is a rarity so everyone should try their best to take in the unparalleled beauty of NEO-Biishikigun during this special day. Also of note, Antonio Honda will appear to face this aristocratic threat. Its very rare to see Honda interact with Tokyo Joshi members so this should be special. He will be joined by Pom and Suzume, who are quite familiar with this group of NEO-Bii members as well as Shoko. Its been a long time since Shoko has dealt with NEO-Bii but they have their own battles that have been woven into the history of ToJo. Saki-sama and Azusa Christie were the ones to take the Princess tag belts from Shoko and Yuka when they were tagging as Mirakurianzu regularly. Also, Shoko is one of the few to defeat Saki-sama in singles competition. With Saki-sama’s busy schedule and appointments all over the world, you should enjoy this rare NEO-Bii match as if it were their last.

• It’s been some time since Miu and Yuki Arai last tagged. As a 2 person tag they’ve only tagged twice before, at Arai’s debut and when Arai first faced Aja Kong. Now they face another difficult test as they come up against the formidable Yuki Aino and the even more formidable “Aniki” Ryo Mizunami. Miu had a fantastic match with Aniki at last year’s Summer Sun Princess where after a fierce battle, Aniki defeated the idol loving pro wrestler. Additionally Aino and Arai just recently battled one another with Aino managing to best the SKE48 Superstar. So both Miu and Yuki Arai will likely be looking for revenge here. But will they be able to make good against a team with such overwhelming power at their command.

• The last time we saw Aja on a big show, she destroyed both Misao and her battle vehicle in anger. She now faces our hero in battle again and brings with her the support of 2 Up Up Girls, Shino and of course, her best buddy Raku. What plans will PaMi devise this time to defeat the legendary wrestler and her compatriots? PaMi also has backup in the form of Wakana and Toga. These two have made many impressive in their tenure as ToJo rookies but will that be enough?

• Its been some time since a contingent from Ganbare has come to Tokyo Joshi. Their last appearance as a group was at the inaugural Grand Princess show where Yuna Manase lead a group of fighters to victory over Tokyo Joshi. Now, HARUKAZE the only member participating from the previous match will lead Yoppy and Ganbare Pro rookie Reara against who also is a holdover from their previous altercation as well as Arisu Endo and HIMAWARI. With Tokyo Joshi down 1 match no 0, it feels like the TJPW group needs a win here to even the score. While HIMAWARI has a longer wrestling career than does Riara, and Yoppy and HARUKAZE have more experience than do Kaya or Arisu. It definitely feels as if TJPW has an uphill battle in this match, but the good news is it feels as if they have a more well-rounded group with HIMAWARI providing the power, Kaya providing the acrobatic ability and Arisu providing a little from numerous categories: technical, acrobatic and power. HARUKAZE leans heavily into the technical category. Yoppy and Riara are both more balanced. Though she’s still quite green, HIMAWARI’s power may end up being the key to victory.

• Runa/Haru Tokyo Joshi’s newest and youngest rookies will open the show in their first time facing one another in singles competition. Neither has as of yet captured a singles victory and since they are only a few months apart in age and both debuted the same day, while they are friends, the drive to see who is currently the superior wrestler is high. Even though the pair are young, this promises to be an intense battle.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brooks and Baliyan Akki of Choco Pro fame will provide play-by-play for this show.

• The first two matches of the show along with the opening segments can be viewed for free on YouTube. You can watch that portion of the show here.

• Joining the Japanese commentary as a guest will be Natsume Nakayama of the Hello! Project idol group, OCHA NORMA.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including reservations for the new WP4 show pamphlet, entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

Horimiya: The Missing Pieces - Episode 7 Staff

Jujutsu Kaisen 2nd Season - Episode 3 Staff

• Mizuki (champion) VS Maki Itoh (challenger)

• Rika Tatsumi (champion) VS Yuki Aino (challenger)

• Neo-Biishikigun [Saki-sama & Mei San-Michelle] VS Yuki Arai & Wakana Uehara

• Miyu Yamashita VS Sawyer Wreck

• Miu Watanabe VS Nyla Rose

• Raku & Aja Kong VS Kyouraku Kyoumei [Shoko Nakajima & Hyper Misao] VS Harajuku Pom & MAX the Impaler

• Vert Vixen (Champion) VS Hikari Noa (Challenger)

• VENYU [Yuki Kamifuku & ASUKA] VS Nao Kakuta & Ryo Mizunami

• Mahiro Kiryu, Neko Haruna, HIMAWARI & Shino Suzuki VS Kaya Toribami, Toga, Haru Kazushiro & Runa Okubo

• Daisy Monkey [Suzume & Arisu Endo] VS Moka Miyamoto & Juria Nagano

• Tokyo Joshi will hold its big summer show, titled Summer Sun Princess ’23, for the second time. The show will feature a whopping 10 matches and will include Japanese joshi legends, veterans, and popular freelancers as well as International guests hailing from both the independent community and All Elite Wrestling. Last year’s Summer Sun Princess ’22 was arguably one of the best wrestling shows of 2022 so this year’s show has some big shoes to fill.

• As always, due to the nature of wrestling, injuries and illness can occur and the card is always subject to change.

• The main event will feature PuriPuri champion Mizuki defending against Maki Itoh. This will be Mizuki’s 3rd defense of the belt and Maki’s fourth challenge for it. The story of Maki and Mizuki goes back Mizuki’s very first Tokyo Joshi appearance in 2017. With nearly 5 years of experience already under her belt, Mizuki was scheduled to face a rookie Maki with less than half a year’s worth of wrestling to her name. Mizuki of course dispatched Maki with relative ease. However, Maki, looking to save face and protect her ego, managed to spin the loss off and recruit Mizuki into her newly created faction, the Itoh respect army. Mizuki, who found Maki amusing and was looking for friends in a new place, agreed and an odd partnership was formed. Mizuki happily tagged along as Maki would get them into various situations. But she was never the devout follower that Maki convinced herself she was. A shining example of this was when Itoh requested Mizuki to challenge for the Princess tag belts, but was unable to be her partner due to already being scheduled for a match. She implored Mizuki to get a partner who was also a fan of Maki and would be a good fit for the group. Mizuki would end up recruiting Riho as her partner, however, she told Riho nothing of the requirements originally made by Maki. When later questioned about it, she would always manage to evade the issue. However, things went along mostly without incident until a number of injuries forced Tokyo Joshi to hold a tag team tournament to fill out a show. For this tournament, teams were created randomly through the drawing of cards. Mizuki and Yuka Sakazaki were paired together in what would become one of Tokyo Joshi’s most decorated tag teams, the Magical Sugar Rabbits. The end result of this tournament saw Yuka and Mizuki obtain victory and then request to be given the at that time vacant Princess tag titles. Maki was furious and stormed the ring spitting fire at the fact that Mizuki would challenge for titles without her. This led to a confrontation for the vacant titles that Maki’s team would lose. The feelings of bitterness continued and the two would soon meet in a singles match a month later and Maki was somehow able to force a draw. While this didn’t satisfy Maki, the two managed to find some peace and things settled until the next year when Maki officially dissolved the Itoh respect army due in part to feeling she was losing completely to Mizuki seemingly being stronger in the ring, having more fans and selling more merchandise than Maki. Whenever the two would face one another, battles would be quite heated but for the most part the two were able to co-exist until the 2021 Princess Cup when Maki was finally able to beat Mizuki in an epic battle. Mizuki was able to get some measure of revenge however when she defeated Maki in the battle royal to decide who would be Yuka’s opponent at Grand Princess. Now, at last the two will meet one on one with the title on the line, yet both seem strangely calm. For Maki, her motivations seem to be both to close out her story with Mizuki by beating her for Tokyo Joshi’s most important prize, but also with the intention of bringing renown to the belt as she travels due to her increasing popularity overseas. For Mizuki, she wants to continue to carry the company she loves as its champion. She knows how passionate Maki can be and recognizes that if she doesn’t match that passion, she’ll end up losing to her. She will be wary of her Boston crab variants as well as that was how she lost to Itoh during the cup. Maki on the other hand is very concerned about the whirling candy as she has never experienced it. The two know each other very well so any analyzation wouldn’t even cover the surface of the possibilities for that match. Just know that over 5 years of history comes to a head at Summer Sun Princess.

• The semi final match of the show will be an international princess title match between champion, Rika Tatsumi and challenger, Yuki Aino. These two are familiar with one another from various tag team confrontations and even when Yuki’s sister, Nodoka,was still active, the sisters were the ones to dethrone Rika and partner Miu when they were tag team champions. However, singles matches between the Rika and Yuki are very rare. They have only faced one another twice, with wins split evenly between the two. Despite their few confrontations, Rika and Yuki know one another very well. Outside the ring, they have similar interests like watching anime and singing so often spend time together. Inside the ring each has concerns about the other. For Rika, she is well aware that Yuki outpowers her easily in terms of raw strength. She also knows that Yuki puts a lot of heart into her matches and the more passionate and fired up she becomes the more difficult she is to deal with. As for Yuki, she is concerned about Rika’s unpredictable nature. There’s always an element of randomness to Rika’s fight style and even knowing Rika as well as she does, there’s always the worry that what she thinks are Rika’s weak points are actually a ploy and Rika will then turn the tables on her. This will be Rika’s fourth defense of the International Princess title. If she is able to win the match, she will be in a 3-way tie with Maki and Hikari for most defenses of the title. Rika would love to keep defending the title and have even more international experiences, but Yuki won’t make it easy for her. Similar to the match between Rika and Miu where Rika won the title, this will be a match where the fight styles of the competitors boil down to power vs technique. Yuki looks to overwhelm Rika. She excels at throwing her weight at opponents doing general damage to them until they’re exhausted and can no longer defend themselves. She does this primarily with heavy shoulder blocks and if they’re on the ground, running sentons. And deeper into the match she will begin executing high damage slams such as her gut-wrench suplex and the “Venus DDT”. She also has a few submissions she relies upon to wear down and ragdoll opponents. Rika is a technique fighter that focuses on damaging specific areas. She especially likes to pinpoint the legs and knees of opponents with dragon screws, dropkicks and a figure four leg-lock to make it more difficult for her opponents to move quickly or execute attacks where they must pick Rika up. Once she’s softened her prey up she has multiple avenues of attack ranging from alternative submissions like the dragon sleeper or even more excruciating white dragon sleeper; to the more straight forward using things like her dragon twist of fate and missile hip attack. This match has potential to be the best of the show.

• Neo-Biishikigun returns to Tokyo Joshi for the first time since Grand Princess. This time the team of beauty obsessed French will be battling Yuki Arai and Wakana Uehara. Yuki Arai is not accustomed to being the senior of a tag team but she’ll be taking the lead here as Wakana only debuted this past January. The two seem very nervous. They’ve heard numerous stories of Neo-Biishikigun’s exploits from other roster members and in some cases have seen some of their matches. Saki-sama and Mei-san really don’t have any equivalent on the roster, so nerves are completely understandable. They need to be wary of all types of different tactics from outside interference to referee distractions to foreign objects. Nothing is off limits for Neo-Biishikigun in their pursuit for beauty and strength. Will Arai and Uehara be able to mount any kind of offense against such an imposing threat?

• Sawyer Wreck returns to Tokyo Joshi for the first time since her title challenge against Mizuki. This time she takes on ToJo’s ace wrestler Miyu Yamashita. Miyu isn’t accustomed to taking on wrestlers that are so much taller than she. That said, its not completely foreign to her either. She has had numerous battles with ToJo’s resident beautiful baddie, Saki-sama and has also had a number of intergender matches throughout her career, including one against DDT’s not at all short Chris Brookes. So Miyu knows how to adjust her game to deal with this issue. That’s of course not her only issue since Sawyer Wreck loves introducing various equipment into her matches. Miyu again is not unfamiliar with dealing with this type of match but its not a specialty of hers. How she will deal with these hurdles is something in which to look forward. With Miyu’s retention of the EVE pro wrestling championship title this past weekend, she has requested this match be a title defense.

• All Elite Wrestling talent Nyla Rose will participate in Tokyo Joshi for the first time. The native beast was originally scheduled to battle against Yuka Sakazaki, but the card was changed due to Yuka’s unfortunate injury. Now Nyla will face the filled to 120% with energy, muscular pink idol lover, Miu Watanabe. Which will be a much different match for which Nyla needs to prepare. Miu is straight forward in her fighting style than Yuka. Run into her opponent until they fall over, and then either spin them or slam them until they’re dead. While lacking in finesse, you can’t deny that it has gotten her results. The question becomes will it work against Nyla? Nyla is far bigger than Miu. Holding around 6 inches in height over her and easily 20 pounds on her. Nyla will be one of the most dangerous opponents Miu has faced. Miu has been studying Nyla’s work in preparation for their contest and is hoping to surprise Nyla with her abilities, but Nyla is no stranger to various fight styles even within the joshi wrestling subset as she has had a number of battles with joshi wrestlers like Yuka, Hikaru Shida, Riho and has even had an extended run with the joshi wrestling promotion, Marvelous, in the past. It’s going to take something extra special to surprise “the native beast”.

• A crazy three way bout will take place at the show. Kyouraku Kyoumei, the team of Shoko Nakajima and Hyper Misao, will be taking on 2 other tag teams each containing their own kaibutsu (Japanese for monster) and a frustration. On second side of the triangle, Raku and joshi wrestling legend as well as avid Raku fan Aja Kong have been paired together. Aja Kong is a pillar of the industry that has been putting on fantastic and fun matches since 1988. She is respected and feared by all who have faced her and her striking abilities are nearly unmatched. Then you have Raku, who can put you to sleep with magic lullabies when she’s not brain chopping your head to mush. Truly a terrifying combo. On the final side, Harajuku Pom has reformed with antagonist turned friend MAX the Impaler in a team which has been called by some fans as POMPALER. Many will recall that Pom and MAX made an attempt at capturing the Princess Tag belts prior to their vacancy by MajiRabi and they had a strong showing in that match. The combination of Pom’s sheer unbridled ability to annoy her opponents with her shrill shrieks and irritating shin based offense, as well as MAX’s intimidating aura, mighty constitution, scary strength and impressive ingenuity in various ways of using Pom as a human lawn dart give this team a strong chance of winning the match. So with two teams such as these with such overpowered members on them, the question is how do Shoko and PaMi have any chance of winning? Well, they have 2 main points in their favor; the first is that of the three teams, Kyouraku Kyoumei are the only one that has had any prior experience in three-way tag matches and have in fact, won this type of match before. The second is that MAX and AJA have pre-existing heat. The last time the two met at WRESTLE PRINCESS II, they nearly down the arena to try to take each other out. So, if Shoko and PaMi can focus those two monsters’ attention on each another, they could potentially focus on taking advantage of their slightly more human seeming tag partners.

• The first of the group of international talents to appear at Summer Sun Princess is Vert Vixen. She will be taking on Hikari in a singles match. Not only that, she is putting her DEFY women’s championship on the line in the match. During her last appearance in Tokyo Joshi, she teamed with Hikari multiple times. So, to show her appreciation, she’s giving Hikari this title match. Hikari, has politely accepted the offer. But to be clear, Vert Vixen is by no means handing the belt to Hikari on a silver platter. She fully intends on beating Hikari and retaining the title and she has the resume to prove that she can. She won the title last October and has managed to take on some of the strongest women in the independent wrestling scene as well as Tokyo Joshi’s own Miyu Yamashita and still holds the title. Hikari will have to come at Vert Vixen with everything she has an then some if she wants to come out on top. Hikari has a significant disadvantage in size and power compared to her opponent so she’ll have to rely on her speed and striking to try to gain the upper hand. Of course as ToJo’s resident deathmatch lover is also no stranger to using less than legal means to gain advantages as well, so Vert Vixen will need to be on guard for any kind of attack.

• An exciting tag match will bring back two popular joshi stars from the freelance community. ASUKA returns to Tokyo Joshi to support her friend Kamiyu. They will tag together as the team VENYU. Those who have seen this team before will recall they are dripping with style and swagger. They’ll also recall that VENYU are as dangerous as they are fashionable. On the other side of the equation, Nao Kakuta will team with a returning Ryo Mizunami for the first time. ANIKI has participated in ToJo shows on multiple occasions, each time bringing an energy to the show like only she can. Whenever Nao and Kamiyu fight one another, they always kick the living crap out of one another and the only time Nao and ASUKA squared off back at Wrestle Princess II, they went after one another as if they were on opposite sides of a blood feud. When you add Aniki to the mix, who has many hard-fought battles against ASUKA all across the Joshi-verse, the result can only be fantastic.

• The second match of the show will feature many of Tokyo Joshi’s up and coming talents. Mahiro will be joined by rookies Shino and HIMAWARI as well as a returning Neko who has been absent since the May Kourakuen show. They face the team of Torippi, Toga, Haru and Runa. On paper, Torippi has her work cut out for her as the cumulative experience of her team is quite a bit smaller than that of the opposing team. She only debuted in 2021 while the rest of her team debuted in March of this year. In fact, Neko alone has more experience than the combined experience of Torippi’s team. That said, statistics almost never tell the whole story. With Neko returning, its probable that she’s still not in full wrestling shape. This is something that could be exploited. She and Mahiro have very little experience teaming with HIMAWARI and Shino.

• The opening match will be both a return and a throwback. Juria will return to action after roughly 6 months on the shelf due to an injury. She will be paired with fellow karate practitioner and regular tag partner, Moka Miyamoto. They will be taking on their closest rival team in Daisy Monkey. Ironically, this is not only Juria’s return match, but a refresh of her debut match at Grand Princess ’22 where, with the same partner and same opponents, she was defeated by Suzume. But they two teams also faced off during this year’s MAX HEART tag tournament and on that occasion, Daisy Monkey took the loss. Daisy Monkey have become even stronger since their last encounter so beating them won’t be an easy task. Will Juria perform better this time? Will she be able to earn a win or will Daisy Monkey continue to prove to be too much.

• The Wrestle Universe website and the Wrestle Universe app are available worldwide. You can get more information and find links to download the app here. If the app is not available yet in your country, please check back later. The regions where it is downloadable are steadily increasing.

• Wrestle Universe is currently running a free 1 week trial for new subscribers. Feel free to enjoy a week of great wrestling from multiple promotions and discover for yourself all the great things they have to offer.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brookes and Baliyan Akki of Choco Pro fame will provide play-by-play for this show.

• Rika Matsumoto will join the Japanese commentary team as a guest for the duration of the show. Matsumoto is best known for providing the voice for Satoshi (English character name: Ash Ketchum) in the popular anime series, Pokemon.

• It was announced that throwing kamitape (paper streamers) and hanging member banners will be allowed at the Summer Sun Princess show.

• There wll be a 15 minute intermission after the 6th match.

• The pre-show, which includes the title signing ceremonies for the remaining 2 title matches as well as the first match of the show will stream for free on youtube. You can view that here.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new Summer Sun Princess show pamphlet with preorder bonus of one random signature, acrylic keychains, entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

• For those attending the show live, feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

3/18 card:

• Yuka Sakazaki (champion) VS Mizuki (challenger)

• Wasteland War Party [MAX the Impaler & Heidi Howitzer] (champions) VS 121000000 [Miyu Yamashita & Maki Itoh] (challengers)

• Miu Watanabe (champion) VS Rika Tatsumi (challenger)

• Yuki Arai VS Aja Kong

• NEO-Biishikigun [Saki-sama, & Mei San-Michelle] VS Yuki Kamifuku & Billie Starks

• Kyouraku Kyoumei [Shoko Nakajima & Hyper Misao] VS Neko Haruna & Andreza Giant Panda

• Moka Miyamoto VS Ryo Mizunami

• Hikari Noa, Nao Kakuta & Ram Kaicho VS Yuki Aino, Raku & Harajuku Pom

• Mahiro Kiryu, HIMAWARI, Wakana Uehara & Shino Suzuki VS Kaya Toribami, Touga, Haru Kazashiro & Runa Okubo

• Suzume VS Arisu Endo

notes

• Tokyo Joshi will hold its their huge spring event Grand Princess ’23 on March 18th at Ariake Coliseum. This will be the first joshi pro wrestling event held within its walls in over 19 years. This will be the second year that Tokyo Joshi holds this mega event and is their first mega show of 2023. This comes after highly successful string of major events in 2022. This show is set to have 10 matches.

• There is an underlying theme on this show of tag partners and friends battling on another for something important and this culminates with the main event. Yuka Sakazaki and Mizuki have been tag partners and near inseparable friends since their team formed in 2018. They are almost never even placed on opposite sides of a multi-person tag match. They hate fighting one another if they can help it. However, there are just some things that are so important that you must fight for. On the January 4th show a battle royal was planned pitting some of Tokyo Joshi’s top contenders against one another for the next shot at whoever came out champion at the end of the show between Miyu and Yuka. Mizuki would win this match, and was declared the next contender. She would never proactively challenge Yuka for the PuriPuri title but once Yuka defeated Miyu, the match was set. So now, there’s a swirl of emotions surrounding the match. For Yuka, leading Tokyo Joshi and holding the title are extremely important. She will defend the belt with all her might, but she’s scared because she’s convinced that she’ll win and she’s worried that Mizuki will hate her for it. Overconfidence? Maybe, but Mizuki and Yuka have had had a handful of singles matches over the years, and the best Mizuki has ever been able to do is wrestle her to a draw. She has never beaten Yuka. But the drive to become champion has become stronger and stronger since Mizuki started with ToJo. She’s seen the champions, especially Yuka, carry Tokyo Joshi on their backs as champion and Mizuki has grown to love ToJo more and more since she started as a regular and eventually a signed wrestler that she wants the chance to herself carry ToJo on her back and lead the roster and company that she loves so dearly on her back. This will be her fifth time challenging for the belt and she’s more determined than ever to get it even if she has to go through her beloved partner Yuka to get it. It won’t be easy. Yuka has been near unstoppable recently. She completely outclasses Mizuki in terms of power and strength, and is comparable to her in speed if she needs it. Yuka and Mizuki both have aerial ability and a wealth of submissions with their deep knowledge of one another its difficult to say one has a clear advantage over the other. Yuka has several potential strategies to victories, she could try for an all out assault and just deal enough damage Mizuki enough to win. She could also try to focus on damaging Mizuki’s legs as she needs them for many of her attacks including stomps, running dropkicks and her cutie special. Mizuki’s strategies are similar, she could also potentially go for Yuka’s legs to hamper Yuka’s offense. Mizuki could also try working on busting up Yuka’s ribs with double stomps and other attacks to potentially inhibit Yuka’s breathing. There’s also the possibility of a trap pin which should never be discounted when Mizuki is involved. However the match goes down, its bound to be a thrill for fans

• Since January 4th of this year, the Princess Tag championship have been under outsider control. The Wasteland War Party which consists of Heidi Howitzer and MAX the Impaler defeated Yuki Arai and Saki Akai at Kourakuen Hall and returned to the U.S. with the pink belts in tow. In the meantime, Tokyo Joshi held their now annual MAX HEART tag tournament to determine the next challengers for the belts. Of the 10 teams participating, Maki Itoh and Miyu Yamashita’s 121000000 (one to million) managed to break through the competition and assert themselves as the next challengers to the titles. This is especially impressive given Miyu’s past record when it comes to tournaments (granted she wasn’t the one to win the final match, but still.) Currently, the Wasteland War Party is bringing the belts back to Grand Princess after defending them 3 times in America. 121000000 hopes to reclaim them for ToJo in this match. Maki even promised Pom that she would reclaim the stuff MAX took from Pom. But will it be that simple? It’s a ticking clock situation. Maki and Miyu are both primarily strike type wrestlers with an intermixing of slams and submissions. Neither are known for their counter or parry specialists so while they’ll both likely be able to avoid some damage, they need to be inflicting more damage more often than Heidi and MAX are able to dole out. Heidi and MAX are two of the biggest wrestlers to ever appear in ToJo and they are well known for their brawling style and a strong constitution. It take a lot to bring either one of them down. So the central question is can the challengers deal enough damage to the extremely resilient champions to get a win before succumbing the pounding that Heidi and MAX are bound to give?

• This is another match that follows the theme of partners battling it out. Rika has challenged Miu for her International Princess title. With Miu defending the belt 3 times now, Rika has seen how Miu has glittered as the champion and has felt a bit of jealousy because of it. She too wants to shine with the belt and take on international talent. She has also noted that if she wins she’ll have held all the belts in ToJo (and the ironman heavymetalweight belt) and would be the first to be considered what she calls a grand slam champion. The last time these two battled, their roles were ironically reversed. Miu was Rika’s first challenger after she captured PuriPuri. They’ve both developed since then so while Rika may have beaten Miu in 2021, her victory is anything but assured here. This match will be quite interesting again given how well the two competitors know one another. Rika is a technical wrestler at her base, she’s got a lot submissions and limb damaging attacks in her bag of tricks she’s especially well known for destroying her opponent’s legs with vicious precision. Miu on the other hand is a power wrestler with 20 pounds of heart in a 5-pound bag. She will run into her opponent until she has nothing left. Miu excels at finding ways to get back into a fight when things seem all but lost. She has the strength to pick up everyone on the roster for a slam or a swing. Speaking of the swing, Rika has consistently pointed out how much she hates being spun. She has something of a complex about it. Miu’s competitors have all tried to gameplan for the swing, but Miu’s cleverness has always allowed her to successfully execute the move in some form. Will this be the deciding factor of the match? Will Rika be able to avoid it? This match is expected to be one of the highlights of the show. Look forward to it.

• The special singles match for this show features joshi legend Aja Kong battling against SKE48 star and young ToJo wrestler, Yuki Arai. This will be Arai’s 3rd confrontation with Aja and her first singles match. Their first match took place at Wrestle Princess 2 roughly a year and a half ago when Arai teamed with Miu Watanabe to take on Aja and Moka Miyamoto. While Arai lost this match, it was a major turning point in her career and made her want to learn more about wrestling. She decided to continue wrestling and grow stronger. Now that she has a one on one opportunity with Aja, she really wants to use her “Finally” finisher and take a win. But this is far easier said than done. For herself, Aja is taking the challenge quite seriously. Yuki’s idol career matters little to the joshi legend, Aja considers her a wrestler and will come at her full force. She’s studied Arai and is thinking of countermeasures for much of Arai’s offense. She fully expects Arai to do the same. Arai’s has a real uphill battle in this match. She is outmatched in terms of both strength and experience. Furthermore, much of Arai’s standard offense is unlikely to work due to Aja’s size. Arai will primarily have to rely on her various kicks and her advantage in speed and agility to gain the upper hand. She needs to be wary of Aja’s Uraken and backdrop especially. Arai is tenacious and has shown herself to be surprisingly resilient for her size, but she’ll need to summon all her strength and grit to be able to weather the storm that is Aja Kong.

• NEO-Biishikigun is back! Saki-sama and Mei-san are returning to Tokyo Joshi after not being seen since this time last year. For those not familiar with the Saki-sama and her household of loyal followers, her credo is that beauty is strength and strength is beauty. She despises ugliness an often seems to see it permeate throughout ToJo. She is one of the strongest wrestlers in Tokyo Joshi’s ranks and has had numerous confrontations with may of its major stars. The ToJo landscape almost always gets shaken when Saki-sama and her allies appear so be ready for anything. This time around NEO-Biishikigun are matched up against Kamiyu and Billie Starkz. Its been over 3 years since Kamiyu has faced off against Saki-sama and she has no experience with her newest maid Mei-san. This of course will be Billie’s first time dealing with the beautiful duo. As a first time pairing, is there any way Kamiyu and Billie can stand against NEO-Biishikigun, a team that has numerous times climbed to the top of Tokyo Joshi’s tag division and is often beautifully unscrupulous in their avenues to victory? Only time will tell.

• Pray that there’s still an arena left to perform in after these titans clash. Hero of love and peace in Tokyo Joshi teams up with a big kaiju to defend the masses from a wild giant panda and its house pet. You heard correctly, Hyper Misao and Shoko Nakajima will be battling Andreza Giant Panda and Neko Haruna in an epic struggle at Ariake Colosseum. Kyouraku Kyoumei have likely spent the lead up to the match developing numerous response plans for the incoming global neko-panda threat. Andreza has been terrorizing the Japanese wrestling scene for a number of years now. His headbutt and powerful chops can easily knock out even some of the toughest opponents so Shoko and PaMi will need all their faculties and possibly some bamboo if they hope to survive this black and white peril.

• Recently it feels like going through Aniki is a rite of passage for the younger members of the ToJo roster. Last year at Summer Sun princess, Aniki faced off against Miu Watanabe. Then at Wrestle Princess 3 it was Suzume’s turn to take on the task. Now, Moka has been selected to battle the veteran joshi. This is the biggest challenge Moka has faced in her young career. Aniki is a 15 year veteran of the ring who has wrestled in most of the major joshi companies of the last 2 decades as well as overseas. She has posed a threat to most of the major players in joshi wrestling over the last few years. Moka has never faced a powerhouse of Ryo’s caliber before. In the match she’ll want to do her best to avoid Aniki’s powerful striking and slams. Moka is not normally a stick and move type wrestler but in this match-up she’s completely outmatched in terms of strength, so wrestling Aniki to the ground and locking her up in submissions, even Moka’s powerful Rashomon, will be difficult. Good luck Moka!

• An interesting 6 woman tag has been set for this show. On one side there’s the regular 3 woman pairing of Yuki Aino, Raku and Pom. On the other side of the match, Free wifi, Nao and Hikari, are joined by the person that makes this match interesting: Ram Kaicho! Ram hasn’t been seen in Tokyo Joshi since Grand Princess last year. Many fans will remember her spectacular entrance at that show leading Raku down the aisle…er.. entrance ramp. Thus, Ram being on the opposite team from Raku is a big surprise. What will happen when Raku and Ram square off is anyone’s guess. This match is filled with chaos agents with 4 out of the 6 competitors in the match being instigators of brattish behavior, 1 competitor having the ability to throw ectoplasm, 1 competitor being some kind of magical sleep deity and the most normal person in the match being a complete sympathizer to her partners’ antics. This all adds up to near 100% likelihood that this match will be filled with complete and utter wonderful nonsense. Be ready for it.

• Match 2 will put much of ToJo’s future talent on display. Mahiro will take Wakana, HIMAWARI and new Up Up Girl, Shino, three wrestlers that have all debuted within the last 3 months, and lead them to battle against Kaya and her team barely experienced rookies, Toga, who has a single match worth of experience, as well as Runa and Haru who will make their in-ring debuts in this match. The amazing statistic here is that Mahiro has more experience wrestling than the combined experience of every other wrestler in the match. Can she use this to her advantage and lead her team to victory? Or will she apologize for everyone’s lack of experience. And what of the newly debuting wrestlers? What will they show us in this match? How will they fare being thrust immediately onto the big stage? Exciting questions to be sure.

• There is an underlying theme of partners battling throughout the Grand Princess card, that theme begins with the opening match of Suzume vs Arisu. Arisu debuted at the January 4th show in 2021. Suzume was her opponent in her debut match. Since then, the two were paired together as tag partners and quickly gelled both as a team and as friends. While they have battled on occasion on opposing sides of tag team matches, this will be the first one on one confrontation the two have had since that debut match. Going in, there’s no animosity between these two. Their intent is to show off what they can do on a big stage. For Arisu, she knows that Suzume is a strong opponent and she often feels like she is the weak link in their tag team that keeps them from winning in big matches, so she intends to use everything she has to take Suzume down and prove herself a reliable partner. For Suzume, she is the senpai of the team so she she’d rather not lose to a junior but she doesn’t know if it’ll be that simple. She hears Arisu and others sometimes say that Arisu isn’t strong, but she feels that Arisu has gone from a junior that she leads along to a reliable partner that stands beside her as part of their team. She even if she’s the senpai, Arisu is her partner and she doesn’t know who is stronger. This match will provide the current answer to that question. Again, since these two are tag partners they know one another extremely well. They’re both speedy and dynamic wrestlers that will likely bring out the best in one another and one underestimation by either of them could be the deciding factor in the outcome of the match.

• Wrestle Universe is available both as a website or as an app. The app is available on iOS and for android. You can get more information and find links to download the app here. If the app is not available yet in your country, please check back later. The regions where it is downloadable is steadily increasing.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brooks and Shota of Ganbare pro wrestling fame will provide play-by-play for this show.

• Juria Nagano injured her hand during the MAX HEART tag tournament and is currently in recovery. Thusly, she is not scheduled to have a match on this show. However, she is will be at the show and is scheduled for some commentary duties.

• Natsume Nakayama from the Hello Project! idol group OCHA NORMA will be providing guest commentary for the event. She will be joined in the booth by regular play caller Haruo Murata as well as sports journalist Sayoko Mita and pro wrestling writer Kagehiro Osano who will provide analysis and color commentary.

• Cheering and kamitape paper streamers will be allowed at this show. So be ready for the full Tokyo Joshi big match experience.

• The Up Up Girls will debut a new song at this show.

• Notes for foreigners attending the show:

1. While mask rules in Japan have relaxed, wearing a mask is still required for attendees of this show.
2. For those familiar with Kamitape and have the intention to throw it, please only throw during the entrance call for each wrestler. If you are sitting in the stands, please quickly move to the arena to throw without disturbing other patrons and promptly return to your seat.
3. Special PA announcements for the show will be recorded by Juria Nagano and Moka Miyamoto. Please listen for them in the arena prior to bell time.
4. There will only be 2 special meet and greets after the Saturday performance. Andreza Giant Panda will be on hand for 2 shot photo ops for 1000 yen each. Also, Neo Biishikigun will be signing for those who purchased portraits during the online sale. No Neo Biishikigun portraits will be available on the day of the show.
5. All other signings will be held in Asakusabashi the following day starting at noon. Please refer to Tokyo Joshi’s official twitter for the signing schedule.
6. Portraits for any available wrestlers, as well as pamplets, posters, t-shirts, and the new special “Fun” book will be available at the vendors station at the performance. Unsold portraits will be available the following day in Asakusabashi however it has not been stated what other merchandise will be on hand. Presumably it will.
7. Universe members generally get a special present at Tokyo Joshi shows. If you are a Wrestle UNIVERSE subscriber. Please present your ticket and profile info (not your username and password, but your user profile) at the designated table to receive your gift.
8. Those who have purchased arena A seating or higher can claim a special portrait book as part of their seating package. Please present your ticket at the table near the merchandise area where the portrait books can be found to claim your copy.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new GP23 show pamphlet with preorder bonus of one random signature , entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

​10/9 card & notes:

• Shoko Nakajima (champion) VS Yuka Sakazaki (challenger)

• Reiwa AA hou [Saki Akai & Yuki Arai] (champions) VS The Uprising [Nightshade & Rhia O’Reilly] (challengers)

• Alex Windsor (champion) VS Miu Watanabe (challenger)

• Miyu Yamashita & Maki Itoh VS Hikari Noa & Riho

• Rika Tatsumi, Yuki Aino & Max “The Impaler” VS Raku, Harajuku Pom & Aja Kong

• Mizuki VS Hyper Misao

• Suzume VS Ryo Mizunami

• Yuki Kamifuku, Mahiro Kiryu & Neko Haruna VS Nao Kakuta, Yuna Manase & Yoshiko Hasegawa

• Moka Miyamoto & Juria Nagano VS Arisu Endo & Kaya Toribami

notes

• Tokyo Joshi will return to Tokyo Dome City Hall, the site of its first Wrestle Princess, to hold its big 9 match Wrestle Princess 3 show. This will be Tokyo Joshi’s 3rd show this year using a venue larger than Kourakuen Hall.

• The match order is subject to be change from how it is listed here.

• In June of this year at CyberFight Festival 2022, Yuka Sakazaki challenged Shoko Nakajima for the PuriPuri title, after a huge, hardfought battle, Shoko managed to best the magical girl and retain her title. Normally that would have been the end of it. Title challengers don’t normally get more than one chance to beat the same champion in Tokyo Joshi. However, Yuka managed to rise to the top after winning ToJo’s ultimate summer prize, the Princess Cup. Since the introduction of the PuriPuri belt in 2016, all the winners of the Princess Cup have gone on to request a PuriPuri title match, so even though Yuka lost at CyberFight, she is now able to challenge for the title again. One of the interesting things about this match, is that though Shoko and Yuka have fought in big singles matches twice prior to this and both times for the PuriPuri belt, this will be the first time since the Princess Cup of 2016 that the two have had a singles match in a proper Tokyo Joshi ring. As previously mentioned, their last fight was at CyberFight Festival this past June, and prior to that they fought for the title at Ultimate Party 2019 at Ryogoku in November of 2019. Both of these shows were combined shows that featured matches from numerous promotions and could not be considered proper Tokyo Joshi shows. Now the two get to face one another in a big singles match for the first time on their “home field” as it were. These two likely know each other better than anyone in ToJo. They’ve been singles rivals and tag partners and are two of the roster’s longest tenured wrestlers. Yet both are expecting the unexpected from the other and both competitors plan to bring new things to the match, wanting to raise the bar from what they’ve done previously. Each encouraged to push further when they stand behind the other. Tokyo Joshi has its 10th anniversary coming soon and each would like to be holding PuriPuri when it happens. So, while Shoko defeated Yuka in June, she’s not letting her guard down or assuming that she’ll be facing the same Yuka from that time. Yuka was able to rise above all the other opponents in the Princess Cup, which is no easy task and something Shoko was unable to do. The match promises to be quite interesting. These two are very similar in many aspects. Yuka holds a slight power advantage, Shoko holds a slight speed advantage, both are gifted mat and aerial technicians and their knowledge of one another means we’re bound to see many counters and reversals during the match. Shoko’s primary finishers are the Northern Lights suplex and a top rope senton. To get her opponents set up for these attacks, Shoko often focuses her attacks on the head, neck and shoulders Yuka has levels of finishers. Her base is the Magical Merry-go-round, a hammerlock spin out flapjack type maneuver. When she knows this won’t be enough, she uses it as a set up for her magical girl style top rope attacks, either the mahou shojo splash, the slightly more powerful magical mahou shojo splash or the most powerful bastard chicken. In their last encounter, Shoko was able to execute her strategy slightly better than Yuka. She wore down Yuka’s neck throughout the match and after managing to counter the bastard chicken, Shoko used a massive double arm DDT that left Yuka too dazed and damaged to put up any defense against Shoko’s top rop senton, giving Shoko the win. So it may be now that both have prepared new attacks, so as not to be out maneuvered. In any case, this is bound to be a emotionally charged battle over ToJo’s top prize.

• For the first time ever, the Puri Tag titles are on the line against a foreign tag team. This will be a huge test for Saki and Yuki. While Saki has had numerous experiences with foreign wrestlers, this will be Yuki’s first time battling anyone from outside the country. Not only that, O’Reilly and Nightshade are both power fighters, something with which Yuki has very little experience. Her only previous experience with this type of wrestler ironically came at last year’s Wrestle Princess where she teamed up with Miu Watanabe to take on Moka and Aja Kong. The two bruisers have been wreaking havoc in Eve recently and have now come to ToJo to continue their domination. If they isolate Arai, the champs could be in trouble. Arai and Akai need to keep up their tandem attacks, wear down Nightshade and O’Reilly with submissions, work their legs and set them up for their finishers all while avoiding big attacks from the Uprising.

• At Summer Sun Princess, Alex Windsor was able to defeat Maki to win the International Princess championship. She took it back to England with her when she left and later retained it when she defeated Hikari in England and is now back in Japan to try to defend it again. This time she will face ToJo’s resident powerhouse Miu, who won the right to challenge after defeating Suzume in a number one contender’s match last month. Thus far, Windsor has been able to bully her ToJo opponents using her greater size and strength. Unfortunately for her, this method isn’t going to work against Miu. So while Windsor can still effectively use her strength during the match, she won’t be able to effectively bully Miu as she did with Maki or Hikari. Windor will have to combine her power with her deep knowledge of technical wrestling to be most effective in this match. That said, Miu is no slouch on the technical end either, so while this strategy is likely to be the most effective, it by no means guarantees her the win. For Miu, this will be her first time in a singles match against a foreign opponent. This inexperience with different styles may be a weak point for her during the match as its difficult for her to know what to expect. But those who know Miu know she can be relentless when she’s fired up. If Windsor allows her to gain this kind of momentum, it could cost her dearly. This appears to be one of the most highly anticipated matches on the show.

• Miyu and Maki also known as 121000000 (one two million) is scheduled to face Riho and Hikari. While Maki and Riho have had a few encounters more recently, Miyu hasn’t faced off against the small monster since 2019 when she and Antonio Honda teamed up to take on Riho and Kenny Omega. Hikari of course has a well-known past with both Miyu and Maki. Riho and Hikari are both known for their speed and technical ability. Both have a mean streak in the ring as well and a plethora of ways to trap opponents into pinfalls. Miyu and Maki have an advantage here in that they have been a dedicated tag team for the last two years, but both Riho and Hikari can’t be underestimated especially considering Riho has nearly the ring experience of both Miyu and Maki combined. We should see a lot of high-speed antics from them. Keeping away from Miyu and Maki as best they can. Maki and Miyu will likely try to catch the two opponents with a big strike and from there try to keep them grounded and deny them any momentum. Will it work? Will they be able to stop the zippy duo or will one of them get caught for just a hair too long and lose it all.

• In what is absolutely one of the most anticipated matches of the day, Titans will clash as Raku and her elite squad of bruisers, Aja Kong and Pom, take on monsters Rika and Max “the Impaler” along with Yuki Aino. Hard to predict what will go on in this match but its sure to be chaos. Will Rika be able to get along with Max? Will Aja be able to protect Raku? Will she want to protect pom at all? Look forward to it.

• The regular tag partners of the main eventers of this card will have a singles match earlier in the show. Shoko’s Kyouraku Kyoumei tag partner Hyper Misao and Yuka’s Magical Sugar Rabbits partner, Mizuki will have something of a momentum builder for their respective partners. The two have dealt with one another numerous times in multi-woman matches, however the two facing one another one on one is extremely rare. In fact, this will only be the second time the two have ever battled in a singles match, the last being back in 2018. Both of these women are chaos entities. Finding all kinds of off kilter and obtuse ways to attack their opponents and this match is likely to be no different. In misao’s last big match, if the opponent broke away from a pin attempting, the pinning wrestler was forced to drink lemon juice. In her last match where mizuki was involved, she brought guns to the ring. There’s no predicting what kind of match this will be or what strategies these two will employ, but you can predict that it’ll likely be a lot of fun.

• Aniki returns to Tokyo Joshi! Ryo Mizunami’s last appearance in ToJo was as a last-minute fill in for American wrestler Willow Nightingale, now she’s been invited in earnest to face rising star Suzume. This will be a monumental task for the young bee. Not only will she be in a singles match with a wrestler with over 10 years more experience than she has, Mizunami will be the biggest wrestling she’s ever faced. Mizunami is far too powerful for many of Suzume’s regular roll-ups to be effective. Her best chance is to do her best to keep out of Mizunami’s reach and strike as fast and as often as possible. She can also try to parry and counter but that’s more difficult as well because she hasn’t faced Mizunami before and is likely unfamiliar with her movements. If Suzume fails in an attempt to counter, Mizunami is going to hit her like a truck hits a.. well, bee and when bees get hit by trucks, they usually go “splat".

• Match 2 looks to be pretty interesting. Toyo Meito, better known as Kamiyu and Mahiro, will team with Neko to do battle against Yuna, Nao, and Yoshiko Hasegawa, better known as Yoppy. Kamiyu joked that it’s the fight against an unknown girl, an average girl and Yuna. Interestingly, while Yoppy and Yuna are now part of Ganbare Pro Wrestling, all three were at one time part of the Actwres Girlz (AWG) roster. Thus, even though the three have little experience teaming, and Yoppy hasn’t been in Ganbare very long, they will likely have measure of fluidity as a team that might come to some as a surprise. Yuna and Nao were part of the original roster and Yuna was one of the people who originally helped train Nao. Yuna left AWG in 2016 and went on to be a regular in ToJo until transferring to Ganbare in 2020. Nao stayed with AWG until 2020 and has been working in ToJo since November of that year. Yoppy was part of a later class of AWG, debuting after Yuna left, but still before Nao made her exit. Yoppy herself exited AWG at the end of 2021 and made her debut with Ganbare this summer. This will be her first experience inside a ToJo ring. Because of the differences in their training, the AWG team and the ToJo team’s styles are fundamentally quite different. For instance, you’re likely to see a lot of hair-mares from the AWG team whereas no one on the ToJo team is likely to do them. That said, both Yuna’s group and Kamiyu’s group are likely to bend the rules of the ring. Only Mahiro who is a model and upstanding practitioner of pro wrestling is likely to attempt to abide by all he rules. Whether this will help or hinder her team though is anyone’s guess. The last time a Ganpro team appeared in Tokyo Joshi, Mahiro took the fall. Slightly more recently, Mahiro had a singles match against Yuna where she was again defeated. She and Kamiyu recently lost their bid for the Princess tag belts, so a win here would certainly provide some measure of solace. But it’s doubtful that Yuna, Nao and Yoppy will make it easy for them.

• Martial arts and exotic animals? No, no. It’s not a new sequel for Kung-Fu Panda, it’s Wrestle Princess 3’s opening match! Moka and Juria will once again pair up to take on Tokyo Joshi’s favorite zebra and the mysterious bird. While Juria debuted in march of this year and shows a great deal of potential, due to her schedule this will only be the 9th match of her career. However, she and Moka have paired in many of her previous appearances so the two are quite familiar with one another. Moka is also the most experienced wrestler in the match, which will likely help cover for some of Juria’s inexperience. Kaya and Arisu rarely fight together, honestly they rarely even fight against one another, so their unfamiliarity teaming may prove to be the advantage Moka and Juria need to take the win. But then again, Kaya and Arisu are both extremely tenacious. Arisu has been having an amazing year as well. She’s grown far beyond expectations. So team Zoo may have a rocky path to victory, but its still traversable.

• Shino, the newest Up Up Girl, will participate in the Up Up Girls opening act.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brooks and Baliyan Akki of Choco Pro fame will provide play-by-play for this show.

• The contract signings for the Puri tag and IP title matches will be aired on Tokyo Joshi's official YouTube channel before the show 60 minutes prior to opening bell. You can view the signing here.

• The show opening and first match will also be broadcast for free on YouTube. You can view that here.

• All seats for the show have sold out.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new WP3 show pamphlet with pre-order bonus of one random signature , entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

• Also if you just want to follow along on social media or interact, search for or use #tjpw and #tjpwWP3

The bracket:

​The match-ups:

• Shoko Nakajima VS Neko Haruna
• Miyu Yamashita VS Hyper Misao
• Mahiro Kiryu VS Yuki Arai
• Harajuku Pom VS Moka Miyamoto

• Arisu Endo VS Miu Watanabe
• Nao Kakuta VS Yuki Aino
• Kaya Toribami VS Yuka Sakazaki
• Yuki Kamifuku VS Rika Tatsumi

• Miyu Yamashita Hyper Misao VS Raku
• Mahiro Kiryu Yuki Arai VS Hikari Noa

• Shoko Nakajima Neko Haruna VS Mizuki
• Harajuku Pom Moka Miyamoto VS Suzume

Competitor breakdowns

• Shoko Nakajima – Shoko is one of the biggest threats to win the whole tournament and one of only 2 to compete in all 9 tournaments. Not only is she the current PuriPuri champ, but she has an impressive and consistent history in the tournament. Shoko has reached the finals more than any other person in Tokyo Joshi. In addition to her cup win, she has been runner up in the tournament 4 other times and personally knocked Miyu out of the tournament in 2 of those runs. With the momentum of strong singles defeats of Miyu, Yuka and Rika this year, she has to be considered a favorite to win her second cup, but one of her historically biggest threats stands in her way. If she is able to pass Neko, Mizuki, who is the only person with a better record in the cup than she, will be her next opponent. If Shoko manages to win the tournament, she will be the first person to hold the cup and the championship at the same time.

• Neko Haruna – This will be Neko’s 3rd cup. Unfortunately she’s drawn into one of the toughest blocks imaginable. To get to the semifinals, she will have to defeat the current PuriPuri champ and 1 time cup winner, a former 2 time cup winner and 2 time tag camp and potentially either Arisu, who has been getting stronger and stronger this year, or Miu, who s a former tag champ and cup semifinalist. Because of her small stature she will need to rely on her intuitiveness to take on whomever she may face. Recently she has been employing more strategies and mind games during matches to outwit opponents and leave them open to attack, hopefully she is able to employ those concepts here to push herself higher in the tournament.

• Mizuki – (seed) Mizuki is an impressive force in the Princess cup. Of the 5 times she’s competed she has made it to the semifinals twice and won it twice. She’s knocked the other major threat, Shoko, out of the tournament twice. The only people that have beaten her in tournament mode are Yuka and Maki. As Maki will not be competing this year, Yuka is her only worry. Her record, clever nature, disarming aura and skill at changing the momentum of a match to her favor always makes her a clear favorite in the tournament. That said, the other roster members know her tournament history as well as we do and will not be taking her lightly.

• Arisu Endo – This will be Arisu’s second entry into the tournament. She is still looking for her first singles win in her career. It won’t be easy to advance given her first opponent is powerhouse Miu Watanabe who is just coming out of a huge match against Ryo Mizunami and was one of the tournament semifinalists last year. But, if she can somehow manage to defeat Miu, she is seeded in such a way that the win would lead her directly to the quarter finals. Arisu is small and fast and has a vicious knee drop that she likes to use as a targeted attack to the neck and upper back of opponents in preparation for her camel clutch submission.

• Miu Watanabe – Miu has officially competed in the Princess Cup three times. In her debut year, she and Hikari had a match to determine who would fill the final slot of the 2018 tournament which Hikari would go on to win. So her official tournament debut was the next year (2019) where even though she was eliminated in the very next round, she managed to pull a shocking upset victory against veteran talent Nodoka. In last year’s tournament, she was able to make a huge step forward as she made it all the way to the final four. She is coming into this year’s tournament with a heap more experience against ToJo’s top wrestlers and outside wrestler’s alike. Who knows, perhaps this I the year for idol otaku wrestler.

• Miyu Yamashita – Miyu is one of the strongest competitors in Tokyo Joshi and one of the the few to compete in every tournament thus far. She could be considered as a shoo in to win the tournament if it weren’t for 1 fatal flaw: She’s terrible in tournaments. Miyu has competed in every single Tokyo Princess Cup since its inception and has never won it. She often can’t even make it out of the second round. Some would think her chances were stronger this year with matches against Misao and, assuming victory, Raku after that. The problem? Miyu is extremely vocal about hating in-ring antics. They throw her off her game and her reaction to her placement in this year’s tournament was much in that same vein, going so far as to beg for a placement trade.

• Hyper Misao – Misao’s tournament history is probably the most interesting. She missed the 2017 tournament due to injury and skipped the 2019 tournament because, well, let’s say she was indisposed. In her rookie year, she only participated in the 2015 tournament due to the sudden injury of a fellow wrestler. In the tournaments in which she participated, she’s rarely passed the second round, however, for whatever reason she has the distinction of most every year, knocking out some of the most powerful competitors in the tournament. This has included, Miyu Yamashita, Yuka Sakazaki and Saki-sama (albeit by disqualification). With her facing Miyu in the first round this year, will she be able to pull another major upset?

• Raku – (seed) Raku has made 3 appearances in the cup. In her second appearance she was defeated by Miyu but in her first and third, she was knocked out by Maki who isn’t competing this year. Could this be a sign from her that this year will be her lucky year? Raku always has a positive attitude and with the numerous techniques to her repertoire, she has the potential to make it very difficult for opponents to move forward?

• Nao Kakuta – This will be Nao’s second Princess Cup. Last year, she had the misfortune of matching up with Miyu in the opening round and while she put on a good showing, she ultimately wasn’t able to get off the starting blocks. She’s been working more in tag competition this year but she’s still a dangerous and clever singles competitor more than willing to take a few shortcuts if it gets her closer to a win. She’s talented, experienced, smart and devious and can be a threat to any competitor she faces. Her opening round opponent is Yuki Aino. Their only singles match ended in a draw so it will be exciting to see who comes out on top. Hopefully she can make more of a mark this year.

• Yuki Aino – like many, 2019 was Yuki’s debut in the tournament. She was taken out in the first round that year by Yuna Manase but in the following year she fared better, taking a huge upset victory from Rika Tatsumi, her senior and a heavy favorite going into the tournament. Last year she made it to the quarterfinal round by taking down Yuki Arai and Neko Haruna, but was stopped just short of the final four by a very game Miu. Aino will have a strength and power advantage against Nao but could easily succumb to her experience edge and conniving mind.

• Mahiro Kiryu – This will be Mahiro’s third Princess Cup and she has the potential to make a huge mark here. In her first match she will go up against the super rookie and newly crowned Princess tag champion, Yuki Arai. If she can best the SKE48 member, that could have tag title implications somewhere down the line. In theory, Mahiro has an experience edge here, but Yuki Arai has already had a number of huge matches against superior opponents including legend Aja Kong so she’s spent the last year toughening up and has already beaten opponents above her level in singles matches. Including Suzume whom Mahiro has fallen to in the past. Mahiro will need to focus up if she wants to advance. Sorry about that.

• Yuki Arai – The newly crowned Princess tag title holder and member of pop idol group SKE48 makes her second appearance in the Tokyo Princess Cup. Last year she fought valiantly but inevitably fell to the superior power and experience of fellow Yuki, Yuki Aino. Since then she has had many difficult battles and gained valuable battle experience and looks to advance further into the tournament. Her reputation as champion is now on the line as well.
  
• Hikari Noa – (seed) This will be Hikari’s fifth entry into the tournament. Unlike Raku and Miu whose debut tournament was the 2019 cup, Hikari was able to win a special trial match against Miu in 2018 and was allowed entry into Princess Cup 5. This year she is seeded to start in the second round against whomever wins the match between Mahiro and Yuki Arai. While her history may be deceiving good in the tournament to paper, given this will be her third time in the second round, in actuality, Hikari has never won a tournament match-up. She has been seeded before in the tournament, but lost first match and in her debut tournament, while she won the match to enter the tournament, and then advanced to the 2nd round after her 1st round opponent was forced to forfeit due to injury, she was quickly dispatched in the second round. So this year she’s looking to reverse her previous misfortunes.
  

• Kaya Toribami – Kaya has once again been placed in one of the luckiest and unluckiest ways imaginable. She once again has been placed in the bracket in such a way that if she wins her first-round match, she immediately advances to the quarter finals. The problem is the opponent she drew is Yuka Sakazaki, one of the strongest, chaotic members of the roster.

• Yuka Sakazaki – Yuka returns to the Princess cup after missing last year. Yuka is a strong competitor that, while never winning, has made it to the finals on two different occasions. She’s one of the most decorated members of Tokyo Joshi with 5 total title reigns with 2 different titles. The most of anyone in the promotion. Her chaos energy is something to be feared. She can be a bully and occasionally will be less than sporting in her matches. She is always a top contender to win the tournament.

• Harajuku Pom –Pom is entering the tournament for the fourth time. Last year she was taken out in round 1 by former ToJo wrestler Mirai Maiumi. This year she has a solid chance to advance further because she will be facing junior wrestler Moka Miyamoto whom she has defeated in the past. Pom’s offense is as strange as she is, focusing almost entirely on the shin and lower legs of her opponents. She’ll be looking to take advantage of her opponents’ pain and confusion to get ahead and try to squeak out wins.

• Moka Miyamoto – This will be Moka’s second year in the tournament. Moka’s road to a win will mean beating an upperclassman for the first time. Is she up to the task? Because or her background in Karate, she can be a real danger to her opponents. A well placed strike moving into her Rashomon submission could be the key to advancing.

• Suzume – (seed) As with several others, this will be Suzume’s third year participating in the Princess Cup. In her first appearance she was able to impress the fans by beating her senior Haruna to move on to the second round. In last year’s tournament, she was able to make it into the quarterfinals but was felled by eventual winner Maki Itoh in a hard-fought battle. She’s coming into this year’s tournament with a lot of momentum. She’s coming off a big win at Summer Sun Princess against the team of her regular tag partner Arisu and 13 year veteran Riho. Now she looks to continue by winning the Tokyo Princess cup.

• Yuki Kamifuku – Kamiyu has continually gone on record about her dislike of singles matches. However, she understands that this is something she has to do. Kamiyu’s record in the previous tournaments hasn’t been great, even when seeded, she’s failed to defeat her first opponent in the cups in which she’s participated. She had better luck in the 2020 International Princess championship tournament considering she won it and the title. She projects an aloof image, but when its time to buckle down she can be a danger to even the top members of the roster. Rika should be wary.

• Rika Tatsumi – Because of injuries early in her career, Rika was unable to participate in Cups 1 or 2, but she has been entered in every subsequent tournament. She has made it to the semifinals one time. Her first opponent this year will be Kamiyu who has been getting developing into a formidable wrestler. Rika will need to be wary of all Kamiyu’s tactics for gaining the upperhand in a match. A win would mean advancing directly to the quarter-finals.

Other tournament notes

• The Tokyo Princess Cup is here! This will be the 9th year running the tournament and it will be their biggest tournament yet
• The tournament is planned to run over the course of 7 shows. The first 3 shows will take place in KFC Hall in Ryogoku. These will encompass the first round of the tournament and part of the second. The last of the second round will be held at Shinjuku FACE. The quarterfinals will take place at Otemachi Mitsui Hall on the 31st. The semi-finals will take place in Kourakuen hall on August 13th and the finals will be held the next day (August 14th) in Kourakuen as well.
• After the quarterfinals have been decided, the final four competitors will redraw lots and the semi-final matches will potentially be shuffled.
• Bouts are 1 fall affairs with no time limit. There have been no “over the top rope” rules in previous tournaments and no changes have been announced for this tournament thus far. Thus, wins are attained by pinfall, submission, referee stoppage or disqualification.
• The most difficult roads to the trophy require 5 wins. Competitors that drew well, only require 4 wins.
• Wrestlers not competing in the tournament on a particular day or those eliminated from the tournament will be scheduled in matches as normal. Each show’s matches not relating to the tournament are to be determined.
• From the 3rd Princess Cup onward, winners have traditionally gone on to challenge the current PuriPuri champion to a match. This year, it’s likely that the championship match will take place at WrestlePrincess III on October 9th
• This year’s Princess Cup tournament will contain 20 competitors.
• Only Miyu and Shoko will have participated in every single Princess Cup
• Last Year’s winner (the 8th cup), Maki Itoh, will miss this year due to scheduling conflicts between the tournament and appearances overseas for which she has been scheduled.
• Of the 7 other previous cup winners, only Shoko (2nd cup winner) and Mizuki (6th & 7th cup winner) currently wrestle for Tokyo Joshi. Nonoko (inaugural cup winner) & Reika Saiki (4th cup winner) are retired and Yuu (3rd & 5th cup winner) primarily works freelance under Pro Wrestling EVE’s banner.
• A new trophy is being constructed for this this year’s tournament and for use going forward. Look forward to it.

General notes

• 100% capacity will be allowed for all shows, but cheering and streamers will be restricted.
• American wrestler “Max, the Impaler” was announced for the August 13th and 14th Kourakuen Hall shows.
• An entirely free, Kourakuen Hall show aimed at a women only audience has been set for August 28th.
• Yume no Puroresu, a web reality series following four women from different areas of the entertainment industry training in pro wrestling with the goal of accomplishing a dream of theirs is currently airing every Friday at 8 PM Japan time on Tokyo Joshi's official YouTube channel.
• Wrestle Universe debuted a new platform on October 1st. Now, finally, the mobile app version has also been released and is compatible with chrome cast. The app is available on iOS and for android. You can get more information and find links to download the app here. If the app is not available yet in your country, please check back later. The regions where it is downloadable is steadily increasing.
• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including the new Summer Sun Princess show pamphlet, the Summer Sun Princess ’22 official show t-shirt, entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, other t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

​7/9 card:

• Shoko Nakajima (champion) VS Rika Tatsumi (challenger)

• Magical Sugar Rabbits [Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki] (champions) VS Reiwa AA cannon [Saki Akai & Yuki Arai] (challengers)

• Miyu Yamashita VS Thunder Rosa

• Maki Itoh (champion) VS Alex Windsor (challenger)

• Mei Suruga & Suzume VS Riho & Arisu Endo

• Hikaru Shida & Hikari Noa VS Team Toyo University [Yuki Kamifuku & Mahiro Kiryu]

• Miu Watanabe VS Ryo Mizunami

• Raku, Yuki Aino, Harajuku Pom & Aja Kong VS Hyper Misao, Nao Kakuta, Neko Haruna & Kaya Toribami

• Moka Miyamoto VS Juria Nagano

Show & match notes

• Tokyo Joshi will hold the second of three big shows on July 9th. The show, named Summer Sun Princess ’22 will be Tokyo Joshi’s inaugural big summer show and will be part of a weekend of Ota ward Gymnasium shows with Ganbare Pro Wrestling’s Sekigahara show following it the next day. Summer Sun Princess will be a 9 match card featuring 2 international talents and 6 guest Japanese talents.

• The main event will be Shoko Nakajima’s 4th defense of the PuriPuri title. This time, her challenger will be Rika Tatsumi. While Rika was happy that Shoko was able to obtain the belt and Grand Princess and has enjoyed seeing her success, she can’t deny that she too wants to be champion and she has made an unequivocal declaration that she will not just bloom, but bloom crazily as champion. In the match she wants to get Shoko to make faces she’s never made, and show everyone a Rika that they’ve never seen. Rika was able to get a win over Shoko’s team in their preliminary skirmish in Kobe, after which she exclaimed that she wants to make sure that Shoko’s head is filled with images of her. Shoko has seemingly been unphased by Rika’s words, she pointed out that both she and Tokyo Joshi have been riding a wave of momentum and that she has gained a lot of big match experience. Shoko knows that Rika is an excellent opponent and wants to grow Tokyo Joshi in her own way. Shoko appears confident in herself and she’s excited to face Rika and see what she brings to the match. Speaking of the match, this will be an interesting affair. Both wrestlers are nearing the 10 year mark of their careers yet they have only had a handful of singles matches including Rika’s original debut as Ririko Kendo. While Shoko has bested Rika in most of their singles encounters, that could easily serve as increased motivation to win here. Shoko is a dynamic opponent that can bring a little of almost everything to a match. It can make her difficult to game plan. She’s good at high speeds, she’s acrobatic and can use the turnbuckles for both offense and defense, she is also a seasoned technical and mat wrestler. Her only real issue is her height and slight lack of power. Rika isn’t quite as well rounded but still has multiple areas of expertise. Where she shines brightest is her technical and submission wrestling. Her ability to take advantage of an opponent’s injury and exploit it is second to none in ToJo. Other strengths that make her dangerous are her unorthodox thinking, and her strategic mind. Rika can fight just as capably on the apron or on the floor as she can in the ring, she may be even more dangerous outside the ropes than inside them. She excels at using her environment to inflict as much damage as possible on her opponents or make her techniques as damaging as possible. In regard to her mind, her ability to analyze opponents and manipulate them or prepare for what they will do is probably unmatched in the company. That said, these things can occasionally be her weakness as well. Rika has a tendency to go too far in her right style, She’ll make elaborate preparations for big or strange attacks that have a more than 0% chance or being countered, reversed or in some other way, blowing up in her face. It can occasionally be her undoing. It’s best to expect a mix of everything with fighting both in the ring and out on the floor. Some high speed and high flying will also likely occur. That said, the probable focus of this match will come down to technical wrestling. Rika will want to keep Shoko grounded and focus on damaging her legs and core, which is the base of much of her offense. Similarly, if Shoko keeps control of Rika, there’s little chance that Rika can lock in a white dragon sleeper or set up for the missile hip, 2 of her strongest attacks. Mental and physical fortitude and whose is greater will likely play a huge role in the outcome of this match.

• The Princess tag belts will be on the line as MajiRabi look to extend their reign to 6 defenses which will match their previous defense record. Standing in their way now is Reiwa AA cannon. The combination of DDT’s Saki Akai, and SKE48 member Yuki Arai. Yuki and Saki challenging for the belts was a bit of shock since the title match will only be their 3rd time teaming together, when asked why she pushed for the challenge so quickly, Yuki said that she has loved tagging with Saki so far, but without challenging, she wasn’t sure when they’d tag again, so she decided to force the issue. Within the team, Saki said she’s letting Yuki take the lead. If Yuki hadn’t asked Saki if they could challenge, Saki would never have gone after the belts had Yuki not brought it up, but since she did, Saki was happy to oblige. Yuki and Saki have a lot in common; they’re both from Kyoto, they were both in the entertainment business before becoming wrestlers and they both won the pro wrestling rookie of the year award for their respective debut years. Even their names share many of the same letters. Saki and Yuki are well aware of MajiRabi’s strength and prowess. MajiRabi is the face of the princess tag division. Nevertheless, Saki and Yuki are confident. Yuki has stated she feels 100 times more confident when Saki is next to her and the two have had numerous strategy meetings in preparation for the match. While Saki has had a number of guest appearances throughout Tokyo Joshi’s history, this will be the first time she’s ever challenged for a title within the promotion. Her record within Tokyo Joshi should be troubling to MajiRabi. It’s spotless. Whether in singles or tag action, Saki Akai has never lost a match in Tokyo Joshi. So MajiRabi will either be the first to beat Saki, or they will be the next to fall to her. This will also be Yuki’s first time challenging for the Princess Tag titles. Prior to this her only title match was against Maki Itoh for the IP belt. Each team holds several advantages that could give them the edge in the match. MajiRabi hold a speed and experience advantage. They’ve been tagging regularly for 4 years and they both excel at rope work along with aerial techniques such as dropkicks and crossbodies. Saki and Yuki have a massive height and reach advantage as neither Mizuki nor Yuka hit 160 cm while Yuki is nearing 170cm and Saki is well past it, supposedly measuring in at 174 cm. Both have long legs that can often be seen booting opponents into oblivion. Theoretically, Saki or Yuki could knock down either member of MajiRabi before they were close enough to attack. As far as strategies go, Yuka and Mizuki will likely want to keep on the move but in a dynamic non-linear way. Avoiding a predictable pattern where they can run into a boot or a kick will be crucial to retaining their titles. For Saki and Yuki, isolation tactics will do them well. If Yuka and Mizuki begin working together its incredibly difficult to stop them. Their tandem offense is one of the best around. So, if Saki and Yuki can’t limit that ability, then it won’t be good for them

• Current AEW women’s champion Thunder Rosa was announced for this show, the more exciting news is that she’s scheduled to face ToJo’s Ace wrestler, the pink striker, Miyu Yamashita. For those that are unaware, Rosa already has a developed history with Tokyo Joshi. She first appeared in the promotion in 2019 where she first had a feud with Kamiyu, and then went on to challenge the PuriPuri champ at the time, Shoko Nakajima. In the prelude to her title match, she would have her one and only small skirmish with Miyu. Allysin Kaye, who had also come to Tokyo Joshi to try to reclaim her SHINE title from Miyu, would team with Rosa and Kamiyu as they fought Shoko, Miyu and Miu. Rosa would go on to return to Tokyo Joshi to challenge for and win the IP title from Maki Itoh just prior to the onset of the Pandemic. While several matches planned, International travel proved impossible for the rest of 2020 and the title match with Itoh ended up being her last match in ToJo. She would inevitably vacate and return the belt about 6 months later undefeated but with no defenses. She now returns as the top of the AEW women’s division to battle one of the strongest ToJo has to offer. Not only that, but she has declared that if Miyu can win, Rosa will give her a shot at the AEW women's championship in the US. Given each of the fighters’ backgrounds, expect this to be a fairly hard hitting affair. Each of them can take a great deal of damage and are not likely to go down easily. Miyu is a skilled martial artist with a strong knowledge of karate and kick boxing while Rosa is a trained mixed martial artist that dabbles in Judo as well. Both women are prideful so it wouldn’t be surprising to see a lot of no guard strikes traded back and forth. For Rosa, she has to be wary of Skull Kick which is Miyu’s near 100% hp killing spinning heel kick. She’s great at pulling the kick from nowhere and if it doesn’t end you immediately, then it puts you firmly on the path. Rosa’s strongest attack is her Fire Thunder driver, which, while it has a somewhat difficult set up, is a powerful package type sit out driver that completely decimates opponents and readies them for the pinfall.

• Recently, British women’s promotion, Pro Wrestling: EVE hosted a tournament known as the SHE-1. Alex Windsor was able to overcome all the competition and win this tournament. Once her win was secured, she made a speech to the crowd and one of the things she did in that speech was call out International Princess champion Maki Itoh. The challenge was heard by Tokyo Joshi management and Maki accepted. The match was set and the two will now face one another at Summer Sun Princess. This will be Maki’s 5th defense of the title which she won at the January 4th show. Maki has been good about accepting all challenges as they come both domestic and international. Her wrestling style is simplistic but effective and she doesn’t really alter it to fit the opponent. Maki’s game plan is hit them, throw headbutts at them, ddt them, and throw crab submissions at them until they either give up or stop moving. Alex is a dangerous technical brawler. Debuting in 2009 though taking time off due to injury from 2018 to 2021, Alex still has a solid experience advantage over Maki. Against smaller opponents, which Maki is by just a smidgen, Alex likes to use her strength and weight to bully opponents to the mat. She has an excellent mat game, good power and a solid knowledge of submissions. To finish matches she often relies on an impressive powerbomb and a scorpion deathlock. So Maki needs to be looking to avoid these if she wants to leave the match with her title. Her knowledge of crab submissions may be an advantage in avoiding Alex’s attack but conversely this means that Alex likely has a few crab escapes of her own.

• Mei Suruga was announced to participate and tag with Suzume at this show. They have since come up with the name “MeiBee Surprise” as their official tag team name and they are scheduled to face Riho and Arisu Endo at Summer Sun Princess. This match has more layers than the child of an overprotective mother in winter. Lets start with Riho. Riho is currently a member of the AEW roster. However, prior to that she worked much of her career in Gatoh Move, where she was the ace of the promotion. She is Mei Suruga’s upperclassman and while they were only in Gatoh move for about 1 year before Riho moved over to AEW, Mei has never defeated her in singles competition. In fact, even though the two have faced off in singles and tag action over 30 times, You could count the victories of Mei’s team on one hand. So Mei would love to get a win over the former gatoh move ace here. Riho along with Shoko was the tag team that Suzume faced as part of her pro wrestling debut. Suzume put up a valiant effort but was dispatched with relative ease by the veteran team. Riho would again come to tag with Shoko against Suzume and new partner Arisu Endo in a match at Wrestle Princess 2 last year. The match was exciting but once again Suzume’s team was defeated. Riho has stated that she has taken interest in Suzume and keeps an eye on her. It seems she enjoys coming in to Tokyo Joshi and checking her progress every so often. Suzume, like Mei, would love to get a victory over Riho in this match. Mei and Suzume were announced as a tag team for this show not long after they fought as the special main event of Mei’s 4th anniversary show and seemingly “hit it off” as it were. Where it gets really interesting is the aforementioned Arisu Endo, who has been tagging regularly with Suzume since just after her debut in a team now known as “Daisy Monkey”, has been scheduled as Riho’s partner for the match. Arisu knows Suzume extremely well and as is often seen to be the case, even though Arisu is one of the most inexperienced members of the roster and has yet to get a singles win, when you fight someone you know as well as your regular tag partner, you can fight well above your normal ability. So with Riho by her side, Arisu’s team is a major threat to the newly formed MeiBee Surprise.

• In march of this year, Hikari Noa had a special singles match up with AEW wrestler and former champion of numerous promotions, Hikaru Shida. While she would inevitably lose the match, Shida found her intriguing. Now the two will be paired together to face the ToJo regular tag team of Kamiyu and Mahiro, also known as Team Toyo. Both Hikari and Hikaru are strong competitors on their own but two strong competitors together isn’t always a recipe for success and they will have no time to workshop before taking on a team that we know has general cohesiveness (apart from Mahiro and Kamiyu disagreeing on the use of certain tactics). So it will be interesting to see if they can gel on the fly. Shida is known for a particular eye gouging attack as well. Will she attempt it on the queen of eye pokes herself?

• International hoss fight! Or so we thought. Due to VISA processing issues, Willow Nightingale will not be able to come to Japan for Summer Sun Princess. Hopefully she’ll be able to participate at a later date. In the meantime, an impressive substitute has been found. So, instead of and International hoss fight, we get intranational hoss fight as Miu’s new opponents will be none other than “Aniki”! You read that correctly Ryo Mizunami will make her debut appearance in Tokyo Joshi to take on the idol loving muscular pink Up Up Girl! Ryo Mizunami has a list of accolades as long as your arm including winning a number of tournaments and singles and tag titles held in numerous promotions. Aniki has fought all over Japan including independent promotions, and respected joshi pro wrestling companies such as WAVE, SEAdLINNNG, Sendai Girls and more. Most recently she has made a number of appearances in the American promotion AEW. Mizunami is an experienced, hard hitting, joshi heavyweight, so this will be a monumental task for Miu, who has never faced anyone as big as Ryo in singles competition. Mizunami can likely hit as hard or harder than anyone in Tokyo Joshi. Don’t count Miu out though, she’s secret strong and can likely give as good as she gets, but there’s no way she can match the experience and toughness that Aniki has developed over her 10 plus year career, so going strike for strike against Aniki will likely ultimately fail. Miu’s probable best course of attack is to find an opening where she can hit a big string of offense to try to do enough damage all at once that she can keep Aniki down for the three.

• Super Raku friend squad assemble! Raku! Yuki! Pom! Aja! They’ve all come together on this show to defend naptime from the forces of evil… or something like that. Anyway, this team of super pals will be facing the Shenanigan loving Hyper Misao, the shenanigan loving Nao Kakuta and honestly Neko and Torippi seem to just be along for the ride as their faithful pets. What will this team have in store? How elaborate can a cold spray attack be? Will get to see a 4 car oyasumi express with Aja acting as the caboose? All these questions and more will be answered at Summer Sun Princess.

• The opening match will be an interesting one. Juria Nagano has been matched up against Moka Miyamoto. Moka was Juria’s partner in her debut match as the went against the team of Arisu and Suzume. Now they will face off for the first time in Juria’s 6th career match. Most worthy of note is that this is another match of Karate practitioners turned wrestler battling. The major points of differentiation are Juria and Moka studied different types of Karate, Juria obtained more accolades due to focusing on the competitive side of the sport, and Moka is the more seasoned wrestler. In the match we will see if any of these differences end up playing a role in the result.

General notes

• It was announced that Tokyo Joshi will host a Summer Sun Princess preshow on Tokyo Joshi's official YouTube channel. 90 minutes prior to bell time, they will have interviews with Thunder Rosa and Alex Windsor as well as the International Princess contract signing. 30 minutes prior to bell time, they will have special interviews with Yuki Arai and Riho.

• Wrestle Universe debuted a new platform on October 1st. Now, finally, the mobile app version has also been released and is compatible with chrome cast. The app is available on iOS and for android. You can get more information and find links to download the app here. If the app is not available yet in your country, please check back later. The regions where it is downloadable is steadily increasing.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brooks and Baliyan Akki of Choco Pro fame will provide English play-by-play for this show. On the Japanese commentary end, Miki Hara has been announced as a commentary guest for the show. That's right, Cutie Honey will be commenting on Tokyo Joshi pro!

• It was announced that as part of a normalizing trial, Throwing kamitape (paper streamers), hanging member banners and cheering while wearing masks will be allowed at the Summer Sun Princess show. So look forward to seeing the full pre-pandemic Japanese wrestling show experience!

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new Summer Sun Princess show pamphlet with preorder bonus of one random signature , the Summer Sun Princess ’22 official show t-shirt, entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, other t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

​10/23 card & notes:

• 121000000 (Miyu Yamashita & Maki Itoh) & Moka Miyamoto VS MagiRabi (Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki) & Suzume

• ​Tag team match – NEO Biishikigun (Saki-sama & Mei San Michelle) VS Tenma Nodoka & Raku
• Tag team match – Hakuchumu (Rika Tatsumi & Miu Watanabe VS Nao Kakuta & Mahiro Kiryu
• Singles match – Hikari Noa VS Harajuku Pom
• Tag team match – KyorakuKyoumei (Shoko Nakajima & Hyper Misao VS Yuki Aino & Neko Haruna
• Singles match – Yuki Kamifuku VS Arisu Endo

notes

• Tokyo Joshi returns again to Shin Kiba 1st Ring to continue its run of live stream shows.

• The card for this show will have 6 matches.

• The match order is subject to be different from how I have listed it.

• This weeks main even is a strong one, pitting 2 of the current strongest tag teams in Tokyo Joshi on opposite sides of a 6 woman tag match. On one side we have the current PuriPuri champ, Miyu, the most recent Princess Cup winner, Maki and rising rookie Moka and on the other we have the newly crowned 2 time Princess Tag champs MajiRabi (Yuka and Mizuki) along with an extremely impressive bee (Suzume). There is a fair amount of emotion that could flair up in this match as the individual members of Maji Rabi have both taken relatively recent losses to the individual members of 121000000. Yuka lost her bid at the PuriPuri belt when Miyu beat her at CyberFight Festival 2021 back in June, while Mizuki tapped out to Maki in the semi-finals of the Princess Cup tournament in August. Conversely, Mizuki once again beat Miyu in the tournament before losing to Maki which gives her 2 singles victories over Miyu in the tournament as she also defeated her in 2019. To a far lesser degree, Suzume is senior to Moka by roughly one year so a win over her could earn Moka a lot of traction in moving up the card. The 4 veterans are extremely familiar with one another and the 2 young wrestlers are close in class so they also work with one another a lot so this match may be a game of inches with 1 slightly better anticipated move proving the difference maker. With 3 champions coming into this match, it could have potential implications for the shaping one or multiple title pictures heading into November.

• NEO-Biishikigun returns to Tokyo Joshi for the first time since losing their titles. Saki-sama has not real ties to the titles and has experienced losing them before but Mei San is younger and felt that her holding a matching item with Saki-sama showed that they were linked. Now with the loss of them what will Mei San’s mental state be like as they are scheduled to do battle with the team of Nodoka and Raku? NEO-Bii needs to be on full alert as we’ve seen previously that not even the great Saki-sama is immune to Raku’s sleepy-time prowess and since Nodoka was the person that Saki-sama and Mei-san originally defeated to obtain the titles, Nodoka has plenty of motivation to try and take a win home here. Will Nodoka and Raku send NEO-Bii reeling with yet another loss or will the team that views beauty as strength bloom once again at Shin Kiba?

• In another tag match Hakuchumu re-unites for the first time since Rika’s return to take on the rat chaser, Nao Kakuta and passion blue, Mahiro Kiryu. Both Nao and Mahiro could use wins here as they have both been on losing streaks since their repective matches at Wrestle Princess but pulling a win from a former Princess Tag title team is easier said than done. Nao and Mahiro are going to have to come in with a plan and execute it perfectly if they want to have a chance at beating the powerhouse idol lover and the white dragon.

• Hikari will be facing off against pom in a singles match this week. Hikari is a self-professed deathmatch lover but are her shins prepared for the onslaught of deathly pain that Pom is prepared to dole out to them? Pom, while silly, has become more and more resilient to the attacks of her seniors. And her summer encounter with Aja Kong likely gave her an additional boost in armor class. Hikari can’t afford to take her lightly.

• Its been a while since we’ve seen KyorakuKyoumei last teamed but there’s no doubt that they’ll have a plan ready when they take on Yuki and Neko. Neko has become more wily in recent months and Yuki knows KyourakuKyoumei well but will it be enough to overcome a hero and her partner kaiju?

• Arisu will be facing Kamiyu on this show. Not only does Arisu need to overcome a nearly 3 year experience disadvantage but a 23 centimeter height disadvantage as well. Facing the 173 centimeter model and wrestler when you’re only 150 centimeters is a tall task indeed (Pun intended. You’re welcome.) Will Arisu be up for it?

• Marika will miss this show due to school related commitments.

• It was announced that Kaya Toribami will take a leave of absence from Tokyo Joshi. The reasons for this were kept private however Kaya told fans that she was not sick or injured. She is expected to return for the January 4th, 2022 Kourakuen Hall show. Best of luck to Kaya in whatever it is she’s pursuing.

• Tokyo Joshi’s next Kourakuen show will be November

• DDT and Tokyo Joshi have opened an international store. https://ddtstore.bigcartel.com/ They have previously had several Tokyo Joshi shirts for order. More products will likely be made available soon so be sure to check the site regularly.

• www.tjpw-store.com. Has Wrestle Princess t-shirts, pamphlets and checki photo albums all currently available for order photobooks and older show pamphlets are available as well. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

​10/16 card & notes:

• 121000000 (Miyu Yamashita & Maki Itoh) VS Hikari Noa & Marika Kobashi

• ​Tag team match – MajiRabi (Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki) VS Nao Kakuta & Neko Haruna
• 6 woman tag match – Rika Tatsumi, Hyper Misao & Tenma Nodoka VS Yuki Kamifuku, Mahiro Kiryu & Suzume
• Singles match – Miu Watanabe VS Moka Miyamoto
• Three-way match – Shoko Nakajima VS Raku VS Harajuku Pom
• Singles match – Yuki Aino VS Arisu Endo

notes

• With Wrestle Princess 2 in the books, Tokyo Joshi moves to Shin Kiba 1st Ring to continue its run of live stream shows and deal with any fallout from Ota-ku.

• The card for this show will have 6 matches.

• The match order is subject to be different from how I have listed it.

• Maki was unable to capture the PuriPuri title from Miyu at WP2 and in the main event we will see how the relationship is going between Maki and Miyu as 121000000 (prounounced one two million) is scheduled to face International Princess champion Hikari Noa and Gal wrestler Marika Kobashi. Hopefully Miyu and Maki are on the same page since beating Hikari and Marika is no easy task. Hikari and Itoh have never particularly gotten along so don’t be surprised if the two of them get into quite a scrap. Marika is also likely to be fired up here. Coming off a big loss against ASUKA and Kamiyu it’s likely that she’ll want to work hard to put one in the win column. Especially against the two that main evented Wrestle Princess last week. Looking at the match Hikari and Marika are the more quick and agile team and will try to attack fast and hard with lots of dropkicks and other quick strikes. Miyu and Maki if they’re on the same wavelength are the more regular team and are far more familiar with one another. So coordinated attacks will be more powerful and will likely be attempted more often. Hikari and Marika will have to do their best to avoid these by either isolating an opponent for the majority of the match, Maki being the slightly preferred option for this strategy or they will have to try to read 121000000 as best they can and hope to dodge or counter incoming tandem attacks.

• The Princess Tag champions, MagiRabi, make their first entrance holding their newly won belts but many strong tag teams will be eyeing them from here on out so they need to be careful. At Shin Kiba they will be facing the Team of Neko and Nao. Nao has been with the company nearly a year now and has developed strong bonds with several members of the roster. She has teamed with Neko on a number of occasions and they seem to be a solid team. There’s no better way to test that team dynamic that a battle with the champs. Both Nao and Neko were on the losing side of their matches at Wrestle Princess so a win here would be ideal. However, the road to that win won’t be easy. Can they walk it?

• PaMi loves Rika! The good news for her here is that she gets to tag with her at this show, the bad news for her is that Nodoka is also on the team. Yes, the members of the three-way match at Ota-ku will now team together as one side of a 6 woman tag match. Problem being that PaMi usually wants Rika all to herself and Rika usually wants to avoid PaMi. Nodoka just wants everyone to get along and to get food as soon as possible. But in the way of this are Kamiyu, Mahiro and Suzume. Kamiyu and Mahiro have been a regular tag team for around 2 years and Mahiro and Suzume are friends who also tag fairly regularly. These 3 should be relatively familiar with one another. So while Rika, PaMi and Nodoka have more total years in ring than do Kamiyu, Mahiro and Suzume, if they are on their game and Rika, PaMi and Nodoka are not, it could spell disaster for the veterans.

• Miu and Moka have been scheduled to take part in a singles match. For Moka, this will be testing her against another of her senpai on the roster. For Miu, this will be an opportunity to get some measure of retribution for the loss she ate at Wrestle Princess 2 that was served up by Moka and Aja Kong. Moka has been improving steadily and there’s no doubt that the win at Ota-ku likely gave her a confidence boost going into this show, but will it be enough to take down the strongest idol-otaku in Tokyo Joshi?

• Shoko, Raku and Pom are all set to take part in a three-way match on this show. Its been some time since Shoko was last in a singles three-way match. In fact the last three-way she was in was the battle to decide the #1 contender for Miyu’s PuriPuri title at CyberFight Festival 2021. Raku and Pom however, have recently been in three-way matches fairly regularly. Will Shoko get reacclimated to the chaotic match style? Raku sleepy-time powers continue to increase and Pom recently tried to eat bubbles, so she is also something to be feared. Three-way matches always crazy so expect more of the same here.

• Arisu gets an opportunity to face Yuki Aino in what I presume will be the opening match of the show. Arisu’s progress this year has been unbelievable but facing the Burning Venus is no easy task. Especially with Arisu having both a height and power disadvantage here. She will have to heavily use her wits and speed if she wants to have a chance at beating Yuki.

• It was announced that Kaya Toribami will take a leave of absence from Tokyo Joshi. The reasons for this were kept private however Kaya told fans that she was not sick or injured. She is expected to return for the January 4th, 2022 Kourakuen Hall show. Best of luck to Kaya in whatever it is she’s pursuing.

• Tokyo Joshi’s next Kourakuen show will be November.

• Wrestle Universe debuted a new platform on October 1st. It can be found at www.wrestle-universe.com All members of the former wrestle universe will need to re-subscribe to the new site as their memberships will not carry over. The good news is that a special campaign is currently running where subscribers of the new service may use it for free until the end of 2021 (you cannot cancel until the end of January). Members of the old service can still use it free of charge until it closes at the end of October, but no new content will be posted. The new sign features an easy sign up process, dual channel audio for shows that provide English and Japanese commentary, automatic English site translations, easily navigable menus for promotions and even wrestlers. The site currently has about 30% of the content of the previous site but is slated to be up to 100% by the end of October. A mobile app version has also been announced and is scheduled to be released before the end of the year.

• DDT and Tokyo Joshi have opened an international store. https://ddtstore.bigcartel.com/ They have previously had several Tokyo Joshi shirts for order. More products will likely be made available soon so be sure to check the site regularly.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including the new Wrestle Princess 2 show pamphlet, Wrestle Princess 2 show t-shirt, entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.

• Speaking of the store, special signed Halloween cosplay Polaroid pictures are on sale now. No two Polaroids are exactly the same so your Polaroid will be different than someone else who chooses the same wrestler. Also on sale is a special costume switch group portrait of Tenma Nodoka, Yuki Aino, Rika Tatsumi and Hyper Misao. Orders for both the special portrait and Polaroids will end on October 19th in Japan so if you want something, don't wait. Remember that you need to use a 3rd party shipping service to order.

​10/9 card & notes:

• Miyu Yamashita (champion) VS Maki Itoh (challenger

• NEO-Biishikigun [Saki-sama & Mei San-Michelle] (champions) VS Magical Sugar Rabbits [Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki] (challengers)

• Hikari Noa (champion) VS Yuki Aino (challenger)

• Miu Watanabe & Yuki Arai VS Moka Miyamoto & Aja Kong

• Twin-cam Monster [Shoko Nakajima & Riho] VS Suzume & Arisu Endo

• Yuki Kamifuku & ASUKA VS Nao Kakuta & Marika Kobashi

• Rika Tatsumi VS Hyper Misao VS Tenma Nodoka

• Raku, Harajuku Pom & Ram Kaicho VS Neko Haruna, Mahiro Kiryu & Kaya Toribami

notes

• Tokyo Joshi will hold its big 8 match Wrestle Princess show from the Ota ward gym. This will be Tokyo Joshi’s biggest show of the year. It is the first time they are performing in the Ota ward gym which to date in the largest venue they have ever used.

• The match order is subject to be different from how I have listed it.

• Since the beginning of her wrestling career, Maki Itoh has been intrinsically linked to Miyu. Maki made her debut on a DDT show in Kyushu where she’s from and she was scheduled to face Miyu, who thoroughly trounced her. Since then they’ve teamed and faced each other countless times including a challenge for the PuriPuri belt back in 2019, but a singles victory over Miyu continues to illude Maki. Maki’s 2021 story has been a wild one. She started off the year with her usual bluster and a challenge against Miyu at Kourakuen Hall. And here again Maki put on a confident face and tried her hardest but ultimately was outclassed and kicked so hard she couldn’t even answer a 10 count. However, a few weeks after that, Maki decided to tangle with NEO-Biishikigun and in a move that was probably less strategic and more due to proximity, Maki enrolled Miyu to aide her. The two have been teaming regularly since then and have seemingly forged a bond that a person more socially well-adjusted person than Maki might even hazard to call a friendship. Through this team and various other experiences Maki had such as wrestling abroad, she has become noticeably stronger. So much stronger that to the surprise of many fans, Maki was able to plow through the Princess Cup this year and not only defeat several of it’s top stars and favorites to win the tournament, but also to defeat one of her top rivals who she also had never been able to beat previously. Of course, in winning the Princess Cup she now has the right to challenge Miyu for the title at Wrestle Princess 2. Briefly speaking of Miyu for a moment, she too has had a few interesting moments over the year. Primarily that she has been beaten a number of times, causing many (including Maki, who has proclaimed she wants to defeat Miyu at her peak condition) to question if she has been in a weird headspace. She was knocked out of the Princess Cup by Mizuki, which isn’t terribly unusual since Miyu has a record of being terrible in tournaments and Mizuki the opposite, but she also has been pinned or submitted in a number of tag battles to NEO-Biishikigun and surprisingly to Yuki Aino. Yet, when it comes to the PuriPuri title, she has been able to focus up and her record has been exemplary. Since managing to take the title from Rika Tatsumi, she has gone on to defend it against Yuka Sakazaki and Saki-sama, two of the strongest in Tokyo Joshi. Now in her third defense, she will once again be battling Maki but a more experienced Maki who holds a great deal of momentum and confidence. Looking at the match, Miyu is a particularly steep mountain to climb. She has a bit of height and long muscular legs. She’s experienced in both Karate and Kickboxing which shouldn’t come as a shock seeing as striking and kicks are her specialty. That said, Miyu is also well rounded as a wrestler. She has not only her kicks but a solid ground game which includes a vicious cobra clutch. In terms of slams she has a fairly varied repertoire as well but will frequently go to back breakers and bodyslams. She is also known to pull out a big german suplex when the need arises. The only real area where miyu lacks any particular training is high flying. You will vary rarely see Miyu go for a dive to the outside or attempt to jump off the top rope. Usually she meets any aerial attackers with pinpoint kicks or other counter offense. Maki’s offense relies primarily on 3 things: Headbutts, DDT’s and Boston Crab variants. Her goal in previous encounters has been to put as much damage on Miyu’s lower back as possible and somehow using this to either get a pin or breach Miyu’s pain threshold and get her to tap. Of course, in those previous encounters she was ultimately unsuccessful. Maki has gone on record as saying she has been developing various counters for Miyu’s special attacks such as her “skull kick” and her Crash Rabbit Heat and has even shown her hand to a degree in a previous match when she revealed one counter for each during their final confrontation. Whether these were her only counters and whether or not Miyu will be prepared for them to come is yet unknown. Miyu is the standard bearer here, she’s beaten Maki numerous time and outside of perhaps preparing for a few surprises, doesn’t really need to change her game plan here: “kick it till it stops moving” is tried and tested. Maki has near limitless fire, but it often gets the better of her. She has to avoid the blind rage bulrush that so often has gotten the better of her in the past. Especially since one of Miyu’s more famous winning tactics is baiting an opponent by dropping back, then allowing them to run straight into getting their head kicked off. If Maki can avoid Miyu’s stronger kicks and focus in on Miyu’s back similar to her matches against Mizuki and Shoko, she definitely has a path to winning the coveted PuriPuri belt.

• In 2019 Saki-sama became interested in Mizuki. At the time Mizuki was one half of the Princess Tag champions with Yuka Sakazaki as the Magical Sugar Rabbits (MajiRabi) and their run was going well. Mizuki rebuffed Saki-sama, who decided that the best way to appeal to Mizuki was to break her and Yuka up by capturing the belts from them. They went on to do just that and when she was again rebuffed by Mizuki, she abandoned the pursuit, stating that any beauty she may have seen was probably just her own reflection in Mizuki’s eyes. NEO-Biishikigun moved on but MajiRabi never forgot the humiliation. Now they finally have the opportunity to once again fight NEO-Biishikigun and recapture the belts. MajiRabi believes that NEO-Biishikigun is an impediment in achieving a peaceful world. They want to eliminate them and once again enjoy frolicking freely. Yuka and Mizuki know how strong their opponents are, they’ve both faced Saki-sama on numerous occasions, and while Yuka will have her first encounter with Mei San-Michelle at WP2, she mentioned that she feels like she’s experienced an opponent similar in the past, though it couldn’t have been Mei as the experience felt more light and pure. Mizuki pointed out that since losing the belts they’ve both had numerous experiences that have made both her and Yuka stronger; like fighting through the Princess Cup and facing one another for the title at last year’s Wrestle Princess. So with this new strength they intend to take the belts back. NEO-Bii is unphased by the challenge and seem unconcerned. Saki-sama mentioned that among her many hobbies she enjoys going hunting and she’s looking forward to this wild game hunt. She intends to show the Tokyo Joshi fans a beautiful hunt by seeking out and taking down a loud bunny (Mizuki) and an obnoxious cockatiel (Yuka). So for MajiRabi he road to victory will not be an easy one. NEO-Biishikigun is arguably the strongest group in Tokyo Joshi. They rarely lose and their teamwork is always top notch. The mix of Saki-sama’s huge reach, powerful strikes and subtle cunning combined with Mei’s speed, unorthodox style and slippery nature, make the two a terrifying team with very few weaknesses. But MajiRabi are also a top team and will use their chaotic minds to find multitudes of methods for inflicting damage on their opponents. They’re going to need to be functioning at 100% and maybe even more if they hope to capture the titles

• Yuki, who has been on a hot streak recently, wants to burn up the stage at Wrestle Princess. However, Hikari, who continues to lose tag team partners, wants to squelch her out so she can continue to protect her current partner belt-san. With Hikari debuting in January of 2018 and Yuki debuting in May of the same year, the two have always seen each other as rivals. They had an impressive and firey singles match at Kourakuen Hall a couple years ago and now that they’ve both gained experience and with greater stakes on the line, the Wrestle Princess match promises to be even more fantastic. Hikari has defended the International Princess belt twice prior to this, against fellow Up Up Girl, Raku, and Gal wrestler Marika Kobashi. Both Raku and Marika are lighter wrestlers that focus more on quick strikes. Kamiyu too who Hikari defeated to win the title would be considered a more technique and strike-based wrestler. So now we see how she fairs against someone who acts as more of a tank. Yuki’s offense is less about finesse and more about just running an opponent over and smashing them. She’s sturdy, damage resistant and strong. Almost the complete opposite of Hikari. Hikari for all of her bluster as a lover of deathmatches, has a smaller and weaker constitution but is an accomplished mat wrestler and relies mostly on dropkicks and holds to gain the advantage over her opponent. But, with her penchant for violence, Hikari may resort to using various weapons during the match to make up for her deficit in power. Keys to victory for Yuki deal with trapping Hikari and keeping her stationary as much as possible. She also wants to avoid getting out of the ring lest Hikari gets ideas. Keys to victory (legally speaking) for Hikari are to stick and move unless employing submission holds or pinning attempts.

• Ok, there’s a bunch of threads to talk about here. First, Miu Watanabe and Yuki Arai. Miu is an idol wrestler from the Up Up Girls pro-wrestling group which was created for Tokyo Joshi. Yuki Arai is part of the idol group SKE48 a Nagoya based branch of the popular and successful AKB48 franchise. So they’re both idols and Miu is also a self-professed idol super-fan. So, much to Miu’s extreme delight, the two have tagged regularly since Yuki’s debut back in May (though luckily it hasn’t affected Miu’s focus during matches). Of course, Miu is happy to be paired with Yuki once again but more importantly she gets to fight Aja Kong. Back in January, Aja and Miu briefly faced off in a multi-woman tag but Miu didn’t feel like she could do anything against Aja, so she has it in here mind that in this match, come hell or high water, she is going for the giant swing on Aja. Her power has been increasing and recently she successfully performed the giant swing on Mizuki and Shoko simultaneously so she believes she’s properly prepared. Aja responded by first congratulating Miu on swinging two people but then stated that Aja is not the same size as 2 people but is actually more like 3! She pointed out that 2 well known legends: Lioness Asuka and Kyoko Inoue were both giant swing users but were never able to perform it on Aja, so Aja told Miu to by all means try, but she is doubtful that Miu will be able to pull it off. Next, Yuki Arai and Moka Miyamoto: While the two are not (I believe) of the same class, these two have developed a major rivalry throughout the summer. The two have traded wins back and forth in various matches. Moka debuted almost one year prior to Yuki so for Moka, Yuki progressing so quickly and even gaining a singles victory over Moka is frustrating to her. As an upper classman, her pride is on the line and she doesn’t want to lose to a junior. Now Moka is paired with Aja Kong and though nervous, she’s confident that their team will get the win. Finally, there’s Yuki and Aja Kong; Yuki spoke of Aja saying “when you think of joshi pro wrestling you think of Aja Kong.” It’s true that Aja is a legend in the industry and with only 5 months having passed since her debut, Yuki is just a baby by comparison. But that will not deter Yuki. She wants display all that she’s learned since she’s debuted and try her hardest to show that she’s not just SKE48’s Yuki Arai performing as a wrestler but she is also joshi pro wrestler Yuki Arai wrestling other joshi pro wrestlers and she will work her hardest to win this battle. Of Yuki, Aja mentioned remembering her performance as part of Tofu pro but she hasn’t had the pleasure of yet seeing joshi pro wrestler Yuki Arai especially in as important a place as ToJo show in Ota ward gym

• In August of 2019, Suzume had her debut match. She was given the monumental task of debuting against an all-star team of Shoko Nakajima and Riho who go by the tag name of TWIN-CAM MONSTER. While she was defeated in the end, Suzume had an impressive performance against the two veteran wrestlers and has since become one of Tokyo Joshi’s rising stars. Now, 2 years later, she has been paired with Arisu Endo and will once again take on TWIN-CAM MONSTER at Wrestle Princess 2. Riho, who is probably most well known by western fans for her tenure in All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and is the first women’s champion there, has in the past made multiple appearances in Tokyo Joshi over the years and returns for the first time in 2 years to participate in this match. Riho has been following the careers of the various wrestlers in Tokyo Joshi with interest in the time that she’s been gone and has met a number of them in the ring when they’ve been able to make trips to participate in AEW. Of course, some of the names she dropped were stars like Itoh, Mizuki, Shoko and Yuka, but she mentioned that she’s been keeping an eye on Suzume as well. Now Suzume can show her the growth that she’s made in the 2 years she’s been away. Suzume is full of fire going into this match and has no intention of losing to the veteran team but she still has an impressive hill to climb. Her partner Arisu, only debuted in January of this year, so she has never had the experience of wrestling Riho, but Arisu and Suzume had a stellar performance against the Magical Sugar Rabbits back in February when Arisu was only a month into her career so don’t be surprised if they are able to give the vets an impressive run for their money in this match. Arisu is especially fired up for this match. Ota gym was the first performance she ever made when she was part of Wrestle-1’s CHEER-1 support squad so this venue is very important to her and she is really motivated to win. Aside from a slight height advantage (and I mean really slight only 3 cm) by Riho, the 2 teams are quite similar. All four as small, fairly light and fast. Generally relying more on speed or momentum than strength to give their moves power. All 4 have impressive stamina bars as well, able to continuously move at a high pace for extended periods. Riho favors flying knee strikes, and jumping double stomps but will also pull snap dragon suplexes, and lucha libre style maneuvers from her bag of tricks. Her finisher is the Somato, and homage to one of her favorite wrestlers, HARASHIMA. Shoko is an accomplished mat technician and enjoys putting people on the mat but she also has dropkicks, her rider kick, and numerous lucha libre style moves as well. Her finishers are a top rope senton and a northern lights suplex. Both Riho and Shoko use the tiger feint kick (619). Suzume likes using misdirection plays often running around an opponent rather than straight into them. She uses this most often for flash roll-ups. She also favors moves where she runs into or somehow bounces off the ropes and increases her momentum. Suzume’s finisher is a jumping cutter called “Ring a bell”. Arisu, as the least experienced member of the match still hasn’t found her unique style, but she is quick and agile. She often goes for a single knee drop to the back of the neck of a prone opponent on fours. She is also known to make use of a camel clutch, suggesting that she may become a specialist at targeting an opponent’s neck and upper back.

• Kamiyu and Asuka have been friends outside of the ring for some time, often spending time together in private. Now, for the first time they have the opportunity to work and tag together in a match. They have named their tag team VENYU a combination of “Kamiyu” and Asuka’s international ring name: “Veny.” At Wrestle Princess they will be taking on the pair of Nao Kakuta and Marika Kobashi, two wrestlers with whom Kamiyu has a penchant for prodding. Nao unsuccessfully challenged Kamiyu for the International Princess championship back in February and in the lead up to the match, Kamiyu was relentless in calling Nao, plain, normal and boring. While they have since seemingly made up and even tagged together, Kamiyu is never above takin a jab or two when the opportunity presents itself and the preamble to Wrestle Princess has been no different. In the case of Marika, Kamiyu has always mocked Marika for her heavy use of make-up and interest in the GAL style. Going so far as to attack her with make-up remover on a number of occasions. While this will be Asuka’s first appearance in Tokyo Joshi, she is well known for taunting and looking down on her opponents, so its likely VENYU will gel together immediately. While on paper Nao and Marika have and overall experience advantage, both have taken extended time away from the ring for various reasons and they have not been wrestling consistently since their debuts. Kamiyu and Asuka also have the height advantage here so Marika and Nao will definitely be the underdogs. Keys to the match for them will be centered around not letting Asuka get off the blocks. She’s easily the tougher and stronger of VENYU. If they can keep Kamiyu pinned down, not letting her use her legs which is the base of most of her offense, and they keep her isolated and away from Asuka, their best chance for victory lies there.

• Pami, Nodoka and a freshly returning Rika have all been scheduled to face one another in a three-way match. At last year’s wrestle princess, Misao participated in the memorable special WP rules switching match against Saki Akai. Given that Misao almost never has a normal match, Nodoka and Rika are no strangers to weird stipulations and Rika is by all roster accounts, crazy, expect special conditions or stipulations for the match to be announced either in the final days leading up to the show, at the beginning of the show, or possibly as the match unfolds. One never knows what to expect in a match like this except that it will be entertaining.

• Two major things to cover in regard to the opening match. First, Ram Kaicho. Ram is one of the head members of the off-the-wall indie promotion Triple Six (666). While not wrestling steadily like Riho, Ram started performing there since she was around 6 years old. She came back to 666 in 2016 and began again wrestling consistently about 2 years ago when an offer was made for her to regularly participate in the joshi promotion Ice Ribbon. After she returned to wrestling regularly, her skill greatly improved and started to catch up to her seemingly unlimited charisma. Ram will join two other charisma monsters in Raku and Pom to round out a three-woman team. This will definitely be a can’t miss performance. The second thing needing coverage is Mahiro. Mahiro missed a show prior to the double Kourakuen shows in August. After the Kourakuen shows were in the books she once again bowed out from competition to nurse some neck issues. She has not been wrestling for over a month but will return to the ring for Wrestle Princess 2. Teaming with Neko and Kaya, hopefully her reserved demeanor and lawful style can help push her animal friends to victory.

• Wrestle Universe debuted a new platform on October 1st. It can be found at www.wrestle-universe.com All members of the former wrestle universe will need to re-subscribe to the new site as their memberships will not carry over. The good news is that a special campaign is currently running where subscribers of the new service may use it for free until the end of 2021 (you cannot cancel until the end of January). Members of the old service can still use it free of charge until it closes at the end of October, but no new content will be posted. The new sign features an easy sign up process, dual channel audio for shows that provide English and Japanese commentary, automatic English site translations, easily navigable menus for promotions and even wrestlers. The site currently has about 30% of the content of the previous site but is slated to be up to 100% by the end of October. A mobile app version has also been announced and is scheduled to be released before the end of the year.

• DDT wrestler Chris Brooks and Baliyan Akki of Choco Pro fame will provide play-by-play for this show.

• It was announced that there will be a free pre-show streamed live for free on Youtube hosted by comedian and talent Yurioka Choto Q (ユリオカ超特Q) and former Tokyo Joshi pro wrestler and DDT staff member, Tokyo joshi’s number 1 announcer, Azusa Takigawa. The Show starts at 12:50 in Japan, or an hour and 10 minutes before the show. You can view it here.

• DDT and Tokyo Joshi have opened an international store. https://ddtstore.bigcartel.com/ They have previously had several Tokyo Joshi shirts for order. More products will likely be made available soon so be sure to check the site regularly.

• Numerous items are currently available at www.tjpw-store.com including preorder reservations for the new WP2 show pamphlet with preorder bonus of one random signature (only for the next hour), entrance music CDs, past show pamphlets, t-shirts and photobooks. Please note that the Japanese TJPW store does not ship internationally so international purchasers must use a 3rd party shipping service when ordering.