bigs news in that it's the first time a josh promotion will have real money behind it since the glory days of AJW. It seems like Stardom might even get a TV deal out of it.  The reports say the promotions will be kept separate , and they seem to have big plans for the promotion in general. 

WWE made an offer as well, and it’s very likely it was an overpayment just so they could buy it up. That’s two major Japanese companies to turn down the WWE this week (the other was NOAH).

Keep it up, Japan.

Some recent stardom news their last two Korakuen Hall shows yesterday, and last month drew 1,602 and 1,300 fans respectively. With the January show being a sellout .
The main event Mayu IIwatani vs Momo Waananbe was really good. Some highlights

Stardom has also started uploaded episodes of their new tv show that airs in Japan on to youtube. There are three episodes so far.
One of the episodes

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52cmu7lpnIs

They also shut down hard the notion that Bushiroad just wanted an idol promotion and instead focused more on the wrestling than Stardom had done previously. People are saying limited meet and greet and no picture books for sale to place a greater emphasis on the wrestling than the looks and the show's length was longer than most previous ones.

May have to get a sub to stream Stardom as they look to be getting ready to become the top fed in the world for in ring wrestling quality.

One of the more heated feuds currently going in stardom hae been the recent one between Hana Kimura and Giulia.
Highlighted in this digest show here (relevant stuff starts at around 13:30) there's a hatred to this feud that you don't usually see in modern Joshi.


Recently Giulia created her own stable to combat Hana's stable Tokoyo Cyber Squad. Giulia's stab;e consists of a rookie wrestler from Taka Micknikhou's ( I'm sure I'm botching that last name) new promotion JTO named Malikia, and Syuri who some here might know from ehr matches with Asuka/Kana in Tajiri's old promotion.

The newest episode has a very good recent title match between Mayu Iwatani and Kagetsu.

Another good-sized crowd for Stardom's Korakuen hall show today with 1518 fans in attendance. That's three straight months now with attendance significantly over 1,000 at their monthly Korakuen shows.

The newest episode is out with the bulk of the really good Arisa Hoshiki match versus Konami.

7th episode is out. Not as good as the previous ones but the clips of Tam vs Kagetsu are nice.

dex, thanks for posting these shows, I've slowly been watching them.

Feb 18, 2020 5:42:17 GMT Lony said:

dex , thanks for posting these shows, I've slowly been watching them.

Thanks Lony, what are your thoughts so far?. Does anyone stand out to you?

So some interesting Stardom news

Because of the Coronavirus situation Stardom is canceling a lot of their upcoming shows as a precautionary measure (they can do this because of the Bushiroad money) . Now while their March 8th Korakuen show will still go on, fans will not be in the arena and it will be an empty arena show. Also, it will be streamed live on youtube so it will be a good opportunity to give Stardom a try if you haven't already.

What are the big matches Dex? I will watch some of it (can't sit through a whole card these days) because I think that is probably the best name for a wrestling show I've ever seen!

Feb 20, 2020 22:57:40 GMT @admin said:

What are the big matches Dex? I will watch some of it (can't sit through a whole card these days) because I think that is probably the best name for a wrestling show I've ever seen!

Mayu Iwatani vs Saki Kashima in a non-tilte match 
Arisa Hoshiki vs Natsuko Tora for the midcard wonder of stardom title 
Jamie Hayter and Bea Priestly vs Momo Watananbe and Utami Hayashibita for the tag titles 
Hana Kimura and Jungle Kyona vs Giulia and her stable mate Malia. 
Also a royal rumble style battle royal 

If I'm being honest you could easily skip the battle royal and the first tag match and not miss anything major (unless you like the Hana and Giulia feud).

Awesome thank you! I will watch the three title matches when I'm back on Monday (my time) and report back. I've tried to watch the TV show but my high school level Japanese is holding me back, and I don't really like watching clipped/edited matches.

FYI to people like @admin , who are understandably not a fan of clipped shows/matches and don't understand Japanese, Stardom does have a streaming service for their shows with translated pre and post-match promos
www.stardom-world.com/

They also don't upload the shows into one video and instead upload each match separately in a group with the other matches on the show, which is nice for people who are only interested in one match or just a few from a specific show. Downsides are that it is a tad pricy for the content they have in terms of backlogs. at a little over $8 a month, and the fact that the website itself isn't translated so you have to make do with google translate or what have you which can make navigating the site hard.

Newest episode
Tag title match + Mayu vs Momo

The submission stuff in the title match was so nasty. Literally looked like that should was popping out. And

They really need to get two people to toss on english commentary. That would blow this up as it is the only barrier people have to watching joshi. Hell even if it is just two girls already working the shows there, it would add so much. As would English subtitles for names and such.

Ideally, this would be repackaged entirely for the US as Stardome I think would be a hit here with how big anime culture is with some rework for the market. They already have some of the best wrestling in the world, just need to market it for the rest of the world.

Feb 26, 2020 18:37:53 GMT c said:

They really need to get two people to toss on english commentary. That would blow this up as it is the only barrier people have to watching joshi. Hell even if it is just two girls already working the shows there, it would add so much. As would English subtitles for names and such.

Ideally, this would be repackaged entirely for the US as Stardome I think would be a hit here with how big anime culture is with some rework for the market. They already have some of the best wrestling in the world, just need to market it for the rest of the world.

This would really be a big thing for me - and they should know first hand how much more popular NJPW became when they started producing it with English commentary. The wrestling is great but I find it hard enough to concentrate on long matches as it is, let alone when I don't really know what is going on. 

Same. I find it really hard to tell who is who. I have to like look it up and hope to see pictures from the event or pick out trademarks. Sucks as I really like the work the women do and want to know more. Every tour they already have American or European women on the show, just let them call the matches however best they can and there you go, fast commentary. Or you know, get someone backstage that speaks english to do it. AAA has shit commentary for English fans in their twitch streams but any commentary is better than no commentary and they try to fill people in what is going on, who is who and answer questions fans have. I would not run a TV show with the AAA commentary,but for free net content I would not watch AAA otherwise.

If the parent company wants world wide fans, they need english commentary as it is pretty much the language of modern wrestling and most of the world knows it. They can also feed off of their stars working globally by promoting the international names on their shows in these casts to suck new fans into STARDOM and expand their merc internationally through it so there is some real gain from doing so too.

Link to the stream

Newest episode featuring Mayu Iwattani vs visiting wrestler Takumi Iroha

The newest episode is out

Bumping this thread with some updates and some really cool highlights of matches.

Stardom recently had its yearly % star GP tourney which has produced some really nice matches.

This video has highlights of Konami (Asuka's former protege/trainee) vs Mayu Iwatani. Konami's submission game is on point, especially her hanging sleeper which is a spot Shayana should consider adding.



This video has highlights of Mayu vs Starlight Kid which features a really cool dragon sleeper submission by Mayu. But the real high point of this video is the highlights of AZM (black and purple outfit) vs Momo Watanabe (Blue, Black, White outfit).