Stardom “New Year Stars” 01/03/17 @ Shinkiba 1st RING, Tokyo

~Hana Kimura could no compete due to a wrist injury. Sumie Sakai replaced her on the card.

- Azumi vs Ruaka

Um, Ruaka is 12 years old and Azumi is 14. The pair of them shouldn't be able to put together a coherent match, but they do. Azumi looks the more accomplished, but that's not a criticism of Ruaka. There are some nice moves in this match such as when Azumi had Ruaka outside on the apron and jumps over the top rope to stomp her. Ruaka has some nice looking kicks. The end of the match comes when Azumi wins with a bridging pin. They work a face/heel dynamic, and Azumi cuts a promo after the match (which is subtitled on Stardoms). I'm just amazed at how young both of these two are. [OK]

- Hiromi Mimura, Saori Anou & Arisu Nanase vs Kaori Yoneyama, Konami & Natsuko Tora

Typical lower card tag match. Some of the personalities do start to come through but at only 7 minutes it's hard to be too judgemental. Mimura wins with a La Magistral on Tora

- Momo Watanabe vs Kagetsu

Before the match Kagetsu does a promo where she complains that people keep asking her questions before a match as she's not even bothered who she's fighting. Watanabe says its her first singles match in a while so she's got lots of aggression, she then just gets up and walks out. Kagetsu comes to the ring first with one of the worst sung theme tunes ever.

Holy crap, Watanabe is just 16 years old and looks like she's ready to kill Kagetsu.

Kagetsu finds herself on the outside and instead of having Watanabe dive out, Kagetsu hides behind the audience, which is different. They both end up brawling outside and Watanabe takes a nasty bump into a load of chairs and for her troubles, gets strangled with a brush. To punish Kagetsu, the ref deliberately doesn't count a pin attempt because he's taking his time removing the brush from the ring. Watanabe gets some offense in, which consists of kicking Kagetsu in the chest, and some nasty looking drop kicks. There's a lot of back and forth as time expires for a draw as kageta was attempting a pin.

Really good match. I might be biased because I was just amazed at Watanabe being only 16. [Good]

- Kay Lee Ray & Nixon Newell vs Viper & Kris Wolf

Wolf is massively over with the crowd, who start howling for her. Viper is awesome as a big monster, Aja Kong style. Pretty cool seeing Kay Lee Ray in Stardoms after seeing her call the crowd a bunch of cunts in her Scottish accent last year in Liverpool. Starts with wolf getting ganged up until Viper gets bought in to the match, where it descends into a comedy fest.

Lots of moves from Wolf from on top of viper or being thrown around by her. Viper ends up splashing onto Wolf and in the most Scottish accent goes 'a'hm soory'. Kay Lee Ray gets the win with a Swanton Bomb on Wolf for an OK match [OK]

- Mayu Iwatani, Jungle Kyona & Shayna Baszler vs Kyoko Kimura, Sumie Sakai & Kagetsu (Oedo Tai)

Kimura is retiring soon so she's doing the rounds. She's famous for her afro (amongst other things) but she's also hard as nails after being trained in the BJW dojo. I remember seeing her doing death matches in BJW with Kobashi and Kasai etc.

Good match, with a lot of focus on Kimura, understandably. Iwatani is this tall, skinny girl but she moves quickly and has a belt called the High Speed Championship. She's been the champ for over 450+ days. Mayu gets the pin with a top rope Frankensteiner on Kagetsu who is pulling double duty. Watanabe comes back out to challenge Mayu for her title. Really good match and looking forward to the singles match at the 6th anniversary show. [good]

- Kairi Hojo 5th Anniversary Special Tag Match: Kairi Hojo & Yoko Bito (B.Y. HO) vs Io Shirai & HZK (Queen’s Quest)

You know when you watch a wrestler in the ring and they just have an aura. Even down to how they get in to the ring and wait for the other team. Shirai has that. And she's got it in buckets. She's got this bad ass Tiger mask and a ric flair-esque robe.

This match was excellent. I didn't end up writing too much about it as I was just watching and taking it in. Couple of things stood out though. Shirai got out of a Boston crab by completely folding her body over and then slapping Hojo in the face for her trouble. Shirai has a nasty looking offense. Her kicks are really brutal. She does a beautiful dead lift suplex, which she really shouldn't be able to do with the ease that she does.

Hojo wins with one of the most gorgeous Elbow Drops I've seen. It's a thing of beauty, she puts her whole body into it and just launches herself onto HZK, with her legs almost vertically in the air. [Good to]

~Kay Lee Ray & Nixon Newell challenged Hojo & Bito to a match for the Goddess of Stardom Championship on the January 15 show at Korakuen Hall

~Viper challenged Io Shirai to a match for the World of Stardom Championship on the January 15 show. Shirai accepted.

~Viper will replace Hana Kimura in the Oedo Tai trio defending the Artist of Stardom Championship on January 7. 

Really good show. Definitely recommend the main event and for curiosity the opener and Watanabes match.