The 10th annual Tokyo Princess Cup tournament is over, momentous occasion for a lot of reasons, and a genuinely great performance in the final. Share your thoughts here.
Do you watch TJPW? Why or why not?
Who did you hope was going to win? Who did you expect was going to?
Great stuff. I'd watch a lot more wrestling from Japan if the shows didn't start so late/early where I am. Especially TJPW/Stardom.
This could be a great place to discuss the event itself. I'd pin the thread but I think some instances are still struggling to see pinned posts on Kbin :/
I love TJPW and DDT, but I'm still at work when the shows are live. My main reason for being excited for All In is that I'll actually be home to watch it.
Man, I hear you on the timezones issue. I'm in Europe so I am mostly fine when it comes to Japanese shows but dodging spoilers for American shows is a whole undertaking.
I got the ending of Omega vs Page way back when and imposed a social media moratorium after any PPV I care about to never have it happen again, but it also means I often just skip around to the matches I really want to see blind and then accept the possible spoilers for everything else because with AEW it's usually ~4 hours of content on a Monday morning and I got work at some point.
Up to you on the pinning stuff, I can tell you that Sync for Lemmy shows the pinned threads fine to my account on lemmy.world.
You nailed it. It's hard not to see spoilers. And once I know what happens I'm not as interested in watching. I feel the same way about movies, TV shows, even the sports I watch.
I've pinned the thread for now. Hopefully that brings a few more TJPW fans here.
Thankfully spoilers don't really make me uninterested, but they definitely take that frantic edge off the ending of matches sometimes.
For example I was genuinely on the edge of my seat sweating at the ending of the tournament final, just because of how believable of a chance they had Kamiyu earn by the end. I would not have believed it at all had i known the ending, obviously.
For my own thoughts:
It takes a genuinely heart rending performance to make me cheer against one of my faves, but Kamiyu delivered in the final.
She looked fiercely determined and put on probably her best match to date, ironically not living up at all to the "casual" in her moniker.
She managed to hold her own against the company Ace and had to be basically murdered with a signature and 2 finishers in a row to get the pin, after almost forcing a tap with a manji gatame that ended via rope break and a series of reversals and attempted pins.
Her very genuine emotional state after the match clinched in my mind that she's got something special in there that she really needs a chance to show the audience. She is already super over and Saki Akai is retiring at the end of the year, maybe there is a chance for her to pick up the Neo Biishiki Gun stable (it would be pretty boring, but they do have similar body types and have similar "beauty focused" characters) or, since she beat Rika Tatsumi in the semifinals, perhaps another international princess reign.
While the ending of the tournament was, I feel, very predictable on account of several outside factors (Miyu facing Mizuki as first opponent and beating her, Miyu going in as champion of a different promotion, Miyu having never won the tournament despite participating every year so far, this being her tenth attempt, and more importantly Miyu being by far the biggest matchup of the bunch for Mizuki going into the next big event), it still had some pretty good matches and it's leading into a very hype-worthy match at Wrestle Princess 4.
My prediction was pretty much 100% Miyu, as my second choice was Yuki Arai who is all but guaranteed to go on to have a rubber match/sendoff against Sakisama, at Wrestle Princess.
I had some hope that Arisu Endo or Hikari Noa would get a surprise push, since they definitely have the skills and passion to do more then they currently do, and Kamiyu made me genuinely believe she could beat the odds in the final, especially off a win on Rika Tatsumi, but in the end TJPW is always pretty straightforward in their booking and the most logical conclusion was indeed the one they chose.
And is the trophy in the pic the one they gave to the winner of the tournament? I think that's one of the best trophies I've ever seen.
It is, and I agree.
I think they debuted this design last year, actually. It used to be an actual cup, before then.
ETA: yep, that's it.
Also, and I may be reading too much into it, it's fitting that a trophy won by those who are seen as having potential to carry the company forward has a stalling carry as the central focus.
It's a great visual metaphor for teamwork if you look at it from the shoot side and an equally good one for power if you look at it from a keyfabe perspective.
I think Yamashita winning the Princess Cup was long overdue. It's not like she isn't booked strong, but they've been using her as a means to put over other talent in tournaments for a literal decade. A win for Kamiyu would have been amazing, but the effort she showed certainly made her look strong. From the first move, Kamiyu knew what she was up against, and she left everything in the ring. I hope she's proud of the performance she put on.
A win for Kamiyu would have been amazing, but the effort she showed certainly made her look strong.
I said this in another post but the look on her face when they zoomed in during her entrance was a "oh god here we go" face if I've ever seen one.