World of Stardom Championship: Mayu Iwatani © vs. Kagetsu

 

Mayu and Kagetsu had a great High Speed match last year, but this was horrendous. It wasn't connecting with me, and by the end of it I stopped caring. The action was dull, the pacing felt very off, and of course they have to shoehorn a stairwell spot in every single Stardom Korakuen main event. This was no good! bad

I thought this was pretty good. It followed there feud well from the house shows. Kagetsu and her cronies did a great job of throwing everything at Mayu and she had to overcome them all.

 

Plus, Mayu got hung, dropped from a high height, then thrown down the stairs. Fuck.

 

Finishing stretch was intense, including Kagetsu hitting an insane choke slam, and Mayu killing her with vicious suplexes.

 

I'd go with like *** 1/2.

i really enjoyed this match. Oedo Tai did their customary interference, but i wasn't so over-the-top as to take away from the match. While I agree that the Korakuen stairwell spot is something best used more sparingly than it is now, the hanging spot was something new and unique and looked incredibly savage.

 

There was a little botch late when Mayu completely whiffed on a kick, but Kagetsu smartly no-sold the strike and treated as a miss. The subsequent strikes all connected sharply. No harm, no foul!

 

If I had to give this a rating, I'd say ***3/4, verging on ****.

 

I find that Mayu feels slightly sidelined since she's won the Red Belt. She doesn't seem to have anything interesting to do between title defences, perhaps because the Oedo Tai, Queen's Quest and Jungle factions suck up all the oxygen on the small shows, having more compelling matches and storylines. But Mayu as champ is incredibly fun in the title matches.

 

If I could draw a ridiculous analogy to Transformers, Io is Optimus Prime while Mayu is Rodimus Prime. That is no say that while Io was supremely confident in herself and exuded an aura of ace, Mayu comes across as perhaps putting up a brave front. Her body language suggests that she's still unsure of herself and not 100% confident that she's really the ace. I find it gives a compelling subtext to her matches. I'm curious as to whether she eventually morphs into a true ace or eventually flames out. FWIW, I though Io was in much the same boat in her first reign as Red Belt champion up until her draw against Arisa Nakajima. For me, the match marked the point where Io went from being champion to being the Ace.

I liked this a fair bit. The opening had the typical 'High Speed' style that you would expect from these two. The brawling leading up to the stairwell spot was actually half decent. Oedo Tai interference wasn't as goofy as it usually is. The finish ended up being a nice slugfest. A very good main event to one of the better top to bottom Stardom shows in a while. ***3/4