The pseudonymous street artist Banksy once wrote: “Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.”
Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling has long taken that approach. This is a promotion that experiments and explores, playing with what’s possible in a wrestling ring. It goes nuts in the pursuit of envelope-pushing.
We saw that again in the Hanamizuki Hall in Osaka at the Happy Summer Vacation show at the end of August.
Pom Harajuku and Shoko Nakajima vs. HIMAWARI and Mizuki could have just been a standard match. It could have been filled with familiar wrestling holds and the usual rhythmic patterns of a tag bout.
Instead, we witnessed something titled a “Chu! Summer Party DeathMatch 2023”, a buck-wild experience that is on brand for TJPW.
The match wastes no time in letting you know what it is. As Shoko’s entrance music skitters in the air, the camera zooms in on a pair of watermelons sitting inside a metal bucket. It’s a peek at one of the wacky weapons about to be unleashed. It’s Chekov’s gun but with more vitamin A.
Nakajima and Pom enter wearing Hawaiian shirts over their ring gear and gripping water balloons in their palms.
It’s no shocker Pom is here. She (right along with Hyper Misao) leads the charge in comedy wrestling for the company. She’s a shin-kicking goofball who is as much a rodeo clown as she is a fighter.
Shoko, a former top champion and big-time babyface, has delved in the sillier side of the sport a lot lately. She and Hyper Misao’s annual January 4 match is reliably one of the goofiest, gimmicky things TJPW offers throughout the year. Lately, she’s teamed with Misao in a number of matches played for laughs including a clash with a giant panda named Andreza.
HIMAWARI and Mizuki enter next. They are better armed, their trigger fingers in position on their assault rifle-size water guns.
The energetic HIMAWARI is a good fit for a bit of fun like this. Her position in the company isn’t yet established. She’s bubbly and likable, a summer-themed gimmick comedy match could well be a way to get her noticed.
Mizuki’s presence here is the surprise. She’s the Princess of Princess Champion, the warrior atop the TJPW food chain. Presenting your top star in a showdown where she gets pelted with water balloons is not exactly traditional booking.
Taking Banky’s words to heart, TJPW cares little for your tradition.
With these four women, TJPW has its combatants. It adds an inflatable pool, some personal-sized watermelons, and lots of zaniness to complete the recipe.
The goofy stuff comes fast and often once the bell rings. Seconds into the action, Mizuki whips an absolute fastball with a water balloon into Pom’s face.
Pom soon responds by dousing HIMAWARI’s face with water from a plastic elephant water can.
The wrestlers battle on a slippery mat. They sprint. They slam. They splash.
A smile stays stretched across Shoko’s face the whole time. She so clearly is having a blast.
Same, Shoko, same.
The match is powered by a buzzing pace. It’s gag on gag on gag. There is no empty space, no rest holds. The wrestlers here attempt to fill every crack in the bout with silliness.
One moment, Mizuki bulldogs her opponent into the inflatable pool. Right after that, Shoko unveils her usual bag of kaiju toys and looks to plunge the champ’s body onto all the plastic Godzillas.
You can’t predict what will follow each moment.
When HIMAWARI and Mizuki grab Shoko and Pom by the necks and drag them out to the parking lot, you might think we’re set to a see a brawl among the cars or maybe someone getting thrown into a dumpster. Nope. The wrestlers instead wave sparklers at each other like villagers would do with their torches at an incoming monster.
The match unfolds more unexpected layers, creating more eye-popping images.
Mizuki and her partner slam Pom and Shoko into a truck tire. Mizuki leaps off a truck. Demonio Dos from the Rika Tatsumi match wanders in, one whackadoodle wrestling offering bleeding into another.
The battle ends thanks to those melons shown in the opening shot.
After Nakajima inadvertently cracks her own partner in the noggin with a melon, Mizuki uses another to rub into Pom’s poor face. The Popping Sugar Rabbit takes a bite of the fruit from the top turnbuckle before smashing down with her famous diving foot stomp.
And so ends an adventure of a tag match.
There is so much to look back on, so much memeable material. But the real strength is that sizzling sense of joy that is left behind.
Pom and Shoko vs. HIMAWARI and Mizuki is not a match I would recommend to anyone and everyone. It’s no technical masterpiece. Boy is it fun, though.
It’s this kind of match that TJPW does best, a slapstick circus with all the high jinks you can handle.
Jim Cornette would hate all of this. So would my grandma who used to watch NWA with me when I was a young boy.
TJPW, though, isn’t going to appeal to everyone, especially when it goes balls out like this. The promotion is going to do its thing. Never minding that it’s not going to appeal to a wide audience.
In its first decade, TJPW has done well to cater to its fans wholeheartedly rather than try to reach everyone.
This is not the second coming of All Japan Women’s. This isn’t Southern style wrasslin’. Nor should it be. This company is at its best when its proudly and emphatically itself.
With the Summer Party match, TJPW offers a set of valuable mantras that artists of every medium should embrace: let loose, go bold, try everything.
Wrestle Inn 