The annual Princess Cup event of TJPW started yesterday with a good (if predictable) first round.
Is anyone else following it? What are your predictions?
The annual Princess Cup event of TJPW started yesterday with a good (if predictable) first round.
Is anyone else following it? What are your predictions?
A good litmus test is that seniority weights a great deal.
If you’re someone’s senior you’re likely to go over them 90% of the time, with the exception of pushes like we’ve been seeing recently due to the top of the card being suddenly decimated during the last year.
With Saki Akai, Yuka Sakazaki (one of the most decorated champions in the company), Juria Nagano, and Nao Kakuta graduating or retiring, and Hikari Noa seemingly fired behind the scenes, the top of the card is suddenly a lot thinner than it was.
For reference, of all 8 PoP title winners, only 5 are left in the company, and 1 was crowned for her first time this year, of the remaining ones the only multi-time winners are Yamashita and Nakajima.
Though, the real massacre was in the tag division. By losing Sakazaki they also lost their top tag team (MagiRabi, with Mizuki) and a second very highly placed one (Miraclians, with Nakajima); they lost Neo Biishiki Gun when Saki Akai retired, and they lost Free Wifi when Noa got fired and subsequently Kakuta retired. That’s 4 top tag teams gone in less than 6 months, and they also lost Team Karate (Juria Nagano and Moka Miyamoto) but that one was lower on the card and Miyamoto is still a rookie so she’ll be fine.
My logic for the current tournament is that I don’t expect whoever wins the cup to win the title, so I’m looking at it as “who’s gonna be a draw for the match-up?” more than “who’s taking Miu’s place?” because if you look at the title reigns, they rarely (but not never) keep them this short.
With the defenses only being at the bigger shows people expect to be able to see at least a few unless it’s particularly effective for the characters, like how Yamashita and Itoh hold the record for the shortest tag team championship reign, at less than 2 weeks and 0 successful defenses.
Also it’s important to consider that TJPW is getting a lot more eyes on it and Yamashita is becoming more and more famous in the US too (recently had a match against Shayna Baszler at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport) and there’s a real chance she might get scouted, so TJPW needs to fill up the card and pass torches as much as they can now, because their developmental process is slow.
And it was fucking phenomenal.
But yeah they really need to get things moving as you said. Oddly I feel we had this exact same convo a year or so ago about them needing to rebuild lol. Yamashita will 100% get nabbed by someone, that or she goes part time in TJ and focuses on US tours. Maki too eventually I feel (tho that’ll probably be AEW with a ‘let me work GCW’ deal).
Gotta get it and watch it still, but so I heard.
We did have that, it was a “they need to rebuild since they will lose these people” last year LOL.
And to their credit, they did pull the trigger on a lot of pushes since then (unfortunately one of them crashed and burned hard with Free WiFi, whose presence will be sorely missed) and every current champion is either someone who never held that particular belt, or any belt, so the work is happening, it’s just that they don’t have a lot of shows a year, and most non-marquee shows have no defenses and few singles matches, so it’s hard to establish someone as a proper star.
I understand the logic, their main income is still the live shows, and people want to know what they are buying, so you want everyone on the card as much as possible, but you can’t put on 3-4 hours show every weekend, on the other hand it’s still not great for making singles stars, whatever the underlying reason.