Hana Kimura vs. Giulia - STARDOM 12/24/2019
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In honor of Hana Kimura, I have donated $50 to CommUnity, a crisis response center located in Iowa City, IA. If anyone reading donates at least $10 to CommUnity or a similar organization of their choosing, I will review a match of your choosing on What a Mark! Thank you for reading.
This was the best match of Hana’s career and one of the most memorable matches in STARDOM history.
The opening forearm exchange was thrilling. These two just beat and battered each other from the start until Hana’s striking gave her a chance to bring Giulia to the mat and lay in some ground and pound. There, however, Giulia’s grappling chops allowed her to even the odds until both stood up and Hana laid in an absolute crack of a slap across Giulia’s face.
Giulia, playing as good a heel as ever, brings the fight to the outside and sends Hana into one of Korakuen Hall’s famous directional signs. There are multiple great little touches in this sequence that make it feel like a big deal, from Jungle Kyona’s relentless pursuit of the action to cheer Hana on to Giulia extending the outside-the-ring fight far beyond what you’d normally expect in an attempt to send Hana through booker and promoter Rossy Ogawa’s table. Giulia’s full-on sprint into a chair shot was classic heel stuff.
Back in the ring, we got Hana’s comeback, including a rather sick axe kick and an ultra-babyface delayed vertical suplex where she played to the crowd throughout. Then, we get the game of one-upmanship: they slap each other, they choke each other, they pull each other’s hair, and saving the best for last, they headbutt each other.
After a double down, these two lunatics start laying in these boots that seem way more snug than we’re used to. Giulia beat Hana down some more, including briefly locking on Bianca, before Hana came right back with a sick application of the Hydrangea, twisting Giulia into knots on the mat.
From then on, it’s desperation, with the time limit rapidly approaching. The two exchange finisher attempts and cradles for a series of completely unpredictable nearfalls. Giulia hits the fire thunder driver, Hana gets her foot on the ropes, Giulia desperately goes for an STF, and the match comes to an end.
There are two things in particular that stick out about this match. The first is the crowd reaction. Since this match, has there been a single instance where Giulia has wrestled and the audience was more into her opponent? Hana got much louder crowd reactions than her newly-signed rival, and that’s practically unthinkable a year and a half later.
The other is that I just keep coming back to that opening sequence. How many matches are that heated, that competitive, that good within a minute of getting started? There were gifs of that forearm exchange that went viral on Twitter and Reddit from people who would have never otherwise watched STARDOM. This match transcended the promotion.
And this was just their first match! You just know these two would have been career rivals, two sides of the same coin, competitors whose looks and charisma more than made up for their lack of pure athleticism and belied their limitless potential between the ropes.
The time-limit draw here, combined with another draw in Hana’s final match, makes for a bittersweet reminder that these stories were not complete. Hana’s story was not complete.
Flowers bloom. And just as we watched Hana, with all her inherent floral imagery (“Dangerous Flower,” the Hydrangea), blossom over the course of her career, it seems like in her wake, the seeds of success were sown. STARDOM is bigger and more popular than ever, running a show at the legendary Nippon Budokan. ASUKA (Veny), one of Hana’s closest friends, was one of the few domestic Japanese talent to participate for an international company during the pandemic. And Giulia, the opponent Hana’s last great match, is on her way to being the single top star in Japanese women’s wrestling.
It’s difficult not to note the time of year Hana passed away: in late May, just as Japan’s cherry blossoms finish falling off the trees, and the beauty fades away until next year. Around the time of Hana’s passing, there were other signs of losing something great. A worldwide pandemic threatened everybody’s lives and livelihoods; WRESTLE-1, Hana’s home promotion, shuttered its doors. A few short weeks prior, everything looked fine; we clearly didn’t know what we had until it was gone.
But just as so many people in Japan participate in hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, knowing the beautiful blossoms are only temporary, I firmly believe that Hana’s passing has led to a fundamental shift in how wrestling fans treat each other and the people they look up to — because this tragedy and everything surrounding it led us to simultaneously realize life’s fragility and the power we all hold to break it or fortify it.
To grow a flower, the plant must be cultivated and nourished. If one ignores the signs of unhealthiness in his flowers, the plant will die.
“When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be,” writes forester and ecologist Peter Wohlleben in his life-affirming book The Hidden Life of Trees. “This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.”
Hana’s passing left a hole in our community. All we can do now is be kind and support one another, willing our forest to grow and bloom and blossom once more.