Momo Watanabe (c) vs. Jungle Kyona - STARDOM 03/03/2019

The STARDOM template

This is the match, more than any other, that informs STARDOM’s success in 2021.

Somehow occurring only a little over two years ago, Momo Watanabe and Jungle Kyona put together the blueprint on how to have a great STARDOM match. The best of Watanabe’s Wonder of STARDOM Championship run, it further entrenched her as one of the best in the world and one of the most gifted wrestlers in recent memory.

Kyona, for her part, was tremendous. There is just something about her that forces you to get behind her, even against a preternaturally gifted teenager in the middle of one of the best title reigns in modern joshi history.

The match was a relatively simple story, one that has become the template for STARDOM: each wrestler gets small advantages early on, and then something crazy happens, and then we start throwing bombs until it’s time to go home.

Watanabe somehow managed to come into this match as a beaten-down, well-worn champion despite her age. She was taped to hell, especially on her back and shoulders. Those little touches make it particularly brutal when Kyona loses all pretense of a fair fight and drops her leg targeting, shifting her focus to the taped-up back of Watanabe. At this point, Watanabe was unbeatable; that powerbomb on the apron proved that Kyona had to go places she wasn’t used to going in order to win this match.

The champ took a ton of punishment during the heat segment, made more compelling than most with a deeply invested crowd. The apron bomb, the crab, the top-rope splash, the backbreaker, and the sharpshooter all tore Watanabe’s back to shreds.

And then it was bomb-throwing time: Kyona hits a sit-out powerbomb, Watanabe comes back with the Peach Sunrise only to have taken so much damage that she can’t even maintain a back bridge. Kyona pops up and just kills Watanabe with the best Jungle Buster of her career, leading to one of the better near falls in company history. Watanabe returns fire with a B Driver, but then Kyona fights out of a sleeper and another Peach Sunrise to smash Watanabe’s head against the mat on another powerbomb.

The true genius of the match is the finish. Kyona, all heart and soul, with the fans behind her 100%, climbs to the top rope. Every pro wrestling trope would have you believe she’s hitting that splash and pinning Watanabe to win back her belt. But this is a company that has proved to have impeccable booking chops over the last two years, and they understand what the right choice *actually* is in that situation.

Because here’s the thing about Jungle Kyona: The money, for her, is in the chase. Every single promotion has those fan-favorites that almost always play second fiddle: Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, Shuhei Taniguchi, Koji Iwamoto, Kofi Kingston, Piper, Owen, Hennig. As soon as she wins a top belt again, she loses that mystique, that underdog nature that manages to win over every single crowd that sees her.

Watanabe rolls out of the way of the splash, pops up, and with a sick smile on her face (as if to say “I am so much better than Jungle”), murders her opponent with a Peach Sunrise before following it up with a super-finisher Regal Plex, an emphatic but hard-fought win for the young champion.

Does that match layout sound familiar to anyone reading? Because it’s exactly what Utami Hayashishita does in each and every one of her championship defenses as World of STARDOM champion. Hayashishita took that template and made it her own, not just because it works extremely well, but because it fits her character and look and aura perfectly.

But where does that leave Watanabe in 2021? Well, with Kyona out with some fairly devastating injuries, Watanabe has taken over that underdog role. She’s always in the mix and the fans clearly love her, but she’s just not pushed at the Giulia/Iwatani/Hayashishita level at this point in her career.

And that’s okay. It’s how good booking and development works: you take great young wrestlers, push them to the moon, and then as soon as that excitement begins to wear off, you put them in what you believe to be their perfect role. Right now, there are other wrestlers on the roster with a higher ceiling than Watanabe, but all STARDOM fans love and appreciate her body of work. She’s only 21; she’ll get her time once more.

Until then, she’s already put together a collection of wrestling matches that rival any other active joshi wrestler to debut in the last decade. Out of those, this defense against Kyona is one of the best.

(****½)

This review comes courtesy of my buddy K, or @Blue__Kano on Twitter, as thanks for donating to the CommUnity crisis center in Iowa City, IA. The donation drive was in memory of Hana Kimura.