Pro Wrestling NOAH X TJPW
One of the things that I love about wrestling is that it’s full of echoes. Reflections of other wrestlers, other companies, other stories. Wrestling is constantly in dialogue with its own past and wider present.
When I watched Mizuki vs Yuka Sakazaki at TJPW Wrestle Princess on November 7, 2020, a couple of moments stood out to me.
The first was Yuka doing what appears to be an Emerald Flowsion, which was
Mitsuharu Misawa’s finisher. The move is not part of Yuka’s typical arsenal, so her choice to use it here caught my attention.
The second moment was Mizuki leaping off the top rope in a double stomp onto Yuka lying on the ground below. I didn’t actually watch Go Shiozaki vs Kenoh in NOAH’s August 10 show, but I heard about this double stomp that Kenoh did onto Go from the top ropes to the ground, and even just a description of it in text left a big impression on me. I immediately thought of that moment when I watched this similar spot in the TJPW show.
TJPW and NOAH have very different reputations as promotions and feature very different styles of wrestling, yet even here, there are these commonalities, these echoes that run through their matches.
We’ll probably never know exactly what Yuka and Mizuki were trying to say with these choices, but even without knowing, I still feel their resonance.
