Marigold
Marigold presented ‘Summer Destiny 2024’ on July 13th from Sumo Hall. It’s the first major PPV for the newly founded promotion by Rossy Ogawa, and it was their first big test after a successful start.
The nine-match long show is available as a PPV on Wrestle Universe and featured three inaugural champions being crowned, including Sareee fighting Giulia for the Marigold World Championship. In addition, a dream match between Utami Hayashishita and WWE’s IYO SKY happened on the show.
The show drew an attendance of 3,058 in Ryogoku Kokugikan and is the highest-attended Joshi show of the year as it beats STARDOM’s All-Star Grand Queendom attendance by 300 tickets. On top of that, it only had 5 fans less in attendance than STARDOM’s show at Ryogoku Kokugikan in December of 2023. It was a huge success for a company that was just founded two months ago.
Marigold had multiple announcements throughout the show, including the start of their round-robin tournament called the Dream Star Grand Prix. It kicks off on August 31st in Osaka and ends on September 28th in Nagoya. The winner will earn a shot at the Marigold World Championship. They also announced that ‘Marigold First Dream 2025’ will take place on January 3rd, 2025, at Ota Ward, which goes head to head with STARDOM’s ‘New Year Dream 2025’ on the same day.
The final announcement was that Shinno Omukai, who is the daughter of the former ARSION and AJW wrestler Michiko Omukai, has officially joined the Marigold roster and will presumably debut in 2025. It was said that she would train with her mother until then while visiting the Marigold dojo during her summer break. With that, Marigold now has two second-generation wrestlers on their roster where the mother already wrestled in a promotion led by Rossy Ogawa.
The first Championship match of the evening was for the Superfly Championship as Misa Matsui & Natsumi Showzuki collided in a match that was expected to be a “show stealer” before the show and ended up as one after it. After 15 minutes, Showzuki was able to pick up the win and crown herself the first-ever Superfly Champion and is the first wrestler to ever win gold in STARDOM & Marigold.
Showzuki was vicious in this match and just as great as you would expect from her. She is the perfect first champ as she has the experience and quality to lead this kind of match on the bigger stage against every opponent they put her against. Meanwhile, Matsui is such a great underdog that fans want to root for, and she showed it here once again as she got the crowd more and more behind her over the course of the match. She has the heart & fire to do great things in Marigold, and her time will come.
The first-ever United National Champion was crowned as the White Belt tournament concluded on this show. Miku Aono & MIRAI fought their fourth match in the semi-final of the tournament after the two had fought to three time-limit draws, including overtime and, after a combined 60 minutes. The winner was to fight Bozilla on the same day, so the initial situation was clear – whoever advanced would have it tough against Bozilla.
Over the past couple of weeks, MIRAI and Aono ended up as rivals for life as they had four great matches against each other, with the last one being the best of the four. They went for a slower approach as the two wrestled for 25 minutes before Miku Aono hit the Styles Clash to win the match after a struggle to advance to the final.
Bozilla, who made quick work of Nagisa Nozaki in the semi-final, had yet to be pinned or submitted since making her debut in Marigold, and with Aono coming into the match already having 25+ minutes under her belt, she was coming into the match as the heavy favourite to win, but it didn’t go quite to plan for her.
The 20-year-old German threw Aono around for the majority of the match and manhandled her. It looked like the former Ace of AWG had no chance to even land any offence, but she used Bozilla’s lacking ring awareness to mount a comeback. Bozilla was too confident, and it cost her in the end, as Aono was able to roll her up and win the match to crown herself the first-ever Marigold United National Champion in a star-making moment. She went for over 35 minutes in two consecutive matches against two of the toughest in Marigold and came out as the winner due to her fire in the ring. An amazing performance from Aono who established herself as one of the top wrestlers on the roster.
Pro wrestling fans throw around the words “dream match” a lot. Still, it rarely fits better than it did here as the most successful World of Stardom Champion and former Queen’s Quest leader IYO SKY returned to Japan for the first time in SIX years to face another former Queen’s Quest leader and one of the most dominant Red Belt Champions in Utami Hayashishita inside a Marigold ring in the semi-main event of the show. It was as incredible as it sounds on paper.
The vibes were incredible as the two walked out with masks paying homage to the Queen’s Quest stable that both were part of and formed the two into what they are right now. The moment the bell rang, the atmosphere in the venue changed as IYO SKY & Utami Hayashishita collided for the first time. A moment in history.
Hayashishita wanted the match before she even made her debut in STARDOM, and six years later, she was finally getting it. The match was fantastic, and Utami’s performance highlighted her genuine excitement as she wanted to enjoy every minute she was in the ring with the ‘Genius of the Sky.’ It was a spectacular match that lived up to the ‘Dream Match’ title, a battle between two of the best of our generation, but was that ever a doubt? Not really, because the pair are incredible. IYO SKY’s performance was outstanding. She showed & proved to the world why she is seen as one of the greatest wrestlers in the history of this business, while not stealing the spotlight of Hayashishita, as she wrestled without “handcuffs” and no producer in her ear that is 100x worse than her inside the ring. Her performances in WWE have been great recently, especially against Bayley & Baszler, but she was on another level here. For the first time in six years, she was allowed to be Io Shirai, and it was incredible to watch.
The finish showed IYO SKY hitting the Tombstone Piledriver and a picture-perfect Over The Moonsault to win the match in 23 minutes. While Hayashishita lost the match, it was the start of her story with Marigold as she aims to become the promotion’s true Ace.
In the main event of the show, Sareee defeated Giulia after a referee stoppage to become the first-ever Marigold World Champion. The match was great, but it took a while to get going as the Giulia control segments weren’t great. The match needed Sareee to take over so it could get into the next gear, but once they got into that flow, it got great and lived up to what was expected between the two.
Giulia still has the problem that she takes a while to find her rhythm in matches, but once they get into the final 10+ minutes, she is fantastic, and that was the case here as well. Sareee, on the other hand, was fantastic as always and showed once again why she’s the best wrestler in the entire world right now. She is on the best run of her career and has been tremendous since coming back to Japan, so her getting the Marigold World Championship is the right choice as she can lead the promotion into the future while playing the “outsider” role that the Marigold roster needs to beat to get to the top of the company.
Giulia never having a real & extended world title run in Japan is wild considering where she was just over a year and a half ago, but with her time in Marigold being limited, it wouldn’t have made much sense to invest that much into her as the top star of the company. It is only a matter of time until she appears in NXT.
Marigold came into Sumo Hall with a mission and that was establishing the roster that had been set up for the past two months with Sareee, Miku Aono, and Natsumi Showzuki being crowned as the first three champions with star-making moments. That next to the fact names like Utami Hayashishita, MIRAI, Bozilla, Misa Matsui, and the inexperienced wrestlers all had great outings, who will all get a lot of focus in the upcoming months, made this a successful show that sets up the upcoming months of Marigold well with the Dream Star Grand Prix right around the corner. It’s an interesting time in Joshi and the perfect opportunity to jump on the Marigold train if you haven’t already.
Pro Wrestling WAVE
The 15th Catch The Wave tournament ended this past weekend with a show at Korakuen Hall hosting the semi-finals & final, with STARDOM’s Saya Kamitani walking out as the winner of the tournament.
She defeated Itsuki Aoki in the semi-final and then beat Kohaku, who beat WWWD World Champion Haruka Umesaki in the second semi-final, in the main event of the show to win the entire tournament and gain important momentum heading into this year’s 5STAR Grand Prix that is starting in August.
After the match, it was decided that Kamitani would challenge Yuki Miyazaki for the Regina di WAVE Title on November 4th at WAVE’s next Korakuen Hall show. She has the chance to become the top champion of Pro Wrestling WAVE as she faces the current ace of the promotion.
