This is part of the “Stardom’s Favorite Daughter—Icon or Illusion?” watch series, which you can find here.

As desirable, non-clipped footage from 2011 becomes increasingly hard to find, we take our first little detour of the watch project. Mayu’s still here, and she has a bit to contribute that I’ll touch on at the end, but she’s hardly more than just one of 10 involved. More notably, this is one of those rare matches that ends up being exactly what you want it to be.

Hell, that goes for the whole show.

This is the type of thing these crossover shows of present time dream about. No holding hands, “celebrating” wrestling, or singing kumbaya; instead it’s straightforward, mean, spirited competition. It’s not the finest wrestling, nor is it as heated as the best examples of interpromotional work, but it is nice to see a show like this have it’s head on straight. The core of that is that nobody is pretending to like each other—because, y’know, why should business rivals like one another—and in this instance, it’s pretty damn clear what the Yumiko Hotta spearheaded REINA team thinks of the Stardom group that consists of majority rookies. We’re not in the territory of a “prove it” type of match where some upstart(s) gets the fight beat into them, we’re far from the realm of Jumbo and Misawa here, but for the same baseline as matches like that are great, this is good. Hotta is just dismissive and grumpy enough to force the rookies to earn all their offense, and as a direct result what we see is to this point easily the best work Yoko Bito and Yoshiko have offered. I’m talking some genuinely mean kicks and strike exchanges, as well as some buyable babyface fire instead of the over cautious normal. Even Mayu and Kashima get some spunky offense in and look good getting pummeled, while Natsuki Taiyo is impressive once again in hiding the pretty apparent weakness of Team REINA’s understudies with her speed. To be fair, credit where credit is due and all that, a young Zeuxis delivers some pretty buttery and fun lucha goods with Taiyo for a few short moments as well, and La Comandante is pretty good simply as a problem for the Stardom team to solve. Don’t get me wrong, even compared to the Stardom squad team REINA is thin, clearly dull, but it ends up being hidden so well.

So, when talking about having one’s head screwed on the right way, once again, this works because everyone understands their role. It’s a little nasty too, and I’m not going to claim that the two teams didn’t care much about the others safety, but, I will say there’s wasn’t much reason for these ladies to not lay their stuff in while they had the chance. Who knows if it’s Meiko Satomura’s credit for putting this event together, or if it’s something else I’m not researched on. Really, who cares? In the end, a good time which sees the result of Yoshiko capitalizing after Hotta and La Comandante come to blows, and bless the crowd here, as their reaction makes it feel like a genuine upset. A heck of a time for a match of mostly bad and/or inexperienced wrestlers.

As for Mayu, her minute or two alone in this one comes opposite to Aki Kambayashi and Aoi Ishibashi, and to this point, it’s her best offensive work yet. Good, strong elbows, a mean drop kick, a smooth looking slingblade with no time for some of the sillier looking stuff she’s gotten too confident in early on in her career. Of course, there’s a couple nice bumps and a pretty good sell on a high kick too, but nothing crazy overall, and I do think the pace speeds up on her a bit too much as her time in the match dwindles, notably with the spot where she catches a lariat attempt from Kambayashi, which considering her thin size at this point, looks more than silly. Overall though, a good shift, and even if this view is aided by the knowledge of what she becomes, a essential reason as to why the Stardom teams ends up being so likeable here. Check the show out if you’re curious about the Joshi landscape Iwatani came up in, it’s a good starting point.

Rating: ***1/2