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

We dip into another Thunder Rock before they were Thunder Rock match, this time to set up for Io and Nanae’s Red Belt match a month later. On one hand, it’s nice to see Stardom head towards a more traditional structure when booking their shows and building for their matches. That means it also goes without saying that it’s nice that Mayu finds herself in something that hasn’t been throw together without any rhyme or reason, and because of that, maybe, just maybe, my complaints about the apparent randomness of Stardom’s booking can finally shift to the more familiar and diverse criticism I’m used to giving them. On the other hand though, because this is setting up a pair of wrestlers not named Mayu Iwatani, I do not care about this match for the sake of the project, and because Nanae Takahashi is one of them, I do not, and would not care in general.

So, for as much as a good half of this wastes my time, I do also like being proved right. The early minutes of the match that are strictly Io and Nanae are awful. Do not be fooled by the all-time carry job Meiko Satomura provided her over a year ago, and do not overestimate where Shirai is at her career to this point either. Nanae Takahashi is doing what I can only presume is her laziest work of her career at this point. There is no horse being lead to water on this day, and there certainly isn’t one in the 30 minute slob in a months time either. Takahashi is a black hole, an empty worker hidden behind her high pitched wails she parades as “passion.” Ironic, as she provides the opposite here, as all we get are some weak strikes, ill-advised knee work on Io, and absolutely no attempts to put over Shirai’s offense. I think you could argue there’s a attempt to make it look like Nanae had a answer for everything, but I don’t think I’m willing to give them that credit when there’s bits like Nanae eating four straight head kicks and not even to make the simple gesture towards her head before transitioning to another sequence of moves. Really, the whole thing undermines the creativity of Shirai and reduces her striking to practically nothing. Great way to build to a title match, guys.

To the benefit of Mayu, this is at least somewhat palatable when she tags in. She’s no saint, but there’s some concerted effort into trying to make the comparably weak offensive opponent in Wakizawa look good. Speaking of which, I don’t get much out of Wakizawa here. I’m not familar enough with her work in AJW, and I’m hardly going to get much out of a backwards tag match in Stardom at the end of her career. The handful of slaps Mayu and her throw look good, I guess, though we’re at the point where I’m sort of beyond praising that tendency Mayu seems to mix into her matches at this point. Otherwise, Wakizawa is more a passenger of Takahashi than Mayu is to Io, and again, that hardly feels like either of their faults. Anway, this mercifully ends when Mayu pins Wakizawa with the Magica de Io, and the duo seems to be in high spirits in their backstage interview, so perhaps you could draw a little nugget about Thunder Rock from that if you want.

Rating: Bad