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

We’re here because this is the first title Mayu Iwatani captures, and make no mistake, I would’ve clicked off this and ignored it otherwise. Due to the usual barriers I’ve ran into early into this project, I have no real context as to why this is set up, nor do I know much about Kyoko Kimura’s Kimura Monster-gun. The last piece is the duo of Hiroyo Matsumoto and Miho Wakizawa that make up the team Mayu captures the Artist of Stardom belts, and they do it on the biggest show Stardom runs in 2013.

It’s also the worst match we’ve encountered on this project by a comfortable margin.

Genuinely too, everyone is to blame. Wakizawa is certainly the main catalyst, who’s doing a full fledged comedy schtick based around these brown stuffed objects that I’d guess are either supposed to be bread or bricks. It’s flat-out stupid, incredibly unfunny, but make no mistake, it’s something Mayu and Matsumoto are enabling. On the other side, this team lead by the supposedly intimidating Kyoko Kimura—who’s flanked by two wrestlers dressed in Guerilla fighter gear and billed as Alpha Female and Female Predator Amazon (which also, stupidly corny)—are getting punked by three goofballs with cardboard boxes and a bucket of items that look like it was gathered from the floor of a horse stall. There’s no good heel work in here to make that satisfying, nor does to babyface team evoke anything in me but second hand embarrassment, and for some reason, this is stapled in the middle of the card and goes for a painful sixteen minutes. And then they have the gall to try to make it emotional after Mayu steals the win, as if this wasn’t the most insulting thing ever.

The first real dead mark on Mayu’s career to this point, when it easily could’ve been the opposite.

Rating: Awful