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

This is a captain’s fall match, with Black Tiger and Dr. Wagner Jr. serving as the captains. It is a odd match, a fun match, and maybe even a good one too. It’s also one where there isn’t much to say about it.

I could reach and comment about the Kairi/Mayu duo, tell you that was the direction to go for a permanent pairing instead of weighing Shirai down with Mayu, but I don’t think that has any merit beyond the concept itself. There is no real reason to sugarcoat anything here. Dr. Wagner Jr. is the kind of jolt the deadpan Stardom crowd needs, and everyone else follows suit. Their best offense, a little more playing to the crowd, a bit more spirit. Wrestling doesn’t have to be a complex formula. Not everything has to be mean or brutal, the stakes don’t always need to be high. Buying into the wrestlers is all you need, and as long as there’s established purpose—even if it’s just six people working the crowd and having a little fun—you have yourself a worthwhile wrestling match. Some are forgettable, barely good or barely bad. That applies here. I may label them as ‘meh’ or ignore them all together. Who cares, right? When things are even a tab bit infectious it’s hard to figure they’ve succeeded, and here, not even the directionless booking, or the implicit randomness Stardom weighed itself down with can crack that formula. It really is as easy as having one of the many unheralded legends from Mexico riff a bit with Tatsuhito Takaiwa and four young wrestlers.

Oh, and for the projects sake, Mayu pretty good in this too! Easily the best of the four women, she grasps the early almost llave-esque sequences well, lays her stuff in, and gets to do her patented ragdolling at one point. Funny how leaning on what one does best and playing by a unmalleable formula seem so similar, and so correct.

Rating: Meh