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

This is for Nanae and Hojo’s Goddesses Of Stardom Championships, as well as being the final of the 2014 Stardom Goddesses Of Stardom Tag League.

This is a complete mess, though, it has a good idea or two, at least initially.

Takahashi starts the match with a couple of quick lariats, getting a two-count on Mayu, and for a second it looks like there might be some self awareness here. Iwatani is undoubtedly the weak link among these four (my personal distaste for Takahashi aside), and within the first minute it’s established that gameplan from the defending team is to suffocate and or isolate her. It begs the questions of can Mayu rise to the challenge? Can Io find the big hot tag? It’s simple stuff, but with the titles on the line, all the star power, it has the potential. Mayu shows she’s game for this too, she’s willing to have Io bail her out, and for a while, there’s a focused effort to sell the back, even when she’s not tagged into the match.

For whatever reason though, they abandon the simple southern tag formula in favor of, I don’t know, whatever this is.

Instead of asking Mayu to play the face in peril, Takahashi desperately tries to establish herself as a face, cleans house for a bit, tags out, and then Mayu and Io transition to working over Kairi’s arm instead. At this point there’s no team to root for, and thing has no clue where it’s going. Now, the good, not great selling performances from Mayu and Kairi don’t even matter either, and now there’s nothing good to chew on. Takahashi in particular, frustrates me in this with some soft offense and a pretty blatant disregard for how she should work considering her standing, but, it’s hard to aim at just one person. Everyone here plays it much too safe, and they go for a extended sprint. There’s a bit more to pick apart here—your usual suspects of soft offense, bad pacing, questionable result—but I’ll always be more frustrated with something that dangles something promising in my face before ripping it away. Hell, forget what this should’ve been. This became nothing at all.

The most disappointing match on the project so far.

Rating: Bad