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

This is for the vacant Artist of Stardom championships.

Generally speaking—and because injury to Takumi Iroha is the only reason the belts were vacant in the first place—this match is rather unimpressive. So, sticking with the tagline that’s lead into everything I’ve written about over the past couple months, we’ll dive into a more Mayu-centric analysis.

More specifically, her tag work.

Quickly though, I’m pretty comfortable being in the negative camp on Stardom’s tag stuff. There seems to be a almost smooth sailing philosophy when they approach the structuring these matches, with the a priority of getting some cheaps reactions from the crowd, and a sacrificing the natural escelation that can make tag matches so easy to get hooked into. That leads to some real goofy looking tag offense at times, and what I can only describe as a obsession with doing cutsey poses, but also works to destroy what little heiarchy the roster has. This match, as an excellent example, features Chelseal a young Koguma and Hazuki, yet, it never feels like anyone’s above anything. It’s painfully 50/50, and it simply feels wrong to see someone as undeniable as Io bend for some pathetic strikes via her young peers. Generally too, combine that with effort levels that seem to range from the fifty to eighty percent level (greats included), and at least early in the promotion’s life, it takes all-star level lineups to scratch across something worthwhile.

More into Mayu’s approach, I think there’s a great-level tag worker in there. Prolonged selling efforts and understanding consequence have and will be the biggest persisting issue throughout her career, two things that can be dampened or hidden completley simply by tagging out of a match. I’ve always found her sympathetic, and I have and continued to praise her bumping and ability to get beat up. She’s still young to the point where she’s not contributing any structural ideas—and generally lots of stuff early is let down either by the leading hand or the in house style—so we can save that discussion for later. It’s why I’m excited to tap into some of the Thunder Rock stuff soon, as with Io calling the shots and Mayu naturally being the lesser half, there’s reason to belive some of that hype might be warranted.

Io’s on the team here too, but this trends towards the typicality I laid out earlier. Lots of posing, the weaker members having large roles, and diminsihing returns from wrestlers that needed to carry the weight. Candy Crush wins the belts, which is a pointless decision, as Koguma retires for the first time in two weeks, leaving the belts vacant again.

For a roster full of members so heavily influenced by Dragon Gate, one does wish they’d treat the trio titles with higher regard.

Rating: Meh