With Trapped in the Cagematch, Kim Wong combs through the highest-rated matches according to Cagematch’s voters in preparation for the annual FSM 50 and the year-end Match of the Year extravaganza.
Saya Kamitani (c) vs. Suzu Suzuki
STARDOM 14th Anniversary Supreme Fight 2025 in Korakuen
February 2, 2025
Cagematch ranking as of 10/1/25: #91
You can’t tell the story of professional wrestling in 2025 without focusing on World Wonder Ring STARDOM. I don’t mean that in the business sense; that aspect of professional wrestling’s never been an especially compelling topic to me. (That said, other writers have lavished deserved praise on STARDOM’s booker for the company’s growth in attendance.)
For the purposes of this column, I am focusing on the bounty of high quality matches that STARDOM has produced this year. As of this writing, STARDOM accounts for 21 out of the 200 (10.5%) highest rated matches in Cagematch of 2025, fourth behind All Elite Wrestling (18% with 36), New Japan Pro Wrestling (14.5% with 29), and World Wrestling Entertainment (13% with 26). If we shrink our lens to just the top 100, STARDOM accounts for 14, tied for 2nd with NJPW and WWE behind AEW (22). Operating with a fraction of the other company’s resources, STARDOM is putting forth top quality wrestling product, matching even its Bushiroad sibling, NJPW.
STARDOM’s artistic success this year is especially notable because it is part of the company’s response in the wake of Rossy Ogawa’s messy exit from the company in February 2024 and the departures of prominent STARDOM wrestlers like Giulia, Utami Hayashishita, Nanae Takahashi, and Mirai. [By the way, for comparison, STARDOM only accounted for 5 out of the top 100 matches in Cagematch of 2024, tied for fifth with Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling with 5 matches behind AEW (23), NJPW (19), WWE (9), and Pro Wrestling NOAH (6)]. Common wisdom In February 2024 held that STARDOM might be in trouble in the same way that any company would be after losing many highly promoted wrestlers, especially when you factored in the expectation that STARDOM stalwarts Mayu Iwatani and Tam Nakano might also follow the moment they get the chance. STARDOM’s success in 2025 is the story of its rebound, its resilience, and its willingness to do something that its Bushiroad sibling has been unable to do so far: pick a young wrestler and commit to them fully.
Some companies might flounder in the face of uncertainty and hesitate to identify who on the back bench could be promoted to the front after such talent loss. STARDOM, on the other hand, was decisive: it had identified the 28-years-old Saya Kamitani as its next focal point. (There’s something to be said about how joshi companies are consistently the most future-facing because joshi is youth-oriented and joshi wrestlers generally have shorter careers than male wrestlers. This creates regular roster churn, even without officials and wrestlers breaking away to form their own company.)
(This is also where I will acknowledge that I am by no means deeply versed in STARDOM’s lore. I started watching STARDOM this year, so I am not conversant in the relationships that wrestlers have with each other beyond what I can gather from reviewing match results and wrestlers’ histories on Wikipedia. I chose not to let the wrestlers’ histories together to be a barrier to my entry to the company. I hope my approach might convince someone who’s been curious about STARDOM to give them a try and that any displays of ignorance are understood to be innocent sins to the deeply seated STARDOM fan.)
By June 2024, STARDOM disbanded her faction, Queen’s Quest and had positioned Kamitani to establish a new character in the process by putting the fault of this loss at Kamitani’s feet. By July 2024, STARDOM arranged for Kamitani to lose her High Speed Championship, a secondary title in the company. Later on that same night, Kamitani unveiled her new character and direction, joining Oedo Tai, the foes who beat her to force Queen’s Quest’s dissolution, and creating a new faction, H.A.T.E.
And yes, it’s yet another rule-flouting and black clothes-donning bad guy group in a Japanese wrestling environment that is replete with these grandchildren of NWO Japan (founded in 1996 when Masahiro Chono joined the NWO), these spawn of the Bullet Club (founded in 2013 when Fergal Devitt aka Finn Balor joined Karl Anderson, Bad Luck Fale, and Tama Tonga).
(In 2025, NJPW has the House of Torture and the War Dogs. NOAH has Team 2000x. Dragongate has Z-Brats. DDT has DAMNATION T.A. STARDOM has H.A.T.E. The idea is endemic in Japanese wrestling. American wrestling isn’t exactly free from this meme either. AEW had the Death Riders [though they wore white t-shirts – except for PAC, who wore nothing at all…except his black briefs].)
In December 2024, Kamitani defeated the aforementioned Tam Nakano to win the World of Stardom Championship for the first time. This cemented Kamitani as the straw that stirs STARDOM’s drink, its focal point, its main character.
That brings us to this match, Kamitani’s first defense of her new title against a previous thorn in Kamitani’s side, Suzu Suzuki. In March 2024, Suzuki and her partner, Mei Seira, defeated Kamitani and Hayashishita for the Goddesses of Stardom tag team titles. Almost a year later, with Kamitani in the driver’s seat, Suzuki laid out a challenge to Kamitani’s title.
What I’m looking for from this match:
- I want Kamitani to impress me. She is the company’s champion, so I have high expectations for this match.
- Kamitani and Suzuki have a history, and while I’m not aware of the details, I should get a sense of athletic rivalry, if not personal animosity, between them.
Luckily, Kamitani starts by challenging Suzuki to a toughness contest by elbowing her in the neck. I don’t love Kamitani’s exaggerated gesticulations, but I appreciate the spirit of starting a match by daring your opponent to hit you as hard as you can so you can hit them back. The taunting works a little better for me when Kamitani runs away from Suzuki so she can claim the high ground of the ring, hit Suzuki with a slide when she tries to re-enter the ring, and follows her with a dive from the top rope to the crowd.
My attention started to drift when Kamitani and Suzuki both sat in chairs and yelled at each other from a distance, Kamitani daring Suzuki to re-enter the ring and Suzuki daring Kamitani to fight her outside. It felt like watching two old men argue in the park about who got to feed the pigeons with their stale bread crumbs that would ultimately end up being rat food. My eyes rolled hard when Kamitani’s colleagues in H.A.T.E. decided to jump Suzuki while she was sitting outside the ring. This was absolutely unnecessary when the referee was already administering the 20 count outside the ring, and we reach the same result of Suzuki re-entering the ring at a disadvantage because Kamitani was able to start kicking her as she reached back inside the ring. And then we enter a headlock sequence. After throwing her tongue out as a taunt, I’m surprised Kamitani didn’t go all the way with the Randy Orton playbook by giving Suzuki the Garvin Stomp.
Suzuki gains control with a stalling powerbomb that dumps Kamitani onto the apron shoulder and spine first and takes Kamitani around Korakuen Hall, throwing her through some chairs and slamming her head into the hall’s eastern wall. I guess this is where I’ll be grumpy about the whole idea of the rules-flouting villainous group: why wouldn’t have H.A.T.E. interfered here to try to save Kamitani from the powerbomb or from being thrown through the chairs in the crowd or being struck by an umbrella? They were running over to that side of the ring, and it’s not like they cared that the referee saw them beat up Suzuki earlier.
Kamitani plays cocky very well, and she can make Suzuki’s offense look impactful. She even shows off some agile feet in this trip:
I also liked the way she struggled against Kamitani’s pinning attempt, giving the match a sense of verisimilitude:
The staggering around after the headbutts is playing it up for the backrows a bit too much for my tastes.
And credit goes to where it is due: landing like this with this speed from Suzuki’s super German suplex is wild.
Following that with taking more German suplexes from Suzuki is even wilder.
We enter the match’s finale, and both wrestlers are trying to project that bursts of adrenaline are helping them power through the pain. Kamitani and Suzuki land awkwardly from Kamitani’s top rope Frankensteiner, and they exchange slow and sloppy poison hurricanranas. (Suzuki in particular gets a leg up to Kamitani’s bicep at best on her poison hurricanrana, breaking the illusion that she is able to force Kamitani to flip on to her own head with the momentum.) Kamitani wins the match with her sitout fisherman’s brainbuster, the Star Crusher.
I can see why STARDOM chose Kamitani because she is very charismatic. The body movements were too exaggerated for my preferences, but they seem to work for her melodramatic character. Her movements were generally crisp, but she didn’t display superhuman athleticism. Her footing on the plancha dive was wobbly, and her poison hurricanranas lacked the speed, at least against Suzuki, to make them look devastating. She was willing to put her body at great risk to make her opponent look impressive, and the deserved credit for that. The pieces are there, and I hope that Kamitani really wows me as we see more of her work while we explore the best of 2025.
The match and the show can be seen on STARDOM World. STARDOM has also uploaded the match to its YouTube page.
