Trapped in the Cagematch: The 37KAMINA vs. The Astronauts (March 20, 2025)

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.

The 37KAMINA (To-y & MAO) (c) vs. The Astronauts (Fuminori Abe & Takuya Nomura)
DDT Judgement 2025
March 20, 2025
Cagematch ranking as of 10/23/25: 70

The last tag team to win the Wrestling Observer Newsletter award for Tag Team of the Year for their wrestling exclusively in a Japanese company was Bad Intentions, the team of Giant Bernard and Karl Anderson that won the award in 2011. Since 2011, the award has been dominated by the Young Bucks (2014-18, 2020-21, 2024) with FTR (2022-23), the Lucha Brothers (2019), Bad Influence (2012), and the Shield (2013) winning the award around the Bucks’ dominance. 

The Bucks are poised to win the award again this year, though they face voter fatigue. (The question about whether this voter fatigue should be a legitimate factor in voting is familiar to anyone who observes the NBA. Award voters have debated whether they could vote for someone else because they’re tired of voting for the most obviously dominant player in the league, from Michael Jordan in the 1990s to LeBron James in the 2010s to Nikola Jokic in the 2020s.) 

If we accept the premise that the voters would like to recognize another tag team for their excellence in 2025, then AEW’s FTR and CMLL’s Sky Team seem like the obvious alternatives. However, is there an option outside of the North American industry leaders? (Since we are including CMLL’s Sky Team, we would have to include trios teams as well.)

We could start by surveying who the tag team champions have been around the world this year. (CMLL simply has too many titles, so they are intentionally excluded from the list below. Let’s just accept that Sky Team would be that company’s most prominent option because Mistico is a part of it. Let’s also accept that neither FTR nor the Young Bucks would be listed below if we had included AEW because neither team has held the AEW World Tag Team Championships this year.)

We then should filter the list down to champions who have had lengthy enough reigns that they would have the body of work needed to challenge the Bucks, FTR, and Sky Team; we can arbitrarily set the cutoff at 5 matches. If we then filter that list of teams by the number of matches amongst the top 200 matches on Cagematch, that leaves us with:

This leaves us with Kyoraku Kyomei (TJPW), Grizzled Young Veterans (DPW), Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane (NOAH), and the Astronauts (DDT) as the options with the most down-ballot potential for the Tag Team of the Year award. As you have probably guessed from the title, we’re going to start with the Astronauts, specifically their sole match in Cagematch’s top 200.

Fuminori Abe and Takuya Nomura, the Astronauts, should be no strangers to wrestling fans. Their hard-hitting singles match in 2023 from their independent show broke through the wrestling discourse, leading to GCW bringing them over to try to replicate the match at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport X during WrestleMania Weekend 2024. They’re a well-regarded and incredibly prolific team (42 matches in 2025, 86 in 2024, and 74 in 2023, compared to FTR’s 29 in 2025 or the Bucks’ 25; however, they pale compared to Sky Team’s 89 and counting matches this year though). As freelancers, they bounce from one company to another, and they mostly stick to lower profile companies; their most viewed matches are likely in second tier Japanese companies like DDT and AJPW, a European indie like wXw, or an American indie like DPW. (In fact, this particular match against the 37KAMINA is the only Astronauts match to have more than 100 reviews on Cagematch.) 

I’ve noted with previous Astronauts matches that they mix in more shtick with their hard-hitting action than I would prefer, though their frenetic and tough style usually leave me feeling satisfied after their matches. That said, their mix of goofiness and action would make them perfectly suitable for DDT, which on this very show tried to present a serious affair between Chris Brookes and Masahiro Takanashi for the KO-D Openweight title and a match between Super Sasadango Machine and Danshoku Dieno where Dieno’s dog, Haku, would join the DDT roster because Dieno lost the match.

I HALO jumped into DDT for this match, so I don’t know the history of The 37KAMINA, why MAO teamed with To-y, why To-y’s name is “To-y,” how “To-y” is pronounced, and why the Astronauts challenged MAO and To-y for the KO-D Tag Team Title. The fine JamieOD at Dramatic DDT, who has been covering DDT since July 2010, summarized the fallout from this match. Those results gave some of the context that I’m missing as a parachutist, and it’s worth reading JamieOD’s post. 

MAO often seems like a contestant for the clown prince of puroresu. At West Coast Pro’s Vegas Vacation during this year’s WrestleMania Week, MAO had a very good wrestling comedy bit where he entered the match while wheeling his luggage and negotiating with his rideshare driver on the phone and then tried to rush through his match with Jiah Jewell because he had another show to work. It’s a small piece of wrestling humor that works in the context of wrestling itself, and it’s a great example of how MAO projects his character.

With all that said, to my surprise, the match started hot with action, springing from Nomura slapping To-y after a standing rope break, which led to double team offense from To-y and MAO that sent both Nomura and Abe to the mat. We then got a sprinkle of comedy from Nomura when he dodged a dive from To-y and berated MAO to get off the top turnbuckle. Nomura and Abe seemed to have a sharper edge to them in this match; Abe punched the top of To-y’s head with a cracking thump that made me wince.

MAO also threw out some candy to the fans, like flexing his biceps on the top turnbuckle before bouncing on to Abe with a split-legged moonsault.

And though Abe feigned feeling like he’d throw up after a kick to the stomach from MAO, he balanced the equation with this impressively fast spinning kick.

You really need to see this kick on video; the gif doesn’t capture quite how fast Abe went from one corner to another while spinning.

The match continued to dance between comedy and action, and I was surprised by how well all four straddled the line. Nomura and MAO had their own moment where Nomura pretended that he might throw up after receiving a kick from MAO, but then they exchanged big bombs like German suplexes. To-y hit Nomura with some very weak machine gun chops in the corner, but then he hit Nomura with a pair of beautiful running dropkicks. They all played it straight when Abe had To-y locked in a submission hold and Nomura caught MAO in a submission hold too so he couldn’t help his partner escape.

We got one more bit of wrestling comedy when MAO saved To-y from being bullied by Abe and Nomura and received a hard chop from an unaware To-y for his troubles. MAO slapped To-y to even the score, and they headbutted each other before turning their offense against Abe and Nomura. From there, it was all high paced action with Nomura appearing out of nowhere to kick To-y, MAO taking Nomura out with a moonsault, Abe taking To-y down with a punch, surviving a full nelson slam, and finally finishing To-y with a brutal variation of the octopus hold.

Comedy in wrestling is fine as long as it’s balanced by action, and this was a much better (and much higher profile) match than Astronauts’ match with 1 Called Manders and Thomas Shire because it didn’t veer too far from action to comedy. The Astronauts had an edge to their offense here that was frankly surprising. MAO and To-y played the role of fighting champions well, and you can understand how they lost after MAO took himself out of the match when he hit his moonsault on Nomura. Left to themselves, Abe was able to force To-y to submit, and now The 37KAMINA is no more. 

This is an easy match to recommend; I think it’s one of the best tag team matches I’ve seen this year.

The match and the show can be seen on Wrestle Universe.

Next time: “Make Poipo the Clown and Poipl Daclown Jr. proud, son.” We continue our check-in on the state of tag team wrestling with a look at Violence Is Forever vs. Grizzled Young Veterans from DEADLOCK Pro-Wrestling’s Title Fight in Vegas.