Trapped in the Cagematch: Amazin’

In the lead-up to this year’s WrestleMania Week, I highlighted St. Louis Anarchy’s Let Anarchy Be Anarchy and House of Glory: Culture Clash as shows of interest. Three matches from Let Anarchy Be Anarchy had caught my eye:

• Unsigned & Don’t Care (Gary Jay & Aaron Williams) vs. Cowboy Way (1 Called Manders & Thomas Shire)
• Mad Dog Connelly vs. Derek Neal
• Jeremy Wyatt vs. Ryan Clancy

Unfortunately, Ryan Clancy suffered injuries to his ACL and medial meniscus, and Derek Neal also missed the show. That wiped two matches that I had highlighted in my viewing plans off the slate, and Let Anarchy Be Anarchy ultimately went by the wayside.

Live reports from WrestleMania Week, however, highlighted another match from that show, a six man affair between the Australians Jack Osborne, Sam Osborne, and Will Kiedis and Nelly’s fellow St. Louisans Camaro Jackson, Everett Connors, and Mike Outlaw. Since St. Louis Anarchy uploaded both Unsigned & Don’t Care vs. Cowboy Way and the trios match to its YouTube page, this was as good a time as any to make good on my intention to check out St. Louis Anarchy’s show.

I had also pinned Bandido vs. Amazing Red from House of Glory: Culture Clash in my viewing plans. It was good, but it did not contend for my The Best Match of the Week That Aired Live, Everybody Else (Not You, WWE or WWE Cronies) Division award. However, I was impressed that independent wrestling legend Amazing Red was making a resurgence late in his career, so the buzz around “Speedball” Mike Bailey’s match against Red caught my attention.

Finally, we turned to Marvelous and Marigold to catch up with a battle between high speed stars, a clash between tag teammates, and a rematch between two recent outstanding rookies.

In this edition, I covered:

• Mike Bailey vs. Amazing Red (HOG, May 1, 2026)
• Unsigned and Don’t Care (Aaron Williams & Gary Jay) vs. Cowboy Way (1 Called Manders & Thomas Shire) (SLA, April 16, 2026)
• North Shore Wrestling (Jack Osborne, Sam Osborne & Will Kiedis) vs. Camaro Jackson, Everett Connors & Mike Outlaw) (SLA, April 16, 2026)
• Mio Momono vs. Mei Seira (Marvelous, May 5, 2026)
• Takumi Iroha (c) vs. Sareee (Marvelous, May 5, 2026)
• Seri Yamaoka vs. Senka Akatsuki (Marigold, May 23, 2026)

Mike Bailey vs. Amazing Red
HOG Glory at the Globe 
May 1, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: 321
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: 7.59

If you’re going to call yourself “Amazing Red,” you had better make sure that you delivered on the promise. (For example, no one could rightly claim that Low Ki was either lowkey or Loki.) For the better part of twenty-eight years, Amazing Red did his best to fulfill his pledge to dazzle and astonish. Whether it was against zero expectations as a newcomer to the American Northeast independent wrestling scene, sky high expectations as his fame grew, and revised expectations as time and injuries sapped his athleticism and forced him to adapt, Red tried to amaze.

I first sought out Amazing Red’s matches based on the word of mouth from the “Matrix Minute” sequence that opened his match against Low Ki in ROH Road to the Title. The crowd at the Murphy Recreation Center gave that minute of action a standing ovation back in 2002, and it still worked in 2026 when I watched it to remember. The Matrix Minute was as important to ROH’s early reputation as the hotbed for cutting edge wrestling as Bryan Danielson vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Low Ki or Bryan Danielson vs. Low Ki.

Amazing Red and Low Ki brought their match to TNA’s sixth show, and it was still very good even though they had to cut their match by almost half. I followed them to TNA, and those early days of the X Division were the secret gems of the early 2000s in American pro graps. (For more, check out episode three of You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me, Garret Kidney and Liam Jones’s TNA podcast.)

Unfortunately, Red’s body started to give out on him not long after he became a staple figure in TNA and ROH. During a tour with All Japan Pro Wrestling in August 2003, Red tore his anterior cruciate ligament. As a result, he and AJ Styles had to relinquish the ROH Tag Team titles, which was especially painful because they had just had a great defense against Mark and Jay Briscoe. (At the time, Styles was 26, Red 21, Jay Briscoe 19, and Mark Briscoe 18.) After surgery and rehabilitation, he returned in March 2004 and kept going as best as he knew how. However, by that point, the next generation of dynamic wrestlers had emerged, and Red only wrestled twice more in ROH: in a six person match in 2004 and a tag team match in 2012.

By 2005, Red only appeared in TNA sporadically, and he spent much of his time with New York Wrestling Connection. (He also had an unaired match with CM Punk in WWE in 2005, which the WWE Vault YouTube channel uploaded in 2024. It was a fascinating look at how well Punk could connect to WWE’s crowd at the time even then and how athletic Red still was despite his injuries. Another match that made do a double take as I reviewed Red’s match history was his match with a very young Kenny Omega for the NWA Canadian X-Division Championship in PWA.) Red and Ki had another match in their decades-spanning feud in 2005 at a 3CW show named Kode Red in Red’s honor; there, Ki teamed with Stevie Lynn against Red and Ice XVII.

Sadly, Red re-injured his knee in a match against Javi-Air at NYWC Psycho Circus in 2006. This time, Red was away for two years; he returned at the Jersey All Pro Wrestling 11th Anniversary Show on December 13, 2008. He even returned to TNA in 2009 and beat Samoa Joe for the X-Division Championship in October. He lost the title to Doug Williams in January 2010, and his title reign was characterized by defenses that rarely lasted longer than four minutes unless it was on PPV, where he got a generous ten minutes.

This tenure in TNA was more interesting for his intersections with the careers of other great wrestlers. For example, Red wrestled El Generico in an unaired match from TNA iMPACT in 2011 and Max Buck nee Matt Jackson in two three-ways and a cage match in 2010 and 2011. Red faced a post-“Hollywood” Dylan Summers Necro Butcher at Pro Wrestling Syndicate Spring Break Showdown in 2011, a pairing that made no sense at first blush and complete sense after a moment’s thought. Of course, Red and Ki met again in 2011, this time at Impact Championship Wrestling’s Super Show 2011. His time in TNA ended in 2011 after an Ultimate X match at Destination X 2011.

In 2012, Red and Brian XL opened House of Glory, a wrestling training school based in New York City, and Red generally limited his matches to New York and New Jersey. (An exception was Red’s match against Ricochet at Brian Kendrick’s King of Flight Tournament in Huntington Park, California in 2013.) It seemed like Red was doomed to recede from the collective wrestling memory as he wrestled opponents who were in their own ascensions: Tony Nese in 2013, Shane Strickland in 2014, and Starman aka Joey Janela, Pete Dunne, and Lio Rush in 2015. Naturally, Red faced Ki again at HOG Beware the Fury 2018.

I remember that it seemed like a big deal and a passing of a torch when NJPW scheduled Will Ospreay vs. Amazing Red for NJPW Super J Cup 2019 in Tacoma, Washington. Furthermore, I was pleased that Red got his moment in the sun at NJPW Showdown in San Jose when he teamed with Kota Ibushi against Kazuchika Okada and Ospreay.

By this point, Red was predominantly wrestling only at HOG shows, and he usually served as the featured attraction while his students gained experience in the undercard. Red even got a rematch with Ospreay at HOG Born Again in 2021 to bring more eyes to Red’s company. So, Red wrestled some of the world’s best and/or famous in HOG: Ricochet, Zack Sabre Jr., Brody King and Malakai Black, Swerve Strickland, Mike Santana, Mustafa Ali, Leon Slater, Nic Nemeth, Tyler Breeze, Andrade El Idolo, Sammy Guevara, Bandido, and Mike Bailey.

And that brought us to his match with Bailey in HOG as the company tried to reach beyond its New York City scope. In January, HOG ran its first show in California in PWG’s second home, and HOG followed its show at WrestleMania Week this year with its second California outing. In the main event, the company continued to try to make Charles Mason like fetch, but Regina George may need to step in to say that Mason, like fetch, was not gonna happen. Bailey and Red anchored the card on the front end while Zilla Fatu, Lance Anoa’i, Mason, and Jonathan Gresham held down the back end so that HOG students like Daron Richardson, Onyx Amagi, and Phumi Nkuta plied their craft in the midcard.

The crowd’s ovation for Red at his entrance was enheartening; I wasn’t sure how much wrestling fans in 2026 would remember the legend of Red. I suppose that I shouldn’t have worried that Red would enter to silence; I would imagine that few Californians who weren’t familiar with Amazing Red could have been anywhere in the world and wouldn’t randomly decide to attend a HOG show on a Friday night. H.O.V. would have appreciated that the fans got their damned hands up for Red’s entrance.

Conversely, the cursed Brass Monkey returned and exhumed buried memories of five thousand Mike Bailey matches over a seventy-two hour period during WrestleMania Week.

Dueling chants, a handshake, and bows started the match, and the two were positioned, at first, to both be clean-thinking, well-intentioned competitors. Of course, we’ve seen before that Bailey had a mean streak in him behind the Karate Kid aesthetic; he can be more John Kreese than Daniel LaRusso. (And that’s funny since he and Kreese have both worked for AEW.) Red and Bailey began with an exhibition of roundhouse kicks that would have made Hakim “The Machine” Alston and Robin Shou proud.

Packing the fans so close to the ring at the Globe Theatre had its drawbacks. For one, a hurricanrana outside the ring was hampered by spacing as tight as the 2014-15 Charlotte Hornets’ when Kemba Walker, Lance Stephenson, Gerald Henderson, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist all packed the paint.

Not long after, Bailey’s mean streak started to appear when he landed a basement dropkick on a distracted Red.

From there, Bailey controlled Red with his kicks and a leg submission, and that forced the crowd to finally pick a side. As expected, they chose Red’s and started to boo Bailey. With the crowd alignment clearly established, Red went on the offensive with a Superman punch, a leaping forearm in the corner, and a terrific spike satellite DDT.

After slipping out of the Code Red, Bailey collided with Red with a missile dropkick, and Red showed that he was still agile enough to accentuate his opponent’s offense.

And while it wasn’t a Matrix Moment Reloaded, seeing Red dodge a kick (that was really nowhere near hitting him) still stoked the coals in my heart.

Red’s tope con hilo right after fanned those flames.

Red tried to close the match with an avalanche Code Red, but Bailey flipped out of it to land on his feet. Seizing the momentum, Bailey thrusted a kick into Red’s face, laid him down near a corner with a Falcon Arrow, and splashed down with a shooting star press. Red persevered, but time and wear caught up with Red when he and Bailey tried to perform a pin reversal sequence.

The end came quickly, almost anticlimactically, for Red. Bailey survived a Code Red and a frog splash, made Red pay for a second frog splash with his knees, kicked Red, and drove him into the mat and into the loss column with the Flamingo Driver. I don’t think the crowd was quite ready for Red to lose this match either, since the ending did not get the reaction that Red and Bailey had probably wanted.

It was fun to catch up with Red and take a trip down nostalgia drive. He was still solid enough to make the matches with the visiting stars worthwhile, even if they never quite become spectacular.

You can watch the match on HOG’s YouTube channel.

Unsigned And Don’t Care (Aaron Williams & Gary Jay) vs. Cowboy Way (1 Called Manders & Thomas Shire)
SLA Let Anarchy Be Anarchy
April 16, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: N/A
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: N/A

Though 1 Called Manders made his debut in 2017, he didn’t really ping my radar until his feud with Mad Dog Connelly in St. Louis Anarchy between 2023 and 2024. His (unannounced) match with Luke Jacobs had saved what was a fairly miserable experience at GCW You Wouldn’t Understand 2024. (That was GCW’s last show at Roulette Intermedium, which is too bad because it was a cool venue, easily accessible via mass transit and near a decent bar option for before and after the show.) While I haven’t been as impressed with his tag team team partner, Thomas Shire, they made a decent team with throwback appeal because there aren’t many teams composed of two meatheaded lunks like Cowboy Way in the American indies these days.

The last time we saw Manders was his unsuccessful challenge for the RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Championship. I was more impressed by Manders’s match against Timur the Great at New Texas Pro’s WrestleMania Week show than by his match against Jay Joshua. Like Fuminori Abe, Manders dips his toes into the wacky and cheeky side of wrestling a little too often for my tastes. He would appeal to my tastes more if he were more Stan Hansen or even Takan Hansen and less Stan Kobayashi vs. Andreza Giant Panda.

Gary Jay was an unfortunate textbook example of first impressions’ indelibility. I first saw Gary Jay at Chikara King of Trios 2009 Night 2, when he teamed with Davey Vega against Evan Gelistico and Pierre Abernathy in one of that tournament’s lowlights. At the time, he went by Gary the Barn Owl, so we just hooted and hollered to entertain ourselves. I also remember my rightful skepticism when he teamed with Pierre Abernathy for Chikara’s Tag World Grand Prix 2013 and my scoffing laughter when I saw that the Devastation Corporation crushed them in 33 seconds. Jay made four more appearances in Chikara between 2014 and 2016, but I saw none of them; I had had more than enough Gary the Barn Owl for the 2010s.

After seventeen years, Jay had transformed from a punchline to a gritty and respected veteran of the American indies. That said, while his tag team’s name might seem to be a defiant declaration, it did give off at first glance a vibe of “the Barn Owl doth protest too much, methinks.” I had marked the match in my WrestleMania Week plans as a a potential barn burner, as it were, or even a slobberknocker. So, I was delighted that St. Louis Anarchy uploaded the match to their YouTube page.

Shire and Jay had a history that dated back to 2014, when Jay defended what was then known as the SLA Heavyweight Championship (now the Gateway Heritage Championship, a much cooler name) against Shire. The fought thrice in 2019: at SLA Hog Wild in May, ACTION Wrestling Founders Day Festival in October, and SLA No Church in the Wild in November. Two years later, they faced each other at AAW Alive #24, where Shire scored his first win against Jay. In 2022, Shire beat Jay at SLA Dingo Invitational Night 2 and at Grandel Wrestling From Dusk Till Dawn to continue his streak, and he defended the Gateway Heritage title against Jay at SLA Gateway to Anarchy 2025. (Manders also held a singles win over Jay from SLA Gateway to Anarchy 2023.)

By coincidence, GCW held a match between Cowboy Way and Unsigned and Don’t Care the day before SLA announced this match. In the GCW match, Manders and Shire beat the combination of Anakin Murphy and Gary Jay. In the SLA match, Manders and Shire faced Jay and Aaron Williams, who began his wrestling career in 2005 in Heartland Wrestling Association, the former home of Nigel McGuinness and Jon Moxley. Williams, like Jay, Shire, and Manders, would be considered an independent wrestling lifer.

Sometimes, wrestling can provide absolutely sublime, understated comedy.

From the start, it seemed that Manders and particularly Shire took a much too light-hearted approach to the match and underestimated Jay and Williams. Manders goofed around with a fan in the first row, and Shire had some fun with the announcer. Even the way he got up after Williams out-grappled him seemed too jokey. Imagine Stan or even Takan Hansen doing this.

Luckily, the mood turned more serious when Manders and Jay tagged into the match. Manders and Jay chopped each other, and Williams jumped in to help Jay send Shire and Manders out of the ring. After a pair of tope suicidas in the Swan Dive, Williams gave us this assessment of how the match was going.

Back inside the pony ring, Williams and Jay wailed on Manders with no regard to the referee, and Jay blew a snot rocket in Shire’s direction to tempt him into the ring. Williams and Jay didn’t do anything while the referee was distracted with Shire’s attempted entry to chase Jay down for his disrespect, so I’m not sure what the point of that snot rocket taunt was other than to set up Shire to grab Jay a moment later. Of course, Shire was Manders’s teammate, so he might have done that even if Jay hadn’t blown snot in his direction.

Jay took the brunt of Manders’s and Shire’s ire, especially after he dared Shire to hit him. The match refocused on Jay and Manders, and they took a breather after Jay lifted Manders up for a knee strike that felt too cooperative. They knocked each other down with lariats, and then they tagged out to Shire and Williams, who seemed to momentarily lose the thread of what they were trying to. Thankfully, they figured it out, though Williams teased a knee injury that didn’t seem to influence the rest of the match.

Manders and Shire double teamed Williams until Jay recovered, and Jay took them both down with chops. Jay and Williams awkwardly watched Manders and Shire yell while they were on their knees and did nothing to stop Manders and Shire from picking them up and slamming them against each other. Then, the referee counted both Shire’s and Manders’s pin even though Manders and Williams were the legal participants.

Williams and Manders faced off for a second before Williams decided to fly out of the ring onto Shire with a rolling senton over the top rope.

That left Jay and Manders to brawl in the ring, which ended with Manders rolling out of the ring. Jay teased a dive out of the ring; instead, he calmly walked out of the ring and took Shire to the Swan Dive’s stage. There, Jay and Shire brawled for a bit before Shire threw Jay off of the stage into Williams’s and Manders’s waiting arms.

As the last person standing in the match, Shire dragged Williams and Manders back into the ring to finish the match. Williams, supposedly on one good leg, escaped Shire and Manders’s double team lariat and eliminated Shire from the match with a frog splash. Manders blasted Williams with a lariat and might have won the match if Jay hadn’t stomped the back of Manders’s head, rolled him over, and stacked himself on top of Williams to pin Manders for the three count.

Manders, Shire, Jay, and Williams packed a lot into fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds. The match had a chaotic energy befitting a bar brawl, which was fitting given the venue, but little things like the referee counting Manders’s and Shire’s pins, some clunky setups like Williams flying out of the ring to take out Shire for no discernable reason other than to set up Jay to take Manders out so he and Shire could fight on the stage to set up Shire’s toss strained even wrestling logic. Manders and Jay also seemed to exist in a different wavelength than their partners.

Would I have ranked this as the tag team of WrestleMania Week over The Swirl vs. Subculture? The two matches suffered different flaws (though the Swirl vs. Subculture was actually shorter than this match, it felt like it dragged longer, while this match had some clunky, immersion-breaking bits), but they both fit the mood of their respective shows. Why shouldn’t a match feel chaotic on a show called Let Anarchy be Anarchy? Why shouldn’t a match feel a bit over-stuffed on a supposed Supershow? To that end, it would probably be a coin flip between the two matches.

Unfortunately, Let Anarchy Be Anarchy was a financial blow to St. Louis Anarchy; the competition at its timeslot and the last minute changes to its card likely caused a rough outing for the company. That meant that too few people saw this match, so it’s good that SLA made it available on their YouTube page. It certainly deserved more than just the 406 views it garnered as of this writing. GCW was able to capitalize on Manders and Jay’s chemistry as opponents first; Manders and Jay faced each other at GCW Guilty Conscience 2026 in May.

You can watch the match on SLA’s YouTube page.

Camaro Jackson, Everett Connors & Mike Outlaw vs. North Shore Wrestling (Jack Osborne, Sam Osborne & Will Kiedis)
SLA Let Anarchy Be Anarchy
April 16, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: N/A
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: N/A

From the start, Everett Connors made clear that he would assume the role of the Wild White Boy in his team this evening. Everyone else in the match must have felt it too since the match was suffused with an almost frantic sense of urgency and wrestled as if it were a sprint. It was impressive how little wasted motion all six of them showed throughout the match. For example, Jack and Sam Osborne worked with Connors to combine a little bit of comedy with the Osbornes twisting their necks back into place and then double teaming Connors for a nearfall.

The Osbornes and Kiedis impressed with how smoothly they moved around the ring. Outlaw proved to be a solid hot tag; he sped the match back up after the Osbornes and Kiedis’s control section with Connors. As order broke down in the match’s endgame, I was waiting for the teams to escalate the action. Both sides used some double team combos to heat the action up. At the end, we got a chain of signature moves from each wrestler before the Osbornes neatly reset the match with their double team finisher on Connors to win the match.

This was a really fun sprint, though I still think that the trios match from New Texas Pro: Sin City Stampede was the more substantive trios match and my pick for the best trios match from WrestleMania Week. However, this would have been a strong contender. Furthermore, I’m glad that Will Kiedis stuck around for a singles match against Mad Dog Connelly at SLA’s Canvas of Dreams II at the end of April.

You can watch the match on SLA’s YouTube page.

Mio Momono vs. Mei Seira
Marvelous 10th Anniversary Commemorative Event
May 5, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: 194
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: 7.85

Two mistresses of high speed wrestling and honorable mentions in the 2026 Voices of Wrestling 30 Under 30 list clashed in their first singles match. Mio Momono sported the West Coast Pro Women’s Championship that she claimed from Johnnie Robbie.

In many ways, Mei Seira and Momono were reflections of each other: both were billed at 4’11” and 114 pounds, and they were both trained by Chigusa Nagayo. Momono had the experience edge with three more years than Seira, though Seira probably had more experience under the singles spotlight. Momono held the AAAW Championship for 96 days, the OZ Academy Openweight Championship for 112 days, and entered the 60th day of her reign as the West Coast Pro Women’s Champion as of this writing. In contrast, Seira held the Stardom High Speed Championship twice for a combined 692 days.

As most would have expected, Momono and Seira started at a sprint, which made Seira’s decision to break the flow on Momono tactically sound and aesthetically pleasing.

Momono challenged Seira to keep up, and when they showed that they were equals, she offered Seira a handshake. Seira won my favor with a slap to Momono’s face. Friendship and mutual respect had no place when there was a need, a need for speed.

That rightly turned Momono’s demeanor around to what we saw against, say, Ai Houzan, and Momono rained blows to Seira’s head. Seira chained a powerbomb, a sprinting elbow smash, and a dropkick, and Momono answered with a super armdrag, a suspended German Suplex on the middle rope, and an arm and neck submission on the mat. Seira and Momono had already starting flying with their dropkicks, but Momono’s super armdrag and Seira’s dropkick to a Momono on her top turnbuckle throne seemed like an escalation.

That escalation led to Seira’s attempt at a dive, which Momono countered with a release German Suplex from the top rope to the mat. It was a wild stunt.

Seira and Momono then traded one count kickouts from dropkicks. (I don’t think I can tell you which dropkick I prefer.) Much like Jason Statham’s Chev Chevlios in Crank and the even more ridiculous Crank: High Voltage, stopping to show the damage that they had inflicted on each other was impossible. To paraphrase Blain, “[They] ain’t got time to bleed” or to slow down after they drop each other on their heads and necks with German Suplexes. The best they could do was have Seira and Momono wobble a bit when they stand before Seira committed to a superkick and Seira look a little dazed as Momono spun her around to set her up for a Code Red.

It was a great sprint, and it will probably join the list of great matches that lasted less than ten minutes. (In this case, it lasted six minutes and forty-three seconds.) Momono and Seira showed that they are at least co-monarchs of motor and momentum. If Jay and Williams vs. Shire and Manders required accepting chaos in a match to become Marie Kondos, then Seira vs. Momono required a suspension of disbelief that sometimes you just need to see a Chev Chelios or a Blain in action.

Then again, Momono did team with Itsuki Aoki to face Mayu Iwatani and Rin in Rin’s retirement match immediately after this match. Maybe Momono was just a superhuman.

You can watch this match and the show on Wrestle Universe.

Takumi Iroha (c) vs. Sareee
Marvelous 10th Anniversary Commemorative Event
May 5, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: 9
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: 9.12

Sometimes, you just need to beat up your friend, sibling, or tag team partner.

Jay and Mark Briscoe famously fought each other to toughen each other up at ROH The Fifth Year Festival: Finale after they had lost the ROH World Tag Team Championship to Naruki Doi and SHINGO just seven days after they won them from Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal. After they had honed their edges against each other, they reclaimed the titles from Doi and SHINGO twenty-seven days after they lost them.

Sareee famously seemed to love teaming with wrestlers whom she defeated. Fierce competition earned her respect, as Arisu Endo found out the hard way when she returned fire on Sareee and Takumi Iroha with enough vigor that they could not ignore her. As Spark Rush, Sareee and Iroha found success in 2025, holding the AAAW Tag Team Championship for 222 days. They’ve teamed for ten matches in 2026 and won nine of them; they wrestled to a time limit draw against Magenta (Maria and RIKO).

Just as Syuri challenged Chihiro Hashimoto after their unsuccessful partnership at Sareee-ISM Chapter X, Iroha challenged Sareee to a match for Iroha’s AAAW Championship, which she had held since August 8, 2024. Their records against each other were even: Iroha beat Sareee on August 24, 2017 in SEAdLINNNG, and Sareee beat Iroha on May 27, 2018 in World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana. They also wrestled to a time limit draw on June 2, 2019 in Diana to set a very neat 1-1-1 record together. This match would put one wrestler definitively over the other, at least until their next match.

Bless the heart of the production team at Marvelous because they definitely tried their hardest with Sareee’s graphic.

With a shove after some decent grappling on the ground, a tight collar and elbow struggle, and a slap to the chest after a clean break against the ropes, Spark Rush exploded. Iroha struck first with a kick to Sareee’s leg, and Sareee responded with a forearm club to Iroha’s chest. Iroha made the first pinfall attempt, but Sareee, as usual, bridged out of the pin and took Iroha down with a running dropkick. Sometimes, you just need to play the hits and “get the Led out” with three consecutive Led Zeppelin songs like you’re Carol Miller. (My preferred trio would be “Achilles Last Stand,” then “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” and close with “When the Levee Breaks.” That selection also ensured the DJ would get two good chances to stretch and get some coffee.)

From a match between two friends/rivals/partners, you would expect some inversions of familiar sequences to show their familiarity with each other. Iroha gave us the first by baiting Sareee into her dropkick to a seated opponent against the bottom rope and slipping away, which led to Sareee crashing out of the ring. Sareee followed by catching Iroha’s kick on the apron in a Dragon Screw Leg Whip to set up a double stomp from the apron.

Iroha and Sareee continued to inflict bodily harm to each other on the floor: a suplex from Iroha on the very thin mat on the Yokohama BUNTAI floor, a surprisingly suspenseful toss into the ringpost, and a dodge that led Iroha to kick the ringpost very hard to Sareee’s delight.

And Senka Akatsuki, buddy, I appreciate that you were trying to help, but spraying Iroha’s boot and pant leg with the pain relief mist probably wasn’t very effective.

Likely infuriated by the lack of aid that Akatsuki rendered to Iroha, Sareee helped her Spark Rush teammate by retrieving Iroha from the floor and returning her to the ring. She then helped Iroha get over the pain from her ankle by stomping her knee and twisting it.

In a bit of a “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” situation, Sareee then decided to help Iroha forget about the knee pain by hammering Iroha’s back with her forearm. Iroha rewarded Sareee for her efforts with a Spinning Heel Kick, but it exacerbated her ankle pain and undid all of Sareee’s work to help her forget it. No good deed ever went unpunished, I suppose.

Iroha beat back the pain to try to wear Sareee down with a Texas Cloverleaf hold, but it barely slowed Sareee down. Sareee doggedly focused on the leg and caught Iroha on the top turnbuckle with another Dragon Whip to the mat and a kneebar. Iroha had to bite her hand to refocus and stop herself from tapping out so she could reach the bottom rope. After she broke the hold, Sareee continued to help by stomping Iroha’s stomach from the second turnbuckle.

This time, Sareee’s counterintuitive pain management system actually worked since Iroha was able to power through the leg pain and land a high head kick, a tornado kick, and a diving heel kick to Sareee’s head and a Swanton Bomb to Sareee’s stomach. A powerbomb and a running kick forced Sareee to burn meter to pop up and retaliate with a running stomp to Iroha’s face and shoulder, which gave both wrestlers a chance to catch their breath.

From their knees and to their feet, Iroha and Sareee exchanged punches like they’re Robin Lopez and Serge Ibaka, Jorge Soler and Reynaldo Lopez, or Spike and Angel. Sareee dared Iroha to throw her best shot, so, like a good friend would, Iroha gingerly tested her ankle and pivoted on her hurt leg for a big roaring elbow.

Iroha and Sareee escalated their forearm strike duel into a German Suplex duel, and Iroha burned through her energy reserve first. Sareee landed the running dropkick to a seated Iroha this time, and they rolled around in full mount on each other until Sareee rained blows to Iroha’s collarbone. She slapped away the referee when he asked her to release Iroha from full mount, which was shocking.

In the end, Iroha and Sareee were just a couple of Finlays (Fit, not David, and certainly not Brogan).

(Judging by Sareee’s reaction to Iroha’s kick above, Sareee might also be Klimton “I’m a genius! Oh no!” Nicchini from Gundam G Reconguista in G.)

Iroha’s kick finally forced Sareee on to her back foot and into the corner, where she turtled to defend against Iroha’s knee drops and punches to the back of the neck. I chuckled when Iroha kicked Sareee’s chest while staring at the referee who told her to stop punching Sareee in the back of the neck. The setup for Iroha’s super sitout powerbomb was clunky though. Iroha’s try at a Running Three earned her three backdrop drivers (yes, I know that her shirts say “uranage,” but let me keep my tribute to Takeshi Morishima), so it’s probably for the best three was enough for Iroha and that she didn’t need five.

Unfortunately, Iroha couldn’t make her version of the Go to Sleep impactful at a critical point in the match; she didn’t lift her striking knee up with much force or speed. She and Sareee made the most of it and caught their breath for the finale. Iroha tried the Running Three again, but Sareee slipped out again and flipped her with the wrist clutch backdrop driver. Iroha kicked out at one for extra emphasis and planted Sareee with a Running Three at last to retain her title.

There was a lot to like in the match, but the excess of the closing moments seemed disproportionately weighted to Iroha. Popping up at one from Sareee’s super finisher and then beating Sareee with her normal finisher seemed to weigh the results too far in Iroha’s favor. Perhaps Iroha’s weak knee lift to the face or the fact that Iroha’s leg pain became completely irrelevant soured me. Sareee maintained a fairly consistent theme of countering her tag team partner’s offense, but Iroha didn’t run with that idea past the early moment that I mentioned above. I prefer Spark Rush’s matches against Hashimoto and Syuri or Miyu Yamashita and Endo to this match.

You can watch this match and the show on Wrestle Universe.

Seri Yamaoka vs. Senka Akatsuki
Marigold Shine Forever 2026 ~ A Glorious Celebration ~
May 23, 2026
Cagematch ranking as of 6/1/26: 229
Cagematch rating as of 6/1/26: 7.77

About five months after Seri Yamaoka and Senka Akatsuki had their singles match to cap off their rivalry from 2025, Marigold reached for the rematch to help bolster their Shine Forever show’s line-up. This anniversary show needed the help since Mayu Iwatani and Victoria Yuzuki were both injured. Marigold even pressed the sixty-five-years-old Dump Matsumoto into service for her first match in Marigold at this show.

Though the show was headlined by a facsimile of an all-star tag team match between Mai Sakurai, Miku Aono, and MIRAI vs. Maddy Morgan, Takumi Iroha, and the departing Utami Hayahshihita (who announced on April 25 that she was leaving Marigold), the critical eye was turned toward Yamaoka and Akatsuki’s match. We last focused on Akatsuki for her match against Chihiro Hashimoto; she then had her unexpected standout match against Chris Hero during WrestleMania Week. After that, she kept on keeping on with a well-regarded match against Miyu Yamashita, a tag match with Spike Nishimura against Speed Rush, a defense of her Sendai Girls Junior Championship against YUNA, a tag match with Chi Chi against Iroha and Hayashishita, and a tag match with Iroha against Sakurai and Yuuka “The Mad Dog from Naniwa” Yamazaki. This was the resume that you’d expect from joshi’s striver, the Guts of Sendai Girls.

When we last saw Yamaoka, she was getting words of encouragement from Hashimoto after Hashimoto and Manami whooped Yamaoka and Yuuka “The Mad Dog from Naniwa” Yamazaki. She took Hashimoto’s words to heart and beat Angel Hayze for the British Empire Women’s Championship, sending the world another reminder that the sun had indeed set on the British Empire. Newly crowned, she had some tag matches and a time limit draw with Hayashishita and her first work trip to the United States with (*sigh*) Sukeban, where she wrestled in the Hammerstein Ballroom as Seri Bear. The indignity of wrestling as Seri Bear surely contributed to Yamaoka losing the British Empire Women’s Championship to Maddy Morgan and injuring her shoulder nine days after wrestling in Sukeban and five days after this match.

The easy narrative was to contrast Yamaoka and Akatsuki, from their debuts to their choice of costumes for their matches. The more interesting narrative to consider would be if they would be as successful as they are if they had switched places.

As of this writing and according to Cagematch, Marvelous has held thirteen shows in 2026, ten of which were at Shin-Kiba 1ST RING and have no reported attendance. The other shows were at Shinjuku FACE, Bizaree Bar, and Yokohama BUNTAI, and the 10th Anniversary Commemorative Event had a reported attendance of 3,492. Marigold, on the other hand, has held forty-three shows, and three shows had an attendance greater than 1,000. Marigold averaged an attendance of 471 over those shows, and they showed declining attendance at their most frequently used venues over the past six months.

The nature of their respective companies placed conditions on their development as wrestlers. Marvelous ran less frequently, so Akatsuki had to seek out growth opportunities in other companies and in other countries. She traveled to the United States to work first, and her matches there have been higher quality and have received more attention than Yamaoka’s sole match with (*sigh*) Sukeban.

In 2025, Akatsuki wrestled 49 matches across 6 different companies: 30 in Marvelous, 8 in Sendai Girls, 6 in Marigold, and 3 in Tenryu Project. Through 2026 so far, Akatsuki has wrestled 33 matches across 10 different companies: 14 so far in Marvelous, 9 in Sendai Girls, and 2 in NOAH. Amongst Akatsuki’s matches that were rated 7.5 or above in her match guide on Cagematch: she had 16 matches from 5 different companies:

• Marvelous That’s Women’s Pro Wrestling: 7
• Dream Star Fighting Marigold: 4
• Sendai Girls’ Pro Wrestling: 2
• Pro Wrestling NOAH: 2
• West Coast Pro Wrestling: 1

On the other hand, Yamaoka wrestled 99 matches across 3 different companies in 2025: 95 in Marigold and 3 in Marvelous. In 2026, Yamaoka wrestled 42 matches across 4 companies: 38 so far in Marigold, 2 in NOAH, and (*sigh*) 1 in Sukeban. Amongst Yamaoka’s 26 matches rated 7.5 or above, she had 26 matches from 4 different companies:

• Dream Star Fighting Marigold: 21
• Marvelous That’s Women Pro Wrestling: 3
• Pro Wrestling NOAH: 1
• Shinya Aoki Produce: 1

Akatsuki’s travel abroad could allow her to wrestle and learn from a greater variety of opponents compared to Yamaoka, which would likely hasten her development.

But hey, at least Yamaoka had a bedazzled cowboy hat.

Indeed, she earned the right to have such a snazzy hat with a little of good ol’ grapplefuck with a touch of the Terror Squad right at the start of the match.

Similar to their performances that we last watched, Yamaoka and Akatsuki showed great focus and intensity during this opening grappling section. Just look at Yamaoka’s surfboard.

Meanwhile, in her matches against Kong, Hashimoto, and Hero, we’ve seen Akatsuki as the underdog rising to meet the challenge from legendary predecessors. Here, she fought a generational rival (who was technically younger than she), and Akatsuki showed no fear. Instead, she was aggressive from the lateral press than only scored a one count kick-out from Yamaoka to her running splash to Yamaoka in the corner. When Yamaoka grabbed her hair to try to escape her half crab grab, Akatsuki just gave it right back to Yamaoka and tightened the hold.

Outmatched on the mat, Yamaoka took to the skies with two springboard dropkicks to force Akatsuki to find refuge on the apron. There, Yamaoka compounded Akatsuki’s pain with a German Suplex on the apron.

After crawling back into the ring, we got the best part of the match. Akatsuki bridged her neck to escape every pin attempt Yamaoka made. Frustrated on the mat by Akatsuki again, Yamaoka tried to find offense in spacing and movement, but Akatsuki slammed her for her efforts. When Akatsuki tried to pin Yamaoka, Yamaoka thwarted Akatsuki’s pins and showed off her amateur wrestling background.

They drew more parallels between them with suplex exchanges (Akatsuki favored the vertical, while Yamaoka the gutwrench), missed frog splashes from the top rope, forearm strikes, and hard slaps to the face that could  almost fool you into thinking there was real enmity between them. In the end, Yamaoka capitalized on Akatsuki’s exasperation at Yamaoka’s resilience, caught her lariat, and dragged her down in an Aoki clutch. Now, they were even.

This was really entertaining not just because it was getting in at the ground floor of a feud that promised years of great encounters. Their determination to overcome the other and prove their superiority was very engaging, and they made the most of their thirteen minutes. Both showed areas to improvement, like the impact of their strikes, but this was still a very impressive outing.

You can watch this match and the show on Wrestle Universe. Also, check out Alex Richard’s review of the show.

Next time: “I’m not looking for treatment
I don’t believe in the truth
I’m just a victim of circumstance
Better known as wasted youth”
-Girl, “Wasted Youth”

No, we’re not talking about former Northeast independent wrestler Wasted Youth. We’re not even talking about former independent wrestler Reckless Youth. Instead, we’re going to talk about 30 Under 30-eligible wrestlers Suzume, MIRAI, Mei Suruga, Kazuma Sumi, and MAO and the eternally young at heart HARASHIMA and Shinya Aoki.