Cero Reviews STARDOM Cinderella Summer Tour In Tokyo 7.17

[cero2k]

STARDOM Cinderella Summer Tour In Tokyo, Day 2
July 17, 2021
Belle Salle Takadanobaba, Tokyo, Japan

AZM vs. Starlight Kid vs. Hina - 7/10
Great opener, full of speed and action. Everyone looked great, but AZM especially was on tonight. If I was nitpicking, I could say that Hina had some stuff that looked a bit sloppy, but it really wasn't hurting the match or anything like that, it just worked with the speed and helped against that choreographed feeling that some matches have.

SLK was in full Oedo Tai mode, not cheating to win, but taking advantage of eye pokes and such. She did end up pinning Hina for the win.

Lady C & Tam Nakano vs. STARS (Hanan & Koguma) - 6.5/10
Match was a bit mixed by having Koguma and C there, who are not as great as their partners. The match kinda tried to build Nakano againsat Koguma of all people, which will end up being inconsequential, like this match, since we're days before the start of the 5-Star GP and they're not even in the same block. For that matter, I'm not a big fan of pairing up one of the top champions of the promotion with the rookie, since it just means that the champion takes a loss to whatever team because of the rookie. If you're going to do that, at least try to have someone established on the other team too.

So I'd say the match was pretty good with Hanan and Nakano, and ok between Koguma and C, with the former pinning the latter with a German bridge.

Queen's Quest (Momo Watanabe, Saya Kamitani & Utami Hayashishita) vs. Donna del Mondo (Giulia, Maika & Syuri) - 8/10
This match has a couple of rivalries going on, Momo vs Maika, Syuri vs Utami, and AphroditE vs Alto Livello, which is the next challenge for the Goddess titles, and so, this match was packed with stuff to work on and build up.

With 6 of the best women in the promotion, I don't have to tell you it was great, because it was, you should know that by now, but for what it's worth, Maika vs Momo started, followed by Utami vs Syuri, and at the end, Guilia and Saya paired up for the near falls. The match ended up going to the time limit, which makes enough sense, no need to beat anyone here.

Post-match - Syuri and Utami were ready to keep going, Giulia and Saya actually kept going, and Maika just hit on Momo. The staredown between Syuri and Utami was fire!

Future Of Stardom Championship Match
Mina Shirakawa (c) vs. Unagi Sayaka - 6.5/10
Doing a rematch so soon after the end of the tournament was ok for me, but I really wasn't expecting Sayaka to take the title here, and given Shirakawa's promo prior to the match, I just felt shitty for her to lose the title so quickly. Sayaka should have won the tournament and that's it, have her defend against the usual rookies before her stablemate took the title.

As for the match, I didn't think it was as good as the tournament finals either. I found this one to be somewhat sloppy with some stuff. These two know each other well that their a sloppy move with some weight on it can look ok, but it doesn't help with selling or mistiming.

Post-match - Sayaka said that after losing the tournament finals, she was lonely and depressed, it was the first time she felt like that since she had joined STARDOM, she was always good because Shirakawa was with her. Shirakawa congratulated Sayaka, she always does her best to not lose to Sayaka or Nakano. They'll work together to win more titles together.

Sayaka said she'll keep the title until 2022 when her 3rd anniversary comes and she is forced to relinquish the title. Before she could leave, Rina came down, talked trash about Sayaka being old, and challenged for the title.

Starlight Kid Recapture Gauntlet Match
Mayu Iwatani (w/STARS) vs. Oedo Tai (Fukigen Death, Konami, Rina, Ruaka & Saki Kashima) (w/Starlight Kid) - 8/10
The storyline here is that Iwatani, in her hope to get Starlight Kid's freedom from Oedo Tai, took on a challenge from Konami, that she'd had to run an Oedo Tai Gauntlet and if she won, then Starlight Kid was free from the stipulation that kept her with Oedo Tai. I was kinda hoping that SLK would indeed be in the match too, and I really hoped that it would come down to her and Iwatani, but what transpired post-match was equally as good.

First challenge was Rina, who actually got a lot of offense on Iwatani early on until Mayo got a modified Dragon Sleeper for the submission. I kinda expected them to have Iwatani sell every match, but I think it would had been better for her to come in strong and determined, and slowly get weaker and tired as she went into the Kashima and Konami matches. There's a point when you just expect the face of the company to kick ass.

Fukigen Death was her second challenge, this one did see Iwatani have a stronger showing, even with the interference of Rina. This one ended really fast when Iwatani tossed Death over the top rope. It was actually longer than the Rina match, but there was a lot more stalling and playing around that it felt shorter.

Kashima was next, and this is when the match got better. Kashima really brought it to Iwatani, she had her working boots on. Kashima has been getting pins over Iwatani for a while, her pin has taken down a lot of people, including Iwatani, so it made for some decent near falls. Finish was actually Iwatani reversing Kashima's pin into a roll up of her own for the win.

Fourth was Konami. She picked up the leftovers that Kashima left, and so she had the upper hand early on, but again, Iwatani came back for the win. Konami did have the longest match and she put in a lot of damage on Iwatani, between kicks and going after her arm, she had some decent near falls. Konami's elimination came after she had survived Iwatani's moonsault and Frog Splash, only to find herself on the apron, and after some miscommunication with Ruaka, was eliminated when Iwatani tossed Ruaka into her.

Fifth match was Ruaka. Iwatani was mostly in control until all of Oedo Tai jumped in and interfered, gave Ruaka some openings to get some offense, but after pulling the referee and so much interference, the referee had enough and DQ'd Ruaka, giving Iwatani the final win.

Post-match - Great! Mayu asked SLK if she would join STARS again. SKL told Mayu that she wasn't, she didn't want to be Iwatani's sidekick anymore, it had been a month since she was forced to join Oedo Tai and Mayu hadn't done anything. She wanted to make a name for herself and she would do it with Oedo Tai, and she would become Iwatani's greatest rival and maybe one day, Iwatani can stand next to her as equals. Fantastic promo and character development for SLK, she really needed it. I would had done it without any physical interaction, but it was still great. Contraire to what some people had 'analyzed', this was not Stockholm syndrome.

This all made it seem like Konami had known all along that this would happened, tricked Iwatani into a match against them all, and even got the DQ knowing that SLK would stay with them.

Iwatani closed the show saying that STARS may look weak right now after losing Death and SLK, but they still had Jungle Kyona and Iida coming back soon.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Show was a mixed bag of quality, nothing was bad, but there wasn't really a match that was 'go out of your way to watch' quality. What was worth that was the closing angle with SLK and Mayu. At the end of the day, this was a lesser show in the tour and overdelivered in that manner.