Cero Reviews TJPW 8th Tokyo Princess Cup 7.22

[cero2k]

TJPW 8th Tokyo Princess Cup, Day 1
July 22, 2021
Shin-kiba 1st Ring, Tokyo, Japan

BAKURETSU Sisters (Nodoka Ten & Yuki Aino), Suzume, & Haruna Neko vs Rika Tatsumi, Hyper Misao, & Shoko Nakajima - 6.5/10
This ended up being way better than I expected honestly. Sisters versus any combination of the other team could be a main event any day, and Suzume is quite good, so I think I just got a bit jaded by seeing Neko's name there, but even her, in all her catness, looked good.

Hikari Noa, Miu Watanabe, Mizuki & Yuki Arai vs. Kaya Toribami, Maki Ito, Marika Kobashi & Yuki Kamifuku - 6.5/10
This was pretty fun. This was a mix of every flavor in TJPW and it tasted great. A couple of moves here and there may have looked sloppy, but nothing damaging. There was a lot of focus on Itoh and Arai, who have been low key feuding for a bit, they did Itoh vs Mizuki for the nostalgia of the Itoh Respect Army, Watanabe paired up with Kamiyu for a while, Marika looked FANTASTIC, and at the end, Noa got the win over Toribami with a Blizzard Suplex bridge. Toribami looked great too, just didn't do as much.

Marika Kobashi, she's slowly becoming one of my favorites.

Tokyo Princess Cup 2021 First Round Match
Mahiro Kiryu vs. Arisu Endo - 6.5/10
This was ok, for both women's level of experience, I thought this was better than others would have had ( e.g. see next match). I really like both women and the action was good enough, both had some time on top to show their stuff, but it really was a nothing match. I was thinking about it and this may had been Endo's longest match in the promotion, and maybe even Kiryu's. Finish saw Kiryu win with a spinebuster.

Tokyo Princess Cup 2021 First Round Match
Raku vs. Moka Miyamoto - 4/10
There aren't many pair ups in TJPW that would make me less care than this. I really don't care for Raku and Miyamoto, while I like, is too much of a rookie for me to get invested. She's not exactly like Arisu Endo who is fantastic out of the box. This was mostly Raku doing her schtick, Miyamoto with the hope spot, and then call it a day when Raku got the win via Doctor Yellow.

Tokyo Princess Cup 2021 First Round Match
Pom Harajuku vs. Mirai Maiumi - 5/10
This one started kinda rough, but it got better towards the end when Mirai started to run over Pom and head to the finish. Early on, Pom did a lot of her offense, which are not bad moves, but she's so unexperienced, that unless she's going against a veteran that can meet her in the middle, those moves don't look good. Mirai is really good, but also not that experienced and her style is more of a brawler/technician. At the end, Mirai submitted Harajuku with the Miramare.

Tokyo Princess Cup 2021 First Round Match
Miyu Yamashita vs. Nao Kakuta - 7/10
This was easily the best match of the show, but it unfortunately was a match with a predictable finish, and so it became a matter of seeing how we got there. Match saw Yamashita control early on, Kakuta made a comeback getting some near falls, and then Yamashita powered back up and got the win with Crash Rabbit Heat, and that's as copy paste as you can get with this.

Post-match - Yamashita cut her winner's promo.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Not the best start to the tournament, but with such a big field, we were bound to get weak matches and this show was where we had to get them out of the way. For the same reason, this show had a lot of matches with predictable results, there wasn't a single upset in this round because most of the matches had rookies.