Cero Reviews GAEAism Decade Of A Quarter Century

[cero2k]

GAEAism Decade Of A Quarter Century
June 13, 2021
Ota City General Gymnasium, Tokyo, Japan

Story behind this show is that Crush Gal Chigusa Nagayo was trying to revive some of the GAEA Japan AAAW titles. Not necessarily the promotion itself, just the titles. So the story here is that both Meiko Satomura's Sendai Girls and Chigusa Nagayo's Marvelous are fighting for possession of the championships in the main event, winner takes all, INCLUDING, the Sendai titles that they put on the line. Marvelous doesn't have titles to put on the line, but technically, the AAAW belong to Nagayo.

Show opened with a video package of the old GAEA, showing some stuff with the Crush Gals, Devil Masami, Kong, and such.

After the video was done, all participants came out for a special introduction. Noteworthy name are Meiko Satomura, who I thought had retired, representing GAEA Japan. Satomura defeated Nagayo in the last GAEA Japan match in history before folding, so I can see how it was a big deal to get her. Mio Momono and Hashimoto got in a stare-down, they're in the main event and they've been heating up the feud in the shows leading to tonight.

Marvelous (Maria, Mei Hoshizuki & Mikoto Shindo) vs. Sendai Girls (Kanon, Manami & Yurika Oka) - 6.5/10
This was a good, basic 3-on-3 match with some of the rookies, the action was chaotic at times, but the focus on the two legal competitors was good. The most experienced of the group is Manami with 3 years, while Hoshizuki recently had some spotlight with a really good performance on STARDOM.

The heat in this match however, was between Hoshizuki and Yurika, they went together for a while that it actually got to the point that Kanon blind tagged herself in to get some action and she actually had a really good exchange with Hoshizuki, she survived a long sequence with a deep deep Boston Crab, had some near falls, but at the end, Hoshizuki won with, not kidding, about 8 dropkicks one after the other.

You can tell Hoshizuki was the spotlight of the match, she wrestled for 2/3s of it.

CIMA vs. Leo Isaka - 6/10
This was a well wrestled match, but I just couldn't get into Isaka. This felt like when you go to your local indie and the established former TV wrestler comes in and wrestles the hometown hero and carries them to a good match, but you know the established name is just there giving you as much as they can to make you look good. Well, that was this match.

CIMA was all in promoting GLEAT.

The Great Sasuke vs. Sakura Hirota - Dud, but great!
Hirota Sakura has a gimmick of impersonating other wrestlers around the world. Prior to the match she cut a promo about defending a fake title she had and came out cosplaying Akira Hokuto. She made some reference to being "Regina Triple H" that I didn't get.

This was all comedy, at one point, Sakuke went all Air bender, sending waves of energy to hurt Hirota. This type of comedy was so different from what we usually see, on one side, it was quite childish, but also a comedy that seemed to benefit from knowing of Japanese culture and Sasuke and Sakura's gimmicks.

I gave it a dud because it wasn't much of match, but for what it was, it was entertaining enough.

Hardcore Match
DASH Chisako vs. Hibiki - 8/10
A great hardcore match, it took a while to get the crowd going, but by the end, it was quite exciting. I've said many times that I'm not into weapon matches under limited reaction fanbases, but this match got a couple of audible slip-ups from the crowd.

The match had a good number of unique spots, they kinda did a thumbtack spot but with small megaphones and it looked as painful as it sounds. They had a chair wall hat Hibiki went through, there was a great spot that I liked with Hibiki desperately throwing the megaphones at Chisako, who was covering herself with a metal bathtub, that she eventually used to take down Hibiki. Finish was a beautiful Frog Splash from Chisako from a ladder.

Story of the match was that Hibiki is not all up there, so Chisako really dominated most of the match, but Hibiki is so much bigger than Chisako and can take way more damage, and so she was like a semi trying to run over Chisako, while Chisako would not stop until she could defeat Hibiki, by dodging her, throwing everything at her, using every weapon possible, until she won.

Chikayo Nagashima, Meiko Satomura & Toshie Uematsu vs. Chigusa Nagayo, KAORU & Sakura Hirota - 7.5/10
Hirota is out there again, and now she's cosplaying herself when she debuted. The rest of the women came out to their usual gear, looking fantastic, especially KAORU and Uematsu, I thought looked healthy and in great form.

This match was so incredibly fun. These women are between their 40s and 50s, and while aside from Uematsu, they've all kept active, it's understandable that they're not in their prime anymore, yet...YET they all looked quite well in the ring, Uematsu and KAORU were out there doing moonsaults and whatnot. The match itself started with a lot of comedy with Hirota and Nagayo, but later on it got real. At the end, Satomura pinned Hirota for the win. For nostalgia lovers and Joshi lovers, this was a great exhibition match.

AAAW Championship / AAAW Tag Team Championship / Sendai Girls World Championship / Sendai Girls Tag Team Championship All Rights Elimination Six-Person Tag Team Match
Sendai Girls (Chihiro Hashimoto (C), DASH Chisako & Mika Iwata) vs. Marvelous (Mei Hoshizuki, Mio Momono & Rin Kadokura) - 9/10
Mei Hoshizuki and DASH Chisako were advertised as surprise entrants, while I am not 100% on it, I think both their victories tonight were the reasons they joined the match for their teams.

This match was great for most of the eliminations, but once it came down to the final two, even three, the match was just exploded in awesomeness. Momono is so freaking great as a wrestler, her selling of desperation to win or defeat a monster opponent is something that I can assure you, you have likely not seen before in wrestling, at least in US wrestling. She's fast paced, high flying, and a fantastic seller. Hashimoto is a monster hoss wrestler, she looks huge in Joshi and works like it.

Finish of this match was also something incredible to see spoiler free, a move that legit made me jump off my seat and scream.

Post-match - After Hashimoto got her newly won 5 title belts, Takumi Iroha and said that she's returning from injury next month and that she's not done with Hashimoto. Team Sendai celebrated and left. Afterwards, Chigusa Nagayo came down and had a speech thanking the crowd.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I had been following the news of this show since the announcement from Nagayo. I had it in my queues, but I accept that it wasn't in high priority, and so I ended up taking a week to watch it, but I glad I eventually got to it. It was a great show through and through, from comedy to workrate. The worst match was the men's match with CIMA and Leo, but everything else was quite good to great, ending with a great hardcore match, a great nostalgia match, and a fantastic title match.

A lot of these women don't tend to get the attention that they deserve because the promotions are not owned by some huge company, but there is quality and it's worth watching.