Mio Momono vs. Chihiro Hashimoto – The Purest of Dynamics
Every day, we need to take a moment and say a prayer for whatever time traveller took Mio Momono and Chihiro Hashimoto from the prime era of 2000s joshi and put them in the current day. These two produced some of the best wrestling in the world in 2021 with the Sendai Girls and Marvelous feud, appropriately with their trios tag at the revived GAEAism show and the subsequent Sendai Girls World Championship match a month later. Here they are again, doing business as usual and putting on the most compelling and intense pieces of wrestling in all of joshi.
With a shorter runtime than their big title match and in a smaller building with a much quieter crowd, this felt like it had a limit to how great it could get given how high of a bar their previous matches set but this may have even eclipsed it. Don’t get me wrong, a 25 minute tag building to a climactic final two or a 20 minute singles title match in Korakuen is great but with just 16 minutes in Shin-Kiba, they restored the feeling. For one, these two know exactly what kind of wrestlers they are and don’t compromise it for non-sensical spots. Mio is a fiery underdog who can bump like crazy and give it back just as much. On the other side you’ve got Hashimoto who’s 1148 day title reign as world champion does a pretty fair job at telling who how dominant she is while also being fantastic at portraying the wounded animal role in later stages of her matches.
The smaller details and unique counters are something I’ll always appreciate and these two bring it in spades, stuff like Mio pulling herself up to strike away at an attempted boston crab or striking Hashimoto in the face to bring her down to her knees from a powerbomb and hitting a spike rana out of it are just a few cool little moments in this. There’s never a moment where you feel like you’re watching two wrestlers just going through the motions, there’s always struggle and an attempt to get an upperhand which is an incredibly simple part of wrestling but something that so many matches miss the ball on, especially in joshi where wrestlers feel the need to taunt to the crowd or work a very slow and methodical heat segment that benefits nobody. It’s not just a one and done momentum shift either, Mio’s comebacks come after a lot of attempts that get stringed together. The best example of this comes from Mio’s attempts to bring Hashimoto off the top rope. First it’s a superplex that gets shut down, then an avalanche arm drag which Hashimoto simply blocks by being that damn strong and once Hashimoto attempts the dive and Mio escapes, her immediate crucifix pin attempt is countered into a fireman’s carry pickup which is only then blocked by trapping Hashimoto’s arms and bringing her down into a submission. Mio even throws a petty little forearm on Hashimoto’s arm after she gets the ropebreak.
By the time the ending stretch comes around, it feels that much more deserved that these two are out of breath and slower to follow up when they’ve been desperate for offence all match. Mio’s scrappiness comes into play with a classic headbutt and just wailing away with strikes, only to then attempt a dive and Hashimoto getting her feet up in mid-air – all the more reason for me to believe these two were taken out of the 2000s with spots like that.
The final minute or so is all built around Hashimoto’s german suplex. Whether it’s Mio blocking by trying to claw away at the mat, flipping out of it or even hitting her own suplex, everything is building to that climactic moment. Just when the crowd really come alive and Mio has everything going for her, to hit the ropes and get caught with the drop step into the sky high german suplex is such a fitting finish to a Mio match. Expectations meeting reality once again in 2 ways. One in the sense that Mio falls short to Hashimoto and two in that these two never miss against each other.
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