Rather than updating individual title lineages, I’m stopping all ongoing series at the end of 2020 and dumping my reviews of subsequent title changes into these global chronological posts going forward. I originally thought I’d post these every six months, then every three months, but I’ve covered enough titles now that it doesn’t seem to make sense to do it that way, so once a month it is!

January 1, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan

Masato Tanaka def. Hayato Tamura {ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From ZERO1 Happy New Year. A rare case where I review the latest title change before doing the rest of the title’s history, mostly because I only just recently found a lot of the title changes and decided to get to this run soon. But who doesn’t love old man Tanaka? I feel like he’s always been an old man, as he doesn’t really look much different than he did in his twenties. I guess his hair is really thin now. But his work is basically the same. He totally kept up with Tamura, and in fact it was Tamura having trouble matching Tanaka’s intensity. Tamura looks like a beefy Kazuchika Okada. At a few points he tried in vein to replicate Tanaka’s offense only to be beaten up by the veteran. Tanaka worked over the leg most of the match and then finished Tamura off with a couple of Sliding Ds at 21:00. ***¾

January 2, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan

Yasufumi Nakanoue def. Yuji Okabayashi {BJW Strong World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From BJW New Year. I really should go back and do the history of BJW’s Deathmatch Championship and continue on with that rather than this title, as the Deathmatch belt is the real headliner. But I hate deathmatches and it was hard enough finding all the title changes for the Strong title, so I’ll stick with this and we’ll call it a day. This was a standard Strong title match, featuring big boys throwing larger than average bombs, kicking out quickly and getting up to do more of it. It wasn’t blow-away in any sense, but it filled twenty minutes with enough strikes and slams to entertain. Nakanoue hit two diving elbowdrops and a moonsault for the win at 19:58. ***¼

Takumi Tsukamoto def. Minoru Fujita {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
I’m writing the review of this match several months after writing the previous match’s review, and I’ve decided to follow both title lineages. God help me, as neither of them have been great up to this point. This was a meander around and shove each other’s faces into sharp things kind of deathmatch. One of the most boring kinds. The most interesting part of the match was the commentators saying that Fujita looked like Jesus Christ after wrapping his head in barbed wire. You don’t hear overt references to Christ in wrestling very often. The rest of the match was the aforementioned sharp objects and sloppy tosses onto makeshift torture devices. It was very boring. Tsukamoto put Fujita in the Gory Special and then essentially did a backslide on top of a bed of nails for the win at 20:02. **

January 4, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan

Kota Ibushi def. Tetsuya Naito {IWGP Heavyweight Championship & IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match}
From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 15. This was dope, but I didn’t get anything out of it that was missing from their G1 Supercard match that I saw live. I suppose this one had way more V Triggers, which is just a good move for a finishing stretch. Ibushi was getting outclassed for a lot of the match, but countered a Destino to a piledriver about 25 minutes in and was able to wrest control of things from there. A million V Triggers later and he won his first IWGP Heavyweight Championship at 31:18. This was his second Intercontinental Championship win, having previously beaten Naito for it at the show I mentioned above. ****

Rika Tatsumi def. Yuka Sakazaki {Princess of Princess Championship Match}
Tokyo Joshi Pro ‘21. I suppose the nice thing about the Tokyo Dome being at one-fourth capacity is that there were plenty of fans left over to fill out Korakuen Hall’s one-fourth capacity here on the same night. This is the best TJPW match I’ve seen to date. Sakazaki had things well in hand, so Tatsumi baited her to the floor where she could injure the champ’s leg on the guardrail. That didn’t slow Sakazaki down much, so Tatsumi went after her neck instead. Tatsumi slow started gaining momentum, so Sakazaki went for the kill. A springboard move saw the leg injury come into play, and Tatsumi pounced on that in desperation. A very long-lasting Figure 4 leglock saw Sakazaki unable to escape or defend herself, so the referee called for the bell at 19:22. You might think that’s a screwy enough finish to have the champ dispute the decision, but she hugs Tatsumi and congratulates her on the win. Great stuff here. ****

January 23, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan

Tsukasa Fujimoto def. Suzu Suzuki {ICExInfinity Championship Match}
From Ice Ribbon 1,095: Winter Story. The prodigal daughter returns to the top of the card for the seventh time. Korakuen Hall has been socially distanced, something that I didn’t see in the last Ice Ribbon title change back in August. I just learned that Suzuki is only 18 years old, and that she won the title at 17. She’s VERY good for her age. I also just learned that Fujimoto calls her Sankakugeri the Venus Shoot. A lot of this match saw Suzuki trying desperately to block or otherwise avoid the move. Suzuki was able to avoid the Electric Chair Drop/Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex (the Japanese name for that move too cool for what the move actually is), but the Venus Shoot eventually hit her in the face and Fujimoto was champ again at 18:50. This was excellent. Suzuki kept trying too much and getting thwarted. She was out of her league the whole way through, successful really only at periodically stopping Fujimoto from running away with the match. I especially liked the parts where they fought over escalating Infinity Bombs. ****