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I've seen a little bit of Tokyo Joshi Pro in the past but this is the most I've invested in a show. I was looking for a reason to follow more closely due to all the good things I had been seeing online; especially about Yamashita and Itoh. Unfortunately, although it was definitely good stuff it didn't hit the same cords that NOAH did early this year or Stardom in late 2020.
Nevertheless, this popular show is worth having an in-depth statistical look at as we take a deeper look at Yamashita/Nakajima...
Miyu Yamashita vs Shoko Nakajima
Ultimately this was a close match with Nakajima's willingness to take to the air helping her to keep pace with the champion. She also leant on submissions as grounding an opponent with an over 1 in 3 strikedown success rate. The closeness of the contest was underpinned by the step for step matching of reversals.
The respect and history of these wrestlers was maintained. Whilst Yamashita was willing to try and KO Nakajima via sledgehammer-like kicks, not a foul was utilised as the struggle intensified. Nakajima won this one by closing the gap on Yamashita in the second half of the match via resilience and not sleight of hand.
Shoko Nakajima endured a very difficult first ten minutes; 4 of those 10 minutes saw her completely closed out by Yamashita. The tenth minute was a turning point in the match; as momentum switched, things may become finely balanced towards the end but Yamashita would be unable to keep Nakajima down for consecutive minutes again.
When stacking this match up with recent matches from Stardom, interesting features emerge. The Stardom offerings use strikes far more evenly than the TJPW effort seeing Yamashita almost doubling Nakajima's cumulation of strikes. It is surprising however that Yamashita's strikes do not down her opponent as much as Giulia's did against Iwatani.
Another interesting comparison is that Nakajima's willingness to take to the sky was in line with Stardom's High Speed Championship match. On the other end of the scale, TJPW's championship match sees both competitors use similar cumulations of submission time as opposed to the Stardom matches' use of it to characterise one end of the match.
The flow of the Princess of Princess Championship match was markedly different to the Stardom matches. The most offence-rich part of Tokyo Joshi's match was towards the end. Stardom used their peaks twice as mid-match crescendos and once as away to kickstart the match.
Other matches:
