WAVE is one of the few stable, highly active joshi promotions at this point, running the 2nd most shows behind the dying NEO promotion. While I'm not a big fan of them in later years, they are a very interesting promotion during the first half of 2010, which is probably the height of WAVE 's existence. WAVE boasts Shu Shibutani, who is a super consistent energizer bunny sort of workhorse in the vein of what Arisa Nakajima would become. Shibutani is good as any female at this point, and perhaps one of the most underrated women of all-time, but there isn't much else on their actual roster. Misaki Ohata & Ryo Mizunami are useful young wrestlers who give good efforts, and can be carried to good matches. Quality youth is certainly the primary factor in WAVE's success though, as the majority of the card consists of wrestlers who debuted in the mid '00's. While the big problem with puroresu is it's become an old man's game where everyone is entrenched & no one ever retires no matter how broken down they are.

What makes WAVE noteworthy, other than Shu, is it's the primary home for a lot of high quality young freelancers, most notably the Triple Tails unit of Kana, Io Shirai, & Mio Shirai, as well as Ayumi Kurihara & the unheralded Asami Kawasaki. Shibutani vs. Kana can deliver at the top level, but for the most part all these wrestlers are at the exciting point in their careers where they are still motivated to improve and are working hard every night to do so. While most of them would be better in a few years, they recover quickly & aren't yet broken or jaded, so while their high end isn't as high, the low end is probably better because they are pushing each other to get better rather than taking nights off or giving half efforts.

Though joshi is mostly a high pace workrate style in 2010, almost all the better young wrestlers were trained by the great Mariko Yoshida and/or went through her promotions, and Kana, Shirais, Kurihara, & Kawasaki mesh very well with Shibutani, Cherry, & to a lesser extent Ohata in being able to do a more martial arts based style, which can either add dimension to the usual high action contests, or, on occasion, stand on its own. Kana is certainly the leader of this faction, and while mostly everything credible is centered around her, there's enough interested workers to keep this style a part of the show.

Anything labeled as Comical WAVE is an automatic skip in my book, but WAVE is good at delivering something for everyone, with a number of different styles and enough talent coming through the door to make 2 or maybe even 3 matches per show worth watching if you are simply looking for quality action. The roster, or lack thereof, make it something of a house of cards though. While WAVE is likely the best promotion for the 1st 7 months of the year, once Shu Shibutani goes down with a torn meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament, the quality drasticaly drops off, though there are a few other factors as well. The Shirai sisters go on a Mexican excursion at the end of August, only wrestling 1 more match for WAVE the rest of the year. Meanwhile, Kawasaki gets more involved in her acting, and winds up wrestling what turns out to be the last match of her career on 9/5. GAMI finds some talent elsewhere, you get Yoshiko Tamura, Kaori Yoneyama, Aja Kong, etc., but it's difficult to bring in random veterans for a big match when your own remaining top stars aren't capable of delivering.

The downfall of WAVE is the centerpieces of the promotion, GAMI & Yumi Oka, just aren't good, and their less pushed idol, Moeka Haruhi, is a tiny girl who fights half her size, with such wimpy offense that's she's truly a joke in a league where Kana is brutalizing everyone who can take it (which lets out Haruhi). While GAMI was one of the better women around the turn of the previous decade, she's old & out of shape at this point, and just can't keep up anymore, especially with all these athletic youngsters. Yumi Oka is a reasonable taker in OZ Academy that, despite being tall, has enough athletic ability to be a quality, Michiko Omukai when she cared kind of worker, but falls very flat here when she actually gets the opportunity to use her own offense, mostly due to being so incredibly uncreative that she simply spams annoying big boots. Oka can be involved in a good match, especially if you surround her with 5 other good workers, but GAMI, though she tries to still hang with the quality workers & be an ace, mostly does so in a foolhardy, bullheaded fashion where she refuses to make the adjustments wrestlers normally make when they lose enough steps that they can't succeed at just doing the same things they've always done. The predictable result of GAMI being her own worst enemy is there are many times when GAMI could either be a useful change of pace as the power wrestler or delve into the martial arts skills she used at the height of her powers in ARSION when Mariko Yoshida was training her against Yoshida's younger students, but instead insists on just doing the workrate style, except in slow motion.

Shibutani was in main events early in the year, and these were some of WAVE's best matches, particularly the ones involving Kana. While it's logical that Kana isn't in a bunch of other singles main events given she's a hired gun, it renders WAVE a promotion where, especially after Shibutani goes down, the good matches are largely the incidental undercard matches rather than important big matches, if such a thing can even be said to exist in a year when any joshi league is a threat to draw 500. Another factor that contributes to this is the promotion doesn't have any titles of their own at this point, which would make it easier to mix things up or give someone else a run. The 2nd Annual Catch the WAVE tournament, whose Rival Block produced some of their best singles matches of the year, was another opportunity to make someone else seem important actually in WAVE, but again finished weakly due to GAMI & Oka playing prominent roles in the contrived feeling playoffs where GAMI ultimately won despite only finishing 3rd (after winning a 1:22 playoff match) in her own league block of 5. One could argue that Kurihara making the finals two years in a row would give her that boost, but she didn't have a more prominent - or even clearly definied - role during the later stages of the year.

1/4/10: Ayumi Kurihara vs. Shu Shibutani 9:37 of 17:47. Not only two of the best young wrestlers of this period, but two of the best, period. Shibutani is a workrate machine, and Kurihara is an excellent, diverse opponent who can hang with her no matter where the match goes. I thought this would be more MMA oriented, but I'm not sure if there was a single submission, which probably wasn't a benefit. Instead they just stuck to doing a fast-paced, aggressive junior style match where they were mostly charging/leaping at each other. The effort was really high as you'd expect, and it was all very well executed. It feels like this should be a WAVE match of the year, and maybe it was if they didn't cut so much out, but they are definitely capable of more. ***1/4

1/20/10

Io Shirai vs. Misaki Ohata 6:27 of 8:44. Io is mostly a high flying spot merchant at this point, and Ohata is probably a good opponent for her because she wants to do an athletic style as well, and will match anyone, effort wise. This was the expected high energy athletic match where they did what they had & got out, though it started stronger than it finished. Early on, Io did a nice job of carrying Ohata through some nice lucha sequences that we otherwise don't see in WAVE, but as it progressed things became more generic with Ohata's comeback where she was simply just throwing herself at Io repeatedly with dropkicks & cross bodies. The match did improve again for the finishing sequence where Io took back over, though it remained more in the standard good gymnastics column than really getting back to the well thought out sequences we saw at the outset. ***

Kana vs. Shu Shibutani 6:35 of 11:45. The two best workers in WAVE turned a brief undercard match into a savage war through effort, impact, and intensity. Kana's stiffness varies greatly depending upon the opponent, in WAVE we could have a Shu-Moeka scale with this match being proof that Kana holds nothing back against Shibutani. Against any other opponent, Shu would happy to bang it out, but Kana is so vicious she would rather get into her high speed offense because she's the better athlete with the flashier, more high impact offense, but most of this is on the move or off the counter. She knows she can't just slug it out with Kana toe to toe, and the fact there's some semblance of actual strategy in play adds intensity to a contest that already feels very high stakes. Kana does a nice job of not make things easy for Shu, instead punishing her with a series of nasty blows any time she cuts her off. Thus, Shu has to do some calculated exchanging to slow Kana down enough to not just get knocked out of the air. Despite Kana being at her fiercest, Shu hangs in there in the strike exchanges, and this is just some electric action, with some of the fastest hard strikes you'll see. Shu gets in enough high spots to be doing her thing & remain competitive, without them seeming too out of place in this war. While the match is on the short side, that's reasonable so given your body can only withstand so much of this style. What isn't reasonable is why they are cutting so much out when this is a class or fifteen above anything else in WAVE this year other than their Match of the Year rematch. ***3/4

2/2/10 Tokyo Shinkiba 1st Ring, THREE-GAMEs WAVE: Kana & Yumi Oka & Misaki Ohata vs. Mio Shirai & Io Shirai & GAMI 9:34 of 18:36 [16:04, 2:32]. A really interesting six person because they were able to make doing different styles depending upon the pairings work. Kana worked her striking style, but while Mio did stiff kickboxing with her, Io instead did her best to use her speed & athleticism to counteract. Ohata vs. Shirais was junior style. You might think the best thing GAMI & Oka could do is stay out of the way, but they were pretty good here, especially considering they mostly worked with each other. Oka actually pinned GAMI two straight falls. ***1/4

2/24/10 THREE-GAMEs WAVE: Ayumi Kurihara & Cherry & Shu Shibutani vs. Misaki Ohata & Moeka Haruhi & Tomoka Nakagawa 10:29 of 19:23 [3:38, 7:44, 8:01]. Shu was by far the best worker in the match because she was thinking about how to make the opponents look good working with her, for the most part jumping at her, which even Haruhi was able to do well enough that their segments were among the highlights. Kurihara was also good, but she was more getting her moves in & hoping the opposition could keep up or stand on their own, which wasn't necessarily the case. Ohata is one of the best utilized young wrestlers in the sense that she's actually not that great yet, rather basic '80's high flyer offense and can be a bit sloppy, but she usually has good opponents who can do good things with a hard worker in this style. Nakagawa definitely had the most to offer on her side, but didn't seem to be involved much. Good athletic action. ***

3/9/10

THREE-GAMEs WAVE: Shu Shibutani & Fuka & Misaki Ohata vs. GAMI & Mio Shirai & Io Shirai 15:30 of 25:09. Chaotic fast-paced spotfest. More toward the style of the Shirai's, who were among the better wrestlers, even though they weren't always on point. Shibutani was the standout because she can work at the highest speed, particularly doing nice things with Io, as they traded the 1st two falls. Fuka was here as part of her retirement road, and while they did the classic goofy sequence where she was shark attacked by the entire roster, she otherwise wasn't involved as much as I would have liked, perhaps because she was doing the exhibition with Shu afterwards, which was actually considerably better action. Fuka did finally come on in the 3rd fall, scoring the pin on GAMI. Ohata was surprisingly absent, while GAMI tried, but was really lagging behind even though she set a much slower pace when she was in. ***

Shu Shibutani vs. Fuka 3:31 of 5:00. These two were part of JD's 2004 class, and trained by Mariko Yoshida. I'll never understand the mindset of WAVE's editor, as this was a really short match people would surely want to see, and it was total gas, but they still cut out 1/3. Just great, lightning paced back & forth action. You knew it was going to be a draw, but these two pulled you in by doing what Shu does so well - go all out - so you actually were invested in the near falls, even though you knew better. One thing that seems to be a motif of 2010 is workers who seemingly have a lot left retiring, from Fuka to Atsuko Emoto to Asami Kawasaki, all of whom only wrestled 6-7 years, to Yoshiko Tamura, who was still at the top of the game, as she'd been for most of the decade. ***

3/24/10: Kana & Cherry vs. Mio Shirai & Io Shirai 9:30 of 12:12. It's interesting how much differently the Shirai sisters work against Kana, both to very good results. Mio tries to match Kana in standup, and they can actually do some sorely underused striking combos in addition to just banging. It's hard for your striking to get noticed when you are always with or against Kana, but Mio is definitely one of the more skilled strikers at this point. On the other hand, Io tries to avoid striking entirely, so she has to get really creative, ducking and dodging Kana's bombs then trying to capitalize on the miss to get an athletic move in. Cherry was fine, but this wasn't one of her better matches as she works much better against Kana than with her. Still, any match with Kana is where Cherry is going to do her best work, but she's just so far below the level of the others in terms of athleticism & crispness that the match still suffered when she was in. ***

4/20/10

Misaki Ohata & Io Shirai vs. Ryo Mizunami & Mio Shirai 10:59 of 15:00. While the contest was mostly good for the strong segments the Shirai sisters worked against one another, Ryo & Ohata gave the sort of strong efforts we saw from them all year. The match was predominantly in the Shirai's style with Mio bringing her kicks & submissions, and Io working with her the same way she does with Kana, finding flying offense out of ducking & dodging kicks. Ohata & Ryo more or less went along, more toward Mio's style, though they did more running. Mizunami is probably better than Ohata offensively at this point because her offense has more impact due to her size, and is executed with more explosion. There's one spot where Ryo counters Ohata's charge with an exploder that's really so much more well performed than had Ohata actually succeeded. I mean, Ohata executes her moves more or less properly, but they don't have the burst to them like when other small speedy athletic girls such as Bolshoi or Taiyo do them. That being said, being small helps Ohata have better stamina & take the opponent's moves better than Ryo, and ultimately, she finds a way to at least contribute to a lot of good matches, one way or another. ***

Rival WAVE: Kana vs. Shu Shibutani 11:11 of 18:16. Match of the Year for WAVE if not all of joshi. Kana is at her most vicious in WAVE because workers such as Shu & Mio are most willing to take it. There's one particularly nasty spot here where Shu is sitting, and Kana nearly knocks her out with a high kick. While Mio is most capable of doing a pure shoot style match with Kana, you never really feel she can win it, whereas Shu can do a really fast paced brutal pro wrestling match where, even if she's not as good a striker as Mio, she can strike with Kana enough to hang in by countering with her array of suplexes & DDTs which are bigger moves than Kana is generally willing to use. It feels a lot more like Shu can win with one of her bombs because she can make it her match, and similarly to what we'd come to think of Arisa Nakajima, is just one of those super athletic stamina for days types that can go full speed until she defeats you with a relentless combo of skill & desire, if that's what it takes. Shu can also counter Kana's clutches & submissions into flash pins, but this also works the other way around where Kana can can counter her throws into submissions, which adds to the urgency & unpredictability of the back & forth match. And that's one of the things that makes this bout stand out, it doesn't just glide along the rails the way so many matches do. Shibutani, who is the most energetic & fiery performer in WAVE to begin with, was extra fired up here because she's in the main event against Kana, who injured her last time they met. She's pretty much shot out of a cannon, but in their infinite wisdom, WAVE editors can't wait to start chopping up the early portion. That really sucked because this might be a great match in complete form, it definitely seems doubtful it ever slowed down in any sub optimal manner, as many other WAVE matches probably do. In addition to some brutal exchanges, Kana tried to work Shu's arm, but got slowed down by a pesky ringpost when Shu avoided a kick. Shu really took over after a tornado DDT on the floor, but Kana eventually came back going back to the arm by spinning out of Shu's German suplex hold into a Kimura. I like how Shu went back to this later on, but did a released version to avoid the potential counter. The intensity here is really high, and Shu is able to make you believe she can win this match, even though she ultimately loses to some sort of stump puller & armbar combo that apparently is another of Kana's moves that supposedly have something to do with Russia. Kana is great, but Shu really adds a lot of elements & intrigue to this match to make Kana's paired down style a lot more interesting without taking away from it by straining the credibility. These may be the two best to performers in all of joshi this year. ****1/4

5/11/10: Ryo Mizunami & Moeka Haruhi vs. Ayumi Kurihara & Misaki Ohata 9:58 of 13:29. Ryo really goes all out here to carry her side and make this a compelling matchup. It's definitely better having Ohata & Haruhi on opposite teams because Haruhi is simply a much lesser version of Ohata, one of those Sachie Abe sort of girls who you want to like because she's cute, but then she's just not quick or athletic or stiff enough to actually be a compelling wrestler. Kurihara was definitely the strongest performer, but always seems stuck in the role of matching someone else, in this case Ryo, in their style. Ohata does a better job here or getting some more energy & explosion into her strikes & jumps to make them more viable, and hence does a more credible job of standing up to Ryo. ***

6/20/10 Catch the WAVE Rival Block: Shu Shibutani vs. Ayumi Kurihara 8:22 of 11:56. Two of the most technically sound women around, as usual they made everything they do look really easy. The action flowed back & forth nicely, this time they mixed some submissions in with the athletic spots. I thought this might be a draw because it wasn't quite as fast & all out as I expected. While it was one of the highlights of the tournament, they are definitely capable of doing a better match. ***1/4

6/27/10 Challenge WAVE: Carlos Amano & Chikayo Nagashima & Sonoko Kato vs. Kana & Ayumi Kurihara & Shu Shibutani 13:54 of 13:59. Great matchup pitting the top 3 workers in WAVE against the top 2 in OZ plus Carlos, who is mostly down because she didn't get many good matchups. This was basically the OZ style workrate match, with a little more martial arts oriented action. It was better than almost anything we saw in OZ just due to the level of opposition, even if it didn't feel like the match really lived up to the potential. Kurihara had the advantage here, being a regular in both leagues, and was quite good, but it was mostly Shu handling the load, even though she seemed kind of beat up. Amano was kind of goofy here with too many headbutts, and it never seemed that the other OZ workers really established themselves, though Nagashima, who had a bloody mouth almost as soon as she started working with Kana, had her moments. ***1/4

7/4/10

Catch the WAVE Visual Technical Block: Kana vs. Mio Shirai 5:54 of 9:22. Impressive Yoshida style technical match that was probably the closest we saw to shoot style in WAVE this year. They threw a couple running kicks, as is Mio's specialty, and did a vertical suplex, but I can find UWF-I matches that have way more obviously fake spots, and this was actually more advanced on the ground with actually properly applied submissions & some better positioning. Lots of hard hitting, and while the finish was out of nowhere, that was fine, it just shouldn't be due to the sort of submission Bob Backlund would use. ***1/2

Catch the WAVE Rival Block: Asami Kawasaki vs. Shu Shibutani 8:03 of 12:26. The intensity & urgency of Shu, in particular, really sets this match apart. It helps, obviously, that she has the speed, technique, and stiffness to back it up, but, as with Kana, fighting somewhat credibly like you really want to wreck the opponent really goes a long way. This is a striking oriented junior style match where they really push the pace, but in the more believable sense of wanting to stay on the opponent so they can't recover rather than the usual we just want to get the extra 6 moves in. Kawasaki, who started in JD before Shu but was mostly an acting student then TV actress, is also quite impressive, especially given how few matches she's managed to have over the years. She's definitely following Shu, but doing so better than the majority of full time wrestlers, and she brings a somewhat unique athletic kicking style that, while showy, still manages to maintain a somewhat competitive feel because she's willing to mix things up & throw combos. It's a shame this was actually one of her last matches as she really had a lot of potential. ***1/2

7/25/10

Shu Shibutani & Moeka Haruhi vs. Kana & Sawako Shimono 10:39 of 14:47. Match was all over the place, as you'd expect with such a massive gap in talent. Shu vs. Kana was some of the best stuff all year, really brutal striking sequences but also some nice evasion. I would have been okay with Shu & Kana not wasting their time with Shimono & Haruhi, but actually what made the match good is that Shu went the extra mile putting the effort in to carry Shimono to the point that their segments were pretty good, which meant that we didn't need to get much of the dreadful Haruhi/Shimono pairing. ***

Catch the WAVE Rival Block: Ayumi Kurihara vs. Asami Kawasaki 5:30 of 11:01. Kawasaki has a karate background, but seems to have been more of a judo player, having been on the high school team. Regardless, she is one of the best kickers we've seen in joshi in terms of actual technique, ability/willingness to throw combos, and diversity. Others hit harder, but they literally just stand there & throw the same 1 or 2 kicks their entire career. Kurihara was excited to have an opponent she could do a more realistic match against, and these two really went at it. Ironically, the stiffest shot was probably Kurihara's dropkick to the chin when Kawasaki was sitting against the ropes, which set up the finish. This looked like it may have been better than Kurihara vs. Shu, which I would not have expected, it just had more heat, intensity, and effort. Of course, WAVE edits with no regard to quality, and these two being outsiders probably made this more skippable to them. Regardless, Kawasaki's stock is rising with every match in this tournament, I think talent wise she could be top 10 joshi right now, her issues are really from never having actually wrestled that often. ***1/4

8/10/10 Tokyo Catch the WAVE Young Block Finalist Decision Match: Ryo Mizunami vs. Io Shirai vs. Misaki Ohata 7:05 of 10:46. Io is by far the most creative wrestler in WAVE, and she was at her freewheeling best here, finding interesting ways to keep everyone involved. She also kept them on their toes, as you didn't know if she was going to facilitate a double team, or just mess with the opponent for the fun of it. This trickery eventually came back to haunt her though as after she pinned Ohata with a huracanrana, Ohata helped Ryo pin Io with a leg drop to win the match. These three worked well together the entire tournament, with Ohata working better with Io than anyone else in WAVE. ***

9/5/10 OSAKA Scramble WAVE: Yoshiko Tamura & Asami Kawasaki & Kagetsu vs. GAMI & Kana & Ryo Mizunami 25:27 of 25:57. WAVE hasn't excelled this year in putting on longer matches, largely because being energetic & going hard are primary factors in their matches succeeding, particularly with Ohata & Mizunami, who are still developing. Certainly, there are workers here who would have been more intense in a shorter match, but it's also hard to be intense at any length when GAMI is (clowning) around. I always get excited about seeing Kawasaki because she'll put some real fighting skills to bear, and her stuff against Kana was some of the best striking we've seen all year in WAVE, ducking and leaping over kicks. It's really a shame they didn't have some singles matches, and that this was the final match of Kawasaki's career. Kawasaki was a bit indecisive at timed, but being a bit unpolished has its benefits as she relies a bit more on reacting to the situation & a bit less on trying to fit into the accepted foolishness. Kana vs. Tamura was also quite good. Tamura is one of the smartest wrestlers in knowing how to get something out of lesser and more limited opponents. Even though this was in the final months of her career & she wasn't going full force, her stuff with GAMI was among GAMI's best all year, as Tamura kept it to suplexes and other locked up offense, if anyone was running, it was going to be her. Considering GAMI was involved down the stretch, this finished quite well do to Tamura, who somewhat surprisingly got the pin on GAMI given they weren't setting up a singles match before Tamura retired (she instead beat Oka). Kagetsu & Mizunami had moments, Kagetsu being the better athlete & pure worker, but even less advanced offensively. Kagetsu especially was just kind of there with the main pairings being Tamura/GAMI & Kawasaki/Kana. ***

10/3/10 NEXT Challenge WAVE: Kayako Haruyama vs. Misaki Ohata 8:07 of 8:24. JWP workers haven't really appeared in WAVE this year, unfortunately, but Ohata works there fairly regularly, including teaming with Haruyama in the tag title tournament earlier in the year. This was a rare chance for Ohata to get a "big" singles match against another promotions former champion. Ohata is one of the tougher workers to rate because her effort is among the best, and she's a good athlete with a lot of desire & hustle, but her offense usually isn't that impressive because her default moves are still the dropkick and a low cross body. These two worked really well together though, doing a nice power vs. speed match. Haruyama did enough big moves, while Ohata scrambled to avoid & catch her off guard. Ohata didn't have big offense here, but Haruyama did a nice job of setting her up for her armbar & various flash pin counters, and that was a believable path to potential victory against a veteran who considerably outweighed, outranked, & outgunned her. ***

10/12/10: Kana vs. Cherry 7:11 of 15:00. Cherry isn't the best worker, but she fairs a lot better in WAVE due to the high number of martial artists/Yoshida trainees. She's a particularly good opponent for Kana, as her background is in judo, and she's best when things are kept simple & paired down. Once or twice there was a bit of hesitation as to whether Kana wanted Cherry to take or avoid a strike, but overall, this was a good performance from Cherry, and one of the best matches of her career. Both have competed in Battlarts Queen Bee, and that's the style they did. While Cherry can't exactly match strikes with Kana, she took some relatively stiff shots, and was able to counter with a kneebar, enzuigiri, a couple of suplexes. The work on the ground was good, with some nice rolling in and out of submissions, and this was the most credible WAVE match I've seen so far this year. There were certainly pro wrestling spots, but they were often explosive counters using the opponents momentum against them. Even though this took place on a goofier than average pro wrestling show, it felt like a real fight. Kana did a great job here not only of carrying this, but of making you believe Cherry had a chance. In the end, the draw somehow actually didn't seem unreasonable. ***1/4

11/16/10: Kana & Misaki Ohata vs. Cherry & Sawako Shimono 10:54 of 15:36. Match really overachieved due to a strong all around effort. Technically speaking, it was good when Kana was in, particularly against Cherry, who again gave as good a performance as she's capable of against Kana. That being said, Cherry did a good enough job here that the match was still reasonably decent when she was in with Ohata. Shimono has only been wrestling for 8 months, so not much could be expected from her, but she wasn't bad, just kind of there. ***

12/5/10 NWA Women's Pacific & NEO Singles Double Title Match: Yoshiko Tamura vs. Yumi Oka 13:45 of 22:05. Apparently, if you watch enough Oka matches, one will actually be good. I don't know who was possessing her, but she was hardly recognizable here, sporting a full arsenal of suplexes and actual wrestling moves, and keeping the infernal big boot to a minimum. She even did some weird avalanche style neck hanging suplex, which probably sounds a lot better than it actually was, but anytime Oka uses an actual wrestling move I won't complain. It's not that Oka is a bad worker, she's perfectly capable, even good taking the opponent's offense, but she literally refuses to do less than 90% big boots in almost every other match, which gets old after 5 seconds much less hundreds of matches. Tamura was really good here, providing a framework for an action packed big match, but it's not so much that Oka needed someone to carry her, when she actually decided to wrestle she was capable of more or less matching Tamura and trading suplexes with her. The striking was pretty stiff, with Tamura accidentally busting Oka's lip with an elbow, but what was surprising here was that an Oka match actually built up & was exciting. ***1/4

12/19/10 OSAKA Scramble WAVE ~ Shirai Sisters Return Match: Kana & Mio Shirai & Io Shirai vs. GAMI & Cherry & Tomoko Nakagawa 11:36 of 16:38. Shirais wanted to show off their lucha here, and found some willing opposition in Nakagawa, who really made this match in a lot of ways, and GAMI, who was surprisingly passable outside of the finishing sequence. Mio looked improved, particularly seeming smoother & more fluid in her offense. Io showed a lot of good athletic offense, as she has all year. Kana was paired with Cherry, which is beneficial for both, with Cherry being much more useful when she's in a situation to use her martial arts training rather than trying to get by on athleticism, which is below average for a prime aged joshi competitor. The level was several notches higher when Nakagawa was in because her athleticism & workrate is much higher than her teammates. An entertaining match that went by very fast. ***

1. Shu Shibutani. Shibutani may not be the face of this promotion, but she's definitely the heart of it, really setting the tone in terms of effort & intensity. For the 7 months she was healthy, she was the hardest worker & most consistent performer in WAVE, if not all of joshi. She has stamina for days & takes every match seriously, going full speed almost every time out, more or less for the duration. She's a sort of anti Ingovernable, taking putting on a high quality performance & winning each match seriously. She's a fierce competitor & you always feel like the quality & outcome are really important to her, hence her not wasting time or letting the opponent off the hook. I care about her matches because she's going all out, putting her heart & soul into them. Of course, it helps that she's a high caliber athlete, who can work fast without losing crispness & precision, but it's her attitude that makes her really exciting, given she has the skills to back it up.

2. Kana. The best striker, hardest hitter, and most credible performer in joshi. Similar to Kawada, she uses a tight move set of legitimate moves and fights a serious style, refusing to stray into showiness just because the opponents are doing so. Kana is very precise & technically proficient. She's there to beat down, and WAVE is a good home for this, with a number of young, martial arts oriented opponents who allow her to hit them harder than she probably should. Kana kind of just does her thing no matter who she's in against, but she does a good job of elevating the opposition assuming they have some aptitude to do her style.

3. Ayumi Kurihara. As in OZ Academy, Kurihara is clearly one of the best talents in the league, but lacks a defined role or actual push. She's a versatile performer who does the style of whoever she is up against, for better or worse, though it always comes out well. I feel like she's a little better suited for WAVE if only because most of the workers are her age & have a martial arts background with Yoshida training, but even here, she's relying more on her workrate than her diversity.

4. Io Shirai. Io is oddly the only big flier and lucha stylist in WAVE, which should help make her more well rounded. I think it does, though in an odd sort of way that she perhaps she sort of backs in to, with her "refusal" to go along with what others are doing forcing her to develop creative counters to stick to the offensive style she wants to use. Offensively and athletically, she's one of the best in joshi, though there's rarely an Io match, she kind of exists apart from the others in WAVE, either doing her own thing the easy way (they let her) or the hard way (they make her work to hit her moonsaults). She has more pure talent than her sister, but Mio actually fits into what's going on in WAVE better, and is able to have some better results in singles, whereas Io mostly feels like an exciting tag wrestler. Io is never dull, but she's a ways away from the elite worker she is in her prime, at this point she looks good but on most occasions isn't really raising the level of the opposition or making the match good more or less on her own.

5. Mio Shirai. Mio is one of the better kickers in joshi, and while to an extent she's Kana light, she is a more athletic version that still manages to be credible. I like her more at this point then in later years, as she's serious, focused, believable, and pretty consistent since she's not trying to do a crazy schedule that's totally breaking her down. Mio fits in really well here, with her skill set making a singles match against any of WAVE's better workers probably sound more interesting than if Io were to wrestle them instead, though Io's style lends itself better to tag wrestling, which is mostly what they're doing.

6. Asami Kawasaki. Kawasaki is one of the best kickers we've seen in joshi in terms of actual technique, ability/willingness to throw combos, and diversity. She doesn't just fall in line with all the bad striking that runs rampant in pro wrestling, she, at least, fights more like the action star she is, which is more evolved in terms of sequences & choreography. She probably isn't going to carry anyone, and I'm not sure if she has must interest in bothering with the random unskilled schlubs, but WAVE has a good core of young wrestlers trained in martial arts that she can excel against.

7. Misaki Ohata. Ohata plays a minor role in many of WAVE's best matches. In fact, she finished behind only Kana & Shu in WAVE matches I'm recommending, 2 ahead of Io & 3 ahead of Kurihara. She never makes the match like all of those women can, and doesn't even elevate it simply by being a particularly skilled worker. Ohata is the perfect person to throw into a tag match though because she'll never let you down when it comes to effort. She's a good athlete, and she's going to give her best, which is really what you want from complimentary players. Always a candidate for any sort of Fighting Spirit award, Ohata may not be the most gifted performer at this point, but she'll never waste your time with a walkthrough.

8. Cherry. Cherry is the biggest beneficiary of Kana working in WAVE, other than the fans. Cherry is not amazing at doing the athletic based, workrate style that is mostly what you get in joshi, but she's good at doing the more credible, martial arts based style that Kana does. While almost all her good matches involve Kana, there's something to be said for being an opponent Kana wants to work with. Obviously, if more wrestlers did this style, Cherry would have a better chance of having more good matches.

9. Ryo Mizunami. Mizunami is similar to Ohata in that she's a young wrestler whose offense isn't that impressive, but who is a good contributor because she always works hard. Physically, she's much different though, being one of the more solid & stocky performers in the league, she's capable of doing a heavy hitting, suplex based style. However, at this point she doesn't have much standing and mostly tries to fit in with the fast paced, workrate style of the league, for better and worse. She's not someone I get excited about seeing, but is a useful tag performer who can at worst maintain a reasonable level in between others making the match.

10. Yoshiko Tamura. Either Tamura or Tomoka Nakagawa would jump way up the rankings with more actual matches in WAVE. Either one could get the final spot, but Tamura is certainly the better overall performer, and had the miracle of getting Yumi Oka to do something worthwhile.

1. 4/20/10: Kana vs. Shu Shibutani

2. 1/20/10: Kana vs. Shu Shibutani

3. 7/4/10 Catch the WAVE Rival Block: Asami Kawasaki vs. Shu Shibutani

4. 7/4/10 Catch the WAVE Visual Technical Block: Kana vs. Mio Shirai

5. 1/4/10: Ayumi Kurihara vs. Shu Shibutani