Kakuta Gets To Team With SAKI One Last Time

GANBARE☆PRO “BOAT RACE G1 TODA PRIMROSE”, 01/06/2024
Saitama Boat Race Toda

0. CWP Offer Match: Sasaki Complete Jr. & Baraki Ueno Vs Daisuke®️ & TERU Oshima
1. Gabai Ji-chan & HARUKAZE Vs Yuna Manase & YuuRI
2. Choun-Shiryu & Shota Kawakami Vs Tsutomu Oosugi & Banana Senga
3. Ken Ohka & Rekka Vs Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Yumehito Imanari
4. Aja Kong, Shuichiro Katsumura & Kouki Iwasaki Vs Keisuke Ishii, Mizuki Watase & Tsuyoshi Okada

With Shinchiro Tominaga out of action with a ruptured Achilles tendon the main event of the Saitama Boat Race show has to be changed. Mizuki Watase and Kouki Iwasaki are swapping sides and Tsuyoshi Okada is coming in to even things out.

The Ganbare☆Pro debut of Daisuke®️ went off well so the promotion is giving CWP a dark match to show off more of their roster. Sasaki Complete Jr. is nicknamed the “Killing Machine” and has won multiple different CWP championships. Baraki Ueno is an esports athlete who likes to use the techniques he learns from fighting games. TERU Oshima looks up to Tominaga and followed his steps into joining CWP.

GANBARE☆PRO “WILD GAMBLE 2024”, 02/06/2024
Tokyo Takashimadaira Kumin Center

1. Hartley Jackson Vs Shota Kawakami
2. Spirit Of Ganbare World Openweight Title Next Challenger Time Staggered Battle Royal: Ken Ohka Vs Yuna Manase Vs Choun-Shiryu Vs Gabai Ji-chan Vs Baliyan Akki Vs Daisuke®️
3. Spirit Of Ganbare World Tag Team Titles: Shuichiro Katsumura & Takuya Wada (c) Vs Shigehiro Irie & Mizuki Watase

The rookie Shota Kawakami is getting thrown into the ring with a real heavyweight in the form of Hartley Jackson.

DDT “WHAT ARE YOU DOING 2024 TOUR IN SHINJUKU”, 05/06/2024
Shinjuku FACE

1. Kazusada Higuchi & Yuya Koroku Vs Yukio Naya & Keigo Nakamura
2. Tetsuya Endo & Yuki Iino Vs Jun Akiyama & Tomomitsu Matsunaga
3. Special Tag Match: MAO & Shunma Katsumata Vs Danshoku Dieno & Kazuki Hirata
4. Daisuke Kiso Referee 14th Anniversary Match ~ Special Tag Match: Keisuke Ishii & Shigehiro Irie Vs To-y & Yuni
5. CDK 5th Anniversary Match ~ Special Tag Match: Chris Brookes & Masahiro Takanashi Vs Makoto Oishi & Shiori Asahi
6. KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Titles: Daisuke Sasaki, KANON & MJ Paul (c) Vs HARASHIMA, Akito & Yasu Urano
7. KO-D Openweight Title: Yuki Ueno (c) Vs Sanshiro Takagi

A rematch of last month’s KO-D Tag Team Titles bout has been added to the show. BURNING will face Jun Akiyama & Tomomitsu Matsunaga again but this time the titles are not on the line.

TOKYO JOSHI PRO “TJPW PRISM ’24”, 09/06/2024
Tokyo Korakuen Hall

1. Nao Kakuta & SAKI Vs X & X
2. Special Single Match: Hikaru Shida Vs Moka Miyamoto
3. International Princess Title: Yuki Arai (c) Vs LA Taylor
4. Princess Of Princess Title: Miu Watanabe (c) Vs Vert Vixen

Last month in America Nao Kakuta and SAKI were meant to team up together on the “GCW VS TJPW” show. Plans changed when Kakuta fell ill and was unable to travel to the shows. Tokyo Joshi Pro wanted to make sure she gets to team with SAKI one more time before she retires so it will happen at Korakuen Hall next month. Their opponents will be announced soon.

GANBARE☆PRO “THE☆BAZAAR”, 16/06/2024
Saitama Musashino Bank Shin-Tokorozawa Branch Parking Lot

1. Ken Ohka, Mizuki Watase & Shota Kawakami Vs Keisuke Ishii, Yumehito Imanari & Rekka

An outdoor event in Shin-Tokorozawa has sponsored GanPro to put on a wrestling match for them. It will be free to watch for guests but may get cancelled if there is rainy weather on the day.

Ganbare☆Pro Is Going Independent

A press conference was held in Tokyo today announcing Ganbare☆Pro will be leaving CyberFight at the end of March 2024 to become its own independent wrestling company. Attending the conference were members of CyberFight staff and GanPro wrestlers to give more information along with other updates related to the news. CyberFight president Sanshiro Takagi said he had spoken with Ken Ohka about GanPro’s future after the promotion celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. The two came to an agreement that the best way for GanPro to grow bigger is to go independent. Ohka said he has been wrestling under Takagi’s management for 20 years now and he has gotten his big breaks because of him. Over the last 10 years Ohka made many new friends through GanPro and he decided going independent will allow the promotion to reach out to even more people. He feels under debt to Takagi and believes the best way to repay him will be to make GanPro successful enough to surpass DDT. Ohka’s goal for GanPro from the very beginning was to turn pro wrestling into a major sport where pro wrestlers can become more famous than other pro atheletes. That goal has not changed.

GanPro currently has shows scheduled up to up until July. Their final event under CyberFight will be on 28th March. Up until now GanPro were able to book important venues like Korakuen Hall and Ota Ward Gymnasium because of CyberFight’s management and resources. Normally Korakuen Hall does not do business with clients unless they are a registered company. GanPro intends to relaunch itself as its own company when they leave CyberFight and their current representative Michiyoshi Mishima will be positioned as the company’s director. Ohka will also become a company board member in the future. They are on track to be fully registered by early March and will update everyone as soon as details are finalized.

According to Takagi the relationship between DDT and GanPro will not change. It will be similar to the current relationship between DDT and BASARA, which is another independent promotion that originally begun as a DDT sub-brand before spinning off into independence. That should mean wrestlers from one side will be able to have matches on the other side when requested. The two companies may also continue sharing venues to run back to back shows on the same day or weekend. Takagi would like GanPro content to remain on Wrestle Universe but we will have to wait on an announcement in the future for more details. Nothing has been confirmed yet about the future of Ganbare☆Joshi but Ohka is thinking of continuing the brand on a irregular basis. The two Spirit Of Ganbare Championships belonging to GanPro will remain as they are.

The champion Shuichiro Katsumura said he was happy and grateful to work under CyberFight. They handled all of the office work so Katsumura could wrestle every month and perform in venues as large as Super Saitama Arena. By going independent Katsumura understands it will be up to GanPro to handle their own behind the scenes work from now on. He has a lot of anxiety over that but hopes all of the wrestlers can work together to get rid of those worries, enjoy the hardships and create a bright kind of pro wrestling. As the current Spirit Of Ganbare World Champion and also a senior figure on the roster, Katsumura thinks he has to be a leader for the locker room from now on.

Several changes to the roster is coming because of this news. Both Shinichiro Tominaga and Yumehito Imanari have signed on to become fully affiliated with GanPro along with their home promotions starting on 1st Feburary. Tominaga has wrestled on GanPro shows all this time as a representative of the amateur indie group Come On Wrestling Party, or CWP for short. He sent in a message saying Ohka approached him a short while ago asking if he would like to join GanPro. Tominaga felt like he would not belong here but agreed to the offer. He now feels a stronger sense of belonging to GanPro than ever before and he promises to do his best to develop the company. Imanari’s new agreement is to remain in GanPro while also representing the Ibushi Pro Wrestling Institute. He left his video staff role with CyberFight last September but remained as a GanPro wrestler ever since. He has close friendships with both Ohka and Kota Ibushi so feels obligated to take care of both of them.

Unfortunately Shota, Yoshiko Hasegawa and Riara have all decided to end their contracts with GanPro and become freelancers at the end of March. Shota feels he is at his best as a wrestler right now and is entering a new period of his life where he gets to be a bit selfish. Hasegawa sent in a message saying she is using her last matches in GanPro to reevaluate the current wrestling enviornment before thinking what to do next. It was not an easy decision for her to make but her time in GanPro is irreplaceable for her. Riara describes her decision to leave as a graduation and she is thankful for her friends im GanPro that she’s been able to train and wrestle often in her daily life. She wants to make the most of what precious time she has left in the promotion. Then she will challenge herself even more in the future. Ohka said the people who come to GanPro do so in order to become who they want to be so he sees this as wrestlers graduating from GanPro instead of quitting. It is possible that GanPro will still book them again in the future but Ohka wants to prioritise taking care of those who stay with the company.

The GanPro roster when it goes independent currently looks like this. The fully affiliated wrestlers are Ken Ohka, Shuichiro Katsumura, Yumehito Imanari (along with the Ibushi Institute), Keisuke Ishii, Shinichiro Tominaga (along with CWP), Mizuki Watase, Munetatsu Nakamura, HARUKAZE, Yuna Manase, YuuRI and Shu Sakurai. The wrestlers from outside GanPro who are confirmed to continue making regular appearances with the group are Takuya Wada, Tyson Maeguchi, Moeka Haruhi and Banny Oikawa.

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I woke up to this bombshell of a news story this morning and I still don’t know what to make of it. There is so much to unravel I don’t know where to start. GanPro is doing what BASARA did in 2019 and that’s leaving CyberFight to go strike it out on their own. I don’t think that was a good move back then and I worry this will not be a good move either. This kind of follows the recent trend of pro wrestlers in Japan leaving their home companies on the indies because being a freelancer is more financially viable for them. Look at the current state of the Japanese wrestling scene and ask yourself is there really room out there for another self-sufficient company right now? What I need to find out is if this is really Ohka and friends having big aspirations that made leaving CyberFight a necessity or if business decisions had to be given by other people higher up the pecking order. If this is a sign of things to come then we could be in for another whopper of a news story by the time we get past March.

As a fan, the concern I have comes from the above BASARA comparison. It is not an easy task finding BASARA coverage compared to most of the other indies. I struggle finding things in BASARA to write about outside of the match results. If GanPro loses that stuff because the website reports were all on DDT’s end then that will annoy me greatly. However if GanPro remains on Wrestle Universe then it will not be much of a problem. They have an audience there and I don’t think it would be worth losing them for another streaming service that could have a smaller reach. Whatever the new website is just keep updating it often so I can have an excuse to keep following it. This has been a really fun little promotion to write about from its very beginning and they provide connections to companies that DDT and Tokyo Joshi Pro do not.

What will happen to the three people leaving seems to be all over the place. Shota’s reasoning makes the most sense because his profile is the highest it’s been for a while and he can find bookings anywhere. What Hasegawa will get up to is much harder to guess. Taking a step back to look at the big picture before deciding where to go sounds like a good idea but it’s also a vague enough excuse to cover up if she already knows where she is going next. I would like to see her in TJPW more but she is appearing in Ice Ribbon a little more often lately. But YuuRI wrestles there all the time and she is still committed to GanPro so Hasegawa would not need to leave if that was her landing point. Riara at first sounds to me like she’s leaving pro wrestling entirely but she says otherwise so I’d like to be wrong on that. Hook her up with Sumire Natsu and let them team up in the 666’s and P.P.P. Tokyo’s of the world.

GANBARE☆PRO “LAST ACTION HERO 2021” Results

GANBARE☆PRO “LAST ACTION HERO 2021”, 24/01/2021
Tokyo Itabashi Green Hall
95 Fans

1. Special Tag Match ~Ganpro Alumni Association~: Ken Ohka & Yumehito Imanari defeated GENTARO & Chikara when Ohka pinned Chikara with the Fire Spear (9:27).
2. Ganpro 6 Men & Women Winter Story: Moeka Haruhi, Yuna Manase & Shinichiro Tominaga defeated Ayumi Hayashi, HARUKAZE & Hagane Shinno when Haruhi submitted HARUKAZE with the 79.5MHz (12:01).
3. Shu Sakurai Trial Tag Match: Kouki Iwasaki & Daisuke Kanehira defeated Keisuke Ishii & Shu Sakurai when Iwasaki submitted Sakurai with a Texas Clover Hold (12:30).
4. Age Is Just A Number! 44 Year Old Vs 48 Year Old Full Scale Battle!: Ikuto Hidaka defeated Shuichiro Katsumura with the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex (17:09).
5. Cabellera Contra No Apesta: Shota defeated Yasu Urano with a Frog Splash (20:41).

In a match where only Shota had something to lose, he had to fight as if he was defending the championship he no longer has. Yasu Urano brought electric clippers with him to the ring and even shaved off a piece of Shota’s hair during the match. Urano tried to win by countout by leaving him for dead outside the ring but broke the count to attack him more. Urano even attacked Keigo Nakamura who was only doing his ringside duties. This led to Ken Ohka getting involved in the match but Urano hit him too then used Daisuke Kiso as a human shield to deflect Shota. Shota eventually got his own back by hitting a Topé Suicida. He missed a Frog Splash and Urano did his own. Shota avoided being pinned and used a Gannosuke Clutch to take back momentum. Shota was able to hit the Frog Splash a second time to get the three count.

Urano approached Shota to shake his hand after the match but he then tried to steal the KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Title belt. Urano tried to start fights with Shota, Moeka Haruhi and Yumehito Imanari before finally leaving. Shota said the indie world cannot take their eyes off his every move. His self-esteem feels a little wounded but his hair will grow back, he still has a championship and he found a new goal to accomplish. He is going to become the main character of independent wrestling in time for Ganbare☆Pro’s return to Korakuen Hall on 7th April!

Ohka suggested that Keisuke Ishii and Kouki Iwasaki should challenged for the GWC 6-Man Tag Team Titles on 7th February. Ishii is celebrating his birthday they day before and Iwasaki recently got married so that is a way for them to celebrate it. They need a third partner though. HARUKAZE said she will join their team because her birthday is the day before Ishii’s. She also has a lot of experience wrestling against THE HALFEE so she wants to finally beat them.

Ikuto Hidaka’s winning streak in Ganpro went up a notch with a win over Shuichiro Katsumura. His matches are getting more difficult because this time he needed to use the Japanese Ocean Cyclone to win. He used the move knowing that Katsumura never anticipated it. Shinichiro Tomainaga introduced himself to Hidaka afterwards, calling him an amateur pro wrestler from CWP (Come On Wrestling Party). He does not represent Ganpro, he is not even on the show poster. But he is still upset to see his friends lose so he challenged Hidaka to a match. Hidaka accepted and told Tominaga they will both fight with pride. Even though Tominaga is not officially with Ganpro, Hidaka senses he has the soul of Ganpro within him.

Ohka told GENTARO that the next Ganpro show on 7th February is a Kitazawa Town Hall. They’ve known each other for 25 years and Ohka wanted to know what GENTARO thinks of when he hears that venue? GENTARO says it reminds him of DDT. Ohka agrees because that was where he was a ringside attendant for GENTARO & Takashi Sasaki when they were the Aka Rangers. He was never able to wrestle the Aka Rangers back then which is why he wants to wrestle them now! Ohka will find a tag partner to take on GENTARO & Sasaki on 7th February.