Joseph and Colette Discuss Mio Momono vs. Arisa Nakajima

Including pro tips on how to keep up with good wrestling and what joshi you should scope out.

For the next four weeks, we’re taking a look at the best wrestling matches of 2023 thus far. We get into how we came up with our list in the conversation below, but you probably know the Joseph/Colette dynamic by now: Joseph keeps up with modern wrestling while I watch Sailor Art Thomas matches … only Joseph would probably get down on some Big Time Wrestling from Detroit, too, so who knows what my excuse is for not keeping up with the likes of Mio Momono and Arisa Nakajima, both of whom are incredible.

Since we’re talking current wrestling, we figured we’d put this week’s discussion up for free. If you’re a paid subscriber to BIG EGG, thank you very much for your support! If you’re not, maybe consider signing up! Or sharing our pieces across the wide, terrible galaxy that is post-Twitter social media.

Joseph: Arisa Nakajima vs. Mio Momono Is Matchmaking at Its Best
Colette: Arisa Nakajima Squeezes the Life out of Mio Momono

Up Next: Next up on BIG EGG, we're catching up with two of the best tag teams on the American indies today: Violence is Forever and The Workhorsemen! This time, they make their mark in one of the most exciting indies coming up right now: DPW. And they do it inside (mostly) of a steel cage!

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Colette Arrand
So, here we are, doing a mid-year review in August. We came to this list by combining the fact that I’ve seen so little from this year with the fact that you’ve seen a lot. I gave you a general idea of what I was interested in (joshi! Mad Dog Connelly!) and you were able to deliver on all of them, which is hardly a surprise given how comprehensive your MOTY thread is. So my first question to you is this: how are you so up to speed on current professional wrestling? I’m always extremely impressed, but are you watching full shows or cherry picking? I’m a full album girl and feel like I need to watch full shows. Maybe 70% of the AJPW I’ve seen has been through weekly TV, and that’s less a matter of ignorance than it is just loving the format and flow of a show, but there’s no way to go as broad and deep into the truly good stuff of the year, like you do, by doing it that way, is there? How do you decide what to watch?

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
So the easy answer first is that there's absolutely no way to do this by sticking to watching full shows. That also just doesn't sound fun to me because most full shows in the world are just kind of not great! The only things I'm really able to sit through as full shows, more often than not, are Dynamite and Collision and the big AEW and ROH pay-per-views. That's more out of routine than anything else too as it's just what I do on a Thursday or Sunday morning.

In the bigger sense, I'm just following the people I enjoy the most. At this point, I generally know who I enjoy and I can look at the names involved in a match and decide whether I think it'll be worth my time or not. From there it's just a matter of checking in regularly with my favorite wrestlers and promotions. Currently, that takes the form of checking the weekly CMLL cards (best matches are usually on the Friday show but Tuesday shows put on some good stuff on occasion too), the Dragongate YouTube drops (most any Natty Vibes or D'Courage tag is an immediate go), and then skimming any of the big drops on IWTV (ACTION is my go-to but less so compared to last year, Lucha Memes always has some gems worth digging into). Beyond even that, I have a good community of friends who actively recommend stuff I know I'd enjoy and that's where I get stuff like BJW recommendations (just follow the Astronauts and Strong BJ) or the indie joshi stuff.

And that brings us to Mio and Arisa here.

Colette Arrand
Yeah. They rip. This rips. I’m assuming that this is either the best joshi match of the year so far, or is near the top. You talk a lot about Mio on Twitter. I hope this week gets some people who haven’t yet to check her out, because she lives up to the hype.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
Have to shout out Twitter mutual @The_Corwo for being a big part of why I got into Mio's work. He was a big proponent of the Sendai Girls/Marvelous rivalry in 2021, that for my money is the best joshi program of the 2020s so far. She spent a lot of last year on the shelf with injury, which is no shock given just how hard she throws herself into everything. It's been real exciting to have her back doing a full time schedule this year and now doing so as the centerpiece of Marvelous as well. For a while there, it seemed like Chigusa and co. just loved to knock her down a peg no matter how fun she got. Even this match has a bit of that as well.

Colette Arrand
More than a little! When I initially saw the runtime I thought it was unusually short for a title match, but no, Mio is thoroughly worked over in this match, but her moments all feel like they could clinch a win for her. That sunset flip stomp sequence? That right there is why I love this great sport.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
To be clear, this isn't a title match so that's probably part of it as well. Arisa's a visitor here from SEAdLINNNG but she's not defending her Beyond the Sea Title as part of this match. That being said, it's not like Arisa's title matches in SEAd go much longer than this either. That's a lady who's mastered the art of bullying the shit out of whoever's in front of her with a lot of efficiency. Ever since Yoshiko got sick (injured?) a couple years, back, SEAdLINNNG has felt like they're working on rebuilding their main event scene so Arisa's been mostly working a bunch of younger challengers this year.

Colette Arrand
I don’t know why I assumed it was a title match but it made Mio’s comebacks more dramatic, haha. I was big into SEAdLINNG for awhile. I really want to see more of Arisa in this context because she’s incredible here.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
You're in luck! Pretty fun year for Arisa in this mode. If you or any of our readers want to branch out further, I highly recommend the Beyond the Sea Title match against Ayame Sasamura. It has a similar structure with Ayame going for an early attack, but she's a little less polished and fiery than Mio is here. Ayame's quite good already though, but Mio's a wrestler that I consider to be genuinely worthy of best in the world-level discussion. Feel like since 2021, any time she's been given sustained support from bookers, she's been showing out. She's got an exciting few months lined up for her too. I think she already has a singles match against Miyuki Takase scheduled for the next Sareee produce show and that'll be one to see as well.

Colette Arrand
It’s really nice to have Sareee back, man. When WWE gave her a schoolgirl/Sailor Scout gimmick or whatever that was, I thought we were witnessing career murder.

I don’t really have much more to say about this match. I watched it while my mom was sleeping, she’s been roasting me about wrestling a lot this week, which is great news (she’s an old fan — loves The Bushwhackers, who are 100% The Greatest Wrestler of All Time). Do you have any other recommendations for today’s modern joshi?

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
Since you've mentioned her, I think all of Sareee's stuff since coming back has been great. She has the singles vs. Chihiro Hashimoto, a main event tag at the Hana Kimura memorial which also features Mio Momono, and her upcoming match on her second produce show looks exciting as well. That's not to mention, that she'll be challenging Arisa Nakajima for the Beyond the Sea Title soon. They recently wrestled a preview tag where they stiffed each other so hard, you could see the bruising on their faces VERY clearly after the match. STARDOM fans will likely have already seen Chihiro's guesting in the company in the first quarter of the year, but they should all go out of their way to see Chihiro absolutely murdering Natsupoi from the July Sendai Girls show in Korakuen. Quick preview for the Best of July piece, but that's probably the best women's match anywhere in the world for 2023 as far as I'm concerned.