#i generally have a really hard time watching hardcore matches but i was riveted the entire time for this one

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TJPW Inspiration | Hikari Noa vs Rina Yamashita

April 1, 2021

Sometimes when you watch a wrestling match, you witness a transformation. This main event of Inspiration (Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s brand new experimental show) was the match where Hikari Noa became a hardcore wrestler.

Hikari has always wanted to do deathmatches. She’s been obsessed with them for years. She said, after this match, that hardcore wrestling is fun, but her true dream is to do deathmatches. She wants to bleed more so that her back will one day look as cool as Jun Kasai’s. She aims to eventually surpass him, becoming the best deathmatch fighter in the world.

Her path is an unconventional one for an aspiring deathmatch wrestler. Hikari is currently a member of the idol group Up Up Girls, who perform at the start of every TJPW show (including this one). She became an idol specifically because it allowed her to become a wrestler.

Near the beginning of this match, Hikari pours out a container of glowsticks and leftover inventory of Up Up Girls CDs. Rina Yamashita, an experienced deathmatch wrestler herself, picks up a few of the CDs and snaps them in her hands. It foreshadows what she’s about to do to Hikari, taking this shining idol and breaking her, bringing out the side of Hikari that’s jagged edges and sharp metal.

I love the use of glow sticks in this match. At one point, Hikari throws Rina into a board covered in them. In this early part of the match, it doesn’t quite feel like a true hardcore match yet. Hikari picks up the ladder and spins around with it on her shoulders like she did in DDT’s December 23 rojo (street) wrestling show. We’re still within the bounds of a regular TJPW match.

I don’t know if you can pinpoint the exact moment the match transitions from something that feels like TJPW into something that feels very different, but for me, it happens when Hikari goes through the table. After that, Rina retrieves a real weapon from beneath the ring, and from that point onward, there’s no more playing around.

Hikari’s favorite foreign object is barbed wire. She says that cooking knives and saws are designed to hurt objects, but barbed wire is designed to hurt human beings, and that’s why she likes it. Maybe next time, she’ll get to use it.

The match ends when Rina hits the Splash Mountain on Hikari, bringing her down hard onto a pile of chairs. Rina used this move to demonstrate that Hikari earned her stamp of approval, and she did it with the expectation that Hikari will grow to kick out of it one day.

A few hours before the show, Hikari posted on twitter that she was going to be the happiest person on the planet today. After the match, speaking through her tears, she immediately requests another hardcore match, saying that it hurt but it was fun. There’s something indescribably different about her afterward. This was an initiation, an induction, a baptism.

She’s ready for more.