When it comes to delivering high-impact and big-drama matches, STARDOM has been impressively reliable, a bedrock of in-ring quality, for the past dozen years. In Chasing the Dream: 50 of STARDOM’s Greatest Matches, Rob Goodwin chronicles that greatness.
Bout by bout. Victory by victory.
Goodwin, host of The STARDOM Cast, traces STARDOM’s history by contextualizing, recapping, and analyzing 50 (plus honorable mentions) of the joshi promotion’s most exciting and important matches. The result is a valuable, absorbing text that serves as an indispensable companion piece.
One might see the second part of the book’s title and assume they are set to read an extended listicle. Chasing the Dream is far from a listing of STARDOM matches, though. It’s far more layered than that. Goodwin makes provides remarkable depth throughout.
You ain’t getting some wafer-thin Wikipedia-like snack here. This book is a fat, meaty sandwich.
Chasing the Dream is arranged in chronological order starting with Nanae Takahashi vs. Meiko Satomura from Stardom The Highest in 2012 to Syuri vs. Giulia (Stardom Dream Queendom 2022) before giving shorter recaps of 16 matches entered as honorable mentions. The extras in the appendix include some contests from 2023.
In the main section, Goodwin breaks up each match into three sections: The Background, The Match, The Verdict.
The background sections are the real heart of Chasing the Dream. These do an excellent job of explaining the significance of each bout, but more than that, they recap each wrestler’s path to that moment. What other challengers did the champion fend off before getting to this clash? Which alliances crumbled to lead to this animosity? What kind of momentum did these underdogs and end bosses have en route to this showdown? In answering these questions with such depth, Goodwin provides an easy-to-follow history of STARDOM as a whole.
A fan with next to no knowledge of the promotion could pop open a random page and after reading that intro section have a good sense, for example, of how dominant Io Shirai was as World of Stardom champ heading into her defense against Mayu Iwatani in the summer of 2017. Goodwin provides enough background info to get you caught up on Mayu’s rise, Io’s imminent departure, and other key details.
As you read from bout to bout, larger narratives start to connect.
Readers can learn about (or relive) Momo Watanabe’s historic Wonder of Stardom Championship run, Kagetsu’s reign as Oedo Tai’s relentless leader, or Utami Hayashishita’s rapid ascent to gold and glory.
The next sections (The Match) detail each bout’s action. These are comprehensive summations. They cover a vast majority of the dropkicks, suplexes, and leaps from the top rope.
These parts, and Chasing the Dream as a whole, are powered by precise, robust prose. Goodwin takes care in his retelling of in-ring action, providing punchy descriptions that read like action scenes from a novel. The language is rich throughout. This helps the book fell less like a reference book and instead something much more enjoyable. A reader can truly immerse themselves in all of it.
For some readers, though, the density of details here might be too plentiful. In some cases, the match section alone is six pages long. Goodwin takes an exhaustive approach here. Preference will dictate whether readers will be put off by that or be happy to savor every hold and strike relayed in sentence form.
The final sections, The Verdict, features an analysis of the bout’s positive points and drawbacks. Plus, Goodwin adds his own star rating at the end.
His breakdowns of the matches are deft. He excels at pinpointing just what it is that worked in the bouts, why some matches are great, and some are truly special.
In addition, Goodwin adds more context in these sections. He turns them into opportunities to dole out more history, more background. Take AZM vs. Starlight Kid from 2022’s Cinderella Journey. He not only explains why those two have such stellar chemistry, he explains why they are generational foes and projects a possible future where they headline Sumo Hall against each other.
All the matches you expect to be in this book are here: Meiko Satomura’s showdowns with Io and Kairi, Io Shirai vs. Mayu Iwatani from Year-End Climax 2016, the acclaimed Syuri-Utami battle from 2021. All the classics get the treatment they deserve.
But Chasing the Dream also shines a spotlight on several lesser-known matchups. Even seasoned fans are bound to learn of some new bangers or at least read of details that deepen one’s understanding of a match.
Matt Charlton provides sketches for the cover and to illustrate just about every match in the book. Charlton’s work will be familiar to many wrestling fans as he’s lent his art skill to texts like J-Crowned and Eggshells.
These drawings accentuate Goodwin’s writing, adding a pop of action or emotion.
Overall, the book is a five-star production. My only complaints are the verbose match recaps and the occasional typo. This is a self-published book that could have used one last pass from an editor’s eyes. It’s not enough to be distracting but worth mentioning nonetheless.
The existence of the book alone is exciting for joshi fans. That’s a corner of the wrestling world that simply doesn’t have enough literature celebrating it.
And a trap many wrestling history books fall into is being more encyclopedic than enjoyable. In these kinds of books, history is presented dryly, a list of events as opposed to a series of stories. Not here. Goodwin makes trekking through STARDOM’s past as fun as it is informative.
In short, Chasing the Dream is an essential addition to every STARDOM fan’s library. It is a must-read for joshi fans (die-hards and newbies alike), an invaluable resource for those folks looking to learn more about STARDOM and its wrestlers.
RESURA 