Banner Credit: Hart_Editing

It hasn’t been too long since the last article about the RESURA Joshi Wrestling Fantasy League, but it’s time for the first update, letting you know where everything stands one month into the season. We’ve already had quite a few great championship wins, defenses and even a tournament finish up that scored quite a few points for the teams in the league, but who’s at the top? That’s the real question!

Let’s first talk about a couple of roster moves that happened this month. Right after the draft concluded I gave a little grace period for the teams to be able to put someone on their roster on injured reserve if they had gotten injured either before this year, or right at the beginning. I felt that it was fair if someone wanted to use a draft pick on someone and have to replace them with someone on the free agents list, then that would be fair. I also awarded the points to those injured wrestlers from the start of the year if they scored any, since we didn’t get to do the draft before the year started like I had originally planned. Hopefully come next year, we’ll be able to do the draft before January 1st while this season is finishing up, that way things can be handled more easily.

Right after the draft concluded, two teams already had a trade drawn up and ready to complete. Scott Edwards and his team “The Icon & Friends” traded their 3rd round pick AZM to Dylan Murray’s team “Mad Dog Military” for his 4th round pick Hanan. It was kind of surprising to see two early picks get swapped right away, but it filled a need for both teams. Obviously Dylan is hoping for a big year from the faction “Neo Genesis” in STARDOM as he now has 3 members of the faction on his team. A lot of people see big things coming this year for Hanan, so Scott obviously hopes that she lives up to it!

Now let’s move onto the injured reserve list, as it got quite a few names put on it this past month. First and foremost, after the draft, my team “Oedo Tai” put Kouki Amarei on the injured reserve list, and replaced her spot in the line up for now with Hyper Misao. Scott Edwards and his team “The Icon & Friends” put Xena on injured reserve, replacing her for now with Ranna Yagami. Ryan Dilbert and his team “God’s Sigh” put Haruka Umesaki on injured reserve, then replacing her with Totoro Satsuki.

That was the last of the roster moves that happened before the first points update, which worked out for me since Kouki was able to score eight points in her one match for the month where she had gotten injured, but nothing after that. Xena and Umesaki both haven’t wrestled yet this year, so they are still sitting at zero.

In the first roster move after the first points were tallied, Dylan Murray’s team “Mad Dog Military” put Kizuna Tanaka on injured reserve and replaced her with Hiragi Kurumi on the seventeenth of January, which was two days before she scored a championship win in DIANA which netted his team quite a few points. Talk about great timing right? Hart Editing’s team “Fart Editing” put YUU on injured reserve on January 18th, after she had earned seven points before going on hiatus, and replaced her with Mari Manji who had earned 12 points already by then, but only racked up three points after being added to the team. Towards the end of the month, on the 23rd to be exact Dave Coumans’ team “TCS 4 Life” put Unagi Sayaka on injured reserve and replaced her with Flying Penguin who scored 16 points before being added, but has added zero since being added to the team unfortunately.

With the roster moves covered, let’s move onto the team standings, and then we’ll cover each team more in depth.

TEAM STANDINGS

As you can see, Scott Edwards is currently holding down the lead with 195 points, but Dylan Murray is following close behind. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the two teams that have members of Neo Genesis on their teams are currently in first place considering how good the start of the year has been for that faction. There’s a bit of a drop in points once you get past the top two, but since we’re only one month into the year, there’s a lot of time still to go for people to gain points and make adjustments with their teams to try to gain points.

Unfortunately, Alex is bringing up the rear with his team that was interestingly built, but with it being heavy on freelancers and indie talent, anything is possible.

If we take a look at the points overall, the big winner this month was none other than Miyu Amasaki who scored thirty points in the month of January. If you’re wondering how she scored her points, she only won one singles match, one multi-person match which happened to be a four-way match, five tag team matches, one champion defense, and a tournament win as Neo Genesis were able to pull out the victory in the little one week faction league that STARDOM recently put together. All in all, it was quite a good month for the current Future Of Stardom champion, and we already know that she’s gained some more points with her recent Artist Of Stardom title win as well.

Tied for second place in the league wrestler wise was none other than the current SuperFly champion Victoria Yuzuki, along with the one member of Neo Genesis who doesn’t have a championship in Suzu Suzuki. Both of them have scored 29 points so far, so it was pretty close, but the funny thing about it all is that the top three point scorers from this past month were all on Scott’s team. Rounding out the top five for the month was Utami Hayashishita with 27 points and Mei Seira with 26 points.

If you’re looking for a few more fun facts, during the month of January, the wrestlers with the most singles match wins was none other than KAZUKI representing PURE-J but not currently on a team in the league, and Meiko Satomura from Sendai Girls who represents Hart Editing. Both of them won a total of four singles matches during the month, which is quite good, but something you’ll mostly see with the smaller companies more so than the big two or three. If you’re more interested in who won the most tag team matches for the month, that honor goes to none other than the joshi wrestling legend herself Jaguar Yokota who represents Ryan Dilbert’s team who was victorious in eight tag team matches during the month. Quite a good amount of output for a wrestler who is currently in her 47th year of wrestling at age 63 according to CageMatch.net. There were five wrestlers from STARDOM who were tied for second place with seven tag team matches won for the month that included Starlight Kid, Tam Nakano, Maika, Koguma and Hazuki. You always know that with the sheer amount of events that STARDOM runs each month that there will be a lot of tag team matches booked. It just depends on how evenly things are booked when it comes to who will score more points than others. With that taken care of, let’s give you a breakdown of each team.

As mentioned above, the three top point scorers, Miyu Amasaki, Victoria Yuzuki and Suzu Suzuki are all on The Icon & Friends. That’s one hell of a start for the team, but unfortunately there are two members of the team in Chanyota and Aoi who didn’t pick up a single victory this past month, meaning that they scored zero points. Scott’s first two round draft picks both scored the same amount of points this month with Mayu Iwatani and Seri Yamaoka both scoring 20 points this month, which is pretty strong if you look at some of the other teams in the league. It will be interesting to see if this team continues to be somewhat top heavy with limited depth scoring, or whether the lower end of the team will start picking up more victories soon to start racking up more points.

CURRENT POINTS – 195

Coming in second place in the league after one month was none other than Dylan Murray’s Mad Dog Military that was led by Mei Seira with 26 points, and Starlight Kid with 25 points. Once again, people who bought in on Neo Genesis are eating good right now. Much like Scott’s team, Dylan also has a few wrestlers on his roster who ended up scoring zero points for the month which included Maya Yukihi and Sakura Hirota. It also didn’t help much that Kohaku only scored two points as well. Saori Anou and AZM both also had a strong month with 21 and 21 points respectively. Hiragi Kurumi was a pretty clutch pick up for Dylan as she scored 15 points right after being picked up in the middle of the month. It’s been a great start for Dylan and his team so far, but will the top heavy nature of his team possibly bring him down in the future, or will those four STARDOM stand outs continue to drive his team towards the top of the standings?

CURRENT POINTS – 182

Currently sitting at third place is none other than RESURA’s owner Ryan Dilbert and his team God’s Sigh who currently sits 43 points behind first place. Leading his team is the Pro Wrestling Evolution stand out Chi Chi who is currently sitting at 20 points, followed by the STARDOM ace Maika with 17 points. Unlike the two teams above him, he only has one wrestler with zero points on his team, but it’s Haruka Umesaki who has been on injured reserve the entire month, so it’s understandable. The lowest wrestlers in points on his team right now are Sareee, Totoro Satsuki, and ZONES all with five points respectively. It’s definitely not the greatest look for the number one pick in the draft to only score five points this month, but it’s very possible that Sareee will have a big month coming up sometime in the next few months, so let’s not write her off yet. With dependable veterans like Jaguar Yokota, Emi Sakura, Ryo Mizunami, and Syuri sitting towards the top of the team so far, there’s a good chance for growth point wise this next month. I think we’ll be seeing God’s Sigh start to charge their way towards first place.

CURRENT POINTS – 152

Let’s move down to fourth place where Plug Pedro’s Outlet Wolfpack has made their home so far, only 48 points behind first place. The Marigold ace Utami Hayashishita is currently his top point scorer with 27 points, followed by the current TJPW Princess of Princess champion Mizuki with 22 points. At the bottom of the team is Kaoru Ito with zero points scored, which probably wasn’t helped by the fact that she only worked one match during January. Two out of three of Pedro’s first picks in the draft were Momo Watanabe who only scored six points, and Miku Aono with only three points, so he’ll be looking for those heavy hitters to have a better month in February. Suzume, Takumi Iroha, and Tomka Inaba had a decent month, but nothing too big to write home about.

CURRENT POINTS – 147

Rounding out the top half of the league is none other than Dave Coumans with his team TCS 4 Life who is currently sitting 52 points behind first place, but definitely not out of it by a long shot. Currently leading his team is his first round pick Giulia who picked up the NXT Women’s championship and defended it once during the month of January which scored his team 24 points. Sitting in second place on the team is Sumika Yanagawa from JTO who scored 16 points on the back of three singles victories, one tag team victory and a title defense. On the low end of the team is Unagi Sayaka who was dealing with an injury for most of the month, but during the two matches she would have scored points for the team, she was on injured reserve unfortunately. Flying Penguin was added to the team in the place of Unagi, but sadly hasn’t scored any points since being added. VENY, Rina, and Mina Shirakawa should all have bigger months ahead of them to help Dave make up some points on first place in the league. Being middle of the league isn’t too bad of a start, but it’s easy to fall behind quickly if you don’t have a few heavy hitters to really step up in the coming months.

CURRENT POINTS – 143

Fernando put together an interesting roster that so far has landed his team in the bottom half of the league, but still only sixty points behind the current leader. Leading the team is none other than the former Artist Of Stardom champion Natsupoi who had a pretty good month scoring eighteen points. Fernando’s second round pick Miyu Yamashita is sitting in second place on his team with sixteen points, which means she’s holding up her end of the bargain for being picked so early, but unfortunately his first round pick Iyo Sky only scored a meager two points this past month which is lowest on the team. Sitting in the third through fifth spot is Saki Kashima, Koguma and Yuki Kamifuku who all had a pretty decent month, but he’ll be looking for them to improve a bit more to help him move up the standings this upcoming month.

CURRENT POINTS – 135

When it comes to my own team, I liked the overall construction of it, and as soon as I was able to, I went ahead and put Kouki Amarei on injured reserve since she’ll be out for a few months with her ACL injury. Luckily for me, she scored a few points in the one match she had this month, so I did get some points for that. Seventh isn’t the position I’d like to see myself in at the moment, but with three of my wrestlers scoring zero points, it definitely makes some sense why I’m down there. Tam Nakano was the top performer for this month, scoring me 23 points, but there was a decent sized gap down to second place on my team which was Hazuki with fifteen points. I’m definitely looking for more from her this upcoming month. I also expected to get more than just 14 points out of the current World Of Stardom champion Saya Kamitani, but I think there’s more to come for her. Hopefully we’ll see more points from the depth wrestlers on the team, as I don’t want to see any more zeros by the end of February.

CURRENT POINTS – 131

Sitting down in eighth place is Hart Editing, who can’t be too excited to be so far down the league table, but with eleven months left, there’s plenty of time to come back. Leading the team is the two headed monster of Bozilla and Nanae Takahashi who scored 45 points together, which is a pretty strong top two. Down towards the bottom are the likes of Miu Watanabe, Riko Kawahata and Maria who are all under performing so far considering that they were all picked within the first four rounds. With Miu being at the head of those three with only six points, Hart will definitely be looking for that trio to pick it up a bit more this upcoming month. Hart also got a pretty good month out of the soon retiring Meiko Satomura who scored 13 points on the back of four singles match wins that makes up 12 of those points. He’ll also be looking for Tsukasa Fujimoto to actually wrestle a match, because she hasn’t had one since August.

CURRENT POINTS – 122

It wasn’t a great month for Xavi and his team Rebel X Run, however he did get a very strong month out of the current United National champion in Marigold Mai Sakurai who scored 25 points for the team which is good enough for sixth place in the entire league. Sadly the next best wrestler on the team only scored 13 points which was Marvelous’ Mio Momono, who had a decent month, but not a great one points wise. On the bottom side of the team was Mima Shimoda who didn’t even wrestle a match in January and Hanako Nakamori who normally scores quite a few points as the ace of PURE-J, but surprisingly she didn’t win a single match. I’d hazard to think that she’ll start her winning ways this month, to help Xavi’s team start making their way up the rankings. He’ll also be looking for Chihiro Hashimoto to work a bit more considering she was his first round pick, and she only scored four points. It’s pretty much a lock that she’ll win the Sendai Girls title from Meiko before Meiko rides off into the sunset, but up until then, big hash might not be as active unfortunately.

CURRENT POINTS – 119

Unfortunately for Alex, they find themselves down at the bottom of the league table, but with so much time left, anything is possible! So far, the MVP for the team thus far has been Manami Katsu from Ice Ribbon who scored 21 points during the month of January. That big title win came just at the right time. Unfortunately there’s quite a bit of a step down to second place on the team which ended up being Rydeen Hagane from PURE-J who only scored 12 points. Down at the bottom was Big Haruka from JTO who didn’t score a point, but she’s an exciting rookie who I feel will start to pick up some points before long. Also surprisingly, Yuki Arai only scored two points, though some of that can be from her finishing her idol duties before she goes to being a wrestler full time later this year. It also didn’t help that the OZ Academy trio of Mayumi Ozaki, Sonoko Kato, and AKINO mostly only work OZ Academy shows, and that’s normally once or twice a month at most. Hopefully they will be a bit more active going forward to help gain some points for Alex. All you can really do is go up from here.

CURRENT POINTS – 95

FREE AGENTS

When it comes to free agents in the league, there were quite a few strong performances during the month of January. The big force known as TANK had quite a good month points wise, even if her work inside the ring wasn’t the most fun to watch as she scored nineteen points. Sitting in second place on team Free Agents was none other than the legendary Kyoko Inoue who defended her championship twice during the month, which helped her get to 16 points. Right behind her was the TJPW regular Yoshiko Hasegawa who finished with 15 points, and KAZUKI who scored 14 points while being tied for the lead in most singles match wins with Meiko Satomura at four. Rounding out the top five in the free agent category is Moka Miyamoto from TJPW and Sae from Yanagase who both scored 10 points during the month of January. With TANK leaving Japan, there’s a good chance no one will be picking her up, but it will be interesting to see if any of the teams will drop a wrestler to pick up one of those top five from the prior month in hopes that they will gain them some positive points for the upcoming month.

All in all, it’s been a good first month for the RESURA Joshi Wrestling Fantasy League, and it will be interesting to see where the teams end up after the next month. Make sure to check out our coverage of the league in early March, and check out the rest of the awesome content that we provide here on RESURA! Also, make sure to give everyone from the league a follow to keep up with what they are working on as they cover the best wrestling in the world!