Soak it all up. The elation and chaos contained inside this bullet train. A rubber mallet tapping on a skull. A shirtless man checking tickets. A blur of a landscape in the window.

This is art. This is TJPW.

It’s been too long this Tokyo Joshi has done something as mirthful and ridiculous as Shinkansen Women’s Pro-Wrestling. In recent years, the company has had wrestlers warring in a swimming pool and an aquarium, and the results were just plain delightful. But 2024 was lacking that type of unique bout, the kind of out-there comedy wrestling that makes TJPW special. 

We saw a return to form on February 15 as Aja Kong, Raku, Miu Watanabe and Mizuki battled  Maki Itoh, Miyu Yamashita, Max the Impaler, and Yuki Arai on a moving train. Consider this sequel to DDT’s bullet train wrestling show in 2023. 

This one-match card started like every TJPW show, with Sayuri Namba addressing the crowd. But this time, she gave her usual rundown of the event while standing in the aisle of a train. Passengers packed the seats of the car. Many of them had their photos out, ready to capture what was to come. 

You could already tell this was going to be memorable.

The UpUpGirls sang and danced in that crowded space to kick things off. There was a palpable sense of bliss. One fan/passenger started pumping her arms along with Miu Watanabe and company. Smiles filled the whole place. That’s what this is all about. 

Never mind a star rating. Forget about calculating work rate. TJPW thrives when it leans into stuff that has everyone grinning. 

One by one, the wrestlers filled the train, each of them making a short walk of an entrance to their team’s respective side of the car. To start, this is where everyone but the legal wrestlers waited. They placed this like a traditional tag match despite the unconventional venue.

Watanabe and Yamashita fought first, flashing us back to their Grand Princess 2023 championship match.

The two powerhouses grappled right next to watchful fans, struggling for position in the cramped aisle. The match stayed in this lane for a while, focusing on “mat” wrestling, playing it straight. That served to build up to the more bonkers stuff. 

It was interesting to see the women work in this environment. No ropes. No apron. No room. 

When Mizuki caught hold of Yuki Arai, Arai had to scoot her body down the aisle to reach her teammates. It funneled the action through a narrow space, creating a unique dynamic and visuals.

It didn’t take long for the standard action to devolve into chaos. As tensions rose and the referee struggled to maintain order, bodies started to converge toward the center of the car. It became hard to tell who was legal and who was even on the same team at times.

The makeshift ring became a mess of flesh and colorful gear. 

Then came the deluge of gags and highlights. Raku wrapped a Yuki Arai flag around Yuki’s face. Mizuki cracked her mallet on Maki’s hard head. Wrestler after wrestler locked each other up in leg scissors, creating a human chain of a submission hold.

Minoru Suzuki later came in with a train employee hat on and checked tickets. He soon got involved in the action, defending his friend and ally Itoh. 

The comedy spots were plentiful. The meme-able moments were everywhere. Just what you’d expect from a match like this.

One of the odder and funnier moments was when the fighting paused so folks could admire the view outside. Aja Kong took someone’s camera and started filming the picturesque scene. A mountain’s beauty had everyone call a truce so they could all look at it.

As for the most impressive wrestling moment, Miu spun Maki Itoh above the rows of seats and above everyone’s heads. She showed off great power and control to pull that off without knocking into some poor dude’s noggin. 

Overall, the action was solid but not spectacular. The wrestlers clearly had to be careful in that tight space with the audience so close. That led to them having to work slower and more tentatively. High-speed wrestling this was not. More like restrained pandemonium. 

But you don’t come to a bout like this for a flurry of counters and fast-paced attacks. You come here for nuttiness. And we got plenty of that. 

The train match, though, didn’t solely rely on comedy spots. The layout worked to highlight everyone, giving us a good mix of hard hits with all the shenanigans. 

Max and Aja Kong had an entertaining brawl at one end of the train, the latest tease of a singles match that needs to happen.

Yamashita’s big strikes brought gravitas to the action.

TJPW smartly had Raku, famously a big fan of trains, play a starring role. She was whacking folks with her pillow and seducing her foes by way of lullaby, and took the final, match-ending blow from Yamashita’s knee. 

The environment itself was a major character in this story. The closeness of the fans created an extra crackle of electricity. The train and the Japanese landscape zipping by in the windows created a cool visual. 

The whole package worked.

TJPW went for it. A bold booking choice that gave us a spectacle sparkling with joy. This likely won’t make a dent in the 2025 match of the year lists, but it won’t be an easy match to forget.