April was a month of awesome joshi pro wrestling, but it was also a month of a bit of sadness as we saw two great competitors retire from in ring competition. Both Tam Nakano and Meiko Satomura scored quite a few points in their time in the fantasy league this year, by scoring 63 and 46 respectively, but they won’t be scoring anymore now that they’ve stepped away. It will be difficult to replace two pillars of the industry, but luckily right now the health of joshi puroesu is quite good.

We’ve now completed fourth months out of 12 for the year, and the race towards the top of the standings continues to be a fun one. It seems that picking up wrestlers from outside of the top two or three companies was the right play, because there’s so many championships to pass around, meaning that your roster could have multiple wrestlers pick up championships and defenses in a given month. Having some strong performers in STARDOM really helped “The Icon & Friends” and “Mad Dog Military” at the beginning of the year, but unfortunately there hasn’t been as many points to go around within STARDOM since then.

The top wrestlers for the month of April had some of the highest scores for a single month yet with Saya Kamitani leading the pack with 36 points. Right behind her was Makoto who had a very strong month as a freelancer scoring 34 points. Both Kakeru Sekiguchi and Rina Amikura also scored over 30 points this month which is very impressive, and can really help a team make up some ground on anyone that might be ahead of them in the standings.

When it comes to the big winners team wise during the month of April, the number one team going into the month the “Outlet Wolfpack” led this month as well scoring 206 points which is the second highest that has been scored in a single month by a team this year. The team that had a higher score was the same team, but during the month of March instead when they scored 216 points. Coming in second for the month team wise was “Oedo Tai” who scored 203 points, which is still a fantastic number, but not quite enough to actually make up any ground on the one team that’s ahead of them in the standings. Rounding out the top three in points for the month was “God’s Sigh” who scored 167 points, which is quite a few less points then the top two, but still a pretty strong showing nonetheless.

If you take a quick look at the rest of the league in terms of points scored for the month the teams from fourth to tenth all were within 21 points of each other. Fourth place was “Mad Dog Military” who scored 159 points, and last place being “Casa Royale” who scored 138 points. Obviously it was a bit of a struggle for “Casa Royale” but their score was still higher than the prior three months lowest score for the league, so maybe things were just more active in the joshi scene this month.

No team is truly out of it yet, but the last place team in the league in terms of overall points “Fart Editing” only has 507 points, while the first place team “Outlet Wolfpack” has 721 points, so they better get it in gear quickly, though that might be hard to do with Meiko Satomura just retiring, and Nanae Takahashi’s retirement on the horizon. They may have to find a few diamonds in the rough to turn the season around.

With all that said, let’s take a look at the overall standings at the end of April.

TEAM STANDINGS

The “Outlet Wolfpack” stayed out front, and built on their lead that had taken last month, but there’s only a difference of 30 points between them and second place “Oedo Tai” who is trying to do everything they can to catch up. “Mad Dog Military” slipped back a position to third and lost a good bit of ground on the top two, but they still aren’t out of the hunt. From fifth to ninth there’s only about 50 points between them, so a big month for any of those teams could have them gaining quite a few positions. You never know for sure when a wrestler is going to have a huge month, and since there hasn’t been a lot of trades, it’s hard telling if some of these teams will try to make a move to possibly try to improve their roster in the coming weeks.

Every month I do my best to tally which wrestlers had to most singles and tag team wins because it’s a fun metric to look at, and it does have a correlation to the amount of points they scored for the month as well. In terms of singles matches won Rina Yamashita and SAKI were the two big winners, picking up four victories apiece. If you may or may not know, winning a singles match scores you three points, so those matches are more important than multi-person or tag team wins. There were six wrestlers who all picked up three singles victories this month which included Saya Kamitani, Takumi Iroha, Honoka, Rydeen Hagane, Tam Nakano, and Maika.

When it comes to tag team matches, there was only one wrestler who stood atop of the proverbial mountain and that was one half of the Goddess Of Stardom champions Hanan who scored eight tag team victories this month! There were four wrestlers who picked up seven tag team victories this month which included Mizuki, Saya Iida, Makoto, and YUU. Anytime a wrestler can pick up seven or more tag team victories, you know they’ve at least scored 14 points, which is honestly not a bad total for a month. If every single member of your team did that in a given month, your team would score 210 points! It just shows that every victory counts.

Just for fun I took the total scores of each of the teams through four months and added them all up to get the number 6,037. I then divided it by 150 to account for the standard amount of wrestlers who are on teams and got the number 40.25. While it doesn’t take into account the couple of roster spots that are over the standard 150 because of injured reserve, I think that this average number of 40.25 is a good base to use to see if a wrestler has had an above or below average year so far.

Out of all rostered members of teams fourth months into this season there are a total of 63 wrestlers who have scored over that 40.25 average mark. The team with the most wrestlers over that average mark is unsurprisingly the “Outlet Wolfpack” with nine wrestlers hitting that mark. Second place was “Oedo Tai” with eight wrestlers above that average mark. The kind of crazy thing about this year so far is that the “Outlet Wolfpack’s” highest points scorer is Suzume with 65, and there’s only one team that has a lower highest point getter which is “Casa Royale”. The point production throughout the “Outlet Wolfpack’s” lineup is truly special.

With Golden Week happening in Japan throughout the first few days of May, there will be a lot of shows happening, so a lot of points to gain for the victorious wrestlers. It will be interesting to see what teams end up benefiting from that the most. With that said though, let’s go to the breakdown of the teams through the first four months of the year.

POSITION: 1st | TOTAL POINTS: 721 | APRIL POINTS: 206

Once again Pedro finds himself atop of the standings in the league with his team being the only team to eclipse the 700 mark so far. The consistency of the team in scoring points has been something truly special to watch, and it will be interesting to see if he can keep it up for a third month in a row to keep this top spot.

The big point scorer for the month was none other than Rina Amikura who came back from her devastating knee injury that kept her out for about a year and has been on a tear every since! Her score of 31 points was fourth best in the entire league, and that’s pretty damn good for a wrestler who was on the free agents list up until the 27th of March. In second place for the team was the current TJPW Princess Of Princess champion Mizuki who racked up 22 points, which is still quite a strong month.

On the bottom side of the team there was a total of five wrestlers who scored under ten points, which is not what you’re looking for, especially out of a couple of heavy hitters like Momo Watanabe who’s been dealing with an injury for a lot of the month and Miku Aono who simply has been winning enough. You’d think that both are poised to have a big month or two sometime this year, but until then, we might be left waiting for them to finally hit that potential we all see in them. Still though, only having five wrestlers with ten or less points really isn’t too bad compared to some other teams.

Overall Pedro’s team is being led by two TJPW champions with Suzume at the top with 65 points scored, and Mizuki right behind her at 63 points scored. With how many tag team matches TJPW does, it can sometimes be a crapshoot when it comes to their wrestlers scoring a lot of points, but luckily for Pedro, by having 2 of their champions, he’s been able to take advantage of their title defenses that has helped build their points total to where they are today.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 2nd | TOTAL POINTS: 691 | APRIL POINTS: 203

My team had a hell of a month, but it still wasn’t good enough to gain any real points on the leader “Outlet Wolfpack”, which just means that I need my wrestlers to do even better next month! Obviously losing Tam Nakano to retirement isn’t going to help, so it will be important for me to try to find someone suitable to replace her. Luckily for me, it sounds like Kouki Amarei will be coming back soon who I’ve had on IR since the first few days of the year.

The top performer for my team during the month was the current World Of Stardom champion Saya Kamitani who scored a whopping 36 points which was the best out of all wrestlers eligible for the month. The fact that she sometimes gets to defend her STARDOM championship, and her WAVE championship in the same month gives her a big boom potential when it comes to points which is something I can’t take for granted. The second best points scorer for me was actually Nanami Hatano who just updated her name from simply Nanami within the past month. She scored 26 points which is a really strong showing from the young DIANA wrestler. Hazuki and Rina Yamashita also had strong months scoring 25 and 24 respectively.

Negatively, there was one wrestler who wasn’t on IR who scored zero points for me this month and that was Kiyoka Kotatsu who had started off somewhat strong this year, but then disappeared for the past month for whatever reason. It also didn’t help that my comedy trio of Ram Kaicho, Momoka Hanazono and Natsu Sumire all scored under ten points this month, which is definitely lower than I’d like.

I’m still waiting for Yukina Uehara to get through those first few months of training and in ring action with Actwres Girl’Z because I believe she’ll start picking up more wins as time goes on since the biggest determining factor on their booking is how many tickets you can sell, and her background gives her an edge against some of her contemporaries.

Through four months the top point scorers overall for the team are Saya Kamitani with 88 points, and Rina Yamashita with 84 points. Like stated before, Saya’s point total has been pushed by her being the top champion in two promotions, while Rina’s high score comes from working a lot of shows, both against women and against men. Both have had a great start to the season, and hopefully they can keep that up going forward, though we all know that title reigns are always meant to be ended eventually.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 3rd | TOTAL POINTS: 655 | APRIL POINTS: 159

The “Mad Dog Military” had another pretty strong month, but unfortunately it was only fourth best in the league with 159 meaning that they ended up getting passed by “Oedo Tai“ who had a really strong month, and they lost ground on first place who scored even better than “Oedo Tai.” Still though, things are looking up overall for Dylan and his team because he has a lot of great young wrestlers who are just coming into their primes, and could get a big push or have already started getting that big push. It is kind of comical though,that his best wrestler points wise so far this year is someone who isn’t exactly in their prime in Kaori Yoneyama, but we’ll touch on that later.

Even though Dylan didn’t have a single member of his roster hit the 20+ point mark, he did have five wrestlers who were above 15 points which is still quite good. His top scorer was the aforementioned Kaori Yoneyama who scored 19 points and she was followed up by Saori Anou and Kohaku who both scored 18 points. The Neo Genesis teammates Starlight Kid and AZM were tied for third place with 17 points apiece.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Dylan had six wrestlers not including the one he had on IR for the month who scored under ten points which is never a good thing. One of the surprising members of that six was Mei Seira who only scored four points last month, which is a far cry from her usual points output considering she went into the month with 49 points to start with. There’s no doubt that Dylan is probably looking for more points from the likes of Hiroyo Matsumoto and Kizuna Tanaka as well, but for both of them, their points might be held back by their previous injury history from the start of this year.

For the season, Kaori Yoneyama has been quite a godsend, and it’s probably quite surprising to most that she’s scored as many points as she has with 93. It definitely shows that by having someone who is a bit more of a low card wrestler in STARDOM, but someone who is also very active on the indies can really help drive your team to more points. Right behind Yoneyama is Starlight Kid with 91, who has had a really strong start to the year as the Wonder Of Stardom champion. She’s been booked very strong, and with her being the leader of a faction, she’ll probably continue to be booked very strong for the biggest joshi wrestling company in the world.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 4th | TOTAL POINTS: 639 | APRIL POINTS: 154

Unfortunately for Scott, his team was sort of stuck in place this month as the points total was right in line with most of the other teams in the league, so in turn it was hard for him to try to gain any points on anyone ahead of him. He still does have a lot of really strong wrestlers on his roster though, and with Mayu Iwatani now switching over to Marigold, I’m sure she’ll have the proverbial rocket strapped to her back which should help her point totals get up to where we’d expect it by this time of the year.

The leader in points for Scott’s team in April was none other than Hanan who is one half of the Goddess’ Of Stardom tag team champions who scored 22 points, which is a pretty damn good total. A few points behind Hanan was Seri Yamaoka who scored 19 points this month and will no doubt continue to put up a good amount of points as Marigold’s “super rookie”, though it seems people throw that term out there quite a bit when it comes to rookies in Marigold.

Once again, one of the big things that held “The Icon & Friends” back from scoring a lot more points was the fact that there was ten wrestlers who scored ten or less points during the month of April, which is not what you’re looking for out of a roster of 15 wrestlers. Miyu Amasaki had been one of the top scorers in the entire league through the first three months, but only scored ten points in April, and Sayaka Kurara followed up her Cinderella tournament winning month by only scoring nine points this time around, which is probably less than Scott would have expected. It’s also unfortunate seeing someone as talented as Erina Yamanaka score zero points for the month, especially with her getting more dates with Marigold more recently.

Even though she didn’t have as good of a month as before, Miyu Amasaki still leads the team in points with 84, however Hanan has shot past some of the wrestlers who were previously above her to take second place on the team with 68. It’s quite a steep drop off, but with some of the biggest stars that STARDOM has ever had now moving on, there’s a good chance that both Miyu and Hanan will be important pieces moving forward for the company. Both Victoria Yuzuki and Mayu Iwatani have eclipsed the 60 point mark this year as well, showing that they are having a good year, but nothing spectacular so far.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 5th | TOTAL POINTS: 592 | APRIL POINTS: 157

This month was another pretty good month for “TCS 4 Life” as they were able to gain a couple of points on the team right above them, but they are still quite a bit back from the top end of the standings. Still though, if they can continue to build on months like this, they may be able to start catching the team ahead of them as the months go on. Dave has had one wrestler really take over when it comes to scoring points for the team not only for this past month, but overall, however he’ll need a few more to pitch in and start scoring more if he’s going to find himself moving up the rankings.

At the top of the standings this month was Kakeru Sekiguchi who scored the third most points by any wrestler during the month of April with 33! That’s some great output from the freelancing veteran which was no doubt helped by the sheer number of championships she’s picked up in recent times. There was quite a steep drop off between first and second on the team though with Honoka scoring 21 points which is still a really good mark, but unfortunately those two wrestlers were the only two to score more than 15 points for the team this past month.

The plus side for the team is that no one scored zero points this month, however there was nine wrestlers who scored in single digits, which is simply not good enough when you’re trying to gain ground on the people ahead of you. The top three draft picks for Dave’s team, Giulia, VENY, and Nagisa Nozaki were all part of that single digit point brigade which is not what you want to see, however all of those wrestlers have the potential to really break out, so hopefully for his sake that ends up happening. There’s also the issue of having two wrestlers who are now on contracts with big companies in America, so you never know how much they will be booked or how strongly they will be booked.

So far for the year, Dave has only had 3 wrestlers score more than 50 points, however his lowest point scorer is Konami with 16 points, who has only been on the team for two months now, so she’s scoring slightly below average, but still a better pace than a lot of the other lowest point scorers. There’s a certain consistency which is good to see, but getting a few more wrestlers up above 50 or 60 by the end of next month will be imperative to him gaining spots. Kakeru Sekiguchi has had a really good year so far leading the team with 76 points, but the tag team of Devil x Princess, Rina and Azusa Inaba are tied for second with just 51 points apiece.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 6th | TOTAL POINTS: 580 | APRIL POINTS: 150

Xavi’s team is in a bit of a interesting spot. The team is quite a few points behind the top teams, but pretty close to the team directly in front of them. They also have a bit of a cushion between them and the teams below, so as long as they stay on pace, “Rebel X Run” should be able to have a good mid table finish, though something tells me that Xavi wouldn’t want to settle for that.

The best wrestler on the team this past month by far was definitely Makoto who had a great month, scoring 34 points! It was also a month where Xavi could be proud of his first round pick of Chihiro Hashimoto as she finally had a month worth getting excited about by scoring 20 points. So far, Chihiro had been a bit quiet for being a first round pick, but now that she’s picked up the Sendai Girls World championship, and is the definite focus of the company, there’s a good chance she’ll be putting up quite a few points each month going forward.

Unfortunately, “Rebel X Run” had nine wrestlers that weren’t on injured reserve score less than 10 points, which is not what you’re looking for if you’re looking to make up ground. The worst was Riara who scored zero, but there was also a few other talents like Tsukina Umino and Hanako Nakamori who have been battling injuries throughout the month which didn’t help their point totals. After such a great March, it was unfortunate to see Aya Sakura only score seven points during the month of April, so hopefully she’ll get a chance to defend her Sendai Girls Junior championship a few times to help stack those points.

So far, the two M.V.P.’s for the team has been Mai Sakurai with 76 points and Makoto with 74 points which is two great wrestlers to have leading by example for your team. Behind them are two popular wrestlers that you’ll see on many indie shows in SAKI and Misa Kagura who have both scored 65+ points this season. Once Mio Momono gets back from her elbow injury, there’s a good chance she’ll be acquiring quite a lot of point as well which will help push this team forward!

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 7th | TOTAL POINTS: 552 | APRIL POINTS: 151

After having a pretty horrendous January, Alex has been putting together some pretty decent months to get back into the thick of things which has gotten them up to seventh place. In the month of April, Alex had two wrestlers score above the 20 point mark which was Akane Fujita who scored 25 points, and Hina who scored 21 points. Both of those wrestlers have championships, so hopefully they can continue to get some defenses to score those precious extra points for defending their titles.

Alex trimmed a bit of the fat so to speak from their roster at the beginning of the month getting rid of Hamuko Hoshi and Tsubasa Kuragaki, though it might have paid off to keep Tsubasa at least for her tag team title win. It’s hard to know something like that would happen though. Unfortunately, Yuki Arai still hasn’t really gotten going so far to start the year even though she’s one of the most popular in TJPW. This past month she only scored three points and that’s after graduating from her idol group. You’d have to expect that she’ll get more points soon. Only getting four points from Mari and two points from Mayumi Ozaki has to be a bit of a blow as well.

The top scorer for Alex’s team so far this year has been Manami Katsu who started off quite strong, but then sort of settled in as an above average wrestler for the team. Her 67 points is a good total, but not one of the tops in the league overall which probably hurts the team chances to be up towards the top.

DASH Chisako, YuuRi and Hina have all scored more than 50 points for “Alex’s Warbitches” so far which is pretty good output for all of them and I think that all three can be counted on to continue to put up good points going forward.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 8th | TOTAL POINTS: 551 | APRIL POINTS: 138

April was a tough month for Fernando as he saw his team score the least amount of point overall in the entire league, and even though it wasn’t super far off of the pace from everyone else, it still leaves the team in a bit of a hole going forward.

There’s a lot of potential with the team, but so far it just hasn’t quite hit it. The team leader in points for the month was none other than Tae Honma who scored 17 points. The next best wrestler on the team was Mei Suruga who scored 14 points, but you definitely need more output from the top two wrestlers of the month if you want to compete. While Fernando may have only had seven wrestlers who scored in the single digits, it’s still not enough when those wrestlers that score ten or more are all under 18 points.

It’s been a rough year so far, but not as rough overall as Hart has had at least because Fernando is still within striking distance of the teams close to him in the standings. Having someone like Natsupoi injured for most of the month didn’t help, and Saki Kashima also took off a lot of time due to injury, which should be two wrestlers that he could count on scoring at least 10 or more points each month. A wrestler who had been pretty strong in the rankings through the first three months, Miyu Yamashita also only scored five points this past month, which is simply not good enough for such an early pick in the draft.

While Koguma has had a pretty good year so far, she shouldn’t be leading the team with just 60 points scored. Out of all of the other teams in the league, that’s the lowest top point scorer on a team, which is not what Fernando has to be looking for. If he had quite a few other wrestlers who were at least close to that number then maybe it would soften the blow a bit, but unfortunately he only has two other wrestlers who have made their way past the 50 point mark which is Mei Suruga and Miyu Yamashita. If he can get some more output from the wrestlers in the middle of the roster, or even ones down towards the bottom because of injuries he could see his team start shooting up the rankings, but until then, he might find himself falling instead.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 9th | TOTAL POINTS: 549 | APRIL POINTS: 167

While Ryan’s team had the third best score for the month with 167, it wasn’t enough to get himself out of ninth place. It’s a step in the right direction however, so we should try to be relatively positive about it shouldn’t we? This month his team was lead by Syuri who finally picked up the IWGP Women’s championship from Mayu Iwatani and that helped her to a total of 27 points! Following right behind her was Shoko Nakajima who also picked up some new gold this month by winning the MLW Women’s championship which helped Shoko acquire 26 points, a great amount for a TJPW wrestler who normally only wrestles six to eight matches a month.

Sadly, two of Ryan’s best young prospects in Haruka Umesaki and Chi Chi both battled injury during the month of April causing them to both score zero points. He also only got four points out of his number one pick Sareee as well as she continues to bide her time working a few shows each month and staying out of the title pictures of most companies. Ryan’s also going to feel a bit of a sting with Maika announcing that she’s going to be on hiatus for quite some time as she gets her elbow surgically repaired. There’s no for sure timetable, but she might be out for the rest of the year, which is especially bad since he used his second round pick on her. At least she went out on a high note by getting him 15 points for the month.

While some things may be looking up, others are looking down when it comes to Ryan’s team. He may have to make a few adjustments soon before he ends up falling too far behind, but hopefully some of his heavy hitters will get their asses in gear and start scoring points like they should. Right now his team is being led by Shoko Nakajima who has scored 65 points thus far this year. His second, third and fourth round picks Maika, Ryo Mizunami and Syuri have all held up their end of the bargain thus far scoring over 50 points, but there’s a bit of a gap down to the next best wrestler which is Natsuko Tora at 37 points. Will Ryan’s team be able to weather the injury storm, or will they succumb to it? That is something we’ll have to wait and see about.

CURRENT POINTS

POSITION: 10th | TOTAL POINTS: 507 | APRIL POINTS: 141

Hart has been pretty consistent considering the fact that his team also scored 141 points last month as well, but to pull himself out of the cellar he’s going to need a much bigger month from his team. His top scorer for the month of April was actually the soon to retire Nanae Takahashi who’s been wrestling everyone she possibly can as she heads towards her retirement in late May. She scored 18 points, and I’m sure she’s going to score quite a few more as the month of May rolls on! Coming in second was the recently retired Meiko Satomura who scored 16 points which puts Hart in a bit of a predicament going forward since he’ll have two of his strongest draft picks no longer wrestling. The only other wrestler to score 15 or more points on the team was YUU who is always good for quite a few points since she works a lot of matches in a lot of different companies.

Other than Meiko now being retired, there’s also other issues to handle for this team to really make a run at moving up the standings. Getting five or less points from Riko Kawahata and Maria definitely doesn’t help things especially when they were somewhat early picks, so Hart has to hope that the two of them are able to win the Marigold Twinstar championships so that he can double dip on the championship points. Bozilla’s future is also somewhat uncertain, and even though she will get points for what she does overseas, it’s hard telling whether she’ll be just as active there as she was in Japan. It also hasn’t helped that Yuka Sakazaki hasn’t been used in AEW basically at all this year, and Tsukasa Fujimoto still hasn’t done anything in Ice Ribbon either.

To say that Hart has an uphill battle is probably an understatement at this point in time. There’s so many points that needs to be made up to even catch the next closest team, meaning that he’d have to have an all time high in points just to probably score enough to get to ninth, however you have to start somewhere right? No one said he has to make all of those points up in one month. The big thing will be to see what changes he makes to make up for the retiring wrestlers. His highest point scorer for the year is Nanae Takahashi who has scored an amazing 74 points! There’s a bit of a leap, but behind her is Risa Sera who’s scored 55, and Raku who has scored 50.

CURRENT POINTS

FREE AGENTS

As always I try to take a look at the current free agent pool to see who’s had a good month and who hasn’t, but we like to mostly focus on the positive. The biggest gain out of everyone on the free agents list was none other Sayaka from ChocoPro who scored 27 points in April! That’s a hell of a mark from a company that runs often, but we hadn’t seen that type of points total out of someone from there before. The aforementioned Tsubasa Kuragaki also came in with quite a few points scoring 19 this past month after picking up the Oz Academy tag team titles with Kohaku. Arisa Shinose also had a good month scoring 17 points which is very good for the freelancer. Now let’s move onto the top overall scorers who are still in the free agent pool.

TOP 5 IN OVERALL POINTS (FREE AGENTS)

Well there you have it. Things are heating up at the top of the table, and things are quite bunched up in the middle. There’s a lot of movement that could happen so make sure that you keep yourself tuned into all of the action in the RESURA Joshi Wrestling Fantasy League!

As always, I’d like to thank you for giving this a read, and showing interest in my little projects. If you ever have questions or want to reach out, feel free to use my Twitter handle down below to get a hold of me. Also, make sure to check out the awesome content creators that are taking part in this fantasy league by using their Twitter link below and giving them a follow.

See you next month for the next update!