Sayaka Kurara vs Saya Kamitani

Sayaka Kurara vs Saya Kamitani

All Star Grand Queendom for the World of Stardom Championship

Sayaka Kurara and I share a suffering. A gaping hole left in our hearts. The emotional wound left by the retirement of Tam Nakano is not one that easily heals.

Unlike me, Kurara can grieve in the ring. Even leading up to this match, she grieved. Obsessed by her inspiration, obsessed with the woman who banished her. Obsessed with the conditions that lead up to her retirement. Kurara couldn't over her career -- that is of no value to Saya -- so in her desperation she offers what isn't even hers. It's impulsive, foolish, and short sighted, much like Tam. Even at the Tam Exhibition, was a hidden room. Within it, an alter, laid out like a wake, in memory of Tam. It has been exactly one year, and the wound is no closer to opening. Instead, it's wider, clawed at, bleeding and raw.

She enters the ring for the match wielding, like Tam, a pole arm, a weapon of martial feminity. Her gear, her mannerisms are Tam. If she cannot have Tam back, she will be her, at least for this night.

Saya Kamitani enters too, lacking the same villainous fire she did one year ago. It's a colder entrance. Still, Tam left a hole in her too, but it is scarred over and calloused. Some days it still aches, and of course today would be one of those days.

As they wrestle, Kurara leans more and more on the spirit of Tam. She calls back not only to Tam's moves, but individual spots from her and Saya's match, whether those spots worked for Tam or not. She will relieve her successes and failures, getting predictably smashed at times by Saya as if it was some kind of scarification ritual. She misses Tam desperately, and as she grieves in the ring, even as Tam's offense brings her success, she cannot quite win. Even the Violet Screwdriver(Which, for Kurara, have nicknamed the Tokimeki Memorial), came upo short.

Tam is gone, and no amount of grieving will change that. This isn't Quantum Leap, she can't pretend to be Tam and undo the past. The reality is that Saya beat Tam, and that canot be undone. Wrestling is intimacy. It's a conversation. Kurara is not conversing with the woman in front of her. She is conversing with a shadow of the past. To win, she needs to move past Tam, and look into the soul fo the woman in front of her. Instead of looking to where Tam was strong, she looks to where Saya was weak. An old wound -- an wound that almost cost her the match vs Tam one year ago.

Sayaka Kurara couldn't do a Phoenix Splash, but a Firebird Splash was among the moves Saya had given up. Instead of being held back by her own wounds, Kurara looked at the wounds that held back Saya, and all the regrets and anxiety that move gave her. The stolen finish is an overused trope not because it's bad, but because it's used shallowly. Here it was beautiful. It was unexpected. Who even though Kurara could do a firebird splash? The last time Saya even considered doing it was one year ago, wobbling nervously on those ropes before having a change of heart. This and the Pheonix Splash have been an Albatross hanging on her neck ever since she injured Mina Shirakawa. Kurara cannot let Tam become an albatross.

Instead she is deceive. She forces herself to move on, to let the past be the past, and to focus on what is needed in the present. She wins. She grieved in the ring and found healing, so perhaps maybe we could be healed too through her. Even in victory, she is appreciative of Saya. She helped Kurara heal too, even if she didn't mean to.

WWE fans will talk a lot about how "wrestling should have stories", while rereading the same childrens books over and over again. This is a story. This is the tangled webs of human emotions and relationships -- the repeating cycles of hurt, the moments of clarity, the growth and collapse of the human soul. This was beautiful Pro Wrestling.