TJPW Max Heart Tournament Round 1 Results

By: Jeff Brown

TJPW kicked off the Max Heart 4 Tournament at Club eX in the Shinagawa Prince Hotel. The first round began with 8 teams trying to punch their ticket to a title shot against Princess Tag Team Champions Ryo Mizunami and Yuki Aino. The show started with the Up Up Girls featuring Uta (in place of Hikari Noa) performing their newest song, “It’s a Battle!”

This show featured only one non-tournament match, which was the 6-person tag opener between Yuki Aino, Rika Tatsumi, & Miki Watanabe vs. Suzume, Arisu Endo, & Shino Suzuki. Essentially, one of half the new tag team champions in Aino mixes it up with 5 other potential title challengers. Rika choked everything that moved and really focused on Shino. After a fun preview of Round 2 action, Watanabe submits fellow UUG member Shino for the win.

Max Heart is officially underway with Kaya Toribami & Haru Kazashiro vs. Yuki Arai & Wakana Uehara. Arai is the International Princess Champion and has amazing confidence with less than 100 matches. Wakana is quickly following in her footsteps, fresh off the rookie tournament win. Toribami is finding her direction, while the young Kazashiro really has a lot of passion and has added that groundwork to her repertoire. Arai applies the sharpshooter to Kazashiro for the tapout.

Nao Kakuta & HIMAWARI vs. Raku & Pom Harajuku saw the fan favorites of Pom and Raku get the win and continue to keep the fun-loving spirit of TJPW alive in this tournament. HIMAWARI was tough as nails, and Kakuta was the great ring general, but they were a makeshift team that came up short.

In a bit of an upset, Ace and Princess Champion Miyu Yamashita is out in the first round. Moka Miyamoto & Juria Nagano have been teaming for awhile, with Juria stating that before she graduates, she wants to win the tag team gold with Moka. The story here is that after a series of vicious strikes, the hungry team of Moka and Juria isolated the rookie Toga for the win.

🔵📺 #wrestleUNIVERSE で見逃し配信中！https://t.co/xeLPx15Ykq
👑東京女子プロレス「第4回“ふたりはプリンセス”Max Heartトーナメント」
東京・品川プリンスホテル内クラブeX

Max Heartトーナメント4 初戦！
2.10後楽園ホールで決勝戦！トーナメント勝ち進んだのはどのタッグチームだ！… pic.twitter.com/2nX1mFQu61

— TJPW 東京女子プロレス (@tjpw2013) January 20, 2024

The main event was a fantastic outing between Kyoraku Kyomei (Hyper Misao & Shoko Nakajima) vs. Toyo Mates (Yuki Kamifuku & Mahiro Kiryu). Mahiro continues to shine, and part of her journey is that she always fails while her teammate Yuki is having a resurgence as the SPW Queen of Asia Champion. Misao and Shoko are wiley veterans who will be frivolous at times, but flip the switch and drag you into deep waters. That happened here as well; Mahiro, despite all her best efforts and having counters for everything Misao and the Kaiju threw out, got rolled up by TJPW’s resident hero. Misao really is the heart of the company, and it was fitting on the first day of this tournament for her to be standing tall with her buddy Shoko.

The shock of Yamashita being out was a strong note and makes things exciting, as it is still pretty wide open as we head into Round 2. The matches for that are:

Yuki Arai & Wakana Uehara vs Mizuki & Shino Suzuki

Kyoraku Kyomei (Hyper Misao & Shoko Nakajima) vs Daydream (Rika Tatsumi & Miu Watanabe)

Raku & Pom Harajuku vs Daisy Monkey (Arisu Endo & Suzume)

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