★★★★½
“Hard-hitting, and hitting hard.”
Not long ago, I tagged Black Doves as the best television of 2024. If I’d seen this before December 31, it would have beaten it out. It’s a top-tier depiction of the world of Japanese women’s professional wrestling in the eighties, weaving truth, fiction and legend together in a way that’s highly effective – probably even if you’re not a particular fan of sports entertainment. It’s the story of Kaoru Matsumoto (Retriever), who escaped a dysfunctional family to join All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling (AJW). Initially struggling to achieve success, she found her niche as nightmare villain Dump Matsumoto, feuding with former friend Chigusa Nagoya (Grace), until the pair faced off in a legendary, brutal battle, destined to lead to public humiliation for one of them.
We all know professional wrestling is staged, with the outcomes predetermined, right? [Do not used the word “fake”: I will cut you!] Here, things are… murkier. This treads a delicate line between that and kayfabe, the wrestling term for promoting it as reality, and genuine competition. The stance here is interesting, suggesting that while those in charge, like promoter Toshikuni Matsunaga (Saitoh), can have a result in mind, that relies on those in the ring agreeing to it. This isn’t always the case [one wrestling show I remember attending definitely had a genuine fight, for backstage reasons], and here, Matsumoto is a loose cannon, prepared to go to any lengths to put herself over. Or her character: the lines are certainly blurred here, to the point of near invisibility.
What matters, is that the audience believed it was real, to the point that Matsumoto received death threats as the feud intensified. It’s perhaps hard to understand just how popular AJW was, but their TV shows were getting considerably bigger ratings in Japan at its peak, than WWE or WCW were during the Monday Night Wars. It was a true cultural phenomenon – oddly, with teenage girls at the front of fandom. Nagayo and tag partner Lioness Asuka (Goriki), known as the Crush Gals, were basically Taylor Swift: they actually had a successful music career. Below, you can see the video of the real match mentioned, between Nagayo and Matsumoto. I defy you to find any wrestling bout, anywhere, where the crowd were so utterly into it.
The show does a fabulous job of capturing this, and the bouts as well are very well-staged – the real Nagayo worked as a technical advisor. Wrestling at the time was very different from what it is now, especially for women, and Matsumoto’s brutal style was unprecedented. She could chew up and spit out current WWE champion Rhea Ripley, using her as a tooth-pick. Indeed, it feels as if the final match is the dramatic pinnacle, and should end the fifth and final episode. It doesn’t and it feels like it’s heading for an anti-climax thereafter, until recovering [while not mentioned, it’s caused by AJW’s rule that wrestlers had to retire at age twenty-six!] But the drama behind it also has a great deal of nuance, depicting her troubled family life, and willingness to do whatever was necessary for her career.
This came at personal cost – not least her friendship with Nagayo. But it also affected her relationship with her family, in particular her mother and sister. Matsumoto initially wanted to become a wrestler, so she could protect them from her abusive and alcoholic father, but in the end, even her family were not safe from the ripples of her in-ring “villainy”. It all works on multiple levels, and provoked genuine emotions in me, to a degree rarely managed by any TV show, least of all one based on (lightly fictionalized) reality. Towards the end, the promoter lets a young girl in to see the show, and I was left wondering whether this was perhaps intended to be someone like Manami Toyoya, the greatest woman wrestler of all-time.
Another series, perhaps The Queen of Heroines? We can but hope.
Creator: Osamu Suzuki
Star: Yuriyan Retriever, Victoria Grace, Takumi Saitoh, Ayame Goriki