11/30/2025

© Chris Gannon

A Wrestler You Should Know About: Millie McKenzie

By Chris Gannon

It was Tuesday 16th September, 8:30pm, and the wrestling world was abuzz with activity. AEW and WWE were both preparing for big shows at the weekend, both debuting on new partner platforms, and CMLL was gearing up for their 92nd “Aniversario” show with a bigger push to make it more available to international fans. For me, though, there was no bigger news than a tweet by my favourite independent wrestler Millie McKenzie.

After spending a week in hospital due to a flare up of a chronic liver condition, Millie shared the sad news that it had progressed much faster than expected and she would require a liver transplant. As such, she was going to have to cut back entirely on her wrestling schedule. A mainstay of the British independent scene, Millie holds, at time of writing, seven titles, something that has drawn the attention of fellow belt collector Mercedes Moné.

© Chris Gannon

Suplex Millie

Despite only being 25 years old, McKenzie is one of the most tenured veterans on the British independent scene, having trained and debuted at 14 years old, first under the name Millie Marks before switching to her more well known moniker shortly after. During training, she started using the German suplex as a joke, as the visual of a tiny blonde girl throwing much larger men over her head was pretty funny. As she grew older, added a bit more height and muscle, it went from being a joke to being a devastating move, skillfully executed, earning her the Suplex Millie nickname. By 17, she was working incredibly regularly all over the Midlands and Wales, and was selected as part of Team Fight Club Pro for the Chikara King of Trios 2017 tournament, alongside Omari, who took part in the WWE tryouts at the beginning of August, and Kyle Fletcher, who is currently solidifying his position as an AEW main eventer. This was the first set of shows I saw her perform, although embarrassingly I misheard her name and was cheering for “Lily McKenzie” for that first day. She had a lot of fire and could easily command crowd support. Someone else who noticed her during that time was the founder of Sendai Girls, Meiko Satomura. Satomura took an interest in McKenzie, which led to mentorship, training and several tours of Japan. To date, Millie is the only triple crown winner in Sendai Girls history, having won the Sendai Girls’ Junior, Tag and World Titles. She is also the only non-Japanese holder of the world title and the youngest woman to win it. She was also chosen as one of the opponents for Satomura’s final UK match back in February, teaming with Nina Samuels against Satomura and Rayne Leverkusen.

Her list of accomplishments so far is staggering, including a run with WWE in NXT UK and participating in the Progress Women’s Title match at Wembley Arena against Jinny Couture and Toni Storm, part of the biggest independent show in English wrestling history. She is the youngest participant in EVE’s She-1 tournament and the youngest winner of the tournament. She’s wrestled in Australia, Japan, Dubai, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Norway.

© Chris Gannon

The Gremlin

At the She-1 2018 tournament, Millie was facing Viper, now known as Piper Niven, in a block match. At the start of the match, after engaging in some technical back and forth they broke off and rested. Once they got up to face each other, Millie started doing some big, strong girl, bodybuilding poses which caused her opponent to break out into hysterical laughter. The match continued, with that fun atmosphere getting chipped away move by move into a more desperate fight as Millie combatted Viper’s power and Viper tried to crush Millie’s tenacity, until Millie had Viper locked in a cobra clutch, the move that secured her place in the tournament. Viper then used her leg strength to push back on Millie to pin her shoulders to the mat, allowing her to get the three count and the win. This was an incredibly fun match which, although it resulted in a loss for Millie, demonstrated her ability to be silly and fun to get the crowd on her side, then, when it got deeper into the match, she was able to show off the range of her technical abilities, demonstrating why she was someone to take seriously. The match was a great showcase of Millie’s instincts when it comes to putting together a match, knowing when to be silly, when to be serious and when to switch between the two for maximum effect. For someone who’s not explicitly a comedy wrestler, she has some of the best comic timing you will ever see, along with the sickest dance moves on this sceptered isle.

Tag, You’re It

At an EVE show in 2023, after beating Alex Windsor in the second match of the show, Millie and Alex were attacked by Nina Samuels and her then protégé Chantal Jordan, leading to a tag match later on the show. McKenzie and Windsor entered on Rita Slayworth’s scooter and then danced in a goofy manner to Nina Samuels’ music. The match against Samuels and Chantal Jordan was hard fought but fairly short at 7:55, but throughout the match Millie and Alex managed to work out some great double team moves, and looked the part as a team, despite it being the first time they tagged. It was during this match I realised that Millie was the most natural tag wrestler I’d ever seen. In the two years since she’d returned, Windsor had put in some great efforts, but they were mostly serious affairs from entrance to final bell. Millie managed to bring shades out of Alex that I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t that they weren’t always there, just that she’d never really had an opportunity to show them before. Tagging with Millie gave her a chance to show them, and if you look back over Millie’s career you could see that if she was in a tag match with anyone, she’d figure out the chemistry that worked with her partner to bring out the best possible performance from them both. When she teamed with Pete Dunne to form the Bruisermates, she acted as his overly enthusiastic, annoying little sister. The more miserable he acted, the more overjoyed she became, especially when she was breaking fingers in his style and showing him how to properly execute a German suplex. Her greatest tag team success, though, came with her best friend Charli Evans, as the Medusa Complex.

© Chris Gannon

Snakes

At the beginning of 2019, EVE held a “Battlebowl” event, with the endorsement of Cody Rhodes. The show featured five tag matches, with the winners of those matches going onto a battle royale, where the winner of that match was granted the match of their choice at the show of their choice. Charli Evans won the match and demanded a tag title match at “Wrestle Queendom 2”. Given that EVE didn’t have tag titles at the time, that was quite an ask, but Evans insisted that they make titles and get them ready for her and Millie to fight for.

Evans had moved from Australia to Wolverhampton in the West Midlands (England, UK) to gain more opportunities as a wrestler. Whilst training, she’d struck up a friendship with McKenzie that led to them teaming. Initially they took up personae as stone cold, emotionless killers, embroiling themselves in a feud with veterans Jetta and Erin Angel in the lead up to “Wrestle Queendom 2”. As the months and matches accumulated, they figured out who they really were as a team, choosing to abandon the ice and their entrance music, Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend”, for fire and a new theme, Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl.” They completed the transformation in their attitude by flipping off ring announcer and promoter of EVE, Emily Read, at the inaugural tag team title match at “Wrestle Queendom 2”. Although they came up short in that match, after McKenzie won the 2019 She-1 tournament, she used her prize to secure herself and Evans a tag title match at “Wrestle Queedom 3”, where they finally won the titles that they’d helped bring into existence. The team also won the Sendai Girls Tag Titles in 2019, the only entirely non-Japanese team to hold them and the only team to defend them outside of Japan.

The Best

I’ve been fortunate enough to see 81 of Millie’s matches live (so far) and to have spoken to her on more than a few occasions. I don’t think that I could express how good she is inside the ring and what an incredibly nice person she is outside of it, but fortunately I’ve found a few people who can. 

As she prepares for the biggest challenge of her life, I have no doubt that she’ll be facing it with a smile, an incredible amount of determination, and the love and support of the many people all over the world that she’s brought joy to in the last decade.

On the 19th of December, Bridge Pro Wrestling and Spinebuster will be running a special show at the Amblecote British Legion Club in Stourbridge, with all proceeds going to Millie. Tickets are available on the Bridge Pro big cartel site. Additionally, Spinebuster have launched a GoFundMe for Millie’s recovery which can be found here.

© Chris Gannon

By Chris Gannon // Instagram // X // Bluesky

© Stardom

2025 Stardom 5-Star Grand Prix Overview

By Chris Whitehead

The 2025 Stardom 5-Star GrandPrix was the latest success in Stardom’s cavalcade of successes since Taro Okada replaced Rossy Ogawa as the head booker in early 2024.

In many ways this may have been the most notable success yet, with the tournament receiving positive critical response, driving impressive attendance numbers and being booked to elevate multiple people.

Crowning Momo Watanabe as the winner showed another investment in an under-utilized member of the roster, which has perhaps become the hallmark of Okada’s approach to booking and roster management. Her win also provided payoff to a decade’s worth of belief in Watanabe by many of Stardom’s most invested and longest tenured fans. This created a true win-win scenario in which more fan goodwill was generated, while also elevating Watanabe further up the card during a time in which there is space to fill at the top due to the oft-discussed departure of wrestlers either due to long term injuries, to retirement, to Marigold or to the United States.

To that point, there were ten former participants, including multiple former GP Winners, who had competed in one or both of the previous two GPs who did not compete in this year’s GP: Tam Nakano, Mayu Iwatani, Mina Shirakawa, Thekla, Maika, Syuri, Giulia, Utami Hayashashita, Hazuki and Koguma. Building on this point, if there was a single theme to the 2025 5-StarGP it was elevation, as multiple wrestlers finished the tournament with their “arrow” pointing up.

On the business front, the tournament broke almost every record you can think of, perhaps most importantly setting a new company attendance record at Ota Ward gym of 2,856 – despite running twice at the venue in the space of a month. This also broke the record for the biggest Stardom attendance ever for an event occurring outside of Yokohama Arena or Ryogoku Kokugikan. The business numbers were impressive on their own merits, and perhaps more so when factoring in the absence of many former participants as well as the unconventional approach to the tournament format.

The success of the tournament even extended to the Japanese media with BBM’s Weekly Pro Wrestling Magazine (Shupro) opting to run their standard weekly issue following the finals with Sareee on the cover – angering many fans, the latest phase in Sareee’s highly effective campaign of working through the media – while also running a special 5-StarGP issue a few days later with Watanabe on the cover, with the production (and sales) of two issues in a week with Stardom on the front cover being more proof that Stardom’s business is hot, lest there was any doubt.

© Stardom

Tournament MVP: Rina

18 year old Rina, in her first entry into the 5-StarGP, shined both in the ring and in the tournament booking while making a run to the Semi-Final stage.

Each of her matches throughout the tournament were better than the last (with one exception), culminating in her Instant Classic semi-final match with AZM on Finals Night – a match I rated at 4.5 stars and my second favorite match of the tournament, and which is currently averaging 8.72 on Cagematch.

Prior to that, the scene in Korakuen Hall after her main event victory against Natsupoi in her Quarter Final match was truly remarkable, with the crowd loudly and jubilantly chanting Rina’s name after seeing her elevated to a no-questions-asked-real-deal Capital-S Star in front of them minutes earlier (and, really throughout the tournament as a whole). That closing promo, and its reception, will live long in my memory as the rare moment in time where you realize a booker has flipped the switch on a wrestler from potential future star to guaranteed future star.

On the booking side, besides being two wins away from winning the whole dang thing, Rina won 7 matches, lost 3 and drew 1. One of the losses was to Natsupoi in group play, who she then beat in the playoff stage. The other two losses were both to AZM, first in the group stage and later in the tournament semi-final – losses which I am sure Rina will avenge in the future. Her most notable win (beside the Quarter Final) was, for me at least, against H.A.T.E. unit-mate and leader Natsuko Tora, in which Tora had Rina beat, but in a moment of hubris, pulled her up from the pin and seemed to want to humiliate her junior by beating her further and instead lost to a clever roll up pinfall. My personal headcanon remains that Rina will retire Tora someday and take over H.A.T.E., and this seemed like another step on that path.

The potential of Rina has been evident for many years, and the realization of that potential has been picking up pace in the two years since her dominant run with Future of Stardom title that began in May of 2023, in which she set records for both the longest reign and the most defenses. The first phase of her potential-realization was perhaps more on the character development side, as the “pink devil” teenage tearaway/brat took full form (including the all time great moment of calling her twin sister an “old hag”).

The second phase has been the leveling up of her in-ring game, which continues to evolve. She had already made her original mentor Hana Kimura’s Hydrangea (octopus stretch variation) a key part of her arsenal, in addition to adding the Kudo Driver to her arsenal (you might call it that or perhaps Kudome Valentine or The Vertebreaker but I will forever call it the Cop Killer.) She has also been inching ever closer to hitting Hana’s Tiger Lily (package piledriver), and when she does eventually hit that it will surely bring down the house and likely also bring tears to eyes. Beyond just expanding her moveset, her selling and transitions have also improved greatly and Rina has become an extremely well-rounded wrestler, with endless potential still available for her to realize in the coming years.

Factoring in the upgraded level of push, match quality and crowd response to both, Rina was a clear MVP for me.

Critical Reception

A key talking point heading into the tournament was the format, which was the biggest in company history with 32 people spread across 4 blocks of 8. The inclusion of multiple low card wrestlers, junior wrestlers and outright rookies was a mixed bag: the less experienced wrestlers are given a chance to have seven singles matches, which are important for their development, but this created concern this could lead to a lower overall match quality and a less prestigious tournament. The tournament did not feel any less prestigious to me (most of the time) but the overall match quality was lower: while the tournament had more high rated matches than last year, it also had more low rated matches and overall quality lagged behind earlier years.

Taro Okada addressed this issue directly in quotes to Shupro in issue #2367 (machine translated):

The main negative to this format was particularly noticeable by the end of the tournament, when the large field led to multiple matches featuring wrestlers who were mathematically eliminated, resulting in too many matches with no stakes. From a critical perspective, perhaps the biggest issue of the format was the “Opening Night” show which, due to the 32 person format, featured 16 singles matches, many of which were short and few of which were memorable. The card length was overkill and that is reflected in the Cagematch show rating as well.

The main positive to this format was the success – for the second year in a row – of the penultimate show of the tournament (“Quarter Finals Night”). This show – streamed live and for free on YouTube – was as perfect an encapsulation of the vibes of 2025 Stardom as you will find, with a loud and rowdy “super no vacancy” sell out (1,589) of Korakuen Hall, the 4th highest crowd at Korakuen in company history. “Quarter Finals Night” featured seven matches rated over 7 on Cagematch, and three over 8, including a low-level Match of the Year Contender between AZM and Saya Kamitani (my favorite match of the tournament). No matter what the format is in the future, it’s clear that “Quarter Finals Night” should be a keeper and in the last two years it has become a more essential show than “Opening Night”.

As far as the format goes, next time I would go with a 20 person tournament, reverting to two blocks, but with four people emerging from each block to keep the Quarter Finals intact. This would lead to 9 matches per competitor, which may be too many – the ghost of 2023’s injury spree always looms large.  The 24 competitors across 4 blocks format used in 2024 is also a viable and more wrestler friendly option. That said, based on Okada’s comments, I would expect the same 32 person format next year.

Best Matches

The below list represents an informal poll of Social Suplex Newsletter contributors’ top 10 matches from the tournament, in reverse chronological order:

Roster Elevation

Highly effective roster management has been a key feature of Okada’s approach to booking during his tenure and this continued here. Few bookers in history have had as many stars depart a roster in such a relatively short period of time and almost certainly never before has a booker continued to improve business even after those departures.

Okada did inherit a roster where multiple wrestlers had not been pushed to their level of popularity, which allowed him opportunities to make some pushes immediately successful in 2024, resulting in Kamitani, Maika and Starlight Kid becoming key stars. Further roster turbulence has presented more gaps to fill and recruiting Sareee has been a clear boon from that perspective, while the self-sustaining, almost booking-agnostic popularity of Natsupoi and Saori Anou has allowed them to operate as red and white belt contenders already this year (and they are likely to do so again).

The roster continues to evolve and improve, and despite the absence of four legitimate main event wrestlers since or after “All Star Grand Queendom” in April (Tam, Mayu, Maika, Syuri), somehow there is still a logjam of women ready to ascend up the card, some of whom are young enough to be there for at least the next ten years. Thus, it makes sense that the theme of the tournament was elevation, with the following wrestlers, the vast majority of whom are 25 or younger, all finding varying levels of elevation:

Additionally, while none of the many wrestlers in the tournament who are three years or less into their career were truly elevated, none embarrassed themselves, and most will greatly benefit from this experience – which was Okada’s goal, after all.

Okada was very strategic in how often, and to whom, his top-of-the-card stars lost, much as any good booker should be. He has long been effective at both showing you who he is pushing with wins and losses, as well as having the wrestlers tell you in promos that they are on the ascent and that continued here.

If you, like I, subscribe to the booking theory that your stars should only lose to someone who is already a star or being pushed up to the level of that star, and not to someone on their way down the card, there was plenty of evidence of that here, with the three top title holders in the company all taking highly strategic losses:

At the end of the tournament, this is how I would currently bracket out the levels within the Stardom roster:

Top Card

Saya Kamitani, Starlight Kid, Sareee, Momo Watanabe, Saori Anou, Natsupoi, Syuri

Upper Middle Card

Ami Sourei, AZM, Bozilla, Bea Priestley, Hanan, Mei Seira, Natsuko Tora, Rina, Suzu Suzuki

Lower Middle Card

HANAKO, Hazuki, Hina, Koguma, Konami, Sayaka Kurara, Saya Iida, Yuna Mizumori

Lower Card

Aya Sakura, Lady C, Miyu Amasaki, Momo Kohgo, Ranna Yagami, Rian, Ruaka, Saki Kashima, Waka Tsukiyama

Rookies

Akira Kurogane, Yuria Hime, Kikyo Furusawa, Kiyoka Kotatsu, Ema Mashima

Injured/Absent

Anne Kanaya, Maika, Matoi Hamabe, Xena

The only record that was not broken was total attendance, but with the 2022 and 2023 tournaments consisting of 20 and 22 shows respectively, compared with 14 this year, that was not feasible.

As noted earlier, this was the first 5-Star GP without key main event wrestlers Tam Nakano and Mayu Iwatani, with Iwatani having previously competed in every GP since 2014. Previous winners Syuri and Maika were unable to compete due to injuries and only one person who had previously won the tournament competed: 2023 winner Suzu Suzuki.

In comments published by Yahoo! JAPAN after the tournament, Taro Okada pointed in one direction for the increase in attendance, despite the loss of star power: “We were saved by the star that is (Saya) Kamitani”, once again crediting the ongoing increase in Stardom’s business to Kamitani’s success on Japanese variety tv show “Love It!”

Okada went on to explain that Kamitani caught the eye of tv producers due to social media buzz from her match with Tam Nakano in April and was invited onto the show for a one-off appearance, which in turn became a weekly recurring appearance due to her being so well received. In the same article, Natsuko Tora also credited Kamitani with changing the type of customers coming to Stardom shows:

That last quote from Tora also aligned with a trend I noticed during the tournament, with noticeable increases in women attendees (still a small percentage of the fans) and a particularly interesting trend of what I have been colloquially referring to as “Dads and Daughters” – which is to say men in their 30s/40s and their elementary school aged daughters. This trend was especially noticeable on the weekend shows that had afternoon start times: for example, the Kyoto and Kobe shows on August 10th and 11th which, likely not a coincidence, both saw significant increases in attendance from the previous year.

Despite this success, there are some headwinds to watch out for in the coming months: due to venue issues across Japan, especially in Nagoya and Osaka, options for larger shows outside of Tokyo and Yokohama are limited compared to past years and five of the fourteen shows on this tour occurred in Tokyo and Yokohama, with three more PPV cards to follow in September, November and December in those cities. Any further major injuries at the top of the card, particularly to Kamitani, would also likely be a significant issue at the box office.

© Stardom

Looking Ahead

The September “Stardom To The World” PPV, while an easy to watch show with solid matches and action (see this issue’s review for more), was not consequential to the booking plans, with each of the top titles being safely defended by the champions. The show did great business, the second highest attendance for Stardom in the Yokohama Budokan (second only to the 2023 5-StarGP “Opening Night”). The Korakuen Hall show on September 27th saw AZM and Kamitani battle it out in a double title match for the red belt and the NJPW Strong Women’s Title, with Kamitani reigning victorious, now holding both titles. Hopefully, this leads to the retirement of the Strong belt.

October was a relatively quiet month, primarily built around the rookie-focused New Blood brand with three of those shows across the month.

November saw the “Crimson Nightmare” PPV in Ota and we have a full review of that show which included Momo Watanabe cashing in her 5 Star Grand Prix win.

December will see the now traditional “Dream Queendom” PPV show emanate from Sumo Hall on December 29th and ticket sales for that show are already off to a hot start. Expect big matches here, on the second biggest show of the year on the Stardom calendar.

By Chris Whitehead

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