Why Ryori Bleck Could Save LAW

[CaptainL]

Written by Eiji Matsumoto

“Hey, Eiji,” they say to me, “if you hate LAW so much, why are you working for them?”

I get asked that question more times than I can count. If I got paid for every time someone asked me that, I’d be a wealthier man than I am now, and I probably wouldn’t need to work this job, and then no one would need to ask me that again. But I digress.

The fact is, I don’t hate LAW. I hate bad wrestling. There’s a difference. And just to prove a point, I’m going to talk about one member of the LAW roster who reminds me our sport has a future. As much as the clueless bimbos with chests bigger than their talent get all the coverage from so-called journalists who can’t keep things in their pants, a true wrestling fan can find plenty worth admiring in the hard-working, determined ladies who put everything on the line week after week to prove their strength and skill reigns supreme. Today, I’ll be talking about one of them, the woman known, loved, and hated by fans as Ryori Bleck.

She’s come to be known as the Tsun Tsun, which is apparently something the kids are saying these days. In researching this article, I asked my daughter about it and as far as I could tell, it means she calls people idiots or something. Gimmicks aside, she’s made a case for herself in the ring that only a fool would thumb their nose at. Hailing from California, Ryori got her start in the independent circuit, where she started making waves from the moment of her very first match. Even though she’s one of LAW’s smaller lightweights - at 5’1 and 105 pounds, the less insightful of mat prognosticators might assume GASTER could snap her like a twig - she’s proven herself a force to be reckoned with, and her deadly snap northern lights suplex - dubbed the Tsunplex - has won her many a match.

Of course, when she’s in the ring, nobody’s thinking about her success. She’s used to getting boos, not that it keeps her from doing what she does best. But the reason she gets booed is the same reason I took a liking to her - and it’s her seemingly single-minded goal to prove that idols don’t belong in the wrestling ring.

Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t have anything against wrestlers getting into the music business - there’s a reason the Beauty Pair were both WWWA World Tag Team Champions and hit the top ten list at the same time. Nor can I complain about idols making the jump to professional grappling, as Misaki Toyoda’s career should be able to prove to any naysayers. You wanna know what the difference was? These women were, shocker of shockers, actually good wrestlers! If they want to put in the effort, train, and show their worth in the ring, more power to them. But when LAW’s talent offices are so starved for talent that they’d rather scrape the bottom of the barrel for whoever’s topping the charts this week and throw them into the ring without any more than the basic training in an attempt to sucker wrestling fans into buying records, it wastes time for all of us who came to a wrestling show for, you know, wrestling. If I bought tickets to a night of squared circle action and half the matches on the goddamn card involve at least one failing idol whose managers were desperate to get eyes on her one way or another, I’m gonna ask for my money back!

[Ed. Note: We tried to tell him people don’t listen to records any more. He didn’t listen. - S-chan]

The sad part is that it works. By the looks of it, you’d think that LAW has more idols on the roster than a lot of concert tours. And the fans eat it up, because they managed to fill the stands with ignorant rubes who don’t know an armbar from an arm drag, but will applaud any set of tits they get to see up close because they know they’ll never have a girlfriend.

Ryori, though, she calls it how it is - and that’s why she’s made it her life’s mission to take down as many idols as she can! Her budding career in the league saw her securing easy victories over Rise Amami and Haruka Kujikawa, or whatever their names are, because I can’t be bothered to check and neither will their agencies when someone more marketable comes along. Even Sanae Saitou, who I’ll begrudgingly admit showed she has a promising talent for wrestling in her debut against Alizeh Midori if only she’d put her efforts into that instead of using it as a vehicle for singing, didn’t last long before she fell victim to the Tsunplex as well. The fans might not like it, but last I checked, if they didn’t want to see their favorite singers get suplexed they could just go to a concert and leave the wrestling for the people who can really appreciate it. It’s about time someone spoke up - and Ryori was the one to do it.

Who knows? Maybe her unblemished record will be enough to deter any more would-be singing sensations from forcing themselves into the undercard. All I can say for sure is that if we had more wrestlers like Ryori Bleck, things might actually be looking up for LAW.