I picked up this set quite a while ago, like maybe in early 2015, but I never got around to posting about it. The 2010 BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Pro Wrestling cards were distributed as a boxed set, with a 96-card base checklist and 3 insert cards (I believe there may have been inserts and autographs, but I am not sure). My boxed set was advertised as complete, but upon opening it I found that the three extra cards were missing. I worked out a partial refund with the seller. This top photo is a scan of the box lid.
The bottom of the box contains a checklist for the base set. This checklist is broken down by promotion, so you can see that each section has a header like JWP, LLPW, and NEO, which are all different wrestling leagues. The last portion of the checklist is made up of the freelance wrestlers who might wrestle for several different promotions in a given year. There aren't any subsets for Hall of Fame or retired wrestlers in the 2010 edition. Maybe they were included among the inserts? I don't really know.
The inside of the box lid has a few casual pictures of popular wrestlers, which for the most part I believe are taken from the backs of their cards. It also contains the set serial number, with this being box # 1542 / 3000. Later sets would move from the box set format to random pack-based distribution. The 2016 set just released and some of the cards have hit eBay already. I have been anxiously awaiting my three boxes, which left Tokyo the day I wrote this post. I am working a little ahead on my blog posts, so I will hopefully have them in-hand by the time this goes live.
I picked a few of my favorite wrestlers to show what the base cards look like. They are color-coded by promotion, so looking at the stack of cards from the side produces a nice stratified rainbow effect. Command Bolshoi is probably my favorite wrestler, which means she will probably retire soon and leave me to look for some other favorite. She is also a bodybuilder and musician, so she's got quite a bit going on.
Command Bolshoi & Makoto vs Kyoko Kimura & Hanako NakamoriPosted by Makoto - Fan Page on Sunday, January 31, 2016
Makoto actually posted some photos of a tag team match the other day where she teamed up with Command Bolshoi to wrestle Kyoko Kimura and Hanako Nakamori. Most of the wrestlers' affiliations with a specific promotion don't necessarily tie them down from working with other promotions or making guest appearances all over the place.
While the card fronts are largely anglicized, the backs are in Japanese. You can parse out some of the biographical data pretty easily, but I haven't taken the time to try translating the blocks of text at the bottom. If I'm going to keep buying stuff from Japan I really need to take a few years to learn to navigate the language. I get by online with lots of guesswork and online translators, but there is a lot of contextual stuff that just passes me by.
I thought that Dash Chisako's shirt was interesting, as it commemorates Super Bowl XXIX between the San Diego Chargers and San Francisco 49ers. It's just an interesting choice of ring gear, especially as it is appearing in a wrestling card set released 15 years after that Super Bowl was played.
While the front of Haru Miyako's card is relatively boring, the back is anything but. I don't know why she is wearing football gear and flanked by a Sasquatch and a Yeti, but it makes for an interesting photo. Kana is now with the WWE as Asuka, which I imagine is a career path that many wrestlers hope for. Some of the other Japanese wrestlers posted photos mocking the move, stuffing their bras and strutting around like the stereotypical WWE Divas that come to mind when you mention the women's division of the WWE. There's probably a bit of jealousy there as well as a sense of betrayal.
Toshie Uematsu took her hairstyle straight out of There's Something About Mary. She and Dump Matsumoto represent earlier generations of wrestler. Someone in one of the Facebook groups was lamenting that there aren't a lot of heels in the current Japanese promotions. I think a lot of the heels from the past, like Dump Matsumoto and Toshie Uematsu have retired and no one wants to step up and fill that role. I don't know enough or watch enough matches to know if there really is a heel void that needs filled, but I think it would be hard to run a story line where everyone is a hero and no one is the villain.
That's all I scanned for the 2010 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling Set. I still have a few years that I haven't covered, as well as a few years that I don't have sets for. I'll probably be getting to 2011, 2012, and 2016 in the relatively near future. I'm still missing sets from 2000 and earlier, 2002-2005, and 2008-2009. I'll keep filling them in when I can, but the older stuff just doesn't pop up that often from sources available to the US.
