October 4, 2025
Evil Uno’s Mystery Wrestling is a fun concept where the wrestlers and matches aren’t revealed before the show. Recently Uno’s fellow AEW superstar Emi Sakura appeared on one of his shows. A couple weeks later and Uno’s in Japan with a special crossover with Sakura’s own company ChocoPro (although Sakura herself is in the US and thus isn’t appearing this time).
As ChocoPro has a set core roster some of the participants where obvious/shared beforehand, but the matchups were kept secret, even in the few hours between the taping and the show’s airing.
Going into the show Mei Suruga, Baliyan Akki, Chie Koishikawa, Miya Yotsuba, Hiyori Yawata, Chris Brookes, and of course Evil Uno had been announced.
Akki and Evil Uno opened up the show, with Uno explaining it’s his first trip to Japan. Akki taught Uno the ins and outs of ChocoPro’s home turf rules in an amusing bit.
For new viewers: Ichigaya Chocolate Square is a unique venue with no ring. The audience surrounding the mat and the one wall the mat is up against are the “rope break” boundaries for submissions only. Pinfalls count as long as the wrestler’s shoulders are on the mat, and there are no rope breaks for pinfalls.
That’s the gist of what Akki explained. In addition, double teams/double pins are legal in tag team matches, there are no count outs, and referees are extremely lenient as far as DQs go (as is normal for Japanese wrestling). For more details see this quick reference I wrote a few years ago.
Uno revealed he does commentary himself for Mystery Wrestling and stepped into the camera/commentary role for match 1.
1- Hiyori Yawata & Chris Brookes vs Egg Tart (Chie Koishikawa & Hagane Shinno)
Hiyori was out first and introduced the newest member of Team Hiyori, CHRIS BROOKES! Ever the good sport Chris came out in a Hiyori hat. I love this team already.
Their opponents are Egg Tart. This is a really cool choice for the opening match.
Referee is ChocoPro GM Aoi Kizuki.
Chris heckled Chie during her intro. Then he threw her flower on the ground and was just being a general gremlin to her. Man I hate to see ChieDK bicker.
Amusing start saw Chris take one hard leg kick from Hagane and tag out. Hiyori then tried to avenge her partner and gave Hagane several … rather ineffective kicks. Hanage leveled her with a single kick of his own in response and she rolled to the corner to tag out. No one wants to mess with Hagane.
After tags on both sides Chris touched the ceiling to taunt Chie, so Chie got on Hagane’s shoulders to do the same. Chris put Hiyori on his shoulders and the audience already knew what was coming. Sure enough Chris put her head through the ceiling as soon as he stood up. Shades of Rin Rin. Chris apologized to Sakura through the camera.
Chris continued being a menace all match doing things like hitting his opponents (and poor ref Aoi) with his big rubber band thing as well as rubbing the broken ceiling tile into Chie’s forehead.
Good action all around, with the strike exchanges between the men being particularly heavy hitting and impressive. Egg Tart applied a sick looking double stretch muffler on Hiyori at one point. Probably would have been it but Chris went nuts with his elastic again and broke it up.
Eventually Chie caught Hiyori with a sweet arm trap rollup for the win.
This was a really high energy ten minute match and a fantastic example of how to work in a bit of absurdity and shenanigans into a hard hitting contest.
Post match Chris went to put the Hiyori hat back on but Hiyori complained about the ceiling thing, so her threw it at her instead.
2- ???
Uno tries to bail and hand the camera off to someone saying it’s very hard to do two things at once, Mei comes out and pushes him back behind the camera. She cuts a promo at Uno, which means towards the camera. Nicely done.
Mei makes the next match 1 count rules in honor of Uno. And then totally unnecessarily but hilariously demonstrates what a 1 count is and how to kick out before 1. I adore this. Once she’s done talking she ejects him, starting a “you get out” chant, and takes over behind the camera herself.
2- Mei’s Special Uno Count Match
And our participants are… Choun Shiryu and Trans Am Hiroshi. This’ll be something.
Choun can work any style and Hiroshi is at home in atypical matches so they worked this stipulation to the fullest.
Choun nearly stole the win early during a reversal sequence but Hiroshi kicked out before 1. Right off the bat they established that the unusual rule was going to have a big impact on their strategy.
Hiroshi did his usual meditation stuff, where he’s able to shrug off strikes and roll back into crosslegged sitting position through the power of inner peace. It worked for a bit, but then nearly backfired spectacularly when Choun went for a pin instead and Hiroshi had to frantically kickout before 1.
Ref Aoi did a phenomenal job on all the close 1 counts throughout the match, including a great series of rapid fire covers by Choun where Hiroshi had to kick out super fast several times in a row.
Late in the match Trans Am Hiroshi stopped for a song break. Choun joined in, and Hiroshi’s sneak attack after they finished singing nearly got the win with a small package. They kept fighting until Choun got caught in a sweet judo throw off of the windowsill for 1 and the win for Trans Am Hiroshi.
This was two extremely talented veterans in an entertaining outing and again a good mix of ridiculousness and solid wrestling.
Right before the main event is where the support shoutouts happen. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Masahiro Takanashi, an incredible wrestler and a big part of ChocoPro, is currently out recovering from a serious neck injury and ChocoPro has set up a variety of ways to help if anyone is able.
3- Miya Yotsuba & Evil Uno vs Best Bros (Mei Suruga & Baliyan Akki)
Brooks is on commentary for the main event. Best Bros give him grief about the hole in the ceiling, and like the stand up guy he is he blames Hiyori.
Uno & Miya are going to be a fun team.
Mei and Uno to start. As usual Mei thinks she’s 10 feet tall and showed no fear against her much larger opponent. She then proceeded to knock herself over trying to tackle Uno. Magnificent.
Mei was more evil than Evil Uno all match, including taking a Miya towel away from a fan at one point to choke Miya with. That’s just not right. Akki fully leaned into the boos too and did a “Bros Hammer” to embarrass Miya by stealing her signature Miya Hammer and then mocked the fans’ negative reaction.
Miya & Uno later got in on the shenanigans too though, when Miya had fans link hands to make a chain all around Ichigaya for extra leverage for Uno’s abdominal stretch on Akki.
Like the opener, this was another fast paced high octane example of great tag team wrestling.
Eventually the teamwork of the well established, former tag team champion Best Bros proved too much to overcome and their trademark Dolphin Press (wheelbarrow assisted shooting star press) on Miya picked up the 3 count.
That was SO. MUCH. FUN. Uno fit right in and this was a blast.
Two of AEW’s Japanese announcers were in attendance and were invited into the post show janken (rock-paper-scissors) tourney.
This happened the day before Choco’s next ring show, New Dawn, which like all of ChocoPro’s show will eventually be available to watch for free on their YouTube channel.
This was a breeze and a joy to watch. The ChocoPro roster are masters at making the most of the environment in their unique home base, and this show is an excellent encapsulation of the kind of wrestling they do. I highly recommend it in general and particularly to anyone who is even remotely interested in checking out the company. This show is officially available to watch at any time for free.
“Thank you for … showing me that wrestling can happen anywhere, it does not need ropes, it only needs the spirit of pro wrestling.” Uno gets it. Really hope he comes back someday.
Thanks to everyone who’s given this a read. Derailments of Thought currently updates sporadically as I am able.
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