This week on Wrestling Omakase we talk three very different joshi matches, plus a 2004 NJPW blodobath and some UWFi! If you haven't listened to a 5 Matches episode yet, every week John and the guest each choose 2 matches to watch and talk about on the episode. Then we each choose a third match, which is put up to a vote on the @wrestleomakase Twitter account (or on the Patreon!), letting the listeners choose our fifth and final match of the week. It's a fun retro format featuring all sorts of different wrestling!

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John is joined by returning guest Taylor Maimbourg (@tamaimbo), who of course has been on Omakase many times before, but this is his first appearance of 2020 and his first one since starting his own VOW network podcast Jumping Bomb Audio (@JBombAudio). John and Taylor talk a bit about adjusting to the work at home life in New York (where they both live) and when and how they expect to be heading back to the office, before they begin discussing this week's 5 Match picks. Here they all are in order:

1. Ayako Hamada vs. Misaki Ohata vs. Arisa Nakajima, WAVE 5/14/18 (Youtube)

2. Io Shirai vs. Kairi Hojo, STARDOM 1/17/16 (Dailymotion)

3. Nobuhiko Takada vs. Gary Albright, UWFi 8/5/92 (Youtube)

4. Yuji Nagata vs. Kensuke Sasaki, NJPW 1/4/04 (NJPW World)

5. Akira Hokuto vs. Meiko Satomura, GAEA 4/29/01 (Youtube)

Topics that come up along the way include: John's girlfriend thinks Taylor cheated, the ultimate in wrestling hipster-ism even for this show, Io and Kairi beat each other's asses in a way they definitely can't do in WWE anymore, why did no one ever give Gary Albright a shot in the US, UWFi fucking rules, not all mid-00s NJPW is bad and right here's your proof, Sasaki's weird history leaving NJPW with Choshu and coming back and then immediately leaving again for the entire rest of his career, yet another thing COVID took from us, GAEA Girls, and much more.

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Missed any of the 5 Matches episodes or just want to revisit one of the matches discussed previously but aren't sure what episode it took place on? Here's a handy Google Doc with links to every single match we've discussed on this series so far, which will continue to be updated with every episode.

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