I knew this day would come. 

Specifically because it was postponed by a month but also because I have an unshakable belief in the magic of tag partners becoming opponents, even if just once. From that perspective, the match where MUSASHI and Seiki would face each other was written in the stars from the moment Seiki asked MUSASHI if he was a cat person or a dog person (a cat person, Seiki is allergic but hangs out at cat bars anyway). The day when they would create something entirely theirs has loomed on the horizon ever since, a delicious and yet slightly terrifying possibility. 

I was so confident that the match would be everything I hoped that I started writing this article weeks before they actually met in the ring. 

And then it happened. And my hopes seemed small by comparison with what the match became. 

I had hoped that this would be the match that showcased the MUSASHI who won ‘Occupation of Indies’ best bout award with Fujita Jr Hayato in 2022. I hoped it would show All Japan fans the Seiki Yoshioka who had deserved so many more titles than he had been able to hold. I hoped it would demonstrate that All Japan’s junior division can more than compete with its heavyweights for drama and skill. It did those things. It also provided one of the most complete and intensely intimate in-ring storytelling experiences of the year. It’s a little bit of each of them, a bit of All Japan, and so much more than the sum of these parts. The stories threaded throughout this match are simple but weighty, with as much dedication to how they are told as the message they send. 

Among many stories that exist within this match, there is one idea that connects everything else and draws the surprisingly un-alike MUSASHI and Seiki together: the idea of home. Home as a place, as a feeling, as an origin, and as a destination. Home as the people that make it. 

Their stories of home and the way they have been told, within this match and outside of it, are what I want to share. These will not be all of their stories, nor complete or perfect versions of them. This is a retelling, an interpretation, a story in itself. It’s my way of sharing some of the meaning I found in a story already told. 

Leaving/Coming Home

From the start of this match, the oppositional base colours of MUSASHI and Seiki make a striking image; Seiki in long black tights, MUSASHI sparkling in his largely white robe and tights, both overlapping in their silver and black detailing. These costumes offer a good representation of the relationship between the men who wear them. Mu-chan and Se-chan have never presented themselves as similar as a tag team, but there are meaningful contrasts and parallels that connect them. These costumes also tell a story in themselves of two very different paths taken to this point.

Seiki’s black tights he has worn in many places – in NOAH as part of Stinger, as part of Stronghearts in Wrestle-1 and GLEAT, and elsewhere on occassional dates with other companies. He is, not always by choice, a traveller between places. Where he might call ‘home’ among these is not clear. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. 

All Japan is not Seiki’s home. But it could have been. In 2013 he spent 2 short months as an All Japan trainee before following the men who brought him there – Muto and Kaz Hayashi – to Muto’s new promotion Wrestle-1. He remains Wrestle-1’s last Cruiserweight Champion, entering his third reign a few months before the company folded in 2020. He had a painfully short reign as GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion the year after, and multiple GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Championship reigns, even a 1 day Triangle Gate reign, before leaving NOAH for other challenges in November 2023. He is not without achievements on his travels but his career has been an interesting patchwork of places, connections, and accolades – somewhat different to the more linear path of the man across the ring. 

MUSASHI used to wear black. Until a returning Fujita ‘Jr’ Hayato took the Tohoku Jr Championship from him in one of the best matches of 2022. MUSASHI changed from black to white, part of his plan to create a change in himself and for himself. Those changes eventually led him to decide to leave his home in Iwate and in Michinoku Pro, where he grew up as a person and a wrestler, and move to Tokyo in 2024. The move was a considered gamble, leaving behind his position as Michinoku Pro’s Ace of the next generation for a chance at a bigger stage. The white in his current tights is not adorned with the Mexican calendario design he wore in Michinoku Pro but something designed for his Tokyo journey. Seemingly a traditional Japanese pattern, the design includes the symbols of his home prefecture Iwate – the green pheasant, chum salmon, paulownia tree flower, and Nanbu red pine. Home clearly does matter to MUSASHI. 

(I would love to say that Seiki’s tights are a reference to Kumamon from his home of Kumamoto, not least because there is a video of Seiki teaching Kumamon to wrestle that is pure joy, but I’m not sure I could get away with that stretch.)

Despite the difference in their journeys to stand here, both have a strong connection with this belt and with All Japan because of those journeys. For both of them, the belt is validation and a chance to belong. It can bring them home. 

For MUSASHI, the World Junior Heavyweight Championship is a sign that his choice to leave home, to find a new place, was the right one. When he left Michinoku Pro, MUSASHI indicated that it was not forever, but that he would not return without achieving something. In his chosen ‘last match’ at Michinoku Pro against former tag partner Douki, it was Douki who urged MUSASHI to win this belt so that they could face each other again. For those reasons and more, he has targeted this belt from the outset as a way to secure his value to the company. He has commitments to meet. His first title challenge against Rising HAYATO was a painful knock to his hopes, ambition, and pride. Holding this belt is a sort of proof, something he cannot easily relinquish, even after defending it previously. He knows just how hard it can be to win a title back. 

For Seiki, winning this belt makes sense of his journey. It provides a continuity between the young trainee who looked up to the holders of this belt and the man he has become now.  However far his journey had taken him from All Japan, he has not relinquished the ambition to hold the belt that his mentors, including the man on comms the night of this title match, Shuji Kondo, had held. In the build up to this match Seiki took the opportunity to tell the story of his journey, something he has almost never done before. In other contexts, he has only worked with parts of his patchwork story in connecting to the audience. Here, that full story was relevant, with All Japan as both the origin and destination. Winning the belt could connect the pieces and, as he said later, could show that the long route was worth it.

Home-makers

Before the match even starts, they are grinning. They wanted this. When Seiki made his challenge on 9th March, both stated emphatically that despite their team having become an essential part of them, they have wanted to face each other. Seiki, at the first press conference, spoke about believing that there was a Mu-chan that All Japan fans had not yet seen and that he wanted to be the one to bring that out. On the day he declared his challenge, Seiki beat Taishin Nagao using his Clash Driver – a move he had not used in All Japan since his return and a move he has used to win championships. It’s a clear statement of intent; Seiki will not be holding back. 

This might be friendly but there are no illusions that this will be anything but a fight. Still, both are confident that this match will bring them closer together, not push them apart. They plan to build, not destroy. 

Each credit the other, and their team, for their growth and with helping them find their feet in All Japan. Seiki had stepped away from wrestling in late 2023, in part, because he had fallen out of love with it. The wrestling that he was able to find in All Japan, with MUSASHI, is what reignited his enthusiasm. MUSASHI, having taken a gamble in his early 30s to do what some of his friends had done in their 20s, needed a supporter. Seiki’s enthusiastic championing of nearly everything that MUSASHI did, whether or not he let MUSASHI get a word in, was much needed cheerleading from someone in a similar position. All Japan’s Mu-chan and Se-chan were an immediate fan hit, but, more than that, their chemistry in and out of the ring drew attention to their individual as well as collective character. Seiki pestered MUSASHI for his favourite foods and details of his life via twitter, they fell out over a generational divide of three whole years, they drew attention to each other’s achievements repeatedly. They were collectively, and individually, charming. As outsiders, or at least newcomers in MUSASHI’s case, they were also able to hold their own with the admittedly large personalities of the All Japan main roster (Yes Kento, I’m looking at you). Throughout this match it was not MUSASHI or Seiki, but ‘Se-chan’ or ‘Mu-chan’ chants coming from the audience, from commentary and even from Nagao in MUSASHI’s corner. The team that they have made has become an embedded part of the All Japan junior scene, as have they. Their partnership has given them the base, the home, that makes a match like this possible. 

As a tag team, they aren’t an immediately obvious combination. They bicker like an old married couple (at least when MUSASHI is able to talk), their press conferences are part fashion-show, part comedy-skit, and they share few hobbies and interests. Even their alignment in the ring has taken time. Rather than a simple, immediate connection, their relationship is one of choice and, ultimately, of trust. For both men, this is authentic to their characters and to this stage of their respective careers. This match reflects that relationship and builds on that foundation. 

This is a match of two parts. In the first, there is a figuring out, uncertain attempts to match each other, accompanied by more than a little mirroring that might be expected from a successful team. There are awkward moments, things that don’t quite work, but they wear at each other, trying to find some advantage. They don’t hold back, MUSASHI going relatively early for his frog splash, Estrella Futuro, that has finished matches for him before. Seiki seems to have the advantage with his offence, appearing more willing to hurt his opponent, but MUSASHI is stubborn, difficult to keep down. The moves are Seiki’s speed, the match MUSASHI’s pacing. They grow tired, drained. And then something clicks. Twelve minutes in they execute a flurry of moves that sees each avoiding contact from the other, finishing with mirrored kicks, just as they started this match. They have only come so far. Something needs to shift. 

So Seiki holds out his hand. And like it’s the most natural thing in the world, MUSASHI takes it. Much like as a tag team, they cannot simply be two parts that sit alongside each other. Whatever happens now they do together. 

They stay, hands clasped, through forearms, through headbutts, through collapsing into each other and then onto the floor, through Seiki kicking MUSASHI in the head and pulling him back up. Seiki only relinquishes his hold to complete Fumie, stomping MUSASHI into the mat. It’s only two minutes. But everything is different now. 

Nothing from here on is easy. Five times MUSASHI hits an Exploder suplex. They trade German suplexes, thrust kicks. Estrella Futuro. La Mistica. La Magistral. Buzzsaw kick. Everything. More than once. For a moment it looks like it is MUSASHI’s kicks, not Seiki’s, that might earn a victory. Finally, Seiki hits the move he announced his challenge with – the Clash Driver – and MUSASHI kicks out. They are crawling, barely able to stand. A thrust kick, Buzzsaw kick from Seiki and still MUSASHI roars, arms outstretched. It looks like there is nothing they are not prepared to give or take. After the match Seiki commented that he had been able to push himself so far because it was MUSASHI, his amazing partner. 

Seiki’s victory comes from the combination of a Shining Wizard and a second Clash Driver that MUSASHI is unable to withstand. MUSASHI rolls away, Seiki stares at the ceiling; the consequences, physical and emotional, seemingly hitting them. It is over. For now. 

There is one move that MUSASHI does not hit here – his finisher Niten Ichi-Ryu. Seiki avoids it twice, perhaps because he knows it too well – when MUSASHI had to miss their first scheduled title match due to ill health, Seiki paid him a tribute (or perhaps was goading him back into action, who knows) by performing the move on poor Taishin Nagao, who probably didn’t appreciate being the apparent message boy for Seiki’s communications with MUSASHI. Still, there is something left on the table for next time. They have plenty still to build on. 

Home is where the heart is

Home is not always a place. It is also the people who make it, whether they are with you or not. It is a feeling you can carry with you. 

This match is starkly intimate. In their gestures, their physical movements, their expressions, MUSASHI and Seiki paint a picture of mutual understanding, respect and love. Foreheads pressed together with eyes closed, long stares with eyes locked, waiting for and returning blows with increasing intensity. This is the sort of match you might forget to breathe during. It is not like any other match they have yet had in All Japan, though a look back at their history makes it clear that they had the potential. At its conclusion, after looking at his long-awaited prize, Seiki grabs the microphone to speak to MUSASHI, slumped in the corner: “Mu-chan, Mu-chan, no words needed”. It’s a typically humorous nod to the months Seiki and others spent cutting across MUSASHI’s opportunities to speak, but it’s also reflective of the understanding they appear to have built in their partnership and throughout this match. There is, in fact, nothing more they could say that has not been communicated. MUSASHI, backstage, has only one word for ‘Se-chan’, “thank you”. 

So much of this match is about relationships and how those relationships have enabled their growth. This is true not only for their relationship with each other but also for their relationships with those who have brought them to this point, particularly for Seiki. Some of those references seem deliberate, others less so, but even if not deliberate it is possible to see the fingerprints of each of their histories throughout. Early on, Seiki secures MUSASHI in a trap-arm crossface submission. It’s not the first time he’s used it but it is notably a signature move of his first ever and serial tag partner, Yuya Susumu. There are elements of the match that remind me strongly of MUSASHI’s feud with Kenbai in Michinoku Pro, someone Seiki and MUSASHI have in common, though under different names. The most obvious signature however, is Seiki’s penultimate attack – a Shining Wizard. Seiki’s relationship to Keiji Muto began around the time he joined All Japan and has continued ever since with a mutual fondness that might surprise some. Despite never having taught Seiki a single move (not even that one), Muto has gone so far as to call Seiki his pupil. An homage to Muto here, in the company he left 12 years previously, feels a weighty gesture, and a mark of Muto’s significance in Seiki’s life. Someone else who gave him a home. 

---

This match is what I love about wrestling storytelling. It works at its most basic level, requiring no prior knowledge of the competitors or their history to enjoy the act of creation, but grows stronger with every layer of meaning that is built into almost every facet of this match. Whatever you love about wrestling, there is something here. 

More than anything, what I hoped for MUSASHI and Seiki when they started again in All Japan in 2024 was finding home. This match proved to me that they had. 

References

Images are from @alljapan @pkdx or stills taken from ajpw.tv, which you can subscribe to and enjoy this match and many other Mu-chan and Se-chan moments.

Related Matches

7th March 2017, Yuya Susumu vs Seiki Yoshioka, J-Stage

6th May 2019, Kenbai vs MUSASHI, Michinoku Pro

13th December 2019, Kenbai vs MUSASHI, Michinoku Pro

15th March 2020, Seiki vs HEAT, Wrestle-1

12th February 2021, Seiki vs Daisuke Harada, Pro Wrestling NOAH

25th December 2021, Seiki vs Haoh, Pro Wrestling NOAH

1st July 2022, Fujita ‘Jr’ Hayato vs MUSASHI, Michinoku Pro

18th March 2023, Fujita ‘Jr’ Hayato vs MUSASHI, Michinoku Pro

30th March 2024, MUSASHI v Rising HAYATO

26th June 2024, MUSASHI & Seiki vs Dan Tamura & Hikaru Sato, AJPW

28th October 2024, Seiki v Naruki Doi

Other Media

Weekly Pro Wrestling 2239 (2023/4/26) Costume Research: MUSASHI

Weekly Pro Wrestling 2360 (2025/6/25) Hybrid Champion: Seiki Yoshioka Interview

Weekly Pro Wrestling 2049 (2020/1/29) Perfect Directory: MUSASHI

Weekly Pro Wrestling 1734 (2014/4/23) Wrestler’s Human Story: Yoshioka Seiki