Ittenyon Stardom Gate 2024 - WrestleFile Historical Verdict

The main event is the strongest booking choice because it follows through on a challenge that was established before Dream Queendom instead of treating the IWGP Women's Championship as an isolated attraction. Syuri enters with fresh momentum from the previous day's Triangle Derby win, while Iwatani is reestablishing herself after returning to the ring. Giving them 19:06 allows the match to feel like a real championship defense without exhausting an audience that has already watched a 20-minute draw in the semi-main. Iwatani retaining preserves the IWGP title direction and records her third successful defense.

The Giulia-Suzuki versus Maika-Bayne draw is more ambitious. A time-limit draw can be frustrating when it exists only to avoid a decision, but here the 20-minute limit becomes the platform for Giulia's larger announcement. The match brings together the new World champion, her recent challenger, the STRONG champion and the recent STRONG challenger. None of those relationships needs to be closed in a tag match four days into January. The draw keeps every direction alive long enough for Giulia to reveal that Donna del Mondo will disband, making the post-match development more important than a routine pinfall would have been.

The undercard protects the right wrestlers while still producing useful results. Yuzuki pins Sayaka Kurara in the opening six-person tag, extending the momentum from her Rookie of Stardom tournament victory without asking either rookie to carry another singles match immediately. Hanan pins Future of Stardom champion Rina in the second match, giving the NEW BLOOD Tag Team champion a valuable fall while leaving Starlight Kid and Hazuki outside the decision. Mei Seira pins Thekla in the third match, keeping the High Speed champion visible and giving Donna del Mondo another result that gains retrospective meaning after the later disbandment announcement.

Saori Anou pins Ruaka in the fourth match, which lets the new Wonder champion collect a direct win without putting her belt at risk one week after taking it from MIRAI. Queen's Quest then defeats MIRAI, Ami Sohrei and Saki Kashima, with Utami Hayashishita pinning Kashima. That placement protects the newly crowned Artist champions MIRAI and Sohrei from the fall while giving the Goddesses champions' faction a rebound after the previous day's Triangle Derby draw eliminated Queen's Quest. The booking is economical throughout: champions are visible, faction results have meaning, and the main event remains the only title match that needs to dominate the show.

Tokyo Dome City Hall gives Ittenyon Stardom Gate a presentation that is larger than a routine January touring stop without pretending to be another Ryogoku-scale finale. The announced 1,536 sellout matters because the event is positioned adjacent to Wrestle Kingdom rather than isolated on Stardom's normal calendar. The crowd gives the IWGP Women's Championship main event an appropriate cross-promotional atmosphere and helps the show feel like a destination for wrestling fans already focused on Tokyo that day.

The seven-match structure is one of the event's best presentation choices. Five undercard matches stay between 8:11 and 10:45, which lets Stardom move through a large part of the roster without creating the fatigue that could easily follow New Year Stars one day earlier. The semi-main then uses the full 20-minute limit, and the IWGP title match gets 19:06. That division of time makes the second half feel clearly more important while still giving the first five bouts enough room to register individual winners and ongoing faction connections.

The pre-show opener adds useful developmental continuity. Yuzuki, HANAKO and Ranna Yagami face Lady C, Hina and Sayaka Kurara, keeping the newest wrestlers visible in front of the larger Tokyo Dome City Hall audience. The rest of the undercard gradually moves from young-roster programs into champions and established factions. By the time Giulia, Suzuki, Maika and Bayne enter, the show has already shifted away from developmental framing and into top-level year-opening business.

The main event is visually and structurally the correct closer. An IWGP Women's Championship defense between Iwatani and Syuri carries more standalone weight than any of the earlier tags, and it avoids making the Donna del Mondo announcement the final image of the night. That ordering lets the faction news land as a major shock while still allowing the show to finish with a championship result. The event feels organized around escalation rather than simply placing a collection of January matches onto one pay-per-view.

The most important long-term development is Giulia's announcement that Donna del Mondo will disband. The faction had been one of Stardom's defining units since 2020, and its members had held major singles and tag championships across the promotion. Placing the announcement after a draw involving Giulia, Suzu Suzuki, Maika and Megan Bayne creates a symbolic endpoint: Giulia and Maika, two wrestlers deeply tied to the unit's history, are on opposite sides as the faction's future is formally closed. That gives the event historical importance beyond any single match result.

Mayu Iwatani's successful IWGP Women's Championship defense is the second major marker. She defeats Syuri in 19:06 and records a third successful defense, reinforcing the championship's place inside Stardom while also preserving its New Japan connection. Syuri entered with substantial momentum after winning the Artist titles one day earlier, so the defense is not presented against a cold challenger. Iwatani's win adds to the return sequence that began at Dream Queendom and establishes that her comeback is not limited to multi-person tags.

The event also documents the immediate aftermath of New Year Stars. God's Eye enters January 4 with the Artist of Stardom Championship, Yuzuki arrives as the Rookie of Stardom tournament winner, and several other wrestlers are working on consecutive major cards. That back-to-back scheduling gives historians a clear two-day snapshot of the promotion's hierarchy at the beginning of 2024. The Queen's Quest win over MIRAI, Ami Sohrei and Saki Kashima is especially useful because it shows the new Artist champions can be presented as vulnerable in a non-title faction match without giving away the belts.

The younger roster continues to develop in front of a larger audience. Yuzuki scoring the fall on Kurara keeps the rookie tournament winner moving upward, while Hanan's fall over Rina places a NEW BLOOD Tag Team champion opposite the Future of Stardom champion. Those results are not as important as the main event or Donna del Mondo's dissolution, but they show how Stardom used the Wrestle Kingdom-adjacent stage to expose multiple roster levels rather than limiting the card to established names.

As a result, Ittenyon Stardom Gate is a compact bridge between eras. Dream Queendom crowned Maika and Saori Anou, New Year Stars changed the Artist titles and elevated Yuzuki, and January 4 closes Donna del Mondo while reaffirming Iwatani as IWGP Women's champion. The event therefore belongs in the core early-2024 chronology even though only one championship is defended.