Thursday, February 10, 2011

AJW 1/4/1992

- Tomoko Watanabe, Akemi Torisu & Kazue Saito vs Miori Kamiya, Kaoru Ito & Mayuki Yamamoto
Pretty decent young girls match, nothing special but a nice litle 10-12 mins. Lot of back & forth but the Jungle Jack girls mostly dominated until the end. Watanabe goes for a rana on Yamamoto but she falls back causing Tomoko to land on her head but she recovers and turns it into a pin somehow to score the win. Aside from that everyone looked solid for the most part except for Torisu but she wasn't in much.
          
- Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Mariko Yoshida & Takako Inoue
Battle of opposing strategies. Takako & Yoshida are all about the fast pace, high flying & double teams. LCO are all about slowing things down, brawling, punchin chicks upside the head, power moves & working holds. LCO-fu wins out for the 1st half of the match, working over Yoshida but TakYo-fu proves to be stronger. They come back, Takako works over work over Mima's leg then they bust out some more high spots & after ping ponging around a bit are eventually able to pick up the win with Yoshida rolling up Shimoda with a tricked out lucha style cradle. Wish it would have gone a couple minutes longer but good stuff.

- Suzuka Minami & Yumiko Hotta vs Sakie Hasegawa & Debie Malenko
This is Debbie & Sakie's 1st time teaming together and the match is built around getting them over as a new team to be reckoned with. Hotta & Suzuka got a lot in and looked strong but Debbie & Sakie were able to controll large portions of the match, using their technique and outsmarting their opponents. They came really close to winning the match and got to look good in defeat, hot crowd was really digging them at the end and thought they might pull it off. No go tonight though as a Hotta spin kick & Suzuka suplex finish off Malenko. Damn good match as these 4's styles blend together really well.

- Bat Yoshinaga & Bull Nakanao vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
Aja & Bull shake hands to start. They'd been feuding for around a year and a half at this point and while they still don't exactly like each other, there is respect after all the wars they've had. Of all the various partners Bull has had taking on Jungle Jack, Bat is certainly the weakest. Still Bat's got enough cred that she can play her part well, being just credible enough to be slightly competitive but never leaving you with any doubt over who's eating the pin as Aja squishes her with the back drop. The rest of the time it's your standard Bull vs JJ stuff, they go at it smash mouth, brawling and throwing each other around. Hardly at the top of pile as far as stuff in this feud goes but even their low end matches are still pretty good.

- Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada
As always, these two go really long when werestling each other. 1st 20 minutes is all mat work, nothing fancy just well worked basics with a few flurries of low level high spots thrown in every few mins. Last 10 things pick up, Yamada really stars laying in the kicks and getting more agressive, Toyota starts upping the pace and trying to use more flying stuff, neither is really going all out though yet. Kinda telegraphs things when 25+ in you're still busting out camel clutches and texas clover leafes. Last 5 minutes sees Toyota playing more the agressor with Yamada almost stalling a little bit, like she's puzzled on how to finish her off so we end up with yet another 30 minute draw between these 2. Toyota quickly appeals for an overtime period and surprisingly gets it. This is when the match really gets good. Toyota finally starts digging deepr into her aresenal of stuff, she bust out a lot of moonsaults, suplexes, some very hurty looking piledrivers and conveys a real sense of desperation. Yamada on the other hand still seems to be in more of a survival mode then in a "win at all cost" mode, still not sure how to finish off her opponent. Time limit runs out again but this is a special night so they're given yet another 5 mins after. Big Toyota chant breaks out as Yamada controlls most of this portion, lots of kicks, suplexes, piledrivers etc... of her own that look like they could finally get her the win she still comes up short. Toyota makes 1 last ditch effort but time runs out again and after 40 total mins things are declared a draw. Not their best work but I really enjoyed this one. This is one of those matches I can readily admit won't be everyone's cup of tea though. The 1st half is really slow but that's a style I dig when done a certain way and I was never bored watching them. The 2nd half has A LOT of sloppy work from Toyota, but I thought her passion and energy made up for it. Watching this I didn't feel like she was a performer in a show failing to properly execute a routine like this was a fucking olympic figure skating show or some shit which is how things come across with so many others. With Toyota it felt more real, like a someone in the fight of their life desperatly throwing out whatever they could think of to earn the win and to me stuff like that is far more important then whether you slip a little bit on the ropes doing a dive or don't hit a move all smooth and flawlessly. So yeah, dug this one a lot.

- (IWA Title) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Akira Hokuto
They don't go balls to the wall or anything but these 2 on cruise controll is still better then most wrestlers in the world at this time. The build is kind of forgettable but once they go into the near fall stretch it turns into a darn good match. The usual you'd exspect from them with all the big move kickouts and stuff finally ending with Kyoko picking up a kind of screwy win as Hokuto kicked out sort of last second. Not too much else to say about this, just a fun match to end the night.

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