AJW 1990 October - December

AJW 10/7/1990

- (Mistuko Nishiwaki Retirement Match) Mitsuko Nishiwaki vs Yumiko Hotta
As a match nothing special but these things rarely are, especially since during this time frame they only gave you a 5 min exhibition for your retirement match. Funnily they went over by like 15 seconds but hey who's counting. They go back and forth for a bit and Nish gets to hit a lot of her big spots and gets to go out a winner after a couple power bombs (she always did one of the best looking ones i've ever seen) buts Hotta away. Long, emotional hug between the Fire Jets post match and your typical joshi retirement ceremony follows. Streamers, 10 count, speach, etc...If you've watched joshi for any length of time you know the deal. Haven't seen enough Nishiwaki matches to be emotionally invested in this to be honest but from what I have seen since I started this project of revisiting the early late 80's & 90's stuff she was really damn good and is someone i'll continue to look forward to watching any time I see her name pop up on a matchlist in the future.

AJW 11/14/1990

Originally watched this show several years ago, re-watching it now it'll be interesting to see if my opinion changes on anything.

- (AJW Tag Titles) Mika Takahashi & Kaoru Maeda (c) Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda
Honey Wings in charge to start, lot of flashy offense at 1st then they take it to the mat working over Mima for several minutes. Kaoru stupidly leg rolls her into her own corner  allowing Mita to hot tag in and go crazy. LCO dominate for a while, beating up both Honey Wings before settling in on working over Kaoru. Mika returns the favor, going nuts when the tag finally happens and I really just can't say enough how much of a highlight she is during this time period. Kaoru kept up with her very well but Takahashi was the star of this show and together they bust out all kinds of cool highspots & double teams including a sweet double flying elbow off the top. Not enough to get them the though as they go for the move a 2nd time but get pushed off the ropes allowing Mita to get the pin over Kaoru with a Northern Lights Suplex to with the belts. Liked this about the same as I did when I 1st saw it, only difference now is that I have way more love for Takahashi. It was missing a little something to put it over the top, maybe an extra couple minutes, I dunno but still a real good match to start the show.

- (Lucha Libre Rules Elimination Match) Hyper Cat, La Diabolica, Miori Kamiya & Mayumi Yamamoto vs  Esther Moreno, Xochitl Hamada, Takako Inoue & Noriyo Tateno
Essentially just one giant long fast paced high spot which is fine if done well and this was great. Doesn't go super long but they pack enough in that you don't even notice and nothing feels overly rushed or anything. Comes down to Kamiya vs Tateno for the finish at which point things switch from being a lucha sprint to a joshi sprint but it still fits well with the rest of the match. Kamiya gets the big win after 12-13 mins. This was my 2nd favorite match on the show originally and while I wouldn't call it that anymore it still holds up really well.

- Yumiko Hotta & Mariko Yoshida vs Madusa & Bison Kimura
The only thing I ever remembered about this going in was Madusa's ridiculous Ric Flair strut at the end. Match itself is pretty fun, an exstended squash for the most part. Hotta & Yoshida get a little bit in and manage small run of offense near the end but the majority of this is the Jungle Jack team beating ass like they're the joshi Road Warriors or something. And years later Madusa's strut and other over the top heeling is just as ridiculous as it was the 1st damn time I saw it.

- Los Brazos vs Gran Hamada, Kendo & Yoshihiro Asai
Lucha invasion continues. Gran Hamada was awesome, Ultimo was really good and Oro & El Brazo were fine too but this match was the fucking Super Porky & Kendo show. Kendo was allready like the most over guy going into the match and is one of the most spectacular wrestlers i've ever seen and by the end Porky won them over huge as well with his fat guy flying. Still blown away by some of the stuff they manage to pull off here, perfect blend of comedy & serious action and a great match period.

- (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls - Special Ref Yoshiyo Yamada) Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami (c) vs Manami Toyota & Kyoko Inoue
This is the match my opinion has changed the most of after re-watching. Originally I thought this was just an ok - decent match but this time around I got a lot more out of it and found it to be really good. It's not a work rate, blow away, movez type of match. Not to say that there isn't a lot of great action but the thing that puts this over the top is the story of the match. Yamada was out injured thus unable to team with Toyota so instead she's made ref and Kyoko Inoue is booked to team with Toyota. Even back then the 2 were rivals so we've got whacky mis matched tag parters, something way way over played in main stream US wrestling but rarely ever done in AJW or Japanese wrestlng in general. Things go well for the new pairing early on, Marine Wolves prove to be a better unit, doing a lot of team work and mostly dominating the 1st round but Kyoko & Toyota are still good enough wrestlers that they can come out on top so long as they coexist. With a little help from Yamada "mistakenly" not seeing Hokuto get her shoulder up at the count of 3 Kyoko gets the pin on her. Funny moment as even she wasn't sure it was really 3 and acted all surprised when Yamada gave it to her. 2nd round things look to continue but it goes bad quickly as Kyoko decideds to bring a chair in and accidenly nails Toyota causing her to lose. Shit breaks down after as Toyota decideds she in fact does not enjoy getting smacked in the head by heavy metal things and her & Kyoko get into a fight with people having to rush in to break it up. The soldier on for the 3rd fall which sees Toyota getting beat down by The Wolves for quite a while before finally making the big tag to Inoue. Soon after things go bad again though as Hokuto & Suzuka prove to also be a smarter pair and after getting Kyoko again attack Toyota on accident Hokuto gets her win back, pinning her with the NLB. Post match Toyota gets on the mic, talks shit and says her & Yamada want their shot. Course, a month later Jungle Jack won the titles so moot point.

- (Cage Match) Bull Nakano vs Aja Kong
Just based on my initial few viewings of this I allready had this on my list of the greatest matches i've ever seen. That was before i'd seen very much of the Aja/Bull feud and only a small amount of 90-92 AJW in general. Watching it again now I had an even greater appreciation for it. The over all work is still unbelievably great but now I got a lot more of the little things that were going on and dug how they played off their earlier cage match. Since that one had a screwy finish with Gedo, it makes sense why this one is escape only and has no ref. In the previous match Aja cut open Bull's leg really bad so here Bull puts it over huge when she goes after it again and as retaliation she stabs Aja in the arm with a pair of scissors which is an aspect i'd never thought of before, originally just thinking she did it just to be a bitch. Also never got why Aja jumps her at the start and cuts a chunk of Bull's hair off till I realised they were setting up for the hair vs hair tag next Jan. The other thing I dug a lot more was watching what was going on outside of the cage with each girls seconds. While Aja vs Bull was always the main focus, the feud itself was a lot more then just that as it was about Jungle Jack vs Gokumon-to in general. Got a big kick out of watching how hard Bison & Madusa were fighting it out with Kyoko & Bat ringside and how hard they were trying to help their friends inside the cage, tossing in weapons, Madusa & Bison going nuts and trying to scale the cage once Bull cut Aja's arm open, Kyoko & Bat doing the same when Aja had Bull in serious trouble at times too. Really cool stuff, matches like these are why I love wrestling.

AJW TV 12/1/1990

- (AJW Singles Title) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Miori Kamiya
Funny moment to start as Miori fakes a handshake then punts Kyoko in the head. Go back & forth with highspots for a bit and then things turn surprisingly brutal. It breaks down into more of a fight then a wrestling match as they go to town swinging fist. They take it outside and Miori ends up bleeding after being whiped into the rails and back inside Kyoko works over the cut which is a little weird since she isn't usually that vicious of a wrestler. Another funny moment as Kyoko takes these ricidulous flipping somersault bumps off punches to the gut and then the fight goes outside again. Miori bust Kyoko open this time, cracking her head with a chair. A few more mins of brawling and then Kyoko finally gets the win after Kamiya misses a kick and gets droped with a spining power bomb. They shake hands after all post match. Fun match, not at all what I was exspecting but in a good way, most of it aired too which is always a plus.

- Bull Nakano vs Akira Hokuto
Bull kicking ass rite from the start and soon in she press slams Hokuto over the top to the floor in a nasty looking Holy Fuck moment. Hokuto appears to have banged up her arm on the landing and Bull laughs at her pain. Bull continues the beat down and Kyoko Inoue runs in to his a double team spot just for the heck of it. Bull breaks out the nun chucks too and chokes away all the while seeming to have the time of her life. Hokuto would make an attempt to fight back here and thear but it mostly got shruged off until she's finally able to hit a big dive on the outside and follow it up with some suplexes and other big moves, she even gets the NLB in but it's not enough. Bull regains controll and a couple of suplexes and power bombs onto Hokuto's head and it's over. Match didn't last very long, 12 mins total and like 1/2 aired so it couldn't compare to some of the stuff they'd do in the future but what we got was still damn good and a nice preview of things to come. Since Bull won this one fairly easily for the most part, kind of weird that Hokuto got the next title shot a month later.

- (2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Madusa vs Manami Toyota, Suzuka Minami & Mika Takahashi
Madusa once again rocking the bad ass pink Zubaz. Jungle Jack attack to start and start tossin fools left & right, they settle on beating the snot out of poor Mika before switching to Toyota for a bit until Bison slips on a banana peel and Toyota cradles her to win the 1st fall. 2nd fall Bison is pissed off and out for revenge and thus procedes to murder Toyota, bring her back to life via voodoo then murder her again. With a little help from an Aja trash can shot to the head Bison avenges her loss after a couple of minutes. 3rd fall is a little more evenly fought as the the 3Ms switch strategies and take it to the mat which works out well for them for a while but things go bad again when they decided to take things outside and try hitting a bunch of dives. Soon after chairs start swinging and bodies get tossed all over and Aja tries to show up Bull, wining with a nasty power bomb of her own on Mika. Suzuka didn't get involved as much as the other 2 in this match but Mika & Manami are one of the more fun tag teams that never was and this was a cool match. Much like the Madusa/Bison tag from Marinepiad, really enjoyable in a monster heel glorified squash sort of way.