Random Quickie - Chikara 8/17/07 International Invaders Weekend Night 1

- Rahim Ali vs Shane Storm
- Alex Payne vs Tim Donst
- USApe vs Moscow
- Shayne Hawke vs Jigsaw

Ape vs Moscow was kind of fun, helped that they kept it short, the other 3 were some mix between awful, boring & generic. All went short and you were glad of it too. Also random thought, in the monkey vs cow match, Moohamad the terrorist cow came out to distract Moscow and cause him to lose. Why's the terrorist cow have to be named Moohamad? Seems kind of racist if ya ask me. Why can't the terrorist cow be named Steve???

- Olsen Twins & Brodie Lee vs Fire Ant Soldier Ant & Worker Ant

First decent match of the show, Olsen's always rule and Brodie killed folks in a pleasing manner.

- Claudio Castagnoli vs Akira Raijin

Surprisingly good. They took it to the mat and had a real nice back and forth exchange of holds. Made me want to track down more Raijin stuff. One of the few matches on the show to get a decent amount of time and they made good use of it.

- Pac vs Ricochet

For something they were touting as a "dream match" even back then this was kinda disapointing. Not bad per se but they only got like 8 mins, enough to go back and forth with random flashy dives but not enough to build into anything special. Nice for what it was but could & should have been so much more.

- Eddie Kingston vs Brute Issei

Kinda fun in a big guy lumbering slug fest sorta way. Brute kinda struggled a little to keep up and seemed lost at times but Kingston brought it.

- Chris Hero, Larry Sweeney, Chuck Taylor & Mitch Ryder vs Las Chivas, Equinox & Lince Dorado

Wasn't exspecting anything going in but holy fuck this was an awesome match. Great mixing of styles, comedy & faux lucha to start, great old school FIP beat down section on Equinox in the middle and your typical indy style dive fest, 2.9 a thon to end things. Everyone was on, including Chivas & Equinox who I didn't have high hopes for but those 3 stole the show actually. Surpised this didn't make Chikara's best of 07 Smart Mark set.

- (Chikara Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) F.I.S.T. vs Los Ice Creams

This on the other hand kinda stunk. The action was OK but there was a little too much stupidity and screwiness wiith their own internal logic that it took away from everything. 2 people in the ring attacking 1 guy = not ok. 2 people pinning 1 guy at the same time = OK. No physical tags needed, just leave the ring & your partner can come in = fine, leaving the ring while the ref isn't looking = not fine. 30 second break in between falls unless 1 team decideds they don't want to at which point the ref says "ok then, ring the bell, go ahead". Dumb dumb dumb...

1992 Joshi thoughts & Top 10-20 list

Took me longer to complete this year then any other i've done so far due to the much larger amount of footage available. Just from AJW alone there's almost more matches this year that made tape then 1990 & 1991 combined, add in that I didn't just watch AJW this time and also watched a good 25 - 30 JWP/FMW matches and this was quite the year. With so much going on it wouldn't be fair to limit things to just 10 so

Top 20 Joshi Matches of the Year.

1. AJW 11/26/1992 (3WA World Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Aja Kong
2. AJW 11/26/1992 (3WA Tag Titles, 2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota (c) vs Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki
3. AJW 8/15/1992 (IWA Title - Hair vs Hair) Manami Toyota (c) vs Toshiyo Yamada
4. AJW 4/25/1992 (3WA Title Match) Bull Nakano (c) vs Aja Kong
5. AJW 7/15/1992 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (c) vs Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue
6. FMW 9/19/1992 Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyoda vs Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto
7. AJW 6/21/1992 (JGP 92) Aja Kong vs Bison Kimura
8. AJW 6/21/1992 (No Time Limit) Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada
9. AJW 5/24/1992 Kyoko Inoue & Mariko Yoshida vs Manami Toyota & Sakie Hasegawa
10. AJW 8/15/1992 (Fuji TV Tag Tournament FINAL) Bull Nakano & Aja Kong vs Toshiyo Yamada & Akira Hokuto
11. AJW 8/30/1992 Bull Nakano, Yumiko Hotta & Suzuka Minami vs Akira Hokuto, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda
12. JWP 12/1/1992 Yumiko Hotta & Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki & Hikari Fukuoka
13. AJW 5/24/1992 Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Akira Hokuto & Etsuko Mita
14. AJW 6/27/1992 (3WA Tag Titles 2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota (c) vs Akira Hokuto & Kyoko Inoue
15. AJW 11/26/1992 (All Pacific Title) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Akira Hokuto
16. AJW 3/20/1992 (3WA vs UWA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (3WA) vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (UWA)
17. AJW 4/25/1992 (IWA World Women’s Title Match) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Manami Toyota
18. AJW 6/27/1992 (AJW Title) Mariko Yoshida (c) vs Etsuko Mita
19. AJW 12/13/1992 (Tag Leauge The Best 92 FINAL) Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada
20. JWP 10/7/1992 (JWP Tag Titles) Cuty Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki (c) vs Dynamite Kansai & Hikari Fukuoka

This was quite a hard list to put together, the top few and bottom few i'm confident about, on any other day I could probably rearrange the middle a good deal. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree but for me giving the Aja/Bull title change the #1 spot was an easy choice. In a stand alone vaccum the Dream Rush tag has better action, it's a fuckin great match, one of the best ever, but at the end of the day it's just a great match. Aja/Bull is a great match AND it's the end of an almost 3 year story that's dominated the entire company for much of that time and it sets up Aja as the undisputed ace of the company which she'd be for the next 2 years. So yeah, easy choice to have that as my #1.

Top 10 Wrestlers of the Year

1. Mariko Yoshida
2. Manami Toyota
3. Akira Hokuto
4. Toshiyo Yamada
5. Aja Kong
6. Bull Nakano
7. Kyoko Inoue
8. Mayumi Ozaki
9. Bison Kimura
10. Dynamite Kansai

Little bit easier list to make. No it's not really reflected in my top matches list but night in night out Yoshida was easily the most talented & consistently enjoyable wrestler in AJW. She didn't have as many opportunities to produce classics as others but she had her share and if I were to rank 21-30 she'd be in a good portion of those. Yoshida's rise up the ranks was a joy to watch too. She's someone who doens't have any natural advantages as a wrestler, she's not big or tall, she didn't have a major sports background prior to becoming a wrestler, not the greatest singer, and while she is very attractive, she isn't hot in that exploitable way that leads to one getting outside deals as a bikini model or whatever. To get ahead in wrestling she had to rely on talent alone so she worked really really hard and started putting on really really good matches. The fans saw this, apreciated it and started cheering her which in turn led to the guys in charge seeing this and pushing her higher up the card accordingly. In this day and age whear most wrestling promoters could give fuck all about things like who has the most skill and who gets the best crowd reaction and just shove whoever they like down the throats of fans until they learn to love it watching Yoshida in 92 was really refreshing. Toyota is an interesting case as she on the other hand was given the most chances this year to produce on a high level and in many of those matches she wasn't even the best preformer in them actually. Still, for every match whear she may have been 2nd, 3rd or 4th best, she had a ton more whear she was #1 and she had so many great matches and moments period that you can't really deny her a top spot. Her vs Yamada would be my pick for feud of the year and I would easily, hands down by a large margin call her & Yamada the best tag team, not just in joshi but in the world in 1992. Aja & Bull being a bit lower on my list this year then in previous years doesn't have so much to do with them slipping as it does more with this year focusing on others besides them a lot more. Bull vs Aja while never a dead issue was cooled off for a while in the early part of the year plus Bull having been on top for so long was starting to run out of fresh feuds. Giving her the CMLL women's title and having her recycle opponents to go after that helped stretch things out nicely though. The Bull vs Hokuto feud in the middle of the year was also one of the more enjoyable things of 1992 too, their 7/15 match is one of the better matches that didn't make my top 20 and their cage match on 7/30 would have been up thear too had it aired in full i'm sure.

Also worth mentioning is that just from a booking standpoint this was one of, if not the companies best years ever and in general so many memorable and historical moments took place this year that it's hard to keep track. This year saw the end (temporarily atleast) of the careers of Yoshida, Bison & Kamiya, the start of careers for girls like Kumiko Maekara & Rie Tamada and the first major pushes for girls like Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito. There was the obvious stuff i've allready mentioned like Yamada vs Toyota, Aja vs Bull, Hokuto vs Bull, Aja & Kyoko teaming up for the first time, Akira Hokuto recruiting Mita & Shimoda and start LCO, Yoshida's awesome little run. Except for the rookies and a few other minor exceptions, pretty much everyone on the roster had atleast 1 standout moment or run of somesort this year that made watching everything in order worth the effort. The running theme of Takako Inoue trying to gain respect, bullying anyone on or below her level and getting the crap kicked out of her by anyone above her level and Bat Yoshinaga continuing to wreck things up on the undercards this year were 2 of my other favorite standout things from this year off the top of my head. Of course, the biggest most important happening this year was the start of the interpromotional wars, first with Shark & Crusher from FMW invading after the main event of the 7/15 AJW show, then JWP getting in the mix and lastly the newly formed LLPW showing up. The original JWP splitting in 2 with half their roster bouncing to form LLPW is also a huge thing that took place this year, I personally didn't see enough footage to really follow having watched nothing from JWP early in the year or from LLPW's first few shows but it's still worth bringing up. The few JWP shows I did watch I really enjoyed, they were a clear #2 and couldn't compare to AJW but they had a few great matches that I got to see and a lot of really good talent on their roster with not just Kansai & OZ but Devil, Cuty, Bolshoi, Plum, Fukuoka, rookie Candy Okutsu and hidden gem Sumiko Saito. 19 years later here in 2011 joshi promotions are still sharing talent and we take it for granted but in 1992 it hadn't been done before, ever, it was new and fresh and exciting. Something that produced a lot of hate filled, emotional moments and a lot of amazing matches. Something that literally changed the entire business forever.

JWP 10/7/1992

- Sumiko Saito vs Candy Okutsu

Again Saito looks good but only a couple mins out of 12 aired and you can only do so much working opening match vs a rookie like Candy who'd only been wrestling 2 months at this stage. Saito gets the win with the STF.

- Fatter Butcher Karate Girl & Green Gi Karate Girl vs Sumiyo Toyama & Flower Girl Tights Wearer

Hell yeah, more Karate army in the house. FBKG Kicks flower girl right in the fuckin eye and swells it shut to start the match. Rest of what airs shows FBKG and Karate Ranger Green throwing a million more kicks and the ocasional knee at her. Greeny catches her with an enzugiri and she gets knocked out and fails to make it back to her feet for 10. Only 2 out of 14 mns aired, no footage of Toyama doing anything was shown but looked fun.

- Devil Masami vs Mariko Kyoki

Another in a never ending parade of randoms popping up on these early JWP tapes. This show would be the only televised proof of miss Kyoki even existing. Devil was nice enough to let her get in a couple kicks and a leg bar, they looked nice. Devil then crushed her and took her head off with a couple of lariets to end this after 3 mins.

- Plum Mariko vs Commando Bolshoi

Was hoping this would be a nice little prelude to the awesome submission match they'd have a few months later but sadly they don't take it to the mat at all. Once I got over the disapointment of them not doing what I wanted and took this for what it was I thought they had a pretty rockin little match. They worked this as a big move, all action match, Bolshoi brought some nice dives and other highspots, Plum brought a big bag of suplexes, ending with Plum getting the win with her cross armed german, fun stuff. Went 14 mins, little under half aired.

- Devil Masami, Sumiko Saito & Mariko Kyoki vs Plum Mariko, Commando Bolshoi & Sumiyo Toyama

JWP crew isn't exactly rolling deep at this point so everyone's pulling double duty here. Main story is Devil playing monster and smashing everyone she gets her hands on. Sumiyo stands no chance, Bolshoi flat out runs from her in a funny spot latter on in the match only to get caught, and Plum gets the worst of it. Nasty spot whear Plum gets press slamed into the turnbuckle post gut first, she gets tossed into various other dangerous metal and wooden things along the way as well. When Devil wasn't in murdalizing folks the rest just kind of floated in and out, nothing to stand out too much just nice paced action. Match went 18, half aired, Devil saw drop Toyama with a powerbomb only to be gracious enough to allow Sumiko to get the pin after a top rope splash. Fun easy crowd pleasing match.

- (JWP Tag Titles) Cuty Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki (c) vs Dynamite Kansai & Hikari Fukuoka

Heh, interesting diffrence during the 2 teams entrances. Kansai & Fukuoka just calmly walk out and get in the ring. Fukuoka oddly looking like the spitting image of Jaguar Yakotoa with her all black singlet. Cury & OZ enter and they get mobed by fans and have to push their way through while mother fuckers are tossing confetti in the air. Wonder who as the more popular team here? Before the match gets under way they splice in a LONG clip of original Tiger Mask Sayama who was a special guest for this show, training Cuty and one of the other youngsters at his dojo in the proper way to smash faces and snap limbs. NOT as exciting as it sounds. Then get footage of Sayama giving them a pre match pep talk earlier in the night in the locker room as Cuty & OZ act all star struck like "holy shit, Tiger Mask is here and he's our buddy and we're super cool pals, fuck yeah hehehehehe" Devil Masami randomly barges in and just sits down next to him and starts puttin on lotion like it's no big deal. Sayama has a great "WTF is this bitch doing" look in response. That certainly killed 15 mins. Back to the match, yay. This was a rare case whear I watched a match twice in a row, the first time around I ended up thinking that this was pretty good but nothing special but I was distracted a lot during the initial viewing and had to stop and pause several times so fig that maybe I didn't give it a fair chance. 2nd time through I loved this a lot more. Early portion sees OZ & Fukuoka taking turns playing whipping girl for exstended periods of time, bit slow but not boring as they do lots of little things to keep it interesting. Ozaki being a great person to have as a tag partner is something i've brought up in previous reviews recently but I noticed here that Cuty is also pretty darn good as well. As a team they really compliment each other, always have each others back, always ready to come in and boot somebody in the head to make sure their partner doesn't get in too much trouble, have a lot of cool double team spots, etc.. Fukuoka & Kansai more work as 2 singles stars thrown together for a night. Around 1/3 of the way in they kick things into high gear after Cuty gets frustrated and tosses Fukuoka outside leading to a 4 way brawling section. Back inside they Cuty & OZ dominate most of the rest of the match, they blitz Kansai for a while and then Fukuoka tags in and works most the rest of the match. They don't go full on sprint but for the last 15 mins or so they work at a pretty fast pace and while not the most rabid you'll ever see they really get the fans into things by the end (better lighting and crowd micing would have helped the atmosphere a lot). Last few mins sees OZ & Cuty double teaming Fukuoka but keep failing to put her away, Hikari looks to make her come back, getting in a rolling cradle on OZ but just as quick Cuty rushes in and kills her with forearms allowing OZ to to drop her with everyone's favorite move the JWP special #1, a powerbomb for the win. Ending felt a little abrubt the first time I watched it but I think that was because by then they'd been going for so long with near falls and stuff that I hadn't realised they were allready into the finishing stretch long before then. Anyways, yeah, a few flaws here & thear but overall great match. Another from JWP that goes really long, 27 mins, but doesn't feel it at all, a total breez to sit through a second time.

JWP 7/9/1992

- (Kickboxing Match) ? vs ?

Don't know what either person's name was but this appears to be a fight between a middle aged house wife and teenage school girl. Skillwise they both looked better then the usual girls AJW gets for these sorts of things. Wifeypoo bust the school girls nose open and appears to dominate but it ends in a draw after 3 Rounds. Only 2 mins of highlights aired.

- Commando Bolshoi vs Mitsuo Kobashi

You know, you can't really say you've lived until you've seen a midget female clown take on a skinny butch karate girl, now I can say i've lived. Kobashi throws kicks, a lot of them, not much else. Bolshoi alternates between punching karate girl square in the face, droping her on her head with suplexes and some sweet submission holds. She wins one for the good guys with a rolling cross arm breaker. Went 6 mins, about half aired, really fun actually. A 2nd unnamed Karate girl runs in post match and they put the bare feet to Bolshoi until Plum makes the save leading to...

- Plum Mariko vs Fater Butcher Karate Girl

Ref calls for the bell while Bolshoi & Kobashi continue brawling outside. FBKG gets in a few kicks but Plum catches her on one, locks in a leg bar and gets the immediate tap out win in 25 seconds. Post match Plum kicks her while she's down just because. OK, I gotta investigate this more now. JWP going to war vs an army of martial artist is something i'd 1. never heard of before and 2. must see more of now :)

- Sumiko Saito vs Hikari Fukuoka

Sumiko's someone i've seen a couple of times now and never thought much of either way, just another random girl on the show. Here she really opened my eyes though, turning in a very impressive performance. She was really good working a match around the simple basic stuff but she also had a lot of nice submissions, including a sweet Bryan Danielson like cattle mutilation and busted out a few cool athletic high spots too. Looking over matchlist for other JWP shows from this time i'm guessing she would be JWP's equivilant to a Mika Takahashi or Miori Kamiya. Good solid mid to upper mid card wrestler who would have been very well rememberd had most of her career not taken place during an era when no one was paying attention JWP. Def want to see more of her now after this match. Fukuoka for her part was real good here too, she brought a lot of nice looking flashy highspots, and you could really see the Toyota influence shine through. She doesn't spaz out and go a million miles an hour like her hero does but she was def aping a lot of her stuff move wise. Match went 24 mins and they aired a good chunk, around half. Enjoyed this a lot.

- Devil Masami vs Cuty Suzuki

Boy, every time I see Cuty rocking the all black outfit it just feels to wrong. Anyways, weird match, Devil doesn't squash Cuty at all, she gives her quite a lot of offense actually but for a good majority of things Devil more or less treats it as a joke. Cuty will try something and Devil will just talk shit on her, make faces or brush it off and not give you any sense that she's in trouble. Came across like she was just toying with Cuty and could have taken over and crushed her in seconds had she really wanted to. Cuty is a persistent little spitfire in this though and she keeps coming back and blasting away at Devil trying to beat some respect out of her. Eventually Devil caves in and finally starts looking vulnerable enough to be defeated but meh, I dunno. By that point it was so late in the match that it felt like too little too late. They did enough later on that overall I can still say this was a pretty decent match but yeah, the early portion left a bad taste in my mouth. Devil gets the win in 21 mins after a power bomb, about 10-11 aired.

Random side tangent, gotta say compared to what AJW was doing at the time, JWP's production was just embarisingly low level. On a Zenjo show if they would have to edit matches they'd mostly atleast still keep the flow of the match in tact and do things in such a way that you often wouldn't even know there were edits at all if you weren't paying close attention and they didn't air the match times at the end of the show. JWP on the other hand will just randomly chop shit up, jump around at weird moments and make it a lot harder to get a sense for what the real story of the match is. Everything else about the show from the lighting to the camera angles with little to no close ups just comes across 2nd rate too. I'm not one to usually harp on such things but it's really hard not to notice. There was a moment in the latter parts of the above match whear I thought Devil may have been busted open slightly for a few mins but never could figure it out because they shot everything from so far back.

- Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai

You can feel the tension in the air even before the bell rings. A really violent match, not in terms of brawling & blood and weapons and stuff like their more famous matches but just in the amount of intensity and stiffness they exhibit. They kind of take you on a roller coaster ride in this match though. Kansai brought the stiff kicks, just punting OZ as hard as she possibly could in the back of the skull at times, Ozaki brought it just as hard and wasn't afraid to hop up and boot Kansai in the Jaw. They'd punch each other, thorw elbows, throw each other into the railings, chairs and lots of other things but every time they'd have a brutal exchange like that one or the other would slow it down and grab a hold. Mostly pedestrian stuff, a headlock here, a camel clutch, a leg bar or something to break things up. Gave the match the feeling that chaos could erupt at any moment as you kept hoping for them to stop holding back and go full force. In the later part of the match it looks like they're going for just another rest hold spot but OZ decideds to really crank the fuck out of an armbar and that really picks things up. OZ keeps up working on it and Kansai does an awesome job selling the pain. Even after she makes her comeback she continues holding her arm for quite a while and puts over how much it hurts her to execute moves even if they don't involve the arm directly. Eventually they move away from that to go into the final stretch but by then enough time had passed that it wasn't a big deal. This is one of those cool matches that starts out good but you kind of wonder what the big deal is at first. By the end while I wouldn't call it one of the top matches of the year things just kept getting better and better over time as they built up to the final climax and by then you're loving every minute. Great stuff for sure. OZ wins after a surprise roll up counter to a powerbomb. Went almost 30 mins, aired in full and it just flew by.

AJW 12/13/1992 Tag Leauge The Best 1992 Finals

- Miori Kamiya, Kaoru Ito & Chikako Hasegawa vs Mima Shimoda, Etsuko Mita & Saemi Numata

Rematch from Dream Rush with Ito & Numata added to the mix. Previous match was more or less an LCO squash but this is worked a lot more competitively. Kamiya was super motivated here and looked really good going at it with Mima. Numatchi & Hasegawa actually had some of the more fun exchanges of the match and Ito was a nice addition to things as well. Turned into quite the nice little low level action tag by the end, Ito gets the win over Mima after Kamiya softens her up. Post match Kamiya announces her retirement. Guess that would explain why she got so many streamers during the introduction though a good portion of the crowd seems to be shocked at the news. Kamyia wouldn't have her retirement ceremony until Match of next year but this is her last televised match and it was a pretty good one to go out on. Not the best, not the most memorable, just good solid work with ocasional really good highlights which actually sums up Kamiya's career pretty well.


- (Midget Match) Tomezo Tsunokake vs Mr.Buddhaman

Only went 4 mins but that's 4 mins too long for me. I didn't care enough to check who won.

- Yumiko Hotta & Suzuka Minami vs Bull Nakano & Terri Power

Another Dream Rush rematch, this time with Bull taking Takako's place. You'd think that would make for an upgrade, you'd be wrong. Terri kind of tried, she didn't fuck anything up, she didn't have any bad looking awkward moments, wasn't clocking people in the jaw with horribly aimed lariets, she spent a lot of the match getting beat up and looked fine more or less. Everyone else totally half assed shit here, Suzuka did nothing of interest and HOTTA of all people was pulling her kicks. By her standards it looked like se was giving a love tap to a baby half the time. Usually she loves trying to cave Terri's skull in but here's she's just like "meh". Bull doesn't get involved in this too much and when she does she doesn't put forth much effort either. It's been a long year, she looks flat out tired actually. Even the crowd brawling is half assed, oh here's a chair, bleh, kinda sorta hit someone, not really, ok let's go back inside. It's like they all collectively said "fuck it, it's the final show of the year, let's just get this shit over with as painlessly as possible so we can go vacation in the mountains". Only they drag and drag and drag things out for 16-17 mins. After the obligatory near falls Terri accidently hits Bull and gets cradled by Suzuka to end it.

- (Vacant AJW Tag Titles) Tomoko Watanabe & Bat Yoshinaga vs Sakie Hasegawa & Debbie Malenko

Battle of the we hate FMW club. Takako & Yoshida come out pre match to return the titles, sad. Also sad is that these 4 pick up from whear the last match left off with a totally pedestrian, through the motions effort for much of this. Really slow paced, basic action, 15 mins in and nothing of note has happened. Bat saves things a little bit when she decided to put some actual emotion into things and does a hell of a great job putting over Sakie working over her leg. Bat starts screaming and nearly crying to sell the pain and that finally wakes up the crowd and myself. Bat does a great job continuing to sell the leg and put over the fatigue of the match for the remainder of things and it's a nice moment when she overcomes it all in the end and picks up the win & the titles by spin kicing Sakie to death. Final few mins of this were pretty nice but it was a too little too late situation unfortunatly. Big emotional speach from Watanabe post match to Bull who was at the commentary booth. Essentially Watanabe going "I done good mama?" and Bull looking on and clapping like "yay, yeah you done good baby".

- (All Pacific Title) Akira Hokuto (c) vs Takako Inoue

Takako jumps her from behind to start and drops her with 3 shoulder dropplexes. Surprisingly Hokuto does not kill her for this but she does quickly take over. These 2 met a few times earlier in the year and every previous time it saw Takako get the dog crap kicked out of her. This looks to be a longer, drawn out repeat but then Hokuto makes one mistake getting caught going up top. Takako punches her and she falls down getting her leg caught in the ropes. Takako is someone who's really really good at working over the leg and going for submissions. Hokuto is someone who's really really really good at selling a body part, especially her legs. They have the bright idea of combining these 2 elements and the match turns pretty damn awesome after that. Takako tries to destroy her knee, Hokuto puts it over like a champ, yay, good times. Hokuto isn't going to quit though and they tell the story of Takako not being strong enough otherwise to stand up to her toe to toe. Eventually Takako makes the same mistake Hokuto did earlier, gets caught herself, droped with a couple suplexes and then finished with the NLB. Overall a real good match. Post match Hokuto gets on the mic, talks shit about LLPW and promises to crush the rebel scum.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 92 FINAL) Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada

Aja & Kyoko came prepared and have swank new matching team gear. Toyota & Yamada quickly try and turn things into a sprint early on but Aja smash ends that mess. Match instead settles into a long stretch of Kyoko & Aja having the time of their life torturing Yamada. Lots of awesome little touches during this part, lots of cheap shots and taunting. Aja bends Yamada over her knee and Kyoko just saunters in and steps on her throat really just for fun. They do the camel clutch/punt spot and Aja with Aja making fun of Toyota. Later on Kyoko puts Yamada in the Romero Special and Aja just walks in and screams at her to give up in another cool moment. All the while Toyota looks on with a sad look on her face whining like "awwwww ref, come on, do something, no fair". Really makes you apreciate OZ as a tag parter even more, she'd have just run in and punched somebody in the face instead :) Toyota finally hot tags in and goes bonkers but Aja & Kyoko were prepared for it and dodge all her shit for a while until Toyota's endless energry wins out and she eventually gains controll. Yamada tags back in for some sweet revenge, the look on her face getting to do the camel clutch/punt spot on Kyoko is priceless. Soon after the Super Maniacs again shut things down and take back over however. Kyoko blitzes her and then Aja drags her outside and spends a good deal of time tossing her around the building, throwing her into fans, smashing chairs and tables and doors and handbags and anythin else she can find upside her head. Kyoko looks on from the ring amused, Toyota stays in the corner like a good girl with her thumb up her ass doing nothing until Aja's done with her at which point she goes over and pats Yamada on the back like "thear thear, you can do it, I believe". 20 mins in and 85% of this has been all Aja & Kyoko. However, they make the mistake of leaving Yamada outside long enough to recover so when she gets back in she's quite pissed and starts murdering ppl with kicks and suplexes and her & Toyota finally get to rally and make their big comeback. Rest of the match is the usual back and forth big move a thon you'd exspect. Some highlights being Aja catching Toyota off a dive and turning it into a giant powerslam in one motion. Nice sunset powerbomb from Toyota on Aja. Double head butt misses for Yamada & Toyota and they eat the tandem spinning powerbomb after. Brutal choke slam from Aja on Toyta almost wins it but Yamada saves. Ending comes down to Kyoko & Toyota, after Aja breaks up a moonsault attempt, Toyota tries to go for the JOCS but it gets blocked by Kyoko and they spill outside, Aja again saves things, Yamada gets taken out and Aja goes nuts sensing this is their chace and starts screaming at Kyoko to finish her with the Niagra Driver. Kyoko hits it but last second Yamada rushes in one last time, again she gets tossed aside and this time Toyota gets pinned after they hit the doomsday elbow. Toyota weak link theme continues I see. Post match is aswesome, Aja & Kyoko celebrate, Toyota & Yamada recieve a 2nd plce trophy which Yamda accepts alone, 3rd place team Debbie (rocking some sweet Zubaz) and Sakie and 4th place team Hotta & Suzuka recieve consolation prizes too. The entire rest of the roster comes out and Kyoko spazes out and leads everyone in a happy happy "zenjo cha cha cha" chant. ENITRE time this is going down, like 6-7 mins, Tyota's just standing off in the corner, head completely down, sad and depressed while Yamada looks on angirly. Brilliant. Their tag title match from a few months earlier was much better but yeah, this was still pretty damn great in it's own right.

JWP 12/1/1992

Show starts off with a flash back to 11/15 whear Toyota, Yamada, Hotta & Takako invaded a JWP event and got in a confrontation with OZ, Kansai & Fukuoka

- Commando Bolshoi & Candy Okutsu vs Sumiyo Toyama & Yumi Tenma

Just a couple mins of highlights aired. Bolshoi beating up on Toyama for the little it was shown looked fun but that's about all I got out of this. They pin Tenma after a nice looking Clownsault and ugly looking Candy splash.

- Masked Yawara vs Machiko Hioki

Odd aperance from 2 randoms. Yawara looks like a long lost ZAP only minus the talent. I can find no other matches for either of these 2 before or after this match. It went exactly 1 minute and sucked so i'm not complaining. Yawara wins over generic rookie #9000 after some judo throws and a cross arm breaker.

- Plum Mariko vs Sumiko Saito

Plum looked pretty decent, Saito was unmemorable, nothing bad, nothing good, just thear. Ok action, little on the slow side but I liked what I saw for the most part. 6 or 7 mins out of 25 aired. Plum gets the win with a cross arm german.

- (JWP Title Tournament Semi Final) Dynamite Kansai vs Devil Masami

Again clipped down to around 6 mins out of 17. A lot diffrent then their match a few months ago. Whear as that one seemed to be a sprint this has a lot more slower paced, old school build to it even though they had much less time to work with. Still good, just in a diffrent way. When they do pick up the pace there's some nice power stuff gettin thrown back and forth for the finish, especially from Devil breaking out diff suplexes & powerbombs. Devil goes for 1 too many and Kansai counters into a roll up to advance to the final.

- (JWP Title Tournament FINL - 2 count rules) Dynamite Kansai vs Cuty Suzuki

Yay, a full match. Cuty sprints down and immediatly jumps Kansai while she's still recovering from the last match. Kansai puts an end to that quickly, knocking her on her butt with a few kicks. Match then follows the pattern of Kansai wanting to slow things down and Cuty playing spunky little pixie who won't be beat and keeps coming back. Cuty gets a fair amount in and dominates atleast half the match actually but each time she gets a little run going Kansai cuts her off with brute force. Fun moment when Kansai jacks some dudes brifecase in the crowd and waffles Cuty with it. The 2 count rules really add to the drama too with Cuty especially milking it for all it's worth and kicking out with force each time at 1. Been a while since i'd last watched this match, liked it a lot more then I did previous viewings. Good stuff. Kansai folds Cuty in half with brutal powerbomb to take the win and become JWP's first champ.

- Yumiko Hotta & Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki & Hikari Fukuoka

Story of the match is young Fukuoka wanting to step up, play with the big girls and prove herself and they certainly give her every oportunity as she works about 75% of this. One of those matches designed to get a kid over by showing how tough they are for surviving a massive beating, never giving up and still fighting back. Gotta say OZ stole the show however playing the role of protective big sister. Watching this I got the sense that she wanted Fukuoka to prove herself just as much as Fukuoka did so she gives her every opportunity but when needed she was always thear to step in and make the save, attack someone from behind, get in a cheap shot and generally even the odds, come in and kick ass when things got too overwhelming for Fukuoka. Great moment around 10 mins in whear OZ just says fuck it and has enough of watching Fukuoka get beat up so she goes nuts on Takako, getting in a crazy slap war, which she wins. Between this and Dream Rush I don't think i've ever enjoyed watching someone work from the apron more then Ozaki. A noticeable minority of AJW fans were in the house booing her and she tells them all to fuck off. For their part, dominating bully is a role Hotta was born to play and Takako is quite good here too. Last few minutes are awesome as Fukuoka gets to fight back finally & the JWP team go on a little mini run. Great near fall stretch, Fukuoka bust out some nice moonsaults and suplexes and everything else she can think of but the Zenjo girls are still too tough in the end. Takako gets OZ out of the way keeping her from making any more saves and Hotta drops Fukuoka with the Carribean Splash to win it. This wasn't non stop greatness like Dream Rush, it took it's time a little more but kept going and going and getting better and better and by the end was for sure one of the better matches of the year. Wasn't planning to but re-watching this single handidly made me want to go track down more 92 JWP just to see more of OZ.

AJW Dream Rush 11/26/1992

Will be really interesting to revisit things here and see if my thoughts have changed as it's been a good 5-6 years probably since I last watched this show.


- Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Miori Kamiya & The Goddess Chikako Hasegawa

LCO pretty much squash Chikako. Kamiya comes in and has a little bit better luck but she can't stand up to 2 on 1 odds. Mita gets the win over Kamiya with the northern lights suplex in a little over 10 mins. Nothing memorable but an ok opener.

- (AJW Title) Tomoko Watanabe © vs Kaoru Ito

Wasn't televised but Watanabe took the title off Sakie a month ago on 10/9. They start off slapping each other but then do a handshake. Ito then dropkicks her from behind and the match is on. Watanabe dominates the early portion, does a little bit of leg work but it doesn't go anywhere. Things pick up a little after Watanabe takes the fight outside. Ito makes her way back in and goes for revenge and hits a small flury of stuff before slowing things down again. So far a real disjointed match, little bit of this, little bit of that but not the best flow to it all to tie things together. Nice sell job from Watanabe putting over Ito working over her back, even when she goes back on offense she's in a lot of pain when busting out her judo throws and other moves. They start trading bigger moves and have a few nice near falls during the home stretch. Watanabe gets sent into the corner and bust out a wacky lopsided moonsault escape, she goes for a rana but Ito counters with a powerbomb. 2 footstomps and the twisting senton later Ito gets the win. Earlier impressions of this weren't very good but upon re-watching it now I enjoyed it a lot more. They saved things nicely in the 2nd half and it turned into a decent match once they settled on the same page. Fitting that Aja's diciple beats Bull's to win her first tonight.

- (Tag League The Best 92) Takako Inoue & Terri Power vs Suzuka Minami & Yumiko Hotta

Terri taking Yoshida's place in the tournament. Takako is still anounced as 1/2 of the AJW tag champs but they'd be striped soon after this.Mish mash of stuff early on, few clumsy moves from Terri, random leg work from Takako, lotta strikes from Hotta including her trying to kick Terri's head off her shoulders a couple times. They settle on working over Takako's leg and weaing her down for a while and things get good after then. Cool double team axe handle spot from T&T after Terri tags back in and Terri gets to bust out some other fun power stuff (no pun intended). Takako bust out the tombstone piledrivers for I believe the first time here, no knees yet tho. Short section working over Suzuka sees her get a faint old school chant from school girls in attendence, neat to see there's still a few left at this point. Suzuka & Hotta regain the advantage and we get a pretty good ending stretch with Hotta & Suzuka taking turns trying to finish off Takako while Terri runs interferance. They finally get her out of the way allowing Hotta to get the win with her "Carribean splash" suplex off the top. Thankfully she's changed it up a little by hooking the leg so she can lift her oppoent up a little higher instead of droping straight down and nearly killing almost everyone she's tried it on. Like the previous match this is a tale of 2 halves, a blah 1st but good 2nd.


- (All Pacific Title) Kyoko Inoue © vs Akira Hokuto

They had a pretty good match in Jan which saw Kyoko get the win although it was a little screwy with Hokuto kicking out last second. There was the really great 6/27 tag with them forming a 1 time partnership to try and take the tag belts off Yamada & Toyota which failed when they couldn't get along. Don't think they ever exploited this as much as they should but there's also always been the underlying fact that Hokuto took Kyoko's spot as Bull's #1 tag partner after Kyoko broke away & Kyoko went on to become buddy buddy with Bull's #1 rival Aja instead. Lots of other run ins together in 92 as well so yeah, this is the culmination of a nice little sub feud that's been building all year. Early on they're quite respectful towards each other, handshake to start and clean breaks in the corner. Kyoko then slaps Hokuto who then drops Kyoko, hard, on her head with a back drop suplex in retaliation putting an end to all that nice nice shit. Soon as she regains conciousness Kyoko gets in a 33 rotation giant swing. The rest of this match really plays up the familiarity aspect between these 2. Lots of counter based spots and one upmanship. Kyoko runs though her usual array of wear down holds and stretches, Hokuto counters that and does the same but there's a lot of struggling to
get stuff locked in. Lots of, "I know what's coming so i'm going to block it" moments. You know, it's a small miracle Hokuto never killed anyone with those jumping piledrivers she used to do, always cringe worthy and she gets a couple in here. Cool little stretch whear Hokuto wipes out Kyoko with a series of dives and Kyoko does an awesome job selling the impact and milking the 20 count on the floor to get back in only to be met with another attack every time she's close. Them knowing each other so well again playing a big factor during the final near fall section as almost every big move comes off of one or the other countering or avoinging another big move from the other. Kyoko regains controll, rolling though a cross body atempt. Kyoko's spring board back elbow is met with a drop kick to the spine. Hokuto's superfly splash meets knee. Kyoko's step up back elbow again fails for the finish as this time Hokuto just lifts her legs and punts Kyoko right in the bottom of the neck on the way down which did not look fun at all. Kyoko just barely kicks out but the NLB to follow up gets Hokuto the win and the title. Whole thing had a really awesome big match feel to it and they really steped things up here. They've done good things together before but this was easily their
best and the 1st time any of their matches against each other delievered a true great home run. But wait, there's more, after a nice little show of respect between the 2 and a short celebration from Hokuto, more chaos erputs. Hokuto grabs the mic and starts talking shit on Shinobu Kandori (rocking the most amazing Cosby sweater ever) & the rest of LLPW who were sitting in the crowd. Kandori, Rumi Kazama & Harely Saito rush the ring. Cool Shiro Abe cameo as he's running gopher for them and fetches another mic. Kandori says nothing but Harley talks some shit back so they're setting the stage for the big Jan 6 man tag and LLPW's involvement in the interpromotional war.

- Bison Kimura retirement ceremony

Pretty long and classy affair. Follows the standard pattern for most of these, notable highlihts are Ultimo Dragon sending a special msg, insane satanic Kabuki dude showing up to give a speach and pretty emotional apperances from Bull & Aja. 2 or so years later Bison would un-retire and return full time.

- (3WA Martial Arts Title - Kickboxing match) Bat Yoshinaga © vs Kyoko Kamikaze

Mr. Danger Mitsuhiru Matsunaga from W*ING shows up as a special guest pre match, WTF?????? Ms. Kamikaze has a belt of her own but no clue what it is and it's not on the line. Not a huge fan of these types of matches but this one wasn't too bad. Bat gets significantly out classed with Kyoko nailing her with shot after shot which was fun for a little bit then quickly got repetitive. Mid way into the 2nd round Bat gets in a lucky back fist shot knocking KK the fuck out and gaining her the win.

- Sakie Hasegawa & Debbie Malenko vs Shark Tsuchiya & Crusher Maedomari

Back from Mexico Sakie & Deb got....football jerseys as souvenirs. Sure, why not. Deb says, they're happy to be back. Shark's going into this match with a heavily injured arm which caused them to have to drop out of the tag leauge. Crusher also has a banged up knee. This was definatly quite the interesting affair. Not so much a pro wrestling match as it is an ugly ugly fight that happens to contain wrestling moves. When Debbie's in with either she plays assasin going after Crushers leg and trying to destroy Shark's arm which gets an interesting mix of cheers and boos, more of the former then the later but it's def split. Kinda weird seeing Shark in an almost face role like that. When Sakie's in there's a lot of uncoperative looking spots, she won't go in for an irish whip easily, fights off attempts to toss her in the the corner, etc.. Sakie was quite fired up and pissed off here, more then i've ever seen from her before. There's an air of tension and hatred in the air that whear you think any moment pure chaos is going to erupt. Nothing pretty to look at but really fun stuff. Sadly the match keeps going and it starts to drag and drag and drag. Shark & Crusher gas out horribly to the point the anouncers start pointing out their "stamina" issues. Crusher can't even get up properly to bump off the drop kick flurry spot that's like day 1 wrestling school stuff for almost every rookie. Match falling apart horribly at this point. Debbie just holds Crusher while Sakie paint brushes her with slaps and kicks in a funny moment. Shark comes in and saves things as they do a lot of easy crowd brawling stuff and rows of chairs get hurled at ppls heads, always fun. Things limp along a little while longer as whatever momentum that sequence built up dies. Match ends after an exhausted Crusher gets taken out with a kick from Sakie, not even a fucking spin kick either, just a regular half assed thrust kick to the chest. Post match Crusher vows revenge and her & Debbie have an unexspected handshake. I used to hate this match but I actually enjoyed a lot of this watching it now even if things did go horribly down hill by the end. The 1st half was great and the 2nd half had a small amount of fun stuff mixed in with the bad so I def don't think it's the horrible match I once did. Even the bad was sorta entertaining in a train wreck sorta way too. If this was 10 mins instead of 20 it would have been awesome. Checking BAHU's FMW site I actually saw that they did have a rematch in FMW the next day whear Crusher got her win back over Sakie and it only went 12 mins. Really wishing I could have seen how that one went.

- (3WA World Title) Bull Nakano © vs Aja Kong

Won't go into too many details for this match. The action is good, very good but, lots of smash mouth power stuff, brawling, big moves, stiff strikes, etc.. Bull breaks out a freaking diving sunset flip off the top rope in a cool moment. But this is so much more then a wrestling match and about so much more then what went down bell to bell. Bull's been champion a few months shy of 3 years, the undisputed #1 top wrestler in the company and for almost 2 & 1/2 years Aja's been her main rival. A lot of others have come and gone along the way trying to take Bull out. Toyota, Hokuto, Kyoko, Hotta, Yamada, Monster Ripper, etc... some came close, some not so much but none came closer then Aja and in the end it could only, should only have been her to finally take Bull down. Bison is in Aja's corner which is fitting as it was never about just Aja & Bull. It was about Jungle Jack vs Gokumonto, Aja & Bison tearing away from Bull's gang to form their own crew in a war to take her down, in a war for respect. Grizzly Iwamoto bowed out early in the feud, Mika Takahashi retired last year, all the other major players involved from both sides are ringside in addition to Bison. The hatchet between Aja & Bull was allready buried earlier in the year as they embraced as friends once again
but so long as Bull still had the big red belt it could never be over. This is the final passing of the torch, this is the ending of an era. Lots of cool little touches I hadn't noticed before in earlier viewings in this match. Bull misses the guiloteen leg drop, Aja follows up giving a shout out to Ito and hitting a bunch of running foot stomps. Bull regains controll a little later on and hits the leg drop this time but it's no longer strong enough to get her the win as Aja kicks out. Bull hits the Megadeath rolling leg drop and what was once an instant win is no longer strong enough to get her the win as Aja kicks out. Bull's last ditch, nothing left in the tank, ultimate move the moonsault misses and that allows Aja to make her final rally. Aja hits a german, 3 big urakens, shouts out to Bison and bust out the blazing chops, all for near falls. Finally, FINALLY, Aja ends this match, ends this 2+ year struggle, surpases her former leader, her rival, her friend by beating Bull with her own move, Aja hits a guiloteen leg drop of her own and becomes the new champ. Lots of emotion post match, Aja & Bull both legit in tears giving speaches, they bow to each other and Bison comes in as well for 1 final group hug. Great match, amazing story, perfect ending.

- (3WA Tag Title Match, 2/3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota © vs Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki

Another match whear I don't really need to give too many details on the action. It's so famous that I assume a large amount of the people out thear reading this have seen it and those that haven't, nothing I write can properly caputre this match anyways. A few random thoughts and observations though. The backstory of this match is interesting. The 9/19 FMW match had the dynamic of Kudo & Combat being former AJW girls who were deemed not good enough and let go years earlier, this match has the dynamic of Kansai & OZ being 2 girls who weren't good enough to get into AJW to begin with as the story goes that they had gone to their open tryouts but never made the cut so ended up having to go to JWP instead. Also interesting to point out that OZ & Kansai were pretty much just randomly thrown together to represent the company. Kind of this myth that some people have but they were never a regular team or ever even very close allies. They had the 3 Toyota/Yamada matches, the 2 Takako/Hotta matches, Thunderqueen, a few other random multi man tags and that's it really. I'm sure there may have been more on house shows perhaps but if you've seen the handfull of matches I just listed thear then you've seen pretty much their entire run as a team. Almost the entire rest of their careers they spent feuding against each other on and off. Like Aja/Bull there were a lot of cool little moments and touches I caught this time around i'd either forgotten about or never knew about before. The high level of energy & pacing througout this match really impressed me a lot on this viewing as well. Like for the entire 40+ mins there's ALWAYS something going on, like even when someone it put in a hold there's constant moving, with the opponent trying to fight out of it or the partner trying to save. Just non stop action but never done in a way that's over whelming or that loses you from being too hard to keep up with. With a few exceptions, no team ever controlls things for more then a few minutes either but it's in no way a spotfest and there's a definate plot/build to things. In the 1st fall I got a big kick out of Kansai & OZ doing the flying head butt since that's one of Toyota & Yamada's big signature double teams. Toyota getting pined by Kansai to end it continued the subtle story they'd been telling of her being the weak link in the team. Not counting the mini Mexico tour, Her & Yamada hadn't won a televised AJW match in months leading up to this and each time they lost it was Toyota eating the pin. Yamada firing up and blitzing Kansai with a
billion backdrop drivers and then the Gori Special Bomb to save the day and quickly tie things up in a short 2nd fall was awesome. At this point they're allready 17+ mins in and if they'd just left it thear it would be considered a great match but the 3rd fall is the best of all and is what really puts this match over the top. The JWP girls throughout the match make the most effort to maybe slow things down a little bit and here's whear they make their strongest attempt trying to wear down Yamada by attacking her arm and then Toyota for a little bit. OZ kind of steals the show at this point. Like Kansai was the bulldozing wrecking machine in this match, just fuckin shit up left and right, muggin folks for their lunch money. Yamada brought a ton of passion and fire and fighting spirit, maybe more so then in any match she's ever had. Toyota did her thing too, not to undersell her because she was great but she didn't stand out as much as the other 3. OZ though, yeah, she brought not only the work but the personality. She turns up the bitch facotor to 10 and then cranks it up to 13 just because. So so awesome just standing on the apron and doing little things, slaping away Toyota's as she reaches for the rope, stomping on her hands, getting in cheap shots. Great moment later in the match whear Kansai has Toyota in a figure 4 and OZ just comes in and puts her in a cross arm breaker at the same time. As time goes on you can tell the JWP team is getting a little more frustrated with things, after a relatively clean match they start resorting to brawling on the floor, chairs, other stuff like that too. Other major highlight of this is the Kansai/Yamada exchanges, like even before the match happened, at the press conference & contract signing they have those 2 get into an altercation and it's clear that's the pairing you're supposed to be most excited about seeing going in and coming out of this match. And holy hell do they deliver, some of the most heated exchanges of the match come between them here, especially the 2 kick exchanges. Kansai wins the 1st easily but Yamada fires up and gains her revenge not long after in just a brutal slugfest. Last observation is again, just how mind blowing it was that they kept up the pace for so long and still had as much energy 40 mins in as they did 5 and also, after that long of a match it dawned on me that they hadn't even done half of the shit they were capable of and were clearly holding back. Toyota & Yamada didn't get in a lot of their usual double team spots. At no point does Toyota even go for a JOCS or a lot of her other
suplexes and stuff for example. Ending finally comes when Toyota redeems herself by busting out the straight jacket german on OZ however. OZ kicked out just before 3 but it was counted anyways, but fuck it, that's why god made re-matches which they had to have known they were gonna be doing. Yamada gets on the mic and gloats as the crowd erupts in a huge Zenjo chant. Greatest joshi tag of all time? Unquestionably, no. Up thear as a contender, absolutely.