Sunday, July 17, 2011

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.



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