- (5 Min Exhibition) Sakie Hasegawa vs Masami Watanabe
Why this is a 5 min exhibition instead of a normal match, no clue. Bigger question, why Chaparita rocked the Canadian flag on her tights in her rookie days, still no clue. They go the distance, Chaparita got maybe 30 seconds of offense in, the rest was all Sakie trying to break the young punk in half with various submissions, suplexing her around and laying in the kicks. Fun times.
- Tomoko Watanabe vs Chikako Hasegawa
Horribly boring match, i'm all for slower paceed exchanges of simple holds and stuff but they put no passion or energy behind any of it so it just came across like they were killing time. Finish was sorta cool in an unintentional way as Chikako takes the judo throw wrong so Watanabe stiffs the hell out of her in retaliation. Few seconds later she drops her with some weird arm/leg cradle hook german for the win. Looked pretty cool actually. Too little too late for this match tho. So moving on...
- (Midget Match) Little Frankie vs Tomezo Tsunokake
...and still moving on...wait STOP, Frankie ain't rockin the Afro WTF??????? That's just wrong. No Afro no peace.....
- Suzuka Minami & Etsuko Mita vs Mima Shimoda & Saemi Numata
Really liked this a lot, one of those matches that goes long, almost 20, so we get a lot of back & forth with everyone having atleast 1 mini FIP segment. All 4 were on and Numata really steped her game up for this one. She's not on the lvl of the other 3 but she atleast didn't look like she was leauges below either. Mostly played whiping girl but had a few nice stretches of offense too minus a moment whear she went all nutty with the shoulder blocks which were kinda ugly. For a few minutes in the middle Mita goes all psycho on her which was quite fun and in the other big big highlight of the early portion there were a few Mita vs Shimoda segments in this that were really good as well. Down the stretch Shimoda & Numata actually look like they're going to win but Numata blows it by accidently nailing her partner with a clothesline allowing the Dream Wolves to get in a run on Shimoda. A tombstone, suicide dive, nasty double team powerbomb and giant suplex later and it's over with Suzuka getting the W on Mima. Good stuff
- (AJW Title) Debbie Malenko (c) vs Terri Power
Debbie the Wise "Let me tell you something. This belt right here is what it's all about" :) Both promise a sportsmanlike friendly contest, boo to that but it doesn't last long. A few mins in they go outside and Terri misses a lariat nailing the ringpost and Debbie just goes nuts after that. She smells blood and starts grabbing chairs and ring bells and whatever else she can get to whack Terri in the arm, really agressive attacks from her which you don't usually see. Rest of the match is centered around Debbie continuing to destroy the arm and go for the submission win. Terri fights back ocasionally, a few power slams, the rana, etc... nice little battle of the superplexes later on with Deb hitting her northern lights and Terri hitting a standard one. Despite her best efforts Terri couldn't pull out the win and Debbie finally gets her to tap out reversing out of another suplex to lock in the cross face chicken wing for the tap out win. I'd heard a lot of hype about this match going in but still wasn't exspecting it to be as great as it turned out to be. Easily Terri's best match ever, she did an amazing job putting over the arm work and her offense looked great too. For Deb this isn't her best match or anything but it's up thear as one of her best performances. You could really tell both saw this as a really big opportunity being two foreign wrestlers getting to have a title match in Japan. Even if it is for the #4 singles belt in the company they really treated this as something special and really went all out to have the best match they possibly could.
- Kyoko Inoue & Bat Yoshinaga vs Aja Kong & Kaoru Ito
Starts out pretty pretty average, Ito gets isolated and beat up for a bit then Aja & Bat tag in and all hell breaks loose. Big intense staredown between the two then Aja just hauls off and battering ram head butts her. Bat surprisingly does not get knocked out by this and even more surprisingly actually wins the exchange as things turn into a wild striking contest. Kyoko tags in and her & Aja continue pounding on each other but Inoue isn't as lucky as Bat was. Ito back in tries to get in on the fun but she's out classed in this area so things go back around to whear we started with her getting whoped on some more. This time around Bat & Kyoko are more amped up however which sees Ito end up with a bloody nose from the encounter. More Bat/Aja fun and boy, considering Kyoko's the one getting a title shot next month this match sure is doing a hell of a lot more to make me want to see Bat take on the champ in singles. Eventually things do get paired down to Inoue & Aja as they exhchange a bunch of near falls. Aja back fist everybody to hell but Bat recovers at the very last second to make the save, Aja then hits Ito on accident which spells her doom. A few minutes later after Bat makes sure to occupy the champ, Kyoko puts away the young Jungle Jacker with a modified rita romero special for the submission win. Another great match on what's turning out to be a really good card.
- (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (c) vs Takako Inoue & Yumiko Hotta
1st fall starts out hot with Takako jumping Toyota, doesn't last long tho with Manami getting pissed and just blasting the hell out of Tak in retaliation with a punt to the forehead and a follow up series up stiff kicks. Jeez, pre show they had to have had a big roster meeting whear the Matsunaga's were all like "ok girls, we don't have Bull & Hokuto on the show tonight so our brutal ass whoop quota is going to be a little low, think you could step it up?" because everyone's been super amped up on this show. When you're in a match with Toshiyo Yamada & Yumiko Hotta and it's Toyota who's laying in the skull crushing blows you know someone's spiked the water. Things settle down a bit after that into a more routine back and forth match and and it ends with Hotta getting the duke over Yamada afer 3 powerbombs. 1st time in a long while that Yamada's been the one to eat a pin for their team. 2nd Fall we get start with more Hotta/Yamada kick exchanges which are always a highlight. Takako tags in and all of a sudden a boxing match breaks out which she loses getting droped on her ass by a straight Yamada punch to the dome. More Toyota/Tak follows and it degenerates into a hair pulling war with Inoue fairing better this time around. Really angry violent match this is. Hotta kicks around Toyota for a bit then Tak comes back in and ups the bitchyness factor going for revenge and really heeling it up on her. Things settle down a little bit again until the finish, funny botch as Toyota goes for a dive on Hotta but slips and falls right on her face. Shook her up a little bit as Toyota flubs another move or 2 but nothing serious and she recovers well enough. Few double teams from the champs and then Toyota drops Inoue with a double chicken wing suplex to even things up. 3rd fall Toyota & Yamada try to blitz Inoue and score a quick win but it's no go and then things break down into an ugly chair swinging brawl for a little bit. Back inside Takako starts tossing out lariats and then goes for a few leg bar attempts. After that the match becomes a war of attrition with everyone wearily going all out. By this point they're nearing the 30 min mark and given they weren't working a lot of time killing rest holds you can tell they're starting to feel it. Finally in the end it comes down to Toyota & Yamada again busting out a big array of double teams, they nearly kill Hotta with their fliping backdrop off the top rope, ironic given how many times the situation has been reversed. Finally after 32+ Yamada gets her win back from earlier and finishes off Hotta with the Gory bomb. Post match Takako gets on the mic and issues out some singles challenges, don't know what gets said back by Yamada but i'm sure it was nothing nice as Tak walks away dejected and in near tears. Not a great match, there were def some flaws. Went a little longer then it probably should have and if you're the type of person who's gonna be all "they didn't execute this or that to perfection - minus 1/4 *" then this may not be for you. Still, I thought the good far far outweighed the bad, this was a war and felt like it, ugly & nasty & gritty. For her part, Takako has been turning that corner from mid card technical wrestler into bad ass butt kicker with an attitude problem for a while now and for me this was the 1st time whear it really felt like she'd finally finished turning and was fully heading straight down that road. She may not have won every exchange but she gave as good as she got and dind't look outclassed, a step below or like the weak link here at all. A damn good match to end the night.
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