Friday, February 11, 2011

AJW 3/20/1992

- Miori Kamiya & Kaoru Ito vs Etsuko Mita & Shiho Nakamigawa
Majority of this match is Jungle Jack beating up little Shiho in your run of the mill young girl stretching sorta way. Late in the match Mita & Kamiya have a fun little section but for the most part Mita is a non factor in this. Ito goes all spazzy for the finish and in another cool moment but by and large this was a basic forgetable match. Most interesting part about it was Kamiya's spiffy new shinny ass space suit.

- (Vacant AJW Jr. Title) Akemi Torisu vs Yuki Lee
Ah, god bless Torisu, she was such a lovable clutz of a wrestler. Anyways, this goes to a 20 fucking minute draw which the editors clip down to about 3 minutes of footage on a show whear nothing else was clipped. I shudder to think how bad this must have been in full. What was shown highlighed Yuki in controll 90% of the time and she's awarded the title on points or some shit like that.

- Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Yumiko Hotta & Suzuka Minami
Kind of hit me watching this that AJW's tag division was way more stacked around this time then I remember. They probably had a good 7-8 reg teams + a bunch of random make shift temp ones. Anyways, this is essentially a much better version of the match they did in the opener. Hotta & Suzuka largely beat the snot out of Watanabe, giving her a slight bloody nose only for big sister Bat Bat to come in and play wrecking ball later on. And damn, K-Hall loves the hell out of them some Bat Yoshinaga, cheering her on as she stands up to big bully Hotta, throwing some deadly kicks and still standing after Yumiko's. Watanabe gets to come back for a big flurry of offense too but falls short in the end as Suzuka murders her with a powerbomb. Good stuff.

- Akira Hokuto vs Takako Inoue
Watanabe & Bat stay ringside and are working as Hokuto's seconds. Always found the whole Hokuto/Bull dynamic interesting around this time as I don't think Hokuto was ever a member of Bull's Gang or anything but they were still all best buddy buddy for a bit. Match is pretty disapointing. I've rarely gotten to see any matches whear these 2 interact,2 or 3 scattered tags and that's it, never seen a singles and on paper these 2 should work really well together. Instead of a competitive match though, Akira treats her like a joke and largely squashes her in 6 minutes complete with 1 foot pin after the NLB. Not that Hokuto squashes aren't always huge fun but yeah, was hoping for more from this. In a cool moment I didn't know took place on this show, the crowd is all YAY VIOLENCE post match and give Hokuto a big ovation, she then gets on the mic and invites Mita in the ring to pledge her alliegance which leads to the birth of LCO.

- (AJW Tag Titles) Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa (c) vs Mariko Yoshida & Mima Shimoda
Weird match. It's heavily played up that Yoshida & Shimoda had been touring Mexico and thus they're all eager to show off their new lucha skills here. Yoshida & Debbie work the opening section and it's a true thing of beauty. All kind of down hill from thear though as this turns into a tale of 2 matches, any time Yoshida but more so Shimoda try and get fancy or creative or whatever and do some kind of overly complicated lucha stuff it goes horrible. Blown spots & awkward moments galore with nothing to cover or make up for it. They even rope Debbie into trying some weird leaping dive late in the match that ends with her just saying fuck this and hoping off the ropes without leaping. The other half of the match is great though, when these 4 just work their regular styles and keep it basic this is a damn good match. Mima & Debbie have some fun sequences in the latter half of the match workign the mat, Sakie & Yoshida work well too. Around the 24-25 min mark Sakie gets the pin reversing a rollup on Yoshida.

- Kyoko Inoue vs Bull Nakano
Kyoko attacks fast, Bull hits her with 1 lariet to shut that shit down and may have 1/2 killed her. Kyoko recovers only to get smashed down again and sent back outside. Bull patiently waits knowing that when she returns she will once agian maul miss Inoue which she procedes to do most viciously for the next 6-7 mins. Kyoko finally catches a lucky break after grabbing Bull's leg and goes into a stretch of working diffrent submission holds, mainly over said leg. Strategy doesn't pay off so well as Bull turns the tables and resumes stretching Kyoko all to hell including the most painful abdominal stretch i've ever seen. Like i'm not exactly sure how she was able to bend her that way. For the rest of the match things pretty much follow that pattern. Bull dominating things only for Kyoko to fight back breifly, usually after captilizing on a missed move by Bull but repeatedly get cut off before she can build any serious momentum. Kind of neat in a way as Bull's work eventually pays off for the finish as Kyoko ends up so beaten up from all the punishment that when she gets put in 1 last submission whear Bull stretches Kyoko's leg over her head like a weird reversed boston crab, Kyoko has no choice but to tap pretty quickly. Definatly not their best match but i've seen them have worse too.

- (3WA vs UWA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (3WA) vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (UWA)
Funny moment as Aja makes fun of Toyota & Yamada's pink UWA belts in the pre match promo. 1st Fall follows your basic tag pattern, Yamada & Toyota in controll to start but get cut off by JJ. Long beat down on Yamada then hot tag Toyota who comes in and does a mini controll segment on Bison before kicking things up and finally pinning her with the JOCS. Nothing major stands out, just good solid work. 2nd Fall is awesome stuff as it's all mega pissed off Aja & Bison going for revenge and mega pissed off Aja & Bison is always fun. They turn it into a wild chair swinging, table throwing brawl and continue to dominate the whole way through. Toyota kicks out of a few things and manages to tag in Yamada but she fares no better and gets smashed as well for her efforts. Super Bomb off the top from Aja finishes her off. 3rd Fall is a longer, much better version of the 1st with JJ being more brutal in their continued beat down and Toyota (who now has a bandaged arm) & Yamada trying even more desperatly to fight back. Great near fall stretch as they isolate Aja and throw every suplex, dive, kick and double team they can think of at her but she keeps kicking out or being saved by Bison. They toss in the kitchen sink too and still can't win so they dig deep and result to attempted murder to finish her off. They put Aja up on the top rope and give her a double team back suplex, only instead of guiding her to land on her back they over rotate so she flips entirely over and lands vertically on top of her head like she was taking a pile driver....off the top rope and fuck, if that can't get the win nothing would have but Yamada covers and we've got new tag champs. Mega celebration time, crowd goes insane, Yamada looks like this is the happiest day of her life. Aja wakes up from her coma a few minutes later and goes batshit on all of them, she screams on the mic, grabs the 1 of the tag belts, attempts to smash it apart on the ring anouncers table then goes into the crowd, rips a piece off and tosses it down. Continues going on a rampage through out the building, tossing chairs and sending fans fleeing while Bison just kind of calmly follows suit all depressed over the loss. Aja gets back in and tries to take out Yamada & Toyota with a chair 1 last time but she's finally drug away by like 7 or 8 people still kicking & screaming. Great match.

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.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

AJW 1991 Thoughts & Top 10 List

So having now finished everything from 1991 AJW that I know of that's available here's some random top whatever list & general thoughts

14 Shows (comm tapes & tv eps) + 2 fan cam matches
87 matches total

Top 10 matches

1. 4/29/1991 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (c) vs Manami Toyota & Esther Moreno
2. 6/18/1991 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (c) vs Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue
3. 9/7/1991 (3WA Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Kyoko Inoue
4. 1/4/1991 (3WA Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Akira Hokuto
5. 1/11/1991 (Hair vs Hair) Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
6. 4/29/1991 (All Pacific Title) Suzuka Minami (c) vs Akira Hokuto
7. 5/26/1991 Toshiyo Yamada vs Yumiko Hotta
8. 8/18/1991 (JGP Finals) Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura
9. 12/9/1991 (Tag Leauge The Best 91 Semi Final) Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuta vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
10. 11/15/1991 (Elimination Cage) Bull Nakano & Monster Ripper vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura

Just missing the cut
8/18/1991 (JGP) Toshiyo Yamada vs Kyoko Inoue

For me nothing touched the Jungle Jack vs Toyota & Esther match in terms of pure excitement but the 6/18 tag is a real real close 2nd. The work is off the charts great but it's the neat little touches, storytelling & playing off history that bring it to another level. After that the 2 Bull 3WA matches are really close to each other as well and on another day I could easily flip the 2. And even though it draged by the end the majority of the November cage match really was too great not to have it this high.
Not top 10 or 20 or anything but special mentions to the Bat vs Kurisu shoot being the most surprisingly awesome match of the year and to Toyota vs Suzuka for being the most disapointing.

Top 10 Wrestlers

1. Bull
2. Aja
3. Kyoko
4. Hokuto
5. Bison
6. Toyota
7. Esther Moreno
8. Yamada
9. Takako
10. Yoshida

Bull's easily wrestler of the year, no questions asked. She is the Sun and everything in the Zenjo world revolves around her. It's weird too, as i've always known she was great, I had her #10 on my greatest joshi wrestler ballot over on the Smarks Choice board years ago but I still never knew she was THIS great. There's very very few people I can think of who were better playing the unbeatable monster role as she was this year.
One of the bigger stories of the year was Kyoko's rise up the ranks. I might not have had her this high up on my list earlier in the year but once she won the JGP and got out of Bull's shadow she was on an amazing hot streak of awesome matches.
Like i've mentioend before discovering how good the Moreno's were was another highlight of the year for me. Esther easily steals the show in every match she's a part of and the only reason she's as low as 7 on my list is because she didn't get as many high profile big matches to shine in and was mostly regulated to mid card matches most of the time.
Takako getting a big push as a mat wrestling/submission master took a little getting used to since that's not usually the style I associate her with damn if she wasn't great at it.
Special mention to Mika Takahashi, Miori Kamiya & Bat as wrestlers who I also came out of this year with a much higher opinion of then I did going in. Bat especially, I still wouldn't call her good or anything but I used to think she outright sucked most of the time but for much of this year she was perfectly decent. Going from someone I used to dread watching to someone I don't mind sitting through is quite the acomplishment.
And the only wrestler I can say I had a lower opinion of by the end of the year or atleast was disapointed by was Hotta. The May Yamada match was great, the Bull cage match was really good and she looked impressive hidden in a lot of random 6 man tags but I really feel like she failed to deliver when given the chance to be in the spotlight more times then not and a lot of the other good matches she was involved in this year were good despite her involvement not because of it.
Bull & friends vs Jungle Jack is obviously feud of the year but beyond that as far as secondary feuds/storylines I really dug Toyota's mini quest to take down Aja, the All Pacific title mix between Hokuto/Suzuka/Toyota, the AJW title sceen built around Takako and the way they slid in Hokuto as Bull's new bff (after having a friendly rivalry earlier in the year) right around the time they started breaking Kyoko away from that role.

AJW 1991 October - December

AJW TV 10/4/1991

Takako Minmei concert - she's not a bad singer

- Bull Nakano vs Debbie Malenko
Solid match but they sadly don't get much time, like 5 mins maybe. Mostly a squash but Debbie gets in a few lucky submission attempts & suplexes. Bull's in no mood for any of this head lock shit though so she just lariats her face off instead. Cool moment when Bull catches her leaping off the ropes in a bear hug and imediatly floats over for a bridging suplex. That doesn't get the win so she kills her off with a really nasty looking high angle reverse DDT, close to being a NLB.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91) Manami Toyota & Etsuko Mita vs Yumiko Hotta & Bat Yoshinaga
Quick segment of Bat getting worked over including the weirdness of Toyota attacking her by punching the bottom of her foot then we get a little bit longer segement of Mita getting beat down. Clip ahead to the ending and we get a really rocking stretch of near falls with Bat surprisingly being a great babyface underdog who won't quit so it goes the time limit. Only 10-11 mins shown total but it was damn good.
Then we get clips from earlier of Toyota & Mita (rocking a see through cape) singing the cheesiest duet song you will ever see in your life as aparently it's Zenjo talent show night.

- (Mika Takashi Retirment Match) Mika Takahashi vs Miori Kamiya
Like i've mentioend before, discovering how good Mika was during this era has been one of the biger highlights of this project for me. She had a fairly short career at 5 years and her best stuff was during a bit of a down time between 2 of the hottest periods in joshi history so she isn't as well remembered by many people today but yeah, she was always a bright spot on the AJW undercards of this era. Match itself is nothing special but these things rarely are. Just an excuse to let the girls hit their spots 1 last time and get a nice send off. She picks up the win after 6 mins in what I believe was a 5 min time limit match but hey, who's counting. Afterwards she gets to run the Jungle Jack train and gets farewell pins on Bison & Aja too. Your typical joshi retirment ceremnoy follows, she gets flowers from her fellow Jungle Jackers & her family, then they cut things off in the middle to go to commercial so dunno if anyone else showed up or not. Was a little curious to see if her former partner the MIA Kaoru (seriously whear the heck did she disapear to???) would have shown up too but oh well...

- (All Pacific Title) Akira Hokuto (c) vs Suzuka Minami
Only 1/3 aired so hard to judge but this looked like it could have been just as great as their previous match, maybe a notch below. Working with Hokuto always brought out the best in Suzuka and she wins the title back here.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura & Aja Kong
Similar to the JJ vs Toyota/Yamada match from a few months earlier. Just a super super sprint match with non stop action for 20 mins. Too much to really single out any one moment as a highlight, just great all around. Fun ending as JJ completely dominates the 2nd half of the match and destroys Kyoko not even letting her tag back out or make a big comeback. Real excited to see what they do for the rematch now during the Finals.
Sucks this didn't get a comm release as they had a lot to pack in for the tv show. Heck there were like 3 or 4 other matches on the show that didn't get aired at all.

AJW TV 10/26/1991

- (All Pacific Title) Suzuka Minami © vs Bison Kimura
Real good match but oddly worked given what's gone down earlier in the year. A few weeks after winning the title Minami drops it in what equates to an exstended squash. In all of her previous encounters with Jungle Jack, Suzuka was booked to be on their level. Someone who'd give them a good fight and often times come out on top. Here it's the complete opposite as Bison completely dominates this match, getting in atleast 90% of the offense (If Minami got in more it must have been cut), turing the match into a brawl and never letting Suzuka slow things down to work more of her technical/power style. When Suzuka does get in some offense, Bison ends up countering a lot of it anyways. She'll go for a dive and Bison will move, go for a powerbomb and Bison will flip out of it, etc.. just outclassing her in every way, like they really REALLY want you to know who the better wrestler is here.

- (2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Esther Moreno & Cynthia Moreno
Yamada & Kyoko went on a short tour of Mexico & this was taped while they were down thear. 1st 2 falls are clipped a good deal and seemed like they were on the short side anyways. A nice highlight of everyone hitting their standard signature spots though. 3rd fall is also on the short side but still a fair bit little longer and more fleshed out then the others with them working more of a joshi big move style then lucha which works well and makes for a pretty damn rocking match while it last. They get a pretty big ovation from the crowd when it's over.

- (Tag Leauge 91) Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto vs Debbie Malenko & Manami Toyota
Bull & Hokuto were sorta in cruise controll here, not dogging it or anything but not going all out either. You knew they were winning going in and they never gave you any doubt of that along the way. Debbie turned in a great performance though, she's not the greatest at the faster paced style but here she really stepped things up, especially working with Hokuto. Toyota was on fire as well & the star of the match, doing her usuall thing running all around a million miles an hour & hitting all her amazing moves. Good solid match, nothing i'll remember a few weeks from now probably but enjoyable stuff.

AJW 11/15/1991

1st watched this show about 5 months ago and at the time I hadn't seen anything else from 1991. Having now watched all the available footage from that year up until this show added a lot during the re-watch

- Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Miori Kamiya & Kaoru Ito
Nothing special but not as bad as I thought on my 1st viewing. Basic but fun opening match stuff pretty much with everyone looking decent.

- Yumiko Hotta, Mariko Yoshida & Mima Shimoda vs Suzuka Minami, Etsuko Mita & Sakie Hasegawa
Pretty good match, liked it about as much as I did the 1st time around. 1st time seeing Sakie in a couple of months as I think she'd been out with an arm injury. She's still got it wrapped up here and she spends a fair bit of the early portion of the match getting worked over. Things go a little more back & forth but team Hotta remains the more dominant trio. Nice ending stretch with Mita & Minami standing out especially. Mita who had a lot of shoulder based offense back then, regal rolls, samoan drops, fireman carry, etc... so you can see how she was on track to inventing the DVD and after the beating she took last show, Suzuka gets a nice bit of redemption scoring a big win over high girl on the totem pole Hotta.

- (AJW Title) Takako Inoue (c) vs Debbie Malenko
Debbie cuts another of her great goody goody, my opponents a great wrestler and i'll try my best promos backstage. Can't help but laugh that in 2010 she'd be the biggest heel in the world doing the same thing. So all year Takako's been getting the big push as a technical wrestling master & submission specialist but if there's anyone who can match her in that department it's Ms Malenko. Really dug how the focus always went back to the mat wrestling for a lot of the match. Takako would try and take things outside & turn it into a brawl & Debbie punched her in the head for her troubles but then they went back to exchanging holds. Someone would throw in some suplexes but then it's back to the holds, pick up the pace & bust out some high spots but then back to the holds. After a while Debbie beats Takako at her own game and starts working over her leg for a change which becomes the story of the match with Inoue selling her ass off for it. Looks like Malenko's going to win the title only she makes a late mistake of going up to the top rope instead of continuing the leg attack and she pays for it when Takako catches her with that weird shoulder drop suplex she was using as a sig move back then for the lucky win. Thought this was just OK during my 1st viewing, f'n loved it during the re-watch.

- Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Akira Hokuto & Manmi Toyota
Initial thoughts were this was a really good but sloppy spot fest. Watching it a 2nd time I noticed the match has a lot better build then I first gave them credit for. While Toyota & Hokuto's feud has died down & been settled they still aren't a super buddy buddy cohesive unit & the 1st part of the match is all about showing off how much better Kyoko & Yamada, fresh off their Mexico tour are at working as a team. They get 2 long controll segments on Toyota & then Hokuto and it's only once Toyota gets taged back in that it turns into your traditional faster paced joshi workrate tag. During all the action Yamada takes a few nasty bumps on her head which I fig 1 of which must have rung her bell because there's a couple sections whear she blows a lot of spots but each time they recover nicely. These 4 could easily do better on another night but this still ended up being a really great match and for 30+ mins the time blew by.

- (Elimination Cage) Bull Nakano & Monster Ripper vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
A match you can break down into 3 parts. The 1st with the 4 way tag brawl is great with the story of Bull & The Monster being the slightly bigger bad asses who can't maintail controll due to them repeatedly accidently attacking each other. Aja's huge missed dive off the cage that bust open the stitches on her stomach causing her to bleed everywhear is a classic joshi moment and a neat little touch that I didn't notice before was that even Bull was showing concern for her at that point and tried to pull Monster off of her when she continued the attack. The 2nd part with Bison fighting alone isn't as good action wise but tells a good story drama wise with her trying to survive 2 on 1 before eventually getting knocked out to the point she can't continue. 3rd part with Bull & Monster fighting each other is easily the weakest section. I like Ripper but she's better in short burst or trading back & forth. Long beat down sections, especially in 40+ min matches aren't her strong point but she was in controll for like 90% of the time against Bull. Ending finally comes when Bull comes back, hits just 2 moves & wins. Course when 1 of those moves is the insane super duper mega death leg drop off the top of the cage I guess that's all you need but still... As a whole a great match but it def drags near the end & shit, Monster doesn't even sell the leg drop. The second shes counted out she gets rite back up and starts talking shit on the mic like it was no big thing and challenging Bull for another singles match, title vs title (dunno what belts Monster had but she brought 2 with her, WWC maybe???).

AJW 12/9/1991

- Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Kazue Saito & Shiho Nakamigawa
Amused that one of the rookies is rocking a Budweiser logo swimsuit. Only goes 11-12 mins but feelt twice that long. 85% of this was Bat & Watanabe squashing the 2 young girls but neither has devestating or spectacular enough looking offense to make that kind of thing fun and by the end it more made those 2 look weak for not being able to finish off their opponents sooner rather then making the rookies look tough by survivng so long. The little offense Kazue & Shiho did get in wasn't bad and overall there was some decent stuff but they'd have been better with 1/2 the time.

- (Rookie Tournament Final) Akemi Torisu vs Rie Tamada
No clue who else was in this tournament or any other details on it. 2 months into her career Rie makes tape for the 1st time and she's allready better then Torisu who's been around AJW on & off for a year though to be fair her previous apperances were all in shoots. Actually this is the 1st time Torisu makes tape in a regular wrestling match as well that I know of and yeah, she sucks. She's twice Tamada's size but doesn't work that way at all as Rie dominates her for long stretches of this. When Torisu is in controll her offese consist of really really awkward looking snapmares, judo flips & other various slams. Ending finally comes when Torisu just kind of shoot muscles Tamada's shoulders down for a weird looking pin off a body slam and you can't help but think the wrong girl won.

- Etsuko Mita, Sakie Hasegawa & Mayumi Yamamoto vs Miori Kamiya, Mima Shimoda & Kaoru Ito
Fun match, the usual you can exspect from these things. Watching LCO go at it against each other was a cool highlight but the big focus of this one was on Sakie Hasegawa. At the start there was a long beat down section on her and during the final stretch she got to be the one to shine during the come back and pick up the win over Ito.

- Yumiko Hotta vs Suzuka Minami
Interesting match on paper. With the previous 3 matches I more or less knew what I was going to get going in but with these 2 I had no clue. I'd just as easily believe they could stink the joint out as I could that they'd put on a great match and what it turned out to be was somewhear in the middle. 1st half kind of drags, Suzuka works the leg but it goes no where before Hotta takes over and just kind of does...stuff. She'll throw a kick here, lock on a sleeper hold, toss in a suplex, just kind of a mish mash of stuff killing time before Suzuka takes back over, this time working the back which also goes no whear but is atleast sort of enjoyable to watch. Almost like they were waiting on the que once the anouncer calls out the 10 min mark they finally pick things up and out of no where it turns into a crowd brawl. Back inside they have a cool section of trading near falls ending with Hotta avenging her Marinepiad loss. Another match whear you feel, based on performance the wrong girl really went over.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91) Manami Toyota & Debbie Malenko vs Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida
Debbie's really great at mat wrestling, Toyota's really great at fast paced sprint wrestling, Takako & Yoshida can do both equally well. Here they did a perfect job of blending the 2 styles togetherand playing to everyone's strengths. Debbie still got to do a lot of her mat stuff but rather then slow down they just had her do really fast chain wrestling spots with Yoshida which were a joy to watch and when Toyota taged in they'd allready been going at a high pace so it was a natural transition. Ironically Debbie said she was disapointed in the quality during the post match promo but fuck it, I loved this match. Only complaint I have is it didn't last longer and the ending kind of came out of nowhere with Toyota just busting out a random moonsault from the middle of the top rope Sabu style.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91 Semi Final) Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuta vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
Aja comes out super late, taped up, surely & pissed off tossin furniture around. Bull & Aja staredown while Hokuto offers a handshake but JJ are out for revenge after the cage match 3 weeks ago and ain't havin none of that shit so they attack to start. Hokuto gets mauled for a bit but it doesn't last too long and she punches Bison right in the jaw for her troubles. They go back & forth for a while with a lot of brawling & more stiff strikes on everyones part before Hokuto again finds herself in trouble. To regain controll this time Bull & her after Jungle Jack's big weaknesses, Bison's injured knee & later on Aja's still injured stomach. They especially go hard on Aja with various with various weapons which sends Bison running in franticly to break things up before the ref can even count 1. By the end things break down into a near street fight and the finish finally comes with Jungle Jack making 1 last come back after a missed Megadeath leg drop from Bull folowed by a uraken to knock her out allows them to crush Hokuto for the win. Great match but it's not over yet as we immediatly go to

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91 FINAL) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
JJ's in full on heel mode tonight. Hokuto & Bull get nice ovations from the crowd on their way out and the place is going nuts for Yamada & Kyoko coming in, hoping they can pull out the win. Story of the match is Yamada & Kyoko are balls of energy, coming in with lots of fast paced attacks & wacky lucha submissions, Yamada even gives Bison a bloody lip early on with punt to the face but even though they're banged up & had just wrestled 1 match JJ are still too tough to take down easily. Jungle Jack uses a lot of power stuff, crowd brawling & weapons to controll a majority of the match, Aja going nuts with the trashcan being one highlight. In the end though, you can see the effect going 45+ mins over 2 straight matches was having on Jungle Jack as they pretty noticably ran out of gas by the end which is what allowed Kyoko & Yamada to pick up the win with a last minute burst of energy using a cool powerbomb, flying enzugiri sequence of moves. Real good match though not on the level of their one in October.

AJW 1991 July - September

AJW 8/18/1991

- Bat Yoshinaga, Tomoko Watanabe & Hirosuine Sonteitam vs Miori Kamiya, Mika Takahashi & Kaoru Ito
Jungle Jack Jobbers vs the Gokumonto C squad to start the show. Typical lower card match. Fun, enjoyable, fast moving action but nothing of any importance until the last few mins and nothing you'll remember a week from now. Most interesting part happens after the match with Bat & Miori getting into a pull apart afterwards, kinda wouldn't mind seeing that match.

- Yumiko Hotta, Mima Shimoda & Sakie Hasegawa vs Debbie Malenko, Esther Moreno & Cynthia
Moreno
During the pre match interviews, Sakie shows off a pretty nasty looking scar/set of stitches on her forearm, no clue what from. Malenko standing next to the Moreno's really highlights how short they are, Debbie looks like Andre the Giant next to them. Also just wanna mention that Debbies promos were always such an awesome highlight of every show with her "aww shucks, I gotta nother good partner, i'm sure we'll win" attitude. Match itself is pretty good though not as much as you'd hope looking at the lineup on paper. Kind of a better version of the previous match as they work it similarly. They keep the action moving with everyone coming in, hiting a few moves then getting out without anyone getting too much of the spotlight though Hotta & Esther managed to shine a little more then the others. As is usually the case in these things, future tag parters Debbie & Sakie have another nice exchange during the match as well

- (AJW Title) Takako Inoue (c) vs Mariko Yoshida
Really really good match. Similar to the Kyoko one from a few months ago. Takako goes to work on the leg and Yoshida puts on a fucking selling clinic. Putting over the pain long after she takes over on offense, she can't even muster the leg strength to put on a body scissors or squat on both legs for a full boston crab. While in control Yoshida desicdes to focus her attacks on the back and Inoue does a damn good job of putting that over as well but she's still able to pick up the win following a series of suplexes that looked sorta like Toyota's JOCS but w/o the arm cross and then going back to the leg for the submission win. Scary moment along the way as Yoshida does a diving tope outside and lands rite on her face which had to suck ass but she was able to get up and keep going none the less. Be interesting when I give their 92 match a re-watch as I recall that one being not as good but it was quite a while ago that I first watched that one.

- (JGP) Toshiyo Yamada vs Kyoko Inoue
They start off throwing bombs before settling down for a matwork section. Yamada is all full of piss, vinegar and ruthless agression during this match and she comes out on top for this part of the match. She doesn't focus on any one particular body part, just going from hold to hold but Kyoko does an amazing job of getting over that all the wear down holds are, ya know, wearing her down. When they entered finishing stretch she didn't suddenly pop up with a burst of energy, acting no diffrent then she did in the 1st few mins of the match. She was still able to bust out some big moves sure, but it really came across like she had to dig down deep to find the strength to pull them off. Really felt like both girls were treating this like the big match that it was. Great great stuff, one of the better matches of the year.

- (JGP Semi Finals) Aja Kong vs Bison Kimura
2 months before House Party 2 - The Pajama Jam was released Aja has grown her hair back and is sporting a full on Kidd style high top fade. She must have been a big fan I imagine. Bitter friends stiffer enemies. Booking long time tag partners against each other has been a long running theme throughout AJW's history. Of all the teams they've done this with, Aja & Bison may be the ones who've held the least back against each other. Hell, if anything, wrestling each other makes them usually up the brutality a significant amount which is certainly the case here. They brawl all over the building to start this one out, stiffing the piss out of each other along the way but then the match takes a unique turn. Bison, being Aja's good buddy and tag partner and all knows that she has a bad ankle and she does what any good friend would do in this situation. She vicsiously attacks it, ripping off Aja's boot, ripping off the bandage, biting her foot & beating it with the police baton she likes to carry around. She works it over for a good while but unlike 99% of all wrestling matches ever, there's no comeback, Bison just beats her down and beats her down and beats her down, Aja gets a few minor licks in here & thear but it has no long term effect. Bison continues her attack, suplexes her, puts her in a leg lock, fucks her ass, makes her humble and causes her to submit. Then to boot, Bison gets on the mic to talk shit afterwards as well. Good stuff

- (JGP Semi Finals) Manami Toyota vs Kyoko Inoue
Not a bad match but i'd certainly rank it in the bottom portion of all their singles stuff i've seen. Built simiar to the Yamada match from earlier with a hot start followed by a long stretch of exchanging holds. The matwork section here isn't as good or interesting though. More just something that comes across like they're killing time. You start thinking this may end up being a long one then they bust out a short section of hot moves and go to the finish almost out of no whear with Kyoko putting her in a combo Romero Special, Camel Clutch for the 3rd submission win of the night. Kyoko's so overjoyed at winning she dang near breaks down in tears.

- Suzuka Minami & Etsuko Mita vs Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto
Judging from how this match went i'm guessing Mita must have done something REALLY bad beforehand. Like maybe she let out a giant fart on the tour bus during a hot summer day or something. Suzuka gets on the mic before the match starts, possibly adding "hey Bull, Hokuto, Mita also said your mother's were whores too". Dunno. Either way, Bull & Akira are pissed off like i've never seen before and beat the fiznuk out of poor Mita here, like so bad that by the end i'm concinvced I was witnessing a legit atempted homicide. Minami for her toubles tries to put up a fight but Bull & Hokuto are having none of that shit tonight, treating Suzuka like a mere speed bump traveling down on their road of violence to the dark side of hell. There was also something going on with Sakie Hasegawa & 1 of the other seconds at ringside i'm not sure about. Times like these whear getting to see the previous shows or atleast having results or some kind of context would come in handy as there was clearly a larger backstory/angle surrounding this match of some sort.

- (JGP Finals) Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura
Fight & War are the 2 words that best describe this. Simple story, Bison jumps her to start, beats & bloodies her up but Kyoko who's allready gone through 2 other matches shows too much heart, won't be denied and keeps fighting back. A little screwyness with the ending as Kyoko blows the finish the first time she tries it but they cover for it nicely and it sort of helped add to the story of the night in it's own way. Great match, best one on the show which is saying something. Crowd is going insane with joy after Inoue wins. Really comes across like a huge deal and career defining, break out moment for her.

AJW 9/7/1991

- Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Mayumi Yamamoto & Kazue Saito
A competitive squash. The other girls got a little bit of offense in but WatBat largely dominated things and this was mostly an excuse for them to show off a little bit with Watanabe looking quite impressive and Bat not being treated as a jobber for a change.

- Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda & Mariko Yoshida vs Mika Takahashi, Miori Kamiya & Kaoru Ito
Jungle Jack Black & White in the hizouse. A few sloppy spots here & thear but otherwise a real good match. Scary moment when Yoshida lands on the top of her head taking a bulldog from Mika off of Miori's shoulders but it doesn't shake her up too much and she continues on fine. Ito got to be the star of this one. You knew going in based on seniority she was most likely the one getting pinned but she really made LCO & Yoshida work for it putting up a hell of a fight & nearly winning herself during the final stretch. After the match Takahashi anounces her sudden retirement will be happening next month.

- Suzuka Minami & Takako Inoue vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura
Ah, you know it's a stacked show when the Jungle Jack Red & Black's working 3rd from the bottom. Decent match but could have been better. Similar story to the Suzuka/Toyota match from Jan. Takako is the weak link who gets smashed whenever she's in but Minami is able to stand up to JJ & out werestle them. Mainly against Bison but she gets the better of Aja too. Problem with the match is the Takako torture fest goes on a little too long with Minami mainly being limited to short burst of offense. When she does get in she's able to also do a good job of avoiding being hit with any of JJ's big moves until the end when they finally catch her use their power to put her away rather easily

- Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada
So this is the 7th singles match i've seen between these two and if you've ever seen even a few of their matches before you should have a good general idea how this one went. On this night Yamada was on offense for most of the mat work section working over Toyota's leg which I think Toyota did a good job of putting over. She doesn't exactly do it in the traditional "ow my leg" hobble around sort of way but she still gets across that Yamada's attacks are taking their toll as when she does go back on offense she can't put the same speed or strength behind her stuff anymore. Yamada while not taking as much punishment suffers in that department as well, perhaps being "rope a doped" into using up a lot her energy dishing out the beating. Turns into an interesting battle for the final stretch with each one delivering what the other can't. Toyota has a lot of big moves but can't put much energy behind them, Yamada has a little more energy but can't deliver a big enough blow to grab the win so things end in yet another 30 min draw between them. Not the best one in their feud but still a great match and a fine addition to it

- (All Pacific Title) Akira Hokuto (c) vs Yumiko Hotta
Hokuto has custom tights that say "WWWA APC", awesome. Really hyped for this going in but it ended up being a complete and total 1 woman show. I'm a long time Hotta fan but she brought NOTHING to the table tonight and completely looked like she did not belong on this level. Watching Hokuto take a beating = good, watching Hotta give a beating = not so good. Watching Hokuto beat Hotta's ass = Yay, watching Hotta taking the beating = Meh. Watching Hokuto sell the leg = great as always, watching Hotta work the leg = ZZZZZ. Hokuto could have proably had a better match wrestling Yoshihiko, the blow up doll certainly would have brought more energy, passion & personality to the table. To top it off, Hotta even botched the finish, messing up a roll up before getting mercy killed with the NLB.

- (3WA Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Kyoko Inoue
Not sure what to exspect going in, i've had seen these 2 have really great matches (94) and really boring ones (95). This one was easily my fav of them all and by far one of the better matches of the year. Bull starts out strong as usual before Kyoko gets the advantage. There's very few people in the world that were gonna stand up to Bull in a fight but she can be outwrestled, either by really speedy girls who hit & run and or on the ground, taking it to the mat. Course, the problem with either strategy is Bull will eventually catch you if you run around and Bull will eventually get back up if you take her down. Here, Kyoko uses her speed to her advantage and is lucky enough to bust Bull open really early off a post shot, making her a bloody mess for the rest of the match, then she goes into a long section of trying to wear down Bull with diffrent holds which she's pretty succesful at actually. Like I said, Bull eventually came back and regained controll but she was clearly weakened by then. Bull decided to return the favor and really tortures Inoue with diffrent stuff, stretching her to hell. Ending sequence sees both really fatigued, desperat to pick up the win. In funny moment, Kyoko tries to go for a german while Bull is holding onto the ropes and if you look in the back ground the ref is just shaking his head like "nope, don't even try girl". Bull has to dig DEEP into her move set to try and win this, again, busting out a lot of stuff i've never seen or atleast rarely seen her do. In a true holy shit moment, Bull counters being whiped into the ropes but doing a fucking picture perfect cartwheel out of it and in one motion, the second she lands on her feet grabing Kyoko for a belly to belly suplex. So the coolest thing EVER. Still, this looks like it's gonna be Kyoko's night, she's able to keep coming with the high speed attacks & get Bull up for a lot of her power moves as well. Things finally go bad for her when she makes the mistake of trying to do Bull's own flying leg drop on her and because Kyoko was still super skinny back then she didn't have enough ass cushion so she hurts her own butt doing it. This allows Bull to grab her in a reverse DDT and hit a giant moonsault to retain her title in what actually felt like a lucky win for her. This truely was Kyoko's year though as far as star making performances and she gets a huge ovation anyways post match.

AJW 1991 April - June

AJW 4/21/1991

- Hirasuine Sonteitam & Bonteipu Sonteitam vs Kaoru Ito & Kazue Saito
Hey, it's another rare aperance of the Sonteitam sisters. Hey, wow, this fucking sucked

- Mika Takahashi & Miori Kamiya vs Sakie Hasegawa & Mayumi Yamamoto
Typical joshi sprint. Fun match though

- Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada
Disapointingly this is worked as more of a regular normal wrestling match rather then ramping up the shoot style antics. Hotta completely dominates things with Yamada missing a lot of the kicks she does try and get in before getting put down rather convincingly in a fairly short match. Good match but no whear near as awesome as what they'd do the following month.

- (AJW Tag Titles) Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda © Cynthia Moreno & Esther Moreno
So one of the big discoveries i've had watching all this early 90's AJW is just how great the Moreno sisters are. Up until now i've enjoyed both of them pretty equally but this match firmly established that as good as Cythia is, Esther is on a whole nother level from her sister as she completely steals the spotlight here. LCO for their part do fine as well, nothing blow away special from them, they hold up their end fine but yeah, this is the Moreno show who pick up the win for the tag belts. Kinda weird too, as Esther Moreno isn't a name that comes up often when people discuss who the greatest joshi or just women's wrestlers in general of all time are but amidst a hugely stacked and deep roster she's easily top 10 in the promotion at this point.

- Manami Toyota & Debbie Malenko vs Kyoko Inoue & Bat Yoshinaga
Weird weird matchup on paper, Toyota/Kyoko always have great chemistry but the rest of the pairings I wasn't so sure about. Bat, who i'm usually not super high on really steped things up though and this ended up a surprisingly good match. Debbie & her worked well together and Toyota vs Bat ended up being really fun in poor poor homeless mans Aja vs Toyota sorta way. 

- Mariko Yoshida & Akira Hokuto vs Takako Inoue & Suzuka Minami
Pretty good match. Parejas Incredibles night in Zenjo town. Neat, Takakao's wearing the same outfit she'd pass off to Nagisa Nozaki 19 years later in a random bit of trivia. By and large this ends up with the tag parters mostly working against each other, Takako & Yoshida take the more subdued route, working lots of leg based mat work, Hokuto & Suzuka on the other hand beat the piss out of each other and in the end the entire match erupts into a chair swingin brawl outside the ring for a countout finish. In another random little cool moment, Hokuto bust out a fuckin cattle mutalation, years before there was ever an American Dragon.

- Aja Kong vs Monster Ripper
Before there was Aja, before there was Bull, before there was Dump, there was the Monster and now she's back straight outa the 80's, super pissed off trying to reclaim her spot. They work this like you'd exspect, lots of power vs power, smash mouth, who's the badest type stuff with weapons flying all over, awesome fun for the 1st few mins, then Ripper takes over and things turn boring for a couple mins making you kind of glad this goes short. Once things end in a double DQ and a MASSIVE wild crazy pull apart brawl breaks out you forget all about the sucky parts and you're begging for 5 more mins though. Course, 10 mins into said never ending pull apart, you're back to being like fuck, let's just move on. A conflicting match but as a whole, damn enjoyable. Aja'd have a much better version of this same match 16 years later vs Dump Matsumoto ironically enough.

- Bull Nakano vs Bison Kimura
On paper, should be an even more awesome version of the match above. 2 big bad ass tough chicks, who've been waring with each other for a year, beating the snot out of one another. Nope, none of that shit to be found here or atleast very little. Instead we get a long stretch of pedestrian mat work, followed by your by the #s big move exchange of bigger moves for the finish. Throughout the match Bull never looked like she was in any danger and wins this short contest rather easily, finishing Miss Kimura off with her own suplex and a top rope splash. The MONSTER runs in for a quick sneak attack on Nakano afterwards.
Overall, a decent show. Some good stuff but nothing major that stands out. More of a card used just to set up a lot of bigger upcoming matches

AJW 4/29/1991

- Tomoko Watanabe, Hirasuine Sonteitam & Bonteipu Sonteitam vs Kaoru Ito, Mayumi Yamamoto & Kazue Saito
Decent enouch match, mainly due to Ito & Watanabe working well together as no one else stood out. The usual you get out of girls at this level who're not really rookies anymore but are still inexperienced enough that they're still low on the card. Due have to say, that i've started noticing that even though she was a highlight here, Watanabe in general did not show a huge amount of potential early on in her career. Atleast not to the point whear you could easily tell she was going to become as great as she would later on. Back in these days she was just sloppy as heck and was routinely blowing a fair # of spots.

- Mika Takahashi & Miori Kamiya vs Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita
Jungle Jack B-Team in the hizouse. Not on the level of the Moreno's but Mika & Mori are 2 more in that catagory of girls who were really good that never get any hype who i've discovered watching all these shows. Mika more so then Mori who I allready was a little bit of a fan of previously. Can blame most of that due to a majority of their best stuff happening between the really hot 80's Crush Girl era and the really hot interpromotional 90's era. Had they peaked/stayed around for either of those periods i'm sure they'd be a lot better remembered. Anyways, for this match, they only get a little over 6 mins but it was damn good while it lasted. Mika & Mori got to look dominant for a change picking up the win and LCO had one of their better performances i've seen this year too.

- (3WA Martial Arts Title) Bat Yoshinaga © vs Akemi Torisu
Bat comes into this wearing a Bull Nakano t-shirt, 20 years later she still knows who the boss is. Anyways, was all set to hit the ff button but I had some time to kill so I decided to check this out and HOLY SHIT this ruled. Not counting Hotta/Mima which i'm 99.9% sure was a work, this was the best shoot fight i've ever seen on an AJW show. No clue who Tirisu was going into this, far as I can guess she's just a chick who got this slot cause she was big and fat and atleast looked the part of someone who'd beat your ass. She wasn't, from second 1 there wasn't 1 doubt that Bat was winning this. Torisu had no skill, no technique and just threw wild ass swings the entire time and ran out of gas by the end of the 1st round. What made this AWESOME? She would NOT fucking quit. Bat bust her open early in the 2nd round and this looks like it's going to be a quick one. Nope. Despite Bat out classing her in every way, kicking she shit out of her, Torisu just keeps going and going and going, swinging like a mad woman hoping to land a lucky punch or something. She gets knocked down a good 15+ times during this match which is amazing considering you often times won't see that happen once in these things but she keeps getting up. On into the 6th round, she gets up slower and slower, by this point there is blood everywhear, all over her face, all over the ring, all over Bat. Everyone knows she's not winning this but everyone, including me is going nuts, screaming, hoping, praying she can atleast survive to the very end and she does. Bat gets her hand raised but Torisu is the one who ends up with a giant chant of her name in the end from the crowd. This potentially could/should have been a star making moment but of course nothing ever really happened after this. Torisu would make a couple more aperances in 91, wrestle a good bit in 92 but never amounted to much of anything. Still, for 1 briefe night she was a star. Victory through guts and all that.

- Yumiko Hotta & Debbie Malenko & Cynthia Moreno vs Toshiyo Yamada & Sakie Hasegawa & Mariko Yoshida
Now time for your, hey let's toss whoever's left over & not booked in something more important on the card random tag. Another one for the short but awesome catagory, joshi sprint style at it's best. Hotta & Yamada tease things for their upcoming rematch, really good sections between Cynthia/Yoshida and Sakie/Debbie too.

- (AJW Title) Kyoko Inoue © vs Takako Inoue
The Big Black Belt on the line. Continuing the trend & tipping off that we must be in for some long main events. They don't get much time, 10 mins maybe but make good use of it in a really good match. Takako is surprisingly dominant for the early portion, working over Kyoko's leg a good deal. Kyoko eventually makes a comeback and we get a few mins of them exchanging big moves with her still selling the leg most of the way and then things end almost out of nowhear with Takako locking on a flash submission hold for the win.
So yeah, to sum up, short, full of mat work that gets sold and directly leads to the finish or in other words, I think I pretty much just watched Ditch's dream match.

- (All Pacific Title) Suzuka Minami © vs Akira Hokuto
The Big White Belt on the line as the Mega Powers Explode. So remember everything I said about Suzuka/Toyota not having any passion or emotion and being a bland, by the #s match? This was the complete opposite, everything that match should have been and more and all around off the charts great. The tag partner/friend element adds a lot to the dynamic and the story of the match is them tossing that shit out the window cause the title's on the line. In an amusing irony, Suzuka herself goes after Hokuto's leg, not as agressively as Toyota did a few months back, just enough to get over that if need be she too will exploit her weakness to gain the advantage. Hesitating to go all the way with it may have been what cost her though as Hokuto picks up the win in the end. Kick ass finish too with her hitting 3 vicious looking missile drop kicks off 3 diff turnbuckles, a 4th flipping drop kick off the last one (which ended up being more of a flipping ass to the face but still) and then finally the NLB. Easily the best Suzuka Minami match i've ever seen and one of the better matches of the year.

- (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura © vs Manami Toyota & Esther Moreno
Speaking of MOTYs. After they lost the hair match in Jan to Bull & Kyoko, Jungle Jack vacated the tag belts. Earlier this month they regained them beating Hokuto & Hotta not sure if that was a tournament final or just a decision match though. Bison comes out rocking the kick ass giant spiked cape & viking horned devil helmet. Aja follows being carried out on a fucking thrown Macho Man style. You can tell something special's in the air for this one. Here they're taking on the Toyota & Esther proving that giving title shots to random ass mish mash teams who've never teamed before is not a recent trend in joshi. As far as random ass teams go though this is atleast an awesome one, they reminded me a little of one of my fav teams ever KAORU & Hikari Fukuoka, both being high flyers that mirror and compliment each other well. Match starts out with them playing the cat & mouse game, with Toyota & Esther running around a million miles an hour hitting high spots, knowing that they'll get killed if they get caught which JJ finally does after a while, using their size & power to dominate things. In a cool moment, Esther tries to head but Aja who literally reacts by going "BWAHAHAHA" and looking at her like "you idiot WTF" but jokes on them as they're able to come back and put Bison away with stereo moonsaults. 1 fall in and this is allready one of the better matches this year but they're just getting started. The 2nd fall starts the same as the 1st one but then Moreno makes the mistake of trying to head butt Aja again and this time she gets more then laughed at, this time she gets the trash can to the head which causes Esther to bleed...A LOT. She freakin bleeds like there was a who can bleed the most contest that night and the prize was a million dollars. Full on 1.0 Muta scale. She's able to tag out fairly quickly to Toyota but then comes back in soon after and gets caught for a while before finally getting put down by Bison, avenging her 1st fall loss with a twisting dive of her own. 3rd fall starts with Jungle Jack taking turns torturing Cynthia & Toyota for a while before they're finally able to come back. The finishing stretch is ridicuslously great with everyone busting out gigantic dives including Esther busting out an Asai moonsault that would make Ultimo go "WOW" and tons of other big moves before Toyota finally gets killed by Aja with a Mike Awesome style power bomb off the middle rope. Can't understand a bit of Japanese or Spanish but I can read body language & emotion and I believe the post match goes something like this. Aja - "hey, heck of match kids, good job" to which Esther responds "Fuck you Jungle Jack, shove it up your ass" followed by several more mins of Esther going all nutty and riling up the crowd for support, she disapears and then Toyota & Aja get into it and have to be held back from ripping each others throats out. Everyone brought their A game for this one, especially Esther who at times looked like the best wrestler in the match, showing that she can do so much more then just flippy high spots. Easily best match i've seen from AJW this year so far. I've got another 7 or so shows from 91 that I haven't watched yet but there isn't too much I exspect has a chance of toping this.

- (3WA Title) Bull Nakano © vs Monster Ripper
And lastly, the Big Red Belt on the line & a fun way to end the night. They weren't gonna be able to top the previous 2 matches but they delivered a good match in their own way. Helped that they didn't try and go too long which Ripper can be hit & miss at and kept things moving with no major down time. Monster jumps her to start and is able to controll things for quite a while as they really put her over as the ultimate mega bad ass of all during this run. Very rare and weird as hell seeing Bull play the underdog babyface role but Bull being one of the best wrestlers ever is infact quite great in the role. Crowd goes nuts when she finally makes her come back as this turns into a double bloody brawl, which Ms Nakano is eventually able to win, busting out the megadeath flipping guiloteen to put her away.
During this time period there were certainly several shows with individual matches better than anything on this card but as a whole this was top to bottom the best AJW show i've seen from the really early 90's.

AJW 5/26/91

- Kyoko/Debbie vs Yoshida/Esther Moreno
Really fun spotfest match with evreryone wanting to bust out the lucha shit.

- Toshiyo Yamada vs Yumiko Hotta
Great match. This is what the way overrated Hotta/Lioness match wishes it was as they go all shoot style and stiff the hell out of each other. When this type of stuff happens between 2 people who 1. have no problem doing it & 2. are tough enough to pull it off I have no problem with it so I loved every minute of this.

- Aja vs Toyota
I thought this was a really good match but I could see opinions differing. There were a lot of "blown" spots but I thought it made for a good story. Aja is a big bad ass who mows over her & dominates with simple power stuff, Toyota makes comebacks but every time she gets the advantage she messes things up trying to do "fancy" shit which she can't pull off due to not being strong enough (in this match atleast) to get Aja up for all her whacky suplexes and stuff, getting more and more desperate & frustrated as time goes on trying to figure out some way to slay the beast.

- (2/3 Falls) Bull/Bat vs Hokuto/Hasegawa
Short, fun match to end things on a happy note. Bat & Sakie are the weak links and play the pawns in Hoktuo & Bulls game of "who can beat the jobber fastest". Kind of ends in a tie so they have a bonus round of "well my jobber can beat your jobber", loser pays for pizza at the post show party which the zoo pound wins triumphantly. Hokuto being a little short on cash having splurged on a shiny new 1st aid kit and designer bandages, ask for a special 4th round do over because "no fair, my jobber wasn't ready" and then in hilarious fassion Sakie still gets beat down a minute later. Hokuto can only laugh at this point while Ms Hasegawa cries, knowing full well she will be beaten with a sack of oranges in her sleep because no one messes with the Danger Queen's money and gets away with it.

AJW TV 6/5/1991

- Esther Moreno Suzuka Minami & Yumiko Hotta vs Debbie Malenko Mika Takahashi & Miori Kamiya
Fun match as usual for these mid card sprint matches. One of the better ones of the year actually with some good stuff between Miori & Hotta and Takahashi & Esther. Really wishing Debbie would get more focus in these multi person tags, she'll often get to do 1 or 2 nice exchanges with someone but for the bulk of things tends to blend into the background as just another body. Course only a little over 1/2 aired so maybe her stuff just got cut.

- (AJW Title) Takako Inoue (c) vs Sakie Hasegawa
Holy shit, never noticed it before but her cheesy pop star idol outfits & singing, combined with the fact that her theme is one of the main tracks from Macross, Takako is so totally doing a freaking Lynn Minmei parody gimmick. Another match with only about 1/2 shown which doesn't work as well when you're dealing with a match that's a little more slow & technical but what we got still looked good, mostly the opening mat work and final few mins of near falls.

- Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada
Toyota's been having a sort of mini, secondary feud with Aja all year, trying to take her down. Here she brings her best tag parter another failing effort in what turns out to be an amazingly awesome match. High end joshi workrate style at it's best, non stop action 100mph from bell to bell for 13 mins.

- Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue vs Akira Hokuto & Mariko Yoshida
And we end things with another really really good tag. Main event so everyone steps up and brings their A game for this one. Kind of similar to the the Bull/Hokuto tag from last month only with better partners involved this time. Like a lot of Bull tags during this time it's built very heavily on everyone knowing their role and playing off the heirarchy of whear everyone's ranked on the totem pole. Bull on top as the unstopable monster, Kyoko & Akira in the middle on about the same level and Yoshida not too far behind but still the clear weak link in the match. And as is often the case for me I get the biggest kick out of watching David try & slay Goliath and the Bull/Yoshida interaction was awesome during this match. Really came away wishing I could have seen those 2 have a singles or even work each other in more tags but sadly they didn't cross paths on too regular a basis.

AJW TV 6/18/1991

- Takako Inoue, Mariko Yoshida & Manami Toyota vs Esther Moreno, Cynthia Moreno & Mika Takahashi
Awesome fast paced lucha spotfest between pretty much the perfect 6 to pull that off as Takako & Yoshida have no problem doing that style even though they lean more towards the technical stuff. Only thing better then watching Toyota & Esther team may be watching them wrestle each other with Toyota surprisingly pinning her. Takako & Yoshida were getting an AJW tag title shot in a few days so thought it would have made more sense to have one of them do it but oh well. Toyota lays in an extra kick after the match just to be a bitch.

- (All Pacific Title) Akria Hokuta (c) vs Toshiyo Yamada
Wasn't digging it as much as other people have. Seemed like just your typical joshi workrate style match, some very good stuff but missing something extra to make it really memorable. Clipping probably hurt it as less then 1/2 aired. They worked a mostly even match but in the end Hokuto won fairly easily with Yamada missing one move then getting knocked out with the NLB.
To give an idea how heavy the AJW schedule was back in the day, during this show they flash the upcoming show dates across the screen and they have 15 shows booked over a 17 day period. Shit, wrestling that much maybe Tateno really did do 2000 matches in less then 10 years.

- (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (c) vs Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue
1st Fall, giant crowd brawl to start before JJ beats down Kyoko a little bit before tagging in Bull. Bull & Aja go at it for a bit including Aja head butting her so hard I believe she may have busted her own head open hardway. Kyoko comes back and gets beat down for a longer period, for just a briefe second the camera pans to Bull holding her nunchucks waiting to be taged back in and you can tell shits on when that happens. Kyoko finally does tag and Bull cleans house on everyone, few mins later, after a few double teams and Bull decideds she's done fucking around and bust out the megadeath flipping leg drop to kill off Aja. Noticed that Bull only ever does that when she's fighting a really strong opponent or when she's just super pissed off, here I think both easily apply.
2nd fall starts the same way with another crowd brawl then Aja getting beat down some more for a bit. Bull makes the mistake of hitting her with her own can which only serves to fire her up and leads to her come back. Bison, having not been in for a while and being fresh comes back in a ball of energy, singlehandidly fights off both of them and puts Kyoko away to even things up. Aja continues going after Bull so they say fuck the rest period and go straight into the 3rd fall with it being Bull's turn to bleed now. Things settle down for a short section between Bison & Kyoko before exploding again with the 2 monsters going at it. Aja goes nuts with the trash can murdering everyone in sight. For the last few minutes things just turn into a war of attrition, everyones worn out and trying to hit any & every big move they can think of to end things. Aja does an awesome top rope tope to the floor in one highlight. Things finally end with Aja pinning Bull after THREE bare fisted urakens. A true HOLY SHIT moment on several levels. Aja hitting the bare fist uraken is the most protected move i've ever seen anywhear in all my years of watching wrestling, i'd never seen anyone survive even 1 until now. At the same time, Bull has been presented as this ultimate unstopable monster for a long time, playing Vader better then Vader did. Bull will look vulnarable at times sure but in the end she leaves you with no doubt who the biggest, baddest, best, toughest wrestler in the company is. Fairly sure this actually may have been her 1st pinfall loss atleast since winning the 3WA title so that Aja had to go to such lengths to take her down is sorta fitting. I still sort of lean towards Jungle Jack vs Toyota/Esther being better but at worst this is still the 2nd best match of the year at this point, just fucking awesome awesome stuff.

AJW 1991 January - March

AJW TV 1/4/1991

- Bat Yoshinaga vs Yumiko Hotta
Fun squash as Hotta takes on her low rent, mid card doppleganger. Bat gets a tiny big of offense in but Hotta's in full on punt the clown mode and treats her like a joke. She kicks her head in, suplexes her all over, stretches her with a nasty looking ankle lock, picks her up at 2 to play some more then pins her with one knee after a big back suplex.

- Toshiyo Yamada, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Mika Takahashi, Miori Kamiya & Takako Inoue
Pretty good match, your typical mid card 6 woman style. Picked up nicely at the end with Yamada & Miori going at it
Then we get a special feature whear the entire AJW roster runs a marathon through the city. Everyone except Aja atleast, she just casually strolls down the street waving to the camera and smiling like "RUNNING???? FUCK THAT SHIT!!!!!". Kaoru Ito comes in 1st with Yoshida 2nd.

- Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Manami Toyota & Suzuka Minami
Weird seeing Toyota & Suzuka paired up given what'd happen later on in the year. Interesting dynamic to the match, MinMan start things out fast and for quite a while just stay in control of things. Suzuka especially gets put over strong as she comes out on top during sections with Aja & Bison. Wasn't until weak link Toyota, who ironically is sporting a bandaged knee of her own is taged in that things turn around after Aja smashes her with the trash can. After that JJ take turns working over her leg and beating her down. Suzuka gets frustrated and runs in to try and save her but they're never able to turn the tide. No hot tag, no big come back, nothing. Toyota tries a diving cross body and gets smashed with a uraken mid air for her troubles. A few mins later Aja pins her rather easily after a big power slam. Good match but i'd rank this at the bottom as far as Manami Toyota & Random partner vs Jungle Jack tags go in 91.

- (3WA Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Akira Hokuto
Tough as Hokuto is she can't really stand toe to toe with Bull in a brawl so she tries for the quick win using a bunch roll ups & high spots. No go though and Bull catches her and makes her pay. They move into a matwork section which Hokuto surprisingly dominates and controlls for the middle part of the match. Soon as Bull's able to escape though and get back to her feet it's back to ass whoping time. She gets in a large amount of offense in a row and it's looking like she's got it won before Akira finally fires back. From then it turns into another one of those wars whear it's a race to see who can finish the other and both scrambling to figure out a way to win. Bull bust out a # of things i'd never seen her do before or rarely see her do, including a big lucha dive off the ropes to the floor. Nothing she seems to do can get her the win though, Hokuto survives the leg drop, ddts, power bombs. Kyoko Inoue runs in to give a quick assist helping lift up Hokuto so Bull can hit a fucking nasty ass middle rope tombstone pile driver which still doesn't put her away. Hokuto for her part was tossing out a ton of dives, suplexes, missile kicks, the NLB and everything else and couldn't win either. She finally falls when Bull catches her with a back drop suplex which actually seemed a little anticlimactic after everything else but that's a minor flaw in an otherwise really great match, one of the best of the year. Post match the Dangerous Queen gets on her hands and knees, bows and begs for a rematch.

AJW 1/5/1991

- (Vacant AJW Title) Kyoko Inoue vs Mika Takahashi
The 1st 1/2 is filled with a lot of time killing unfocused mat work mixed in with a few big moves which doesn't do the best job of building momentum. The later stages are really good though, with time ticking down and them busting out high spot after high spot to try and win. Takahashi was especially impressive during this part as she has a lot of athletic stuff she can do. Funny moment near the end when she does a huge double underhook suplex off the top and doesn't imediatly follow up so the ref starts freaking out, like "hurry, cover her you fool, this is your chance, there's not much time left". No winner declared in the end so the belt remains vacant. Given their experience level it was interesting watching them try and fill 30 mins which is more time then all but a handfull of matches got that year. Despite a # of obvious flaws it was mostly a real good match overall. One i'll probably give a re-watch too soon as I think I might enjoy the first part of the match a little more with a 2nd viewing.

AJW 1/11/91

- Ito vs Hasegawa & Kamiya vs Watanabe
Usually skip the mma fights but given who was in it I decided to give it a go. Watanabe/Kamiya was a little more exciting but both matches were still boring and skipable. Only thing of note was that in both it was pretty clear Ito & Kamiya were the dominant ones and made sure there was no question by the end who was gonna be declared the winner.

- Toyota vs Hokuto
Ah Hokuto, Mrs. Victory Through Guts. Here she comes in with a hugely bandaged arm, knowing her probably for a legit injury and Toyota just waste no time going after it, ripping the 8 million damn layers it's wraped up in off. Being a lot more brutal & vicious then you usually see Toyota act. Toyota also has a bad leg going in though so later on Hokuto tries to focus on that to even the odds. Makes for a really cool story and a damn good match. Suzuka Minami was at ringside for this freaking the FUCK out, threatning to throw the towel in for Hokuto at any moment. After the match she is super pissed off, yelling at Toyota and swearing to get revenge and now for literally the 1st time in all my years as a joshi fan I now actually want to go out of my way to check out a Suzuka Minami match.

- (Hair Match) Jungle Jack vs Bull/Kyoko
Another of those famous matches that's been on my "buy" list forever but I just never got around to getting a hold of for whatever reason until now. Did not disapoint. The Aja vs Bull feud is the #1 thing that stands out to me about the 90 through 92 era and nothing that cool has happened in a very long time. The amount of hatred, brutality, emotion & excitement is just on a whole nother level. Kyoko as the young underling wanting to prove herself & Bison as the trusted soldier standing by her buddy's side ready to kill for the cause played their roles awesomely as well.

AJW 1/23/1991

- (Cage Match) Bull Nakano vs Yumiko Hotta
Not sure what led to this match taking place. Dunno if they were feuding at the time or this was something they just did to try and draw crowd for a big house show. Given the time frame a comparison has to be made to the Bull/Aja cage matches and this wasn't on that level but was still really good in it's own way. Bull dominates, having her cronies toss in weapons, including the giant oversized nun-chuck, Hotta puts up a good fight though and even gets help from I think Suzuka Minami who tosses her a chain. Bull of course bust out the leg drop off the cage as well. After the match Jungle Jack fresh off their hair loss run in to attack. Kyoko & Bat rush to try & save their boss and all hell breaks loose for a while, ending with Aja going into the crowd tossing chairs all over which legit nearly causes a riot to break out when other fans start tossing chairs back.

AJW 3/17/1991

- Tomoko Watanabe vs Kazue Saito
Awful, packed a whole lot of crap into 4 minutes.

- Tomezo Tsunokake vs Little Frankie
One of, if not the earliest apperances of the midgets in AJW. Along with Mr. Bhuddaman, a staple in the company, either in the ring or behind the sceens right up until their very last show. Shit, Bhudda still randomly shows up at shows even now. You'll be glad to know that right from the very start they sucked. Actually, by their own standards this wasn't super horrible even decent at times but still nothing to go out of your way to see or ever ever ever watch again if you do. Also neat, did not know Shiro Abe was still reffin this late into the 90's.

- Debbie Malenko & Mariko Yoshida vs Sakie Hasegawa & Mayumi Yamamoto
Decent enough match until Sakie got hurt  taking a dive from Yoshida, knocking her head hard on the floor as she landed. They stoped the match to drag her out of thear and they never regained the momentum during the few mins it was a handicap match.

- (3WA Martial Arts Title) Bat Yoshinaga (c) vs Kaoru Ito
After your standard rookie & midget matches, we complet the unholy trifecta of things guaranteed to stink up an AJW show with your pre-requisite shoot fight. Even AJW wasn't in the mood for this crap tonight as they thankfully clip things to just a few highlights of the 1st & last rounds.

- (Noriyo Tateno Retirement Match) Noriyo Tateno vs Takako Inoue
Last of a dying breed. Of the big mega stars of the 80's she's the last to go. Short sprint, nothing special as a match. Just a nice way to send out Tateno on a happy note as she picks up a win, gets an awesome ceremony and then gets beat down by all her old 80's buddies like Lioness, Dump & Jaguar after the match one more time. Course the real story is what happened afterwards in the back. Tateno sorta never really wanted to retire but the owner of short lived US women's promotion LPWA promised her a big cushy job for life with his company if she'd quit wrestling and move to America and then in one of the all time great dick moves in wrestling, the night she retires he calls her up to say "uhhh, no nevermind, no job 4 u kid, don't come". She'd un-retire the next year to join LLPW when they started up.

- Yumiko Hotta, Esther Moreno & Cynthia Moreno vs Toshiyo Yamada, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda
Another mostly average match. Started a little slow but they things got good by the end

- (All Pacific Title) Manami Toyota (c) vs Suzuka Minami
To start i'll just say that in no way was this a bad match. That said, this was far from being great either. Huge HUGE disapointment. Sometime in between January and now Suzuka's "Bitch I will tear your fucking head off for what you did to my best friend" attitude fizzled out and things start with a nice sporting handshake and never heat up much from thear. MJH actually summed things up nicely, Minami's a solid mid card wrestler but didn't have what it took to steal the spotlight and shine as a major star. A total paint by #s match. "Hey lets do mat work for x amount of mins" ok now "you do your big move then i'll do my big move and we'll kick out of stuff for a while" ok "finish". Nothing wrong with that formula actually but the thing that takes a match from being just ok to being really good/great is the added elements of emotion and drama and passion and personality and this match had none of that.

- Akira Hokuto vs Aja Kong
Now this is more like it. Aja comes in super pissed off, murderalizes poor Hokuto, dragging her all over the building before she makes a short come back. Too little too late though as she fails to slay the monster.

- Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura & Mika Takahashi
Going in dind't know what to exspect as i'd heard mixed reviews but I ended up loving this match. The streak of awesome Bull's Army vs Jungle Jack matches being the best thing in the company continues. They're building up to a big Bull/Bison singles match so Bison got to look strong against Bully poo but for me this was the Takahashi show. Underdog struggling to take down the giant, getting killed but never giving up is always a fav story of mine in wrestling. She's finally able to get in some good offense near the end, thanks to Bison softening her up and even a run in from Aja. And for 1 split second when she hits a huge suplex on her you think she might pull it off but it only ends up making Ms Nakano mad. For her toubles Bull chanels Tracey Smothers and decideds to comit super dooper ultra mega mass homicide upon the poor girl, busting out the rarely used rolling guiloteen leg drop right on her face.

AJW 1990 Thoughts & Top 10 List

Random top whatever list and 1990 thoughts

Not too much made tape from this year, 9 tv shows/comm tapes + a few random misc matches that surfaced here & thear, prob around 50-60 matches for the year total that i've seen (decided not to get the AJW Classics ep that has the 12/9 footage, for now atleast).

Top 10 matches

1. 11/14/1990 (Cage Match) Bull Nakano vs Aja Kong
2. 8/19/1990 Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Bull Nakano & Grizzly Iwamato
3. 8/19/1990 Akira Hokuto vs Manami Toyota
4. 7/21/1990 (3WA Title) Bull Nakano © vs Manami Toyota
5. 1/4/1990 Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita vs Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta
6. 9/1/1990 (Cage Match) Aja Kong vs Bull Nakano
7. 11/14/1990 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami © vs Manami Toyota & Kyoko Inoue
8. 5/13/1990 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami © vs Yumiko Hotta & Mitsuko Nishiwaki
9. 6/17/1990 (JGP FINAL) Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta
10. (Lucha Libre Rules Elimination Match) Hyper Cat, La Diabolica, Miori Kamiya & Mayumi Yamamoto vs Esther Moreno, Xochitl Hamada, Takako Inoue & Noriyo Tateno
Slim pickings this year, a lot of good but not a ton that was blow away great after the 1st few matches on this list. Both 89 and 91 were way better.

Top 10 Wrestlers

1. Bull
2. Hokuto
3. Aja
4. Toyota
5. Mitsuko Nishiwaki
6. Hotta
7. Mima Shimoda
8. Suzuka Minami
9. Bison Kimura
10. Mika Takahashi

Like 91 I found Bull to be easy choice for #1, was going to go with Aja as #2 again but thinking about it Hokuto really did have a much better year then her as outside of the Bull feud she didn't do that much this year while Hokuto had a lot more range. Toyota had a really strong year as well as this was kind of her breakout year. After that it's kind of a pick em. The lack of footage for a lot of people kind of sucks and kept them from being higher or in the case of people like Kyoko & Yamada, on the list at all as they only even had a couple of matches make tape this year.

1990 was a weird period for AJW, they'd lost Dump in 88 and then lost Crush in 89 plus several of the other big names who carried the company in the 80's were gone by then so they were in a clear rebuilding period. The 1st 1/2 of the year was all about establishing and putting over the rivalry between the Dream Orca, Tokyo Sweethearts, Marine Wolves, Fire Jets crew and featuring them as the new top stars to varying degrees with Gokumonto just kind of milling about in the background. The 2nd 1/2 of the year the promotion took a major turn when things switched to being all about the Aja vs Bull feud. Now Bull was the obvious successor to Dump but something I started thinking about as I watched more 90 stuff was that there really wasn't a clear cut choice for new top babyface(s) to fill the void left by the Crush Girls. Hokuto was close and back in 89 it looked like they might have been grooming her for that spot, making it a point to have Chiggy & Lioness feud with her on their way out but after that AJW seemed a little hesitant to get 100% behind her as the new "it" girl. Along the way in 90, like I mentioned earlier Toyota really broke out but I dunno if she was quite ready back then to be the top ace either Didn't help that she wasn't fully over with all the crowd back then either. You could really tell that this year was when the new generation of fans, many of which were males, started showing up to shows and while they loved Toyota she was hot & cold in the eyes of what was left of the shrieking school girl crowd who seemed more into the tougher, strong, butch girls like Hokuto & Hotta. Whatever you want to say about Yumiko, for a while thear she was over as fuck with that audiance and I always got the sense that AJW wanted to do more with her but when given the spotlight on a few (not all) ocasions, she choked and under-delivered which caused them to eventually sour on her push. Kind of a nobody in early 90, Kyoko had fully established herself as another one in the competition for the spot of future top star by 91 and while they never did get behind Yamada as more then an upper mid card wrestler (maybe they thought she was too much of a Chigusa clone?), she was atleast in the race for a while too among others. So yeah, back then there really was a feel of "shit, we can't decide who to push now, let's just throw a bunch of stuff out thear, see what sticks and let the cream rise to the top". Guessing that may have been what led to the non traditional pick of Aja getting the slot as Bull's main rival and them building the company around a monster vs monster feud for the 1st time which ended up being a great choice as it carried the company through their down period and gave them a couple extra years to further build up the other girls like Toyota & Kyoko.

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.