Random Quickie - Michinoku Pro 12/16/2010 Dick Togo vs Rui Hyugaji

Wrestling's awesome in how simple it can be. I'd never seen or even heard of Hyugaji before this match but they show a short 2 minute video package before this match and it does a great job of setting up the story. A month ago young goody goody Hyugai turned heel to join up with the evil gang Kowloon by attacking Togo and helping them win a match so now they're gonna fight. I'm sure things are more detailed then that but that's the basic jist of things and all you really need to know. Guess i'm a little late to the party on this one as I see it did quite well in the Purotopia best of list. But yeah, this match ruled. Reading over a few people's thoughts on this something that I don't think has been brought up nearly as much as it should is just how much this works as Togo fighting a younger version of himself. They're not similar in move set or skill wise of course but personality wise yeah. Togo's been in Kaientai, Far East Connection, Legion of Violence, the Itallian Horsemen and every other kinda bad ass heel group you can imagine all over the wrestling world. Now here he is in this match, almost 20 years into the business, a few months shy of retirement, bloodied up, in the fight of his life against a young upstart wanna be kid. A kid who's only 3 years into his career, a kid who was fuckin 3 years old when Dick Togo started wrestling, a kid trying to prove he's a man now, a man who's a bigger Dick then Dick. Stuff like this is why wrestling's great.

AJW 10/17/1992 Tag League The Best Part 1

Odd moment to start this off as they do a highlight package of previous Tag League tournaments and only show the last 3 winners even though it's been going on for 6. Debbie & Hasegawa pledge allegiance to win during the opening ceremony.

- (3WA Midget Title - Mr Buddahman Ref) Little Frankie (c) vs Tomezo Tsunokake

Only interesting thing about this is that we found out Lil Frankie has to do his promos standing on a chair and Mr. Buddahman is the ref and they have a midget commisioner apparently named Dynamite King to precide over the festivities. Aside from that FF material as usual. Frankie retained if you care. At the end of the tape we learn the name of the midget commisioner (his "official title") is Yoshimi Yasuda. Moving on...

- Mima Shimoda & Takako Inoue vs Miori Kamiya & Kaoru Ito

Jungle Jack vs The Sexy Pair. Early portion is all about the leg work on Ito with Tak going to town with the sub work. Kamiya tags in and does a funny bit heeling it up whear and just jams her thumbs in Takako's eyes for like 30 seconds. Takako takes a beating for a while and we get another section of Ito getting worked over before they go into near fall mode. Takako shines pretty nicely during this part, Mima does her usual thing, Kamiya is almost a complete non factor and Ito does ok busting out a few nice highlights and she gets the win after hitting a twisting senton on Shimoda. Little bit of a disapointing match, not bad at all just a little by the numbers and you know these 4 could do even better on another night. Nice little chant for Ito from the K-Hall crowd after her win.


- Akira Hokuto & Etsuko Mita vs Bull Nakano & Cynthia Moreno

Christ the Moreno clan is short. Not a new revolation but damn is it noticable looking at Cynthia standing next to Bull. Anyways this was a cool little match. Everyone more or less played the role you'd exspect and it was kind of formulaic but it was a really good execution of the formula for the most part so I dug it a lot. LCO was in full evil cheating bastard mode which is always fun. They even had Shimoda run in to lay in a few extra kicks. Hokuto & Bull have a few nice battle of the bad ass sections when they're in thear with each other with Hokuto even getting the upper hand in many of them. Cynthia isn't the most sympathetic person taking a beating but she's far from bad at it and she was on fire once it came time for her to make the big comeback later on in the match. Ending is a little out of nowhear as Hokuto grabs her in an upside down twisting pretzle thingy hold for the flash sub win but yeah, this was pretty rockin up until then.

We then get a sad a little moment as Mariko Yoshida comes out and anounces she has to pull out of the tag league due to injury. It would be almost 2 years before she'd return to the ring.


- (Tag Leauge The Best 92) Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Eriko Shark Tsuchiya & Yoshika Crusher Maedomari

Oh lord, this match, WOW. Mad Dog Military jump the Goku girls and SHIT'S ON as chair throwing madness ensues. Back in the ring Bat completely fucks up Shark with stiff kicks to the point whear Shark just covers before trying to grap some kind of hold as things break down. Doesn't appear these 2 are exactly "working" with each other here. Watanabe comes in and things go a little smoother as she takes a beating for a little while. We get another Shark vs Bat face off and Jesus Holy Christ Bat is murdering Shark in this match. Shark just legit gets blown up and you can see her huffing and puffing for all she's worth. Insane heat for all of this as the crowd boos the hell out of anything the FMW girls do and are having freaking orgasms of joy when the AJW girls get their shots in, especially for Bat. Nice suplex, choke slam & lariat from Crusher in this. I'm no fan of hers but hey, credit whear it's do and all that. Eventually this breaks down into more brawling chaos outside that sees Watanabe get busted open and start gushing blood all over. Bat just straight up punches Shark in the skull as hard as she can. Somewhear in the back Hotta's sitting in a corner crying in fear saying "ouch, lighten up girl". Crusher comes in and caves in Bats skull with a chair for her trouble, another chair shot for Watanabe and then a double powerbomb puts an end to things as Shark & Crusher pick up the win. Fuck, this kicked a million billion trillion zillion kinds of ass. Just great on every level you can imagine. If you hate Shark & Crusher this is the match for you, for entirely diffrent reasons if you love Shark & Crusher this is the match for you and hell, if you don't care either way but just love intense, angry, emotional, hate filled fuckin fights this is the match for you. Seriously, anyone out thear that's seen this and didn't like it is an evil, heartless, soulless demon that should be banished to a level of hell so deep that it doesn't exist yet, that the Devil will look at you when you arrive through the gate and proclaim "we gotta come up with some new shit for this bastard". So uhhh yeah, good match.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 92) Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa vs Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue

Debbie the wise proclaims "we're facing the toughest team there is, we're gonna try our hardest" then goes off about the importance of matching gear for tag teams in the pre match promo. Little goofiness to start this off as Kyoko does some wacky hijinx only to get out smarted leading to Sakie & Deb hitting double dives. Super Maniacs mock their Steiner pose in response. Sakie & Deb try and shut down the "Kyoko clap clap clap" chant and turn the crowd to their side but it's a losing effort. Match kind of drags for a while after that. Paced almost like they're going to a DRAW even though they didn't. Long stretch of Sakie getting worked over but it's all very pedestrian stuff and nothing of note, then Debbie gets the luke warm tag and things switch up to Kyoko getting beat up. Things finally pick up when Aja tags back in around the 15 min or so mark and starts going crazy upside Debbie's head with the palm strikes. After that the action gets really great including both teams busting out some cool shit i'd never seen them do before. Insane overhead superplex from Debbie is always a big highlight too. The POWAH of Aja & Kyoko proves to be too much in the end as they splat both their opponents down with twisty whirly bird drops and Kyoko just squats on poor Sakie to pin her for the win. Another match that falls into the "good but you know they can do better" catagory. With a better middle portion this would have been among the better matches of the year i'm sure.

 

- (Tag Leauge The Best 92) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta & Suzuka Minami

A point i've brought up before is that AJW was really great when it came to booking matches to get over who the better wrestler is. Toyota & Yamada are double tag champs & main event stars. Hotta & Suzuka are a mid to upper mid card tag team that hasn't done much of importance in a while. On paper you think OK, this will be a pretty competitive match but in the end the champs will of course pick up the win. Instead we get almost the complete opposite. The anouncers refer to Hotta & Suzuka as the "dark horse" team in the tournament as they make their entrance so you know something's up. This isn't a full on squash or even anything close to it but Hotta & Suzuka were largely the dominant team here. They controlled most of the action in the first 2/3 of the match, any time Toyota or Yamada would make a come back and get a little momentum going it wouldn't last super long and they'd get cut off. Any time the match went outside, the champs would be left laying on the floor wallowing in pain. Toyota who's coming off a recent foot injury got her leg worked over, it didn't go anywhear early on but by the end of the match they went back to it and it became a big focus. Hotta & Suzuka both destroy it late in the match and either legit reinjure it a little or Toyota does one of the best sell jobs i've ever seen from her to put it over. Betting on the latter actually which was pretty awesome. Eventually she has to sit out for several mins to get it re-taped while Yamada fights it alone. Eventually she comes back and her & Yamada go on a big run of stuff but nothing they can pull out gets them the win. Enzu flurry from Yamada, the double team flapjack, double team high angle slam, double flying head butt, all get 2. Hotta gets a bunch of her own big stuff in too and Suzuka is quite the bad ass in this as well. In the end it comes down to Hotta & Toyota. Toyota eats knee off a moonsault attempt which allows Hotta to drop her with the straight jacket superplex which doesn't look like it's _ close to killing someone this time though still scary. Hotta jumps for joy in victory and has a look on her face like even she can't believe it. Another really good match between these 2 teams. Not sure if i'd rank this ahead of the March one or not but it's close

End of this tape has a sweet hype segment running down the card for the big Dream Rush show coming up in November which was cool to see as you almost never see that done in joshi

AJW TV 9/19/1992

So while Bull & Hokuto were off in the land of the Frontier kicking butt AJW sent a bunch of their other girls down for a little vacation down Mexico way.

- (2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota vs Maria del Angel & Tania

Never seen or even heard of the 2 luchadoras before. 1st fall is all about the visiting AJW girls showing off and controlling things as they run through their low level offense. Toyota spazes out while Yamada gets some kicks in and stretches folks on their way to an easy win. 2nd fall is quick and sees Maria & Tania bust out a big bag of pedestrian arm drags...and stomps..and stuff...not exactly making a great first impression on me here. 1 of them pins Yamada with a simple drop kick while the other pins Toyota with a sidewalk slam...yup. Final fall is a repeat of the first only Toyota does bigger dives and Yamada does fancier kicks. A Double flying head butt wins it for them. Entire thing only went 8 mins and was pretty much just a squash to highlight Toyota & Yamada who even though they weren't even doing anything that spectacular still got over pretty big with the crowd here. Action was kinda sloppy a lot of the time since the lucha ladies had a hard time adjusting to taking Japanese style offense but this was ok enough.


As is customary when ever we get a joshi show highlighting a Mexican trip we get a ton of sightseeing footage now with the highlights being

- Kyoko Inoue & Aja Kong visit Kendo at what appears to be a mask making factory set up in someones living room. Kyoko picks out a Tiger Mask while Aja finds one of Liger and starts huming his freaking theme song. Aja then tries to steal a Super Porky Brazo mask but Kendo gives it to her as a gift :)

- Toyota & Yamada visit a lucha museum. They play with the giant toy ring, try on diffrent mask and find a pic of Yoshida & Shimoda hitting a double flying drop kick to Martha Villalobos that happened to be hanging up for some odd reason.

- Lioness Asuka shows up to chill with Yamada & Toyota after and they take stroll through a park.

- Aja & Kyoko visit the Wagner/Moreno family home. Minus Silver King & Esther the whole clan is thear pretty much. Wagner Sr, Mama Wagner, Wagner Jr, Cynthia, Alda & Rossy Moreno & I belive Alda's kids. Cynthia makes them all lunch.

- (2 out of 3 falls) Aja Kong, Kyoko Inoue & La Diabolica vs La Sirenita, Neftali & Lady Apache

Cool, except for Sirenita i'm familiar with all the luchadoras here. Nice to see Diabolica again as she hasn't been back over to Japan sine 90. So unlike the previous match this is wrestled a little more evenly. Aja & Kyoko along with Diabolica are working ruda and this follows your basic tag formular. The good girls out wrestle and outsmart the big evil monsters. Pretty awesome seeing Aja do the wacky lucha miscomunication spot whear you get tricked into destroying your own team mates. Eventually the technica's get caught and destroyed with power stuff. Nasty looking power slam off the top from Aja to end the 1st fall. 2nd fall is more of the same, things pick up when they start busting out a few dives and stuff but it ends badly as Diablica takes out Apache with a flip tope and Apache gets knocked out hitting the back of her head on a chair. A few mins later the other 2 fall to the #s game with Aja beating one with the flying back elbow and Kyoko dropping the other with the Niagra Driver to sweep things 2 falls to 0. Pretty fun match as Aja & Kyoko have no prob eating lucha offense so they all meshed quite well here.

Random Quickie - FMW 9/19/1992 Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyoda vs Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto

And so it begins, the very 1st interpromotional match in joshi history. There's a complete fan cam of this floating around some whear out thear but the version I have only shows a little less then half the match. You still get a good feel for how this went and just based on what aired it's one of the best matches of the year. Kudo & Combat, the 2 AJW rejects who weren't considered good enough and got let go from the promotion fighting against 2 of the current top stars from that company. Kudo & Combat step up fully and more then prove they belong at that level and this ends up being pretty much everything you could want out of a match like this. Off the charts intensity, action, hatred, emotion, everything tha makes wretling great and a huge crowd going ape shit for all of it. In the end Kudo falls to a leg drop from Bull crushing team FMW's dreams. The Zenjo girls talk shit on the mic in celebration while Kudo & Combat walk away dejected with their heads down. FMW wouldn't be FMW if they weren't the underdogs though and things are just getting started here.

AJW 9/15/1992 - Bull Nakano 10 year anniversary show

After the usual opening show ceremonies we get a special in ring celebration for Bull's anniversary. Notable highlights include the anouncer reading letters of congrats from Madusa, Ultimo Dragon, Terri Power & Harley Saito. Flower presentation from Suzuka Minami & Kyoko Inoue and a speach by Kyoko as well.

- (AJW Jr. Title) Rie Tamada (c) vs Kumiko Maekawa

Tamada won the title from Torisu in an untelevised match on the 8/10 show and they waste no time giving her her 1st defense. Match was full of really basic but well done stuff. On the short side and no real standout moments but I enjoyed this for what it was. Maekawa dominated a lot of the match and gets the shoot pin in 4 mins after body slam to win the title. Hugs of RESPECT all around post match :) Maekawa is all teary eyed in celebration.

 

- (Midget Match) Little Frankie vs Tomezo Tsunokake

1st time seeing the midgets in over a year. Skiped watching this match though. Life is short and lord knows i've seen enough of these little fucks allready over the years to 1) know every move they're gonna do and 2) know that none of it entertains me. Did pause long enough to notice Little Frankie is missing a whole row of teeth which I somehow never noticed before and that Tsunokake the time travler is rocking a bizare shirt that says something about California, Cher & 1998, here in 1992.

- Estuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Miori Kamiya & Saemi Numata

Pretty fun stuff as they work your standard AJW weak link formula match. Kind of similar to the Aja/Sakie vs Toyota/Yamada tag from the previous show. Not as good as that match was of course but I still enjoyed it. This time we get a diffrent ending too as LCO pick up the win with a doomsday device on Kamiya.

- Yumiko Hotta & Cynthia Moreno vs Debbie Malenko & Takako Inoue

Heh, pre match promo Debbie wonders if they'll have to contend with Hotta's mad new lucha skills given that she returned recently from Mexico. Early segment between Hotta & Takako proves Debbie had nothing to worry about as it's same old Hotta we all know. Takako holds her own for a bit before it ends badly with her taking a punt to the jaw. Debbie & Cynthis have their go of it and do some cool stuff including a swank reverse rolling Rita Romero special from Deb. Her & Takako get a short control segment working over Cynthia until Hotta the conquering hero runs in to clean house. Hotta & Takako have another good section going at it as Tak's in tough girl mode standing up to her here. Ends badly though as Hotta comes out on the winning side. In a repeat from the last show, Hotta again almost kills someone trying to do a straight jacket german suplex off the top rope. Being that Takako isn't nearly as heavy as Bull you'd think Hotta would be able to lift her more instead of droping straight down but nope. One of those moments whear you just shake your head wondering WTF they were thinking. Crappy ending to an otherwise decent match.


We then get a short speach from Manami Toyota who hobbles out on cruches having injured her foot, not sure how. Funny moment as she almost trips getting into the ring. Funnier moment as she almost falls on her ass again trying to hop off the freakin apron on 1 foot as she goes to leave. Her music played the entire time during her whole speach too. Weird.

- Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito vs Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe

Crazy start to the match as they go brawling into the stands early on. Ito hits a nutty foot stomp off the K-hall stage and we get a big dive train sequence including Bat with the bad ass suicide dive plancha. Settles down into your basid see saw tag match afterthat for a while. Bat with some wacky spin kicks to the small of Sakie's back in an odd moment. After taking a few more kicks Bat goes for the pin and Sakie sorta forgets to kick out making for another odd moment, oops. Match continues after that with a long beat down section on Sakie and things start to meander at this point. Eventally Sakie just starts fighting back and doesn't even bother to tag, going on a long stretch of offense herself. Ito eventually gets to come back in and we get a lot more back & forth stuff as I start thinking to myself that "boy this match is long". They don't really change gear either, just sort of working the same mildly fast pace for much of this. Eventually the bell rings indicating a time limit draw and suddenly it all makes sense. 20 something mins of the 30 aired. Love all 4 of the girls involved in this, if all they had was 20 i'm sure this would have ruled. Hell, if they had 30 but were able to do a clean finish i'm sure this still would have been quite good. But yeah, a 30 min DRAW isn't going to uhhhh be met with much success. I'm being a little hard though I feel as this didn't suck either and it had it's share of good moments. Many a better wrestler then this has been killed by the dreaded curse of the TLD :)

- Akira Hokuto vs Suzuka Minami

1st big singles match for Suzuka in a while and she's amped up for it jumping Hokuto before the bell, letting her know what's up. Quite the diverging paths these 2 have taken since their last meeting. Hokuto takes over for a bit an then the match becomes a battle of who can wear each other down more. Things pick up as they take the fight back outside with both hitting suicide dives on each other. Suzuka also gets in a tombstone on the floor which didn't look fun. Big run of stuff from Suzuka as she gets in a bunch of suplexes and powerbombs. She hits the big senton but can't get the win, goes for a 2nd and eats knee. Hokuto can't take advantage though as Suzuka still remains in controll and gets in a few more big moves. Hokuto finally starts countering her shit and seemingly as if to say "OK, enough fucking around" Hokuto drops Suzuka with a weirdly done backdrop suplex followed by the NLB for the easy win. Suzuka plays sore loser but Hokuto just walks away unphased having proven her point. This was good though really it felt more like Hokuto wrestling down to Suzuka's level rather then Suzuka stepping up to hers.

Long sit down int with Bull going over some of the highlights of her career

- (2 out of 3 Falls) Bull Nakano, Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue vs Toshiyo Yamada, Yumiko Hotta & Mariko Yoshida

Zany hijinx to start this off. Everyone chases Kyoko until they she hides behind Bull and no one wants a parth of that. Hotta steps up and gets doinked by Miss Nakano, Yoshida fairs even worse and gets dinked. Aja & Bull do then bust out the freakin leap frog onto your opponent hanging off the ropes spot and uhhhh...yeah, bad times for Yoshida. Goku Jack beat up Yoshida a while longer until she's able to break out the monkey flip on Bull to escape her torture. Yamada has a go of it and continues the fine tradition of getting her team getting their butt kicked. Hotta finally gets to come in and play wreckin ball but that doesn't last long. Yoshida & Yamada back to playing the game of who can get crushed the bestest. All 3 try and triple drop kick on Bull and she just shrugs it off, double suplex attempt not so much as Yamada breaks out the surpise roll up win over Bull to take the 1st fall. Short 2nd fall as Aja comes in and smashes all in her path. They grab Yoshida for some triple team action and Kyoko ends it with the flying back elbow. 3rd fall sees everyone bouning all over as they go fighting around the arena. Aja goes bowling for camera men using Yoshida as the ball. She gets a full strike and everything. Back inside long stretch of near falls, awesome mini segment between Yoshida & Kyoko. ending comes when Aja hits a big splash on Hotta followed by Bull droping the leg. Yamada saves...barely, only prolonging the agony. One more leg drop from Bull and it's over. Happy ending for the special girl on her special night. Hokuto comes out at the end to give her more flowers as they gear up to kick some FMW butt soon. Really good match as everyone was on for this one.