AJW 1989 Reviews

AJW 3/4/1989

- (AJW Tag Titles) Mika Takahashi & Kaoru (c) vs Miori Kamiya & Reibun Amada
Pretty good match, one of the better ones i've seen Kaoru & Takahashi have actually. AJW tag division was majorly stacked  back then and Honey Wings are probably my 2nd favorite tag team after Jungle Jack from this time period. Much like Hikari Fukuoka did years later, Takahashi & Kaoru really compliment each other's styles perfectly and are such an exciting team to watch. This was one of those matches whear the Champs dominated all the way through but Miori & Reibun showed heart and wouldn't quit and eventually managed to pull out a hard fought victory in a bit of an upset to take the titles.

AJW 3/19/1989

- (Vacant AJW Title) Manami Toyota vs Aja Kong
Just a couple mins of highlights shown but you could see that they had good chemistry together even at this stage of their careers.

- Toshiyo Yamada vs Yumi Ogura
Wrestling's so cool in that when done right you really don't need a lot of backstory, knowledge of the participants or even the ability to understand the native language to get across a great story for a match. Yamada's the spunky underdog desperatly trying to prove herself and Ogura's the grizzled vet, confident in her superiority who's like "well fuck kid, show me what ya got" and they got all this across within the 1st min of the match. A few nit picks in that it went a little too long and that when Yamada finally made her big comeback in the later part of the match Ogura didn't do the best job of putting it over & never looked like she cared about winning, only keeping Yamada from beating her. But in general I love these kinds of matches and they still did a good job on this one.

- (IWA Title) Chigusa Nagoya (c) vs Akira Hokuto
Awesomely great match which surpassed even my exspectations with Chigusa on her way out giving the major rub to rising star Hokuto. Got a big kick out of Hokuto's bad knee being a major focus even this far back, like seriously, was there EVER a time when she didn't have a bum wheel? Perhaps when she was born the Dr. must have punched her in the knee instead of smacking her on the bum. Still, unlike the last match, even though you knew who the bigger star was, Hokuto still got in enough that you thought she might pull out the win and puts up a hell of a fight before going down swinging, shockingly getting caught with a sleeper hold. Always loved the way Chiggy applied that hold but almost never saw her win with it so cool ending I thought. Hokuto cries like a baby post match

AJW 4/?/1989

- Mima Shimoda vs Saemi Numata
JIP, dunno how far in. Just your basic young girls match but fairly decent as far as those go. Nothing fancy but I was impressed how well they were at building a match with just the fundamentals. Goes to a draw.

- Lioness Asuka vs Grizzly Iwamoto
Fun little quick match, Grizzly has Aja & the other Goku cronies runing in and cheating like hell to help her out but Lioness is still too much for her and after working over the arm for a bit gets a submission victory.

AJW 4/27/1989

- (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka (c) vs Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami
Chigusa's done a few interviews mentioning how pissed she was about being forced to retire due to the age rule and holy cow can you see it written all across her face. Other random thought, just now occured to me that the reason Hokuto & Suzuka are rockin saiolor suits to the ring is because they're the MARINE wolves, weird that I never made the connection. Anyways, match starts out with Hokuto avenging her loss last month to Chiggy, getting a quick pin on her in like 10 seconds with a surprise suplex. 2nd fall is more of what you'd exspect with Crush Girls dominating, mainly focusing on beating down Hokuto. They settle on working over her arm because, well, it was Hokuto's fate in life to eternally be the walking wounded. Minami doesn't do much of anything and essentially seems to be thear so that on paper it's not billed as a handicap match. After a long beat down she finally gets taged back in and one pile driver from Chigusa & giant swing from Lioness later Suzuka bites the dust. 3rd fall and she's a little more involved but still not bringing much to the table. Her seeling is so...bland and on offense she doesn't wow, not that she's bad at either but Hokuto's the one that shines on the team in this match. Final fall goes quite a while, like 15-16 mins and follows the pattern of Marine Wolves getting short burst of offense using some nice double teams & stuff followed by Crush getting longer stretches of controll. Cool moment as they play off last month with Chigusa again getting Hokuto in the sleeper which gets a big pop from the crowd but she escapes this time, a few mins later the Marine Wolves make a last ditch come back effort and lock on a tandem sleeper of their own but sadly can't pull it out. Chigusa "the Lariat" Nagayo ends things with a wiffy looking clothesline on Akira to put her away. Not sure whear it happened but Chigusa seemed to have gotten hurt somewhar along the way (possibly neck) as post match she's down for a long time and has to be carried from the ring. Liked the Nagayo/Hokuto singles a little better but this was still an awesome match.
Most if not all the undercard for this show aired spread out across a few AJW classics shows. Been a while since I watched the matches but from what I remember everything was decent or better with a real good Aja/Bull vs Yamada/Mita tag being the highlight and Mika Komatsu retiring against Ogura which was a lot better then usual for a 5 min exhibition match. 

AJW 10/8/1989

- (Tag Leauge The Best 89 Semi Final) Etsuko Mita & Akira Hokuto vs Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota
Damn good match. Really well put together given that except for Hokuto, everyone else involved had only been wrestling a little over 2 years at this point. Nothing fancy or anything but a real good basic story to the match with LCO having a lot better team work and dominating things over weak link Toyota with Yamada who was clearly a bigger star then her at the time coming in to save the. MASSIVE crowd heat during this, just a non stop insane shriek of noise that you can hear fully since there's no commentary, almost head ache inducing actually. Cool ending with Yamada outsmarting Mita and hitting a flash german to pick up the win.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 89 Semi Final) Mitsuko Nishiwaki & Medusa vs Yumiko Hotta & Reibun Amada
Not sure what the hell to make of this. Nishiwaki & Amada are 2 girls i've heard of for years but only maybe ever seen 3 matches of each and that was quite a while ago. Reibun looked ok but didn't make me want to seek out more of her work & had really horrible punches, Nishiwaki was pretty impressive though and the glue that held this match together....somewhat. Any time Hotta & her were against each other things were pretty good but once Madusa taged in it all went to hell with some of the more awkward looking work i've seen in a while. At one point Madusa & Hotta get into a kick fest and i'm convinced Hotta was going out of her way to make her look bad by either blocking or no selling all her stuff. Another weird moment as the match focuses on Amada getting her leg worked over for a while, Madusa has her in some sort of leg lock and then Hotta & Nishiwaki start fighting with each other next to her. Madusa just kind of stops working the hold and blankly stares at them for a moment then starts yelling out Nishiwaki's name at the top of her lungs for no real reason. Ending finally comes a few mins later with Madusa getting the win with an ugly looking moonsault whear she had to have Nishiwaki HOLD HER HAND the entire time while executing it. Not a horrible match but certainly not good either and absolutely a trainwreck.

- (Tag Leauge The Best 89 FINAL) Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Mitsuko Nishiwaki & Medusa
Kind of a combination of the previous two matches though more closer to the 1st then the 2nd so it's somewhere in the middle quality wise. Fun stuff though. Again they focus a lot on beating down Toyota but mostly have Nishiwaki, who continues to impress me, do all the work. Madusa doesn't get to do as much here and when she is in she's mostly limited to striking which is one of the few things she can do well. Her punches suck ass but she's a great kicker and she works well with Yamada having a fun exchange. Nice near fall stretch and kind of surprisingly, Madusa again gets the win after her & Mitsuko hit a double team off the top. In a funny moment even Madusa kind of acknowledges that Nish carried this thing during the post match promo.

AJW 12/9/89

- Toyota vs Yamada
Real good considering their experience level. Maybe it's just because they always tended to go long so i'm used to it but I thought they did a good job of not telegraphing it was going to a draw. Reminded me a lot of their November 93 match only with a much more basic move set.

AJW 12/?/1989

- Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta
Decent enough match but they've had a lot of better ones. Lot of back work by Hotta which Toyota put over nicely, a nice performance for all the haters who think Toyota couldn't sell. Beyond that I thought it was missing a little something and felt kinda house showish. Hotta gets the win with a nice suplex

- (2 out of 3 Falls) Bull Nakano, Aja Kong & Grizzly Iwamoto vs Toshiyo Yamada, Mitsuko Nishiwaki & Kaoru
Bull dumps water on the anouncer that got beat up earlier in the tape, Griz whacks him with her Kendo stick, Aja harrasees him as well so apparently this was a running feud of death between Gokumonto and him. Aja Kong also has a fucking AXE with her and ya know, why wouldn't she? Sadly she does not connect with any of her swings. Much stronger baby face side this time around making for a way way super fun match. Yamada was on fire here and Nish & Kaoru were bringing it too. Mix in with Bull & gang being in a surley mood at their cheating, weapon swinging best and yeah this was awesome. Bison (I think) was on crutches at ringside and they were swung wildly by many people at many other peoples heads and guts and legs and the ref got whacked along the way for good measure near the end of the match, a few seconds later Yamada eats a uraken to finish things up.