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.