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.