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.