Hamada's UWF Vol 7 Comp - 1990 - 1993 Joshi

11/10/1990 - Kaoru Maeda & Mika Takahashi vs Xochitl Hamada & Esther Moreno

Bit of a weak follow up to the match the day before. More just a standard tag match with Moreno & Hamada going for fast paced flippy stuff and the Honey Wings slowing it down with mat work. Near the end team luchadora have a bit of miscomunication and get in a shoving match after accidenly hitting each other. Kaoru & Takahashi take advantage and are able to finish off Xochitl pretty easyily after isolating her. Takahashi gets the W with a big superplex.

11/12/1990 - Kaoru Maeda & Mika Takahashi vs Xochitl Hamada & Esther Moreno

A mix between their previous two matches. Like the first match it starts pretty hot with Kaoru & Mika again running out to jump them then when things settle down we get a long matwork section. Bit hard to focus at times due to the camera angle but this is a 21 year old fan cam so beggers can't be choosers. Moreno & Mika are really good during this part. The action picks back up once the lucha girls get in a big series of highspots , they miss a pair of dives outside which leads to some pretty nice brawling around the building for a while. Back inside we get a little more matwork before going into the finish which is a bit of a repeat of the last match only this time it's Moreno eating a giant double superplex. Post match Hamada goes nuts on Moreno beating her down with a chair, the Honey Wings leave at first not caring but Hamada keeps beating her down, including giving Moreno a tombstone on the chair until finally Kaoru & Mika begrudgingly make the save. Damn good match, bit of a toss up between for which is better, this or the first but I slightly lean towards 11/9 however. Sadly there's no footage of any Hamada vs Moreno singles matches that may have come out of this as i'm sure that'd be a great pairing opposite each other.

3/7/1991 - Mariko Yoshida vs Sakie Hasegawa

This was ok. They only got 8 mins so kind of a cliff notes version of what they could do as they run through the usual. Little sloppy in a few spots which hurt the momentum of the match too. Near the end Sakie goes for a diving cross body and somehow catches Yoshida in the nose on the way down busting it open so they go to the finish pretty soon after that. Sakie goes for a suplex combo but Yoshida reverses out and hits one of her own to win.

3/7/1991 - Noriyo Tateno vs Kaoru Maeda

Crowd was hyped to see Tateno as this was a little over a week before she was set to retire. They did a few nice spots in this, crazy suicide dive from Kaoru and Moreno dead lifting Kaoru up by the hair into a big slam were two of the highlights. Beyond that and a few other things they didn't do much else of interest. They went to a draw and even at a measly 10 minutes it still suffered from a lot of the same issues that plauge those types of matches.

3/8/1991 - Noriyo Tateno & Sakie Hasegawa vs Mariko Yoshida & Kaoru Maeda

Bit better then either or their individual matches the day before. Kaoru & Yoshida get the early advantage and I dug the leg work with them going after Sakie's knee. When Tateno & Sakie gain control they don't fare quite as well. They get Kaoru in for an exstended beat down but every time it looks like she's gonna be in any real trouble Yoshida is thear to watch her back and make the save. All through the rest of the match Sakie keeps selling her knee from earlier which was a nice touch and eventually they go back to attacking it. Tateno gets the win out of nowhear with a surprise cradle on Yoshida. Fun match up until then.

3/9/1991 - (Special ref Kaoru) Mariko Yoshida vs Sakie Hasegawa

No clue why Kaoru is on ref duty tonight, bigger mystery is why the heck they had her wearing a garbage man's uniform to do it in. Essentially they do 5-6 mins of really basic low level stuff then all of a sudden Yoshida nearly kills herself on a suicide dive outside, landing bad as her head goes splat on the concrete floor. Miraculously she appears to be ok, enough to continue the match atleast which wakes the crowd up and a big Yoshida chant ensues. They don't go too much longer however and back inside they imediatly switch it into high gear with a bunch of counter sequences that sees Yoshida come out on top, again reversing something of Sakie's into a pin for the win. Last few mins were good but before that pretty average.

5/24/1992 - Mariko Yoshida vs Mima Shimoda

K, this is more like it as we skip ahead a year and are now in the middle of Yoshida's run as one of the best wrestlers in the world. Story early on sees them take it to the mat with Shimoda focusing on Yoshida's arm. As always, Yoshida does a great job putting it over not only while on defense but continuing to do so while on offense. She drops an elbow but it only serves to injure her own arm, she goes for a boston crab but doesn't have the strength to hold on to both legs so has to switch to a half. Great little things like that make her stand out as one of the best. For a while the match turns into a Yoshida showcase as she goes on the attack for a bit. Shimoda hits a lot of really nice flying clotheslines during the comeback which she always does but tonight they looked better then usual. Switching things up she starts going for a bunch of leg lock submission attempts now. In another cool little touch she locks in an ankle lock and when Yoshida tries to push up out of it Shimoda reaches over and punches her in the gut to shut that shit down. Like a lot of Yoshida matches that i've noticed, in the end things come down to them dodging and countering a lot of each others moves, lots of athletic back and forth stuff. Really puts over Yoshida as the type of wrestler who wins by outsmarting her opponents. Damn good match, i'd say this is just a notch or so below the great match Yoshida would have with Shimoda's partner Mita a month or so later. Really played to both girls strengths well.

5/7/1993 - (CMLL Women's Title) Xochitl Hamada (c) vs Kaoru

Skipping ahead another year, Kaoru had droped the last name by now and had started working in the mask as "Infernal Kaoru". No major highlights in this, just a good solid match with Hamada mostly dominating and Kaoru fighting back ocasionally. Not enough in the end as she gets powerbombed to hell as Hamada retains.

Hamada's UWF Vol 6 Comp - 1990 Joshi

So a few years back Jeff Lynch put together a 7 volume comp of Gran Hamada's Universal Wrestling Federation and I ended up picking up the last 2 volumes which focus exclusively on the women's matches that took place in the promotion. AJW & UWF had a working relationship at the time so they would trade talent back & forth, mostly AJW girls appearing on Universal shows but a occasionally you'd see the UWF men wrestling on an AJW card too. Don't know how well it worked out for UWF but it exsposed the AJW girls to a lot of new fans and i've always heard it credited as being 1 of the things that helped eventually grow their audiance and led to more male fans showing up at shows as opposed to the school girl dominated crowds of the 80's. Anyways, i've never seen any of this footage before and only maybe 5 or so UWF matches period so this will be interesting to take a look at.

3/1/90 - Xochitl Hamada & Mika Takahashi vs Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto

This is from UWF's debut show. Ah Xochitl, Ayako's lesser known but just as talented older sister, glad to see more footage of her. You can really tell this is def a diffrent audiance who doesn't usually watch much joshi based on the crowd reactions. A lot of stuff that's routine on AJW shows like the screaming and certain other spots gets a lot of laughter and bemusement from the audiance, at the same time, they also pop for a lot of the big moves and seemed into it by the end. Mostly a by the numbers formula tag. The Outsiders Bison & Grizzly mostly dominate things with their rough, heel style with Hamada & Mika making the ocasional comeback only to get cut off and the beating to continue. Of the 2, when they did get on offense Hamada got to shine the most and really looked like the star of her team. Ending comes when Mika & Hamada get a hold of the Outsiders Kendo sticks and start caning the crap out of their opponents and the ref who happens to be Wally Yamaguchi of WWF Kaientai "Choppy choppy your pee pee" fame. Kind of funny since in AJW this wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary but apparently UWF has stricter "rules" so the ref calls for a DQ. More chaos follows but eventually gets settled down. Nothing special but a pretty decent match.

3/2/90 - Xochitl Hamada vs Bison Kimura

Based on how the last match ended you'd exspect a heated follow up but no. Sadly they just have a low end house show match. Lots of basic mat work mixed in with a couple bigger moves. Didn't help that this took place in a darker building with a quieter more subdued crowd too. Hamada again looks good with a few nice highspots at the end including a crazy out of control plauncha but not too many highlights besides that. Match ends in a double countout shortly after.

3/5/90 - Xochitl Hamada & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura

Starts out a little bit similar to the 3/1 tag. Kaoru & Hamada get in bigger stretches of offense then Mika & Hamada did but the early going is still largely heel dominated. Hamada & Bison really clicked here for the 1st time and had some great exchanges and a nutty Flair/Garvin level chop war. Ending comes when all 4 get in the ring and they go for one of those complicated lucha sequences whear everyone's doing mirror spots at opposite ends of the ring and there's a bunch of heel miscomunicaion stuff. Sorta falls apart a little at this stage but they recover nicely and bodies go flying all over in a cool dive train. Back inside Kaoru & Hamada score the win with tandem roll ups on their opponents. Overall a damn good match and the 1st to really show off how good the AJW girls could be.

6/4/90 - Manami Toyota, Mika Takahashi & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto

They switched things up and brought over an AJW ref to handle things, nothing against Yamaguchi but that's def a wise move. You can tell the girls had really started to get over with the new audiance at this piont as the crowds hyped for this one. Funnily enough it's the Gokumonto heels that are the one's who have the biggest cheering squad too with Aja especially being crazy over. In a funny bit they chant her name in tune with every offensive move she hits or when the ref counts a pinfall for her like the ECW fans chanted Shaw for Hack Myers. Hilarious stuff I really can't do justice describing. On the opposite end, the crowd doesn't dislike Honey Wings DX either, they'd ohh, ahh and applaud when they'd do a big move or cool spot but they're not as into them as they are their opponents. Match itself follows the previous pattern of the heels kicking all kinds of ass and the faces having to bravely fight back. All 6 really busted ass in this one and near the end Toyota & Kaoru are getting big chants as well after making their comeback. Near fall exchange is really good down the stretch and ends with Aja & Toyota going at it. After escaping a suplex attempt Aja backfist Toyota and puts her down with a huge german suplex of her own to win. This wouldn't crack my top 10 for AJW in 1990 but i'd say this is def somewhear in the top 20. Great great match with a hot crowd, nothing not to love about this.

6/7/90 - Madusa, Mika Takhashi & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto

3rd Show in a week Universal had run at K-Hall so the crowd's not as hot at this point though still into things a good bit. Compared to the previous tag this has more back & forth stuff with no team getting controlling for too long. Aja & Madusa were in the middle of their feud at this point so there's a big focus on them well.

The stuff between them is pretty good as they had decent chemistry together. Madusa working with the others is a bit hit & miss so thankfully Honey Wings do a majority of the work in this. Last few mins are a bit odd. Goku are in controll and go for what I can only describe as a traingular belly bump of doom but it backfires and leads to everyone fighting outside. Big dive train follows and in the midst of all the chaos Madusa & Bison end up going at it in the ring. A small USA chant of all things breaks out for Madusa and after accidently running into Aja, Bison gets pinned out of nowhear with a rollup. Def a step down from the previous tag and the finish was pretty anticlimactic but overall still a good match.

6/1/90 - Bison Kimura vs Kyoko Inoue

Not much to this as they have a pretty by the numbers match. Kyoko was still a no name with a bit of potential at this point as she didn't get her big break until the end of the year. She got to get in just enough offense to not make this a total squash but never really looked competitive enough that you ever thought she had a chance of winning. Bison wins with that weird drop to your ass backslide she was doing for a while.

11/9/90 Kaoru Maeda & Mika Takahashi vs Xochitl Hamada & Esther Moreno

More Esther Moreno is always great in my book. Somewhear along the way Honey wings seemed to have developed some bad blood with the luchadoras as they rush the ring and attack before the intros even start then throw their oppenents out into the crowd. Back inside both Kaoru & Takahashi run through some cool highspots with Moreno before things slow down and the Moreno/Hamada team gains controll. Only last a couple mins as they go right back to fast more fast paced back & forth action. After a couple double teams including a pretty sweet stereo elbow drop on Moreno, Kaoru gets the win over her with a german. Damn good match, whole thing only last maybe 10 mins but they packed a lot in. Excited to see the 2 rematches they have a couple days after this. Kaoru & Takahashi get in a few exsta punts to Moreno's head as they leave just because. Moreno & Hamada give ref Yamaguchi a giant back body drop before making their exit...just because :)