Will be really interesting to revisit things here and see if my thoughts have changed as it's been a good 5-6 years probably since I last watched this show.
- Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Miori Kamiya & The Goddess Chikako Hasegawa
LCO pretty much squash Chikako. Kamiya comes in and has a little bit better luck but she can't stand up to 2 on 1 odds. Mita gets the win over Kamiya with the northern lights suplex in a little over 10 mins. Nothing memorable but an ok opener.
- (AJW Title) Tomoko Watanabe © vs Kaoru Ito
Wasn't televised but Watanabe took the title off Sakie a month ago on 10/9. They start off slapping each other but then do a handshake. Ito then dropkicks her from behind and the match is on. Watanabe dominates the early portion, does a little bit of leg work but it doesn't go anywhere. Things pick up a little after Watanabe takes the fight outside. Ito makes her way back in and goes for revenge and hits a small flury of stuff before slowing things down again. So far a real disjointed match, little bit of this, little bit of that but not the best flow to it all to tie things together. Nice sell job from Watanabe putting over Ito working over her back, even when she goes back on offense she's in a lot of pain when busting out her judo throws and other moves. They start trading bigger moves and have a few nice near falls during the home stretch. Watanabe gets sent into the corner and bust out a wacky lopsided moonsault escape, she goes for a rana but Ito counters with a powerbomb. 2 footstomps and the twisting senton later Ito gets the win. Earlier impressions of this weren't very good but upon re-watching it now I enjoyed it a lot more. They saved things nicely in the 2nd half and it turned into a decent match once they settled on the same page. Fitting that Aja's diciple beats Bull's to win her first tonight.
- (Tag League The Best 92) Takako Inoue & Terri Power vs Suzuka Minami & Yumiko Hotta
Terri taking Yoshida's place in the tournament. Takako is still anounced as 1/2 of the AJW tag champs but they'd be striped soon after this.Mish mash of stuff early on, few clumsy moves from Terri, random leg work from Takako, lotta strikes from Hotta including her trying to kick Terri's head off her shoulders a couple times. They settle on working over Takako's leg and weaing her down for a while and things get good after then. Cool double team axe handle spot from T&T after Terri tags back in and Terri gets to bust out some other fun power stuff (no pun intended). Takako bust out the tombstone piledrivers for I believe the first time here, no knees yet tho. Short section working over Suzuka sees her get a faint old school chant from school girls in attendence, neat to see there's still a few left at this point. Suzuka & Hotta regain the advantage and we get a pretty good ending stretch with Hotta & Suzuka taking turns trying to finish off Takako while Terri runs interferance. They finally get her out of the way allowing Hotta to get the win with her "Carribean splash" suplex off the top. Thankfully she's changed it up a little by hooking the leg so she can lift her oppoent up a little higher instead of droping straight down and nearly killing almost everyone she's tried it on. Like the previous match this is a tale of 2 halves, a blah 1st but good 2nd.
- (All Pacific Title) Kyoko Inoue © vs Akira Hokuto
They had a pretty good match in Jan which saw Kyoko get the win although it was a little screwy with Hokuto kicking out last second. There was the really great 6/27 tag with them forming a 1 time partnership to try and take the tag belts off Yamada & Toyota which failed when they couldn't get along. Don't think they ever exploited this as much as they should but there's also always been the underlying fact that Hokuto took Kyoko's spot as Bull's #1 tag partner after Kyoko broke away & Kyoko went on to become buddy buddy with Bull's #1 rival Aja instead. Lots of other run ins together in 92 as well so yeah, this is the culmination of a nice little sub feud that's been building all year. Early on they're quite respectful towards each other, handshake to start and clean breaks in the corner. Kyoko then slaps Hokuto who then drops Kyoko, hard, on her head with a back drop suplex in retaliation putting an end to all that nice nice shit. Soon as she regains conciousness Kyoko gets in a 33 rotation giant swing. The rest of this match really plays up the familiarity aspect between these 2. Lots of counter based spots and one upmanship. Kyoko runs though her usual array of wear down holds and stretches, Hokuto counters that and does the same but there's a lot of struggling to
get stuff locked in. Lots of, "I know what's coming so i'm going to block it" moments. You know, it's a small miracle Hokuto never killed anyone with those jumping piledrivers she used to do, always cringe worthy and she gets a couple in here. Cool little stretch whear Hokuto wipes out Kyoko with a series of dives and Kyoko does an awesome job selling the impact and milking the 20 count on the floor to get back in only to be met with another attack every time she's close. Them knowing each other so well again playing a big factor during the final near fall section as almost every big move comes off of one or the other countering or avoinging another big move from the other. Kyoko regains controll, rolling though a cross body atempt. Kyoko's spring board back elbow is met with a drop kick to the spine. Hokuto's superfly splash meets knee. Kyoko's step up back elbow again fails for the finish as this time Hokuto just lifts her legs and punts Kyoko right in the bottom of the neck on the way down which did not look fun at all. Kyoko just barely kicks out but the NLB to follow up gets Hokuto the win and the title. Whole thing had a really awesome big match feel to it and they really steped things up here. They've done good things together before but this was easily their
best and the 1st time any of their matches against each other delievered a true great home run. But wait, there's more, after a nice little show of respect between the 2 and a short celebration from Hokuto, more chaos erputs. Hokuto grabs the mic and starts talking shit on Shinobu Kandori (rocking the most amazing Cosby sweater ever) & the rest of LLPW who were sitting in the crowd. Kandori, Rumi Kazama & Harely Saito rush the ring. Cool Shiro Abe cameo as he's running gopher for them and fetches another mic. Kandori says nothing but Harley talks some shit back so they're setting the stage for the big Jan 6 man tag and LLPW's involvement in the interpromotional war.
- Bison Kimura retirement ceremony
Pretty long and classy affair. Follows the standard pattern for most of these, notable highlihts are Ultimo Dragon sending a special msg, insane satanic Kabuki dude showing up to give a speach and pretty emotional apperances from Bull & Aja. 2 or so years later Bison would un-retire and return full time.
- (3WA Martial Arts Title - Kickboxing match) Bat Yoshinaga © vs Kyoko Kamikaze
Mr. Danger Mitsuhiru Matsunaga from W*ING shows up as a special guest pre match, WTF?????? Ms. Kamikaze has a belt of her own but no clue what it is and it's not on the line. Not a huge fan of these types of matches but this one wasn't too bad. Bat gets significantly out classed with Kyoko nailing her with shot after shot which was fun for a little bit then quickly got repetitive. Mid way into the 2nd round Bat gets in a lucky back fist shot knocking KK the fuck out and gaining her the win.
- Sakie Hasegawa & Debbie Malenko vs Shark Tsuchiya & Crusher Maedomari
Back from Mexico Sakie & Deb got....football jerseys as souvenirs. Sure, why not. Deb says, they're happy to be back. Shark's going into this match with a heavily injured arm which caused them to have to drop out of the tag leauge. Crusher also has a banged up knee. This was definatly quite the interesting affair. Not so much a pro wrestling match as it is an ugly ugly fight that happens to contain wrestling moves. When Debbie's in with either she plays assasin going after Crushers leg and trying to destroy Shark's arm which gets an interesting mix of cheers and boos, more of the former then the later but it's def split. Kinda weird seeing Shark in an almost face role like that. When Sakie's in there's a lot of uncoperative looking spots, she won't go in for an irish whip easily, fights off attempts to toss her in the the corner, etc.. Sakie was quite fired up and pissed off here, more then i've ever seen from her before. There's an air of tension and hatred in the air that whear you think any moment pure chaos is going to erupt. Nothing pretty to look at but really fun stuff. Sadly the match keeps going and it starts to drag and drag and drag. Shark & Crusher gas out horribly to the point the anouncers start pointing out their "stamina" issues. Crusher can't even get up properly to bump off the drop kick flurry spot that's like day 1 wrestling school stuff for almost every rookie. Match falling apart horribly at this point. Debbie just holds Crusher while Sakie paint brushes her with slaps and kicks in a funny moment. Shark comes in and saves things as they do a lot of easy crowd brawling stuff and rows of chairs get hurled at ppls heads, always fun. Things limp along a little while longer as whatever momentum that sequence built up dies. Match ends after an exhausted Crusher gets taken out with a kick from Sakie, not even a fucking spin kick either, just a regular half assed thrust kick to the chest. Post match Crusher vows revenge and her & Debbie have an unexspected handshake. I used to hate this match but I actually enjoyed a lot of this watching it now even if things did go horribly down hill by the end. The 1st half was great and the 2nd half had a small amount of fun stuff mixed in with the bad so I def don't think it's the horrible match I once did. Even the bad was sorta entertaining in a train wreck sorta way too. If this was 10 mins instead of 20 it would have been awesome. Checking BAHU's FMW site I actually saw that they did have a rematch in FMW the next day whear Crusher got her win back over Sakie and it only went 12 mins. Really wishing I could have seen how that one went.
- (3WA World Title) Bull Nakano © vs Aja Kong
Won't go into too many details for this match. The action is good, very good but, lots of smash mouth power stuff, brawling, big moves, stiff strikes, etc.. Bull breaks out a freaking diving sunset flip off the top rope in a cool moment. But this is so much more then a wrestling match and about so much more then what went down bell to bell. Bull's been champion a few months shy of 3 years, the undisputed #1 top wrestler in the company and for almost 2 & 1/2 years Aja's been her main rival. A lot of others have come and gone along the way trying to take Bull out. Toyota, Hokuto, Kyoko, Hotta, Yamada, Monster Ripper, etc... some came close, some not so much but none came closer then Aja and in the end it could only, should only have been her to finally take Bull down. Bison is in Aja's corner which is fitting as it was never about just Aja & Bull. It was about Jungle Jack vs Gokumonto, Aja & Bison tearing away from Bull's gang to form their own crew in a war to take her down, in a war for respect. Grizzly Iwamoto bowed out early in the feud, Mika Takahashi retired last year, all the other major players involved from both sides are ringside in addition to Bison. The hatchet between Aja & Bull was allready buried earlier in the year as they embraced as friends once again
but so long as Bull still had the big red belt it could never be over. This is the final passing of the torch, this is the ending of an era. Lots of cool little touches I hadn't noticed before in earlier viewings in this match. Bull misses the guiloteen leg drop, Aja follows up giving a shout out to Ito and hitting a bunch of running foot stomps. Bull regains controll a little later on and hits the leg drop this time but it's no longer strong enough to get her the win as Aja kicks out. Bull hits the Megadeath rolling leg drop and what was once an instant win is no longer strong enough to get her the win as Aja kicks out. Bull's last ditch, nothing left in the tank, ultimate move the moonsault misses and that allows Aja to make her final rally. Aja hits a german, 3 big urakens, shouts out to Bison and bust out the blazing chops, all for near falls. Finally, FINALLY, Aja ends this match, ends this 2+ year struggle, surpases her former leader, her rival, her friend by beating Bull with her own move, Aja hits a guiloteen leg drop of her own and becomes the new champ. Lots of emotion post match, Aja & Bull both legit in tears giving speaches, they bow to each other and Bison comes in as well for 1 final group hug. Great match, amazing story, perfect ending.
- (3WA Tag Title Match, 2/3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota © vs Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki
Another match whear I don't really need to give too many details on the action. It's so famous that I assume a large amount of the people out thear reading this have seen it and those that haven't, nothing I write can properly caputre this match anyways. A few random thoughts and observations though. The backstory of this match is interesting. The 9/19 FMW match had the dynamic of Kudo & Combat being former AJW girls who were deemed not good enough and let go years earlier, this match has the dynamic of Kansai & OZ being 2 girls who weren't good enough to get into AJW to begin with as the story goes that they had gone to their open tryouts but never made the cut so ended up having to go to JWP instead. Also interesting to point out that OZ & Kansai were pretty much just randomly thrown together to represent the company. Kind of this myth that some people have but they were never a regular team or ever even very close allies. They had the 3 Toyota/Yamada matches, the 2 Takako/Hotta matches, Thunderqueen, a few other random multi man tags and that's it really. I'm sure there may have been more on house shows perhaps but if you've seen the handfull of matches I just listed thear then you've seen pretty much their entire run as a team. Almost the entire rest of their careers they spent feuding against each other on and off. Like Aja/Bull there were a lot of cool little moments and touches I caught this time around i'd either forgotten about or never knew about before. The high level of energy & pacing througout this match really impressed me a lot on this viewing as well. Like for the entire 40+ mins there's ALWAYS something going on, like even when someone it put in a hold there's constant moving, with the opponent trying to fight out of it or the partner trying to save. Just non stop action but never done in a way that's over whelming or that loses you from being too hard to keep up with. With a few exceptions, no team ever controlls things for more then a few minutes either but it's in no way a spotfest and there's a definate plot/build to things. In the 1st fall I got a big kick out of Kansai & OZ doing the flying head butt since that's one of Toyota & Yamada's big signature double teams. Toyota getting pined by Kansai to end it continued the subtle story they'd been telling of her being the weak link in the team. Not counting the mini Mexico tour, Her & Yamada hadn't won a televised AJW match in months leading up to this and each time they lost it was Toyota eating the pin. Yamada firing up and blitzing Kansai with a
billion backdrop drivers and then the Gori Special Bomb to save the day and quickly tie things up in a short 2nd fall was awesome. At this point they're allready 17+ mins in and if they'd just left it thear it would be considered a great match but the 3rd fall is the best of all and is what really puts this match over the top. The JWP girls throughout the match make the most effort to maybe slow things down a little bit and here's whear they make their strongest attempt trying to wear down Yamada by attacking her arm and then Toyota for a little bit. OZ kind of steals the show at this point. Like Kansai was the bulldozing wrecking machine in this match, just fuckin shit up left and right, muggin folks for their lunch money. Yamada brought a ton of passion and fire and fighting spirit, maybe more so then in any match she's ever had. Toyota did her thing too, not to undersell her because she was great but she didn't stand out as much as the other 3. OZ though, yeah, she brought not only the work but the personality. She turns up the bitch facotor to 10 and then cranks it up to 13 just because. So so awesome just standing on the apron and doing little things, slaping away Toyota's as she reaches for the rope, stomping on her hands, getting in cheap shots. Great moment later in the match whear Kansai has Toyota in a figure 4 and OZ just comes in and puts her in a cross arm breaker at the same time. As time goes on you can tell the JWP team is getting a little more frustrated with things, after a relatively clean match they start resorting to brawling on the floor, chairs, other stuff like that too. Other major highlight of this is the Kansai/Yamada exchanges, like even before the match happened, at the press conference & contract signing they have those 2 get into an altercation and it's clear that's the pairing you're supposed to be most excited about seeing going in and coming out of this match. And holy hell do they deliver, some of the most heated exchanges of the match come between them here, especially the 2 kick exchanges. Kansai wins the 1st easily but Yamada fires up and gains her revenge not long after in just a brutal slugfest. Last observation is again, just how mind blowing it was that they kept up the pace for so long and still had as much energy 40 mins in as they did 5 and also, after that long of a match it dawned on me that they hadn't even done half of the shit they were capable of and were clearly holding back. Toyota & Yamada didn't get in a lot of their usual double team spots. At no point does Toyota even go for a JOCS or a lot of her other
suplexes and stuff for example. Ending finally comes when Toyota redeems herself by busting out the straight jacket german on OZ however. OZ kicked out just before 3 but it was counted anyways, but fuck it, that's why god made re-matches which they had to have known they were gonna be doing. Yamada gets on the mic and gloats as the crowd erupts in a huge Zenjo chant. Greatest joshi tag of all time? Unquestionably, no. Up thear as a contender, absolutely.
