Devil Masami vs. Jaguar Yokota AJW 9/7/83
Kadaveri: I think the context of this match finally surfacing needs a bit of explanation for those who aren't 80s Joshi nerds. Jaguar Yokota and Devil Masami were the top two stars of AJW in the 1981-84 period in between Jackie Sato retiring and the Crush Gals becoming megastars. This WWWA Singles Title match was the main event to one of the biggest shows of the era and essentially the blowoff to their feud, which goes back at least as far as them feuding over the AJW Junior Title in 1980. Jaguar & Devil went on to form the tag team 'Empress Duo' and never wrestled each other in a singles match again.
Sadly though, the match was missing. The source for most of the early 80s AJW footage you'll see online is one Japanese guy's collection of home-recorded VHS tapes of AJW broadcasts on Fuji TV. I got in contact with him a few years ago and specifically asked him if he had this match, as I noticed a Crush Gals vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Noriyo Tateno match (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qqf3xDkrE) from the same show was circulating. Turns out that back in 1983 when recording the episode he'd mistakenly inserted a tape with only about 25 minutes left, so we got the first match of the episode but then it cut off and the main event wasn't recorded. Imagine making a little error like that, and finding out someone from another continent is upset about it 40 years later. It's far from the only big match of that era missing but I'd say it's the most historically important one. I'd hoped for years that surely someone else had recorded and kept a copy, but most of these older Japanese fans aren't very online so this hypothetical person might not even be aware that they have something rare.
In more recent times there have been different people uploading their own recordings of 80s AJW broadcasts to YouTube, which has filled a few gaps. You might see me in the comments asking if they have the 1983 Jaguar vs. Devil Title match, but to no avail. Despite there being no footage, I felt this match was important enough then when I made the 1980s Joshi Set last year I inserted a magazine description of the match into the video (https://vkvideo.ru/playlist/640112534_2/video640112534_456239022) to let everyone know the match happened, rather than just disregarding it entirely.
So for decades, all we had to go on to learn about this match was descriptions in Japanese media at the time, and references to it in future interviews. When Devil Masami defeated Dump Matsumoto to win the WWWA Singles Title in 1985, she referenced this match in her post-match interview, saying that she felt her performance had made up for her deporable display in the 1983 bout, where she was so upset about losing that she'd threatened to quit there and then. At the time, AJW was still running a strange mix of worked pro-wrestling with an element of legitimate competition. Specifically, while most matches were entirely worked, sometimes they'd do matches where the majority was worked for entertainment purposes, but there was no pre-determined winner. Rather, after some kind of signal had been given, the wrestlers would take turns to try and legitimately pin the other for a 3 count.
Then in July 2024, this Japanese blogger uploaded clips from the match, saying that someone who had a copy invited him to his house to watch it and allowed him to record some moments on his phone. https://ameblo.jp/kimumasa992/entry-12860724586.html I only had to watch a few seconds of the clips to verify that this indeed was the 9/7/83 title match. Whether this directly led to the full match being uploaded isn't clear, but it's possible the buzz among the tiny number of 80s Joshi nerds about this footage being confirmed to exist caught the ear of the mysterious uploader who put up the whole broadcast several months later.
Now to the match itself. The match length was 38:26, with 25 minutes shown on the TV edit. My more wider thoughts on it is that it changes my ideas on the development of AJW's house style by quite a bit. My working theory at the moment is that in early 1984 we saw their working style(s) diverge into what ended being the most varied but somehow still cohesive wrestling products of the era.
Firstly, there was an escalation in quickening the pace of matches and adding innovative moves, which brought us the style most associated with Jaguar Yokota, the Crush Gals and the Jumping Bomb Angels.
Secondly, while brawls and evil cheating heels totally existed beforehand, Dump Matsumoto kept that style relevant by upping the ante considerable, adding horror elements and a level of unhinged spectacle far beyond anything the likes of Abdullah the Butcher ever did. Thirdly, in what feels like a restraining move on the other two trends (even if not conscious), there was a movement (in big title matches especially) towards slower, epic feeling matches based around holds (taking some influence from early shoot style) and longer control segments compared to the far more fluid Joshi house style. I associate this more with Devil Masami, but Yukari Omori also excelled in this.
What's thrown me off about this one is, while Devil Masami was still in her uber-heel phase here, this match is actually fought more like a 'Style Three' type of match that I thought didn't come until around a year later. There's barely any dirty play from her at all in fact, even though she doesn't do her turn from heel to 'tweener' until a big angle in February 1984. So I think this match is in fact a first draft in front of a live audience of the style that really peaked in the Crush Gals boom era of 1985-86. Also, this is before the UWF's first show, so while I do know that shoot style did influence some AJW wrestlers a bit after this, it clearly wasn't the only thing going on.
We get an opening flurry in the first couple of minutes where both wrestlers get to throw some offense but to little effect, and then things settle down and for the next ten minutes this is very grounded wrestling. Sometimes they're on the mat exchanging holds, and they switch things up by taking to their feet for tests of strength, but the one consistent thread is that Jaguar is the superior wrestler. Devil is competitive and gets ahead a few times, but Jaguar always comes out on top in these exchanges. There's a familiar moment where Jaguar has Devil in a facedown leglock and Devil just can't break out of it and tries going for the ropes, familiar because Devil would put Chigusa Nagayo in a similar predicament in their big title match two years later.
Eventually Devil needs to break this dynamic and she does it by throwing Jaguar headfirst into the ring post and throws her into some chairs on the outside. Within the context of the match I guess this is a dirty play, but watching Devil up to this point with her liberal use of weapons and outside interference, it barely counts.
This doesn't work well for Devil though. Jaguar flies back into the ring and unloads some big flying offense on her before taking back control and getting her on the mat stuck in a hold again. It's an unconventional layout in that Jaguar is the smaller, faster babyface, but actually she's the one who's trying to keep things grounded and slowed down with Devil fighting from underneath. So it feels like she's the one whose comeback has been built to when she manages to counter Jaguar's hold with a headscissors and then hits a cool seated-piledriver like move for her first protracted segment of offense of the match. We get some feats of strength with her big delayed bodyslams but soon they're back on the mat but Devil has Jaguar grounded now. Her camel clutch feels like such a more heelish hold than anything Jaguar did however. But this just leads up to what I think is the match highlight, one of the sickest ganso bombs I've ever seen it's borderline attempted murder. Devil just plants Jaguar straight down on her head and Jaguar stays down looking like she'd had the life knocked out of her.
The big ganso bomb changes the match completely. The next section is all Devil-dominance and Jaguar is selling like she's at 50% energy at most for the next several minutes. It's not the kind of 'holding a specific body part' selling we're more used to in modern times, just a general sense of being out of it and just about holding on to survive. Jaguar does get in a counter by hitting a backdrop, but is too hurt to capitalise and they tease a double KO for a bit before they're both up (Devil actually gets up first). Jaguar also tries hiding out on the outside to recover, making the most of the 20 count. It's a really good selling performance. Bear in mind we are missing about 13 minutes of the match (I assume nothing was cut from here on as it's the finishing stretch and the time calls add up), so the exhaustion on display probably made a bit more sense if we were seeing this in full.
Now we get to the spicy bit. The ring announcer makes the call for 35 minutes passed, and Devil goes for the win as per the secret rules. She stands horizontally to Jaguar, who is lying flat back on the match, and Devil just goes down flat to try and hold her down for the 3 count. On the replay, I have to admit, it looks like Jaguar cheats a little bit. The rule was that you're not allowed to try to bridge out until the cover has already been applied, but she goes up a split second before. Might not have made a difference, but Jaguar is able to turn onto her front and keep herself in the match. It's her turn to try to win next. Devil again goes for a cover, but those in the know will see she wasn't trying to win this time, it's a spot for Jaguar to do her signature bridge out straight to her feet to come running off the ropes, which she follows with a very nice jump over Devil's head (she gets impressive height on it) to get back into the match. Her turn is next
The spiciness continues. Jaguar hits a butterfly suplex and she goes for the win as per the rules. Devil's shoulders are clearly down as Jaguar begins the cover, and she tries to fight her way out of it but can only get one shoulder up at any one time. There's an almighty struggle over this, but Jaguar definitely does manage to pin Devil's shoulders for a 2 count. But a 3? Well, this video quality isn't great so it's not entirely clear, but it does look to me that Devil's shoulder was up just before the 3. Anyway, Devil was convinced her shoulder was up and was outraged. I've read all about this incident but never seen it for myself, with Devil saying the referee was biased and Jaguar says Devil was just mad she lost. But she goes right over the announcer table to scream at Commission Ueda (who isn't just an on-screen authority, he was actually the most powerful person in the company who wasn't a Matsunaga) that she's been screwed.
While it would still be the norm for rookie matches, this would be the last time AJW had a World Title be decided by shoot-pin rules. Which is another thing which makes this match historically significant and I'm so glad we finally got to see it. While that aspect of the company would be downplayed going forward, they also created a template for the kind of epic title match that AJW would really specialise in over the next few years. This is a lot rougher than the later matches, there are some lulls in the action (I mean in terms of being captivating, not literal movement) and it feels like it'd take a little while longer for the AJW crew to fully figure out how to get the most out of this style. I'd say the 7/19/82 match between these two is still probably the better match, albeit a very different one. It feels a bit weird to give this a star rating considering the context, but I'm going to give this a flat 4. But for it's place in history this is a must watch for anyone interested in 80s Joshi. I'm so happy this has finally surfaced.
MD: To my credit, I am back in 1979 still, right? And while I've seen the Dump stuff that's canonical, I'm less versed on this stuff. But this is a big match, and a lost match, and we'll jump right in. It really felt like a title match and a struggle, especially the holds where it was obvious just looking at Masami and Yokota just how much effort they were putting into them, and especially the finish which had Yokota forcing Masami's shoulders down almost from force of will alone (or as Kad pointed out, from true force alone). This had kinetic action that ground back into the holds in a way that gave the match substance. It never broke down into chaos or interference. It always went back to the center and therefore it never lost its way.
Throughout the match, Yokota would get an advantage with speed and grit, often times just throwing her body at Masami (which is really how the match started), and then Masami would grind her down with power (again, how the match started) and bombs. Some of the specific holds really worked for me, such as the way they were able to trade bodyscissors early, working basically all the way around the world shifting holds and positions until they switched places on who had on the bodyscissors.
Masami would drive Yokota out of the ring or leave her laying, but Yokota came back again and again. The comeback towards the end had her basically vault straight up over Masami's head before hitting a rana. Even then Masami shut her down and tossed her off the second rope from a fireman's carry. So while it was all grounded, they built to some pretty big spots, before the finish which was scrappy as could be and still felt contested nonetheless. I don't know if those shoulders were down.
Riki Choshu/Masa Saito vs. Tatsumi Fujinami/Shiro Koshinaka 9/5/88
MD: This one's on us. We've had access to this HH since 2018 or whatever but I don't think anyone actually gave it a good look. It's the IWGP Heavyweight champion and the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion up against the tag champs for the belts. And it's really good and goes twice as long as I expected.
After some opening title match feeling out between Saito and Fujinami (two of the most credible guys ever so it was good like you'd expect), Shiro wants to tag in against Choshu and we're off to the races. Koshinaka is a guy that I like a lot more in tags than singles. He (and Takano/Cobra) were really expected to be the heirs to Tiger Mask in having exciting, over the top Jr. Title matches and you really end up with a lot of noise. But he was a plucky underdog with a special connection with the crowd and a real sense of theatricality. Earlier in 88, he started being the only guy in the promotion (not even Inoki) who would sometimes "Hulk Up" and the fans couldn't get enough of it.
Here he quickly got outgunned by the superior hierarchical forces and what we ended up with was a tale of survival as he tried to punch his way out of first Saito's Prison Lock and then Choshu's Scorpion. There's probably nothing the fans in 88 New Japan would eat up more than someone fighting valiantly against holds like that and at one point they were clapping along to each valiant Koshinaka punch in a way that I'm not sure I've seen them do before. They cycled through this twice until, fighting a Scorpion attempt, Koshinaka was able to crawl over and make the tag.
I thought things would go home shortly hereafter (once Koshinaka recovered enough to make it back in of course) and there was a bit of that, with Fujinami having to survive some of the holds Koshinaka fought out of as they targeted his knee. Shiro did come back in and they had the advantage for a while, but they were fighting from a deficit. It was Fujinami that got overwhelmed instead, posted on the outside by Saito and opened up to create a dramatic (and surprising) next act to the match as Saito bit the wound and Fujinami fought for his life.
Koshinaka tries to intervene and got trapped in the ropes just as Fujinami turned the tide, fighting off both Saito and Choshu until Choshu's lariat finally prevailed. Super dramatic stuff, the sort of which you can only get out of New Japan at its best.
Pirata Morgan vs. MS-1 (hair vs hair) CMLL 3/15/91
MD: There's a moment at the end which is honestly remarkable and we're
going to lead with that. After a solid tercera where I'm not sure MS-1's
selling was warranted, but they sort of made you go for it anyway,
Morgan gets a small package through countering a move for the pin. The
commentary says that this move was invented by Lex Luger, champion of
the world, and is called the Total Package. Honestly, this was worth
dusting off just for that.
This is in the found, or at the very
least, underlooked category. I'm sure most people haven't seen it. It's
interesting but doesn't rise to the level you'd want it to, mainly due
to some narrative quirks. It has some things you almost never see in a
hair match, and despite Morgan wearing white with his black, it doesn't
get quite as bloody as I thought it would.
We come in with MS-1
controlling in the primera. He is, of course, good at that. Morgan goes
for a few comebacks but the ref gets in his way; it's that kind of
match. They make a big deal out of the fact Morgan doesn't have a
second. After MS-1 puts him away to win the first fall, he absolutely
cracks him on the post on the outside. They made it sound as loud as any
shot like that I've ever heard but then there isn't the massive amount
of blood to follow it up. Morgan tries to come back with some big shots
but the ref again gets in his way, which feels like an inversion to
earlier apuestas matches. It'd be like the ref disrupting things after
Chicana's big comeback punch vs MS-1. It just felt wrong.
As the
segunda goes on, MS-1 keeps pulling Morgan up, which you almost never
see in a hair match. He steps on his chest and then steps off before the
three, that sort of thing. Eventually, Morgan tries coming back again
and this time the ref pushes him out of the ring. That was the cue for
Morgan's brother and Hombre Bala to come out to second him which
symbolically turns the tide of the match and leads to his big comeback
and some big dives before the finish. Along the way, there are some
other weird quirks like Morgan rolling in the ring to get into position
and some rope running that felt out of place, but in general, it ends
well with that famous move invented by Luger and the fans are happy with
the outcome. It all could have been just a bit more grounded and grisly
though.
Labels: AJW, CMLL, Devil Masami, Jaguar Yokota, Masa Saito, MS-1, NJPW, Pirata Morgan, Riki Choshu, Shiro Koshinaka, Tatsumi Fujinami
Read more!