70's Joshi on Wednesday: Miyamoto! Fumiake! Ueda! Sato! Aso! Ikeshita!

MD: Most weeks we'll try to hit one full match but here, to start off, we have a few due to clipping.

1. 1975.03.19 - Jumbo Miyamoto vs. Mach Fumiake (WWWA Singles Title) (Clipped)

K: This is a historically important match that we only have due to the Samurai TV show ‘AJW Classics’ airing a portion of it in 2003. Jumbo Miyamoto is the current champion, she is a cousin of the Matsunaga Brothers (the owners of AJW) and appears to have been one of AJW’s biggest names since being founded in 1968. Mach Fumiake was already a mainstream celebrity in Japan as she was runner-up in a TV singing contest (a Japanese ‘American Idol’ style show), her wrestling for AJW was a big enough deal that it got them a TV deal with Fuji TV. It’s a massive bit of history because women’s wrestling had been stuck with a stigma of being seedy, getting Mach Fumiake convinced the TV executives that this would be wholesome entertainment for families and hip affluent young people in particular.

The first time I saw Mach Fumiake is when she made a special appearance in the legends segment of the Dream Slam 1 show in 1993. It was immediately obvious why she was a huge star in her day. She’s very tall, good looking, has a deep voice and turns out she can sing as well! It’s like someone merged the most marketable qualities of every top Joshi star who followed her into one person. The only thing she’s potentially missing is, was she actually any good in-ring?

We only see about 3 minutes of a 20 minute title match here, so we can’t meaningfully assess them as wrestlers. But we can at least get a flavour of what the AJW main-event style looked like in 1975, and see that there is already evidence of the innovations it later became renowned for. The pace is breakneck. Jumbo opens with a couple of rough snap mares; the move is treated as if 1 alone isn’t going to do much damage, but it’s about getting control of your opponent and unloading a relentless barrage of offense upon them. Mach tries to fend it off by immediately clambering for the ropes, which we can see is already established as a babyface move here (it was considered a heelish move elsewhere at the time, Jack Briscoe escaping a hold by grabbing the rope was a heel turn!). After more exchanging of throws we even get a familiar spot where Mach uses her long legs to put Jumbo into a headscissors, which Jumbo kips up out of and we get a standoff pose-down.

The match soon skips ahead to what looks like the final couple of minutes. Jumbo hits a big vertical suplex (or ‘brainbuster’ as it’s called in Japan) for a 2 count. This gets a big reaction from the crowd like they’re really impressed Mach kicked out of it! I’ll not as well that Mach doesn’t so much kick out and bridges her shoulders up off the mat. The best part of the match by far was Mach’s big boot, she delivers two in a row, and the way she does it is to Irish Whip Jumbo into the ropes, and then hit her with the strike as she runs back at her. The 1st one especially looks like it really knocked Jumbo silly. The finish comes soon after, and unfortunately is a bit weak. Mach hits two butterfly suplexes (or something similar) but struggles to get Jumbo up high for either of them so they don’t have much impact, and then pins Jumbo for a 3 count but Jumbo looked like she’d got her shoulder up at 2 and immediately stands up and yells at the ref. Not really the most decisive way to put over your new top star, but now the era of Mach Fumiake truly begins (if it hasn’t already), just a shame we can’t see any of it. 

MD: We get the opening couple of minutes and then the finishing stretch here, after the announcements and some discussion from the commentators. I had no idea what to expect coming in considering that we’re in the mid-70s. My points of comparison would be IWE, AJPW, NJPW. Jumbo had a clear size advantage though Mach was taller, and they size each other up to start. I was thinking they’d go right into measured matwork maybe? They do not. Jumbo blinks first and charges in with these fevered snap mares. Then Mach returns favor with armdrags. The intensity is jarring relative to what I was expecting given the year and location. They’re just throwing their bodies at one another and whipping the other over though. We come back post clip with a big Jumbo vertical suplex which was very much a finishing move in most places around the world in 75. I never even saw one in the French footage. Mach came back by absolutely taking Jumbo’s head off with a big boot, and then locking in an Octopus hold and finishing it, though not without controversy with a double underhook drop and a butterfly suplex that she barely, barely got her over with. Jumbo pretty clearly kicked out at two but the ref didn’t see it that way and she started attacking everyone post match. The commentary discussed a “Mach Special” for Mach and a Raiden Drop for Jumbo but I’m not sure if that butterfly suplex was the Mach Special or not. The only reference I see online to it is from the script to Mach’s 1975 movie The Great Chase. Anyway, that’s a tangent. Point here is that this set the stage immediately: wild intensity both during and after the match with them absolutely going all out against each other from what we get to see. It feels like a huge shame we don’t have more Mach footage even if only from how she took Jumbo’s face off with that boot.

2. 1976.11.01 - Jumbo Miyamoto vs. Maki Ueda (WWWA Singles Title) (Clipped)

K: At the time of this match Maki Ueda is both the WWWA Singles Champion and a WWWA Tag champion with Jackie Sato as Beauty Pair, a cultural phenomenon rivaled only by the Crush Gals in the mid-80s. We have a decent amount of footage of Maki Ueda from later in her career but this is all we have of her two title reigns.

Similar to the previous match, Jumbo opens with a couple of rough snap mares to establish control, though this time she throws Maki straight out of the ring and lays beatdown on the ringside area throwing her into chairs. It feels like a less-refined version of Las Cachorras Orientales, but it doesn’t feel like it really did enough damage for it to have been worth it. Maki gets back in the ring and Jumbo hits her with two shoves off Irish Whips. Jumbo’s offense comes in twos. After a bit of tossling on the mat which Jumbo gets the better of, we see the move where Jumbo pushes her opponent into the ropes front-first, and then pulls back on the ropes to knock them down to the mat. She does it twice of course. I’ve never liked this move as it’s not very convincing; but it’s a Joshi staple at least by the late 70s, and possibly already was at this point.  
 
The match skips ahead with Maki on top, and we get to see what her “Irish Whip into a strike” move is. Hers is some kind of jumping knee attack, but she gets barely any height on the leap; it’s not clear if that’s even what she intended. The camera angle probably didn’t help though. Maki hits a couple of neckbreakers that had some good snap behind them and then puts Jumbo in a sitting Gory Special kind of submission. Amusingly, this is broken up when Shinobu Aso of Black Pair (Beauty Pair’s nemesis) runs in, quickly pushes her over and runs back out before the referee can do anything. The match just keeps going though. So Joshi’s pretty lenient attitude to outside interference is already happening here. She didn’t achieve much though as Maki still gets Jumbo into another submission hold. Jumbo is selling like she’s already a defeated woman here, she just looks kind of pitiful just about reaching the ropes while groaning in pain. Maki pulls her to the outside and tries to get revenge for the earlier beatdown, but this is a mistake as outside brawling is Jumbo’s speciality, and this gives her an opening to whack her head on the announcer’s table a few times to get herself out of trouble and reset things. Jumbo tries to unload some big offense but Maki counters into a sunset flip pinning predicament and gets the win. And that’s the end of Jumbo Miyamoto’s career, we barely knew her. Mariko Akagi gets into the ring and they set up her challenging Maki for the belt on November 30th (Mariko wins the title here, but we have no footage of her reign).

MD: This time I wasn’t surprised when Jumbo rushed Maki at the bell, but I didn’t see Maki’s bump over the top (her stomach hitting the rope off an Irish Whip and it just propelling her up and over) and Jumbo erasing her face on at table at ringside. Unfortunately, this is clipped as well and when we come back, Maki had an advantage, presumably from working on Jumbo’s damaged and taped knee. After a Cobra Twist attempt by Maki (too close to the ropes) they end up back outside and proceed in slamming each other’s face into that table once again. The finish has Maki get a sunset flip off a whip in the corner. This was Jumbo’s retirement match, which was announced to the crowd after it was over, and if there was a fast count in the Mach match, here it was a slow, hesitant one, as if the ref didn’t want to count Jumbo out. The post-match ceremony was pretty emotional, including upcoming challenger Mariko Akagi, who had been commentating, coming in to greet Jumbo and Maki. I’m glad we have these even if it’s hard to judge them on merit given the clipping.

3. 1976.12.08 - Jackie Sato & Maki Ueda vs. Shinobu Aso & Yumi Ikeshita (WWWA Tag Team Titles) (Clipped)

K: Beauty Pair vs. Black Pair was THE feud of 1976-78 and this is the only in-ring footage we have of it. Black Pair here are Yumi Ikeshita and Shinobu Aso. The version of Black Pair Westerners are more familiar with is Yumi Ikeshita and Mami Kumano, Kumano having replaced Aso when she retired in 1978*, but the Ikeshita & Aso pairing is still well remembered in Japan and is the version of Black Pair who Beauty Pair battle in their feature film “Red-Hot Youth.” Speaking of youth; it’s worth pointing out that at the time of this match, Sato & Aso are 19 years old and Ueda & Ikeshita are just 18 years old.

This opens with a good display of the 70s AJW heel style where roughly every 2nd move is dirty. For example Shinobu tags in by grabbing Maki by the hair and doing some double teaming. This is followed up by choking Maki with the ropes and on the ropes with her boot, using the ropes as a weapon to knock her down, and also repeatedly doing this face-scrunching move which looks more like schoolyard bully humiliation than wrestling offense. Plus clawing the eyes. It’s also very vicious and focused in its villainy if not on a particular body part or something. But there’s also something aesthetically pleasing about Yumi Ikeshita’s body slam off an Irish Whip. As much of a nasty cheater as she is, she still shows she can hit some impressive moves when she wants to.

There’s not much else to say about this match as it’s also edited and we don’t get to see much other than Black Pair just beating down on Beauty Pair so it’s quite repetitive. Maki’s bodyslam and piledriver both look pretty nice and Jackie gets to hit a dropkick, but that’s about it. The most noteworthy part may actually be that Maki actually gets a 3 count out of her piledriver, when that move notoriously almost never finishes matches in Joshi. They ought to get lessons from Maki on how to hit it properly.

*Shinobu Aso would make a brief comeback in 1987 with JWP as “The Sniper”. 

MD: Normative things I find interesting here: Maki was announced as Dropkick Ueda. She had a cape. Sato didn’t. In both this and the matches we’d seen previous, the champions were announced first. Here, both teams came out simultaneously from different parts of the arena as the music was playing. Ikeshita was noted as “The Bomb Girl.” Her shoulder was bandaged up as was Maki’s elbow. They also kept cutting to people playing badminton. Just leaving that out there.

This remains about as far from a 70s NWA Title match style as you can get despite the belts presumably being on the line. The second the bell rings, all civility goes by the wayside. There were liberal cuts here, but Aso and Ikeshita went to the eyes early and they stayed there throughout. Early on, there were still breathless momentum shifts with Sato and Ueda staying in it but the story of the match seemed to be Aso and Ikeshita using dirty tactics and frequent double teams to control Sato while Ueda badly wanted in. They had a number of suplexes too, including a nice fall away slam and a tilt-a-whirl. When she got in, it was a bit more familiar to me in the AJPW tag style; she was able to come in hot but quickly got dragged down by the numbers game and stayed that way until Sato had recovered enough to even the odds. Much like the two matches that preceded it, the clipping makes it a little hard to really judge but the tenets of the style seem to come into focus already: unyielding and varied high-impact offense and relentless intensity with no quarter given. As we move into more complex matches, we’ll have a better sense of whether or not it all comes together on a match by match basis and hopefully how it continues to develop towards the end of the decade.