70's Joshi on Wednesday: Kayama! Aoyama! Kumano! Hackney!

9. 1978.12.17 - Lucy Kayama/Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano/Sylvia Hackney (2/3 Falls)

K: I’ve mentioned her a couple of times prior to this but this our chronological footage debut on Tomi Aoyama. She was also part of that 1st official class of 1977. She was a spectacular athlete in an era where they hadn’t quite worked out how to incorporate her kind of athleticism into pro-wrestling. She’s like a 1970s version of Dante Martin where it’s more about good she is at basic things like jumps than anything much more complex.

We have a basic start where the heels just jump Tomi. Lucy tries to tag in but she gets admonished by the referee for coming too far out of her corner to do a legal tag, and while the referee is distracted the heels double team Tomi a bit more. This bit of unfairness gets over who the heels are to the Hawaii crowd, and sets up Tomi looking really impressive by being able to overcome the double-teaming without any help by escaping Sylvia’s choke and quickly hitting a standing dropkick to take her down so she can run over and tag Lucy in.

I did think it was funny a bit later when Mami Kumano hit Tomi and the referee in succession with a chair, and the ref sells it x10 harder falling halfway across the ring. This being closely followed by Mami dangling her opponent off the apron by her neck swinging her back and forth like a deranged grandfather clock. She’s the first person I’m aware of to use that spot (although that’s possibly a footage issue), I did note that when Dump Matsumoto turned megaheel in 1984 she regularly used it and initially she was given Mami Kumano’s entrance music.

I’ll also note that the heels are throwing everyone around the ringside area causing chaos and I’m only 4 minutes into the match now. This style really doesn’t want to have any wasted moments.

Skipping ahead to the 2nd fall now, and shortly after we get a cool moment where Lucy Kayama has been laid down with her throat over the second rope, one heel is pushing her head downwards to choke her on the rope and the other has pulls her feet from outside the ring so she’s been violently yanked around throat-thirst on the rope being choked. Part of me thinks someone needs to steal that but it also looks a bit dangerous but what do I know. The heels are getting an impressive amount of heat for all of this.

By the time we get to the final fall the crowd is audibly in to all of this. The pace noticeably picks up quite and lots and things become a lot more chaotic. Chairs start being swung around but there’s also some rapidfire moves from Queen Angels. Tomi does a pretty spectacular dive over the top rope to the outside for a match from 1978, followed by some appalling camera work of Lucy flying into shot but we don’t see what dive she did as the camera wasn’t looking at the ring. Queen Angels win by countout and they celebrate in the traditional AJW babyface manner: beating up the referee.

***

MD: So we’re still in Hawaii, which makes it clear that the majority of early footage we have apparently is in Hawaii. This, to me, felt like a really good lucha match, just from the themes and the ebbs and flows, and even the action. The faces here were the Queen Angels (Kayama and Aoyama) who were the champs. Hackney and Kumano ambushed to start and Hackney fit right in with quick swarming offense, even if Kumano would stand out more in the match (would she ever?). There was a brief moment of early shine after a Tomi shotgun dropkick that hit like a brick that included some of Kamaya’s cool short elbow smashes, but the heels took over completely with some chairshots on the floor and in the ring (and getting the ref too for good measure). The beatdown was just top notch rudo stuff. Kumano would hang people by their necks dangling over the top rope. She’d launch them by their hair. She’d press them into the bottom rope throat first while a second yanked on their legs on the floor. She would grind her heel into their skull with the head on the stairs and squash a hand over the top rope. She won the first fall with a calf branding sort of meteora but that wasn’t nearly as impressive as the general feeling of massacre. And Hackney did her part too, tossing Tomi into the front row a few times.

When Kayama was able to sneak around for a clutch cobra twist out of nowhere, the crowd came unglued. It was the hottest I’ve heard a crowd so far and really felt like that glistening moment of lucha comeback. Tomi followed up with a giant swing and bodyslam-position suplexes and the Queen Angels took the second fall with a very high body press off the top. They continued to press the advantage for a bit in the third fall but the heels took back over. Hackney tried for multiple figure-four attempts, and Lucy eventually had enough but the ref held her back, definitely holding them to a higher standard, as if they were tecnicos. But Tomi forced a second big comeback with a high body press off the ropes and they went into their “Queen Rocket” planchas to knock the heels loopy enough to score a countout win. Post-match they took their grief out on the ref for his transgressions. This felt more extreme than most Brass Knucks matches in the states at the time and had a ton of familiar lucha beats in all the best ways.