70's Joshi on Wednesday: Kayama! Yokota!

7. 1978.09.XX - 01 Lucy Kayama vs. Rimi Yokota (Probably September)

MD: Believe it or not, we’re still in Hawaii. This was definitely a thing. Yokota is a couple more months experienced at this point and she shows quite a bit of confidence and intensity. Kayama has a height advantage, but Yokota deals with that by ambushing her from behind at the bell. After tearing her apart a bit, Yokota started on the bandaged leg, with a bunch of gnarly and varied offense, including stepping on the ankle and stomping the leg twice, following it up with a knee drop, some kicks to the inside of the leg as she held it, and a figure four. When she went to the stomps/knee drop a second time, Kayama was able to dodge and take over. She focused on the arm, only selling her leg a little when she was safely in control again. She had some nice stuff here, with big arm drivers and these short back elbows. Ultimately, after a trip outside, Yokota would come back (not paying any heed to the armwork), only to get cut off as Kayama switched over to the back. She started with an atomic drop and moved on to a series of double armed backbreakers before a double arm Canadian backbreaker submission. She was certainly using her damaged leg liberally here, but the match had moved on. The individual bits of work were nice and intense but the limb focus seemed more like a way to keep them on track than something that added to the narrative of the match. It never fully came together for me. That said, Yokota’s stomp/knee combo was certainly memorable and she carried herself like a real threat.

K: This is our first look at Lucy Kayama, who along with Rimi Yokota was part of the first AJW Class of 1977. Before 1977 the company had recruited wrestlers more haphazardly, but when Beauty Pair exploded its popularity with schoolgirls they found themselves being inundated with thousands of applications, so they created an institutionised system whereby applicants would first attend auditions to try-out, a select few would be chosen to become hired trainees at the company’s dojo, and those who passed the ‘pro-test’ at the end of the training process each year would get to debut as pro-wrestlers. This institution of distinct annual classes with a try-out, training and pro-test was unique to AJW, and is part of what distinguished the women’s scene from men’s wrestling in Japan.

After debuting in 1977 Lucy Kayama had a very brief run as part of the Black Pair which we only know about from magazine photos of her with the group, but she got switched to being a babyface pretty soon. She is currently one half of the WWWA Tag Team Champions with Tomi Aoyama as ‘Queen Angels’. They’d later release a pop single ‘Rolling Love’ which they’d perform at shows e.g. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIr0bnWIXCU). They were nowhere near as successful as Beauty Pair, but I think they were cool…

Anyway, the match starts and Rimi immediately does that old trick of attacking her opponent after they turn their back to go into their corner. It always works! Rimi just unleashes her signature relentless nasty offense on Lucy. Early on she locks in a Figure 4, I’ve watched wrestling from many different eras and locations and it fascinates me that despite all the stylistic diversity, the one constant seems to be the Figure 4 Leglock is always used by someone and works the same way. It reminds me of how you can see Indo-European languages all have a relatively recent common ancestor as the word for ‘mother’ in English/Spanish/Russian/Persian/Punjabi etc. are all very similar. Rimi continues attacking Lucy’s leg, she stretches one leg by standing on the ankle and then stomping on her knee. This leads to an interesting transition where Rimi goes for a kneedrop in this position, but Lucy moves out of the way so Rimi hurts her knee on the canvas.

As good as Rimi is on offense, you can guess why Lucy never made it as a heel from watching her here; she’s a lot better at sympathetic selling than she is at dishing out a beating herself, as when it’s her turn to go on offense it’s far less engaging. Plus the second move of her comeback was a big punch or lariat, not clear what she was going for as she totally missed despite Rimi being stood up straight right there in front of her… Rimi bumps for it anyway. Lucy also targets Rimi’s arm even though it was her knee that was hurt, which makes Rimi selling her knee just before a bit pointless.

Lucy does look a bit better on offense for the finishing stretch though, where she puts Rimi away with a series of big moves. To be precise, an inverted atomic drop, a Zidane Headbutt off an Irish Whip (I’m noting the Zenjo crew all have their own ‘Irish Whip into a strike’ move), side suplex, two butterfly pendulum backbreakers and then finishes with a backbreaker submission. A decent if uneven match.

*3/4