70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Kayama!

12. 1979.01.XX1 - 02 Lucy Kayama vs. Monster Ripper

K: They get over the psychology of this match at the start by having Monster act like a clumsy oaf just throwing herself at Lucy, missing the first couple of times as Lucy was able to move out of the way or use her skills to turn Monster’s momentum into a throw. Monster quickly takes over after this, showing that her power is too much for Lucy’s superior speed & technical skills, or at least what she’s shown. Monster’s impressive physical charisma makes this pretty basic layout work a lot better than what most people would be able to do with it.

I did pop a bit when a few minutes in, commentator Shiono notes that one ‘Tenjin Masami’ is at ringside watching. I almost didn’t recognise her as she has a plaster entirely covering one eye.

Lucy gets a bit of hope back when she locks in a figure four, more interestingly after Monster gets out of it, she then does a strange move where she holds Lucy’s legs apart, and then does like a jumping leg drop but coming down on each of Lucy’s legs like she’s forcing her to do the splits. The closest thing Lucy gets to any kind of sustained offense is when she gets helped out by Tomi Aoyama. At one point they do a double vertical suplex, Tomi holds Monster down and Lucy does the move I know as a Vader Bomb, but the commentator calls the Queen Angels Special!

This was an effective enough squash, both getting over that Monster is just too powerful for Lucy to be a match for her, but she’s not quite invincible.

**

MD: Ripper had tons of presence right from the get go. As she was announced she made herself as big as possible and screamed and you could practically see the power radiate off of her. Early on she had a clear advantage. Her offense for the most part consisted of taking the head and tossing it down. That could be with a front facelock or a hairgrab or a choke but she just drove Kayama down. Kayama would try to pry off an arm or a leg but she had very little luck until she finally got a single leg and locked in a figure four. For her trouble, Ripper bit the knee, clobbered the knee, and finally just pried the pressuring leg off with her strength. Oh and she started working on Kayama’s knee for revenge. This lasted until Kayama was able to get her up and over the top while she was being worked over in the corner. She followed it up with a huge dive to the floor giving everything a fairly iconic feel and then, just to take it over the top, her Queen Angels partner Tomi Aoyama came in to double team Ripper. They got her up and over for a suplex but the second Tomi left, Ripper took back over, including choking Kayama with tape. From there she started hitting bombs, including a great spinning torture rack and a deep delayed double underhook superplex. For a bit, Kayama was able to bridge her way out to get big pops but Ripper squashed her with a big splash to end it. Early on the commentators noted that Kayama had to use all of her “three-dimensional killing techniques” like the Queen Special but she probably needed some five-dimensional ones to really have a chance against Ripper.