70s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Figueroa!

15. 1979.01.XX2 - 03 Marina Figueroa vs. Rimi Yokota

K: A rare chance to see Yokota on the receiving end of a squash match, this time from the veteran Marina Figueroa. Figueroa doesn’t seem to be able to move very fast so some of Rimi’s usual spots probably aren’t available to her here, so this is mostly just her getting beat down in an effective but not very interesting manner. The most interesting part is when Marina started targeting Rimi’s arm, I liked how she yanked on Rimi’s arm and yanked it into the top rope to put an little spin on a common move. Rimi’s comeback though wasn’t very good as she just brushed it all off and when into a standard comeback as if she’d hadn’t just had her arm-worked over. Marina took over again fairly quickly where Charito Silver got involved from the outside and then puts Rimi away.

*1/2

MD: As best as I can tell we only have a couple of Figureoa matches but she had been wrestling for a couple of decades at this point. Here, she dominated the first half of this, refusing a handshake and then rushing right in as Yokota had turned around with a youthful shrug. She had a way of moving Yokota exactly where she wanted her and doing a very specific sort of damage. Her shots didn’t look particularly impactful but they all hit in the worst possible places, the gut, the nose. Very targeted. That led to her smothering Yokota while twisting the nose and to Yokota diving deep into the well with a very jaguar like bite on the hand that was smothering her to escape.

Yokota tried to work the leg but had to settle, after a figure-four that made it to the ropes, with just containing Figueroa with a headlock. Marina turned that into a nasty headscissors and opened things up to working over Yokota’s taped-up arm, with some nasty and consistent offense. We’re starting to see this sort of selling dropped quickly though, and it was here, as Yokota came back with a cross chop and abdominal stretch that both heavily used the arm that was just getting wrenched over the top rope. There was also a piece of blatant second interference to break up the hold letting Figueroa take over to finish the match with a quebradora and a backbreaker stretch over the knee. Dropped selling aside (only an issue because of the limb being so specifically targeted and so specifically used), it was good to see Yokota in a match where she was positioned more as a babyface and to see Figueroa and very focused, very nasty offense.