70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Maki!

21. 1979.02.27 - Jackie Sato vs. Maki Ueda (WWWA Singles Title, Loser Must Retire)

K: It’s hard to know where to start in writing about this match. The levels of spectacle are so much higher than anything else we’ve covered before, in fact I’m not sure the big 80s shows ever got as extravagant as this just in terms of the presentation. It certainly does get you in the mood to watch something momentous. It’s hard to review the match itself because we only see about half of it (they went 48:07). It looks like the match was broadcast on two separate episodes because in the middle of the video we have there’s a closing credits crawl, and once that’s done we pick up sometime later in the bout.

This match came about on relatively short notice due to Maki Ueda’s decision to retire from wrestling (contrary to some Western fans on the internet, she was not forced to retire, for one thing she was only 20 year old at the time). The closest thing we’ve got to an explanation were these comments from Maki in an interview:

“I was paid 300,000 Yen* a month, the same as when I was a newcomer. At the time, I thought I was getting paid more than the average office worker. I was a child myself, so I just did as I was told… I was more masculine on the inside, and Jackie was more feminine. The issue that led to my retirement was Jackie's romantic relationship. When I was away on an expedition, Jackie wanted to go back to Tokyo. I thought she was the kind of woman who could keep work and love separate..."

*Note, adjusting for inflation, 300,000 Yen would be around $6,400 in 2024.

It takes the wrestlers a long time to make their entrances as the crowd is spilling out into the walkway area. Jackie in particular looks like she’s in danger of being crushed at one point. The match itself is quite basic when you just write down the moves they did, and there are some points where it feels like they’re stretching things out for time rather than building to something. But leaving it at that wouldn’t do it justice at all, as the biggest achievement is how they take an already hot crowd, calm things down ever so slightly to build them right back up again in a few key moments so that they’re almost blowing the roof off in the finishing stretch.

What they do establish early on is that Maki is the faster of the two and is able to gain the advantage a few times with some nifty movements through holds. But Jackie has more power and generally just manhandles herself back into an advantageous position, sometimes when Jackie takes back control it feels like she’s ‘restraining’ Maki almost. Things really move into the highest gear when Maki goes to the top rope to hit her splash (part of the Beauty Special) but Jackie moves out of the way. Jackie then goes up top to hit her own splash but… the same thing happens. It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff but in context it really put over that they felt the need to go for something big to get the win.

I find the finish kinda touching. I don’t know if this was the intention behind it, or if there even was any thought put into it, but after moving up the escalation ladder in the finishing stretch, the finish itself was just about the softest way you can win a big match I’ve ever seen. Jackie goes for a Boston Crab, but Maki grabs hold of her ankle to block it. As Jackie is trying to turn Maki over onto her front, she seems to realise in the moment that she can just move forward, keep Maki on her back and she’ll have her in a pinning predicament. She goes for it and Maki just about gets her shoulder up at 2, but Jackie pushes forward more to get her shoulder back down and gets the 3 count when they’re virtually face to face. I can’t think of more ‘gentle’ way to pin someone in a wrestling match. And once Jackie has the 3 she just lets go and walks off.

The fans are screaming the house down, the camera cuts to some of them in tears at what they’ve just witnessed. I’m not going to give this a rating because it’s too incomplete, but it’s definitely something fans should watch just to have seen it.

MD: I can fully understand if this is the only match of the 70s a lot of people watch. I consider ourselves (and anyone going through this footage with us) fortunate to watch everything we have going up to this, for the sake of both familiarity and contrast. This is like nothing we’ve seen so far. In the last match, Sato felt like a star, but this is the first time that, from the text itself, the Beauty Pair really feel like superstars. They come out together and the crowd is abuzz, absolutely mobbing them, and it doesn’t stop until the very end.

We get about twenty five of a longer match, but you very much get the sense of it, I think. This feels momentous; watching this is watching history unfold. Maki is the aggressor for most of the match and maybe has a technical or speed advantage, but Jackie comes off as the stronger of the two. What drives this more than anything else, is that each wrestler is desperately trying to win. The stakes are clear, their hearts are bared open for the world to see, and everything is both a struggle, and entirely honed in on victory. That means all of the transitions are based on mistakes or opportunities, logical, competitive, compelling.

That said, it’s all still rough around the edges. The style hasn’t fully coalesced. The narratives are not as clear as they could possibly be. There are moments which, were it not for how hard both women were pushing, might feel haphazard or not fully capitalized on. They fill those gaps with grit and effort and energy. There is a moment where Jackie finishes a move and instead of letting it settle in, immediately rushes towards the top rope. In so many other matches, it would have felt like the wrestler rushing to get the next spot in, but here it felt like her trying to seize any advantage possible on the way towards hopeful victory. It’s the same with the finish. Jackie gets a double leg and goes for a crab. Maki blocks it. Jackie presses down for a pin. The ref counts two but a shoulder goes up, whether intentional or otherwise. She presses down again and gets the heartbreaking three. On one level, it’s not a complex or deeply thought out finish. It felt like happenstance, chance. On the other, it fit entirely with the mood of the match where they were constantly desperate to snatch whatever win they could. Jackie was just able to press the shoulders down for three seconds. That tiny action was all that stood between two women and a dream.

Post-match, both women are interviewed and provided gifts. Maki manages to look up with a smile that melts the commentators and the crying crowd. Then they force themselves to sing in the middle of the ring. Maki was right around twenty years old. I have a kid around that age. I work with people just a few years older just starting their professional lives and here she was ending this chapter of hers. I think back to what I was doing at that age, and the weight of putting on a match like this, of retiring, of standing in that ring and singing in front of a crowd screaming and crying for you after all that… what a weight on her shoulders. As for the footage in general, I’m curious to see how things develop from here, because this felt like a sharp turn towards bigger and grander things.