70s Joshi on Wednesday: Silk! Fujimi!

22. 1979.02.XX1 - 01 Indian Silk vs. Victoria Fujimi

K: I don’t have a whole lot to say about this match as I thought it was very mediocre without being awful or anything. Indian Silk totally dominates the first few minutes, but it doesn’t really build up much heat because compared to the antics of the Black Pair etc her heeling is incredibly tame. It comes across like she’s just winning the match. Indian Silk is working like she’s a big monster, but she isn’t that big, so that aspect doesn’t work well either.

I was also thrown off with how Nancy Kumi was constantly interfering to help Fujimi; it felt completely unwarranted the first few times, I’d expect to have seen some egregious cheating from the heels before a babyface second would actually attack their mate’s opponent. The referee did start heeling it up later in the match, maybe Nancy knew he was going to that, but the sequence of events was backwards.

The few seconds where Indian Silk did a pendulum backbreaker hold where she’s pulling Victoria’s head up and down was pretty neat though. But otherwise, pretty dull and weird match.

*1/2

MD: Most notable thing about this one was that we had a leaning rudo ref. That meant that Nancy Kumi (Fujimi’s Golden Pair partner) felt it perfectly acceptable to dash in to interfere now and again. It gave everything a bit of a weird tonal feel overall. Maybe the other side of it was that Silk (who had an Indian gimmick, yes, but that they said was Mexican) was supposed to be a monster.

She manhandled Fujimi through a lot of this. A lot of choking her over the bottom rope or lift up drop down flapjacks. She had a really nasty deep cobra clutch which she pressed over her knee repeatedly as well. Whenever Fujimi got an advantage, she was equally fierce, including a fairly brutal gourdbuster and cobra twist, but the ref contrived to cut it off. Finishing stretch had a bunch of bombs by Fujimi, including this great running press off cross body in the corner and high vertical splash sentons before winning with a deep roll up. Maybe it was just me but I felt a disconnect here. Anyway, post match Fujimi got to beat up the ref so this felt somehow years before its time.