70s Joshi on Wednesday: Sato! Iwae!

38. 1979.07.31 - 01 Chino Sato vs. Kazuko Iwae (Kazuko Iwae debut)

K: There’s not much to say about the actual wrestling in this match so I’m going to talk about debuts. A much bigger deal of them is made in Joshi compared to other wrestling scenes. Part of this is that after its first boom in popularity with Beauty Pair, AJW set up a unique system of accepting new wrestlers with a two-stage process.

First, hopefuls would have to pass an audition, then they are accepted as trainees (and thus, are already considered ‘employed’ by the company), usually live at the dojo and train full-time until they’re ready to pass the second stage called the ‘pro-test’. The pro-test is like a live exam, and consists of a mixture of general athletic feats (e.g. squats, bridges) and specifically pro-wrestling skills like rope-running and grappling. If you want to see a modern example of a pro-test, Marvelous broadcasted one on their YouTube channel last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IIHmgkbzxk

If they pass the pro-test, they’re then given a debut date. AJW (and its descendents) made a much bigger deal out of debuts than other companies, they’d usually be on relatively big show and would be televised. In later years AJW would also sometimes broadcast footage of their trainees getting ready to debut or their pro-tests to hype this up, so it means that the fans would often be able to follow a wrestler’s career right from the beginning.

As for the match, it’s more evenly-matched than debuts typically would be later on (this is probably just because the formula hasn’t developed yet). Iwae does a good job of showing her stuff. She has some pretty cool headscissors moves on a standing opponent that I don’t remember seeing much of, but the crowd certainly sounded like they bought them as offense. Her lowly status is more established with her lack of hit points, as all it takes to beat her is for Chino to dodge a flying crossbody then splat her with a powerbomb and that’s her out for the 3 count. Chino looks like she’s barely been hurt from the whole thing though.

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MD: This is Iwae’s debut and she looks ok out of the gate, starting with a couple of armdrags before Sato took her out with a jumping fist and jumping knee. Iwae turned a bodyscissors around by grabbing the hair and pulling her up and then controlled for a while with a series of headscissors. She missed a cross body and Sato hit a couple of power bombs to end her. Not a lot to say here but she looked ready to debut at least.