70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Seiko! Kumano! Ikeshita!

43. 1979.08.XX1 - 03 Jackie Sato & Seiko Hanawa vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita

K: There’s an annoying clip very early on which makes it hard to assess the opening portion of the match. We get the standard-fare feisty babyface Seiko launching right into the attack, then later Black Pair have taken control and we didn’t really see how. But their section mauling Jackie Sato especially is pretty good. Highlights included pulling Jackie’s arm out tort and then headbutting her in the shoulder, and a bit later Yumi would grab Jackie by the back of the head and launch her face-first through the ropes into Mami’s outstretched knee through the other side of the apron. Absolutely every piece of offense Black Pair do just looks dirty. It’s just cheating, or just ugly and unsporting at the very least. It felt near miraculous when Jackie was able to get a comeback in by dodging a double-team so Mami kicked her own partner by mistake, and once she got the ball refused to let go until she picked up the first fall. What a hero.

There’s a noticeable change in pace and tone in the 2nd fall. Whereas the 1st was messy and driven by the heels just causing mayhem, this time Black Pair were being far more measured and controlled in taking apart their opponents. It felt like they were reacting to a chaotic situation of their doing backfiring on them to cause them to lose the 1st fall, so they’re not going to allow that to happen again. After taking out Jackie with a weapon (hiding it from the referee for a bit of extra heat), Mami Kumano just voluntarily allows Jackie to go over and tag a very angry Seiko Hanawa in, who is also protesting to the referee about the weapon use. Black Pair are happy to have Seiko as their target though rather than the superhero Jackie. She also gets meticulously taken apart and beaten. The third fall follows much the same pattern, but this time they capitalise even more by tying Jackie’s leg up in the ropes to finish off Seiko quickly. Nice match this, the 1st fall probably went on just a little too long but that’s just about the only negative thing I’ll say about it.

***

MD: A couple of clips in here around transitions which is never the best but what we get is pretty substantial even if the last few minutes of this is the end credits. Hanawa had to be inspired teaming with Jackie because she attacks right from the get go. We miss how the Black Pair take over, but they sure do take over. This is a great dominant performance from them. They control at length multiple times in the match but the longest is in the first fall where they destroy Jackie. I’m usually higher on Kumano and she has her usual wild abandon and violent stuff, including some new things like a dragon sleeper into a stomach whack. Here though Ikeshita really shined, just rubbing Jackie’s face all over the mat.

At some point they switch over to Hanawa but that really just lets Jackie recover enough to be ready for Hanawa to turn it around on them for a hot tag. She almost reminds me of Hogan in some ways by this point (some might consider that blasphemy). She’s great at taking and taking but when it’s time to give, she’s larger than life, just kicking through faces, just dropping people straight down from a belly to back position, and hitting her cross attack with great camera angles. As noted, the Black Pair did take back over and things got wild on the outside as one might expect. The trick was to isolate Jackie and they did so with the help of their seconds on the floor. In the last fall, they managed it by tying up Jackie’s leg in the ropes. Hanawa was fiery but ultimately doomed.