70s Joshi on Wednesday: Komone! Kazuko!

52. 1979.09.1X - 01 Hiroko Komine vs. Kazuko Iwai

K: This is a rookie undercard match and I’ve seen enough AJW to know this is going to be a very basic match that exists more to help the wrestlers develop their fundamentals/get reps than to be all that entertaining. Still, this is better than most matches of this type. They both look pretty competent at this match type, Iwai is actually pretty good for her experience level and it feels like the company is giving her a bit of a push by giving her her 3rd televised singles match within six weeks of debuting (and that’s with the footage gaps).

There’s a section a few minutes where Iwai has Komine in an Indian Deathlock, she’s able to hold it in for quite a while and keeps a bit of movement by slamming herself against the mat when Komine tries to wriggle out. Eventually Komine reverses it into a headlock before going mean heel offense. I thought they worked that whole section pretty well, the submission looked pretty tight and believable. Afterwards we get a very strange move where Komine has Iwai on the ground and puts her leg inside and around like she’s going for a sharpshooter, but then she leans forward and grabs Iwai by the head, and does a forward roll into a kind of monkey flip style move. I probably haven’t described it well but see for yourself/I should probably gif it. They’re getting creative already anyway. One of the reasons I’m still so interested in Joshi is how even in nothing matches like this there’s still a good chance you’ll see a bizarre move you’ve never seen anywhere else.

They built to a pretty good finishing stretch where things got more fast-paced, even if they didn’t do anything but dropkicks (which were used as a high spot), crossbodies and pin attempts. Iwai was a little too keen to rush to the next spot after one of her kickouts at 2, but that’s nitpicky. Komine won but protected Iwai a little bit in that she had to pull out a backslide pin to get the win. Solid rookie match this.

**

MD: This is probably the least consequential match we’ve seen? Neither of these two will be in the footage for 79 after that. Komine would not be long for the wrestling world. If you look up Iwai, the results you get are this project basically. But you watch this next to the matches we’ve seen with Masami and Yokota and there’s no reason that either of these two couldn’t have stuck with it and been a star in the 80s. Iwai had fire from underneath, throwing dropkicks and what have you. She looked good early with an inverted deathlock. Komine had a lot of good stuff, whether it just be slamming Iwai’s neck off the ropes or the roll-forward toehold slams she was doing or her twisting body presses. There was a level of basic competence that was expected by almost anyone on TV in the promotion. Komine leaned on Iwai meanly. Iwai fought back hard. This just wasn’t the reality where they made it.