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

53. 1979.09.1X - 02 Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (2/3 Falls)

K: Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama are as big a superteam you can get on the babyface side right now so this is a big match we’re getting here. I popped right at the start when Mami Kumano tried to whip Jackie Sato into the heel corner only for Jackie to use the momentum to boot Yumi Ikeshita off the apron! Mainly coz it reminded me of the 6/9/95 spot, though I doubt that’s where Kawada got the idea. The hierarchy makes sense in that Black Pair do they usually shenanigans including a lot of weapon hiding, but they never manage to turn things totally chaotic and both Jackie & Tomi get a lot of hope spots in before the big comeback towards the end of the fall. Unfortunately there’s some awful camera work at the finish where they almost totally miss Tomi’s top rope boomerang, if it weren’t for having already seen her do the move properly I wouldn’t have known what happened.

We got the similar Black Pair formula after they drop a fall, they go totally nuts in the 2nd trying to turn the match into as insane a brawl as possible. About 50% of their offense here is hitting the babyfaces on the head with a metal bucket which has somehow entered the ring. At one point Jackie does a great heroic babyface spot where she fights both of them off at once and then gives them some well-earned revenge with some bucket shots of her own. Jackie hits a picture-perfect headscissors takedown that I don’t see anyone do anymore. Wraps her ankles around the opponent’s head and somehow in the motion it looks as believable as I’ve ever seen a wrestler try convince me that there’s no co-operation involved in this. When Black Pair get the fall back, it’s when Yumi Ikeshita runs in to break up a Jackie Sato big splash attempt, only to then hit a backdrop suplex and get the pin herself even though she clearly wasn’t the legal woman. Referee!

The 3rd fall has an even wilder start. Now Yumi has got a mop and is stabbing everyone in the throat with it. After it gets confiscated, Jackie comes back off the ropes and hits one of the best double dropkicks on Black Pair I’ve ever seen. There’s a dynamic, flowing element in how she moves across the ring even when she’s in the air she seems to change direction mid-flow so that she hits Mami with one foot but then Yumi a little bit later with the other foot once she’s closer. Such a special wrestler. Black Pair go crazy with weapons again this time with chairs and Yumi has what looks like a wrench, Jackie defeats her with her superior wrestling skill by countering an attempted wrench attack with a rollup. Good and fitting finish. They never felt like they were going to go into 5th gear in this match and there wasn’t any big angle, I’d say this is one of the best matches we’ve seen that was never trying to be anything more.
***1/2

MD: This was wild and it felt a little like a culmination of a lot of what we’ve seen so far. We never get any explanation why Jackie and Tomi are teaming. We don’t have Tomi and Lucy teaming for the rest of 79. The commentary did question if Tomi and Jackie would make a good enough team to overcome the Black Pair who had been teaming for a year and a half. It started, oddly enough, with some heel in peril with Tomi and Jackie thrashing Kumano and the ref refusing multiple out of position tags by Ikeshita (she got a shot in on the ref each time he pulled her back out).

Once they took over, however, they didn’t look back, playing hide the object for the next six or seven minutes. It was a bit down to dumb refereeing but there was that element of bullying the ref and the ref being afraid to do much that would be a hallmark of the style forevermore. They made some small efforts at least. Neither Jackie or Tomi could get anything on them until Jackie just had enough and let loose with one of her three big comebacks of the match, firing away and setting things up for Tomi to hit her comebacker cross body off the ropes for the fall.

With each fall, the Black Pair escalated their weapon attack. In the second fall, that meant bringing a bucket in. Again, that went well for a while until Jackie had enough and caught it and started firing back. Total star, larger than life. Everything was going pretty well for them, including an incredibly long Tomi giant swing until Ikeshita cheapshotted Jackie so that she’d fall on Kumano right when Tomi was coming off the top, letting the Black Pair take the second fall. The third fall escalated things to chairs and a wrench but Jackie was was able to hit a jumping rolling clutch out of the corner for a snap win. Maybe the hide the object bit went on just a little too long (maybe) and maybe we could have used a few more nearfalls or something in the third fall but overall, the highs were real high here and Jackie came off as larger than life while still giving a ton until it was time for her to do her thing (and Tomi fit right in). It was a main event and it felt like one.