70s Joshi on Wednesday: Nancy! Kai!

64. 1979.10.XX - 03 Leilani Kai vs. Nancy Kumi (Either late September or before October 17)

K: One of Fuji TV’s tricks was to edit matches down for length, but rather than just cut the footage up, they’d shift the commentary audio so that the announcer would be in the middle of a sentence when the video actually skipped minutes ahead so it was even less noticeable that there was cutting. I say that because they do a primitive version of that trick here when they skip ahead in the match opening ceremony.

This was better than I thought it’d be. Kai starts off by attacking Nancy with a bouquet of flowers, forcing her to flee the ring. I’m not convinced that hitting someone with flowers is all that threatening, although the image was funny. There is a decent amount of effort put into this and I thought Nancy sold well when she was slowly trying to create space to weather the tide, I’ve not been impressed with her in general. She also looked good losing her temper when they started fighting on the outside, choking Kai in a justified babyface reprisal.

Moolah got involved again. I know that she’s going to wrestle Nancy Kumi soon enough so I guess this match was partially an angle in setting that up, as they don’t resolve anything between Kumi and Kai with this one. It ends in double countout and both wrestlers seem to claim victory.

**1/4

MD: This would have been a pretty good match in Kansas City or Albuquerque? I thought Kai had a lot of star power, a lot of flair. For instance she had great fun rampaging with flowers before the match. She just didn’t have quite enough of it. She’d do the heel handshake with her other behind her back but not really pay it off. She’d make a shocked noise when Kumi was winning a test of strength but it didn’t really go anywhere. If she was going to lean into it, she should really lean into it, and she would later in her career, but not quite yet. Otherwise she took a lot of this and when they were going it wasn’t always perfectly timed. At one point Kumi had to basically deadlift slam her because of a time miscue. Lots of choking and kicking and stomping and Moolah interfering and a bit of heel reffing. Kumi was much better at asserting herself than she had been a year earlier and they had some nice missed splashes, including one off the top, but it definitely didn’t hold up to Black Pair matches or what have you. Match got thrown away as they were outside for too long even though Kumi probably got in early enough. She went after the ref in response. Floor wasn’t too bad here but it was a low, low ceiling.