70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Williams!

69. 1979.10.17 - 04 Jackie Sato vs. Vicki Williams
 
K: This is the final match of the Japan vs. USA series. I hadn’t noticed before but they seem to have got a pretty good crowd for this show, you can see there are fans in the upper sections and this is before they started being careful to only show one side of the venue on camera for poorly attended TV tapings. It starts with Jackie Sato coming to ring with mic in hand shouting about the crooked referee. It reminded me of Chigusa Nagayo's mid-match promos about 5 years after this when some injustice had occurred, but no as effective. Jackie doesn't have the deep booming voice for it. The American ref is kicked out despite his protestations that he is "the greatest referee in American and Japan" and is replaced by AJW ref Jimmy Kayama.

We get a decent enough match which is helped by the crowd being relatively heated, although they don’t make much use of that or take the crowd to higher peaks at any point. That’s my biggest takeaway from this series as of today, they’re too content to just go out there and have their match that they do almost every week. Even with this one being different in that the heel ref is gone, it doesn’t really payoff in any way except the heel has to tone down the cheating. Even just Vicki going for a big bit of cheating when she thinks the referee had been distracted for something only for him to not fall for it and cut her off I think would have helped this along and given the crowd a reward for putting up with so much bullshit leading up to this.

Jackie spends a bit too much time on the receiving end, but her comeback is good. She’s a lot better on offense and I don’t think presenting your Ace as constantly fighting for her survival against anyone who isn’t Monster Ripper is effective in the long run. We’re finally done with this series now and will be on to more entertaining and memorable things soon enough.

** 

MD: We’ve finally made it to the end of the US vs Japan series. The US team (which included the Black Pair) had already won the overall team competition. This was for the individual crown. Ronnie Wright came out to ref as always, still bandaged but ready to go. Sato complained and this time, she had the law on her side. They had called the NWA office in New York and Wright was not just taken out of the match but suspended. 

And in a fair fight, Williams got crushed. This was pure ace stuff from Sato. She missed a dropkick once and Williams hammered her a bit. Williams got some shots in from underneath another time, but basically, this was a lot of Sato. In retrospect, Williams took more of this than I remembered, but I think that’s because Jackie’s comebacks were so strong. When it was time, she absolutely had her way with Williams. She’d outwrestle her, stepping over and flipping her over, stretching her this way and that, outfight her, coming back from some shots with a cross choke in the ropes, and then at the end, out suplexed her, just driving her down with two belly to backs before a splash off the top to pin her. It was a real sense of inevitability, as if they were done with this farce and were going to wash their hands of it.

That’s not to say the ceremony at the end wasn’t fun, because it was. All of the American team (including Ikeshita and Kumano) got medals and both Moolah and Sato got trophies. And thankfully, we can move into the home stretch of the decade and not look back to this series.