70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Kumano!

71. 1979.11.XX1 - 02 Mami Kumano vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: They do something pretty effective right at the start here which sets the tone that tempers are gonna flare for this one. Before the bell starts, they both square up looking like they want to bite each others head off, and then Mami quickly snatches at Tomi’s hair, and the crowd does an audible ‘wooah’. Spices things up nicely.

This then plays out as a match which has turned into a fight but it never really turns into an all out brawl either. Tomi’s superior technique is established early on when she counters a snapmare by kicking out upwards, knocking Mami off her feet (steal this…) and follows up with her single-legged dropkick. I think the reason no one does that anymore is it looks like an injury risk to the person doing it, so I’m less keen on demanding someone steal it. Still looks cool and unique though. Mami throws things out to the outside a couple of times and a bunch of chairs get knocked over, but it feels like she still wants to get the win rather than just beat Tomi up. The match having some stakes in that it’s setting up a match with Jackie Sato later down the line might enlighten us a bit as to why. Doesn’t stop her smashing an apple over Tomi’s head though.

I gasped when she pulled out the scissors from her top and stabbed Tomi in the head with it. Hardly the most violent scissor stabbing in AJW history, but I’ve been trained to shudder whenever I see scissors in a Joshi match. This has been a really good performance from Mami. I was going to say this that we’ve mainly only see her in tags, but I went and checked and this is actually only the 2nd Mami Kumano singles match we’ve covered (and the previous one was vs. Yumi Ikeshita, so this is the first time we’ve seen her in singles vs. a babyface). Being in singles requires her to fill up more time without using her signature spots and she’s doing that better than most here (certainly preferable to most of those Americans). She topped off the hie the weapon section by having Tomi snatch it out of her hand and use it against her, or at least try to, as the moment that started happening she reacted like a massive coward and fled the ring to Tomi’s totally justified attempt at vengeance and I enjoyed this a lot.

Tomi’s Giant Swing to end things was very impressive. Good stuff all around, but nothing remarkable and it felt like it ended before the peak.

***

MD: Oh hey, AJW is doing their own “World Challenger Determination Tournament” here. Winner gets to face Jackie. And this was really good. Just a great look at Mami and felt years before its time (not surprising with these two). They go all action right at the start but Mami gets Tomi on the apron (figured the choke was coming but..) and then smashes head into the post. On the floor she beats her with an apple (!) completely shattering it over her head, and then it’s back in the ring and time to play hide the object. The commentators call it “metallic madness” since they’re not sure what it is at first, but it is, in fact, a small pair of scissors.

There’s no color here but it’s really a brutal attack. Mami hides it pretty well in her gear and then just comes at Tomi’s skull again and again and again. At one point, Tomi tries to get it but Mami just bites her and keeps going. From there she does some flip bombs. Everything she does is devastating. Tomi’s comeback is great as she bites back and gets the scissors but things devolve pretty heavily from there. They kept trying to pin each other but the other would refuse to put shoulders down for even 1. 

It went back outside and Tomi got an abdominal stretch on, which pushed Mami over the edge. Once they made it back into the ring, she started using a chair, including on the ref. He didn’t DQ her though, and Tomi instead was able to turn things around and hit as long and fast a giant swing as we’ve seen in this 70s footage to put her away. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.