70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Nancy!

74. 1979.11.XX2 - 02 Nancy Kumi vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: Unfortunately the Golden Pair vs. Queen Angels series of matches from 1978 are unavailable except some very brief clips, but that’s enough to know that these two are established rivals meeting again in singles competition.

There’s a very gradual pace to this that’s a bit uneven. Sometimes it does feel like they’re building up to something, I thought Aoyama’s armwork was pretty cool and so were the battles over the leglocks and figure four. There’s a moment where Aoyama’s getting really feisty about it and pushes away the referee when Nancy’s in the ropes and he tries to break it up. But the moments are all a bit disconnected from each other and it just feels too much like they’re stalling for time rather than stalling to gain some kind of advantage. It would be better if one of the wrestlers was primarily responsible for the stalling and having the other trying to get to keep the match going so you could create some narrative tension with it, rather than them both just doing it. Even when they do some action, for example right at the start they take turns to kick each other in the back of the leg and take a slightly off-timed backbump, it just ends in a reset.

Zooming in a bit though, the work was mostly good. The holds were worked quite tightly and were believable, as well as most of the transitions. They managed to establish a bit of a contrast between Nancy going for more brute force whereas Tomi was more flashy. A good moment for Nancy was when she lifted Tomi up in the atomic drop position and then just planted her straight down on the mat with a look of annoyance. Things did heat up well in the last few minutes, but the lack of a finish hurt it. It felt like they should have started the “finishing” stretch a bit earlier so there was more tension going into the time limit, but it being so late in the match it never really felt like either had gained enough of an advantage to win anyway.

Tough match to assess really. Felt like a super flawed and primitive version of something that could have been great.

**3/4

MD: I thought this was supposed to be the finals of the challenge series to see who would face Jackie but of course it was inconclusive (a 30 minute draw). Maybe this was just part of the series as we still have a Kumano vs Ikeshita match ahead of us. It was pretty heated all things together. Rivalry between the teams or no, this felt to me like two people who had been honed into razor sharp steel by fighting off the Black Army for the last few years. Aoyama had been elevated even as a singles but Kumi felt elevated here too. 

I did see a bit more of an advantage by Aoyama but some of that might have been due to the ten minute cut. Aoyoma had pressed her advantage hard trying to hit her back press off the top rope (rope not turnbuckle) and top turnbuckle but neither worked and she had controlled the arm. When we came back from the cut, Kumi was briefly in control. Then, though, Aoyama went to the leg and really did a number on it. When she had the figure four on and then Kumi did finally get to the ropes, she kicked the ref away a couple of times. That’s how heated all of this was, babyface vs babyface or no.

But all of this allowed Kumi to come back and attack Aoyama’s leg and get her own figure four. I thought her selling was quite good as she took back over right until they both decided to drop it for a bit (though Kumi was able to stay in it during Aoyama’s last press by sniping at the leg once more in desperation). Aoyama hit the Queen Rocket for a very dramatic 18 count where Kumi just barely made it back in but by then time was almost up and Kumi survived one last suplex and it ended up a draw. The cut was kind of brutal here since it was one third of the match but I thought what we did get was one of the better singles matches we’d seen in a while.