80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Ikeshita!

Disc 2 

6. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Yumi Ikeshita (All Pacific Title) 2/25/81

This was a major show, it's hard to know for sure but I'd guess it was the biggest AJW show of 1981. They have some retired stars providing guest commentary. Also on this show was Chino Sato's retirement ceremony and the team of Ayumi Hori & Nancy Kumi defeating Devil Masami & Mami Kumano to win the vacated WWWA Tag Team Titles. It's quite annoying that Yumi Ikeshita has been All Pacific Champion for over a year yet this is the first footage we have of her defending the title. We know she defended it against Mami Kumano on 12/17/80 (at the same venue Jackie Sato won the WWWA Singles Title tournament the day before) and went to a time limit draw with Rimi Yokota on 8/8/80. Both those shows appear to have been broadcast but footage has just never surfaced online. Oh well. 

Mimi starts this swinging. I mean literally, she does almost nothing but throw punches in the opening portion of the match while the commentary puts over her 'boxing style'. That Ikeshita reacts by dodging and throwing some punches of her own makes this feel a lot more sporting than her matches usually do. Makes me suspect we're missing a big part of the picture with her other title defences being missing as the contrast with this and her 'regular' matches reminds me how Stan Hansen would work more technically and slower-paced when wrestling for the Triple Crown.

We later get a long section where they're both repeatedly trying to get the other in a figure four. There's one where it's counted by rolling over, but rather than both lying on the mat they've both got their legs high in the air with their faces to mat, I don't remember ever seeing a figure four end up like that. Mimi rolls out to the outside, takes her time to regain her compromise and very carefully creeps backs into the ring, and goes for a figure four again! Wasn't expecting that to keep going as it felt like Mimi was conveying she was seriously thinking about what tactics she was gonna try next. Yumi gets out of this one, but Mimi turns it into a catapult before she can properly escape and sends her launching out of the ring. I thought Ikeshita bumped really well for that, it's a bit of a silly move but she made it look about as believable as I've ever seen. 

Skip a bit, and they do the thing. Mimi drops Ikeshita flat on the mat, turns so she's standing facing horizontally over Ikeshita's body, and falls onto her flat for a pin attempt, which Ikeshita very quickly bridges out of. A minute later, Ikeshita does the same thing, but I notice Mimi cheats a bit as she already had her shoulder up a split second before the pin connected.
It's one of those matches.

Then almost right after, Mimi does a small package and Ikeshita gets counted for maybe 1 before she gets her shoulder so far off the mat that she's practically on her side, but the referee keeps counting to 3 anyway. Mimi wins, looks as shocked as Shawn Michaels in Montreal and Ikeshita just immediately storms off to the back.

Well it's hard to give much of an assessment to a match which finishes like that. For one thing this felt like it had at least another 5 minutes to go, it had been just about ‘good’ up to this point but nothing they’d established so far had paid off in any meaningful way so the finish kinda killed it. As far as I know no one involved has ever done an interview explaining what went down there, but yeah, obvious bullshit. In 1981 Mimi Hagiwara was drawing and Yumi Ikeshita wasn't, speculate away.

MD: This followed well with the two biggest in-ring changes between the 70s and 80s that I’ve noticed so far. The first is that the babyfaces were better at fighting back and pushing back against the heels. That happened almost immediately here as Mimi started with her punching, got tossed over the top in response, but then pulled Ikeshita out and she beat her around ringside until Ikeshita was able to fight back and outdo her there. 

The second is that there’s more familiarity in general. More reversals, more comeuppance for going back to the well. We saw that here too as Mimi went for her flying cross chop early but Ikeshita was able to sidestep/swat it away and take over from there. Mimi would get it later though. I thought the transitions were good overall and stood out in this match, things like Mimi getting back into the ring and ducking a punch to put on a cobra twist or Ikeshita turning a bodyscissors right into a crab in a very cool reversal. 

What hasn’t changed (and what might never change?) is that no one set them aside and put the idea in their head that if a hold is important in the match or if a body part is focused on, then maybe, just maybe, it can have some long term selling within the narrative of the match. The middle of this match is dominated by battles over the figure four and the battles are absolutely excellent. Ikeshita tries everything to put it on, advancing again and again and working different approaches. Once she gets it, Mimi’s selling and emoting is best in the world stuff for 1980. Then she turns it over and they fight over that, ending in the two of them bridged up from their bellies in an image I’ve never seen before but that I bought to be excruciating in the moment. Ikeshita followed her out after the break and continued to work over the leg on a chair. What followed was Mimi rushing back into the ring and putting a figure-four on herself and it was a great moment but that, and what followed with Ikeshita completely tossed any long-term or even medium-term (or even short-term?) selling out the window. I tend to forgive it in most of these matches because it’s just not a hallmark of the style and I’m seeing this as more of a historical journey than a critical one as we build towards the peak years, but when things are done so well, I really would enjoy it more if there’s consequence and payoff to the excellent work.

What did remain was the struggle between the two down the stretch and what did pay off, at least to a degree, was the sense of struggle: pressing each other’s shoulders down, bridging out of pins, etc. It led to a strange finish where Mimi got a small package out of nowhere but Ikeshita clearly had her shoulder up and Mimi seemed as surprised as anyone that she won. A lot to like in here overall, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted and the finish was strange.