80s Joshi on Wednesday: Kumano! Ito! Jaguar! Noriyo!

Disc 2 

11. Hiroe Ito & Mami Kumano vs. Jaguar Yokota & Noriyo Tateno 8/81

K: Black Pair and Jumping Bomb Angels are Joshi tag teams from totally different eras, so the biggest novelty of this match is that their careers overlapped just enough to see one of each team against each other. By 'just enough' I mean this is Noriyo Tateno's TV debut and, from the footage we have available, the last in-ring appearance of Mami Kumano. Noriyo is part of the class of 1981, and early in her career gets pushed as an understudy of Jaguar Yokota (or to be more blunt about it,  punching bag/pin-eater in tag matches).

It's also the first time that Jaguar Yokota is now 'Jaguar' rather than Rimi. So I can stop worrying about accidentally calling her Jaguar in these reviews. The other wrestler here is Hiroe Ito. She's in Black Gundan faction, part of the class of 1980 and will later get the ring name 'Wild Kazuki', and pretty soon after that will be put in a mask to wrestle as 'Tarantula'.

The start is kinda funny as Mami squares up to Jaguar, making you think she's actually gonna wrestle her, but then just charges at poor Noriyo on the apron and drags her in to beat her up. Signalling from the start that the heel gameplan here is to target Noriyo and act like Jaguar isn't even there. The beatdown is very vicious and very loud. Kumano and Ito are both big screamers but in slightly different ways (yes I'm gonna analyse Joshi screams). Kumano comes across more out of control maniac in her screaming, whereas Ito feels more like she's just really exerting herself trying really hard to hurt her opponents, and her scream isn't a high-pitched so it's not so grating on the ears.

The hierarchy and dynamic is pretty clear here. Jaguar is way better than everyone else, she's almost able to fight both the heels on her own if she can keep things in the ring. But it doesn't play out like that. She's either being thrown to the outside so the heels can target Noriyo, or we get some crazy fighting on the outside where Mami Kumano in particular is causing mayhem. It's kinda funny how unpredictable she is, even stuff that isn't technically impressive like how she just kept kicking at Jaguar on the other side of the announce table while standing on it. You'd think after the first couple she'd done enough but she wouldn't stop. She's just all instinct. Noriyo took a funny bump into the chairs, knocking over a bystander in the process.

They gave Noriyo a little bit of shine when Jaguar got control of things in the ring and actually tagged her in to help out. Noriyo did a few single-legged dropkicks which didn't look that good, but I guess they didn't really need to. Jaguar was getting pretty big reactions earlier on with her hip attacks. Big relative to the time period, despite the reputation of "80s Joshi", 1981 AJW crowds really aren't that loud at all.

Noriyo is left in the ring a little too long though, so we get the predictable result. In some classic early AJW they cut away to brawling on the floor during a pinfall so we don't actually see the 3 count. I don't understand how that happens on a taped show. Good match though. The kind of 10 minute tv tag that achieves everything it set out to do.

***

MD: Our last look at Mami Kumano and her cool leather jacket with one arm cut off. Our first look at Noriyo Tateno. Ships in the night. It’s not like I’ve never seen a Jumping Bomb Angels match. And I had vague working knowledge of Masami and Yokota coming into this. I certainly have a good sense of Chigusa and Dump and all that’s coming, but I did come into this footage a lot blinder than you might think. I’d probably never seen a full Jackie Sato match, or Mimi Hagiwara or Nancy Kumi or the Queen Angels. I certainly hadn’t seen the Black Pair. I have now seen more of them than any other joshi, quite probably, as we’ve gone through years of footage comprehensively. So it’s been a bit of a hit to my weekly watching to lose Tomi or Jackie and now we’re losing Mami Kumano who I’ve probably connected to as much as anyone in this footage. One last romp on the way out though.

The commentary tells us that Tateno had done the high jump and was good at swimming, so important stuff here as always. Anyway, after a failed attempt for handshakes by Yokota and Tateno, Kumani ambushed them and took right over. Ito stood out early, dragging Tateno’s eyes across the mat and jamming her elbow right in it. Good, vicious stuff. She jammed a suplex later and draped a knee right over Tateno’s throat, so she had gotten the correct Black Army tutelage. All that and a stomach claw, including in the tree of woe too. Kumano likewise did her usual stuff, including ramming Tateno into the post from the apron, which everyone at ringside took very seriously. She went for a cavernaria just by yanking Tateno’s hair too but that was broken up by Yokota quickly. And yes, we got to see her do her dangling Brody King style choke at least one last time too. The last big thing she did was stand on the commentary table and cause chaos while the commentator’s voice rose in pitch accordingly. Hot tag came after some heel miscommunication but the finish was Ito reversing a whip causing Yokota to hit a body press on Tateno. A fun changing of the guard of sorts in a way. Mami Kumano will be missed.