80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Devil!

Volume 3  

5. Devil Masami vs. Mimi Hagiwara (WWWA Singles Title Next Challenger Tournament Final) 3/7/82

K: So this is the state of play going into this match. Monster Ripper just returned to AJW, she tagged with Wild Kazuki in the match before this one defeating Jumbo Hori & Nancy Kumi. She has a title match against Jaguar Yokota booked at the next big AJW show on April 7th at Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium, which they're already promoting. This match is the finals of a #1 contenders tournament, but that title shot will be against the winner of Monster Ripper vs. Jaguar Yokota at the next big AJW show after that, which is July 19th at Ota Ward. GOt that?

This has one of the wildest starts to a match you'll ever see. Right at the bell Devil grabs her cane and charges at Mimi swinging. Mimi flees to the outside with Devil chasing after her, Mimi picks up a chair and they have a medieval duel on the outside swinging cane and chair at each other. It's kinda funny when the bell rings, I hadn't noticed the match hasn't formally started yet.

That crazy start makes everything feel high energy and heated as they start wrestling in the ring. That and Devil's disturbing yells as she takes delight in maiming poor Mimi. This is hardly original insight here but yes what makes this rivalry work is you've got an all-time great offensive wrestler beating up a great sympathetic seller. Less talked about though is Mimi's got some great offense of her own. Her first big comeback (that doesn't last long) is just her throwing flurries of punches that knock Devil down. She doesn't scream 'great puncher' when you look at her and her skinny arms but she actually makes it believable with how much conviction she throws into them. 

Devil has a cool hold where she wraps up Mimi's arm in a sitting armlock, and then does forward rolls to clinch it in more, like she's countering a rollup but she just rolls all the way through. This is a start of a really good heat segment where Devil deploys a new method of torturing Mimi's arm every 30 seconds. A bit later on she's got Mimi's arm wrapped up in the ropes, contorting it around while her Devil Legion goons are getting cheap shots in. 

Mimi does a bit of prolonged arm selling that gives Devil's heat section feel like it had consequences for the whole match. When she puts Devil in the figure four she lifts herself up with only the good arm instead of the usual two. She goes for her special backdrop but isn't able to hit it properly with her arm hurt. To correct this injustice caused by the interference earlier, Lioness Asuka runs in and bodyslams Devil while Mimi goes up top to hit her flying knee, but the referee won't count the pin. Can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but AJW refs are very reluctant to call for DQs, so they'll do stuff like refuse to count a pin if someone just did something illegal rather than DQ them.

The finish is Mimi getting beaten up by Devil & goons on the outside and is counted out. It's a fine idea but the execution was lacking. Firstly, the babyfaces are completely ineffective at stopping the heel seconds from attacking her and it makes them look a bit useless, secondly it looked like Mimi had got into the ring in time but was counted out anyway. I don't think we needed a double injustice when her being attacked by Devil Legion already achieved that, so that just made the referee look bent. But still this was a very good match, almost great, and now we have Devil Masami world title match to look forward to.

***3/4




MD: This was the finals of a tournament and there’d be a big trophy at the end and everything. And I suppose a title shot? Devil had left her cane on the top rope as she was getting her robe off. The second she got it off, she grabbed the cane and charged and we got a fun bit of dueling with Mimi snatching a chair, before things broke down. Duel is actually a good word for the early goings here. It felt almost like a joust with each wrestler flying at one another simultaneously to see who would get the hair/head and whip the other down. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it done quite this way and it was neat. There was much more of a sense of urgency to it than some of the face offs we see today.

Match opened up when Devil pried off an arm and really went to work with it. There was a nice long short arm scissor sequence where Mimi was able to roll her over but not do much else. Devil also used pumphandles over her shoulder but she decided to drag Mimi across the ring at the same time and it looked brutal. And of course they wrapped her arm in the ropes and everything broke down again, Mimi’s close-up emotive selling stealing the show. Mimi did escape and took Devil down to put on a figure-four. The selling never lasts too long in any of these matches but I really appreciated Mimi trying to manage the figure four with just one arm. While it got broken up by Devil’s goons, Mimi had some help too and after an assisted body slam came off the top but the ref wouldn’t count it due to the interference.

Beginning of the end here was Mimi flying off the ropes and tragically missing a cross body, landing on her arm and rolling to the floor. This broke down once again but this time half the seconds were keeping her from getting back in to beat the count and the other half were trying to push her back in. Devil just stood there, feet towards the rope, to block her and draw the count out. The commentary treated it a bit like a loophole in the rules, and Devil won the big trophy in a very unsatisfying way. That didn’t stop her from blowing big kisses to the crowd though. Mimi is really one of the most interesting and emotive sellers of all time. I don’t think that’s a crazy statement.