80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Masami! Jaguar!

Volume 3   

13. Mimi Hagiwara sings 'Broadway Dream'

K: Matt got to this first and made me chuckle that he keeps reviewing the singing segments, not something I ever intended anyone to do! It’s just part of AJW. You have to watch it. If anything my curation has significantly downplayed the proportion of 80s AJW TV that consisted of wrestlers singing. Part of it was to try and sell records (these songs were all released as singles), but I also think they match up well with their in-ring personas and aren’t just random songs.

MD: I don’t know? What do we say about this. It’s weird to see Mimi in red and not white. She’s more expressive selling than singing but she’s clearly good at this? This was disco-tinged in a way I may have expected a year or two earlier. I got nothing. I’m tone deaf. 

14. Devil Masami vs. Jaguar Yokota (WWWA Singles Title) 7/19/82 

K: We don’t have much info on attendances for this era of AJW but I’d make an educated guess that this was the biggest show of the year. It’s Ota Ward and it looked pretty packed. We’re missing a lot of the TVs before this one unfortunately. We do know that Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori successfully defended the tag belts against Leilani Kai & Velvet McIntyre in a show shortly before this. They beat Princess Victoria & Wendi Richter in the match before this one, plus earlier in the show Lioness Asuka beat Masked Yu to win the AJW Title (which had been vacated by Devil Masami earlier). 

Right from the introductions you can hear that there’s sizeable contingent in the crowd who are cheering for Devil Masami. Anyone who tells you fans cheering for heels is something that only started recently needs to brush up :) It’s worth noting not just because it’s unusual, but I also think it informs how the match plays out. If the reason for Devil getting cheered is some fans liked how violent and ‘badass’ she comes across, this got undermined by Jaguar Yokota really pulling out that side of her tonight, which was a good thing.

Devil’s more crazed shenanigans are put on the backburner tonight, it feels like her and Jaguar really want to deliver more of a classic style wrestling match. They distinguish themselves not by Devil cheating as such, but the different way the transitions play out. Firstly, we have them go to the mat, where Jaguar is pretty dominant in locking Devil up in various leg-focused holds (which Devil sells with excellent facial expressions). Devil switches things by powering out of a butterfly suplex position. Later again when she’s on the defensive it’s because Jaguar has her in an unusual submission where she’s pulling both Devil’s shoulders back behind her like she’s about to do a really big sitting chest press but is overdoing it… but Devil has the brute strength to power out and take Jaguar down. On the other hand, whenever Jaguar takes the advantage, it’s by using some combination of speed and technique, for instance when she leaps at Devil off an Irish Whip and rolls her up into a pinning predicament. 

Power vs. technique, but also there’s an added malice to Devil’s offense, for instance in how she slams Jaguar face first into the match, like she’s adding a bit of gratuitous violence/humiliation into it. She’s also the first one to take things to the outside, where she throws Jaguar into the chairs. It’s such a ubiquitous spot I sometimes think you need to think of Joshi match structure as shine - heat - throw into chairs - hope - comeback or something. It works as a signifier that we’ve moved onto a new section of the match.

Jaguar gets back into the ring and has an angry vibe about her. She quite quickly gets the advantage when they start a Greco-Roman style struggle, which you’d normally think would favour Devil, but Jaguar’s able to use her leverage to flip Devil over in a kind of monkey flip move and then goes to work on her. She’s so aggressive and vicious at going after Devil’s leg that Devil actually flees to the outside limping! There’s a big roar from the crowd supporting Jaguar here, it’s as noisy a crowd as we’ve had in a while. She gets a reprisal in and throws Devil into the outside chairs.

The big criticism at this point has to be about Devil mostly dropping selling her leg after the restart, or after a minute or so. I don’t think it’s accurate to say she drops it entirely, she does subtly walk a bit unevenly on it for a little bit and when she has Jaguar up in the military press she does a movement just as she drops her that her leg was about to give out if she held up Jaguar a moment more. I’d put this in the category of it would have elevated the match if Devil sold her leg more, but it’s not egregious enough to actively drag things down. We’re also just hitting a climax here which is exciting enough that I don’t really notice unless I’m really paying attention. 

Also, Jaguar hits and OVER THE TOP ROPE dive onto Devil on the outside. I’m pretty sure she’s only the 2nd woman - after Tomi Aoyama - to ever successfully hit that move. Puts over that you’re watching a special match when something like that gets pulled out.

We’re not getting a winner here. We’ll have to wait another year for that. Double countout it is. Thematically, the way they executed this works. Jaguar has tapped into her most vicious side and - unusually for her - is showing a lot of emotion and expressiveness in dishing out punishing to Devil. She actually looks gleeful at times. It all gets out of control when she’s swinging a chair around at her as Devil gets her cane to try to fight back, but despite that being her element, they come across as evenly matched at this. A flaw is Jaguar’s chair shots are a bit weak, although I may be looking at them with post-ECW eyes, and it is a positive that wrestlers didn’t seem to need to actually scramble their opponent’s brains to get a reaction from a chairshot.

Excellent match and one of the best of the early 80s for AJW.

****1/4

MD: Long title match between the top face and the top heel and a great way to end the disc. What clearly stands out in this relative to Jaguar’s predecessors, and a theme for this disc in general, is just how much she took the fight to Devil. Despite being carried out by her faction, they would be a non-factor here, only intervening when everything broke down at the end and maybe acting as moral support when Devil was hurt the worst. Jaguar had enough of Masami’s crap and she was going to take no more. 

While Devil tried to attack her at the start, she turned it back on her with a cross body block off the second rope and after trading a few holds (including a deep tapitia/cavernaria variation by Devil), Jaguar honed in on the leg. That meant a brutal figure four, with the two selling huge in what seemed to be oppressive heat. It meant wrapping the leg around the rope and kicking at it. It meant her short leg scissors. It meant a toehold with her knee dug into Jaguar’s leg. Jaguar sold it with her usual expressiveness and Jaguar put over the effort like the most important thing in the world.

Which, of course, meant that Devil would drop it completely as she headbutted her way back into a comeback, immediately locking in a tapitia that used the leg like nothing had happened. Bit of a shame, not because you have to sell religiously but because it was both the meat of the match and so well done while it was happening.

That said, the bombs they bridged to next were compelling.They both had a lot of stuff and some good transitions as well. Jaguar flipped through a tilt a whirl backbreaker attempt. Devil reversed a second tombstone. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, Jaguar was going to get her after bridging up out of a pin and finally hitting her double underhook and belly to back suplexes, but Devil survived.

They spilled to the outside to finish the match (having visited it once or twice already) with Jaguar again getting fed up and launching an assault on Devil with a chair. Devil came back with the kendo stick and they jousted for a while before taking out the ref and forcing the match to be thrown out. It was still pretty satisfying even if they clearly left a lot more for the future. We tend to not hold the dropped limbwork against them because they just hadn’t mentally worked their way through that sort of longterm consequence but here it did particularly grate. Still, the good was exceptionally good.