80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jumbo! Yukari! Devil! Tarantula!

Volume 5

1. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jumbo Hori & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles Best Of 3 Series, Match #3) 6/13/83 

K: The clip at the start was fun, but really there was no way an AJW-AꓭBA crossover was missing the cut. 

So here we are at the 3rd match of the best of 3 series for the tag titles. They did a good job of making the 2nd match feel different and a sequel to the first, and they pull it off again here even if in the end, it’s not very satisfying.

I thought the opening of the match was quite striking in its extreme minimalism. Devil Masami and Jumbo Hori square up to start things, look like they’re about to start grappling a few times but back out at the last second. Looking like they were trying to find an opening against the other but then seeing that one wasn’t there. Eventually Devil just decides she isn’t going to bother with this anymore and tags in Tarantula without any action at all having happened. They teased a Devil vs. Jumbo showdown but what we get is more of the usual Devil & Tarantula dirtily double-teaming an isolated opponent.

When Tarantula’s in she doesn’t just show off her cool rolling into a dropkick move, but has a roll into a headbutt in her arsenal now. The Dynamite Girls have more luck against her than Devil and have a gameplan of targeting her knee. This begins in the 1st fall and actually becomes more important as the match progresses (prolonged limbwork/selling not exactly being early 80s AJW’s strongpoint). 

Devil Masami appears to have been watching her Dynamite Kid tapes, as that falling headbutt off the top looked very familiar. I might have to do a Top 300 Devil Masami moves video to showcase how vast her arsenal is.

The 1st fall felt a bit basic and could have done with a bit more fight, but at least it gave them somewhere to go for the 2nd. Tarantula is selling the knee work from the 1st fall, hobbling a bit as she gets into the ring off the tag and when she’s hitting an Irish Whip. Again she’s taking the brunt of the Dynamite Girls’ offense, including Yukari Omori spinning her off the ropes and dropping her straight on her head. Might have been an accident but it fit the narrative of the match that she get a bit more vicious. They pay off the kneework by having the finish of the 2nd fall be Omori hitting a Vader Bomb directly onto Tarantula’s leg rather than across the chest as normal, and then she hits a big piledriver for the pin.

The 3rd fall is where things get really interesting. If you haven’t seen the 1/4/82 tag then firstly how dare you undermine this project by watching things out of order erm sorry I mean maybe it’d help if you at least went back and checked out our write ups? The big drama of the 3rd fall in that match was Omori’s partner being taken out injured, leaving Omori forced to defend the tag titles in a 2 vs. 1 situation against Devil & Tarantula. In a karmatic twist, tonight Tarantula goes down injured and has to be removed, and rather than forfeit the titles, Devil tries to fight 1 vs. 2 against the Dynamite Girls. Whether they were deliberately playing this as OMORI’S REVENGE or not I don’t know, but fans used to craft all kinds of long-term narratives over All Japan matches many years apart so I’m certainly allowed my turn here. It actually works that when they restart as a 1 vs. 2, Jumbo Hori actually plays by the rules. It’s only when Devil gets her in a Romero Special that Omori storms the ring to not only break it up, but to then do an attempted mob beatdown on Devil. The match then just completely breaks down as Omori just wants to take this opportunity to beat the hell out of Devil, until eventually Jumbo gets a vicious look on her face like she’s started to enjoy this and decides “ah screw it yeah let’s just kill Devil she deserves this.” 

A lot of heel wrestlers would struggle in this situation. How are you supposed to be the heel when you’re fighting in a handicap match and at least 1 of your opponents is flagrantly ignoring even the rules of handicap matches as she just wants to kick your ass in an unfair situation? I thought it was really impressive how Devil never really came across as sympathetic in any of this. Firstly, she gets help from the Devil Legion seconds on the outside, so it’s not that much of handicap. But even more, she still just acts evil. She’s an impressive fighter for sure, but it comes across like she’s channelling some unnatural demonic energy to even the odds. There’s a hell of a lot of headbutts being thrown and some choking and biting as well when they’re going crazy outside. Devil even manages to hit a big revenge piledriver on Omori (see end of 2nd fall) before the time limit expires, so we don’t get a finish. Very impressive Devil performance in difficult circumstances, but the match being quite strange makes it memorable at least.

By the next time we see them, these two teams will have had another title match which the Dynamite Girls win, but we don’t have that match unfortunately.

***1/2

MD: There’s a brief clip of the babyfaces taking a boat to the next show in Hokkaido before this. Not a ton to say about it except for you get glimpses of all of their personalities. They do a funny bit as it turns about food and Jaguar tells them all they have to train only for the interviewer saying that Jaguar was talking about food too secretly. They are very young. In engaging with the text, sometimes I overlook that too much. It’s remarkable they were able to do so much at their age. 

This was the third match of the series. It’s interesting, I’ll say that. Both teams work together extremely well by this point. There are some great tandem moves from Devil and Tarantula, double cross chop/headbutts or dropkicks, and of course the way that they just control the action if someone gets too close to the corner. They rode that to victory in the first fall pretty soundly, though not without taking things to the floor. There’s one table bump by Omori that’s brutal since the table gives out on her. Dynamite Girls have a dynamic (it’s true, sorry) sequence of moves to win the second fall after Jumbo catches Tarantula for her swinging bear hug slam. One bomb after the other, some literal. Just an amazing flow to it. They finish the sequence with a vicious Omori tombstone on Tarantula.

That brings the match to a halt as Tarantula can’t go on. Devil (and the Dynamite Girls) agree to go 2 vs 1 but Devil (after throwing headbutts at everyone like a whirlwind) immediately brings her minions into it so it’s not really 2 vs 1 at all. She starts throwing wild chairs too and the commission threatens to throw out the match. That leads to everyone bullying the ref and them restarting things for a by-the-rules 5 minute period. Devil hangs in there best she can (heavily protected) but even after a tombstone of her own she can’t get the pin before the time ends. This sets up one more match later on. That we don’t have but the Dynamite Girls win by TKO due to Tarantula’s hurt leg. They finally get the belts on them but this was an almost absurd way to protect the heels (Devil especially) throughout. That’s not to say the action wasn’t very good though even if it’s all anti-climactic since we don’t get to see the title change.