80s Joshi on Wednesday: Tarantula! Mimi! Matsumoto! Yu! Chigusa! Lioness!

Volume 5     

11. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Tarantula (Double Retirement Match) 4/1/84 

K: Farewell to Mimi Hagiwara and Tarantula. Both of them were already getting phased out towards the end of 1983 for inevitable reasons; Tarantula had a recurring knee injury, and Mimi was 28. Tarantula had a memorable 18 month run in 1982 - mid 1983 teaming with Devil Masami, but Devil kept improving over time and Tarantula didn't, and before long she felt like the least interesting wrestler in the stable she was supposed to be the #2 in. 

Mimi is the bigger loss as it would have been great to see how she'd fit into new era that was emerging; she was a much more of a big sympathy selling babyface than anyone else on the roster. The closest wrestler to her was probably Noriyo Tateno, but she Noriyo was an every girl type whereas Mimi was a glamorous star, which brought a different dynamic to her matches. She had an elegant, aesthetically pleasing moveset which gelled well with her it girl presentation. After retiring she went on to marry Yoshitaka Matsunaga, the son of 60s Joshi wrestler Yuriko Amami and nephew of the AJW Matsunaga brothers (they had another brother who didn't work in wrestling). Tragically for her, she later discovered that she was unable to have children, possibly caused by injuries suffered from wrestler.

There's not much to say about the match itself. It was a 5 minute exhibition where they did all their signature moves one last time without there being much psychology to it, and of course it went to a time limit draw. It was cool to see Tarantula hit the double forward roll dropkick, but Mimi leapfrogged the 2nd one, but Tarantula countered that into a rollup. They both seemed happy enough in the retirement ceremony, didn't say much worth noting really. I did enjoy Devil very aggressively saying goodbye to Mimi on her way out though, half-expected her to give her one last caning. 

MD: What to say here? I think my single favorite wrestler in the footage so far is Mimi. Maybe she’s not as good as Jaguar or Devil, but I think it’s closer than rep would have it. In some ways, it’s a cheat. She was years older even if she wasn’t necessarily years more experienced. She had the acting background which she leveraged hard even in her early days in the ring, just one of the great sellers of, well, pro wrestling in general. Incredible expressiveness either while taking a beating or promising revenge on the floor. By 81-82 she really seemed to put the pieces together and she’s got a lot of “stuff,” tons of moves. 

I have less to say about Tarantula. She sort of falls off the scene (presumably due to knee injuries as they were building) and Yamazaki took her role with Devil in 83. But it was a good act, the two of them together. I half wonder why they couldn’t have cycled her in as the masked manager for Dump and co (well I think it’s Rossy, right, so I guess that’s why). She was credible and her rolls were better than most rolls in wrestling.

There’s an air of defiance here to start. Mimi had announced her retirement after a very cool Jaguar/Mimi vs Crush Gals match a couple of months before, but here she comes out wild, hitting the Mimi Special electric chair suplex twice and then a dive right to start. When they get back into the ring, Tarantula hits her rolling dropkick and a pretty clumsy roll into a sunset flip before things settle down. I sort of wanted one last flurry out of Mimi before the end but she’s mostly surviving Tarantula as the bell rings at the five or six minute mark to end the exhibition.

Post-match, Tarantula unmasks and they both speak to the crowd before walking through the other wrestlers. It’s sad but not quite as sad as some of the others we’ve seen so far. Mimi was older and Tarantula seemed happy to have her mask off and to show her face and at least they didn’t make them sing.

12. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka vs. Dump Matsumoto & Masked Yu (WWWA Tag Team Titles #1 Contendership) 4/1/84

K: Firstly sorry for the appalling video quality. The story of this bit of footage is an anonymous account just uploaded it in this quality to DailyMotion one day, someone ripped it before the account disappeared, and no other copy of it has ever surfaced afaik. So if you're reading this and have a better quality version at home, GET IN CONTACT.

This is the first real Crush Gals vs. Dump & Minion match. Boy oh boy, the levels of heat here are unbelievable compared to the last time these same wrestlers had a tag match almost exactly a year prior. Dump & Masked Yu come out again with the Masked Manager and feel like the most hated heels ever. The Masked Manager starts acting all badass trying to threaten fans and the announce crew, but something about him is a bit off. His demeanour just isn't very intimidating and Dump is far more effective at this same stuff. I don't think he's a good addition to her act. The Crush Gals have their arms around each other playing best friends, looking like they're bracing themselves to go on a terrifying rollercoaster or something. If the intention here is more to portray a brutal mugging and assault than a wrestling match then, well you have to say they succeeded. There's no gradual buildup to tempers flaring until we reach the 'go to the outside and get thrown into chairs' segment, that just happens right at the start and it's a big brawl from then on with weapons being used. Dump has what looks like a metal pipe (I'm watching about 5 pixels of it so hard to tell) and tries the hide the object game in front of a referee who doesn't seem to be looking very hard.

The crowd is hot and constantly has this sound of outrage and anger in them, like they can't believe what they're seeing. We get some big A-SU-KA chants (she feels more over than Chigusa tonight)) when she puts up some fight against the onslaught, but it's all too much and after a couple of big Dump lariats and a questionable 3 count, she drops the first fall. After this Chigusa gets on the mic and does a big mid-match angry promo (one of her specialities), quality is too poor decipher what she's saying or what's being said by officials, but it results in the referee being replaced.

I think what makes these Dump matches work is how structurally subversive they are compared to the rest of the company, even the usual babyface vs. heel matches. You never know when an escalation is going to come, Dump can pull out anything at any moment and it doesn't need to be proportionate or specifically in retaliation for anything. She's just nuts. Her offense feels like extended cut-offs after cut-offs. If a lesser wrestler attempted to wrestler like this (not much need for an 'if' there, Dump inspired countless copycats) it wouldn't work at all, the matches would just feel like a mess. So why does it work with her? I think firstly, you can't understate how massively charismatic Dump is. Similar to how The Rock could pull off the goofiest lines just because it's him, Dump is so totally believable as an evil-incarnate maniac that her working such a chaotic style is just her fitting the part. I also think there is a little bit of unconventional structure in there, she has a up-down-up-down rhythm to her demonic behaviour, and times it well so that just as you start to think you've seen the worst of it, she pulls out some new unhinged shenanigans. 

The only way they could have made the heel team look more terrifying here would be to have them take 2 straight falls, but I guess they wanted to protect the Crush Gals a bit. So we get a DQ for the 2nd fall when the Masked Manager storms the ring and holds the babyfaces in place so his team can hit them with top rope moves (Dump hits a big top rope splash!), but since they made a big deal of changing the referees you can't really expect him to not DQ them for that. I think the Masked Manager gets ejected for this (though he comes back later), masked wrestlers have been very busy today, as right after the 3rd fall starts Asuka pulls out the scissors Dump used previously to cut Chigusa's hair (I believe that's the first time Dump used scissors) and cuts up Masked Yu's masked! And that's the end of her masked wrestler career. What a crazy scene. Asuka's fightback is for naught though, as she very unfortunately injures her own leg doing a giant swing (maybe UnMasked Yu was just too big for her), her and Chigusa get beat up badly some more (Chigusa is bleeding) and the referee just calls the match for the heels before even more chaos breaks out with the seconds getting involved. There are huge Devil chants (the fans pronounce it like 'DE-BI-RU") when she starts swinging. Dump actually backs down a bit when Devil gets in and they had an interesting staredown, Devil is not afraid of her, she just looks at her with disdain and Dump seems to defiantly look her in the eye and stare back but doesn't fight or anything. They have a unique bond going on. 

Heat, chaos, violence, injustice, camaraderie in face of it all. Great spectacle and match, you can tell at this point I think that the boom times are coming.

****1/4

MD: It’s funny. In watching the last few matches, I thought to myself that the conventional wisdom was off and surely the Devil/Dump angle was what set things on fire, because it was so hot and Devil turning was so impactful. There was so much meat on that bone. But this felt like them moving pieces three steps forward and it was the daring to hotshot so much that really put things over the top. So much happens here.

For one, the match starts with Asuka having her arm around Chigusa. I’m not saying they’re cowering but it didn’t look like she was holding Chigusa back either. It made them more relatable to the fans, somehow. It added a sense of dread. And then when things started, they didn’t let up. 

Dump and Yu steamrolled them. This introduced the scissors as a weapon. They won the first fall handedly. Then in the second, after Asuka tried to fight back, the Crush Gals got swept under again and the scissors started to be used to actually cut a slightly bloody Chigusa’s hair. It felt like a major escalation when things were still percolating with Devil. The manager came in to help hold the Crush Gals for these vertical splashes off the top from Yu and Dump and the DQ that followed felt like a mercy since Chigusa and Lioness were beaten. They’d get their revenge in the third fall though with Lioness hitting the giant swing and then using the scissors to unmask Yu (again, massive escalation; they just gave it away!). Everything devolved into absolute chaos with Dump and Yu having clear advantage, even as Devil finally came out (in her own color, blue, not the red of the babyfaces or the black of the heels). I think it ended up being thrown to Dump and Yu but it was hard to tell. I can tell you that at one point midway through trash was getting thrown in which we’ve never seen chronologically, not even in the era of the heel ref and the US invasion.

Again, they moved the ball three steps down the field here. The fear. The scissors. The haircut. The mask going off. Devil getting involved. The heels winning. Blood. It was a lot all at once but it clearly worked for them. One last note. The VQ was quite rough on this one, but by mid way through, given the violence and chaos and comeback, I had gotten acclimated and completely forgotten about it.