80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Richter!

Volume 4  

3. Jaguar Yokota vs. Wendi Richter (WWWA Singles Title) - 10/5/82

K: This is all long before I was born so I don’t have the same level of interest in seeing the famous American women wrestlers in Japan that others will. For example I’ve probably seen more of Leilani Kai wrestling Japanese opponents than anyone else. Wendi Richter’s a slight exception in that I first saw her when I was exploring the early Hulkamania period and hadn’t gotten into Japanese wrestling yet. She’s an interesting personality for being pushed as such a big star in 1984/85, just from watching the shows you’d think she was a bigger than than anyone in the company other than Hogan and Andre. Of course that run would end quite abruptly. It’s also hard to tell how good she was from watching that run as her matches were mostly just Moolahisms. I’m not the expert so there may be some standouts that I’m missing/forgetting, but from what I’ve seen so far, if you want to see Richter at something close to her potential, this is the match you should watch.

Wendi works as a very skillful technical wrestler here, and she has the legit skill to pull it off effectively and make it entertaining. Jaguar is usually dominant at this sort of thing so her even going 50/50 is putting her over in a way. She fights a little dirty sometimes, for example the moments where she throws Jaguar throat-first onto the ropes. But her most heelish trait, and her undoing, is that she’s so arrogant. Constantly stopping to strut, show off to the crowd and complain to the referee about non-existent affronts. She’ll get the advantage on Jaguar and take her down, but then rather than really press it, she’ll stop to do a pose in the ring to taunt the crowd, which gives Jaguar the time to recover and hit her with a quick dropkick.

If the narrative here is supposed to be that Wendi was initially underestimating Jaguar, I think they pay it off well when about 2/3rds in Wendi offers Jaguar a handshake, with a very “ok I respect you now” facial expression that I don’t think we’re meant to take as completely earnest. Jaguar’s not gonna allow it to break up her momentum anyway and continues on her offensive stretch. Her figure four looks really great. It feels a bit deflating (if you’re rooting for her) that Wendi is able to - with a lot of struggle - break free of it.

There’s a very cool move where Jaguar locks Wendi’s arm behind her back, and then walks up her from the side to lock in a submission. It doesn’t go well for her in the end as Wendi throws her off eventually, I thought Jaguar was gonna turn it into an offensive move for a moment. 

I don’t like the finish of this, even if I liked the match as a whole. In the final 3rd I thought they did a good job on conveying that the momentum is gradually shifting towards Jaguar. Like she’s winning a war of attrition. Every stretch on offense she gets just gets slightly longer and Wendi’s more and more fleeting. Jaguar hits a great missile dropkick after dodging a flying legdrop. Then, for some reason, the AJW wrestlers grab Wendi when she’s on the outside and pull her in front of Jaguar for her to hit a very impressive flip into a dive, which she follows up with another excellent tombstone and the win. The execution of it all was great but I just question the idea of the babyface winning due to outside help that wasn’t really in retaliation for anything? Maybe politics got in the way of logic.

***1/2



MD: Rarely in this project so far have I been surprised. A lot of that is just because I don’t know what to expect coming in, sure, but this one really did surprise me. Richter looked great here. She looked like she was going to be one of the best heels of the 80s. I don’t even think that’s hyperbole. I came in and watched the entrances thinking that her jawing and posturing and rooting and tooting cowgirl act was going to be the best part of the match.

Then she started by basing big for Yaguar, basically allowing her to climb up her for monkey flips and the like. And when she took over on offense, she used the size differential to the fullest and her stuff looked really good and was varied and interesting. She suplexed her from the apron in. She spun her around with a dangling choke in the center of the ring. She caught her off the turnbuckles and dropped her with a backbreaker. She hit this wild one legged front dropkick out of nowhere. She worked the fingers. She had a hanging tree choke toss and walked around the ring with an over the shoulder neckbreaker and a Canadian backbreaker. And her in between movements, with knee drops and big boots and choking was all good. At one point she held on with the hair on a headlock, retook it that way once, and then on the second pull, got her knee up for a sort of short knee trembler which looked awesome. This was Wendi Richter, offensive dynamo. 

Jaguar would take any chance she had. When Richter gave her a little space, she used it, especially tossing her about on the outside. But Richter had such a size advantage that she was able to cut her off pretty easily. Still, Jaguar kept coming. After she hit her butt butt and butterfly suplex, she put Wendi into this gnarly twisting submission I haven’t seen her do before, and later on she was able to put on both the figure four and to climb up her for a hanging armhold. She even managed an airplane spin. Finish had Jaguar’s seconds get Wendi in position for her doing a front tumble into a tope which the camera barely caught well but looked amazing nonetheless and then her front tombstone. Very solid win for Jaguar here as it felt like she overcame a mountain. 

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