80s Joshi on Wednesday: Yamazki! Noriyo! (Jumping Bomb Angels Pre-explode!)

Volume 5 https://vkvideo.ru/video-230463180_456241257

2. Documentary 

K: I'm not sure if this was shown on an AJW TV episode or if it was part of some other show, it feels like it's aimed at people who aren't watching wrestling as it over-explains some things. Still this is a cool look at life for the AJW roster. Funnily enough most of the footage for this documentary was filmed backstage at the 6/17 show which we're missing the main event of.

I liked Jaguar's comment saying the way to succeed in pro-wrestling is to find something unique to you. 

Chigusa is quite charming in her brief interview, we get a brief glimpse of her selling the hell out of her knee in a match.

The text notes that Mimi is 27 here. I'll just note for anyone confused about AJW having a "retire at 25 rule" that I can't find any source from the company itself saying they had this rule, I think it's just fans/journalists making a general observation which over time got misunderstood as being a hard rule. The more accurate way of putting it is AJW wrestlers started young and, in a manner not dissimilar to the territories in the US, once they were considered to be getting stale the company would move them on. But AJW also had a monopoly on women's wrestling in this time, so that effectively meant no one could have a career more than 10 years, if that. But there was never a fixed age at which they "had" to retire.

MD: This is relatively lengthy and gives us a look at life on the road and in the dorm and the gym with lots of snippets of interviews. We’re lucky to have it. Some quick thoughts:
Matsumoto said that the TV execs said she looked too charming to be a villain.
Tarantula had already dislocated her knee multiple times though she didn’t want to quit, because there were more belts to get (she’d have less than a year yet).
Lots of ichibans in Ripper’s promo but she also said Mimi! Rimi! And I bet she rhymed the two of them a lot. 
On the other hand while the babyfaces were all working out they had a Mimi & Yokota shirt on.
They made sure that the masked heels had their masks on for the bus rides for the sake of this.
It was interesting the brief moment we saw them all putting up the ring. 
Mimi, at 27, was as much as 12 years older than some of them. I thought she’s been the best wrestler we’ve seen in the footage in late 82-early 83 (even more than Devil or Jaguar) and some of that is absolutely singular talents with her expressiveness and selling, but how much of that was also the experience advantage?

3. Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Noriyo Tateno (AJW Junior Title) 7/9/83 

K: Junior Title time. For those who recognise these two as the Jumping Bomb Angels, don't watch this match with that on your mind as not only is this before they become a tag team, they're actually in opposing factions at this point. Itsuki Yamazaki is a heel in Devil Masami's Devil Legion, and Noriyo Tateno is in Jaguar Yokota's Dynamic Jaguars.

One thing they do have in common though is they both debuted in 1981, so they're natural rivals.

I think this is easily the best match for this belt since the days Jaguar was wrestling for it. Noriyo impresses with a rolling attack at the start, which maybe doesn't achieve that much but make her look determined to win but it's still a cool way to start. I think she does a better job at putting her personality into things than Yamazaki, who is quite cold and aloof. Not the worst thing for a heel to be but sometimes it came across like she was less invested in winning than Noriyo was.

Noriyo has a couple of brilliant battling out of pins here where she's just forcing her shoulders up off the mat and hanging on for dear life when she gets a hold of an arm or something so she can keep herself lying on her front so Yamazaki can't pin her. The best one comes right after Yamazaki hits two of her jumping inverted DDTs (I don't know what to call this, Matt has already highlighted it).

The crowd is relatively quiet but they have a good enough match that there's a lot of loud chanting towards the end cheering on Noriyo. There's not a whole lot of structure but at least they peaked at the right time with the frantic pin attempts as the time limit is getting close to expiring.

**3/4

MD: These Junior matches are all about the last few minutes with them scrambling desperately for any pinfall possible. I don’t really have a great sense of Yamazaki but she felt quite evenly matched with Tateno. I’d call her the aggressor for a lot of this after she took things to the floor early. She had some good stuff and some stuff that was good just based on quantity, be it these float over layout reverse DDTs or a flurry of four dropkicks in a row towards the end. But she kept overdoing it and not putting Tateno away and you got the sense that she was almost gassing herself with all that offense which let Tateno come back. Tateno, down the stretch, had much more in the way of roll ups. I don’t know if it was the location or what, but we’ve gone a couple of years without young people in the crowd chanting and living and dying on a wrestler. There was a bit of that with Tateno, at least one chant. I think maybe she had more of that connection and maybe the crowds were shifting a bit? Anyway, neither did pin the arms down of the other (shoot or work) and this ended as a draw.

4. Devil Masami Sings 'Till I Burn Out'

MD: She sure does. Actually, what's great about this is that if you look at the lyrics, it almost plays out like a Disney Villain song. Go look for yourself. Link is above and the subtitles are there.
 

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