80s Joshi on Wednesday: Nagayo! Lioness!

Volume 4  

6. Mimi Hagiwara Sings "Sexy in The Night" - 1/4/83

K: It’s January 4th, and you know what that means! Well, if you don’t, it means it’s the first show of the New Year. AJW would run Korakuen Hall every year (usually the 4th, sometimes 3rd or 5th) with some big matches to start the year strong.

There’s an interesting section in the intro where Announcer Shiono advertises wrestler try-outs. There’s a graphic on screen detailing where to send your resume to, noting that applicants must be aged 15-18 and be at least 165cm tall. It might not seem that odd now, but in 1983 wrestling was still a mostly closed business. Most people got in because they already knew someone in the business. It’s pretty rare that random fans just turned up saying ‘hey I wanna be a wrestler’ and got trained if they passed an audition, but that was the norm in AJW.

MD: They’re playing this up as a “singing duel” between Mimi and Devil, as Devil has a new song too, and I wonder if this aspect isn’t a little lost even in the set. I do get the idol culture and we’ve seen elements of this throughout but I wish I could get into a fan’s head and figure out how all this all synced together. Was it like watching an episode of JEM and the Holograms from the 80s but with fight scenes? Were they wrestlers who happened to sing or singers who happened to wrestle? Did they have a rich, full life in the minds of the fans where they were just competing at everything? Were they having craft fairs and baking contests and boat races and prank competitions on the side and people only happened to see the wrestling and the singing? How did all of this make sense to people? As an aside, this show also had Nancy Kumi’s retirement match so another stalwart is gone. 

7. Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka (AJW Title) - 1/4/83

K: If you watch this in vacuum it might not feel particularly noteworthy, but this is a famous match that apparently changed wrestling history. It’s the first match featuring the future Crush Gals to be featured in the semi-fictionalised ‘Queen of Villains’ Netflix show, which obviously used the real match as a template. 

The non-kayfabe story going into this is Chigusa felt her wrestling career was going nowhere and had told other wrestlers backstage that she was going to quit after this match. Her performance displayed all the reckless abandon of someone not concerned about damaging her body too much to perform adequately the next day. Maybe a bit of her frustration can be felt in the force she puts behind her spinning kicks. The way she wrestled that day backfired on her ‘retirement’ plans however, as when she went to Kunimatsu Matsumoto’s office to tell him she was quitting, before she got round to that he showered her with praise for her performance and told her she should try and wrestle like that permanently. Somewhere in that conversation Chigusa changed her mind and didn’t mention that she wanted to quit. Turns out her wrestling career was going somewhere after all.

It’s hard for me to review this without seeing everything through those lens. Still, I think without knowing all that, I’d still think this was the best singles match in either woman’s career to date. Right after the announcer lists all the matches Chigusa recently lost, she shows her new angry jealous heel attitude by trying to storm Asuka before the belt and snatch the belt off her. That she fails to get it actually works, because she’s just not good enough to beat Asuka at anything, it’s that feeling of failure which is driving her emotions.

The opening strike exchange salvo is really good. Asuka throws harder and appears to be winning already after a couple of hands get thrown. Rather than no-sell/try to look tough, or just backing down, instead Chigusa covers up and tries to go for some kind of takedown. It looks both like she can’t handle Asuka’s strikes but also that she’s going for a counter.

After a hot start, they never really relent. There’s slower sections of course, we get the customary legwork section, but there’s such energy and aggression behind it from both women that it doesn’t feel like a cooldown at all. They just keep on fighting, that Asuka looks like she’s going to win for almost the whole match doesn’t stop them from behaving like things are neck and neck. Their pin attempts are very tight and we get a AJW-special kickout before even a count of 1. Get those shoulders off the mat! Now! Don’t wait till 2…

They’re relatively limited in moveset here but that doesn’t stop them from pulling off a memorable finish. Asuka gets Chigusa up for a backdrop, but this time drops her right on her head. She follows up with a Samoan Drop like move to get the win and retain the belt.

***1/2

MD: Bit of a weird one. Kadaveri explained to me that Chigusa had gotten frustrated at a losing streak and went heel, but this was not in the least a showcase for her, except for maybe her selling (more on that in a second). Asuka came in with the belt and the intensity early for the pre-Crush Gals pre-exploding was great. They just really swung at each other to start, a chaotic feel. I did get the sense that Asuka was the aggressor. It made sense that Asuka got the early advantage and she had a lot of “stuff” here, including a nice torture rack drop and this great over the shoulder arm submission where she spun around with it. 

Chigusa took over with an absolutely brutal bridging toehold, and truly that was just about her only real offense in the match, that and the subsequent beating on the leg. Asuka came back with a figure-four. That revealed Chigusa’s super power. She was the one-eyed woman in the land of the blind when it came to extended selling. It wasn’t even THAT extended but she sold the leg as she came back just a little (having dodged a move). It wasn’t much but it was appreciated in a sea of everyone just dropping lengthy limbwork to move on to the next thing.

Finish had Asuka hit another torture rack slam and a giant swing en route to pressing the arms despite Chigusa’s best efforts. I didn’t have any real sense that the fans wanted to boo her here, but this was spirited at time. I just thought Chigusa should have taken a lot more of it.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Jumbo! Masami! Tarantula!

Volume 4  

5. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jaguar Yokota & Jumbo Hori - 11/4/82

K: Tag champs Devil Masami & Tarantula in a non-title match here. It's still 2/3 falls because AJW TV just did that regularly for main event tags whether it was for the titles or not. 

They flip the script a bit here by having the heels jump the babyfaces right at the start, rather than later into the match as a reaction to the momentum swings against them. The announcers are very alarmed that Jaguar & Jumbo were still in their entrance gowns while being accosted. 

The 1st fall feels more like a heel showcase with the occasional comeback spots. Tarantula inherits Yumi Ikeshita's plant opponent onto sticking up toes move, but follows this up by savagely biting Jaguar's neck like she's a vampire or something. Later Tarantula has Jaguar in a headlock, but with the other hand she's pulling her hair just out of sight of the referee. It's delightfully villainous how the ref can see she's doing something untoward, and Tarantula isn't really trying to pretend she isn't doing something illegal, but is just about managing to stop the referee from directly seeing it, like that's what really matters. I thought the finish to this fall was a bit odd. Jaguar Irish Whips Devil into Jumbo Hori, presumably to set up some double team move, but Devil just spins around her, hits Jumbo with a side suplex as Tarantula prevents Jaguar from breaking it up. It made sense in conception, other than the move to actually pin Jumbo didn't look that strong.

But that slight complaint about the 1st fall goes out the window with the finish of the 2nd fall! Jumbo hits a slam, and then Jaguar does a missile dropkick from the top rope to take out Devil, but lands into a pinning position on top of Tarantula and gets the win! Surely someone else has done a finish like that before but I don't remember it. I've only mentioned the finish, but more generally the 2nd fall had a nice pickup in pace and Tarantula in particular was showing out.

The 3rd fall is almost an inversion of the 1st in that its the babyfaces who almost ambush the heels at the start, there's a big double figure four spot that they like to do. But before long the heels take control and methodically grind them down without many big spots to specifically point out, but it's all good stuff. Devil & Tarantula are very good at coming across like they really are just an excellent tag team (whether they fight dirty or not) and it’s just really difficult for anyone to sustain any momentum against them. I liked when Devil was using the big hanging choke on the turnbuckle while Tarantula got her chops in. Devil goes wild with her cane while the referee gets distracted and this sets up Devil getting a rare pinfall win with her leaping senton (usually used for a nearfall). I like how although wrestlers have signature moves, nobody really has a finisher here, so what will win a match is far less predictable.

Jumbo punishes the referee for his poor eyesight by throwing him into the crowd. A strong AJW babyface tradition.

***1/2

MD: Masami and Tarantula had become a pretty effective team by this point. They ambushed to start. Tarantula would sneak in a choke or just bite you in the face. Masami was relentless. There was a real sense that if you got breathing room by going one way, they’d be the other ready to get you. Still, the big difference I’ve noted in 82 relative to 79 or 80 was just how much the babyfaces could fight back. The Devil Army made them really, really work for it though. One second of lapse and Tarantula’s hand would be right in your face. Hori came back only for Devil to stop short on a whip and nail her in the back. Yokota fought back only for Masami to get a foot up from a prone position. When they did mount a comeback at the end of the first fall with a series of press up seated sentons by Jaguar, all it took was one duck by Devil and she hit a belly to back on Hori for the fall.

Second fall had Jaguar winning a test of strength against Jumbo which seems a bit silly and then laying in headbutts. Tarantula hit her roll-into-a-dropkick which is one of the few good rolls in wrestling history, then a missile front dropkick. Again, they made Jaguar work for it as she hit her forward vault to start her comeback but Devil caught her on the apron and she had to side step. I won’t use the word “evolutionary” but I do think that they were building on things so fans did not grow accustomed to the same match over and over. Jumbo came in with a massive power bomb, leading to a sort of bridging exploder and a great finish where Jaguar hit a missile dropkick on a charging Devil and then landed with a top rope splash on Tarantula. Great end to the fall.

In the third fall, Devil tried to hit some of her big offense (like the press slam) but Jaguar kept escaping. She and Tarantula had more luck choking with an outside bit of rope/wire. She also did a dangling choke from the top while Tarantula hit some chops which is not something you see every day. When she was firmly in control she hit all that offense she wanted before like the press slam, which felt perfectly petty in the best way. She followed that up by being even more petty and vindictive with the stick and won it with a flip senton, which is not something I think I’ve seen her do chronologically up until now. This was a good distilled version of the style at the time. We’ve seen a few tags like this now and you can tell where they were developing different aspects over time. I’m curious if that survives into the next generation’s tag matches. Post match, Jumbo goes after the ref again. We know that’s not going to do them much good over time.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Masami! Tarantula! Jumbo! Mimi!

Volume 4  

4. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jumbo Hori & Mimi Hagiwara (WWWA Tag Team Titles) - 10/5/82

K: Mimi Hagiwara is gunning to win back the tag titles. She's not very loyal though and has dumped Yukari Omori to tag with Jumbo Hori instead. 

Devil vs. Mimi is definitely the central feud in the promotion now. Their bouts for the tag titles are main-eventing the bigger shows above whatever Jaguar is doing, and have more of a narrative thread to them than the Singles Title scene does. We know what kind of a match this is going to be from the previous encounters, and this time it feels like they just get straight to it. The babyfaces get worn down and isolated with Devil especially showing a cool variety of heel offense. Mimi is there to get beaten down, or at least she does a better job of selling it than Jumbo does. I liked when Devil had Mimi by the hair and was dragging her around the ring, then she passes her hair over to Tarantula so she can have a turn.

Jumbo's role here is a bit unclear. She could be seen as the lesser star to Mimi, or she could be seen as the giant enforcer. But she doesn't come across as either. Mostly she just wrestles like everyone else, but it looks a bit strange sometimes because she's so much bigger.

They're brawling on the outside earlier than usual, and this time it felt like the Devil Army made sure to do most of it in front of the announcer's table, or ever on it.

Devil has this very sinister grin on her face to start up the 2nd fall. She also does a highly impressive military press drop where she actually launches Mimi up a fair distance for her to fall on her face. I know Mimi must be the lightest wrestler on the roster but it's still quite the feat of strength. They escalate on the fighting on the announcer table from last time by this time choking Mimi with a chain right in front of announcer Shiono, who tries to intervene a bit but is shoved away.

Devil totally loses it in the chaos that she gets herself disqualified for using her cane. It all just gets really intense between the 2nd and 3rd fall. Mimi is absolutely furious at the antics Devil Army were able to get away with before they got DQ'd and shouts abuse at the officials. Jumbo beats up the referee and we have an entertaining standoff where it's announced that the match will not be restarted until Devil Masami surrenders her weapon, which she eventually does with a massive strop. They channel all that intensity and anger into the 3rd fall and make it feel a bit more on edge than the previous two. When Tarantula gets a dirty pin to win you feel the room almost explode immediately when Mimi runs in to protest vehemently. Another injustice! Devil Army can't keep getting away with this.

****

MD: I tend to see these matches in a bubble of sorts. I know we’ll start to get more storytelling over time in 84 or pieces we can tie together better at least. I have no idea where this is going but one thing I’ve noticed over time is Mimi getting more and more frustrated at Devil’s antics and what she and her cronies are just able to get away with. Some of the wrestlers will simply take the fight to them, and she will too, but she also goes to the announce table and yells at the commissioner and anyone else even while, sometimes, her partner is getting mangled by a weapon or mob tactics. It’s a little reminiscent of Nancy Kumi getting fed up with the American heel referee in 1979. This is, of course, the big frustration with the style, even more so than limbwork not going anywhere, the idea that the heels can just do whatever. It’s not a rudo/tecnico split where it’s stylistic and the tecnicos are held to a high standard. There’s much more of a sense that the authority figures/referees are afraid of the heels (and I imagine that only gets more defined with Dump’s reign of terror to come). 

Long story short, Mimi gets so frustrated at Masami using a chair/the kendo sword, that she really has it out towards the end of the second fall with the commissioner, and it makes enough of a difference that they call for the DQ for that fall for Devil and Tarantula. At the same time, Hori tosses the ref around. It gave the third fall a completely different feel where it seemed like the babyfaces, given that the heels didn’t dare cheat as much as usual, might actually win it and take back the belts. But then Tarantula hits a couple of rolls into moves (first a dropkick and then a sunset flip) and despite Hori’s legs clearly being on the ropes, the ref counts three. Mimi is beside herself post match and has to be dragged out before she causes a riot. I have no idea where this is going but it was a nice bit of heatseeking to make it seem like the babyfaces would triumph and then finding another way to pull it out from under them. If a company was being carefully booked, you’d lead to a special ref or other sort of stipulation match here to draw the next big house, but I have no idea how they were doing things at this point. 

The match itself was very good. Mimi had an immediate advantage by charging in, but Devil and Tarantula could turn things around at a moment’s notice. Devil might take over just by stopping in the ropes on a Hori whip for instance. They took things outside and from there, Hori and Mimi would have to work from underneath. Pretty cruel stuff with Devil stepping on Mimi’s hand as she reached for the ropes or standing on Jumbo’s hair from the outside. Plenty of choking (including with her shin) on Jumbo. Mimi finally took back over and Hori pressed with her size, but tragically, Mimi missed a cross body off the ropes (Devil ducked) and with a scream went skidding to the floor. She then got slammed onto her pelvis on a table by Devil (it looked brutal). She came back one last time but Devil dropped back with her on a victory roll attempt to end the first fall.

Second fall was brutal with endless headbutts from Tarantula and Devil, a Devil press slam, a killer Tarantula front dropkick. Jumbo caught her off the ropes and then put her on the top to toss her off but Devil came in with the kendo stick and then a chair and that is when Mimi finally had enough to force the commissioner and ref to call for a DQ. That opened things up for the third fall, and it was subsequently exciting, with some really good nearfalls for Jumbo and Mimi. Devil was able to sidestep Jumbo though and floor her with a headbutt. That let Tarantula hit a missile dropkick, roll through into a dropkick, and roll through into a sunset flip for the win. Of course, Jumbo was tied up in the ropes which led to Mimi losing it again. You certainly were feeling the emotion she was putting forward here. Between her offense, her presence, her emoting, and her selling, she comes off as really exceptional in 1982.

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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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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Yukari! Masami! Tarantula!

Volume 4 

2. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) - 8/10/82

K: This is a rematch of the 1/4/82 main event, since Tarantula is Wild Kazuki in a mask.

This has a very measured start. Tarantula doesn’t actually do anything other than start the match, stalls a bit and just tags in Devil. I was reminded a bit of Randy Savage’s heel stalling tactics, but it didn’t actually turn into that. Rather we had Devil methodically grinding Mimi Hagiwara down, she does a cool little sidewards half crab sticking her knee into Mimi’s back. When she’s in Tarantula is actually the more aggressive one this time. 

There aren’t many big moments here other than a well worked match typical of the style. People following these write-ups won’t be surprised to learn that the first transition came after Mimi got thrown into the chairs on the outside before getting a good comeback getting back in. After that the momentum never really swings back to the heels like it was in the opening minutes.

2nd fall is where things get more intense. Mimi starts things off by unloading her boxing skills on Tarantula with a load of skinny-armed bodyshots. This sets up Devil a bit later on getting her hands on Mimi, and first thing she does is start savagely biting Mimi’s hand and working over her that way. That’s her way of working a limb basically. The babyface team are protected a bit by only losing this fall by countout due to the heels throwing them out and attacking them with weapons. Mimi does some really great selling on the outside as she’s being helped out, looking like she might vomit into a bucket. Not very glamorous of her I know.

When the 3rd fall starts, Devil and Tarantula stand in front and behind of Mimi holding her in place, and take turns to headbutt her? Like, Devil will headbutt her and send her head backwards a bit, but then Tarantula headbutts her from behind like a human pendulum system. Made them look very creative as well as a bit nuts.

More brilliant selling from Mimi throughout all of this. She looks like she’s just struggling to move any part of her body and is not fully conscious as she crawls over to her corner to try and tag in Omori. The longer this goes on the more it feels like the babyfaces just aren’t going to turn this around. They’re being outgunned constantly. And just at moments where you think this would be the natural time to start a big comeback, it just doesn’t happen, and when it nearly happens it gets cut off pretty quickly before any real damage was done. To add to the relatively humiliation. The finish is Omori tapping out to Devil Masami’s Romero Special, which rarely ever won matches.

Mimi adds to her stellar performance tonight by going absolutely berzerk at the result. Looking like she’s going to try and beat up the AJW officials for not intervening to stop the heels cheating. It’s quite the scene as she has to be physically restrained and carried out by her fellow wrestlers. 

This felt like a lesser version of the 1/4/82 match. I wouldn’t normally review a match as good as this with what seems like a negative comment, I just wish they added some extra element to it other than getting the opposite result (Mimi’s tantrum not really being part of the match). Still this was very good and effective at furthering the feud.

***3/4

MD: Most interesting thing from the pre-match commentary is that they outright note that Tarantula is Wild Kazumi who has donned a mask. Look, I’m working off of the youtube translation here so it’s dubious, but I think the commentators start to get on her case for choosing a creepy name like Tarantula instead of the name of a flower. So that’s 1982 AJW for you? I guess? 

Devil and Tarantula controlled this to start when Devil nailed Mimi off the ropes. Lots of stretching her, hairpulling, etc. Devil did a sort of side crab at one point. Tarantula came in with dramatic claws and chokes. Things spilled to the outside and both of the champs got stacked on the announce table. Tarantula had some nice knees in the ropes in here. She was working quite big. Mimi and Omori got a bit of hope but were cut off until Tarantula accidentally hit Devil with a missile dropkick and knocked her from the ring. That let Omori and Hagiwara fight fair and Mimi soon had Tarantula down and out with her bodyslam suplex variation and one shoulder electric chair finisher to end the fall.

Second fall had Omori and Hagiwara pressing the advantage. Tarantula hit an explosive dropkick (she feels a little more explosive than most of the heels, more like the faces, maybe, at least in this guise), but they couldn’t control things until they reversed a whip and hit simultaneous tombstones (with Devil’s a really nasty front one). After that Mimi was in really bad shape and they were able to take things outside and whack them with objects until the countout to win the fall.

Third fall had Mimi as basically a walking corpse. She has some of the best body language I’ve ever seen. I don’t think that’s hyperbole or wanting to rediscover someone. She really was that good in this specific area of her selling. They hit her with so many headbutts including pingponging ones back and forth. Omori tried to assert herself but the ref kept taking her out. Finally, she did make it in and was able to turn the cane attempts back on the Army. The numbers game was too much and when she had an abdominal stretch on Tarantula, Devil grabbed her hair from outside. Things spilled to the outside and Mimi tried to help but she was just too worn down. Inside the ring, Tarantula did a splash off Devil’s shoulders and then Devil locked in a Tapatia as Tarantula held back Mimi for the win and the title change. Post match, Mimi lost it on the ref, looking like a woman possessed. I thought this was good and very complete (even though I swear some of it was clipped). I liked the ending of the second fall especially. They could have finished it after the tombstones but it was more to the heel’s style to force the countout with chaos and violence. It was gratuitous but that was the point. Tarantula looked good and added something different (even from what I remember of her as Kazumi) on the heel side and it was another legitimately great performance from Hagiwara.
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Chigusa! Noriyo!

Volume 4 

1. Chigusa Nagayo vs. Noriyo Tateno (AJW Junior Title) - 8/10/82

K: There’s a story around this match that gives it a little bit of historical significance. This was the biggest match in either woman’s career to this point. Chigusa had won the Junior Title a few months earlier in a decision match against Itsuki Yamazaki. Everyone backstage thought she’d beat Noriyo here as she was 2 years in and Noriyo only 1. That she lost was a such an embarrassment that she said she was quitting wrestling and went to see her parents rather than take the bus with the rest of the roster back to Tokyo. She’d be back of course.

The match is better than the average rookie outing. Chigusa does a couple of Jackie Sato style thrusting big boots to the chest, which is interesting when Lioness Asuka was the one billed as ‘Jackie Jr’ for their similarities. There’s a nice moment where Noriyo Tateno goes in for either a very low flying crossbody or a very high dropdown trip; but either way Chigusa had to quickly jump quite high to avoid it. A nice bit of sloppiness that makes things not look rehearsed. 

It’s also noteworthy that Chigusa already has a bit of fanclub going and they’re quite loudly chanting NA-GA-YO for her. There’s a popular perception that Chigusa’s rise to stardom came with the armies of cheering schoolgirls who started packing out the shows in 1984, but that’s not quite the full story. Even when the fanbase was mostly adult men (though it was a lot mixed than current Joshi) she was getting more popular than her push.

**1/4

MD: It’s important to know that the flowers today were provided by the Nagakusa Park Association and Fukushima Television. Noriyo is 16 here as they are happy to point out repeatedly on commentary. Nagayo has about a year on her. I get that this isn’t uncommon in this footage, but that doesn’t make it less striking when you stop and think about it sometimes. Case in point, they were both also given giant stuffed bears as well.

This was certainly sprinty. Tateno tried for an early attack with a dropkick, but Nagayo was more or less able to defuse much of what she tried. She just couldn’t press much of an advantage herself. When she did, the match was a little better and a little more grounded. At one point she did this sort of curb stomp where the legs were further back than usual as she all but stepped on them. And then she did hit her spin kick at one point too. 

Really though, the strength of this one was just in how they shifted from one hold to the next and kept things moving and competitive. That came into play at the end as Tateno was able to muscle it out and get Nagayo down for the three and the title. We’ve heard of guys legitimately working in the start of the match like in Florida or pretending to do so for extra money like in Oregon but the idea that you work an entire match and then the finish is based on a shoot is still so mindboggling to modern brains (or at least it is to my own). But it does make things unpredictable to say the least. In a match like this where there wasn’t any sort of clear narrative they were following save for that these two were pretty equally matched, it fit well enough, I suppose. It did give this all a bit of a weird feel since Chigusa had a local cheering section and got a chant once, for instance. I guess it all worked out for these two in the end though.

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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. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Tateno! Jaguar! Mimi! Yukari! Masami! Kai! McIntyre!

Volume 3  

11. A Day In The Life of Noriyo Tateno

K: Something you'll get from AJW is all their wrestlers were trained from scratch by the promotion itself, so watching wrestlers develop from very limited rookies into fully-fledged stars is all part of the show. So sometimes they'd dedicate a bit of TV time to introduce viewers to a newer wrestler and get over their personality with the audience, before they have much wrestling skill to speak of. This one is for Noriyo Tateno. On episodes before this they did segments for Chigusa Nagayo and Yuriko Takagai. Nagayo gets plenty of attention later on and Takagai retires at the end of the year/is historically irrelevant, so I chose to include the Noriyo feature. It all helps to get a broad understanding of the vibe of AJW TV.

MD: This is pretty much what you’d expect. They do it in a clever way to have the segment start towards the end of her day (late training and going to bed) and then end as she’s coming out the curtain for a match the following evening. Tateno is 16 here. I’m kind of curious what she was reading that we only get a glimpse of. It’s also interesting they’d show the training because it mainly consists of rolling and taking back bumps and that’s the sort of thing that feels like it might raise some flags. Yes, they need to know how to fall, but they sure do a lot of that in training… anyway, we’re going to be probably spending quite a bit of time with the Jumping Bomb Angels on future volumes so this felt like time well spent even past seeing the inside of 1982 shops or local strawberry fields.

12. Devil Masami, Leilani Kai & Velvet McIntyre vs. Jaguar Yokota, Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori 5/15/82 

K: K: In this match we have a trio of the WWWA Singles Champion Jaguar Yokota and the WWWA Tag Team Champions Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori. Talk about overpowered. Mimi Hagiwara comes to the ring wearing a crown and a semi-transparent white gown. The way she's presented would feel heelish in almost any other context, but she is unironically pushed as a sweet and pure Disney princess like character. 

There's a lot going on in this 1st first, it almost feels like a full match by itself. The main narrative here is that Devil is just unstoppable. She does have a title shot against Jaguar on the 7/19/82 show coming up, so keep that in mind. We open with Mimi charging at the Devil and unloading a flurry of her signature boxing punches on her. It does seem to work for ten seconds maybe when Devil flees to the outside, but then gets the better of Mimi fighting on the outside.

Devil gets revenge for Mimi's punches by continually working over Mimi's hand all through the fall. She starts when she isn't even in the ring yet. Velvet McIntyre has Mimi caught up in the ropes, and then Devil comes over, grabs Mimi's hand and bites it! She goes after it again once she's the legal woman, and it becomes the focal point so much that McIntyre and Kai also go after it when they're up against Mimi. Mimi is able to put up a much stronger fight against the two foreign wrestlers, for instance she's handling Velvet very capably at one point, but then she runs into Devil, who she just can't handle it seems.

Jaguar and Omori don't do a whole lot in the 1st fall really. They're both hot tags but in a different way. Omori just pops in to do some power moves before she runs out of steam and get beaten up. She has an interesting one that starts like a powerbomb, but then she tosses her opponent to the side instead. Jaguar gets more of a reaction when she's tagged in, but she's overzealous in trying to just launch herself at the heels that she gets trapped in their corner and triple-teamed quite quickly. The babyfaces just aren't working together very effectively, meanwhile the heels put together some joint offense to win the 1st fall.

The 2nd fall is mostly just a compressed version of the 1st. This time Mimi does well beating up Leilani Kai, that is, until Devil Masami intervenes and goes to work on her hand again. The twist here though is this time when Jaguar gets tagged in she gets to shine a lot more and evens things up for the babyfaces.

The 3rd fall is when things develop more, there's just a bit more heat in how everything's worked and the babyfaces have more a determination to win about them. Things spill out to the outside a couple of times and the fighting is fierce. Mimi looks downright mad and violent when she's throwing people around on the outside. There's a better throw into chairs on Jaguar though, because she doesn't exactly take a bump but just runs straight into them. 

We get a bit of a Devil vs. Jaguar teaser here. There's a cool moment where Devil swings Jaguar into the corner, Jaguar goes for her boomerang counter off the turnbuckle, but Devil just ducks under it with great timing so that if she hadn't ducked that split second the move actually would have hit. It looks so much better when I've seen so many other wrestlers try these spots but can't make them look anywhere near as believable. 

There's also a funny moment where Velvet McIntyre has Jaguar held up in the air in a choke. Mimi runs in and pushes her so Jaguar just gets dropped to the mat. I'm not sure if that's what Mimi was going for there, but I guess it stopped the choking at least.

We get a rare-for-AJW DQ finish here. Devil for some reason really totally loses it and decides that breaking Mimi Hagiwara's hand is a more important goal for her today than winning this match. She brings her cane into the ring and just starts smashing her hand up with it. After the DQ the Commissioner and referee try to pull that cane off her but she's goes even more wild, throws the referee into the chairs and actually tries to throw a strike at Commissioner Ueda but is restrained by the seconds at ringside. We have a nutcase on the loose.

One of the best TV trios matches we've seen so far. We're a long way off Devil vs. Jaguar so I'm not sure if it was really all intended to build that match, but unfortunately we're missing 6 or 7 shows in between, so seeing it that way is probably the best we can do from an enjoyment standpoint.

***1/2

MD: Tons of pomp right from the start here. I feel like we haven’t seen a ton of Yokota and Hagiwara together this year. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s Kumi who’s been off on her own? But Mimi’s out looking like a white princess, crown and all. Jaguar has more of the martial arts look in black. Devil’s dressed like an evil musketeer (you’ve seen the look, I’m sure), and Kai has the whole “Queen of Hawaii” deal going. Quite the entrances. 

This was pretty great. Omori played her role of taking some beating and coming in strong with small bursts of strength. Likewise Velvet stood out in a big way when it came to effective Moolah-ism (hairpulls, stepping on the hair, maring someone with the hair) and Kai had that plus strength on top of it. Really though, this was about Mimi, Jaguar, and Devil. 

Mimi took it right to Devil at the start, throwing those boxing blows. That meant when Devil could take over later, she started targeting the hand, biting it, stepping on it, punching it! Who punches someone’s fist? Devil Masami, that’s who. Mimi, of course, sold brilliantly, as she is want to do, both in the ring while it was happening (while constantly registering, fighting, struggling, reaching - what a babyface she’s become) and on the apron when they cycled through.

The heels took the first fall after cutting off some fire with Devil being an absolute monster. She pressed slammed Mimi in front of her corner then hit a spinning one to make her land on her hand. When Omori came in they made her take a Bret bump into the heel corner and then Kai finished her off with a splash. Second fall had more working over Mimi’s hand and Jaguar coming in only to eat a gutbuster from a suplex position from Jaguar (who just had so much stuff in this match, so much of it organic and nasty). Yokota did come back ducking under Kai and Velvet before hitting a missile dropkick and beautiful butterfly suplex with an even more beautiful bridge on Velvet. 

Third fall was chaos leading to one more massive move from Devil, being a press slam into the corner onto Jaguar. Things spilled out and when they got back into the ring Jaguar bridged out of a Kai pin and bounded her way back into it. Just when it seemed like their side might win, Devil came in with the kendo stick, targeting Mimi’s hand specifically. The commissioner threw it out and gave things to the babyfaces but Jaguar was absolutely furious at him and everyone else for what had occurred. Between the hand focus and Mimi’s selling and Jaguar’s violent tendencies and how well everyone else played their role, this worked quite well for me.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Ripper!

Volume 3 

10. Jaguar Yokota vs. Monster Ripper (WWWA Singles Title) 4/7/82

K: I'm a bit lower on early Jaguar Yokota than some other Joshi heads. I definitely don't think she was one of the best wrestlers in the world in 1978-81; historically her matches with Jackie Sato have been talked about almost like Jaguar was elevating Jackie, when in context it was more the other way around. If you wanted me to pinpoint when exactly was Jaguar one of the best wrestlers in the world, this is the match where she's definitely JAGUAR.

The opening minutes of this were very effective. If you hadn't seen anything from these two before, everything you need to know gets established when Ripper tries to jump Jaguar from behind as she's walking back into her corner after Monster ignored her offer of a handshake. But Jaguar has eyes in the back of her head, she dodges, not one very several swings at her head. She's smart. She's fast. She's skilful. She grabs Monster's arm and does that move where you run up the ropes and flip backwards into an armdrag thing, I've seen Mayu Iwatani do it many times but she could never execute it as crisply as Jaguar does here. Monster's raging like an angry neanderthal at this, but Jaguar stares her down looking determined and tough. 

One of those starts to match I can replay in my head. Seeing the training skit on AJW TV the previous week makes this a bit better as you can more easily imagine what Jaguar is thinking as she fights to counter the onslaught Monster’s gonna throw at her. Not long after the start she grabs Monster from behind slightly at the side and executes a takedown, just about, in a way which made her seem more skilled as a wrestler but struggling to overcome the size differential. There’s another moment when she has Monster in a Boston Crab, Monster is powering out of it, and realising she’s not gonna be able to hold it in, Jaguar instead switches out of the crab by doing a lightning quick handstand roll to put her back on her feel with momentum to launch another attack. It all emphasises her strengths and makes her look like she’s just The Best.

I've talked up Jaguar enough so I should also note that this is also Monster Ripper's best performance so far. Might just be the best performance of her career actually. She takes all of Jaguar's highspots very well, she's not just some lumbering big girl in reality even she sticks to portraying on in kayfabe. We get a bit of limb-selling from Monster as Jaguar is focused on her knee. This wouldn't be a big stand out in most promotions but in the AJW context where it's not part of the 'going through the motions' formula it feels noteworthy, especially when it results in a big turning point (the backbreaker hurting Monster's knee), and arguably the finish as well. She takes things up a gear effectively when she smashes Jaguar's head into the ring post on the outside, and works on the cut when they get back in the ring. 

The other bit of psychology is Monster going for risky moves after Jaguar hitting on and it backfiring on her. Jaguar's flying hip attack doesn't work, for example, because Monster is so big she just bounces off her. But then Monster tries her own but Jaguar is too fast, ducks, so Monster crashes and burns. Monster also goes for a big top-rope splash after she got hit with a tope just earlier (Jaguar was successful this time), but we get another crash and burn that Jaguar pounces on for the finishing stretch. When she gets the win she gives out such "Yeah that's why I'm the champ" aura that I don't think we'd seen from her yet. As if she's saying, come on, despite everything Monster put me through, you didn't think I wasn't gonna find a way to beat her, did you? 

I believe in my champ.

****1/4

MD: This was absolutely a big match with a big match feel, and it was very different than, let’s say Jackie vs Ripper. Yokota was a different wrestler with different skills. She had to use her quickness and she was going to be more prone to be tossed around. That said, there was a clear sense that she was not going to be able to defeat Ripper with speed or even speed and technique alone. She would have to find something else within her.

Throughout the match, from the moment Ripper first caught her after some initial dodging, it was clear what this match would be. Ripper would lean on her, would dominate. Jaguar would escape, would get in a shot or two, but be unable to really do any damage. She’d keep Ripper on her toes for a minute but there’d be a cut off. 

Yes, that was the size, but it was also that Ripper just had so much stuff. She had wildly varied offense here and it all looked great. She’d press slam Jaguar onto the top rope. She’d pull her back into a quasi surfboard/tapitia. She’d hit a neckbreaker drop off the ropes to cut her off. She had a hundred ways to damage Jaguar and to keep her reeling. When Jaguar was able to toss her into chairs or hit a ‘rana out of nowhere, or even get a monkey flip (all of which Ripper took really well), Ripper had an answer. 
At one point, that answer was to toss Jaguar around on the outside, opening her up. That gave us some of the first real woundwork we saw and the commentary found it shocking and horrific. With the VQ, we don’t get a great sense of the visual power of it, but everyone knew it was what was happening and it did feel striking. But maybe Ripper got too laser focused on it, because it allowed Jaguar to start in on the leg, with a figure four and wrapping it into the ropes to attack. 

Perhaps that made Ripper desperate and take chances and those chances, having failed, opened her up for a straight up missile dropkick, not the sort of front one we so often see. With Ripper staggered, Jaguar, who had tried (and failed) to hit a double underhook suplex earlier in the match, got Ripper up for the airplane spin and then hit her with a bridging belly to back to win it. It felt like she had climbed a mountain and truly accomplished something. And she did it not just through bounding past an opponent or getting a fluke roll up, but by projecting herself as an ace in the end.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Lioness! Mimi! Yukari! Masami! Matsumoto! Ripper!

Volume 3 

9. Devil Masami, Kaoru Matsumoto & Monster Ripper vs. Lioness Asuka, Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori 3/30/82

K: This is the main event of the go home show before the big Monster Ripper vs. Jaguar Yokota WWWA Singles Title match. This made the set mainly for that reason, but it's also nice that it's a good match with Lioness Asuka and Kaoru Matsumoto in, thus fulfilling my rule that there been at least one match from them in 1982 so viewers can track their development.

I wouldn't say the first fall was all Monster, but it almost was. While the other pairings had some back and forth, whenever Monster Ripper was in the ring she was just demolishing everyone and never looked to be in any real danger. This starts right from the beginning when the heels get trapped in the corner and hit with a sequence of running splashes, but when Omori jumps at Monster she just bounces off her like Monster's made of steel. The closest thing we get to Monster looking like she's in trouble - and even then, not really - is one point where she goes for the flying hip attack twice, but Lioness Asuka rolls underneath her the second time so she crashes and lands. I'll also note that whenever anyone gets Monster into a pinning predicament, she immediately just kicks out before the referee can even begin a count.

Kaoru Matsumoto has a decent showing here for the little that's expecting of her. She doesn't have much in the way of offense, but I thought she threw a pretty mean lariat at Asuka early on. And something about the way she walks around the ring just feels like an arrogant strut, and it's not even clear that she's doing a strut.

Mimi Hagiwara was easily the best on her team, no surprise there really. Her and Devil Masami keep up their good chemistry. I think Devil might actually be physically stronger than Monster despite not being as big, Monster at least looked like she had a bit of a struggle lifting Mimi over her head, but for Devil she just goes straight up into the military press like she's picking up a co-operative 6 year old. I have enough recent experience to know the "co-operative" qualifier was very important there. Mimi also does a funny little butterfly suplex move, or at least that's what I'd call it from the set up, but Mimi doesn't go over with Devil for it, she just drops her straight on the mat. Looked painful actually.

Matsumoto gets the most focus in the 2nd fall, kinda makes sense since if they're going to level things up she's the obvious heel to take the pin, so might as well give her some ring time. She gets a bit of work to do with everyone, but we get an AJW 'flew too close to the Sun' finish pretty quickly where she's trapped near the babyface corner, gets hit with move after move until Omori gets the pin as Mimi and Asuka mark the heel corner to prevent a break-up. I like how they incorporate teamwork into tag matches like you probably would do if this were a real sport. Omori gets the win on Matsumoto, starting the most heated feud in AJW history :)

The 3rd fall is just the heels getting revenge for losing the previous fall. Monster Ripper looks especially awesome going on a rampage including having a chair wrapping around Asuka's neck and swinging her around the outside and onto chairs, before Matsumoto gets her on top of the announce table to pose looking all proud of herself. Bit of stolen valour in there. Omori is the victim here and gets taken out. Heels stand tall.

This would have been a better match if the 3rd fall had more to it than just the babyfaces getting demolished. Might have undermined the wider purpose of the match, but I'd say pulling that off while milking a bit more drama out of it would have been the bigger challenge, and more impressive to pull off. But for what it was, this was good stuff.

***¼

MD: I thought Matsumoto was on her way here, even if she was on her way to a different place where she’d eventually get up. She was very good at asserting herself and using her size. Sometimes it was a little rough around the edges but she was additive to the super powered heel team that was Masami and Ripper. Those two were in matching black and despite the size difference, there were times where for a split second, I thought Ripper WAS Masami, solely because she was doing something so vicious and cruel. There was a point where she wrapped a chair around her opponent’s neck and dragged her around ringside and it’s exactly the sort of thing Devil would do.

I honestly think she had not just improved tenfold since her run a couple of years earlier but was actively great at times. Once Mimi hit her cross chop and Ripper didn’t just no sell it, but she dusted herself off like she was Samoa Joe or something. Coolest person in the room. The match started with everyone charging at all three heels pressed into the corner and it worked right until Ripper simply stepped forward and made it work no longer. And she had all of the huge offense like the press slam backbreaker. Devil contributed more than enough too of course.

Mimi continued to stand out on the babyface side. She was not quite an ace but she was very good at this point. I’m going to have to see more out of Asuka especially but I know that’s coming. This was a means to an end to heat up Ripper even more and it certainly achieved that goal even if that came at a slight cost.
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Jumbo!

Volume 3

8. Jaguar Yokota vs. Jumbo Hori 3/30/82

K: This is a strange match because it’s worked like an international friendly before the World Cup. For those not familiar with soccer/football, a friendly is a game which isn’t part of any competition and the outcome doesn’t really matter. The main reason why they happen in international football is the teams don’t play/train together regularly, so it’s really for them to get some practice and try some new things without worrying about losing the game too much.

The purpose of this match in kayfabe is Jaguar getting to wrestle a much larger opponent as like a practice run for the Monster Ripper match. But in reality, they only work like that half the time. We do see it in that we got to see Jaguar pull out a few rarer moves/holds, but also she seems to get mad and vicious a bit too much if this is the story they’re going for. It probably did make the match better that she did that, even if it did undermine the narrative a bit. The real probably actually is doing a match with this narrative and having it go to a 30 minute draw. 30 minutes is just too long for a match where they’re just feeling each other out/getting warmed up for Monster. This might have worked better if it had a 15 minute time limit or something, or they just dropped that warm-up angle and just made it a regular heated match with Jumbo really wanting to make a name for herself by stealing a win on the champion. That would have been fine. But if anything Jaguar felt more determined to get a win that Jumbo did.

There was a very good crowd reaction cut where Jumbo hit Jaguar with that reverse FU move where she just launches her from up high onto the mat. He looked startled that that is even allowed.

**1/2 

MD: I don’t know about this one. They certainly worked hard and were aggressive. Things got heated quickly with Yokota pulling hair and trying to dismantle Hori, though it was all within some reason. For instance, Hori had a damaged shoulder and it wasn’t until Yokota was more desperate down the stretch that she started in on it. Instead through most of the match, she went for the legs. Even then, that wasn’t her first gambit. She bounded through almost immediately and tried to avoid Hori. Hori was able to catch her and toss her about a bit. 

That’s when things spilled to the floor and Yokota managed to toss Hori into some furniture. Then came the legwork. Some of it was very cool, such as Yokota’s short leg scissors, but she just couldn’t do enough damage and Hori was able to bound back to her feet to hit a Russian Leg Sweep. Then when, Yokota tried to toss her into the announce table, thinking, maybe, that she was bigger than she was (or her heart was big but her body wasn’t), Hori just jammed it and tossed Yokota in instead. That was just a momentary setback for Yokota landed on her feet (mostly) off of another fireman’s carry toss and used a legscissor to take her down. She finally got the figure four then, and Hori finally sold. 

You know, for about a minute on the floor before she came back in and did some rope running and absolutely crushed Yokota with her lifting twist bearing slam and a power bomb. Yokota turned the second bomb into a rana for a nearfall and then went in on the shoulder, far more desperate. She came close, maybe, with cobra twists and what not, but things ended up skitting to a time limit draw of desperate pins. Good fight but not very good consequence especially since there was some big stuff in here. I think maybe just don’t make the whole match about legwork if the leg won’t be sold for more than a few seconds? They hadn’t quite worked that bit out yet.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Devil! Ripper! Jumbo! Mimi!

Volume 3

6. Devil Masami & Monster Ripper vs. Jumbo Hori & Mimi Hagiwara March 1982 

MD: My biggest takeaway here is that all four of these women had improved quite a bit from 79-80. But my bigger takeaway from this and the disc overall so far is that Mimi has gotten very good. Generally, I think of her selling and emoting and we saw a ton of that in the Devil’s singles, but this was more about her taking stuff in the moment and dishing it back out. She matches up very well with Devil. Meanwhile, while not quite as improved, Hori is still much better at working her size and asserting herself.

The combination of the two, combined with a house style which has shifted to more even wrestling and not just chaotic heels steamrolling people, gave this a much different feel than it would have gotten a couple of years before. Ripper wasn’t nearly as protected, though she was a bit on the finish, managing to clothesline both Mimi and Hori before they ducked and got her back (that drew Devil in with the stick to end the match). Mimi had a lot of clutch roll ups out of nowhere while Hori was able to just ragdoll Devil at times. We didn’t get a Hori vs Ripper match up though the match seemed to build to it. They had a singles eventually  but we don’t have it on tape. Devil did take over in the second fall and it was by smashing Mimi in the head with a chair a few times; it didn’t matter how assertive the babyfaces were in the face of that. I’m not sure this one ever really settled down but it each fall had a nice, exciting, sprinty feel to it, at least. And it’s convinced me that I’m right about how far Hagiwara has come and the fact she probably doesn’t get enough credit.

K: 2/3 falls main event tag match. Pretty common on AJW TV at this time.

The purpose of the first fall seems to be developing the feud between Devil Masami and Mimi Hagiwara. Not that Monster & Jumbo don't contribute anything, but there's no real big moment from them, although part of that might be when they're all brawling on the outside the camera is following Devil & Mimi fighting a lot more often. Even compared to their last singles things feel a bit more frantic in how they're throwing themselves at each other desperate to gain the upper hand. It's a good vibe. Things look pretty dangerous when Mimi hits her special backdrop and looks like she almost drops Devil on the back of her head, and then straight afterward picks Devil up for what looked like a very low piledriver. Devil sells it extremely well or is legitimately knocked loopy...

I actually think it is Devil just selling really well though, as she's still acting like she's been knocked loopy in the 2nd fall, however takes a perfect bump for a Mimi punch which, if I can break kayfabe a little, obviously wasn't hard enough to actually put her on her ass. Very good Devil performance here.

This second fall is when we switch to showcasing Monster Ripper a bit. The moment she tags in for the first time, she shoves Mimi and Mimi goes so far flying backwards the crowd audibly gasps. Great bump, but also very effective in the wider context as this gets over that Monster is superhuman strong and we should be very worried about the babyfaces in this match, but also future matches Monster's gonna be in on this tour. Monster also gets to throw around and suplex Jumbo Hori when they're paired, which you don't see often.

Mimi gets hit with a big backbreaker and it's her turn to still be selling when the 3rd fall starts. Devil hits a nice Jumbo Tsuruta style running knee, I've heard that she was one of the few AJW wrestlers to watch men's wrestling, so that might have been evidence of it. She also looks really good crush Mimi's throat with her shin and then dragging her across the match in that position so she's in the heel corner. I've seen that move from Yumi Ikeshita before, but the not the dragging across the mat escalated version. 

There's no 'big' moment to point to here, but Mimi's selling in this whole section is very good. She looked exhausted and struggling to just hang on and survive. Even her elegant rollups still have an element of 'just acting on instinct' in them. Melancholy is in the air. She's doing a lot of work here and it's not that much of a problem that Jumbo Hori, hasn't really done much. She hits a couple of cool looking powerbombs in this 3rd fall but other than that her tagging in feels like just parts where Mimi can get a break. 

One of those matches that’s clearly good, if not entirely satisfying, but you’re definitely wanting more. But of course I would say that wouldn’t I? 

***1/2
  

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Devil!

Volume 3  

5. Devil Masami vs. Mimi Hagiwara (WWWA Singles Title Next Challenger Tournament Final) 3/7/82

K: So this is the state of play going into this match. Monster Ripper just returned to AJW, she tagged with Wild Kazuki in the match before this one defeating Jumbo Hori & Nancy Kumi. She has a title match against Jaguar Yokota booked at the next big AJW show on April 7th at Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium, which they're already promoting. This match is the finals of a #1 contenders tournament, but that title shot will be against the winner of Monster Ripper vs. Jaguar Yokota at the next big AJW show after that, which is July 19th at Ota Ward. GOt that?

This has one of the wildest starts to a match you'll ever see. Right at the bell Devil grabs her cane and charges at Mimi swinging. Mimi flees to the outside with Devil chasing after her, Mimi picks up a chair and they have a medieval duel on the outside swinging cane and chair at each other. It's kinda funny when the bell rings, I hadn't noticed the match hasn't formally started yet.

That crazy start makes everything feel high energy and heated as they start wrestling in the ring. That and Devil's disturbing yells as she takes delight in maiming poor Mimi. This is hardly original insight here but yes what makes this rivalry work is you've got an all-time great offensive wrestler beating up a great sympathetic seller. Less talked about though is Mimi's got some great offense of her own. Her first big comeback (that doesn't last long) is just her throwing flurries of punches that knock Devil down. She doesn't scream 'great puncher' when you look at her and her skinny arms but she actually makes it believable with how much conviction she throws into them. 

Devil has a cool hold where she wraps up Mimi's arm in a sitting armlock, and then does forward rolls to clinch it in more, like she's countering a rollup but she just rolls all the way through. This is a start of a really good heat segment where Devil deploys a new method of torturing Mimi's arm every 30 seconds. A bit later on she's got Mimi's arm wrapped up in the ropes, contorting it around while her Devil Legion goons are getting cheap shots in. 

Mimi does a bit of prolonged arm selling that gives Devil's heat section feel like it had consequences for the whole match. When she puts Devil in the figure four she lifts herself up with only the good arm instead of the usual two. She goes for her special backdrop but isn't able to hit it properly with her arm hurt. To correct this injustice caused by the interference earlier, Lioness Asuka runs in and bodyslams Devil while Mimi goes up top to hit her flying knee, but the referee won't count the pin. Can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but AJW refs are very reluctant to call for DQs, so they'll do stuff like refuse to count a pin if someone just did something illegal rather than DQ them.

The finish is Mimi getting beaten up by Devil & goons on the outside and is counted out. It's a fine idea but the execution was lacking. Firstly, the babyfaces are completely ineffective at stopping the heel seconds from attacking her and it makes them look a bit useless, secondly it looked like Mimi had got into the ring in time but was counted out anyway. I don't think we needed a double injustice when her being attacked by Devil Legion already achieved that, so that just made the referee look bent. But still this was a very good match, almost great, and now we have Devil Masami world title match to look forward to.

***3/4




MD: This was the finals of a tournament and there’d be a big trophy at the end and everything. And I suppose a title shot? Devil had left her cane on the top rope as she was getting her robe off. The second she got it off, she grabbed the cane and charged and we got a fun bit of dueling with Mimi snatching a chair, before things broke down. Duel is actually a good word for the early goings here. It felt almost like a joust with each wrestler flying at one another simultaneously to see who would get the hair/head and whip the other down. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it done quite this way and it was neat. There was much more of a sense of urgency to it than some of the face offs we see today.

Match opened up when Devil pried off an arm and really went to work with it. There was a nice long short arm scissor sequence where Mimi was able to roll her over but not do much else. Devil also used pumphandles over her shoulder but she decided to drag Mimi across the ring at the same time and it looked brutal. And of course they wrapped her arm in the ropes and everything broke down again, Mimi’s close-up emotive selling stealing the show. Mimi did escape and took Devil down to put on a figure-four. The selling never lasts too long in any of these matches but I really appreciated Mimi trying to manage the figure four with just one arm. While it got broken up by Devil’s goons, Mimi had some help too and after an assisted body slam came off the top but the ref wouldn’t count it due to the interference.

Beginning of the end here was Mimi flying off the ropes and tragically missing a cross body, landing on her arm and rolling to the floor. This broke down once again but this time half the seconds were keeping her from getting back in to beat the count and the other half were trying to push her back in. Devil just stood there, feet towards the rope, to block her and draw the count out. The commentary treated it a bit like a loophole in the rules, and Devil won the big trophy in a very unsatisfying way. That didn’t stop her from blowing big kisses to the crowd though. Mimi is really one of the most interesting and emotive sellers of all time. I don’t think that’s a crazy statement. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Hori! Martel! Martin!

Volume 3 

4. Jaguar Yokota & Jumbo Hori vs. Judy Martin & Sherri Martel 

This is the last match Judy Martin and Sherri Martel would have in this tour of Japan before heading back to the United States. From what cards I can see Sherri actually tagged with Kaoru (later Dump) Matsumoto for most of this tour. Those are matches that'd be interesting to see if there's any evidence she had an influence on Dump (they certainly have 'act insane' in common). No footage of any of them though. 

To the match, Jaguar has her arm taped up and Judy & Sherri immediately go after it. There's no shine at all. Barely 30 seconds into the match and this is the heels working over a body part. It's a lot less hectic than their previous outing, which maybe doesn't suit them at first, but it also gives them something to build up to. They were going somewhere with the heat but I thought Jaguar's tag out was a bit anti-climatic, she literally just throws one punch to the gut and then rolls over to the over side of the ring to tag in Jumbo Hori. Could have done with a bit more struggle there.

This was basically a set up for a double figure-four spot. Sherri Martel sells Jaguar's figure four by shaking around like she's in the most unbearable pain ever. When she rolls out of the ring and Judy Martin gets in, Jaguar does one of the best rolling handstands I've ever seen her do into a dropkick. I find it mesmerising. 

This is my favourite part of the match though. Judy and Sherri have an argument after a miscommunication, they're driven to the outside and are still arguing. Then Jaguar and Jumbo chase them around the ring going in opposite directions, until Judy and Sherri meet on the other side and crash into each other! Perfect. I don't remember seeing that anywhere else but it's such a simple and funny spot to make the heels look like clowns.

We then get a double countout, which in AJW 2/3 falls rules means the score is 1-1 so this next fall is the final one. 

I'm not some big limbwork obsessive but in this match I think it would have been better for Jaguar's arm to come into play. Mainly because if you're going to spend the first few minutes of the match setting up that and nothing else, it doesn't make much sense to me for it to then have no impact on the rest of the match. It's like spending the opening chapter of a novel establishing that the main character has a fear of heights but then that trait having zero impact on the plot.

Instead, this final fall is more heel shenanigans, but relatively tame compared to what we've seen before. There's a beatdown on the outside, Jaguar gets thrown onto a table. There's a decent comeback where she ducks a double clothesline and then has Jumbo lift her up for a couple of double thrust kicks. Jumbo actually gets the pin with a top rope crossbody, which would have been a good win for her.

Fans of Judy & Sherri will appreciate seeing this. It's a better opportunity than they usually got in the USA to show how good they were and it has some uniqueness going for it. Pretty good. I don't think anyone gave a standout performance though nor did we really learn much.

***

MD: A lot going on here. Less chaotic and more focused to start as they target Yokota’s damaged elbow but that does go away after a while. Early transitions aren’t super interesting. Hori gets swept under on the outside when she tries to help save her partner but then she comes back with just a punch to the gut. Love the end of the fall though. Yokota handsprings through but ends up 2-on-1. It bleeds into heel miscommunication and the heels shouting at each other and shoving. Hori and Yokota take over and chase them around ringside where they crash into each other. Then it becomes a mad dash back into the ring, really putting over the countout in a way you can only do in a ⅔ falls match. Yokota makes it back in but I don’t think it’s in time so it’s 1-1.

This had more of Hori working big too. She crashed into both Americans in the corner like Andre might do. Martin sold a Vader Attack from her by almost being taken out of the match. They had Yokota barely survive another count later on, but the finish was pretty definitive with Hori hitting a big flying body press for the win. It had a lot of disjointed stuff (I didn’t mention the double figure fours) and lacked the overall chaotic feel of the last Martin/Sherri tag but the highs were pretty high and very fun here. 
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Yukari! Martel! Martin!

 Volume 3

3. Judy Martin & Sherri Martel vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) 

K: I'll forever associate this match with DEAN. It was one of the last matches he reviewed on the DVDVR board before we lost him and in his classic hyperbolic style he declared it the GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s. 

Before the match starts Sherri steals the tag belts and runs outside with them, apparently thinking the rules in Japan are that the winner is just whichever team is able to physically take possession of the belts. They both act so insane it makes you feel like anything could happen here, this atmosphere is helped along by them getting in the ring and getting immediately ambushed by Hagiwara and Omori and thrown into the crowd to big applause.

When we finally get something you could definitely call 'wrestling' (no value judgement here) Sherri is targeting Hagiwara's throat dropping her on the ropes, and later when she has Hagiwara grounded she's seemingly biting her in the face. She just comes across as a nutcase, and then Devil Masami gets involved on the outside whacking Mimi with her big cane. I should add for a bit of context from matches not on the set that Devil Masami seems to have given herself a personal quest to make Mimi's life a living hell. This is far from the only time Mimi will be wrestling someone else but Devil keeps getting involved in her matches just to torment her. She's obsessed. It's like she had a premonition that after her wrestling career was done Mimi would become a Christian evangelical preacher (not joking that actually happened).

I really like Mimi's selling here. For example the more hurt she is, the more she wobbles/looks a bit unco-ordinated when she's running off an Irish whip.

This is not a famous match, but if it were to become one, it should be famous for the spot where Sherri and Judy put Mimi's head between the ropes, put the middle rope over the top rope, and then swing back and forth with her head stuck like they're trying to break her neck. I'm watching this thinking "why does nobody steal this?", think about it a bit more and decide "ok, this does look legitimately dangerous" so maybe that's why. Still it looks absolutely awesome, brutal and makes the heels look like psychopaths.

Oh also, sick piledriver by Mimi to take the 1st fall. This alone would have been a really good and memorable match. This is for the tag titles so it's 2/3 falls.

In AJW tradition, the babyfaces are 1 fall up, so the heels go crazier, take things to the outside and try causing carnage. It's so wild it's hard to follow what's going on. At one point Devil Masami is on the outside swinging her cane at people. I think Mimi gets a chair up to the protect herself from the shots meanwhile someone else is being thrown into the seats. For whatever reason Devil is so enraged she comes into the ring swinging her cane around, and the heels FOR THE SECOND TIME now put Mimi's head in the rope trap of death like they're trying to kill her. Things are so damn out of control and someone is gonna die so the referee DISQUALIFIES the heel team, which almost never happens in AJW. 

Not the most important thing I know, but there's a 2/3 falls match which ended 2-0.

Is this the greatest match of the 80s? Well no. That’s a little silly. It’s relatively limited in what it’s trying to achieve, that Martel & Martin are homicidal maniacs and Hagiwara and Omori are such heroes for being willing to fight them. It did most of that. The big flaw is I don’t think Omori really got herself over here, in fact I barely remember her doing anything. Devil Masami probably had a better contribution to this than she did. It was certainly entertaining and not one you’ll forget soon.

***1/2

MD: Hey, I’ve seen this one! DEAN gave it to me during a Secret Santo in 2023. 

Here’s what DEAN said about it when giving it to me:

“This match is fucking INSANE.  It's the fucking DREAM tagteam of Sherri Martel and Judy Martin aligning with total lunatic Devil Masami at ringside trying to murder the hell out of Mimi Hagewara and Yukari Omori in 1982.  GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s!”

Here’s what I said about it then: 

“The big thing I learned from this however was that Martin and Martel were basically Raging and Ravishing. I'm a big Glamour Girls fan, but Kai and Martin were pretty similar, great bullies, incredibly credible offense, big bumps, great pacing. Martin is basically the most credible Moolah-ism wrestler ever. Sherri on the other hand, is wildly over the top. Her punch to the gut may have been goofy, but she was all antics, all the time, starting from stealing the belts and refusing to give them back to just screaming, fighting with fans, heatseeking like wild. Then Martin would come in and just assert control and leave things for Sherri to cause havoc.

After the whole belt stealing thing, the faces got the early offensive advantage, but then Martin/Martel took most of the rest. Whenever the faces tried to comeback it became an absolute gang scene with everything completely breaking down. Devil would interfere liberally. So that meant whenever comebacks actually did take, they ended up being super violent. Structure here ended up being comebacks and quick cutoffs, and then a real comeback for the first fall victory as they switched up on top rope leaps and then hit a kneeling pile driver. There was more heat again right at the start of the second fall and it all broke down into chaos. Mimi and Omori looked fine but it was hard to get much sense out of them other than getting battered around a few moments of fiery comebacks. Sherri, however, came off as a generational heatseeker; obviously she was as a manager but I think she couldn't flex quite as much in the AWA and WWF as a wrestler maybe? Here she had a lot of freedom to just toss poise completely out the window and go wild.”

Here’s what I think about it now:

What I have now that I didn’t back then is a much better understanding of Hagiwara and a much better sense of the chaos in Black Army matches from 78-81 or so. And honestly, even compared to those, this was pretty wild. Sherri is such a natural. She understood pro wrestling so well, bursting out of the ring with the belt and parading around with it, snatching it away when anyone tries to take it from her. What a natural heatseeker, just perfect in her role.

They controlled most of this, and on Mimi for most of it as well. Lots of choking, both naturally and in the ropes which formed a sieve around her neck. Brutal stuff. Lots of beating them around the ringside area too. Whenever they started to fight back for more than a second, everything would break down into chaos. Omori actually got to flex her strength a bit here on comebacks. Eventually, Mimi finally had enough and unloaded fists and neckbreaker drops on Martin, Omori hit a Vader Bomb and Mimi a nasty looking kneeling pile driver, where you could see Martin’s life flash before her eyes. That was the end of the first fall. Second went quite well for Martin and Sherri until Devil accidentally clocked Sherri with the pole. It still went pretty well for them after that though and eventually everything really broke down and they just choked their opponents in the ropes until the ref called for the DQ. I’d say this was pretty clearly the best showing of any American women so far. Martin hit like a truck and ground things down and Sherri was just as over the top as she’d be ten years later. And at least Omori and Hagiwara survived it to stand tall with their belts in the end.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Masami!

Volume 3

2. Devil Masami vs. Jaguar Yokota 1/26/82 

K: This is the first time on the set we get to see the company top babyface vs. top heel in a singles match. So much has changed since we last saw these two against each other wrestling for the Junior Title. Jaguar's the World Champion here, but this match is non-title (world title defences are rare and saved for big shows).

At the start Devil Masami seems unaware that bringing a weapon into the ring is illegal when the referee ushers her to remove it. This doesn't do much good as one of her seconds just passes her a chair instead, which Devil immediately uses to swing wilding at Yokota's head. But this backfires as Jaguar is too fast and one time Devil swings it so wildly her momentum takes her over the top rope and Jaguar chases after her. The opening makes Devil look very villainous and wild, but also a bit dumb. The brawl continues on the outside until Jaguar takes a big bump into the announcers after Devil banged her head on their table. So far, so good. Devil comes across as almost out of control.

Devil can't match Jaguar for wrestling skill. An interesting thing about the structure of this is the 'slow down' parts are actually when the babyface is in control, as Jaguar's mostly just keeping Devil trapped on the match and applying holds, whereas when Devil escapes everything gets wild again, but she can't do that without outside help/using her cane. Devil also tries to get a win by countout a couple of times, she'll take anything to get a win here.

I noticed the commentary shout out Mami Kumano when Devil gave us a big pendulum swing on the apron.

Towards the end is when we get the more classic exciting babyface segment. Jaguar begins her comeback with her spectacular handstand through an Irish Whip and into her flashiest offense to send Devil into retreat. She goes for 1 high-flying move too much though misses Devil with a crossbody to the outside and instead hits Masked Yu (a Black Devils crony). She looks very cool doing it though, however Devil can only capitalise on this by bludgeoning her with her cane over and over again until it looks like Jaguar has been injured. That's basically your finish. Devil rolls her into the ring, hits her with a big military press and actually pins her with it. They show Jaguar reach for the ropes, but actually Devil clearly got the 3 count before Jaguar had the ropes. Huge win for Devil.

Very good match. Devil vs. Jaguar is on.

***1/2

MD: This was pretty well constructed, actually. On top of it being Devil vs Yokota with both of them more or less formed. The openings that Masami got were because of interference, or feints, or decisions Yokota made. But it didn’t feel as haphazard or random as the Black Army sprawls of a couple of years earlier. It felt more measured and intentional. A tighter narrative.

Early on that meant that Masami was prevented from using the cane but swung the chair. Yokota dodged it (and they were big swings to dodge) but ended up getting thrashed on the outside. Masami pressed by attacking the throat and having a lot of mean, borderline illegal offense, but Yokota came back with the sunset flip reversal and then leaned in hard with the figure-four and then the nasty single leg version. That was broken up by Yu. That distraction allows Masami to use the cane and then the Kumano Swing. Yokota comes back with her dynamic handspring (which is up there with Fiera’s spinning kick as one of the best comeback moves ever), but she chooses to hit a dive on Yu instead of Masami. Good revenge but it clears the way for Masami’s last assault with the cane and the press back into the ring and the one in the ring for the win.

Previously there was just as sense all of that was happening almost at random or as part of the chaos and carnage of the Black Army. Here though, there was much more of a method to the madness and it made for a stronger match.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Chigusa! Nancy! Jumbo! Lioness!

Volume 3

1. Chigusa Nagayo & Nancy Kumi vs. Jumbo Hori & Lioness Asuka 1/26/82 

K: It’s a bit flukey that there ended up being ended up being three matches from this show on the set. The reasons for including the next two matches we’re covering should be clear from watching them. This one was a late inclusion though, it’s relatively run of the mill match. It’s mainly here so we can get another look at Nancy Kumi (who will be retiring soon), and so we can track the development of Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, who otherwise would have only had 1 appearance each in 1982.

I hadn’t really noticed this move until Matt pointed it out previously, but in the first minute we see Nancy’s Kumi fake-out crossbody move, but this time instead of a suplex she turns in the momentum into a bodyslam. It’s good that she’s got something unique to her now, on the whole she’s not a very memorable wrestler.

You really see Chigusa’s enthusiasm and drive on display here. As soon as she tags in for the first time she’s shouting at her opponent and makes the crowd laugh, which probably wasn’t the intention, she’s just so hyped up! Especially when she’s predictably going to get beaten up. Chigusa debuted in 1980, so she’s in the same class as Lioness Asuka, but she’s pushed like she’s class of 1981. The reason for this is Chigusa barely wrestled in 1980-81. The class of 1979 was a disaster, only three wrestlers debuted, and all of them quit within a year. This is why the class of 1980 was especially big, they essentially had to produce two years worth of wrestlers, but it also meant there wasn’t room for the under-performing members of the class (which Chigusa definitely was initially) to wrestle often. 

Chigusa actually hits a pretty good top rope elbow drop when she tags in the second time, and follows this up with even more excitable shouting. Not to be outdone, Lioness Asuka goes for a sunset flip cover from the corner and still manages to apply it despite landing on her head! I like watching this as these two competing with each other to showcase themselves. I find them more interesting than the two veterans here, who aren’t treating this like an important match (to be fair it isn’t). Asuka later hits a really good backbreaker, the move, it’s a bit confusing because the commentary calls that and the ‘Canadian backbreaker’ submission as a ‘backbreaker’ and Asuka did one after the other.

Jumbo Hori tags in, and Chigusa does one of the funniest botches I’ve ever seen. Hori appears to be going for a sidewalk slam, but Chigusa jumps over he and just bizarrely does a sidewards roll over her back and falls onto the mat while shouting. I can’t figure out what she was even going for but her ambition was endearing. Jumbo just stomps on her. Chigusa soon gets herself back together and does her biggest showcase yet with a series of karate kicks on both her opponents in a fighting hot tag to Nancy. The crowd actually audibly gets behind her for this. The next audible reaction from the crowd is when Jumbo Hori gets in and flattens Chigusa with two big hard powerbombs to wrap this up.

This isn’t a particularly good match. I think seeing stuff like this will enhance your appreciation for good matches to follow though.

**1/4

MD: On to Disc 3 and a little deeper into 1982. This disc will take us halfway through the year or so. By April we’ll get our first look at Kaoru Matsumoto, but for now Jumbo Hori is Jumbo Hori and Lioness Asuka is Lioness Asuka and here they are up against Chigusa and Nancy and the Crush Gals are pre-exploding. 

This was all action in somewhat less than fifteen minutes. You can tell Kumi from Nagayo because Nagayo has a kneebrace. Obviously Jumbo is bigger so that’s not so hard. I’d say that Hori had more come into her own and was working to her size here. She threw around her opponents more and did the drop down body scissors for instance, and she certainly asserted herself at the end with a couple of power bombs to win it. Nagayo felt plucky and persistent, just constantly coming at you. Towards the end she unloaded on a bunch of wild spinning kicks. I had less of a sense of Asuka though she chained together some back based offense towards the end and was able to dump Kumi with an atomic drop over the top rope to set up the finish. 

In general I guess that Hori and Asuka controlled a little more, mainly due to Hori’s size, but it was still back and forth. Kumi got in all of her stuff for instance, though more towards the end. I think I was feeling the lack of contrast overall in this one, though the energy was good; when Nayago was facing Asuka, it was a little rough around the edges but the spirit carried it through.

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