80s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Sato!

Disc 1

1. Intro - 1/4/80

2. Chino Sato vs. Rimi Yokota (AJW Junior Title) - 1/4/80

K: For anyone who didn't know, I am the person who curated this set. So it feels a bit strange for me to be reviewing it when it's partly my work, but I also haven't had the chance to write about it in any real depth or explain my thought processes. I'll try to keep that on the sidelines though as talking about the matches themselves should be priority of course, but it'll mean you'll be reading a different perspective from me than Matt every week. 

There's an amazing video of three rookies talking about their training at the start of the set that I thought was a perfect introduction to understanding 80s AJW. That it also happens to be the first thing that aired on AJW TV in the 1980s (this was the January 4th 1980 show) makes it even more fitting. These are super determined teenage girls who have dedicated their youth to becoming successes in pro-wrestling, mainly because they feel they have no other options. There's a harsh desperation in the air that makes this very different from WWE's stories of 'boyhood dreams'. As well as just enjoying some wrestling matches, part of watching AJW is to follow the life stories of these rookies struggling to try and make it to the top, or fall short, as most of them do.

It's with that understanding that we can delve into this 1st match. This is to decide the first ever AJW Junior Champion (the title has just been introduced for younger wrestlers). Note that unlike Japanese men's wrestling, in Joshi 'Junior' refers to experience level, it is not a weight class. A wrestler's seniority is especially important (down to year they debuted) in AJW, not just because of standard Japanese seniority customs, but because their careers are so short and the wrestlers all joined in classes. In any random AJW match, you would expect the winner to be the wrestler with the higher seniority, e.g. a wrestler who debuted in 1978 will by default beat a wrestler who debuted in 1979. The formula trains the audience to pay attention when it get broken, as that tells you who is being pushed. 

The standard system of seniority goes something like this:

1. Trainees. These are wrestlers who have passed an audition to join the company, and are paid employees, but they have not yet passed a 'pro test' that allows them to have matches. This is a unique two-stage system to become a wrestler which only exists in Japanese women's wrestling. Trainees spend most of their days training to pass that test, but you will also sometimes see them hanging around ringside at shows doing menial tasks.

2. Rookies. These are wrestlers in their 1st and 2nd years since debuting. They will have extremely basic ring gear/not much of a discernable gimmick, their matches will mostly be just doing fundamentals (their matches against each other usually finish on just straight pins), and they'll generally be associated with a mentor senior wrestler. The idea behind this is wrestlers should have gotten good at all these basic elements of wrestling and 'paid their dues' before they start to try developing distinctiveness.

3. Juniors. These are wrestlers in their 3rd and 4th years since debuting. They will still be held back in terms of push, and will generally still be associated with a senior mentor wrestler, but by this point they should be developing into their fully-fludged self.

4. Proper wrestlers. Their isn't an exact term here, just that by the time they reach their 5th year, if their development has gone on track, they should now be reaching their peak and be aiming to challenge for the top titles.

Now that above system is not set in stone, in fact things can get really exciting when you see the company is so high on a particular wrestler that they seem to be fast-tracking them through the system, but it gives you a solid idea of what to expect as wrestlers progress. 
NOW TO THE MATCH

This is the biggest match of either wrestlers career to this point and they really make the most of it. They do such a good job of conveying their determination to win. It gets really nasty at times, without either of them being a heel, but just two young athletes who really want to win and get mad at each other for being in the way. Sometimes it feels pretty. Like early on when Yokota brings a metal bin into the ring to clock Sato on the head with it (just the once, so it doesn't feel like cheating but just her being mad). When things spill out to the outside (which happens a few times) they chase the other out and keep laying in the violence, chairs get involved. It mostly feels spontaneous though flawless, for example there was a bit of a noticeable bluescreen pause on one of Sato's chairshots on the outside.

They keep up this ferocious, simplistic action for over 20 minutes. They don't quite have the arsenal to be going that long without things feeling repetitive sometimes, or narrative threads losing coherence, but I was still thoroughly entertained. The two (almost) constants are Sato repeatedly targetting Yokota's leg with holds and sometimes just stomping. The other is that they're are both persistently looking for the win by sneaking in quick rollups or covers. This is where Yokota excels as she's mechanically so brilliant. For example the sunset rollup she does when countering Sato's shoulder barges about 10 minutes in is incredibly crisp, you'll struggle to find anyone in wrestling history make such a simple move as that look impressive and like something that could have pinned someone.

It's hard to see anyone getting the win with any of these flashpins though, because both wrestlers are so determined to never be on their back. You'll see them kick out/roll onto their front sometimes literally before a 1 count. It can be a bit glaring when you're used to wrestlers kicking out on 2 out of habit, even when they weren't in any danger of losing the match, but this way it feels like any pin attempt is in danger of ending the match if they aren't getting their shoulders up by a count of 1. This is a stylistic thing with Joshi that hasn't entirely gone away but in the 80s it was especially distinctive. Even on when they're brawling in the outside when they're on the ground they'll instinctively turn over to their front even though they can't get pinned out their anyway.

In the end, Yokota gets the win with a determined holddown which Sato can't push up out of despite flailing the rest of her body around. There's a cute little cut away to two girls in the crowd hugging as Yokota is awarded the match and a trophy as tall as her. Very good match, and a great way to acclimatise yourself to the house style.

***3/4

MD: On the one hand, given some of what we’ve seen at the very end of the 70s, we shouldn’t be surprised a title match looks like this. On the other, yeah, it took me by surprise. We really didn’t see much Sato in the 70s footage, just a few matches and she played different roles in them. Her offense was pretty dynamic. I do remember that. Yokota is, of course, Yokota, but this is by far the most she’s gotten to shine even with her popping up a decent amount in 79. 

This goes almost the full thirty and we’re only clipped out of a few minutes of it. I’m not sure it always has a coherent story. I’m not sure that the actions, as gnarly as they are, always have the consequence over time that I would prefer. But what we get here is gripping in each and every individual moment and full of struggle for literally everything that happens. It’s still an overall exhausting and engaging experience even if I’d say it never completely comes together. 

Things break down almost immediately with Sato knocking Yokota out of the ring and just toppling her into chairs and Rimi coming back with an object. That’s one way to set the tone. She overextended however and Sato is able to mangle her leg with a chair. Some of the legwork that followed was just brutal. There’s a deathlock where Yokota managed to contort herself in the most painful way. This would be a theme for a while. Yokota wouldn’t sell when back in control but Sato still targeted it to take back over and that worked well enough for me considering. None of this was passive. Yokota fought back at every point, and Sato just adapted. That might mean turning a block of a Boston Crab into a giant swing or a jammed figure-four into her dropping down on top of Yokota. 

The crowd felt more into this than some of the matches we’d seen in late 79, but they gave them good reason to be. Even when things were more even or back and forth, the level of intensity was very high building to a frenetic last minute where both wrestlers had to dive into the ring to beat the count at the last moment. When Yokota vs Masami from 83 showed up recently, there was question about whether the finish was a shoot or not, and this 100% felt like a shoot and Yokota able to just barely hold down Sato’s shoulders. I have no idea if it was or not, but if so you almost wonder how history might have shifted. That I even question this is a testament to the wildness of the match. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Rimi! Seiko! Chino! Martin! Kumano! Masami!

58. 1979.09.2X2 - 01 Chino Sato, Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa vs. Judy Martin, Mami Kumano & Tenjin Masami (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: The Americans are very visible at ringside for this one but thankfully they appear to not be in constant interference mode for this low stakes matchup. We start with Chino Sato goes for some kind of grab attack on Mami Kumano which seemed to throw Mami off a bit, but Chino didn’t have a 2nd move to hand to capitalise before she got cut down to size to begin a period of heel domination. This first section is wrapped up with a pretty cool moment where Yokota is being stomped in the heel corner, and just for a second Judy Martin lets go, and with cat-like reflexes Yokota dashes all the way across the ring to her corner to make a tag and she does it so quickly it really looked like Judy had made a mistake and was physically unable to stop Yokota getting away.

The big babyface comeback comes from a Seiko Hanawa rollup of all things. Once the heel’s offense is broken up, it’s like they can’t get their machine up and running again. For the final few minutes the pace really speeds up and the babyfaces basically take turns to hit their signatures moves and tag out before they get tired. So we get Hanawa fireman’s slam, Sato hits a couple of powerbombs and then Yokota is flying around with her very aggressive crossbodies and it’s all too much and somehow in the mix of things they get the win with a snap pin that looked a bit awkward and probably came too soon.

Pretty inconsequential match, but fun for what it was.

**

MD: This was pretty straightforward but Martin, Kumano, and Masami are a bit of a WAR team when you think about it. Martin is, in my mind, the ace of Moolah-ism. No one makes hair throws and clubbing shots work better than her as she bases and makes everything make sense. They sent Sato out to die at first and the Young Pair didn’t do much better, getting only tiny spatterings of hope. Kumano pulled hair and jammed her knee into throats and stepped on faces, but Masami would tear at them with her nails instead. A different sort of villain.

When they finally mounted a comeback, Sato got to shine with a Giant Swing and some of the most direct power bombs we’ve seen yet (we saw some of the leg hook flip ones here instead). I don’t remember seeing a straight one quite like this earlier in the footage. Kumano had none of it though and dragged her down until things devolved into chaos and the babyfaces won with a fairly dubious sunset flip. Lots of chaos on the outside with the seconds as you’d expect too. This was ok but needed more hope if it wasn’t going to get a shine.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Sato! Iwae!

38. 1979.07.31 - 01 Chino Sato vs. Kazuko Iwae (Kazuko Iwae debut)

K: There’s not much to say about the actual wrestling in this match so I’m going to talk about debuts. A much bigger deal of them is made in Joshi compared to other wrestling scenes. Part of this is that after its first boom in popularity with Beauty Pair, AJW set up a unique system of accepting new wrestlers with a two-stage process.

First, hopefuls would have to pass an audition, then they are accepted as trainees (and thus, are already considered ‘employed’ by the company), usually live at the dojo and train full-time until they’re ready to pass the second stage called the ‘pro-test’. The pro-test is like a live exam, and consists of a mixture of general athletic feats (e.g. squats, bridges) and specifically pro-wrestling skills like rope-running and grappling. If you want to see a modern example of a pro-test, Marvelous broadcasted one on their YouTube channel last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IIHmgkbzxk

If they pass the pro-test, they’re then given a debut date. AJW (and its descendents) made a much bigger deal out of debuts than other companies, they’d usually be on relatively big show and would be televised. In later years AJW would also sometimes broadcast footage of their trainees getting ready to debut or their pro-tests to hype this up, so it means that the fans would often be able to follow a wrestler’s career right from the beginning.

As for the match, it’s more evenly-matched than debuts typically would be later on (this is probably just because the formula hasn’t developed yet). Iwae does a good job of showing her stuff. She has some pretty cool headscissors moves on a standing opponent that I don’t remember seeing much of, but the crowd certainly sounded like they bought them as offense. Her lowly status is more established with her lack of hit points, as all it takes to beat her is for Chino to dodge a flying crossbody then splat her with a powerbomb and that’s her out for the 3 count. Chino looks like she’s barely been hurt from the whole thing though.

*

MD: This is Iwae’s debut and she looks ok out of the gate, starting with a couple of armdrags before Sato took her out with a jumping fist and jumping knee. Iwae turned a bodyscissors around by grabbing the hair and pulling her up and then controlled for a while with a series of headscissors. She missed a cross body and Sato hit a couple of power bombs to end her. Not a lot to say here but she looked ready to debut at least.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Hori! Komine! Yokota! Sato!

27. 1979.04.XX1 - 01 Ayumi Hori vs. Hiroko Komine

K: Ayumi Hori is part of the class of 1978 but didn’t debut until the end of the year as she suffered an injury during training, so she’s really a lot less experienced than her classmates at this point. She’s also probably the tallest wrestler in AJW’s history, billed at 180cm.

I can tell Hiroko Komine was leading this at some points, she moves a lot more naturally than Hori does. At times it looks like Hori’s not really doing anything but concentrating on doing her moves correctly, she doesn’t screw anything up but the vibes of the match are all off as there’s little semblance of struggle over things and she takes a bit too long to do her stuff. It’s a better watch when Komine is on offense, and Hori’s bumping is fine at least. They do play into Hori being much larger in a few moments, for instance when Komine picks her up presumably to do a slam but then collapses backwards from her weight. But mostly Komine has little trouble taking her down, it’s doing Hori a favour really that in kayfabe she comes across as not really knowing what she’s doing.

We only saw 5 minutes of this, though I doubt there was much more to it. Komine did well but Hori looked just barely fit for TV at this point.

*

MD: Our first look at Hori. It’s funny. The way they shot her at first , in the corner, by herself, with her robe, I was thinking that she didn’t look all that big, but when she was up next to Komine, she was giant. They also had this way of shooting up from the floor that made her seem all the larger once things got going. Komine was, apparently, injury prone and she had her hand taped up here. It’s pretty clear right from the get go that they have something with Hori. Though obviously green, she moved well, could take things like monkey flips, was clearly strong enough to do any physical feat she wanted to with Komine, whether it be a sort of head between the legs back body drop or just tossing her about by her hair. This went five minutes but it was a very full five minutes, maybe even seeming clipped. Komine would get her with mean shots and tight holds, but Hori would just sort of power out and run right through her. Komine did get the win with a sort of flowing cross body where she ended up almost vertical by the time they landed. My biggest surprise is that they weren’t talking about Monster Ripper the whole time. If I was booking this, I would be building Hori to face Ripper.

28. 1979.04.XX1 - 02 Chino Sato vs. Rimi Yokota

K: This match had more of a ‘traditional’ babyface-heel dynamic than Black Pair matches. Chino doesn’t really cheat, well except a few moments of competitive feistiness, but the match is laid out so that Rimi gets some shine only for Chino to take over and go into a long heat section where Rimi still gets to do cooler stuff. For example Chino goes for a Boston Crab a couple of times but Rimi just forces her head forward to roll out of it both times before Chino can lock it in, but she doesn’t give up and gets it on the third attempt. There was a cool bit of camera work where they show Rimi dragging her body over the mat while in the Indian Deathlock to try and get to the ropes, only for Chino to pull her back, but just out of shot so you don’t see it coming until suddenly Rimi starts magically moving in the opposite direction. The moment I enjoyed the most was when Chino was trying to work on Rimi’s leg, but Rimi counters by taking Chino down with a headscissors while her back is still on the mat. It was pretty simple but it made Rimi look more intelligent than necessarily athletically impressive as I didn’t even consider that counter as an option until she did it.

There was a bit of an odd moment where Chino locked in a Figure Four really close to the ropes, like, Rimi actually gets her hand to them, then lets go, and Chino then rolls over so they’re in the middle of the ring now. It would have been find if Chino had forced Rimi off the ropes because merely touching the ropes isn’t considered a rope break in AJW, you need to keep a hold of them, but instead it just looked like Rimi let go for no reason. It’s made more odd by this little section ending by Rimi forcibly rolling back to where she was to start with, grabbing the ropes again and so forcing a break.

Matt’s done his write-up for this match before me so I’ve already seen his comments on the leg-selling. I don’t agree with him on this one. I thought Rimi sold the leg appropriately for the situation. She didn’t come across to me like her leg was perfectly fine. She shakes it about several times while she’s in her comeback. At 12:20 in the YouTube video for a quick example. I also interpreted her favouring one side being part of her selling her right leg (she seems to a have a very slight limp on the one Sato had been working over) rather than just selling her side. We’re getting into very nitty gritty here but I just felt the need to justify myself a bit here. The other thing I’ll say is I wouldn’t expect Rimi to be outright limping on one leg kind of selling, for one thing she is Chino’s senior and in kayfabe definitely the better wrestler, so it feels right that she sell just about enough to register that the legwork has had an effect on her, but not enough to severely impact on her, or stop her winning.

The finish is a great example to me of what makes Rimi Yokota so special. She counters Chino’s rolling headbutt into a sunset flip pin, and it looked perfect. The timing on it is exquisite. Most wrestlers could never make that spot look good but Yokota does this kind of thing time and time again. Of course I know what she turns into to, but even here you can see she’s a special talent.

***

MD: I was not expecting this out of Sato after her being sort of a plucky rookie the last time we saw her. Yokota rushed in early, but Sato took over very quickly and focused for minutes and minutes on the leg. Lots of brutal looking, varied offense, including a series of damaging holds and moves while Yokota was in a cross-toehold. The best of that might have been these bounding splashes down onto the hold. It was brutal and the selling in the moment and immediately thereafter by Yokota was good.

Of course, once she had her comeback, the leg was perfectly fine. In fact, the big issue was her side after she missed a splash. Sato was quick to just crush her over and over with power bombs. There was some talk about a 6 on 6 series of Americans vs Japanese where you’d have to qualify and could score different points with different outcomes but I don’t see immediate sign of that in the match list, but who knows. This went fifteen and was good as segments in a bubble and if you learn to swallow your thoughts about consequence. Sato did move on from the leg and maybe that was her folly. Finish had Sato doing these roll through headbutts only to get caught on the second and sunset flipped. She decked the ref post-match for good measure. Yokota was very sympathetic here (maybe for the first time as she had leaned more aggressive in previous matches), but Sato absolutely made an impression.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Komine! Hagiwara! Sato! Akagi!

13. 1979.01.XX2 - 01 Hiroko Komine vs. Mimi Hagiwara

K: This is our first look at Hiroko Komine, who (along with Mimi) is from the AJW class of 1978. Hiroko would quit after another year, I was going to say that there’s almost no information on her but just this March she was interviewed on Jaguar Yokota’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_JoKLR4Q5s The gist of it is she was constantly injured while wrestling. She tells a story of going to hospital thinking she had a sprain only to be told she has a bone fracture but it was already broken so long ago it’d already hardened so there wasn’t much they could do. No wonder she didn’t last long.

I’m also just noticing how very thin Mimi is here. In 1983 she did an interview where she claimed she’d put on 11kg since she’d started wrestling so she could compete better, the reason may be a little kayfabed but looking at her here she probably wasn’t exaggerating the weight gain.

To the match, pretty early on Hiroko establishes herself as being on the heel-side of things, but it’s a bit “box-ticky.” She does the standard tropes of stomping on Mimi she’s in the ropes and scrunching up her face, but the aura of malice isn’t there. When Mimi gets a comeback going it’s a bit abrupt as just pulls Hiroko up while in a body scissors and slams her down to break it. It doesn’t get any reaction but I guess the quicker things got changed up the better, as alongside being more charismatic Mimi is actually a bit better on offense (though neither are ‘good’), her neckbreaker drop early into this section had a nice execution to it even if she’s still a bit rough.

Things improve when Hiroko starts to get back into things, but rather than the generic heel offense she goes for running elbows and some decent-looking dropkicks. Mimi manages to counter snapmare-attempt into a backslide and gets the pin. This wasn’t much. But it’s also just a rookie opener which nobody thought we’d be watching back 45 years later, so it’s fine for what it is and there’s not much else to say about it.

*1/4

MD: If I’m reading the poorly translated commentary right, they were making fun of Hagiwara for wrestling 300 times in 78 and only winning about twenty times and said that Komine was rookie of the year. This went less than seven minutes. They were pretty even to start with rapid succession alternating armdrags, but Komine took over. She was competently mean but didn’t stand out, using eyerakes, standing hairpulls, and front facelocks that she rolled back with. Hagiwara pulled her hair out of a bodyscissors to takeover with her neckbreakers and a nice gutwrench of sorts before they went into finishing stretch with dropkicks and cross chops and body presses (some missed) and finishing things with a few pin attempts and a Hagiwara backslide. Competent for the experience level is the phrase that I’d use but Hagiwara seemed a bit more confident than the last time we saw her.

14. 1979.01.XX2 - 02 Chino Sato vs. Mariko Akagi

K: Chino Sato is from the AJW Class of 1978. She retired in 1981 and I believe her retirement ceremony was the first to have the ‘When A Child Is Born’ instrumental playing while her career achievements were read out, which would become the standard format from then on.

Chino gets a bit more offense in this than you’d expect considering the gulf in status, but her offense also isn’t very good and it comes across like Mariko is just humouring her more than she’s a genuine threat. Mariko a couple of times just brushes her off and decides it’s her turn to take over and imposes herself far more convincingly. It’s fitting then that the finishing run is Chino hitting a bunch of offense, the first move of which she totally misses (unintentionally), there’s a Giant Swing which she tries a splash but Mariko moves out of the way, then just puts her in a Figure 4, Chino submits and that’s the end of that.

This has some value in that it’s a rare look at Mariko Akagi in action just before she retires, and it does look believable from the footage that she really was the best worker of her era. But it’s also just a veteran vs. rookie squash low on the card (and one of the less good rookies at that), and a match like that is always going to have a low ceiling.

*1/2

MD: My last impression of Akagi was that she was a fiery and unrelenting heel. Here things seemed to be nice and calm right at the start but then she came charging in with kicks. She had amazing snap on everything she did, especially her headlock takeovers and snap mares. Really, everything though. She’d bound to the top rope at a moment’s notice to leap off with a twisting body press and the way she locked in the figure four at the end, right after eating a giant swing, was absolutely flawless. In comparison, Sato was a bit of a clutz, well meaning but stumbling all over the place. She was presented as gutsy, charging right in and kicking out of move after move when she probably should have stayed down and she had a late flurry full of power bombs and that giant swing (that probably made her more dizzy than Akagi). She was a work in progress. Akagi came off, especially in comparison, like a surgeon in there. These two were quite short and much more focused and direct than the longer tags we’ve been seeing with a lot of momentum shifts and I found them refreshing but I’d like to have a mixing of things moving forward.

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