80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Rimi!

Disc 2 

7. Jackie Sato vs. Rimi Yokota (WWWA Singles Title) 2/25/81

K: These two wrestled each other in the tournament for the vacated title just two months before this (and covered earlier) but this match feels very different to that one. The pace is a lot slower (not that I’d call it ‘slow’, but comparatively) and plays out more as a straight wrestling contest. We do get a bit of heeling from Rimi when she targets Jackie’s hand, for example grinding it against the ropes, but it’s so brief it feels more like a wrestler determined to win than actual villainous behaviour.

The standout moments for me here are the moves that they don’t execute cleanly. I liked when Rimi first bridges out of one of Jackie’s pin attempts, she wobbles a bit trying to come up straight to her feet, like she was only just barely able to pull that off. The delay that wobble caused is enough for Jackie to hit her with a big forward thrusting kick. 

There’s a similar sense of struggle in the pin attempts. They don’t allow their opponent to get anywhere near a pin if they can help it. There’s even one cover where I’m not sure Rimi would even have got a count of 0.1 as Jackie launches her shoulder off the mat and tries to roll onto her side before Rimi had even applied the cover properly. It’s one thing I wish was more prevalent in wrestling as a whole, the wrestlers treating being on your back as being in mortal danger. After seeing too much of this it throws me off a bit when I watch some other wrestling and it seems like wrestlers are just voluntarily allowing their opponents to cover them because “well I’ll just kick out at 2”. In matches like these if the referee gets a 2 count it means you’re in serious trouble and might just be about to lose, often by your opponent just reapplying the cover until you’re too exhausted to escape it and get pinned.

Which is how this match ends and a new champion is crowned. I don’t want to sound too downbeat here, as I still think this was well-wrestled and enjoyable for the most part, and has a few moments I thought were very good indeed. But considering the magnitude of the occasion, I wish this match was a lot better or at least more memorable than it was. It’s possible that it came across ‘basic’ as they just wanted to demonstrate that Rimi Yokota was the superior wrestler now and there was no need to add any more sparkle onto it. In that regard, it probably was a success. But looking back it results in a match that isn’t all that interesting and - contrary to the reputation of acclaimed 80s Joshi - hasn’t aged well.

***1/4

MD: They made this feel like a big deal by having previous champions, Jumbo Miyamoto and Maki Ueda out there pre-match and commentating. Maki, of course, wanted Jackie to win and noted as much. For obvious reasons, this didn’t have quite the contrast of their last match and I think it might have suffered relatively, even if it still accomplished what it set out to do.

That’s not to say that Jackie didn’t dominate early. She clearly did. Rimi was able to cartwheel through at one point but not really capitalize on it. Instead she got tossed around and stretched by Jackie. When she did take over, it was dramatic. She stepped on each toe and then stepped over an arm before following from her big offensive flurry of their last match, that nasty, nasty destruction of the fingers on the top rope. It’s really brutal stuff and we get to see it more clearly here because the VQ is a little better than last time. 

Jackie was able to reset things by going out to the floor and she took back over, building to putting on an Octopus. Rimi came back with her dynamic press up sitting senton but instead of following it with a second, she arched backwards for a ‘rana and a surprising nearfall. Jackie reset on the floor once more (which does involve Rimi bashing her into chairs first). The rest of the match was bomb throwing, with Jackie hitting some devastating offense onto the back and Rimi hitting double underhook suplexes like there was no size difference between the two at all. To hit them so easily did really make it seem like she and Jackie were equals in a way that wasn’t present in the first match. Which takes us to yet another one of those abrupt early 80s AJW finishes where it comes down to pressing shoulders onto the mat in a scrappy shooty way that sort of leaves story behind. It’s akin to running a marathon and then trying to sprint over the finish line, I guess. To me it feels disjointed even if there’s a wild energy to it. Here Yokota had some small advantage for the way she bridges out of pins athletically, but after a slam and three attempts, and I think to everyone’s surprise, she won. Jackie was quick to shake her hand, clap, and get the heck out of there. This was a little more subdued then their last match but that was the price of having Rimi of more of an “ace” equal. If she had accomplished more with speed instead of power, they probably could have still gotten much of the same effect across, but that’s not what they were trying to do. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Rimi! Nancy! Ayumi!

Disc 2 

4. Ayumi Hori & Nancy Kumi vs. Jackie Sato & Rimi Yokota 1/6/81

K: This match is Red Phoenix vs. Dynamic Jaguars, i.e. the two babyface factions going up against each other. I noticed at the entrances that Ayumi Hori is now being billed as ‘Super Jumbo Ayumi Hori’, she’ll get her name changed to Jumbo Hori soon after this.

This is worked a very fast pace, certainly unlike most wrestling of its time. But what also stands out about it is despite that, it’s still quite mat-focused and they get a lot of movement out of struggling for holds. There isn’t much targeting of a limb over a long period, it’s more that they just grab at whatever they can when they get an opening and improvise from there. There are some patterns though which fit the wrestlers we’re watching. For example Rimi is a lot more ferocious than Jackie and likes to come in all guns blazing hitting fast offense from the get go, whereas Jackie is more content to take control with an armbar or something. But Jackie comes across as the better wrestler here as her approach actually does work the vast majority of the time, whereas Yokota sometimes overextends herself with her flying around and throws momentum to the Red Phoenix team when one of her moves doesn’t hit. 

Likewise, Hori is clearly presented as the weak link in her team. Her size does come into play a few times, for example it feels like she was only able to counter one of Jackie’s headscissor takedowns because she was physically bigger rather than her having much technical skill. But that’s all she really has to offer here and so spends most of her time on the defensive or trying to tag Nancy back in so they can get back into the match. I did enjoy her cocky smile squaring up to Jackie though, like she really thought she was in with a chance there before Jackie wrenched her shoulder out and started running circles around her on the mat with impressive ease.

Jackie isn’t able to do this so easily against Nancy though. When we restart for the 2nd fall things are pulled back and they do a really good Greco-Roman style struggle. Nancy actually gets the better of Jackie in this, one clever more is when they’re on the mat she pushes her knee against Jackie’s chest for extra leverage in pinning her down. Jackie backs into her corner to allow Rimi to tag in, and we get that contrast again when Rimi charges in trying to beat everyone up at once, looks amazing for a few seconds before it backfires and now Red Phoenix are back on offense. Whichever way it goes for her though, Rimi is a thrill to watch.

The 3rd fall is a bit slower worked than the previous two, I think they convey well that the battle has been taking its toll. Hori did sell her leg a little bit earlier on but not much amounted to that until here, where we get a protracted stretch of her leg being worked on is cut off from tagging Nancy in because of it. She even gets a bit of shine here in being allowed to sell. The finish, this is going to sound like I’m being “early 2010s WWE fan” funny here, but I have to describe it as Ayumi Hori hits Rimi Yokota with an Attitude Adjustment, then picks up Rimi to hit a 2nd one but Rimi does the CM Punk counter of landing on her feet and pivots into a quick rollup for the win. 

***3/4

MD: I’m pretty sure Hori and Yokota were tag champs at this point which is interesting given the factions. We don’t usually get to see the wrestlers coming down to the ring up to this point, so it’s nice to see Jackie slapping hands and what not. She’s leaning hard into the Jaguar theme with one on the back of her coat and the pattern worked into her gear. Kumi and Hori have blue matching coats so not rocking the Red Phoenix literally.

This was action packed right from the start. It was driven pretty well by the contrast between the four. Kumi and Yokota were explosive (with Yokota more so). It doesn’t mean Yokota wouldn’t pick up even Hori and drop her on her face, but they were more likely to just throw themselves at their opponents. Jackie and Hori leaned more on dominant strength. This was the biggest I’ve seen Hori work so far though she might have been too giving at times. In general, though, there was a sense that she was a mountain to be climbed, a problem to be tackled, though Jackie was so often up to the task. When things picked up at the end of they fall, they really picked up, which was saying something given the pace up til then. Jackie survived a front flapjack by landing on her feet and immediately headscissored Kumi over, following it up with her slingblade type neckbreaker drop whip off the ropes and her belly to back drop. Yokota came in with her press up vertical seated sentons off the rope and things kept swirling faster and faster until Jackie slammed Kumi and Rimi hit her triangle ricocheting splash off the turnbuckle pad and Jackie finished her off with her bodyslam backbreaker. It’s all a lot and was a lot within the span of seconds really, but it was very exciting stuff that didn’t feel weightless or tacked on. It felt more like a fast break from a couple of great athletes. 

Second fall started with some really nice close-up struggle as Kumi was able to turn a test of strength around on Yokota by pushing her over with the knee. From there they worked her over, almost leaning heel in their aggression. She was able to slip up out of a pin with a shocking bridge to get the tag to Jackie and everything broke down into chaos on the outside after that. Everything comes back together for Kumi and Hori both putting on figure fours (again, struggle: hori has to really kick at Jackie to get it on) and then Yokota has another electric comeback and they head outside again and the match has sort of lost the plot even if it’s all very exciting. They do find it again as this leads to Kumi beating the count to take the second fall.

Third fall has some struggle (very good stuff with Jackie fighting for every inch) to start before things settle down for very nasty legwork on Hori. Yokota just stomping on it looks absolutely brutal. But none of it matters because once she makes the tag, she’s fine. Finishing stretch has more beating on Yokota until she starts to cartwheel and bound and every time she does it, you have to pause and go back and see it three times because you almost can’t believe your eyes, even with footage from 45 years ago. Hori catches her after the first but then she bounds out of a FU attempt and wins with a roll up. I don’t 100% know what’s coming, but given how she’s come along and what she can do, I can’t wait to see where Yokota is at this point in 1982 for instance. Lots of good action in this one even if because of the length and the lack of a clear heel, it did sort of go all over the place. The Jackie/Rimi team is something special given their differences and strengths.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Mimi! Rimi! Kai! Kumano! Ikeshita!

Disc 2 

3. Jackie Sato, Mimi Hagiwara & Rimi Yokota vs. Leilani Kai, Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita 1/4/81

K: AJW traditionally do a good Korakuen show on or around January 4th where you’re almost guaranteed to get a quality main event even if they’re not almost the most consequential. This match is such a good example of what these shows were going for. Here we have probably the top 3 babyfaces in a company going up against the top 2 heels and one of the currently residing foreigners (who almost always align with heels) in a ⅔ falls match, which the main event tag matches usually were. 

Another note, Rimi Yokota vacated the Junior Title before this show to focus on challenging for the WWWA Singles Title (and I guess, outside of kayfabe, no one at the junior level was ever going to beat her for it). Before this match Tomoko Kitamura (later Lioness Asuka) defeated the obscure Noriko Kawakami to win the vacated title.

The heels are in control for an unusually long time to start off with here, especially since it’s Jackie Sato who they’re dominating first. I thought it was cool how Leilani Kai would have a lot of choking-centred offense, and when Yumi Ikeshita came in, she continued on that theme by switching up her offense to target the throat. For example she just stands on Sato’s neck disdainfully, and a bit later she changes her “plant opponent’s face onto sticking up toes” move so that she plants Jackie’s throat on it instead. When Rimi is able to tag in, there is no hot tag, as she just gets dominated as well. The comeback actually comes from Mimi Hagiwara, whose new gimmick is that she’s taken up boxing training and is now a fearsome striker. It’s a bit ridiculous when you describe it when she has such spaghetti arms, but I think it works at neutering a weakness by insisting in kayfabe actually Mimi is strong and punches really hard. The conviction she puts behind those haymakers and that they actually work in taking down Kai and getting the comeback going after everything else had fails puts her punches over as legit. You can make all kinds of things work in wrestling if you commit to them. They even come back to this in the 2nd fall, when Mimi clenches a fist at Kai and that’s enough to get Kai to back off into her corner.

The 2nd fall has a fantastic final few minutes where Jackie manages to tie up Leilani Kai and Mami Kumano in the ropes and so they can’t help their partner. Then we get ‘Flew Too Close To The Sun’ sequence where Yumi Ikeshita just gets battered with one move after another by Jackie & Rimi making quick tags in and out, before she gets pinned with a very spectacular move where Rimi runs at the corner pad and kinda dropkicks it to spin around into a running splash but with extra oompf. Great stuff.

In the 3rd fall all the tension and violence we’d seen building up in the first 2 just explodes. They’re quickly on the outside brawling and just punching each other hard like rival football hooligans. A chair gets introduced to Yokota’s neck. There is an unfortunate bit after this where Mimi Hagiwara’s in the ring with Leilani Kai and goes for a few poorly executed takedowns which hurt the previously ferocious momentum a bit, but Rimi rushes into to rectify that. We get a more measured cooldown when the heels take over on Mimi and get a measure of revenge when they trap her in the ropes and drop her throat first into it. This lasts just about enough for the crowd to get their energy back because before you know it all hell breaks loose, they’re all running into the ring and brawling and Jackie Sato & Yumi Ikeshita look like they’re damn trying to murder each other choking over out on the floor. The match fall gets thrown out and the match is called a draw.

Great match. Exciting all the way through, we got memorable interactions in a bunch of pairings and Mimi Hagiwara’s boxing deal is getting over (she’d done it before this but this is the first time you’ll see it on this set). They achieved all that without giving anything away, not even a real finish.

****

MD: On the one hand this devolved into chaos and got thrown out. On the other, some of the checkpoints along the way felt almost evolutionary as we move into 1981. Moving into 1981, I am acutely aware that we’re on borrowed time with some of these wrestlers. We’ll lose Kumano and (for the most part) Jackie, of course, by the end of the year. So I guess we appreciate what we have while we have it. 

Kai seems like she’d come along in the year or so since we’ve seen her. Still a lot of choking and Moolah-ism but more presence and confidence. The start was clever as she went to the floor to call out Jackie only to set up a distraction so the Black Pair could nail her from behind. They controlled from there on Jackie then Yokota (whose frame makes her a great FIP) and then Mimi. But apparently Mimi had developed as well because she had gloves on her hands and was now a great puncher apparently. She ducked a Kai shot and laid in a bunch of blows to turn things around. That let them do a big corner spot where Jackie and Mimi held all three of the heels so Yokota could come flying at them repeatedly. Ikeshita took back over with a nasty headbutt though and they dismantled Mimi with missile dropkicks, Ikeshita’s fall away slam, release bombs from Kumano, and then a big suplex by Kai to win the first fall.

Jackie asserted herself right at the start of the second fall, but the heels took back over, including with an Ikeshita seated senton out of nowhere. The babyfaces turned it around with one of the best things I’ve seen out of all of the footage so far. Kai and Kumano came over to menace Jackie on the apron but she and Mimi were able to get their heads tied up in between the ropes, allowing the babyfaces to switch around and completely demolish Ikeshita finishing with Yokota pressing back off the top turnbuckle with a ricocheting splash. The third fall had some spirited stuff on the outside, including a chair getting stuffed down upon Yokota by Kai’s partner (maybe Wendi Richter in overalls?), but it devolved into chaos and got thrown out. This built to some great moments and, like most of the 80s matches was a little more even than the 70s beatdowns so felt more complete. It was a good way to start the year. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy!

Disc 2 

2. Jackie Sato vs. Nancy Kumi (WWWA Singles Title Tournament Final) 12/16/80

K: This will be far more of a write-up than a ‘review’ as only about ⅓ of the match was broadcast so there’s not much to meaningfully assess. I generally didn’t even consider including such incomplete matches in this set but I made an exception here because the narrative importance to the promotion. Simply put, you gotta see who won the tournament!

This felt like an elevation of Nancy Kumi. She’s not depicted as being Jackie’s equal here I don’t think. For instance in the opening she’s able to grab a hold on Jackie briefly before Jackie’s able to escape. They then lock up again but this time it’s Jackie who is able to apply the hold, but when Nancy tries to escape the leglock Jackie just switches into a headlock on the mat, and then moves up into a standing headlock as Nancy tries to fight her way out but it takes her a relatively long time to break out. 

The clipping makes it impossible to follow what the narrative is after this but we do get a pretty dramatic finishing stretch for the last few minutes of it. Nancy’s able to hit some big power moves. It’s cool to see her like this where she’s clearly wrestling on a higher level than we’re used to seeing her. But it’s almost as if the story here is that Jackie’s big moves are just a bit more damaging than Nancy’s are, and once she gets to hit a few Nancy’s just not able to recover quickly enough for anything before she’s hit with another one. It helps that Jackie’s execution is really snug and powerful, I think you wouldn’t need any pre-existing knowledge of the promotion to recognise she’s the top dog here. She’s finishes Nancy off with a big tombstone to begin her 3rd world title reign.

No rating.

MD: Interesting match, though we definitely lose a lot of it and potential coherence from clipping. Apparently this went 35 and we have about ten of it. This was the finals. Jackie had beaten Yokota in overtime. Kumi had somehow bested Monster Ripper. What we do get here is very good. Kumi starts with a go behind trip and then Jackie follows suit. That doesn’t sound much but we really haven’t seen that sort of parallel construction much in these matches so far. Things open up with Jackie getting a roll up and a few moves in and then Nancy taking over with a roll up and some stretching and a few moves of her own. 

There was a very strong sense of sport and competitiveness here. They were both babyfaces but they rode on different buses and were in different units. The camera shots were great to capture the struggle, with Nancy pulling at Jackie’s hair to get her into a hold and you could see Jackie emoting pain and frustration. I’m not sure we can fully extrapolate out the ebbs and flows of this one overall, even if we can get a good sense of the tone and feel.

They did have a hot and iconic finishing stretch. Things spilled to the floor with brawling and Kumi took clear advantage on the way back in, stringing together one move after the next after the next. It felt inevitable maybe, a changing of the guard, but Sato slipped behind her with a roll up and took right over, dropping her again and again with her big bombs. Kumi managed to survive but only right up until the point where Jackie crushed her with a tombstone. We’d seen the Black Army use tombstones before to varying effect, I think, but they were fairly rare. This one was brutal and as Jackie celebrated her victory, Nancy was carried off to the back in a heap (if results I see are correct, it would be a bad couple of days for her as she’d lose the tag titles to Hori and Yokota the next day). From what we saw here, this was clearly good, especially considering Jackie had already worked a long match and Kumi had probably gotten tossed around by Ripper earlier in the night, but I find it hard to say definitively.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Rimi!

Disc 2

1. Jackie Sato vs. Rimi Yokota (WWWA Singles Title Tournament Semi-Final) 12/16/80 

K: We’re at the penultimate match of this tournament to crown a new WWWA Singles Champion after the belt was vacated on the 8/8/80 show. There are only 3 matches from the tournament that we have footage of, the Nancy Kumi vs. Yumi Ikeshita match covered a couple of weeks ago, this, and the final. For those interested in the context, here is how the tournament played out.

1st Round
Nancy Kumi def. Yumi Ikeshita
Jackie Sato def. Mami Kumano
Rimi Yokota def. Irma Gonzalez
Monster Ripper gets a bye (I’m guessing it’s because she was the previous champ)

Semi Finals
Nancy Kumi def. Monster Ripper
Jackie Sato vs. Rimi Yokota.

So we’re now at the 2nd Semi-Final with the winner going on to face Nancy Kumi for the title later on the same show. They start this off by drawing the viewer’s attention to the size difference. Rimi is moving around apprehensively trying to find an opening, like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. She goes in for a couple of sliding kicks or takedown attempts, it’s not clear. The way she moves is unusual and looks more like a sliding soccer tackle than what you’ve expect to see in a wrestling match. It gets over that she is very skillful even if she’ll struggle to match Jackie in physical strength.

There’s a bit of clipping here and soon we’re in a new section of the match where Rimi is now working heelish and is targetting Jackie’s hand. She bends it backwards like a mean World of Sport heel, drags it against the rope and stomps on it with her boot. Her going for dirty tactics helps make it a bit more believable that she could get sustained offense on Jackie, but it also sets up Jackie to be all angry when she gets her comeback in. There’s a real venom from Jackie when she repeatedly smacks Yokota hard onto the mat with her variety of slams. It reminds me of late era Jumbo Tsuruta in how the grumpiness seems to make her a better wrestler. There’s another big comeback after this where Jackie’s even madder, she grabs Yokota by the collar and pushes her around, throws a bunch of slaps, big moves, hits one of the best vertical suplex backbreakers I’ve ever seen her do before going for a big pin. It’s exciting how much the crowd are vocally behind her beating up this little wretch, who is putting up a hell of a fight, they surely must acknowledge. 

I’ve talked up the good match narrative so far, it’s usually what I like to talk about, but this is also a great match in just mechanical execution. They both have great offense, though Jackie gets to show it off a lot more here due to her more dominant role. They do so well in the little moments to convey struggle.

Ok so things get heated, spill out to the outside and we get a double countout when Rimi clearly deliberately holds on to Jackie’s leg to force it. As we’ve covered before, AJW has a standard way to deal with “non-finishes” in matches where you need a winner, we get a period of overtime where someone needs to either get the win, or if there’s no decision in the extra time, a winner will be decided on based on who had the better performance in the extra time (it seems to be decided by the referee & commissioner).

They do an excellent job of upping the ante for the overtime. Both of them look really driven to win, Rimi especially, perhaps realising that her best chance of winning this match was getting to this scenario and then throwing absolutely everything she has in the next few minutes just to get over the line. It feels like it might work. There’s a brief section of matwork where you see that dream die though, I call it ‘brief’ but they actually do a hell of a lot in those couple of minutes. There’s a great struggle by Yokota to get Sato in the Boston Crab but she’s unable to turn her around, so she goes for a Figure Four instead but Jackie’s able to break out of that one. When she fails to put Jackie away here (or at least keep her under control till the time is up), that’s when it’s all over for her, as Jackie’s able to use the space to unleash another huge flurry of offense before successfully locking in her own Boston Crab, which she keeps locked in until the end. Yokota doesn’t submit, but she’s unable to fight back and when the bell is sounded with her defenseless in a brutal looking submission, there’s only one way the judges can call this.

This is one of the best matches of the early 80s and a great encapsulation of what this style could produce. It’s a shame we don’t have much Lucha footage from this era to compare it to, because there are some similarities in pacing and levels of flashiness, though I think the Joshi workers are still faster overall (that’s not a positive or negative, just an observation). You will find better matwork elsewhere, I think what these two especially excel at though is the feeling that nothing they’re doing has been choreographed. It’s a bit messy sometimes, but in a way that gets the blood pumping and draws me in.

****1/4

MD: I really enjoyed this. Contrast makes the world go round and this was full of it and they knew it. Jackie, despite wrestling the match clearly as a babyface and having the crowd behind her, came off almost like an angry Bruno at times. There were multiple moments in the match that were about her getting her hands on Yokota and what she’d do to her once she did. There was hairpulling, a goozle, and endless belly to back position moves (atomic drop, straight drop, belly to back down the stretch), plus multiple suplexes into backbreakers. 

Meanwhile, Yokota did everything possible to stay in it. This felt, if not like a passing of the guard, then definitely an elevation, especially down the stretch as she showed amazing heart. Not just then though. She started the match rolling about and picking at legs and doing anything she could to get Jackie off balance without getting caught. Shortly thereafter, she had this wonderful one or two minutes of dismantling the hand and arm, running it over the top rope, tossing it into the opposite top rope, stretching it over the ropes. And of course, Jackie, in her most Bruno/Jumbo reversed a stretch over the top rope and sent Yokota sprawling to the floor. It was less about Jackie selling it (though there were moments where she sold wonderfully in the moment, especially in the figure four once Yokota got it on), and more about pure containment of the superhuman ace so that Yokota even had a fighting chance.

That really defined the finish and the five-minute sudden death period that followed, as Yokota just clung to Jackie desperately on the outside so that she couldn’t beat the count and then, after some early scrambling that gave her an advantage in the overtime, she ended up caught once more and crushed, this time surviving a crab until the bell, though the match was awarded to Jackie nonetheless. While this suffers a bit from clipping, what we have is a very clear presentation of both women playing their roles extremely well in front of a crowd that knew they were seeing something special.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Masami!

Disc 1 

15. Devil Masami vs. Jackie Sato - 11/27/80 

Our first look at Devil Masami after she got her more famous name. I think the name change happened at the 8/8/80, as that's when they reset a lot of things, but I'm not sure. I'm inevitably going to focus on her in this write up as this is the first match in her career where she feels like a great wrestler in the making, as well as this being a kayfabe uplift in how she's going toe-to-toe with the company Ace despite being a junior and #3 in her own stable. She's already the new top heel in waiting.

It's not easy to break this up into sections because the match doesn't flow like that. The bulk of it is just matwork that progresses from one predicament to the next, it's impressive how seamlessly they put everything together without there being much in the way of big moments or turning points. The big takeway from this in more context is that you'd expect Jackie to be more dominant, but she's only really taking about 60% of the match and even then never really gets Masami looking like she's in serious trouble. For example there is a headscissors where Masami tries to counter by doing a forward roll out of it, but when she has her feet in the air Jackie counters it by spiking her in almost a "already on the floor" piledriver. But then Masami attempts a similar escape with more urgency and gets out. 

If anything it looked like Jackie was in more danger at times. The moment that most comes to mind is her selling of her knee by limping slightly on it after Masami  had gone for it with some holds before Jackie made it to the ropes to break. In a relatively minimalist match her doing something like that stands out a bit more. Devil is more heelish, she's targetting an injury and she does stuff like squeezing Jackie's flesh to add a bit more pain that doesn't look strictly legal, but despite all that she does come across like she's just outwrestling Jackie at some points. There's barely any 'cheating' to speak of. 

The biggest moment of the match feels like when Devil goes for a headbutt, but Jackie ducks it and turns it into an abdominal stretch for a nice little pop. She really pulls on it hard. Devil is able to throw her off, but it's to little avail as Jackie is back up soon and hits her with slingblades, vertical-suplex backbreaker, her big signature offense. All this forces Devil to retreat to the outsie and take advantage of the 20 count. When she gets back in there's a higher level of intensity to everything and the crowd seem to be getting behind Jackie a lot harder even though she's losing now. Or at least Devil is on offense for almost the entire time, and Jackie's few hopespots don't go very far. 

That is, until her very last one, which is the most ferocious and has Devil on the backfoot. She's only able to counter by using Jackie's momentum against her to toss her over the top rope, where Jackie lands awkwardly and is apparently 'injured', forcing the referee to award the match to Devil for an upset win. Slightly flukey win but a big win all the same.

***3/4

NB: I hope you liked ending the first volume with the AJW TV closing credits. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed Jackie being helped to the back by someone in a red shirt with 'C. Nagayo' on the back. You'll be seeing a lot more of her later.

MD: Just a singles match while the tournament is going on. They go through Masami’s history as a wrestler and then talk about how she’s releasing an album on commentary. She is Devil Masami now by the way though I think her graphic says she’s formally Tenjin, and she is the #3 of the black/devil army. Mami is on the outside with a devils jacket with her name on it, so that is established now. 

I enjoyed this. Jackie leaned hard into hierarchical control to start, really flexing as the ace, doing one tricked out takeover after the next on Masami, who struggled from underneath. It opened up midway as Masami targeted a very taped up knee, and she did a lot of punishment with leglocks. From there, it would go like this. They’d build to a very spirited Jackie comeback. Masami would take a powder and then use her strength to take back over. She’d punish Jackie for a bit and Jackie would come back again. They’d go away from the knee until the finish which was fluke-y in that world of sport way as Jackie tumbled to the floor and couldn’t continue due to the knee.

What stood out the most was the intensity however. Jackie was throwing herself into everything she did and her selling was incredibly emotive, working towards the last row in the best way. There’s one comeback where she turns things around into a cobra twist before hitting big moves off the ropes and a belly to back and she looks like the best wrestler in the world over the span of that minute or so, just absolutely electric. And Masami rose to meet her, vicious and decisive in her offense. As devastating as Masami doing a seated/lifting surfboard (for instance) was, I would have rather they go back to the knee once or twice to set up the finish, but this felt like a huge elevation for Masami and one that seemed to be deserved.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy! Rimi! Romero! Ripper! Masami!

Disc 1 

10. Chabela Romero, Monster Ripper & Tenjin Masami vs. Jackie Sato, Nancy Kumi & Rimi Yokota - 5/80

One of my rules for making this set is I tried to get at least 1 trios match for each year. I'd be surprised if anyone picked one of them as their favourite match (though I've been surprised before), they're more used to build towards a blowoff/give the top stars something to do in between rather than trying to be a great match. But capturing the overall vibe of 80s Joshi was one of my aims, so these matches need to get featured.

It was also common for a trios match to be 2/3 falls if it was the main event of that TV taping. 
So this is mostly about Team Jackie vs. Team Monster. They're building to another title match between these two on 8/8/80, which we won't cover because unfortunately the footage is missing. It's probably because of that their interactions are going to be limited. We do get quite a lot of Masami and Yokota though, who even without the benefit of hindsight I think look like the most promising junior babyface and heel prospects on the roster.

When we do get Jackie vs. Monster in the ring together, Monster is pretty decisively dominant and Masami behaves like a nasty pest on the outside getting her shots in. She makes the mistake of getting in the ring to try fight Jackie instead, and gets hit with a really forceful Irish Whip into a strike. I wish more wrestlers would do Irish Whips with the commitment and conviction Jackie does here. There's also a great little moment where Monster is on the apron facing the crowd yelling at them, which annoys Jackie enough that she comes over and just shoves Monster off the apron to the floor. I found it funny how nonchalant Jackie was about it. 

I also liked the sense of camaraderie from the babyfaces here. Like, Yokota is too small to really put up a fight against Monster on her own, but she's skilled enough to confuse and distract her while Nancy Kumi gets into to hit a dropkick or something. Masami on the other hand, tries to make up for her obviously (in kayfabe) deficiencies as a wrestler but just being crazy and bringing chairs into the ring (only to fail most of the time).

To start off the 3rd fall, we got a fun spot I still see used today. The heels attempt an ambush, but it backfires when they all get trapped in the corner by Jackie & Nancy while Yokota hits them with two consecutive dropkicks. Heel team looking a bit silly again. There isn't much more of this, soon after Jackie Sato hits her awesome vertical suplex into a backbreaker move on Masami for the win.

I guess the other thing I should comment is that Chabela Romero was extremely forgettable in this, ha. Wasn’t bad or anything but felt like a servicable passenger in a good match.

***1/4

MD: I’m always fascinated by where the flowers come from. It’s really only with Japanese wrestling and it’s best when you get a wrestler that interacts with them somehow, like Hansen. We are informed they’re from the Yamanouchi Line Tourism Association, so that’s good to know, right? No? Probably not. You will be glad to know however that Monster Ripper DOES chuck them into the crowd after the kid gives them to her. What a champ. Only other thing of note pre-match is that Yokota has a superhero type eyemask that she takes off on being announced.

This was 2-out-of-3 falls with fairly short falls. They kept it moving. Nancy started. I feel like we haven’t seen as much as others, but she looked good here. Yokota was far smaller than everyone else in the match in a way that was impossible to miss. She came in and got swept under almost immediately, but took all the offense (especially Ripper’s) extremely well. They cycled Jackie in eventually and things were obviously heated throughout between her and Ripper. There was a moment where she reversed a whip where the whole world seemed to change for everyone in that crowd. Just an ace being an ace. 

When they cycled back through again and it came time for Yokota to get press slammed by Ripper once more, she actually managed to land on her feet, which set things up for the babyfaces taking the first fall. Ripper was pretty much able to singlehandedly equalize things though especially once things spilled out to the floor. She had a great torture rack samoan drop that I hadn’t seen her use much before this. Third fall started with everyone holding Ripper in the corner as Yokota pinballed off of her with dropkicks in a nice visual. The heels worked together to have Ripper come off the turnbuckles at people right until that backfired. From there the faces didn’t look back with Jackie winning it with a suplex into a backbreaker which is another new one as best as I can tell. 

This had clear momentum shifts and accomplished a lot in fifteen minutes or so. Everyone felt like they belonged, including Masami who was sufficiently malicious and Romero who had big powerful looking offense. And it kept things moving towards an eventual Ripper vs Jackie rematch. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Ripper!

5a. Jackie Sato vs. Monster Ripper (WWWA Singles Title) - 3/15/80

K: This is another match I left off the proper set after giving it some thought. It's certainly a big match. But it's a big match AJW didn't plan on having until a few weeks before, it was supposed to be Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama, but Tomi was injured and had to pull out. So rather than Jackie facing the heir apparent, she's back facing an old foe from the previous year without much of a build (especially if you haven't seen the 1979 matches).

It's also because we got a rematch at a bigger show on 8/8/80, but there's no footage available of that one, so this is left without much connective tissue to anything else on the set.

But it's still worth watching just as a good match. We start off hot with Jackie hitting a fast proto-slingblade right at the bell to fire everyone up. After then it's a bit of a mixed bag. There's some interesting moments in how they're exchanging holds while keeping the crowd relatively subdued (I mean there's still quite a lot of shrieking, but by Jackie Sato title match standards it's subdued). I liked how Jackie reversed being in a from-behind sleeper position by going between Monster's legs to get into a reverse-sunset kind of counter, which Monster countered into a bodyscissors and actually went for a pin with it. But the moments in between these little exchanges were a bit wanting, they felt like resets and Monster wasn't as physically imposing as I'd like her to be. 

It does get better when she shifts more into using her strength and size advantage. The big spot that gets us really going again is when Jackie manages to overcome Monster smothering her by back body drop style lifting her over the top rope to the floor to huge cheers. They did a good job of milking that moment and Monster looking all outraged and flummoxed on the outside helped get over that this was a potential turning point. Monster storms back into the ring but has been thrown off her gameplan now and Jackie is able to hit her with a bunch of moves, until I swear it looked like Jackie was going for a Diamond Cutter but Monster was too strong and kept on her feet. We get a cool brief image of Jackie on the ground and Monster towering over her, kinda symbolising how much of a mountain Jackie still has left to climb.

Alright so here we go. It feels like we're starting to move into a higher gear as Jackie gets back to keep fighting, and things move closer to being evenly-matched. Monster hits Jackie with 2 of her big hipdrops from the top, and another regular one, but doesn't go for a pin. This felt a bit off to me when that move has been established as a match winner. Instead she throws Jackie out of the ring and then the Black Pair (who'd done nothing to this point) beat up Jackie on the outside and just before she's able to get back in the ring, they hold her back in time for her to lose by 20 count. You can lose titles in AJW on a countout so Monster is the new champion. 

It did get the desired response from the crowd to be honest, but I couldn't get into that, it just felt like too much of a bullshit finish that didn't play off anything that happened beforehand at all. Monster looked like she was winning without outside interference anyway, so I don't get why she even did that. It's like she chose to win by bullshit because she didn't want to just beat Jackie fairly.

The scenes of the crowd crying and shrieking are impressive. They certainly delivered drama even if the match had glaring flaws.

*** 

MD: To me, there’s a clear difference in the crowd here relative to Jackie’s matches over the last six months or so. There had been a tick-up for the Tomi match, maybe, but this is night and day. There’s constant screaming, constant shots of worried or elated young women. Just from what we’ve been able to see, the difference is Ripper. She was a threat to be overcome, a true monster. A monster heel. The US contingent with Moolah were irritants with their heel ref and numbers. The Black Pair were competent and dangerous and violent. But Ripper was a Monster, protected and treated like one, and she was truly something for Jackie to overcome. And the crowd felt that, lived and breathed it.

This wasn’t the Jackie of the previous year though, nor was it the Ripper. They were both advanced in their work and their roles. Ripper felt a little more deliberate and focused, less raw. She made a lot out of the early feeling out, using one hand to combat Jackie’s two in a test of strength, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, Jackie felt like she had more agency, could meet Ripper more as an equal. Yes, there was the vault over ambush at the start, but even just holding her own. Ripper didn’t open the match up until five or six minutes in. That wasn’t because Ripper was diminished. It’s because Jackie had grown into a larger than life ace. 

Ripper did open the match up by hefting Jackie up into a fireman’s carry and just pushing her off into a forward drop. She controlled for a while until Jackie could return the favor in a big moment. Again, there are more parallel spots in 1980 than in 1979. Twice could be a coincidence, but this is three matches we’ve seen it in so far. Jackie had another one where she got Ripper up and over the top.

This was somewhat clipped as Jackie was going for an Octopus and we come back with Ripper fighting out of a cravat (nice struggle there). Unfortunately, and why this probably didn’t make the set, the finish is pretty lame for the setting, with Ripper getting Jackie out and then everyone fighting on the floor to draw the countout and the title change. It protected Jackie while allowing the title change and a subsequent chase. I assume that Tomi’s injury was legitimate and not a work but this sets up a few matches and probably did business. It was a lame finish in the moment though. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Tomi!

Disc 1

3. Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama - 1/4/80

K: This is probably the biggest match the company could put on at the time. Company Ace vs. Heir Apparent, World Champion vs. All-Pacific Champion. It’s non-title and had a 30 minute time limit (title matches would have 60) so they’re telegraphing a bit that this isn’t THE match between the two, but it’s still a pretty big deal to see these two in a singles match.

The crowd were pretty hot for the previous Junior Title match and they’re even hotter for this one. When Tomi Aoyama climbs to the top turnbuckle the screaming is so loud it comes out a bit distorted in the audio. There’s a couple of young girls in the front row I noticed who are really getting into it and reacting to the big spots. True wrestling connoisseurs there. 

When the match starts they both have these fighting pose stances squaring off at each other and it feels like they’re both taking each other seriously. Tomi is a bit more aggressive, which I think works in the matches favour as it benefits her to come across as confident, Jackie doesn’t need that so much as she’s already the Ace. There’s a cool little spot where Jackie launches Tomi into the corner, and Tomi counters it by leaping to the top and going for a boomerang splash or something, but Jackie just does a backroll to get out of the way and Tomi adjusts to land on her. I say this a thousand times watching this stuff but that’s a cool logical spot that someone should steal now and it’d fit into modern wrestling fine. 

I feel like if I’d seen this after watching the 70s stuff I’d be surprised how much of the early match is taken by Aoyama. Not just that, it’s that she’s in control primarily through mat wrestling rather than any of her high-flying. In fact, the couple of times she does actually go for a top rope roof Jackie able to just move out of the way. It feels like Jackie has her scouted for what she’s most known for, but is struggling to deal with her on what is supposed to be Jackie’s superior domain. There’s a couple of occasions in this early period where a hold gets broken and they had a soft-reset, and you think “ok this is where Jackie takes control”, but the back-and-forth doesn’t happen, Aoyama quickly gets back on top each time.

I thought this structure worked great. It gives a big boost to Aoyama’s credibility/levels her up a bit without hurting Jackie’s stature at all. It works all the better that when Jackie does get a comeback - and her comebacks comes not from one of those soft-resets, but a proper fighting comeback - her offense looks fantastic and clearly more damaging than Aoyama’s. It’s just she hadn’t been able to deploy it yet. She’s also just cool. She does a Big Boot so casually like no one else I’ve seen in that she just lets her foot just hang in the air for a couple of seconds after clocking her opponent with it. She makes it look easy.

Jackie isn’t able to consolidate control though. Aoyama actually gets a comeback in pretty quickly by countering a headscissors into a hold of her own to start her 2nd prolonged period of control. This 2nd one differs in that while the 1st was established her as on Jackie’s level on the mat, this was getting her over as a real threat to win the match. She’s a lot more vicious now and her offense is mostly targetting Jackie’s leg. There’s cool moment where she goes for a Figure Four but Jackie spins over onto her front before Aoyama can lock it in, but this makes it an even bigger moment soon after when Jackie isn’t able to block it and we get cuts to the crowd looking very distressed as Jackie is put in the submission and has to clamber for the ropes. 

It feels very cohesive that Aoyama loses this 2nd period of control not by losing on the mat, but she went for a piece of her signature high-flying offense (a dropkick) but Jackie countered it. The counter is awesome. Jackie just sidesteps the dropkick, puts out a knee and drops Aoyama straight onto it to turn the dropkick attempt into a gutbuster. This leads us into a huge 3rd act/climax of the match where they go 50/50 or close enough. Jackie sells the leg quite well I thought for the first few minutes of this, hobbling a bit on it while on offense or moving until she gradually shifts back into moving normally. I don’t think Aoyama had done serious enough damage to her leg to warrant selling more than that. There’s a great moment where, after initially failing to do a Giant Swing, Aoyama manages to hit Jackie with a dropkick - the first time her flying offense actually pays off; and then goes for the Giant Swing for the 2nd time and she’s able to get Jackie up and spin her around.

They finish this with another great scream reaction from the crowd for Jackie missing a dive and crashing into the outside, only for Tomi to crash and burn even worse when she goes for a (this time deliberate) dive to the outside. She’s able to beat the 20 count back into the ring, but then Jackie hits her with a sick backdrop that lands her on the back of her head and they are both counted for a double KO. I’ve sometimes complained about non-finishes in a lot of the 70s matches but this is a draw where it felt like that match had built to that conclusion so I have no problem with it.

I love this. Desperation to win, gritty matwork, innovative spots, lots of little narratives that get paid off within the match, and of course someone getting dropped on their head. The first Zenjo Classic.

****1/2

MD: I’m curious to see where Kadaveri is going to fall on this relative to everything we saw in the 70s but this might be the best match we’ve seen so far, and the most complete. This was non-title and they were really pushing this as the match up that would take them into 1980. The idea was that if Tomi had a good showing here she could get a title match or at least that she’d need a good showing to have momentum for a title match. There was a real tension here, with a hot, vocal crowd, the hottest we’ve seen in a while. It should be noted that a lot of the transitions came after moments where they were tussling for pins and trying to hold each other down, for instance.

I think there was just more of everything. This felt more complete and actualized than a lot of what we’d seen in the 70s. There was a higher level of familiarity. Tomi rushed in with dropkicks but she went for both a dive (though not the Queen Rocket) and her jump to the top finish early only for Jackie to get the heck out of the way quickly. Later on in the match she had to really work for the giant swing too. 

There was also more limb targeting and selling, even on offense. It didn’t make it through act breaks but it was more tangible and made it farther into the match than usual. Tomi went to Jackie’s leg early and she leaned hard on it with a lot of different flexibility-enhanced holds. Jackie had a comeback with a few power moves but Tomi cut her off by going back to it and when Jackie was able to come back again, she was noticeably stumbling until they moved on to the next big theme.

The finish was very self aware and smart, heading towards their next match. Jackie had dominated for a time, using all sorts of offense like her belly to back toss, falling power body slams, and these wrenching backbreakers. She had hit a couple of her off the rope cross takeovers (not sure what to call them. They’re like flying cross chops but she grabs the head and tosses her opponent down but it’s a trademark of hers). After a tussle, Tomi had come back and they faced off at the twenty minute mark to finish things up. Jackie got an advantage with a roll up into her belly to back suplex, but she missed another one of her flying cross attacks and rolled out. Time seemed to stop as everyone knew it was time for the Queen Rocket. Tomi wiped out though. She made it back into the ring but Jackie went to put her away with another belly to back. She pressed off the top rope to counter it and they both crashed down, unable to beat the count, leaving things even for their big title match (though fate, or booking, I’m not sure which, would have other things planned for that). 

It was still rough around the edges at times (though generally in ways that added as much as it potentially took away) but when you combine some of the evolving smartness and self-awareness to the work with a hot crowd and big stakes, this felt like a step forward for the promotion. We’ll see if it’s part of an evolutionary line or just a momentary blip though.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy!

78. 1979.12.11 - 03 Jackie Sato vs. Nancy Kumi (Only 9 Minutes of 30 shown)

K: They only show about 9 minutes of a 30 minute long match here so this will be a brief post. I did think it was interesting that they actually acknowledged the cuts by putting what minute of the match we’d skipped forward to in the corner. I don’t remember ever seeing that in any other match AJW match. They’re more famous for being excellent at seamlessly editing matches to fit the TV time.

The context of this is that they’re building up challengers for Jackie’s title. They seem to do a lot of these non-title matches vs. the champion where you’d think the challenger was high enough in the pecking order to just get a championship match, but the booking philosophy seems to be that title defences only happen at the biggest shows. Nancy looked like she was putting in a strong effort here (which is another way of saying she wasn’t being boring as hell). I would have liked to see this in full because they really did have the crowd hot in the latter stages. There’s a nice cut to some very concerned fans as Jackie is fighting to break out of a Boston Crab; which was followed up by Nancy hitting a sunset flip that was impactful enough it was almost a proto-Code Red. 

The taper also screwed up by seemingly changing channels for a few seconds just as we were at the finish. Have to just laugh at that.

MD: Yeah, I was going to say that we miss the actual draw and the last nearfall for some cartoon or another, and that’s the way we end our trip through all 70s footage that we have. Come on!
But we’re lucky to have this at all, even cut up, I suppose. I will say that Kumi’s come a long way in 79, especially in the back half as she was not someone who particularly asserted herself in matches, just a cipher to get beat around the ring by the Black Army and she’s pretty formidable here as she was in the Moolah match. 

We get the feeling out to start, which was a little clumsy even with Jackie carrying herself like she thought she was the best in the world. She was unquestionably an ace. Then it cut to a middle section with Nancy hitting a neckbreaker drop and her lifting flapjack. Somewhere in there, she worked the leg too and I think that would have been a huge chunk of the match. They said everyone was chanting for Jackie but it seemed at least a little split to me. The half crab attempt was compelling because Nancy just collapsed trying to twist her around.

And the finishing stretch was a legitimately exciting few minutes. Jackie really did have a great small package out of nowhere and that almost got her the win once or twice. Nancy ended up on the defensive but she kept on kicking out even as Jackie tried more intense moves. It seemed like they were going to end it on a roll up as the bell rang, but that’s when the cartoon cut in. They already had Jackie's next opponent lined up in Tomi (just coming off of her match with Lucy) so this elevated Nancy just a bit more while keeping Jackie strong. 

That brings us to the end of the footage. We’ve talked about the next thing we’ll do (which is pretty logical considering where we are and what was released just about a year ago now) but I imagine we’ll be back in a week or two with some general thoughts about the 70s AJW footage first.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Kumano! Masami!

75. 1979.11.XX2 - 03 Jackie Sato & Lucy Kayama vs. Mami Kumano & Tenjin Masami

K: This is a fairly throwaway formula match with good wrestlers in it. The most significant thing I'll point out is that Tenjin Masami gets a good showing, she's in the ring about as much as Mami Kumano but I don't think she ever looks like she's significantly less developed even if she doesn't have any signature moves yet. She looks nasty and fearsome, the screaming while on offense is probably a bit too much. 

The finish of the 1st fall was a bit off. It looked like they went for the finish a little earlier but there was some miscommunication, and then they repeated the set up almost straight after.

The Black team were very dominant for most of the 1st fall, setting up a babyface comeback and win, only for the heels to get even more vicious immediately on the 2nd fall's start and they introduce a chair to proceedings to even things out. I knew that was going to happen from having watched enough of these. After all of the wild weapons and methods of cheating we've seen before though, simply hitting someone with a chair felt kinda uninspired. Maybe this wasn't the right match to do anything special.

We didn't get to see much from Jackie until the 3rd fall. Selling for long periods of the match is Lucy's job, and since Black Pair were gonna be on top for most of the first two we were bound to not see much of Jackie. A cool moment is when she counters an Irish Whip attempt by just launching Kumano into Masami who was standing on the apron. Jackie follows up this with a whip of her own into a straight forearm or punch in the face that looked like it knocked Masami's lights out. Lucy gets tagged in to go for her Vader Bomb, but Masami is up too early so she turns it into a kind of reverse dropkick, also pretty cool adjustment that felt like it was on the fly. 

There's a really relentless bit of offense where we first see Jackie hit a big flying splash, the cover gets broken up  and Masami tries to escape by rolling under the bottom rope, but Jackie is too on the ball and drags her back into the ring before hitting her vertical suplex into a backbreaker move. All this offense from the babyfaces is just too much and takes us straight into a finish that felt satisfying. 

This was a promotion just spinning the wheels killing TV time till the next big show. First two falls were mostly filler. Jackie got to look like the worthy champ at the end, that’s all it really felt like it was trying to accomplish and I guess that’s all it needed to.

**1/2

MD: I’m glad we get to see Kumano a couple more times as we’re nearing the end of this stage of the project. This was another one of those very complete tags. My biggest takeaway was how much Masami felt like she belonged. I’m not sure I had the sense in previous matches, but she had as much confidence as I’ve seen out of her in this run and had found ways to stand out. Yes, there was the choking and the general aggression, but she really made use of her size, both in hefting people up with hanging tree chokes or pressing them over her head, but also by using Vader attacks or just having Lucy’s flying cross chop bounce off of her. Just real heft to what she did in a way that wasn’t a visually sure thing as it was with, let’s say, Hori.

Kumano was, of course, Kumano. An absolute bulldozer. Lucy (incredibly fiery and intense) had burst forth to take an early advantage but Kumano just shut her down, pulling her this way or that by her hair or dragging her face across the ropes or the mat. They had a great bit where Masami would grind the knee into the face before handing her off to Kumano for the dangling choke. Jackie broke it up once, but then Masami went after her and both of them ate it. Finish of the first fall was Lucy bouncing off Masami only to slip around her for a roll up. Clever stuff.

Second fall was a mauling as Kumano came in with a chair and absolutely brained Lucy and Jackie. That led to Masami holding one up for Kumano’s seated senton off the top and a missile dropkick. Third fall continued the mauling, including with object shots, until Jackie was able to reverse a whip crashing Kumano and Masami into each other. Lucy had a nice mule kick off the top (that I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen before), and then Jackie used suplexes and slams to win. She just sort of dropped down with an elbow to take it. Still hierarchy in this one as Masami was more likely to get swept under, but she was really more of the force that she would one day be here.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Ikeshita! Gomez!

72. 1979.11.XX1 - 03 Jackie Sato & Lucy Kayama vs. Norma Gomez & Yumi Ikeshita (2/3 Falls)

We start in the middle of the 1st fall. I found it a little hard to get into being dropped into it with Jackie getting double teamed by the Ikeshita and her Mexican ally, lots of choking for several minutes, and when Lucy got tagged in she just got more of the same. Then, in a blink and you’ll miss it transition, the babyface suddenly started steamrolling and were 1-0 up. 

But ok things pick up when we start the 2nd fall and Jackie is in a mean mood now. The fall starts with Jackie Irish Whipping Norma Gomez straight into Ikeshita on the apron, knocking her to the ground and drawing out a ‘woah’ from the crowd. Ikeshita is pissed and wants to fight on the outside and looks determined to get her vengeance. I thought it was interesting how she wins with the hurricanrana pin (after some very cool over the head backdrops), and even though Jackie makes contact jumping in to break up the pin, it still counts because she wasn’t able to actually break it up and Lucy’s shoulders stay down. I don’t know when it became a rule (or if it even officially is one) in wrestling that the referee stops counting the pin in a tag match if someone so much as taps the pinning wrestler on the back, but I don’t think that was a good change.

There isn’t much of a 3rd fall. Jackie does a cool backbreaker and looks like she’s going to really take charge, then a chair is being swung around, they’re fighting on the outside and the result is a countout. Oh well. I guess they just weren’t going to give away anything tonight. 2nd fall was good though.

**

MD: We come in JIP here. I didn’t really get a great sense of Norma except for that she was credible. She kept the pressure on, mainly with choking and mean shots and that was all that was needed because Ikeshita was going to come in with all the cool stuff. Also a picked up choke hiding. Eventually Lucy took out Norma on the apron and ran right to Jackie and they just mowed through their opponents like it was nothing. 

We had another transition in the second fall, but that was after some chaos on the outside. Again Ikeshita looked like a million bucks. Her delaying power slam off the ropes were brutal and the way she won the second fall with that elaborate over the top escape into the ‘rana was top notch. There were a couple of moments here where they said the crowd was going up big for Jackie and I just didn’t see or hear it. You watch the crowd and there aren’t those shots of wincing or screaming girls. Everything seems less hot than back during the Ripper feud and before, and I don’t know if it’s how things were mic’d or if they were just cooling down in general.

But that didn’t make Jackie any less of an Ace. When she took over in the last fall, it was brutal and without mercy or doubt. But then the chairs come in and everything breaks down and that was that.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Williams!

69. 1979.10.17 - 04 Jackie Sato vs. Vicki Williams
 
K: This is the final match of the Japan vs. USA series. I hadn’t noticed before but they seem to have got a pretty good crowd for this show, you can see there are fans in the upper sections and this is before they started being careful to only show one side of the venue on camera for poorly attended TV tapings. It starts with Jackie Sato coming to ring with mic in hand shouting about the crooked referee. It reminded me of Chigusa Nagayo's mid-match promos about 5 years after this when some injustice had occurred, but no as effective. Jackie doesn't have the deep booming voice for it. The American ref is kicked out despite his protestations that he is "the greatest referee in American and Japan" and is replaced by AJW ref Jimmy Kayama.

We get a decent enough match which is helped by the crowd being relatively heated, although they don’t make much use of that or take the crowd to higher peaks at any point. That’s my biggest takeaway from this series as of today, they’re too content to just go out there and have their match that they do almost every week. Even with this one being different in that the heel ref is gone, it doesn’t really payoff in any way except the heel has to tone down the cheating. Even just Vicki going for a big bit of cheating when she thinks the referee had been distracted for something only for him to not fall for it and cut her off I think would have helped this along and given the crowd a reward for putting up with so much bullshit leading up to this.

Jackie spends a bit too much time on the receiving end, but her comeback is good. She’s a lot better on offense and I don’t think presenting your Ace as constantly fighting for her survival against anyone who isn’t Monster Ripper is effective in the long run. We’re finally done with this series now and will be on to more entertaining and memorable things soon enough.

** 

MD: We’ve finally made it to the end of the US vs Japan series. The US team (which included the Black Pair) had already won the overall team competition. This was for the individual crown. Ronnie Wright came out to ref as always, still bandaged but ready to go. Sato complained and this time, she had the law on her side. They had called the NWA office in New York and Wright was not just taken out of the match but suspended. 

And in a fair fight, Williams got crushed. This was pure ace stuff from Sato. She missed a dropkick once and Williams hammered her a bit. Williams got some shots in from underneath another time, but basically, this was a lot of Sato. In retrospect, Williams took more of this than I remembered, but I think that’s because Jackie’s comebacks were so strong. When it was time, she absolutely had her way with Williams. She’d outwrestle her, stepping over and flipping her over, stretching her this way and that, outfight her, coming back from some shots with a cross choke in the ropes, and then at the end, out suplexed her, just driving her down with two belly to backs before a splash off the top to pin her. It was a real sense of inevitability, as if they were done with this farce and were going to wash their hands of it.

That’s not to say the ceremony at the end wasn’t fun, because it was. All of the American team (including Ikeshita and Kumano) got medals and both Moolah and Sato got trophies. And thankfully, we can move into the home stretch of the decade and not look back to this series.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Tomi! Kumano! Williams!

65. 1979.10.XX - 04 Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Vicki Williams (2/3 Falls)

K: It’s good to see Jackie again. It hits me right at the start that she has an aura which draws me into her matches, even the way she stalls still feels like she’s just getting you to brace yourself for what’s about to happen next. She’s a very cool wrestler. I noticed as well how Vicki Williams took such a big bump for Jackie’s offense when they first crossed paths. Felt like she was consciously conveying that Jackie’s a much stronger opponent than anyone else we’ve seen her go up against.

The 1st fall was a bit messy. I did like the spot where Mami Kumano has Tomi Aoyama on the apron and pushes her into the corner post, but when Tomi spins her around and tries to do the same thing in revenge the heel ref immediately intervenes to stop first. I haven’t been very complementary about his style of heeling but I’ll give credit where it’s due. Mami has pretty strong performance here, taking up most of the match as Vicki seems a bit off at times.

The 2nd fall was a bit more structured, but the biggest problem with it is the match felt more concerned with getting heat on the referee than the heel wrestlers. There were a couple of moments where Jackie got physical with him and looked like she’s on the verge of losing her shit, but it’s not much of a payoff and isn’t worth how much his antics break up the flow of the match. We did see a very good comeback that led to Tomi picking up the pin with her top rope boomerang, but the camera cuts missed it, they really seem to hate her.

Our 3rd fall only have one purpose. Jackie is gonna kick ass and win. She did tag out for bit in the middle so the heels managed to get a bit of offense in on Tomi, there was a weird spot where Tomi came back on an Irish Whip diagonally (which seemed to break the laws of wrestling physics) and pushed the heel ref into her opponents. I got the idea but I don’t think it worked. Maybe if they all tumbled over it would have been effective, if a bit more comedic than I think was the intent here. But once Jackie was back in the ring she just turned into a superhero, repeatedly smashed Vicki Williams into the mat and got the 3 count despite the ref doing a ridiculously slow count on her. He then gets beat up for his crimes. 

**1/2

MD: I’m not sure what happened to our beloved Queen Angels. I know that Lucy and Tomi wrestle at the end of the year but they were commentating like Jackie and Tomi were the strongest tag team in the world and we don’t see Tomi and Lucy team again in the footage. Williams (with Grable) was the NWA tag champion and she was fine here. You almost had to feel for her because Kumano would do her dangling choke (twice) to Jackie and then Williams would come in with a conventional choke, or Kumano would do her top rope seated senton and Williams would come in with a kick. What’s probably even going through her mind in that situation? The world is far bigger and more wonderful than Moolah told her yet she was trapped in her box forever.

This had a lot of heel ref shenanigans. It had plenty of outside interference from all of the American women. That said, it still worked just a little better than some of the other similar matches. Maybe it was just a bit more chaotic. Maybe it was because Jackie worked well from underneath and Tomi was fiery on the outside, dragged out again and again by the ref. Maybe it was because there were a few spots where the ref got comeuppance (or almost did like when Tomi pushed him into a double clothesline from her opponents). But it still didn’t clear the bar of if this was Jackie/Tomi vs Mami/Yuki. This was one where the ⅔ falls structure hurt a little too (and it usually didn’t) as the big comeback was deferred past a banana peel Tomi cross body pin to even up the falls. I wanted that big Jackie comeback and we didn’t quite get it. What we had to be satisfied with instead was the ref reluctantly counting three after Jackie’s belly to back and then him getting beaten up a bit post match (only to be helped out by Moolah; had to be an interesting tour for that guy overall, but boy am I sick of him).

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Barkley!

57. 1979.09.2X1 - Jackie Sato vs. Winnie Barkley (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: This is similar to the Jackie vs. Vicki Williams match we covered last we so it makes sense to more of a direct comparison. I don't like how these Japan vs. American matches are laid out, the evil foreigner is way too dominant and the constant cheating is overkill.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. People often associate this kind of match with Dump Matsumoto but there's actually a substantial business. Dump's matches (especially the famous ones) don't have this kind of flat constant cheating where the heel is just doing essentially the same thing over and over again. Rather, there's an ebb and flow to it where she'll do some cheating, then roll it back a bit, before coming up with some new devilry, and you never know what she's going to do next or how deep into her bag of tricks she's gonna go this time. It's why her matches sometimes have an element of horror in them.

But back to the match I'm actually reviewing. This does feel like a slightly improved version of what we saw last week in that firstly, Jackie does get a bit of shine at the start. I'm not saying there's some absolute rule that that needs to happen, but I think in this kind of match it really worked and neither of her opponents have ferocious enough heel offense to take over right from the start and have it feel meaningful. The dodgy referee  business starts early but is a little more restrained in that he breaks up a hold that he claims is a choke, and there's a little plausible deniability there that he's just strictly enforcing the rules before it becomes blatantly obvious that he's just crooked against Jackie.

But after hinting a more efficient direction at the start this settles into the pattern of the referee slow/fast counting and the Americans on the outside constantly interfering under his nose so Jackie can never get any momentum going (she does hit a beautiful proto-slingblade in one of her brief hope spots though). It just feels a lot more right when Jackie gets to go on offense, she's meant to be the heroic Ace around here, plus she's just such a physical specimen.

But then in the last few minutes this match turns into something different entirely when AJW referee Jimmy Kayama runs into to confront the American ref and his crooked ways but the ref attacks him. The crowd are so furious at the ref they start throwing things at him and it really feels like things are getting out of hand when suddenly a random fan actually runs into the ring to  remonstrate with him, and all the wrestlers on the outside have to jump into the ring to get rid of him. Jimmy Kayama is in there again fighting, throws the crooked ref out of the ring just in time to fairly count a Jackie cover to give her the win. Well. That would have been an awesome final 90 seconds of a great match if I hadn't been mostly bored for 10 minutes beforehand.

**

MD: Yeah, this was more of the same from the last match but Williams had looked way smoother than Barkley. She was, of course, Winona Littleheart, just out of gimmick.That’s almost a shame because I’d be curious what the gimmick would have looked like in this setting. As it was, we were looking at choking, eye rakes, draping the face over the ropes, etc. Jackie emoted well in agony. The heel US ref made sure that she didn’t get any comebacks but honestly, there weren’t even enough hope spots in here. The US team (the Moolah Army) interfered when they did. The commentators told us some useful things, like that the winner of the tournament would get $30,000 (I think dollars at least), and that Winnie liked disco dancing. At least things did come to a head in a crazy angle at the end as referee Kunimatsu Matsunaga had enough and got involved, getting into a big brawl with the US ref and finally just making the count himself. It was a wild scene for such a pedestrian angle and probably made this work overall as long as they just don’t go right back to it later. You could watch the last two minutes of this and get the full effect save for some of Jackie’s great selling.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Williams!

56. 1979.09.21 - 03 Jackie Sato vs. Vicki Williams

K: I’ll be a bit theoretical like this. For a match to work, it almost always has to have some structure going on in order for it to have any value. This distinguishes it from an angle, which can just be one thing happening because that’s its only purpose. This feels more like an angle than a match because it’s really just one thing happening. Vicki Williams jumps Jackie at the start and chokes her and gets helped out with blatant interference from the other Americans on the outside and the biased American referee just lets it all go. Jackie doesn’t put up any real fight against it, it’s hardly a spirited performance from her. So I’m only a few minutes into it and I’m already thinking “ok you’ve made your point, the Americans are cheating and their referee is crooked” and just want this to wrap up quickly.

Unfortunately they didn’t. This just goes on very monotonously until Jackie finally gets tired of the crooked ref constantly slow counting her and attacks him to get DQed. There was no need for this match to go any more than 5 minutes.

*1/2

MD: As a one time thought experiment this was pretty interesting. Jackie had to face not just Vicki, not just all of the American contingent on the outside, but also a biased referee who would let Williams put her in illegal holds, would break Jackie’s mostly legal holds, and would count far faster for Williams than Jackie. It’s something we’ve seen a hundred times but here it was fresh and new and shocking to the announcers and the crowd.

And that was probably a good thing as there wasn’t a whole lot else interesting with the match. Williams used a bunch of chokes. She had one nice drop into a body scissors. Jackie had some really good comebacks especially after the image of her getting choke in the ropes in front of the whole American team and they had a clear way for Williams to get back on top as Jackie was arguing with the heel ref, but it never really added up to much overall. That was especially true with the non finish. Instead of the ref getting some meaningful comeuppance, Jackie tossed him after a slow count and he DQed her. I assume this will be a story moving forward with the American vs Japanese tournament and therefore it made sense to introduce and not pay it off, but we’ll see.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Tomi! Kumano! Ikeshita!

53. 1979.09.1X - 02 Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (2/3 Falls)

K: Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama are as big a superteam you can get on the babyface side right now so this is a big match we’re getting here. I popped right at the start when Mami Kumano tried to whip Jackie Sato into the heel corner only for Jackie to use the momentum to boot Yumi Ikeshita off the apron! Mainly coz it reminded me of the 6/9/95 spot, though I doubt that’s where Kawada got the idea. The hierarchy makes sense in that Black Pair do they usually shenanigans including a lot of weapon hiding, but they never manage to turn things totally chaotic and both Jackie & Tomi get a lot of hope spots in before the big comeback towards the end of the fall. Unfortunately there’s some awful camera work at the finish where they almost totally miss Tomi’s top rope boomerang, if it weren’t for having already seen her do the move properly I wouldn’t have known what happened.

We got the similar Black Pair formula after they drop a fall, they go totally nuts in the 2nd trying to turn the match into as insane a brawl as possible. About 50% of their offense here is hitting the babyfaces on the head with a metal bucket which has somehow entered the ring. At one point Jackie does a great heroic babyface spot where she fights both of them off at once and then gives them some well-earned revenge with some bucket shots of her own. Jackie hits a picture-perfect headscissors takedown that I don’t see anyone do anymore. Wraps her ankles around the opponent’s head and somehow in the motion it looks as believable as I’ve ever seen a wrestler try convince me that there’s no co-operation involved in this. When Black Pair get the fall back, it’s when Yumi Ikeshita runs in to break up a Jackie Sato big splash attempt, only to then hit a backdrop suplex and get the pin herself even though she clearly wasn’t the legal woman. Referee!

The 3rd fall has an even wilder start. Now Yumi has got a mop and is stabbing everyone in the throat with it. After it gets confiscated, Jackie comes back off the ropes and hits one of the best double dropkicks on Black Pair I’ve ever seen. There’s a dynamic, flowing element in how she moves across the ring even when she’s in the air she seems to change direction mid-flow so that she hits Mami with one foot but then Yumi a little bit later with the other foot once she’s closer. Such a special wrestler. Black Pair go crazy with weapons again this time with chairs and Yumi has what looks like a wrench, Jackie defeats her with her superior wrestling skill by countering an attempted wrench attack with a rollup. Good and fitting finish. They never felt like they were going to go into 5th gear in this match and there wasn’t any big angle, I’d say this is one of the best matches we’ve seen that was never trying to be anything more.
***1/2

MD: This was wild and it felt a little like a culmination of a lot of what we’ve seen so far. We never get any explanation why Jackie and Tomi are teaming. We don’t have Tomi and Lucy teaming for the rest of 79. The commentary did question if Tomi and Jackie would make a good enough team to overcome the Black Pair who had been teaming for a year and a half. It started, oddly enough, with some heel in peril with Tomi and Jackie thrashing Kumano and the ref refusing multiple out of position tags by Ikeshita (she got a shot in on the ref each time he pulled her back out).

Once they took over, however, they didn’t look back, playing hide the object for the next six or seven minutes. It was a bit down to dumb refereeing but there was that element of bullying the ref and the ref being afraid to do much that would be a hallmark of the style forevermore. They made some small efforts at least. Neither Jackie or Tomi could get anything on them until Jackie just had enough and let loose with one of her three big comebacks of the match, firing away and setting things up for Tomi to hit her comebacker cross body off the ropes for the fall.

With each fall, the Black Pair escalated their weapon attack. In the second fall, that meant bringing a bucket in. Again, that went well for a while until Jackie had enough and caught it and started firing back. Total star, larger than life. Everything was going pretty well for them, including an incredibly long Tomi giant swing until Ikeshita cheapshotted Jackie so that she’d fall on Kumano right when Tomi was coming off the top, letting the Black Pair take the second fall. The third fall escalated things to chairs and a wrench but Jackie was was able to hit a jumping rolling clutch out of the corner for a snap win. Maybe the hide the object bit went on just a little too long (maybe) and maybe we could have used a few more nearfalls or something in the third fall but overall, the highs were real high here and Jackie came off as larger than life while still giving a ton until it was time for her to do her thing (and Tomi fit right in). It was a main event and it felt like one.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Ripper!

51. 1979.09.13 - 02 Jackie Sato vs. Monster Ripper (WWWA Singles Title)

K: Part of the appeal of pro-wrestling is getting to watch heroes in action. It stirs up some deep primal feel with us, this mix of admiration for the person we’re watching and just the raw emotion of the events taking place. The best babyfaces are able to pull their audiences into that primal state, have them feel a chill go down their spine as they watch their hero stand tall against the odds.

That feeling is what separates Jackie Sato from the pack to me. As impressive as many of these wrestlers are in other ways (it’d certainly be unfair to compare her to the heels too directly), none of them inspire that personal attachment and loyalty. Jackie would be topped by later stars, but from what I can see of the footage we have, she is the big pioneering Joshi babyface who her successors built on.

This is a match I’d already seen several times before this project as it’s one of 70s AJW’s most famous moments, but it’s still nice to have seen the build this time. That Monster Ripper had been looking almost unstoppable leading up to this probably wouldn’t surprise anyone coming into this cold, but it does help a little in knowing exactly how the booking had gone about that.

A little detail I like is how Jackie starts the match like it’s still just any other title match. She extends a hand and offers a knuckle-lock or Greco-Roman start. She doesn’t have any personal animosity towards Monster, at least not on the surface, but Monster just kicks her hand away in disdain anyway. So we know who the moral aggressor is. When the lock-up starts, Jackie first gets the advantage with a nifty move where she stands on Monster’s toes and then launches forward to headbutt her.

There’s an element of desperation and determination in everything Jackie does here, whereas Monster looks like she’s having time of her life toying with her prey. We get a repeat of the spot from their first match where Jackie ducks Monster’s flying hip attack, but it’s doesn’t lead to a comeback like in the 1st match and Monster is back up in no time. It just gives Jackie a little time to regroup. It feels like the odds are against her even more this time. All she can really manage against her to this point are sneaky rollup attempts. They aren’t really offense but it felt like a version of the Steamboat Rule in that she’s letting the crowd know she’s still trying to win the match even if she’s clearly a long way from doing that.

Jackie does something a bit odd for a babyface here, she keeps going to outside to avoid Monster, and when Monster goes chasing after her she’ll get back in. Jackie is selling her leg so maybe she’s buying time for it to wear off, or something else. It doesn’t come across as cowardly though. It all pays off when she takes an opportunity as Monster’s climbing back up to the apron to hit her with a flying crossbody to the floor. Or maybe that was the plan all along. Either way it works, and believable turns the tide of momentum in her favour and sends the crowd into a frenzy as they see Our Hero has a real chance to win this. She doesn’t let up, hitting her biggest moves in quick succession before Monster has a chance to rally. The big splash that she’d won matches with recently only gets her a 2 count though. She gets the win with a backdrop suplex bridge though, with a dubious probably 2.9 count (but this feud has to continue) but the crowd weren’t paying enough attention to Monster’s shoulders to notice that! Bit rough around the edges, but this all worked very well.

***3/4

MD: This felt suitably epic to me, the culmination of something. I’m not sure the finish quite lives up to the match and the moment but they also maybe needed to leave things on the bone if they thought they’d be using Ripper more (we don’t have more of her in 79, but she’ll show up again in 80). There’s a lot to like here. Early on, Jackie uses her speed and daring to frustrate Ripper, including with a headscissors takeover out of a victory roll position. They play at wrist control after that, and it really does become all Ripper fairly quickly. She’s too big, too fierce, too strong.

Maybe it’s just me, but they almost seemed to shoot this part of the match where she just destroys Jackie a little differently. It seems closer up, more of a horror scene. The crowd was full of Jackie’s followers, including two girls they keep cutting to with her name on their headbands, and yes, they look on in terror as Ripper ragdolls her about, ending with a destruction of the leg. As the officials check on her, Ripper rushes back in to attack. There’s nothing polished about anything she does. It’s all rough around the edges, rough in general, but it works here exactly for that reason.

Eventually she all but shoves Jackie out leading to a bit of recovery and the back half. As Jackie makes it back in, she transforms into the most magical of standing tall babyfaces just like that. She leads off with maybe the best drop down trip ever, as she just rolls into a charging Ripper. She’s too fast and too slick and goes so far as to press Ripper up onto her shoulders and drop her. They move into a more even stretch, including a really great reversal out of a backslide by Ripper that I’d never seen before where she just shimmies her way into a folding press with the legs nelsoned. But Jackie keeps pressing and hits a big belly to back (with maybe, almost certainly a shoulder coming up to diminish it a bit?), and sends the place into a fervor by regaining the belt. Very clear and crisp and brisk for most of this. A hero triumphing. Save maybe for them refusing to commit on the finish, a match very much worth the build.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Tomi! Ikeshita! Masami! Komine!

49. 1979.08.XX3 - 04 Hiroko Komine, Tenjin Masami & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Jackie Sato, Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama (2/3 Falls)

K: Top babyface & two buddies vs. top (native) heel and two buddies. Jackie’s team really should have the clear advantage with her having Queen Angels as her partners and Yumi just has two rookies, but that’s not how the match goes. The heels dominate the early goings easily, but with Jackie never tagging in so it’s more that they’re dominating the lesser two of her team. Still it’s a bit surprising to see Hiroko Komine in control of them for so long. Unfortunately there’s a noticeable clip around here so we don’t get to see the first babyface comeback until it’s already started, or if it really even was a comeback or just an ‘extended hope’ as Yumi Ikeshita pretty quickly shuts it down. She does a cool move as she’s taking back control where she Irish Whips Lucy Kayama straight into Komine’s flying crossbody. Someone steal that. It made the Irish Whip look a lot more effective rather than just whipping someone into the ropes as there’s isn’t the time for the opponent to react.

There’s a couple more babyface comeback moments in this first fall, both of which are started by Lucy Kayama. The first one doesn’t go very far, she just counters a running move by tripping her opponent from the side, but before she gets much going Yumi Ikeshita bursts in and she has a new villainous trick for today. She has a towel wrapped around her hand and is using it like brass knucks. I guess that would probably work if the towel was tort enough. Football hooligans used to do that with newspapers around their fists, it’s called the ‘Millwall Brick’. This is what gets Jackie involved for the first time, she doesn’t stand much of a chance against Yumi Ikeshita and her towel though. The second bigger comeback from Lucy comes from a heel mishap. She moves out of the way of Komine charging at her, who knocks Ikeshita off the apron instead and they both tumble to the floor. With a good sense of urgency, the babyfaces isolate Tenjin Masami, Tomi is tagged into the do a flurry of dropkicks and a giant swing which sets up Jackie doing a big splash (stealing Lucy Kayama’s move) and she wins them the 1st fall.

The first thing I want to comment on from the 2nd fall is that Tomi Aoyama hits such an excellent violent looking dropkick it gets an audible gasp from the crowd. She follows that up with this pretty dynamic vertical suplex where she’s never stood up straight at any point, she just kinda falls into it and her opponent goes over with her. No wonder Ikeshita felt the need to bring out the towel to stop her momentum. This time she’s just strangling her with it. She even manages to simultaneously fight off Jackie trying to intervene by kicking her away while still using her arms to continue strangling Tomi. What a… villain. As we go into the finishing stretch for this fall Jackie really looks like a hero throwing everyone around. Queen Angels look cool in a different way with their cool moves. Lucy Kayama does a couple of proto Tiger Driver like moves setting up Tomi Aoyama to get the win with the Queen Special splash for a 2-0 victory. Good match.

***

MD: Maybe I’m crazy for saying this but I think certain structural things are starting to come together with the style. If you look at the matches from a year prior (or even six months), there were more momentum shifts but they all had less meaning. Now there’s more in the way of hope spots before they build to a big comeback. The large majority of this match had the Black Army controlling even though they didn’t pick up either fall and it felt a little like an initiation for Masami and Komine. Komine was slicker; she has this high-speed, too close, askew cross body that is very nice, especially when Ikeshita added oomph with a whip. Masami was more of a bruiser. She just runs headlong into people. Ikeshita was a force of nature like usual, just chucking people over her head at will.

We lose a little of one comeback due to a clip but we get this more or less in full otherwise. At one point they use a towel as a weapon, first wrapped around their hands, and then later, around Tomi’s neck. Jackie comes off like the star she is when she’s in there but she does get beaten around a bunch too. The finish of the second fall has Lucy with this run-into-the-corner headstand splash. I probably would have liked to see the Army get one fall but they did take most of this and the Angels and Jackie do come off like a super team of sorts.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Seiko! Kumano! Ikeshita!

43. 1979.08.XX1 - 03 Jackie Sato & Seiko Hanawa vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita

K: There’s an annoying clip very early on which makes it hard to assess the opening portion of the match. We get the standard-fare feisty babyface Seiko launching right into the attack, then later Black Pair have taken control and we didn’t really see how. But their section mauling Jackie Sato especially is pretty good. Highlights included pulling Jackie’s arm out tort and then headbutting her in the shoulder, and a bit later Yumi would grab Jackie by the back of the head and launch her face-first through the ropes into Mami’s outstretched knee through the other side of the apron. Absolutely every piece of offense Black Pair do just looks dirty. It’s just cheating, or just ugly and unsporting at the very least. It felt near miraculous when Jackie was able to get a comeback in by dodging a double-team so Mami kicked her own partner by mistake, and once she got the ball refused to let go until she picked up the first fall. What a hero.

There’s a noticeable change in pace and tone in the 2nd fall. Whereas the 1st was messy and driven by the heels just causing mayhem, this time Black Pair were being far more measured and controlled in taking apart their opponents. It felt like they were reacting to a chaotic situation of their doing backfiring on them to cause them to lose the 1st fall, so they’re not going to allow that to happen again. After taking out Jackie with a weapon (hiding it from the referee for a bit of extra heat), Mami Kumano just voluntarily allows Jackie to go over and tag a very angry Seiko Hanawa in, who is also protesting to the referee about the weapon use. Black Pair are happy to have Seiko as their target though rather than the superhero Jackie. She also gets meticulously taken apart and beaten. The third fall follows much the same pattern, but this time they capitalise even more by tying Jackie’s leg up in the ropes to finish off Seiko quickly. Nice match this, the 1st fall probably went on just a little too long but that’s just about the only negative thing I’ll say about it.

***

MD: A couple of clips in here around transitions which is never the best but what we get is pretty substantial even if the last few minutes of this is the end credits. Hanawa had to be inspired teaming with Jackie because she attacks right from the get go. We miss how the Black Pair take over, but they sure do take over. This is a great dominant performance from them. They control at length multiple times in the match but the longest is in the first fall where they destroy Jackie. I’m usually higher on Kumano and she has her usual wild abandon and violent stuff, including some new things like a dragon sleeper into a stomach whack. Here though Ikeshita really shined, just rubbing Jackie’s face all over the mat.

At some point they switch over to Hanawa but that really just lets Jackie recover enough to be ready for Hanawa to turn it around on them for a hot tag. She almost reminds me of Hogan in some ways by this point (some might consider that blasphemy). She’s great at taking and taking but when it’s time to give, she’s larger than life, just kicking through faces, just dropping people straight down from a belly to back position, and hitting her cross attack with great camera angles. As noted, the Black Pair did take back over and things got wild on the outside as one might expect. The trick was to isolate Jackie and they did so with the help of their seconds on the floor. In the last fall, they managed it by tying up Jackie’s leg in the ropes. Hanawa was fiery but ultimately doomed.

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