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

Volume 4  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Richter!

Volume 4  

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2



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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Masami! Jaguar!

Volume 3   

13. Mimi Hagiwara sings 'Broadway Dream'

K: Matt got to this first and made me chuckle that he keeps reviewing the singing segments, not something I ever intended anyone to do! It’s just part of AJW. You have to watch it. If anything my curation has significantly downplayed the proportion of 80s AJW TV that consisted of wrestlers singing. Part of it was to try and sell records (these songs were all released as singles), but I also think they match up well with their in-ring personas and aren’t just random songs.

MD: I don’t know? What do we say about this. It’s weird to see Mimi in red and not white. She’s more expressive selling than singing but she’s clearly good at this? This was disco-tinged in a way I may have expected a year or two earlier. I got nothing. I’m tone deaf. 

14. Devil Masami vs. Jaguar Yokota (WWWA Singles Title) 7/19/82 

K: We don’t have much info on attendances for this era of AJW but I’d make an educated guess that this was the biggest show of the year. It’s Ota Ward and it looked pretty packed. We’re missing a lot of the TVs before this one unfortunately. We do know that Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori successfully defended the tag belts against Leilani Kai & Velvet McIntyre in a show shortly before this. They beat Princess Victoria & Wendi Richter in the match before this one, plus earlier in the show Lioness Asuka beat Masked Yu to win the AJW Title (which had been vacated by Devil Masami earlier). 

Right from the introductions you can hear that there’s sizeable contingent in the crowd who are cheering for Devil Masami. Anyone who tells you fans cheering for heels is something that only started recently needs to brush up :) It’s worth noting not just because it’s unusual, but I also think it informs how the match plays out. If the reason for Devil getting cheered is some fans liked how violent and ‘badass’ she comes across, this got undermined by Jaguar Yokota really pulling out that side of her tonight, which was a good thing.

Devil’s more crazed shenanigans are put on the backburner tonight, it feels like her and Jaguar really want to deliver more of a classic style wrestling match. They distinguish themselves not by Devil cheating as such, but the different way the transitions play out. Firstly, we have them go to the mat, where Jaguar is pretty dominant in locking Devil up in various leg-focused holds (which Devil sells with excellent facial expressions). Devil switches things by powering out of a butterfly suplex position. Later again when she’s on the defensive it’s because Jaguar has her in an unusual submission where she’s pulling both Devil’s shoulders back behind her like she’s about to do a really big sitting chest press but is overdoing it… but Devil has the brute strength to power out and take Jaguar down. On the other hand, whenever Jaguar takes the advantage, it’s by using some combination of speed and technique, for instance when she leaps at Devil off an Irish Whip and rolls her up into a pinning predicament. 

Power vs. technique, but also there’s an added malice to Devil’s offense, for instance in how she slams Jaguar face first into the match, like she’s adding a bit of gratuitous violence/humiliation into it. She’s also the first one to take things to the outside, where she throws Jaguar into the chairs. It’s such a ubiquitous spot I sometimes think you need to think of Joshi match structure as shine - heat - throw into chairs - hope - comeback or something. It works as a signifier that we’ve moved onto a new section of the match.

Jaguar gets back into the ring and has an angry vibe about her. She quite quickly gets the advantage when they start a Greco-Roman style struggle, which you’d normally think would favour Devil, but Jaguar’s able to use her leverage to flip Devil over in a kind of monkey flip move and then goes to work on her. She’s so aggressive and vicious at going after Devil’s leg that Devil actually flees to the outside limping! There’s a big roar from the crowd supporting Jaguar here, it’s as noisy a crowd as we’ve had in a while. She gets a reprisal in and throws Devil into the outside chairs.

The big criticism at this point has to be about Devil mostly dropping selling her leg after the restart, or after a minute or so. I don’t think it’s accurate to say she drops it entirely, she does subtly walk a bit unevenly on it for a little bit and when she has Jaguar up in the military press she does a movement just as she drops her that her leg was about to give out if she held up Jaguar a moment more. I’d put this in the category of it would have elevated the match if Devil sold her leg more, but it’s not egregious enough to actively drag things down. We’re also just hitting a climax here which is exciting enough that I don’t really notice unless I’m really paying attention. 

Also, Jaguar hits and OVER THE TOP ROPE dive onto Devil on the outside. I’m pretty sure she’s only the 2nd woman - after Tomi Aoyama - to ever successfully hit that move. Puts over that you’re watching a special match when something like that gets pulled out.

We’re not getting a winner here. We’ll have to wait another year for that. Double countout it is. Thematically, the way they executed this works. Jaguar has tapped into her most vicious side and - unusually for her - is showing a lot of emotion and expressiveness in dishing out punishing to Devil. She actually looks gleeful at times. It all gets out of control when she’s swinging a chair around at her as Devil gets her cane to try to fight back, but despite that being her element, they come across as evenly matched at this. A flaw is Jaguar’s chair shots are a bit weak, although I may be looking at them with post-ECW eyes, and it is a positive that wrestlers didn’t seem to need to actually scramble their opponent’s brains to get a reaction from a chairshot.

Excellent match and one of the best of the early 80s for AJW.

****1/4

MD: Long title match between the top face and the top heel and a great way to end the disc. What clearly stands out in this relative to Jaguar’s predecessors, and a theme for this disc in general, is just how much she took the fight to Devil. Despite being carried out by her faction, they would be a non-factor here, only intervening when everything broke down at the end and maybe acting as moral support when Devil was hurt the worst. Jaguar had enough of Masami’s crap and she was going to take no more. 

While Devil tried to attack her at the start, she turned it back on her with a cross body block off the second rope and after trading a few holds (including a deep tapitia/cavernaria variation by Devil), Jaguar honed in on the leg. That meant a brutal figure four, with the two selling huge in what seemed to be oppressive heat. It meant wrapping the leg around the rope and kicking at it. It meant her short leg scissors. It meant a toehold with her knee dug into Jaguar’s leg. Jaguar sold it with her usual expressiveness and Jaguar put over the effort like the most important thing in the world.

Which, of course, meant that Devil would drop it completely as she headbutted her way back into a comeback, immediately locking in a tapitia that used the leg like nothing had happened. Bit of a shame, not because you have to sell religiously but because it was both the meat of the match and so well done while it was happening.

That said, the bombs they bridged to next were compelling.They both had a lot of stuff and some good transitions as well. Jaguar flipped through a tilt a whirl backbreaker attempt. Devil reversed a second tombstone. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, Jaguar was going to get her after bridging up out of a pin and finally hitting her double underhook and belly to back suplexes, but Devil survived.

They spilled to the outside to finish the match (having visited it once or twice already) with Jaguar again getting fed up and launching an assault on Devil with a chair. Devil came back with the kendo stick and they jousted for a while before taking out the ref and forcing the match to be thrown out. It was still pretty satisfying even if they clearly left a lot more for the future. We tend to not hold the dropped limbwork against them because they just hadn’t mentally worked their way through that sort of longterm consequence but here it did particularly grate. Still, the good was exceptionally good. 

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

Volume 3  

11. A Day In The Life of Noriyo Tateno

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

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

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

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Ripper!

Volume 3 

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

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

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

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

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

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

I believe in my champ.

****1/4

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

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Jumbo!

Volume 3

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

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

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

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

**1/2 

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

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

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

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

Volume 3 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Masami!

Volume 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good match. Devil vs. Jaguar is on.

***1/2

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Kumano! Ito! Jaguar! Noriyo!

Disc 2 

11. Hiroe Ito & Mami Kumano vs. Jaguar Yokota & Noriyo Tateno 8/81

K: Black Pair and Jumping Bomb Angels are Joshi tag teams from totally different eras, so the biggest novelty of this match is that their careers overlapped just enough to see one of each team against each other. By 'just enough' I mean this is Noriyo Tateno's TV debut and, from the footage we have available, the last in-ring appearance of Mami Kumano. Noriyo is part of the class of 1981, and early in her career gets pushed as an understudy of Jaguar Yokota (or to be more blunt about it,  punching bag/pin-eater in tag matches).

It's also the first time that Jaguar Yokota is now 'Jaguar' rather than Rimi. So I can stop worrying about accidentally calling her Jaguar in these reviews. The other wrestler here is Hiroe Ito. She's in Black Gundan faction, part of the class of 1980 and will later get the ring name 'Wild Kazuki', and pretty soon after that will be put in a mask to wrestle as 'Tarantula'.

The start is kinda funny as Mami squares up to Jaguar, making you think she's actually gonna wrestle her, but then just charges at poor Noriyo on the apron and drags her in to beat her up. Signalling from the start that the heel gameplan here is to target Noriyo and act like Jaguar isn't even there. The beatdown is very vicious and very loud. Kumano and Ito are both big screamers but in slightly different ways (yes I'm gonna analyse Joshi screams). Kumano comes across more out of control maniac in her screaming, whereas Ito feels more like she's just really exerting herself trying really hard to hurt her opponents, and her scream isn't a high-pitched so it's not so grating on the ears.

The hierarchy and dynamic is pretty clear here. Jaguar is way better than everyone else, she's almost able to fight both the heels on her own if she can keep things in the ring. But it doesn't play out like that. She's either being thrown to the outside so the heels can target Noriyo, or we get some crazy fighting on the outside where Mami Kumano in particular is causing mayhem. It's kinda funny how unpredictable she is, even stuff that isn't technically impressive like how she just kept kicking at Jaguar on the other side of the announce table while standing on it. You'd think after the first couple she'd done enough but she wouldn't stop. She's just all instinct. Noriyo took a funny bump into the chairs, knocking over a bystander in the process.

They gave Noriyo a little bit of shine when Jaguar got control of things in the ring and actually tagged her in to help out. Noriyo did a few single-legged dropkicks which didn't look that good, but I guess they didn't really need to. Jaguar was getting pretty big reactions earlier on with her hip attacks. Big relative to the time period, despite the reputation of "80s Joshi", 1981 AJW crowds really aren't that loud at all.

Noriyo is left in the ring a little too long though, so we get the predictable result. In some classic early AJW they cut away to brawling on the floor during a pinfall so we don't actually see the 3 count. I don't understand how that happens on a taped show. Good match though. The kind of 10 minute tv tag that achieves everything it set out to do.

***

MD: Our last look at Mami Kumano and her cool leather jacket with one arm cut off. Our first look at Noriyo Tateno. Ships in the night. It’s not like I’ve never seen a Jumping Bomb Angels match. And I had vague working knowledge of Masami and Yokota coming into this. I certainly have a good sense of Chigusa and Dump and all that’s coming, but I did come into this footage a lot blinder than you might think. I’d probably never seen a full Jackie Sato match, or Mimi Hagiwara or Nancy Kumi or the Queen Angels. I certainly hadn’t seen the Black Pair. I have now seen more of them than any other joshi, quite probably, as we’ve gone through years of footage comprehensively. So it’s been a bit of a hit to my weekly watching to lose Tomi or Jackie and now we’re losing Mami Kumano who I’ve probably connected to as much as anyone in this footage. One last romp on the way out though.

The commentary tells us that Tateno had done the high jump and was good at swimming, so important stuff here as always. Anyway, after a failed attempt for handshakes by Yokota and Tateno, Kumani ambushed them and took right over. Ito stood out early, dragging Tateno’s eyes across the mat and jamming her elbow right in it. Good, vicious stuff. She jammed a suplex later and draped a knee right over Tateno’s throat, so she had gotten the correct Black Army tutelage. All that and a stomach claw, including in the tree of woe too. Kumano likewise did her usual stuff, including ramming Tateno into the post from the apron, which everyone at ringside took very seriously. She went for a cavernaria just by yanking Tateno’s hair too but that was broken up by Yokota quickly. And yes, we got to see her do her dangling Brody King style choke at least one last time too. The last big thing she did was stand on the commentary table and cause chaos while the commentator’s voice rose in pitch accordingly. Hot tag came after some heel miscommunication but the finish was Ito reversing a whip causing Yokota to hit a body press on Tateno. A fun changing of the guard of sorts in a way. Mami Kumano will be missed. 

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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! 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: Guam! Ayumi! Rimi! Richter! Ikeshita!

Disc 1 

12. Fun in Guam

MD: Everyone sings. For Jackie and Mimi, that makes sense, but they keep going down the roster with each being more of a surprise than the last. I’m not sure exactly when this was shown, but when they show Masami as a surprise, they call her Devil, which is the first time I’ve heard that so far. Nancy and Lucy (the tag champs) totally fumble their song to high comedy. Then they do a charity auction for unicef with clothing/gear and Jackie was very appreciative of everything raised and I will leave it at that. This was a fun little look at life beyond the ring, even if it was a life mandated by the company.

13. Ayumi Hori & Rimi Yokota vs. Wendi Richter & Yumi Ikeshita - 9/30/80

K: I enjoyed Wendi Richter flexing her muscles in the introductions. They weren't even that impressive, which made it even more heelish that she thought those arms were worth flouting to the crowd.

That arrogant introduction sets up the match pretty well though, as she very quickly gets embarrassed by the much smaller Rimi Yokota, who's able to bodyslam her and almost pin her within a minute. Yokota is such a ball of energy flying at you it's hard to do anything to stop her. Ayumi Hori gets tagged in, she's one of the biggest wrestlers AJW ever had but she's still the rookie in this match (class of 1978, but didn't debut until 1979 due to injuries) and isn't able to hold out long before Richter takes back control and tags Ikeshita in.

Hori still looks a bit awkward and clumsy here, kinda hesitant when hitting moves, but she never gets to stay on offense for long. After the setback early on, the heels have committed to breaking up any momentum the babyfaces get going and isolating Hori in the corner whenever they can. There's a kinda strange tag where Richter hits Hori with a body block coming off the ropes, but instead of going straight down, Hori just bounces off towards her corner and tags Yokota in. It was logical in a vacuum but made me laugh a bit at why other wrestlers don't do that.

Yokota isn't able to break the heel control when she tags in. Ikeshita just slots her into her routine, including that cool unique move where she places her heel on the mat, toes sticking up, and impales Yokota's midsection onto her foot. The babyfaces do have a fun moment where things break down and they manage to get the heels in double figure fours before Mami Kumano runs in and gives them a beating for their audacity. Yokota does have a bit more success against Richter when nobody else is getting involved, but once Ikeshita is back in it's clear she is being positioned as the stronger of the two heels here.

Also, they brawl on the outside for a bit and Ayumi Hori gets slammed into a table. Nothing special, but we do get an early glimpse of the Dynamic Jaguars seconds, a very young Tomoko Kitamura (later known as Lioness Asuka) and Yukari Omori. 

The biggest crowd reaction comes after when Yokota finally manages to pull of a successful comeback sequence on Ikeshita (rather than Richter). It looks like the babyfaces are gonna go on a conquering rampage when Yokota tags in Hori, who hits Ikeshita with a few more moves and hoists her onto the top turnbuckle for something big, but Ikeshita turns the tables on her with an awesome rollup from up top which actually wins the match outta nowhere.

This was a very enjoyable TV tag that isn't trying to be any more than that.

***1/4

MD: Basically a mixed tag, believe it or not. Richter came off as a giant here. I don’t remember her being quite so tall, but she was perfectly matched with Hori, size-wise which made Ikeshita and Yokota seem tiny. Jumbo and Jaguar controlled for the first few minutes, including Rimi slamming Richter right from the start and Ayumi rolling back with her with a front face lock into a body scissors (Richter picked her up out of that by her head but just dropped her instead of doing the French Catch forearm to escape). Ayumi hit a Baba-esque Russian Leg Sweep in there too.

Ikeshita took over by tossing Ayumi out and then tossing her into a table which went crashing every which way. The transition had a very chaotic feel to it. Things calmed down after that with Ikeshita and Richter using a lot of throat shots and clubbers to keep control. Things built to a fun comeback with a tandem figure-four spot. We’d seen this before in a singles match with interference but it worked well here too; it did lead to interference though as someone came in to help Ikeshita. Rimi kept the comeback going on Richter (really throwing herself at the larger woman) but Ikeshita asserted herself with her great offense (beautiful fall away slam, her gutwrench power slam). 

The finishing stretch was very good here. After some more chaos on the outside, Rimi turned things around on Ikeshita by pressing herself up and landing right on her with a vertical splash twice. Ayumi then came in with some really big offense including a slam out of a fireman’s carry that I hadn’t seen before in the footage. When she put Ikeshita up on the top turnbuckle (likely just to toss her off by her head), Ikeshita was able to smoothly roll into a small package for the win though. Very slick. This was fun and sprinty with the interference and chaos on the outside used well to transition things while not outliving its welcome. 
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Mimi!

Disc 1 

11. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Rimi Yokota - 8/80

K: Before I go into the match, I’ll fill in a bit of missing context. Shortly before this match we’re covering was the biggest AJW show of 1980, which was on 8/8/80 at the Denen Coliseum. The claimed attendance was 10,000 fans, almost certainly exaggerated, but it gives you an idea. The main event was Jackie Sato vs. Monster Ripper for the WWWA Singles Title, the semi-main was Rimi Yokota vs. Yumi Ikeshita vs. the All Pacific Title. Because this is early 80s Japan, both matches ended in draws. The WWWA Title match was a double countout/no contest, and the decision was that the belt would be vacated and a tournament held to crown a new champion. The All Pacific Title match was a 60 minute draw, which tells you how much of a push Yokota was already getting that they’d book her in such a match.

Other significant things about that show include Tomi Aoyama’s retirement ceremony (sayonara, we barely knew you), and the opener being Chigusa Nagayo vs. Yukari Omori, both of whom were making their in-ring debuts, and would go on to become very important wrestlers. The company also did a bit of a reset by putting everyone into three factions, Dynamic Jaguars, Red Phoenix and Black Devils. Here is how they’re split:

Dynamite Jaguars = Jackie Sato, Mimi Hagiwara, Rimi Yokota, Yukari Omori, Tomoko Kitamura
Red Phoenix = Nancy Kumi, Lucy Kayama, Chino Sato, Ayumi Hori, Chigusa Nagayo
Black Devils = Yumi Ikeshita, Mami Kumano, Tenjin/Devil Masami, Hiroe Itoe, Kaoru Matsumoto.
Plus a bunch of rookies who we won’t see on this set. This 3 way split of the roster (they travelled separately, the stable names came from the tour buses) would remain for the next few years.

Now to the match:

This opens with Rimi Yokota going all raging bull immediately on Mimi. Beating her to the floor, then kicks her out of the ring, and then chases after her on the outside and throws her into some chairs. She looks like she's barely capable of restraining herself she's got so worked up. Mimi gets herself back into things with a fancy rollup through the ropes, but not much in the way of offense.

That opening was a microcosm of how this whole match plays out. Yokota is a dominating force of nature that Hagiwara can barely hold out against. There's a bit of heeling in there, for example Yokota sneaks in some biting where she can while working on Mimi's leg. She has a very interesting submission hold where she pulls Mimi's knee out between her own legs and just pulls at it, I don't recall seeing that anywhere else except from her.

Mimi has a good performance, although she's mostly just selling and hobbling on her leg. There's one moment where she attempts a rollup, and I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but she screws it up and just lies down holding her leg for Yokota to get back at attacking it. It's not like her rollups ever lead to much at anyway. Shortly after we get the closest thing Mimi's got to a comeback when she hits a couple of flying neckbreakers and follows it up with a tiger driver style sideslam, that's really all we get though, as Yokota bridges out of the pin and then one-ups Mimi by hitting a far more impressive version of that same move before getting the win.

This was very one-sided. It established Rimi Yokota as a rising force to be reckoned with, Mimi came across as a sympathetic personality, but she just couldn't hang.

***1/2

MD: Very glad to have the context, though even with it, I'm not 100% sure why the new stablemates are so heated here. But it was heated. Yokota didn't just bite, she bit three different places, the fingers in one of her early holds where she was really wrenching Mimi every which way; the knee! which makes no sense, but it did play into that weird knee submission she did; and then the foot, which got her chastised hard from the ref. I swear she also stepped on the hair and pulled at one point too, and tossed Mimi around by her hair too. 

 We haven't seen a ton of Hagiwara as of late but what I remember of her is that her strong point is her emotive selling and that was absolutely at play here. I'm not sure if her background (acting I think?) but she's excellent at it. She also had hope spots that were almost exclusively roll ups, which was interesting in a Ricky Morton sort of way. I can't say her offense was awe inspiring though, and really, when it came down to it, Yokota just cut through her. You can almost see her moving into the Aoyoma role in the hierarchy maybe?  I guess time will tell (for me at least; it's history for others but mostly new for me). This was a great showcase for her, bolstered by Mimi's selling.

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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: Rimi! Masami!

Disc 1

6. Tenjin Masami & Rimi Yokota Interviews - 4/4/80

MD: Big takeaways here are that Masami’s family didn’t want her to get into wrestling so that was inspiring her to become a champion to show them that she could be one and the interviewer making Yokota stop her jump roping and being super patronizing before getting Jackie’s opinion on things. This made it seem like Jackie was her mentor in a way we haven’t really seen on screen so far as I can tell.

K: Just responding to Matt’s comment here. Yes Jackie Sato is depicted as Rimi Yokota’s mentor on AJW TV from early 1980-ish, there are a lot of these backstage/on location interviews/skits on the TV shows that are used to build characters (though in a less obvious “this is a TV show” way than most US wrestling). Part of the reason I included this little interview was to have at least one clip where viewers can see the Sato/Yokota relationship.

7. Rimi Yokota vs. Tenjin Masami (AJW Junior Title) - 4/4/80

K: This is, afaik, the first singles meeting between these two. In a vacuum, this might not seem like a particularly noteworthy match, but it’s also the beginning of a rivalry which would become central to the promotion within a couple of years when these two moved up to feuding for the World Title.

You can also see that these two are talented, probably the best babyface/heel of the new generation, which I’ll define as those who joined the promotion after the Beauty Pair boom had already begun. You see a few slight hesitations in their movements, especially in that early stretch where they tried to start the match all action, but for the most part they pull it all off well. Yokota is not just an incredible athlete, but she manages to incorporate it into her offense far more functionally than almost all wrestlers physically capable of pulling off what she can do. The spot where she dodges Masami with a handstand flip to the side before spinning around in a dropkick is both meticulous and all the more effective because it doesn’t look totally smooth.

Masami is a bit less developed in terms of mechanics. Her offense is very good and most of it looks like she’s really trying to hurt her opponent, but her bumps are still a bit awkward and stiff. It’s most noticeable when she gets hit with a monkey flip and, well the way she took it wasn’t that aesthetically pleasing even if it wasn’t outright ‘bad’. But where she already shines is in her demeanour. She feels like a menacing and vicious presence throughout, there’s something about the way she walks that makes her feel even bigger than she is. She has these slightly bigger than you’d expect strides. Her facial expressions are excellent, even in moments where not much else is happening she just looks like a dangerous angry woman on the verge of really snapping, without getting too hammy with it.

And of course I couldn’t write about this match without mentioning the memorable moment. The lemon. It’s not just that she pulls out a lemon and rubs it in Yokota’s eyes to blind her in an acid attack, although that alone would have been cool. It’s also how she sets it up by attacking the eyes earlier in the match, so the crowd has eye-attacks in mind. She also doesn’t get the lemon out until Yokota is on the outside recovering, so the crowd has plenty of time to notice that she’s about to do something evil. It’s not just a spot being good but working to get the most out of it.

We had a lot of chaos early on with the Black Pair (they’re becoming more of a faction now, and that will shortly become official) and the babyfaces fighting on the outside, which makes things feel really heated until they’re all cleared out so we get more of a straight match. I think the interference was deployed quite well here seeing as the heels were doing it from the start and it felt like a storm Yokota had to fight to weather before her friends cleared them out rather than just some random external thing breaking up the match flow.

The more straight match section was definitely the weaker part of the match, even with the lemon incident. Probably because they’re having to go to a time limit draw and didn’t really have it in them to work that long a match and keep it interesting (yet), although they do pick things up for the last few minutes. Definitely a cool thing to have though, so let’s keep an eye on these two going forward.

***1/4 

MD: The future unfolding before our eyes. I’m not going to say these two were fully formed (they weren’t), but they were farther along than I might have expected. You could see it in Yokota’s early explosive athleticism. I had to watch an early spot where she burst through a cross-chop block and did a front handstand at lightning fast speed in order to get an advantage three or four times. It was that good and relatively hard to follow. Meanwhile, everything you needed to know, and I mean really, really needed to know, about Masami was in her face, the little malicious sneer she was able to carry herself with throughout most of the match. And they had so many of the other trappings down just when it came to how hard they hit, how deeply they struggled, the way they’d bridge up out of pins or roll onto their stomach after a move to save themselves. 

Masami countered that early athleticism with sheer cruelness. She had an advantage on the outside with Black Army coaches helping her do damage and inspiring her to be her worst. That meant doing Kumano’s hanging choke on the apron followed by the fireman’s carry press slam. Eventually, they were able to clear the ringside area with no small effort and things reset. That meant a brief advantage for Yokota before Masami started on the eyes, and she started on them with a vengeance, first with rakes, but then by squeezing a lemon (that she hid in her bosom mind you) and driving it into Yokota’s eye. Brilliant heatseeking. 

I could have used a more definitive moment of comeback, but Yokota did fire back, using first a body scissors and then a figure-four, with Masami trying to bite Yokota’s knee to get out of it. They escalated to bombs, including a nice over the shoulder facebuster by Masami (which is where Yokota immediately went to her stomach), and as time was ticking down, Yokota had a last advantage with an over the shoulder backbreaker. As we know, I haven’t watched too far ahead even if I have seen a couple of Yokota vs Masami matches in passing, but this felt like a great foundation for everything to come.

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