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

Volume 3 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

 Volume 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

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

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

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

Here’s what I said about it then: 

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

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

Here’s what I think about it now:

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Martin! Ikeshita! Rimi! Seiko!

62. 1979.10.XX - 01 Judy Martin & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa (Either late September or before October 17)

K: This was a bit toned down compared to the face vs. heel tags I’ve gotten used to seeing, and that has good and bad points. The good being that the match felt pretty cohesive throughout. I got the impression that the heel team were clearly superior and they rightly dominating most of the proceedings, but they also established that Yokota has a bit more going for her than Hanawa. She got the big comebacks and most of the prolonged offense when they were able to put the heels on the backfoot. The bad point though, is that it all felt a bit pedestrian. Even when they spilled to the outside to brawl a bit it felt like they were doing it coz that’s just what happens in 1979 AJW tags rather than having any real commitment to it.

The definitely highlight for me was the 2nd big comeback when Ikeshita was able to swing a chair at her opponent only to get knocked over and it wasn’t immediately clear what even happened. It looked a bit like she just lost her balance because the chair was so heavy hah. But no it was Yokota saving the day. She had a pretty good showing in an otherwise very unmemorable affair. I thought Martin was pretty disappointing and didn’t add much at all.

*3/4

MD: This wasn’t perfect but I thought it was a structural improvement to what we’ve been seeing lately. No heel ref. Less sputtering heat and more clear delineated double heat (with a reason to justify the second). Pretty hot finish. Ikeshita took over right from the start and she looked like an absolute monster as per usual. Just scraping faces on mats. That sort of thing. Most of the first heat was on Yokota and Martin was able to give fairly well (though Ikeshita did most of the work). When it was time for the first comeback (Yokota pulling Ikeshita off the top as she was going for her seated senton) Martin didn’t take as well as I’d hope. Some of it was struggle and not going along with things but some of it seemed like she wasn’t exactly sure how to take something.

Second heat was because Ikeshita started to use the top of a microphone as a weapon and she escalated on to chairs. Again, they didn’t need a heel ref to make all of this work. It was just the usual chaos with a little help from the outside. Comeback here was good visually as Yokota came out of nowhere to make it happen. Ikeshita grabbed someone’s handbag as they were brawling down the aisle and used it as a weapon which I’m not sure I’d ever seen before. Then she used that advantage to get back in the ring and win the match. It was only one fall and was a little tighter overall than what we’ve been seeing

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

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

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

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

Pretty inconsequential match, but fun for what it was.

**

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Martin!

54. 1979.09.21 - 01 Judy Martin vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: I didn’t think much of this one. There was a lot of interference from the Americans patrolling the ringside area; my main thought about it was how much it seemed to disrupt the flow of the match and every time Tomi got back in the ring it felt like a reset. I’m not sure what the difference is because Black Pair of course do interference in their matches but it usually works a lot better than this, like it’s just part of the greater package whereas here it’s more of an irritating intrusion.

When Judy and Tomi are just in the ring the work is fine but nothing really of interest. Judy dominates the vast majority of the match, which I don’t think is ideal, and Tomi just gets one big comeback with her top rope boomerang and a giant swing into the big splash and that’s the end of that.

*1/4

MD: Judy Martin is a favorite and it was great to see her here so maybe I’m biased towards this one. She’s sort of the best possible manifestation of Moolah-ism, that style known for hair throws and clubbering and slams, just an excellent base to give structure and form to all the fireworks around her. I was wondering how fully formed she’d be here (maye three years in they said, and age 20), but nope. She drives Tomi right into the corner with nasty shots to start. This is Judy Martin, fully formed already basically.

This was the first match of the long awaited Japan vs US series and it functioned almost like a lumberjack match with both teams on the outside. Martin would control and toss Tomi to the floor where she’d get beaten on for a bit before her team broke things up and she fought her way back in. Just solid, well-formed stuff overall. Great finishing bit where she Tomi hit her comebacker body press off the ropes (very nice camera angle on it) but just for a 1. It served as the last transition though as she mowed through Martin and flung her about in a fantastic screaming giant swing for the win.

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