70s Joshi on Wednesday: Komone! Kazuko!

52. 1979.09.1X - 01 Hiroko Komine vs. Kazuko Iwai

K: This is a rookie undercard match and I’ve seen enough AJW to know this is going to be a very basic match that exists more to help the wrestlers develop their fundamentals/get reps than to be all that entertaining. Still, this is better than most matches of this type. They both look pretty competent at this match type, Iwai is actually pretty good for her experience level and it feels like the company is giving her a bit of a push by giving her her 3rd televised singles match within six weeks of debuting (and that’s with the footage gaps).

There’s a section a few minutes where Iwai has Komine in an Indian Deathlock, she’s able to hold it in for quite a while and keeps a bit of movement by slamming herself against the mat when Komine tries to wriggle out. Eventually Komine reverses it into a headlock before going mean heel offense. I thought they worked that whole section pretty well, the submission looked pretty tight and believable. Afterwards we get a very strange move where Komine has Iwai on the ground and puts her leg inside and around like she’s going for a sharpshooter, but then she leans forward and grabs Iwai by the head, and does a forward roll into a kind of monkey flip style move. I probably haven’t described it well but see for yourself/I should probably gif it. They’re getting creative already anyway. One of the reasons I’m still so interested in Joshi is how even in nothing matches like this there’s still a good chance you’ll see a bizarre move you’ve never seen anywhere else.

They built to a pretty good finishing stretch where things got more fast-paced, even if they didn’t do anything but dropkicks (which were used as a high spot), crossbodies and pin attempts. Iwai was a little too keen to rush to the next spot after one of her kickouts at 2, but that’s nitpicky. Komine won but protected Iwai a little bit in that she had to pull out a backslide pin to get the win. Solid rookie match this.

**

MD: This is probably the least consequential match we’ve seen? Neither of these two will be in the footage for 79 after that. Komine would not be long for the wrestling world. If you look up Iwai, the results you get are this project basically. But you watch this next to the matches we’ve seen with Masami and Yokota and there’s no reason that either of these two couldn’t have stuck with it and been a star in the 80s. Iwai had fire from underneath, throwing dropkicks and what have you. She looked good early with an inverted deathlock. Komine had a lot of good stuff, whether it just be slamming Iwai’s neck off the ropes or the roll-forward toehold slams she was doing or her twisting body presses. There was a level of basic competence that was expected by almost anyone on TV in the promotion. Komine leaned on Iwai meanly. Iwai fought back hard. This just wasn’t the reality where they made it.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Hori! Iwai!

 46. 1979.08.XX3 - 01 Ayumi Hori vs. Kazuko Iwai

K: Iwai just debuted on 7/31, Hori is only a little more experienced but she’s also much bigger so gets to look stronger on offense even if this never looked like turning into a squash. They’re both rookies so their offense is very basic and consists of a lot of repeated moves.

I noticed Iwai’s stance right at the start seemed very reminiscent of Jackie Sato’s fighting stance. She looks ok in this. The match has a pretty low ceiling because of the limitations of the wrestlers and the restrictions they’re working within, but everything she did looked pretty decently executed. There is a pretty nifty move where she looks like she’s going for a snapmare, but actually jumps really high in the air with her feet sticking up, and on the way down uses that extra momentum to actually execute a kind of flying snapmare.

Hori takes over by countering a bodyscissors by standing up, pulling Iwai up with her and splatting her on the mat. It’s a transition I recall seeing multiple times now. Her turn on offense isn’t as interesting as Iwai’s. She’s treated as a powerhouse juggernaut but I don’t think there’s ever really enough force in her moves to really convey that, and I know the idea is she’s going on a rampage, but since she doesn’t pull that vibe off it just comes across as unfocused. This does play into the finish though, where she misses and running splash which allows Iwai to get back into it and sneak the win. Not a bad showing, but I thought Iwai clearly looked the better of the two at this point.

*3/4

MD: Some specific moments I liked a lot here. Early on Iwai had to really heft up to get Hori at all. Hori was so big that it didn’t make sense to do snap mares but instead to have the same bodily effect with a headlock. Iwai on the other hand had to fly up high for flying headlock takeovers. On the third, she fell down on her for a pin which was an interesting sort of thing I’ve never seen before. Some of it seemed a little too cooperative overall, but it did lead to a very nice bodyscissors big where Hori had to get out with that great headlift drop you’ll see sometimes. A lot of the rest of the match was just Hori crashing into Iwai until Iwai was able to get a small package out of nowhere. They both had promise in their own way but at this stage in their journey they probably needed to be against other people to shine.

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