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: Mimi! Kai!

Disc 2 

12. Leilani Kai vs. Mimi Hagiwara (All Pacific Title) 8/25/81

K: I'd say Mimi Hagiwara is the earliest Joshi wrestler who was obviously pushed for being conventionally attractive to male fans. Her gimmick was that she an 'idol wrestler', but I'd argue she is not truly a precursor of Idol Wrestling (capitalisation deliberate) as we know it today. It was a gimmick, something to make her stand out. She wasn't working in a company full of idols, she still had to operate under pro-wrestling logic. Especially now that she's being pushed as the company's #2 babyface.

My first thought on the opening is how it's laid out to make Mimi look strong and should be taken seriously. Leilani makes the first attack, but Mimi just starts throwing strikes back in retaliation and doesn't even seem phased by the attempted ambush. She doesn't just win the striking battle though, but she gets to throw in a few impressive take downs as well like her flying headscissors, and counter-wrestles Kai to beat her on the mat. Watching this in kayfabe, you'd have to reach the conclusion that anyone dismissing Mimi's wrestling ability is a fool, but even outside of kayfabe, she hits all of this with pretty good execution. She's not Jaguar Yokota but it's all good enough for me to buy into it.

Kai's comeback is that move where she just throws her opponent chest first into the top rope. I've never liked that move and it's a weak transition here and didn't play off well everything that'd happened before (i.e. Mimi steamrolling her). It barely goes anywhere though, as Mimi's back on offense soon enough, this time looking even more dominant taking things to the outside and throwing Kai into the chairs. And when Kai gets in the ring, Mimi pulls out her boxing skills and pummels her with a flurry of body-shots which I thought Kai sold very well. She looked like the air had been punched out of her.

The finish is a double countout after Mimi apparently got so carried away beating up Leilani on the outside that she forgot about the 20 count. I don't know how else to read it as Kai was hardly stopping her from getting back in the ring. I guess there was a bit of politics involved, even if it is a bit funny to me that it was ok for Kai to look totally dominated by a skinny pretty girl so long as she didn't take a pin. 

***

MD: Well, this was a match. Mimi took about 80% of it over 14 minutes or so, maybe even more. They slugged it out to start and Mimi took over with a great headstand ‘rana/flying headscissors takeover combo and she really never looked back. There were two bits of Kai coming back and she looked pretty credible when she did, but this was not shine/heat/comeback. It was a mauling. First time she missed a splash after maybe two or three chained moves and the second she missed a top rope splash after a (nice) suplex and body slam.

Meanwhile, Hagiwara was a force, inside the ring, outside the ring. Her offense started to loop a bit because she could only do so much to Kai. She hit a bunch of neckbreakers, a couple of suplexes, had an octopus hold, some pinning combos, and so on. Jackie was on commentary and I wouldn’t say Haigwara looked like an ace here, but when she was tossing Kai around the outside without any real opposition she looked like a force. Finish had them roll out on the figure-four and brawl with Mimi just missing the count back in to make this a face-saving draw for Kai. Kind of a weird one, honestly.

13. Mimi Hagiwara Sings Stand Up 1/4/82

K: I’m not going to review the singing performance ha. There is an old DVDVR thread discussing a potential 80s Joshi set where someone comments that each disc must have a song, and they’re right. You’re missing too big an element of the promotion without them. If you watch the original TVs (which were 1 hour or 30 minutes) almost every episode has a song on it. So they actually take up a much smaller proportion of screen-time on the set.

MD: And just like that, we’re in 1982. And Mimi Hagiwara is commanding the room, or the ring, singing Stand Up. I’ve seen Jackie and others sing as part of this and you don’t get quite as much of their in-ring personalities, but I think you do get that more with Hagiwara, but I am not going to go much deeper than that here, sorry.

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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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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Grable! Kai! Kumano! Lucy! Rimi! Victoria!

68. 1979.10.17 - 03 Joyce Grable, Leilani Kai & Mami Kumano vs. Lucy Kayama, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi (2/3 Falls, first part of match corrupted)

K: There's a chunk of this match missing as the tape got screwed up and when the picture comes back we're in the middle of a heated 1st fall. Shame because this looks like the best match we've seen in a while. The heels have Lucy Kayama isolated in their corner and take turns to take her apart before getting the win. We don't really see any of the other babyfaces really do anything before they drop the fall but Lucy looked good taking the beating. 

The 2nd fall starts with Lucy back in the ring again squaring off with Mami Kumano, and before long she's stuck in that corner again. It's probably just a result of much of the 1st fall being missing but it's kinda funny that more than half of the run time of this 2/3 falls trios match we have consists of 1 person being tripled teamed and their partners being powerless to  do anything about it. Victoria Fujimi does run in a couple of times when Mami Kumano started to fight a bit dirty but she's only able to disrupt a pinfall or two before the ref throws her out. And that's for the best as it's Lucy who manages to get the comeback together by herself, including a sick release Tiger Driver. It's a shame the hot tag itself wasn't really built to, in fact it happens off screen as within seconds of that Tiger Driver Fujimi is now in the ring apparently legal. Still the comeback was satisfying and Lucy even got the pin with her special splash. This has been quite exciting and lively (the crowd are pretty good too).

The heels are feeling rattled as now Mami Kumano has brought out THE TOWEL. She tries to jump the babyfaces with it but it BACKFIRES BIG TIME with Rimi Yokota stealing it off her and using it on the heels herself, making them look very foolish. Another cool moment was Kayama doing a kind of Rainmaker Elbow move where she pulls her opponent into her but it's an elbow to the face rather than a lariat. Lost Move Alert. She's really having a good performance today. The one drawback is the finish was a bit out of nowhere. That's not necessarily a bad thing in match as fast-paced as this but it felt like it could have done with a few more minutes.

***

MD: We come in JIP (due to a corrupted tape) midway through the first fall. The heel ref has his head bandaged, which is pretty funny. I sort of miss the introductions since we’re so used to getting them. How cool did Kumano’s jacket look (she has boots with her name on them). Did Kai do her little spin dance? (She has boots with LK on them). Lucy is in all white. Important stuff here. 

First fall has Lucy getting a tag but then cut off by Mami and a rope to choke her with. Her shots both coming in and then firing back on Kai look pretty damn good though. Kai and Grable are able to double team her (missile dropkick from Grable as Kai holds her and then a double slam) to end the fall. Second had a spirited comeback after a missed top rope splash (this was weird as Kumano was in the ring and distracted checking on her partner who missed it and that’s how Lucy fought back. Wasn’t as clean as it could have been if she wasn’t legal). Some big offense from the babyfaces including a Lucy Tiger driver and Victoria gourdbusters.

Final fall was chaotic. Kumano came in with a towel but Yokota got it and started choking. Obviously the heel ref got involved and again later when he prevented a legal tag from taking place. There were some big bombs and Kumano had this neat body scissors pin that she did. The heels took it with Grable’s over the shoulder backbreaker in the end. I assume this was a way to save face with Sato about to win the $30,000 in the main event.

ER: The main story of this, for me, was how ferocious Mami Kumano was. I love the heel team, Grable and Kai as the two larger Americans flanking Mami, and I thought the Americans were good here, especially Grable. But Grable and Kai worked as more overpowering heels, and I was drawn to Mami's wild animal heeling. She goes after Lucy Kayama in the footage of this we have (who knows what the dynamics were in the opening we didn't see) and it's all aggressive asshole stuff, treating Lucy with real disdain. She had this release swinging neckbreaker that she used to fling Lucy toward their corner, and I'm not sure I've seen that before. The 2nd fall started with Mami keeping the bandaged ref in between she and Lucy until the right moment, then grabbing hair and quick punching her in the back of the head as she's throwing her to the ground. There were six people here and Mami was the only one grabbing hair for real. Everyone else was working strikes, not blowing each other up on body shots, not playing dirty, but Mami is in there pulling hair as hard as possible, which only made her hair based throws and set ups look better. She was working on a whole different level from the others, even breaking out a slick scissored takedown of Victoria that looked more innovative than anything else in the match. She was also great at getting her ass kicked when Lucy finally tagged out, flying up for Victoria's big release front suplexes and going up for Yokota's backdrop and pancake. Everyone here brought something, but I kept waiting to see what antics Mami Kumano was going to get up to next. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Nancy! Kai!

64. 1979.10.XX - 03 Leilani Kai vs. Nancy Kumi (Either late September or before October 17)

K: One of Fuji TV’s tricks was to edit matches down for length, but rather than just cut the footage up, they’d shift the commentary audio so that the announcer would be in the middle of a sentence when the video actually skipped minutes ahead so it was even less noticeable that there was cutting. I say that because they do a primitive version of that trick here when they skip ahead in the match opening ceremony.

This was better than I thought it’d be. Kai starts off by attacking Nancy with a bouquet of flowers, forcing her to flee the ring. I’m not convinced that hitting someone with flowers is all that threatening, although the image was funny. There is a decent amount of effort put into this and I thought Nancy sold well when she was slowly trying to create space to weather the tide, I’ve not been impressed with her in general. She also looked good losing her temper when they started fighting on the outside, choking Kai in a justified babyface reprisal.

Moolah got involved again. I know that she’s going to wrestle Nancy Kumi soon enough so I guess this match was partially an angle in setting that up, as they don’t resolve anything between Kumi and Kai with this one. It ends in double countout and both wrestlers seem to claim victory.

**1/4

MD: This would have been a pretty good match in Kansas City or Albuquerque? I thought Kai had a lot of star power, a lot of flair. For instance she had great fun rampaging with flowers before the match. She just didn’t have quite enough of it. She’d do the heel handshake with her other behind her back but not really pay it off. She’d make a shocked noise when Kumi was winning a test of strength but it didn’t really go anywhere. If she was going to lean into it, she should really lean into it, and she would later in her career, but not quite yet. Otherwise she took a lot of this and when they were going it wasn’t always perfectly timed. At one point Kumi had to basically deadlift slam her because of a time miscue. Lots of choking and kicking and stomping and Moolah interfering and a bit of heel reffing. Kumi was much better at asserting herself than she had been a year earlier and they had some nice missed splashes, including one off the top, but it definitely didn’t hold up to Black Pair matches or what have you. Match got thrown away as they were outside for too long even though Kumi probably got in early enough. She went after the ref in response. Floor wasn’t too bad here but it was a low, low ceiling.
 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Kai! Ikeshita! Nancy! Victoria!

61. 1979.09.2X2 - 04 Leilani Kai & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: This has a heated energy to it that’s been missing in the earlier matches on the show. Things explode almost from the off when things go to the outside and Golden Pair get the better of the heels on the outside with some classic throwing wrestlers into chairs action. When things get back in the ring Leilani Kai behaves like she’s completely insane while choking Fukimi. Shaking her head and and screaming her head off loudly even by AJW standards.

It’s been a long time since I said this, but I thought Nancy Kumi really showed out here. Not that she was even necessarily the standout of the match (I thought all 4 put in good performances really) but she really got the crowd behind her both with her selling and the fiestiness she put into her offense when she managed to get some hits in. It felt that she was lashing out in anger at the dirty tactics she’d been subjected to and the crowd seemed to feel it and get excited for her. So it annoyed me more when she got submitted by Leilani to end the 1st fall, who then did this smarmy little celebration dance. The little shit. She gets pinned by Fujimi to finish the 2nd fall and pulls an even more deranged face at her afterwards.

I haven’t been keeping count so this is just based on memory, but I feel like Black Pair (or 1 Black Pair & Foreigner) ⅔ falls matches go one of two ways based on who takes the 1st fall. If the babyfaces take it, the heels go really wild and over the top with brawling on the outside, interference and weapons to try to get things into their kind of match. If the heels take the 1st fall, we have a slower, more calculated grinding down of their opponents with stuff like the Hide The Weapon special. This is what we got here, and the exciting brawling comes a bit later in this version as it’s the babyfaces who need to bring it when they get their comeback in, and any ‘unsporting’ moves from them at this point are justified retaliation.

The 3rd fall holds this back from being a great match. It wasn’t bad or anything but it felt like a bunch of stuff they’d established and built well in the 1st and 2nd didn’t get paid off. The heel team just smothered the babyfaces for several minutes until they got the win and it felt a bit deflating. Fujimi did get a bit of an exciting comeback at one hitting spin kicks but it was very short, if she had a minute or so on offense and looking like she might get the win to build to a climax I think this would have been a lot better.

***½

Oh and the music video at the end haha. Well they were trying to get Jackie Sato over as a solo pop star after Beauty Pair ended, but it comes across a bit like a personality cult. It didn’t really work, well she was super over with the live crowds, but they were getting smaller and she was never anywhere near as a big a star on her own as Beauty Pair were as an act. Think of it as a precursor to the more successful Chigusa Nagayo personality cult.


MD: This was a very good tag that was marred by the heel ref stuff and it was unfortunate since it really didn’t need it. You had the Golden Pair reunited (they had fought previously) for the first time in a while and Ikeshita teamed up with a very game Leilani Kai. She was primed and ready right from the bell, living her best life dancing as she was introduced and the two heels never looked back. I probably don’t give Ikeshita quite enough credit relative to Kumano because she lasts longer and is better known and doesn’t get the same sort of credit that I want to give Kumano, but she really is just as good. She can go from rubbing a face into the mat to stepping on a heel on the outside while her partner is choking to taking these huge flapjack bumps over and over or hitting a killer missile dropkick or a nasty side suplex or her rana off the ropes. Or maul someone with a chair. She could really do it all.

First fall here had a nice burst against Kai to start by the Pair but they got swept under pretty quickly. Hope spots, as they were, ended up disrupted by the ref. Just the usual Black Pair mauling with Kai adding a bit of effective Moolah-ism to the mix. Second fall had the a ton of hide the object, which was vicious and fairly entertaining though having a heel ref made it seem just a little silly maybe; he was letting them get away with murder even if they were doing a pretty good job at hiding the evidence. It did make one of Kumi’s big comebacks seem all the more impressive since the odds were so against them, but then they just got swept under again so maybe the pacing was a little off? The finish of the fall was spectacular though as Kumi slammed Kai and Fujimi came flying in off the screen to press up off of the turnbuckle to hit a splash. Just a wild move. It was all for naught though for in the third fall they got swept back under and despite Fujimi putting on a couple of submissions, Kumano burst out of nowhere at the last second to interfere so that they couldn’t break up a pin. Again, this was good but it didn’t need the heel ref stuff. They could have cheated more legitimately (I know that sounds funny but it’s wrestling) and things would have been all the better for it. Kai fit in well though and this is probably the best I’ve ever seen the Golden Pair look. I’ll let Kadaveri cover the music video that followed this if so inclined.

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