80s Joshi on Wednesday: Nagayo! Lioness!

Volume 4  

6. Mimi Hagiwara Sings "Sexy in The Night" - 1/4/83

K: It’s January 4th, and you know what that means! Well, if you don’t, it means it’s the first show of the New Year. AJW would run Korakuen Hall every year (usually the 4th, sometimes 3rd or 5th) with some big matches to start the year strong.

There’s an interesting section in the intro where Announcer Shiono advertises wrestler try-outs. There’s a graphic on screen detailing where to send your resume to, noting that applicants must be aged 15-18 and be at least 165cm tall. It might not seem that odd now, but in 1983 wrestling was still a mostly closed business. Most people got in because they already knew someone in the business. It’s pretty rare that random fans just turned up saying ‘hey I wanna be a wrestler’ and got trained if they passed an audition, but that was the norm in AJW.

MD: They’re playing this up as a “singing duel” between Mimi and Devil, as Devil has a new song too, and I wonder if this aspect isn’t a little lost even in the set. I do get the idol culture and we’ve seen elements of this throughout but I wish I could get into a fan’s head and figure out how all this all synced together. Was it like watching an episode of JEM and the Holograms from the 80s but with fight scenes? Were they wrestlers who happened to sing or singers who happened to wrestle? Did they have a rich, full life in the minds of the fans where they were just competing at everything? Were they having craft fairs and baking contests and boat races and prank competitions on the side and people only happened to see the wrestling and the singing? How did all of this make sense to people? As an aside, this show also had Nancy Kumi’s retirement match so another stalwart is gone. 

7. Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka (AJW Title) - 1/4/83

K: If you watch this in vacuum it might not feel particularly noteworthy, but this is a famous match that apparently changed wrestling history. It’s the first match featuring the future Crush Gals to be featured in the semi-fictionalised ‘Queen of Villains’ Netflix show, which obviously used the real match as a template. 

The non-kayfabe story going into this is Chigusa felt her wrestling career was going nowhere and had told other wrestlers backstage that she was going to quit after this match. Her performance displayed all the reckless abandon of someone not concerned about damaging her body too much to perform adequately the next day. Maybe a bit of her frustration can be felt in the force she puts behind her spinning kicks. The way she wrestled that day backfired on her ‘retirement’ plans however, as when she went to Kunimatsu Matsumoto’s office to tell him she was quitting, before she got round to that he showered her with praise for her performance and told her she should try and wrestle like that permanently. Somewhere in that conversation Chigusa changed her mind and didn’t mention that she wanted to quit. Turns out her wrestling career was going somewhere after all.

It’s hard for me to review this without seeing everything through those lens. Still, I think without knowing all that, I’d still think this was the best singles match in either woman’s career to date. Right after the announcer lists all the matches Chigusa recently lost, she shows her new angry jealous heel attitude by trying to storm Asuka before the belt and snatch the belt off her. That she fails to get it actually works, because she’s just not good enough to beat Asuka at anything, it’s that feeling of failure which is driving her emotions.

The opening strike exchange salvo is really good. Asuka throws harder and appears to be winning already after a couple of hands get thrown. Rather than no-sell/try to look tough, or just backing down, instead Chigusa covers up and tries to go for some kind of takedown. It looks both like she can’t handle Asuka’s strikes but also that she’s going for a counter.

After a hot start, they never really relent. There’s slower sections of course, we get the customary legwork section, but there’s such energy and aggression behind it from both women that it doesn’t feel like a cooldown at all. They just keep on fighting, that Asuka looks like she’s going to win for almost the whole match doesn’t stop them from behaving like things are neck and neck. Their pin attempts are very tight and we get a AJW-special kickout before even a count of 1. Get those shoulders off the mat! Now! Don’t wait till 2…

They’re relatively limited in moveset here but that doesn’t stop them from pulling off a memorable finish. Asuka gets Chigusa up for a backdrop, but this time drops her right on her head. She follows up with a Samoan Drop like move to get the win and retain the belt.

***1/2

MD: Bit of a weird one. Kadaveri explained to me that Chigusa had gotten frustrated at a losing streak and went heel, but this was not in the least a showcase for her, except for maybe her selling (more on that in a second). Asuka came in with the belt and the intensity early for the pre-Crush Gals pre-exploding was great. They just really swung at each other to start, a chaotic feel. I did get the sense that Asuka was the aggressor. It made sense that Asuka got the early advantage and she had a lot of “stuff” here, including a nice torture rack drop and this great over the shoulder arm submission where she spun around with it. 

Chigusa took over with an absolutely brutal bridging toehold, and truly that was just about her only real offense in the match, that and the subsequent beating on the leg. Asuka came back with a figure-four. That revealed Chigusa’s super power. She was the one-eyed woman in the land of the blind when it came to extended selling. It wasn’t even THAT extended but she sold the leg as she came back just a little (having dodged a move). It wasn’t much but it was appreciated in a sea of everyone just dropping lengthy limbwork to move on to the next thing.

Finish had Asuka hit another torture rack slam and a giant swing en route to pressing the arms despite Chigusa’s best efforts. I didn’t have any real sense that the fans wanted to boo her here, but this was spirited at time. I just thought Chigusa should have taken a lot more of it.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Lioness! Mimi! Yukari! Masami! Matsumoto! Ripper!

Volume 3 

9. Devil Masami, Kaoru Matsumoto & Monster Ripper vs. Lioness Asuka, Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori 3/30/82

K: This is the main event of the go home show before the big Monster Ripper vs. Jaguar Yokota WWWA Singles Title match. This made the set mainly for that reason, but it's also nice that it's a good match with Lioness Asuka and Kaoru Matsumoto in, thus fulfilling my rule that there been at least one match from them in 1982 so viewers can track their development.

I wouldn't say the first fall was all Monster, but it almost was. While the other pairings had some back and forth, whenever Monster Ripper was in the ring she was just demolishing everyone and never looked to be in any real danger. This starts right from the beginning when the heels get trapped in the corner and hit with a sequence of running splashes, but when Omori jumps at Monster she just bounces off her like Monster's made of steel. The closest thing we get to Monster looking like she's in trouble - and even then, not really - is one point where she goes for the flying hip attack twice, but Lioness Asuka rolls underneath her the second time so she crashes and lands. I'll also note that whenever anyone gets Monster into a pinning predicament, she immediately just kicks out before the referee can even begin a count.

Kaoru Matsumoto has a decent showing here for the little that's expecting of her. She doesn't have much in the way of offense, but I thought she threw a pretty mean lariat at Asuka early on. And something about the way she walks around the ring just feels like an arrogant strut, and it's not even clear that she's doing a strut.

Mimi Hagiwara was easily the best on her team, no surprise there really. Her and Devil Masami keep up their good chemistry. I think Devil might actually be physically stronger than Monster despite not being as big, Monster at least looked like she had a bit of a struggle lifting Mimi over her head, but for Devil she just goes straight up into the military press like she's picking up a co-operative 6 year old. I have enough recent experience to know the "co-operative" qualifier was very important there. Mimi also does a funny little butterfly suplex move, or at least that's what I'd call it from the set up, but Mimi doesn't go over with Devil for it, she just drops her straight on the mat. Looked painful actually.

Matsumoto gets the most focus in the 2nd fall, kinda makes sense since if they're going to level things up she's the obvious heel to take the pin, so might as well give her some ring time. She gets a bit of work to do with everyone, but we get an AJW 'flew too close to the Sun' finish pretty quickly where she's trapped near the babyface corner, gets hit with move after move until Omori gets the pin as Mimi and Asuka mark the heel corner to prevent a break-up. I like how they incorporate teamwork into tag matches like you probably would do if this were a real sport. Omori gets the win on Matsumoto, starting the most heated feud in AJW history :)

The 3rd fall is just the heels getting revenge for losing the previous fall. Monster Ripper looks especially awesome going on a rampage including having a chair wrapping around Asuka's neck and swinging her around the outside and onto chairs, before Matsumoto gets her on top of the announce table to pose looking all proud of herself. Bit of stolen valour in there. Omori is the victim here and gets taken out. Heels stand tall.

This would have been a better match if the 3rd fall had more to it than just the babyfaces getting demolished. Might have undermined the wider purpose of the match, but I'd say pulling that off while milking a bit more drama out of it would have been the bigger challenge, and more impressive to pull off. But for what it was, this was good stuff.

***¼

MD: I thought Matsumoto was on her way here, even if she was on her way to a different place where she’d eventually get up. She was very good at asserting herself and using her size. Sometimes it was a little rough around the edges but she was additive to the super powered heel team that was Masami and Ripper. Those two were in matching black and despite the size difference, there were times where for a split second, I thought Ripper WAS Masami, solely because she was doing something so vicious and cruel. There was a point where she wrapped a chair around her opponent’s neck and dragged her around ringside and it’s exactly the sort of thing Devil would do.

I honestly think she had not just improved tenfold since her run a couple of years earlier but was actively great at times. Once Mimi hit her cross chop and Ripper didn’t just no sell it, but she dusted herself off like she was Samoa Joe or something. Coolest person in the room. The match started with everyone charging at all three heels pressed into the corner and it worked right until Ripper simply stepped forward and made it work no longer. And she had all of the huge offense like the press slam backbreaker. Devil contributed more than enough too of course.

Mimi continued to stand out on the babyface side. She was not quite an ace but she was very good at this point. I’m going to have to see more out of Asuka especially but I know that’s coming. This was a means to an end to heat up Ripper even more and it certainly achieved that goal even if that came at a slight cost.
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Chigusa! Nancy! Jumbo! Lioness!

Volume 3

1. Chigusa Nagayo & Nancy Kumi vs. Jumbo Hori & Lioness Asuka 1/26/82 

K: It’s a bit flukey that there ended up being ended up being three matches from this show on the set. The reasons for including the next two matches we’re covering should be clear from watching them. This one was a late inclusion though, it’s relatively run of the mill match. It’s mainly here so we can get another look at Nancy Kumi (who will be retiring soon), and so we can track the development of Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, who otherwise would have only had 1 appearance each in 1982.

I hadn’t really noticed this move until Matt pointed it out previously, but in the first minute we see Nancy’s Kumi fake-out crossbody move, but this time instead of a suplex she turns in the momentum into a bodyslam. It’s good that she’s got something unique to her now, on the whole she’s not a very memorable wrestler.

You really see Chigusa’s enthusiasm and drive on display here. As soon as she tags in for the first time she’s shouting at her opponent and makes the crowd laugh, which probably wasn’t the intention, she’s just so hyped up! Especially when she’s predictably going to get beaten up. Chigusa debuted in 1980, so she’s in the same class as Lioness Asuka, but she’s pushed like she’s class of 1981. The reason for this is Chigusa barely wrestled in 1980-81. The class of 1979 was a disaster, only three wrestlers debuted, and all of them quit within a year. This is why the class of 1980 was especially big, they essentially had to produce two years worth of wrestlers, but it also meant there wasn’t room for the under-performing members of the class (which Chigusa definitely was initially) to wrestle often. 

Chigusa actually hits a pretty good top rope elbow drop when she tags in the second time, and follows this up with even more excitable shouting. Not to be outdone, Lioness Asuka goes for a sunset flip cover from the corner and still manages to apply it despite landing on her head! I like watching this as these two competing with each other to showcase themselves. I find them more interesting than the two veterans here, who aren’t treating this like an important match (to be fair it isn’t). Asuka later hits a really good backbreaker, the move, it’s a bit confusing because the commentary calls that and the ‘Canadian backbreaker’ submission as a ‘backbreaker’ and Asuka did one after the other.

Jumbo Hori tags in, and Chigusa does one of the funniest botches I’ve ever seen. Hori appears to be going for a sidewalk slam, but Chigusa jumps over he and just bizarrely does a sidewards roll over her back and falls onto the mat while shouting. I can’t figure out what she was even going for but her ambition was endearing. Jumbo just stomps on her. Chigusa soon gets herself back together and does her biggest showcase yet with a series of karate kicks on both her opponents in a fighting hot tag to Nancy. The crowd actually audibly gets behind her for this. The next audible reaction from the crowd is when Jumbo Hori gets in and flattens Chigusa with two big hard powerbombs to wrap this up.

This isn’t a particularly good match. I think seeing stuff like this will enhance your appreciation for good matches to follow though.

**1/4

MD: On to Disc 3 and a little deeper into 1982. This disc will take us halfway through the year or so. By April we’ll get our first look at Kaoru Matsumoto, but for now Jumbo Hori is Jumbo Hori and Lioness Asuka is Lioness Asuka and here they are up against Chigusa and Nancy and the Crush Gals are pre-exploding. 

This was all action in somewhat less than fifteen minutes. You can tell Kumi from Nagayo because Nagayo has a kneebrace. Obviously Jumbo is bigger so that’s not so hard. I’d say that Hori had more come into her own and was working to her size here. She threw around her opponents more and did the drop down body scissors for instance, and she certainly asserted herself at the end with a couple of power bombs to win it. Nagayo felt plucky and persistent, just constantly coming at you. Towards the end she unloaded on a bunch of wild spinning kicks. I had less of a sense of Asuka though she chained together some back based offense towards the end and was able to dump Kumi with an atomic drop over the top rope to set up the finish. 

In general I guess that Hori and Asuka controlled a little more, mainly due to Hori’s size, but it was still back and forth. Kumi got in all of her stuff for instance, though more towards the end. I think I was feeling the lack of contrast overall in this one, though the energy was good; when Nayago was facing Asuka, it was a little rough around the edges but the spirit carried it through.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Masami! Tomoko!

Disc 2  

8. Devil Masami vs. Tomoko Kitamura (AJW Title Decision Match) 5/9/81

K: Tomoko Kitamura, in case you didn’t know, would later adopt the ringname Lioness Asuka. That her name is actually Tomoko is never really hidden from fans from what I can tell. In later years you can clearly hear wrestlers calling her by this name in on-set skits and stuff that aired on AJW TV regularly. 

As mentioned in a previous write-up, Kitamura is (still) the AJW Junior Champion, which she won in a decision match after Rimi Yokota vacated the belt. This match is for the AJW Title, which is the next belt up in the company’s hierarchy (which around this point, becomes well-defined) and, believe it or not, was also recently vacated by Rimi Yokota. It shows you how rapidly Yokota was pushed, and that it probably wasn’t all a long-term plan, that in the space of a few months she’s had to vacate lower-card belts she held because she’d become too strongly pushed to lose to anyone else who would be competing for them.

This is also - as far as I’m aware - Devil Masami’s first challenge for a singles belt that wasn’t the Junior’s Title. Her gradual improvement has been very noticeable watching all the footage, even athletically, she feels a bit more flexible and snappier with her movements than a year ago. But of course with Masami, her strongest attribute is how brilliantly expressive she is. You don’t need to understand a word of Japanese to just pay attention to Masami’s facial expressions and be engaged with what’s happening in the ring. As well as showing pain, she just looks sad when Tomoko’s got her in a hold she’s struggling to get out of. You see the fears moving in her brain when she stops to thinking of a new way to get herself out of this predicament after her previous idea didn’t work. She’ll look proper chuffed when one of her moves pays off, and she’s able to exact a bit of vindictive retaliation. Another nice touch is how she’ll make a brief pause, shout something, because hitting a move, like she’s signalling to he crowd to pay attention to what I’m about to do because it’s going to be something important in the match, without being so obvious about it that it suspension of disbelief gets killed. And she achieves all this without it ever getting too hammy, it’s the kind of thing I think Edge often tried to pull off, but he’d usually overdo it and just come across goofy. Even in this match, when she’s not fully put it together yet, and there’s a purposeless limitation on how great the match can be because of their position on the card and that’s how AJW did things, Masami looks like a special talent. She’s just so watchable. 

It may feel like I’m being harsh on Tomoko by having less to say about her, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. She has a good performance here, even if she feels like she’s being carried in terms of who is driving the match narrative. But she hits all her spots well, her dropkicks are impressive and you can hear she’s getting the crowd behind her in her big comeback segment. She’s definitely more over than Chigusa is at this point if you compare crowd reactions in their matches against Masami. The famous clapping and screaming young female fans of this era usually aren’t that hot for anyone not the Beauty Pair, but they get pretty loud of Kitamura here, and a few of them look physically distraught when she loses in a questionable three count. I’ll note that the main event of this show (not on the set) was Rimi Yokota defending the WWWA Singles Title against Peggy Lee, and the crowd didn’t feel like they were getting behind Yokota as much as they were for Kitamura by the final minutes of this.

I’m probably going to be higher on this than most people. There weren’t many standout moments and it’s all quite basic wrestling, something about this style when done right just connects with me. There’s a gritty determination to win coming from both wrestlers in their battles on the match and over the shoulders with the various pin attempts, even if she’s a villain I still feel “oh that title means something” when Masami looks all emotional upon winning it. The selling was a bit better than normal, it’s mostly in the moment selling, but when nobody’s doing things like spending several minutes attacking a specific body part, there’s no need for anything more than that. 

The other bit of context for this is that Jackie Sato and Yumi Ikeshita are now both effectively retired. Jackie’s retirement ceremony will be a couple of weeks after this. So this match can also be read as an audition for moving up the card, someone has to fill those top babyface/heel spots, and the wrestler who moves up to fill them then has to have their previous spot filled by someone below them. It’s all quite interesting.

***1/4

MD: As best as I can tell this was the end of a Grand Prix for a chance to face Rimi, but I’m sure we’ll have more on this up above (and we did. It was for a secondary title I never heard of, unless it was the Hawaii/Pacific title's next evolution). Kitamura was the 1980 Rookie of the Year and the current Jr. champion and the future Lioness Asuka. Masami, of course, has a giant butterfly on her white gear despite being a Black Devil. 

More on Kitamura in a moment, but I find Masami fascinating to watch already. I mentioned previously how Hagiwara, a former actress, was incredible emotive in her selling. She was, but I’d say that she was conventionally emotive. Very good in all the ways one would look for and expect. Masami is emotive as well, but in unconventional ways. Her performances reach out and grasp you; they surprise you and draw you in. I had expected that when she was on offense, because she’s known for projecting a sort of malevolent glee; I’d go a step further and say that it’s almost languid at times, casual, as if she’s having a special conversation with the referee as she’s tearing apart her opponent. It’s true when she’s taking offense too though, the way her face seems to contort in both agony and near-disbelief that this is somehow happening to her. 

My big take on our first look at Kitamura was that she was very competent. She wrestled in a straightforward manner with lightning sharp focus. She won the early exchanges. Masami was able to turn things around using the ropes into a rowboat type move, but even then, Kitamura dragged her back to the mat. Mid-match she took over once again, now using dirty tactics, but Kitamura withstood them and was able to bring things back to even. It was only after things took a tumble to the outside and Masami started using foreign objects that she took over for good and was able to quickly drop her and get a, I would say, heavily contested win. It’s one thing to do these shoot pins and have wrestlers force one another’s shoulders to the mat, but we’ve seen a couple of matches now where they clearly were unable to keep them down, or even come close to keeping them down and the count continued anyway. It all feels very weird to me. Overall, this had a different feel to me as Kitamura brought something different to the table, maybe something a bit more straightforward while still being formidable nonetheless. 

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Queen of Villains - Truth & Fiction

by @kadavri on Twitter

I originally wrote this as a Twitter thread after having just finished the Dump Matsumoto ‘Queen of Villains’ Netflix series. The thread got way more interest than I’d expected! So I’ll try to tidy it up for the blog post.

This isn’t me reviewing the show. This is for anyone’s who’s watched it (this article will be full of spoilers!) and wants to see the real-life matches it's based on and understand the real history. The show contains a mix of truth and fiction, though sometimes the real story is even wilder than the fiction! I will go through it episode by episode commenting on how people and events were depicted, noting if it’s true, false, or a bit of both.

EPISODE 1: 

Kaoru Matsumoto's father was a cheating alcoholic who abused his wife and she hated him? TRUE: In Kaoru's own words, she became a wrestler because "I wanted to kill my father."

Kaoru was from a poor family, and she raised money as a child by collecting empty bottles to sell? TRUE. 

Kaoru was a wrestling fan as a child? TRUE. Though from what I've read, she was more a fan of Mach Fumiake (a wrestler mentioned but not depicted in the show) than Jackie Sato.

EPISODE 1 MATCH 1 - Jackie Sato vs. Maki Ueda (Loser Must Retire). This is a real match. You can watch it here! https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bq1a-haKZIc 

The Jackie  vs. Maki match was a 'shoot', i.e. had no predetermined winner? FICTION. Jackie winning was the "script" as Maki was retiring anyway for other reasons. 

Maki was angry at Jackie for having a boyfriend and this led to her quitting AJW? KINDA. It was a lot more than that though. She was also unhappy about her pay, she says she was being paid barely more than the average office worker despite being a national megastar. Another issue was the rough schedule, especially since it prevented her from spending time with her dying mother. Jackie’s relationship also caused problems, she once made a cryptic comment about Jackie not being able to ‘separate romance and work’. I’m also not sure this person was actually a ‘boyfriend’ either, but I won’t go into speculation there.

So this stuff in the Netflix show about some matches having no predetermined winner is just made up? No, that’s TRUE. The show fudged the details, but one of the unique things about AJW is it did a mix of normal 'fake' wrestling matches and "shoot pin rules" contests. The audience weren't explicitly told which was which.

What do you mean "shoot pin rules"? So within an otherwise worked pro-wrestling match, the wrestlers would take turns to try to legitimately pin their opponent. If you held them down for a 3 count you won, if they get up, they get the next turn. The wrestlers weren’t allowed to try to get their shoulders up until their opponent was already covering them, then they had to try and power up. It wasn’t a total shoot as in between they’d still do 'fake' moves like bodyslams to keep things entertaining. But remember, they're following that up by trying to legitimately pin their opponent, which incentivises them to be extra hard about it so their opponent is too tired/hurt to bridge up. This created a tension between the co-operative and competitive components of the matches. 

To see what this looks like, see the first match of this video: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239031 I think these matches work a lot better when you understand what’s actually going on. The younger/less experienced wrestlers regularly had matches with these rules. Higher up the card it was rarity, especially as time went on, the last time a World Title match happened with no predetermined winner was 1983. 

The Twitter user MoskowDiscow also provided some extra details, which I’ll quote here: 

“It was always dodgy to an extent too, as sometimes they'd have a preferred winner in mind and would fast/slow count the wrestlers as needed. Lots of post-match blowups over this during the wrestlers' junior years… You will also often see the person being pinned cheat by raising their shoulders at the last second before the pin begins. This, too, caused its fair share of blowups.”

It took a long time for Kaoru Matsumoto to become a wrestler? TRUE. This is even more true than the show depicts actually. She first tried out for AJW in 1976, after failing her first two tryouts, was accepted in 1979, and debuted in late 1980.

Kaoru Matsumoto & Chigusa Nagayo were best friends in the early days? KINDA. Well, they were friends, but from their interviews I don't think they were ever BEST friends like the show depicts. Kaoru was actually closer with Tomoko/Lioness Asuka than she was Chigusa.

In their rookie days Chigusa & Kaoru once sneaked out of the AJW dojo at night and went to a disco together? TRUE. Here's a translated interview of Dump telling the story:

“The period when Chigusa and I were the subject of senior bullying lasted a long time, and there were many days when matches were not set up. There were a number of times in the series when I was taken off the road and was away at the dojo.

It just so happened that we agreed that we should go to a disco because we had so much time to spare, and we went to a disco in Shibuya. A pair of rednecks from Kumagaya City and Omura City in Nagasaki, Japan. As I recall, I was seduced by the phrase "all-you-can-drink-all-you-can-eat" for 1,000 yen, but there was nothing sexy about it. All women in rubber sandals and jersey. I couldn't enter with sandals, so I bought a pair of 980 yen pumps nearby and managed to get in.

I don't dance, I don't drink, I just drink juice and eat. Flirting? It's not going to happen. Then the lights go down and the cheek time starts. 'Wow, what a world this is. They're all kissing! . We stood there with our eyes rolled as if we had wandered into the adult world. Come to think of it, it was probably a temporary escape from bullying. The dreamlike "first disco experience" with Chigusa was one of the few memories of my youth.”

EPISODE 2 MATCH 1 - Kaoru Matsumoto vs. Monster Ripper. AFAIK, not a real match. I have to caveat that whenever I say this that there are footage gaps, so it's possible we just don't have it on tape rather than it's outright made up for the show.

EPISODE 2 MATCH 2 - Chigusa Nagayo & Yukari Omori vs. Ayumi Hori & "Lovely Yoneyama". Not a real match, Lovely is also not a real wrestler. I suspect she's a stand in for Nancy Kumi, who has a reputation for being a real nasty bully, so I think Netflix decided to dodge unnecessary controversy by just not depicting her (she’s still alive).

EPISODE 2 MATCH 3 - Jackie Sato vs. Rimi Yokota. A real match! You can watch it on my 80s Joshi set here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyogO_sbduk

AJW double-crossed Jackie by having Yokota beat her for real? KINDA. It's true that Yokota beat Jackie for real. But it wasn't an actual screwjob, the match was shoot pin rules. Jackie wasn't tricked into it, she just lost. Albeit, it was obvious Yokota would win with those rules as she was an actual great wrestler for real whereas Jackie’s athletic background was basketball, so I guess you could interpret it as a bit unfair to do that to her.

EPISODE 2 MATCH 4 - Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka. A real match. It happened on 1/4/83 and you can watch it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I-u-MlMiTFs&t=121m48s It was also under shoot pin rules.

Chigusa planned to retire after this match? TRUE. The story is the match was so good because Chigusa decided her career was going nowhere and this would be her last match before quitting, so she just went all out. But when she went to the boss afterwards to say she's quitting, before she could get any words out, he praised her performance so heavily telling her she’s found herself and should keep wrestling like that, that she changed her mind before saying it.

EPISODE 3 MATCH 1 - Crush Gals vs. Dynamite Gals. Probably based on a real match that happened on 8/27/83. Sadly, there's no available footage of it for me to show you.

Jaguar Yokota and Lioness Asuka got their nicknames in the same meeting? FICTION. Lioness was still wrestling as 'Tomoko Kitamura' for at least 3 months after Rimi Yokota became Jaguar Yokota. (But that's ok, it's just a TV drama not a documentary.)

EPISODE 3 MATCH 2 - Crush Gals vs. Devil Masami & Kaoru Matsumoto. Afaik, not a real match. If it actually happened in 1983, it would have probably looked something like that though.

EPISODE 3 MATCH 3 - Crush Gals vs. Jaguar Yokota & Lovely Yoneyama. Obvs not a real match as Lovely doesn't exist. However, it is slightly reminiscent of this real match - Crush Gals vs. Jaguar Yokota/Noriyo Tateno, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYc8dfrwz3M&t=62m40s

Jaguar Yokota wanted a "unscripted" match with the Crush Gals so she could beat them easily, but tapped out to Chigusa Nagayo's sharpshooter? FICTION. This whole event is entirely made up by the show. I’m not necessarily opposed to some creative licence in making these shows, but this is the one scene I thought was a bit stupid. Jaguar (a real skilled fighter) would have steamrolled Chigusa if it was real. And the sharpshooter is not a real submission anyway.

EPISODE 3 MATCH 4 - Crush Gals vs. Devil Masami & Masked Yu. Not a real match. I guess the show created it because the debut of "Dump" was not that dramatic in real life so they needed to spice things up. She actually announced her name change pretty non-chalantly after running a 10km race, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYc8dfrwz3M&t=7433s

EPISODE 4 MATCH 4 - Crush Gals vs. Devil Masami & Dump Matsumoto. A real match! And a famous one for being the moment the Devil Army break up and Dump starts her own group. You can watch it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYc8dfrwz3M&t=7833s

Shiro Abe refereed that match and passed Dump weapon's behind her back? FICTION. It looked to me that they were borrowing from a scene that happened in a different real match - Crush Gals vs. Dump Matsumoto & Rossy Moreno 1/5/85, which you can see here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239024

The Japan Grand Prix was a tournament where all the matches had no predetermined winner? FICTION. This was an unnecessary embellishment imo. Of course it's AJW so things weren't necessarily all 'scripted', but afaik the winner of every match was known and agreed in advance. The winner of the tournament was going to wrestle for the World Title at AJW’s biggest show ever (at the time) later in the year, so the company was never going to run it without deciding who was going to win.

EPISODE 4 MATCH 2 - Devil Masami vs. Lioness Asuka. A real match! You can watch it here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239025 This was also the opening of the Japan Grand Prix tournament.

AJW got its prime time TV slot back with the Japan Grand Prix? FICTION. AJW got its prime time slot back in July 1984, the Japan Grand Prix didn't start until March 15th 1985. We're well into the boom period by this point in real life. I think the show also exaggerated a bit how bad AJW’s business was in between the Beauty Pair and Crush Gals boom periods. They didn’t have a prime time TV slot, but they were still a successful pro-wrestling company.

EPISODE 4 MATCH 3 - Chigusa Nagayo vs. Crane Yu. A match that would definitely have happened due to tournament rules, but I don't believe it was ever televised.

EPISODE 4 MATCH 4 - Crane Yu vs. Dump Matsumoto 4/25/85. A real match! Except it wasn't the "semi-final", it was just part of the round robin stage. You can watch it here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239025

It wasn't a "no predetermined winner" match like the show depicts, but the scene of Crane Yu being screwed over is actually loosely based on fact. What happened was Crane Yu was told to lose to Dump in a close match where there wouldn’t be any outside interference, and found out mid-match the real plan was Bull running in and her getting totally smashed. I guess they didn’t just tell Yu beforehand the plan was her getting beaten decisively and putting over Bull as Dump’s new #2 because she might object, so she just got delivered a fait accomplii. Yu was so mad about this she legitimately quit, but was convinced to stay come back as a referee..

So was Dump Matsumoto actually an asshole in real life as well? FICTION. Everyone got into the odd fight in AJW, but everyone who was there seems to agree Dump was a really nice person behind the scenes who actively tried to stamp out the bullying culture once she had the backstage clout to do so. Her persona was an act.

EPISODE 4 - MATCH 5. Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka 4/7/85. A real match! But not a semi-final, just part of the round robin stage of the tournament. You can see it here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239025

The scene in Episode 4 where Dump crashes a variety TV show? That also actually happened, although it was Bull Nakano with her. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bOZuq-1u8Y&t=11350s

Jaguar Yokota was being put out to pasture as the Crush Gals became the top stars? FICTION. She was never as big a star, but Jaguar was still a very popular wrestler and the company loved her. She was NOT forced to retire, the Matsunaga Brothers actually tried convincing her to keep wrestling another year. She retired out of choice after injuries started piling up.

Asuka was angry at Yokota for retiring? TRUE. She'd wanted to have a shoot pin rules match with Jaguar, as probably the only wrestler who could beat her. The scene in the show is based on a real incident where Asuka crashed Jaguar's retirement ceremony, which was not actually supposed to happen. You can see here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239028

EPISODE 5 MATCH 1 - Chigusa Nagayo vs. Dump Matsumoto Haircut Death Match - 8/28/85. Obviously this is real... but if there's anyone reading who still hasn't seen it you need to go fix this: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239027

Dump went "off script" in the Haircut Deathmatch? FICTION. The show made this up for some reason. I think what they were trying to get across is virtually everyone watching assumed Chigusa would win. Her losing and getting shaved was one of the biggest shocks in wrestling ever. Although it’s possible the wrestlers just massively worked the show creators. 

Chigusa and Asuka didn't always get on? TRUE. They had their ups and downs and were never really best friends. The show doesn't go into details, but by 1986 things between Asuka and Chigusa got really heated. Asuka quit Crush Gals that year, costing the company (and Chigusa!) a load of money as the TV network wouldn’t keep AJW in its prime time slot without the Crush Gals together. 

She also no-showed an AJW event, which caused even bigger commotion than it normally would because

1. It was known she was having problems at the time, for example she’d recently turned up to her Sumo Hall Main Event World Title match against Devil Masami in a total state. She hadn’t slept the previous night, visibly had massive bags under her eyes and when her and Chigusa started rehearsing their singing performance earlier in the day, she just collapsed on the floor and had to be taken away in a stretcher.

2. A famous pop star called Yukiko Okada had recently committed suicide and there had been a bunch of copycat suicides which the media was in a frenzy about, so people in AJW were genuinely terrified that Asuka might have killed herself. It turned out she’d just ran away and went to live with an anonymous female rockstar who she apparently had got rather infatuated with. Chigusa called this woman a ‘grim reaper’ who’d possessed Asuka in a magazine interview, which made Asuka very angry. That whole situation was a mess. The show didn’t go into this part of the story though.

EPISODE 5 - MATCH 2. Dump Matsumoto's Retirement Match. A real match. You can watch it here: https://vk.com/video640112534_456239033 

These wrestlers really bled all over the place after being stabbed with scissors on a prime time TV show aimed at schoolgirls? TRUE. I don't know what else to tell you. There was some trickery to make it look more brutal than it really was, but it wasn't CGI or fake blood. There really was no promotion like AJW and that’s partially why I’m such a huge fan. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the best pro-wrestling ever (although it’s up there), but I definitely think it’s the most fascinating.

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