80s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Kumano!

Disc 1

9. Lucy Kayama vs. Mami Kumano - 5/80

K: The Lucy Kayama vs. Yumi Ikeshita match that we covered a few weeks ago was always going to make the set, I think this is a good companion piece. Mami Kumano is the less technically impressive than her Black partner, but she has a feral raging energy of her own that she works into her matches well. It's also rare that we see her in a singles match, so let's check this out.

There's some noticeable editing in the early portion of the match where they're exchanging holds and we don't see much else, so hard to draw any conclusions from it other than they were going long so kept themselves plenty of places to go in the time they had to get through. They mainly seemed to be going after each other’s arms. Of course things escalate when Mami Kumano starts incorporating her cheating antics and creating a bit of chaos. She does things by throwing in some hide-the-weapon action and, one of her specialties, very uncivilized biting. There's one memorable moment where Mami has Lucy's arm in her mouth, with no hands! She's just standing there gripping it with her teeth and it looks very savage. She also counters an attempt at leg lock by biting Lucy's leg to force her to break it.

She did a lot more hiding the weapon though, probably overdoing it. The crowd does laugh at one point at the referee's ineptitude for repeatedly missing Mami pulling her weapon from inside her top, which probably isn't the reaction they were going for. Mami's cheating and the referee's uselessness enrages the babyfaces at ringside so much that they grab Mami, by the ankles and yank her out of the ring for Lucy to hit her with a big dive. This moves us forward and the match turns into a war from here on.

It's interesting that Mami actually threw a jumping kick. Not a very good one, it's just that you almost never see anyone throwing kicks in pre-Crush Gals Joshi so it stood out to me.

They build and build up to the time limit finish, by which point they're just clobbering each other with strikes looking barely aware that they're out of time. This probably overachieved for a singles match between the two less pushed members of two tag teams currently feuding.

***1/2

MD: You’ll be glad to know the commentary is still calling her Mt. Lucy (or maybe you won’t be). I miss Kumano’s cool one-arm-cut-off leather jacket but she has a cape and a splash of red in her hair now. And as you can imagine this turned into a wild scene. I get the sense it was clipped somewhere along the way and went to a 30 minute draw, but I’m not entirely sure where. 

Lucy was able to outwrestle Kumano early, having an answer for most things, including attempts to cheat by pulling the hair or throwing a shot while in the hold. Kumano’s answer to that was to toss her out and then, as the match opened up, to hide a spanner and attack her with it. I also get the sense she had a taped up thumb she was using but I’m not sure. 

We’ve seen hide the object before but what made this work were the bits of hope and comeuppance. At one point Tomi grabbed Kumano’s leg and dragged her out allowing Kayama to get a queen rocket through the ropes upon her. She started one comeback by isolating the spanner and grinding her foot into Kumano’s hand. Kumano hit her seated senton off the top relatively early but when she went for it later in the match, she got tossed off by Lucy. All of this was full of struggle and intensity. There was a crazy moment where Lucy put Kumano in a figure four only for (I think) Tomi and Masami to run in and do the spot in unison. Later on when it seemed like Lucy had a real advantage, Ikeshita ran in as well. And they finished it off as the bell rang just throwing wild shots at each other. The big difference so far between the 79 and 80 matches, past some callback spots giving everything a bit more weight and meaning, is that the babyfaces are able to hold their own more (and not just Jackie either). It honestly makes a huge difference.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Lucy! Kumano! Ikeshita!

Disc 1

8. Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita SJW 4/4/80

K: Firstly, I want to give a little shout out to an old poster called Xalazi. Many years ago, I remember him posting on Reddit that this was one of his favourite Joshi matches. This would have been around the time I decided I was going to make this set. That comment prompted me to decide that I'm gonna include any match I see getting talked up like that by someone who knows their retro Joshi. It's like giving everyone who's influenced this project a personal pick.

I feel like you need to have seen the 7/31/79 tag between these two teams before you see this one. They have a similar vibe, and have a very similar ending, but everything here feels like an escalation from the previous outing, which was already very dramatic. 

In the introductions Queen Angels don't really look like they're here to fight. Tomi Aoyama has recently returned from a knee injury and it's still all taped up. Lucy Kayama looks almost like a stereotypically dainty shy girl the way she's holding her hands and looking at the floor. That may have been misdirection though, because as soon as the bell sounds they both jump Black Pair with dropkicks, stomp Ikeshita out of the ring and go for a beatdown on Kumano. Feels more like how Black Pair would open a match, but after all we've seen involving these teams, you can't fault Queen Angels for not acting like suckers tonight.

The babyfaces aren't able to maintain the advantage in an all out fight, but they do hold their own and there's some extra venom in their offense. Thankfully for Lucy Kayama her big dive actually hits her opponents this time and sets up them winning the first fall. I think it was her dive that busts Mami Kumano's mouth or nose open. Not too badly but there's enough blood to make her believable dazed even into the 2nd fall. The move they got the pin with was a big splash from Kayama kneeling on Aoyama's shoulders. It looked like they didn't quite know what they were doing, but that's cool, like they're pulling out all the stops to win here.

But then, disaster strikes. When attempting a Giant Swing on Mami Kumano, Tomi's knee collapses under her. Ikeshita immediately pounces after spotting she's hurt. Lucy runs in to protect her partner but gets thrown out the ring so Tomi can be isolated and pinned just before Lucy is able to reach out to break it up.

Then it's carnage. Black Pair are desperate to exacerbate Tomi's re-injured knee. It's hard to figure out what's real and what isn't here and they take multiple kicks at her injured knee in between throwing a bunch of babyfaces around the place who're failing to stop them carry out this criminal assault. Even the officials get manhandled. Heck, even Tenjin Masami tries to restrain Ikeshita at one point!

They start the 3rd fall, maybe hoping the match being officially back on will get Black Pair to tone it down. This doesn't work. Tomi's in a mess on the floor and they continue on the maiming. The way Mami kicks Tomi's leg from under her is so callous it makes you mad. The venue is echoing with the shrieks of the audience. This fall barely lasts a minute before the bell sounds, apparently for some kind of 'time out' to assess Tomi's injury as they don't call the match yet. That only lasts about 30 seconds coz Black Pair won't stop attacking her. Tomi actually tries to escape while on her back just flopping up and down across the ring with one leg in the air. It's actually pretty impressive how much she moves from doing that.

Well done to Tomi for escaping, but unfortunately that just leaves Lucy Kayama in the ring having to face off with Black Pair on her own. She doesn't stand a chance, but she fights valiantly, eventually succumbing to the ultimate retro Joshi finisher, just lying across your opponents shoulders and forcing them down onto the mat until you get a 3 count! I know, revolutionary. Works especially well when your powerless tag partner is watching on the outside all teary-eyed incapable to do anything about it.

Could we have got a bit more of an actual match? Yes. Would this have been better if Lucy's final stand was more prolonged, and she actually got one last hope spot? Oh I'm sure it would. It wasn’t entirely believable that the two Black Pair members were able to fight off virtually the entire roster PLUS officials to kick at Tomi’s knee. The stoppages were a bit too randomly deployed as well, I don't really know why they stopped the match in the 3rd fall, only for Black Pair to ignore it so they just sounded the bell again. Yes, you probably know what I'm getting at, this feels like an early draft for better matches down the line. For those following this, keep note of the "1 partner gets injured in tag match, forcing heroic babyface to fight 2 heels on her own in super dramatic circumstances" match layout. It's an AJW staple.

But there's no way a match this effective can be anything less than great.

****

MD: This was a match which more or less became an angle even if it ended as a match. It’s great to see the Queen Angels back together at least for this shot. It started quite similarly to how you’d expect a Black Pair vs Queen Angels match to start. The Angels got the first strike in. It’s funny how they did though. They wanted a handshake but the Black Pair decided to shake each other’s hands instead and then got dropkicked mid-shake. After that they held an aggressive advantage until they missed a move (miscommunication) and the Black Pair took over.

That’s when things shifted from the norm (and this is a time where I am very glad that I know what the previous norm was). This time around, the Angels were much more aggressive in their comebacks. A lot of times they’d flail in a futile manner but get dragged back down quickly. Here, they were able to come back each and every time and only by the Pair dodging a move could they take back over. Lucy and Tomi had grown to the point where they could take up half the air in the match, maybe more. So when Lucy avoided being choked by wire on the outside and then crashed down upon them from the top rope to the floor, it felt inevitable. They weren’t able to dodge this version of the Queen Rocket this time. Instead, Kumano came back up an absolute mess, her nose bloodied, looking like she was out on her feet.

They got a quick fall with Lucy climbing up Tomi’s shoulders and leaping off and then continued putting on the pressure. Either Kumano was really knocked loopy or she was doing some amazing selling (I think the latter given how quickly she recovered) as she was limp and barely present even as she was getting destroyed. Tomi set things up to give her a giant swing and again, it was striking how she was just dangling for the start of it. Ikeshita had recovered though and came in out of nowhere taking out Tomi’s injured  knee. That’s when things took another turn. They got a quick fall but then the ring filled with people as they tried to continue the punishment while others tried to protect Tomi. The Black Pair tossed everyone around including officials. When the match did restart, Tomi was gone and it was two-on-one and the Pair made quick work of Lucy to win back the titles. What made all this work was how dominant the Angels were in the first fall. They had hit a different sort of kayfabe gear relative to previous matches. That Kumano was a bloody, stumbling mess didn’t hurt things either though, but it’s probably a tough one to judge given how it devolved into an angle and didn’t really reform into a match.
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Ikeshita!

Disc 1

4. Tomi Aoyama & Jackie Sato Interviews - 2/21/80

5. Lucy Kayama vs. Yumi Ikeshita (All Pacific Title) - 2/21/80

K: Before we get to the match, we have an announcement from Commissioner Ueda that Tomi Aoyama will have to vacate the All Pacific title and cancel her title challenge against Jackie Sato due to an injured knee. This is all real, but they make the most of it for TV purposes by getting over how devastated Tomi is to lose this opportunity, saying that she doesn't care if she loses a leg in trying to win the title. The next interview with Jackie about the situation also holds the line, as she talks about how she missed a lot of time due to injuries early in her career. It all makes wrestling feel very important and winning a title to be the crowning achievement of their lives.

So this is for the vacated All Pacific belt. There's a high level of ambition to this compared to most of the matches going on around the time. The first 10 minutes or so are mostly just matwork, but it's very gritty and interesting matwork with a slight feeling of escalation throughout. You don't see either of them having an obvious strategy or targetting a specific limb or anything, it's more like they're just reacting in the moment with whatever opportunity is available to them. It's "riffing" but it feels more genuine than in the Zack Sabre Junior sense, as I don't get the feeling that any of this was choreographed. 

Examples of interesting offense around the many hammerlocks include them doing that turning Greco-Roman test of strength spot that I associate with Billy Robinson vs. Giant Baba, but with a twist that Ikeshita brutally forces Kayama backfirst straight down onto her knee. Ikeshita also headbutts Ikeshita's shoulder while working her arm on the mat. There's a fanastic spot that Matt's already GIFed on Twitter when Ikeshita walks up Kayama's body onto her shoulder to turn her over into an armbar (I don't know how to describe it exactly). It's cool enough that Ikeshita makes the mistake of attempting it a second time a few minutes later, but Kayama counters it this time and creates space for her comeback segment. 

I think there's a nice contrast between the two segments in that while Ikeshita was on top for most of the first 10 minutes, Kayama was still fighting back and standing up to her. However, once we get into Kayama's segment where she has the momentum, Ikeshita comes across as unsporting and while not quite 'cowardly' she's hardly showing fighting spirit. She backpeddles constantly, tries to get to the ropes and goes to the outside for an extending period breaking up Kayama's flow. There's nice little moment where she backs off from Kayama and actually falls over looking kinda foolish for a second. Her brief 'hope' spots are totally opportunistic and acts of savagry where she goes straight for the throat or eyes. This escalates into her pulling out a weapon and trying to stab Kayama with it to shrieks from the crowd, which sets up Kayama snatching it off her and getting it a stab of her own on the outside, justified revenge, but perhaps a mistake to fight Ikeshita on her terms.

Ikeshita can't quite help being a kinda "cool" heel, but her performance here certainly isn't going for that and I think it is effective with her audience, even if me in 2025 still thinks she's kinda cool :)

The more this turns into a brawl the more sloppy and difficult to follow it gets. It's entertaining but I don't think it quite developed from the bulk of the match up to this point, the shifts in momentum start to feel a bit random until the finishing stretch, which was good. Lucy goes for a big dive to the outside and misses, but unlike earlier in the month where she won the tag titles soon after missing a dive, this time Ikeshita immediately pounces on the mistake and soon has her in the ring, gives her two big piledrivers and takes the win and the belt.

Not quite a great match, I think I've said this a few times, but they mostly have the right idea and it feels like they're getting a bit closer to reaching the stars. Certainly a very interesting one.

***3/4

MD: Here’s the big title match to decide who gets Tomi’s vacated All-Pacific title. And it’s really something. They did some fairly scrappy matwork to begin, more so than I would have expected. That’s not to say they weren’t swinging at each other while in holds. Ikeshita was able to seize an advantage by working the arm, building to this great step up short armscissors takeover and roll. That opened things up enough for her to hit her fall away slams.

When she went for the step up again, Kayama was able to hang on, hold her high and drop backwards with her. I know this doesn’t seem like a ton (though it was a great spot) but that sort of transition with a callback really isn’t the sort of thing we saw much in 79. She honed in on the leg but couldn’t hold the advantage for too long because Ikeshita started playing hide the object. That led to yet another callback spot. She had nailed Lucy in the gut off the ropes with it. When she went for it again, Lucy was able to get a sunset flip hope spot out of it. It just feels different to me, closer to more modern, more complex wrestling. And it’s two matches now, so that’s a bit of a pattern.

Kayama got the object on the floor and mounted a bit comeback turning a teeter totter tombstone bit into a slam and following up with a gutwrench and tiger driver. Ikeshita sometimes went right to her belly so she couldn’t get pinned or put her knees up to avoid it, and she did the former here. It was a nice touch, as was the transition where she just launched a headbutt into a charging Lucy. Finishing stretch had her clock Lucy and the ref with chairs. Lucy was able to use her athleticism to vault over her only to get taken down. Ikeshita followed up with another series of bombs (Power slam, butterfly suplex, leaping bulldog) but missed a dive. Unfortunately, Lucy missed the Queen Rocket and Ikeshita put her down with a belly to back and two pile drivers, which is not a move we’ve seen much in the footage so far. The finish left everyone dejected but it made Ikeshita into someone to chase. There were definitely more modern elements here (callbacks for transitions and hope spots, dueling limbwork, etc.) and it felt like a very complete match overall to me. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Nancy! Kumano! Ikeshita!

Addendum 2 

3b. Lucy Kayama & Nancy Kumi vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (WWWA Tag Team Titles) - 2/5/80

K: Already sneaking in a match that isn't on the set proper but I've since uploaded a supplementary volume to include it. It was always being considered, but I'd made myself a rule to keep each volume to under 4 hours and this ended up being cut because it doesn't really link up with the rest of the 80s matches as it's really wrapping up an angle which played out through 1979, and I made the set assuming viewers wouldn't know anything about what happened before 1980.

However I've just done write-ups for every AJW match of the 1970s on this very blog, so now leaving this off would be a far more significant omission. So let's get into it.

The AJW crew really let you know from the start that a match is not gonna be just them going through the motions by how ferociously they go at it when the bell sounds. We didn't get a start like this for Jackie & Tomi's big match, though I guess the crowd were already hot for that one so there wasn't a need to catch their attention.

Nancy hits some slams and goes for the big classic Joshi pin early here, only for Ikeshita to block it with her knees like it was a frog splash. Cool little exchange that only really works in this promotion because of how they do pins. That counts as a babyface shine though. Throughout the 1st fall I feel like they do just about enough for Queen Angels to come across as on Black Pair's level as wrestlers, but they just don't have an answer for when Black Pair just start relentlessly cheating, which they do a lot. At one point Mami Kumano has Nancy Kumi by throat and hoists her up to her feet while strangling her and it looks so evil and feral, like Nancy just doesn't how how to deal with such a crazy person who'll do that. This probably goes on a bit too long as they meander a bit towards the end until Ikeshita gets the win with a very well-executed German suplex.

We get the customary 2nd fall. Black Pair beat down on Lucy meanwhile Nancy does good work on the apron looking genuinely concerned and sticking her arm out to try and make the tag. Mami puts Lucy in her dreaded pendulum swing which provokes Nancy into running around the run to put a stop to it but Ikeshita cuts her off, and this creates a soft reset on the outside. Then things get a bit strange. Nancy apparently cannot stand watching Lucy getting beat down any longer so just runs into the ring without a tag and starts wildly slamming everyone. It's a really good freakout actually. The referee protests for a bit but then seems to let it go. Things break down a bit more and before long Nancy hits a big slam on Mami Kumano, pins her and wins. Wait what, she wasn't the legal woman, and the referee knew it! Well I dunno about that. 

They up the ante a bit more for the 3rd fall. Mami Kumano kinda gets revenge for the terrible refereeing by whacking him with a chair, as well as everyone else, including her own tag partner! The spirit of Zenjo Reckless Abandon manifested itself in Lucy Kayama when went up top for a big splash to the outside but appears to have totally missed and just smacks herself into the side of the announce table in an awful looking bump. But because it's AJW she's back up and makes it back into to ring to win by countout. Another dubious finish to a fall that I suspect wasn't intended to happen exactly like that.

Well the finishes of the 2nd and 3rd falls clearly hurt this otherwise quite enjoyable match and crowning of new champions.

***

MD: Kadaveri summed this up well in that it felt different. They went through a lot of similar motions to other Black Pair tags from the 70s, with the initial burst by the babyfaces, by the long beatdown on Lucy interspersed with little bits of hope, with a chaotic brawl on the outside, with weapons coming into play, but there was just a bit more energy to it, just a bit more desperation. In the post match, I’m pretty sure Lucy said she did it for the injured Tomi and maybe that was what put her over the top. 

Some of the specific moments of transition and hope worked well for me. Lucy’s leapfrog out of harms way to set up a hope spot. The chairshot where Kumano cracked Ikeshita that I had to go back on a few times because it was timed so well. And yes, Nancy rushing in. There was also a moment where Lucy deliberately went to the floor to escape a potential pin which seemed a bit more strategic than usual. And of course, as Kadeveri mentioned, there was getting the knees up, but another thing you’d see Ikeshita do was to roll onto her stomach after a move so she couldn’t get pinned. When you add in the bridging escapes, it really does give the spirit of these pins a unique feel that you don’t get anywhere else in the world at this time.

Kumi scoring the pinfall didn’t take me out of it too much because I could see how it was easy to lose track in the chaos, but the dive absolutely missed and looked very nasty. Nancy was able to keep the Pair from making it back in, but that was certainly unfortunate. In general, this felt meaningful enough to be a title change, and it felt earned, even with a few blemishes. Lucy went through hell and took advantage of a few lucky moments, but you can’t beat the Black Pair without both resilience and luck. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Tomi! Queen Angels Explode!

77. 1979.12.11 - 02 Lucy Kayama vs. Tomi Aoyama (All Pacific Title)

K: Lucy Kayama challenges her tag partner in Queen Angels for the All Pacific belt. I guess we got the Black Pair members fighting each other to fit a theme for this show.

Really strong lock up to start. Followed up with Tomi leaping onto the ropes looking for some kind of boomerang move but Lucy avoided it, but Tomi follows up with a couple of big shoulder tackles, but goes to well 1 too many times and Lucy counters with a trip on the next attempt. All this is done with real conviction, physical intensity and a slight bit of sloppiness that just makes it feel a bit more real. That all happened in barely 10 seconds and it's got me invested in seeing the rest of this match.

Things settle down a bit with Lucy going after Tomi's back. She actually does a Liontamer for a bit before settling into the more familiar Boston Crab. There's a couple of backbreakers (the tilt-a-whirl version) but she doesn't get far with it until Tomi gets a comeback with another one of her wild boomerangs off the top. This one managed to land a bit though still looked sloppy, like she didn't have time to steady herself properly but just did it.

We cut out for adverts for a bit which breaks up the flow a bit as when we're back it feels like a chunk of time was cut out. Now Lucy is back in control and is grinding Tomi down. She does two really sick Tiger Drivers, I thought the first one looked a bit reckless but then the second one was basically the exact same motion but with even more force. Just classic Joshi behaviour really.

Aoyama does a bunch of good dropkicks and she uses them more like punches when she's on the defensive as well as to try and establish control. The one I want to highlight though is actually when she gets countered by Lucy sidestepping her and lifting a foot up into her ribs it looked like. Such a simple counter I'm surprised hasn't been copied more.

Unfortunately we get a bit of cop-out finish even if it was quite exciting. Tomi goes for her boomerang off the top rope but falls to the floor and then they kinda take turns to miss dives to the floor heh. We get a countout finish as Lucy holds on to Tomi's leg to stop her getting into the ring so Tomi still looks like the stronger one. There are structural issues holding it back but really good match.

***1/2

MD: Some color to start (as the youtube autotranslate function is finally back). They recently renamed the Hawaiian title to the All Pacific Title, making it more prestigious. The commentators were wondering if they were seeing the end of tag team wrestling between this match, the Black Pair match, and the Beauty Pair having broken up. 

I thought this was great. Some of it was the familiarity the wrestlers had with one another. Some of it was the familiarity we had with them. You could see it early on with Tomi going for her top rope leap back spring board finisher right from the start but Lucy getting out of the way. She still controlled early until Lucy opened up on her back. Kayama had such massive offense here in her two bits of control, double underhook backbreakers, tiger drivers, and towards the end as she was getting more desperate for victory, this awesome backslide breaker where she dropped to her knees and did it over and over. Some of it was a little repetitive at times but she was repeating dynamic things targeting the back. Meanwhile, Tomi had this great way of going to the ropes. At one point she wrapped both arms around them to hug it to break up a pinfall. Just really got over the stakes here. 

Tomi's comeback transitions were great too. The first time, she bounded to the top when whipped to the corner and flew back with a twisting kick to the face. You wouldn't see that anywhere in the world (where we have footage) in 79. Probably not in 89 either. Then, to break up that second flurry of offense, she countered one of Lucy's flying headbutts off the ropes with a picture perfect dropkick to the gut. Perfect timing. Perfect familiarity. 

The finish was so over the top with three huge bumps that I was ok with it. You didn't need a clean winner in a match like this between partners. Tomi wiping out off the top was wild and then both missed their version of the Queen Rocket. Yeah, the cuts were pretty frustrating. We lost the Giant Swing which felt like a huge moment in the match. But overall you got the idea here, including some big transitions, and it felt like something so much of the footage was building towards and paid off quite well. 

ER: One of the best 70s joshi singles matches I've seen, partners explode without it getting messy, built more around learned behavior and learned instincts than blood or overt violence. Aoyama is the champ but Kayama comes off like the real star, from her little purple robed twirl during her introduction and her perfect 70s lady short haircut. She looks incredible, and I find her so much more interesting than Aoyama. Aoyama goes immediately to her finisher (which I love), leaping to the top rope and crashing and burning into the ring. Tomi learning quick that her partner knows all of her tricks. Kayama is so good in all her responses to Aoyama, all the way she takes her offense, and all the cool ass ways the fights back. I'm not a big fan of all of Aoyama's offense, but Kayama makes it look incredible. The impact of Tomi's bulldogs were amplified by the height which Kayama leaps into them, and that's true of Aoyama's so-so dropkicks and other things. Kayama just makes everything pop. 

Someone needs to steal Kayama's backslide breaker, a move I have never seen before. It's pretty common for me to watch any of the French Catch and see something I've never seen before, but most of that is due to a specific kind of creative athleticism that was tapping a different vein than our modern "creative" athleticism (which often just boils down to finding a slightly different way to reverse a reversal of a reversal that has already been established). A Backslide Breaker is something anyone can do and it looked like a cool way to set up an actual backslide (which she did). It's something easy enough that anyone can do it, and yet here it resides in 1979 and nowhere else. Wrestling is funny. 

I thought the count out finish worked incredibly well. If it wasn't Kayama's time to win the title, but it wasn't right for her to lose, then this finish absolutely rocked. Tomi leaps to the top rope just like she did at the beginning of the match and just like when she hit her kick, but this time it gets her shoved off wildly almost into the 2nd row. I shot forward in my chair when she crashed to the depths. But the follow up is even better, when Kayama goes for a big tope and completely misses Tomi, crashing and burning even worse! Kayama is holding her leg on the floor because she just did a high speed dive into nothing, and then Aoyama runs into the ring and completely misses a running pescado. These women are just leaping into nothing over and over and the misses all looked brutal. Kayama holding Aoyama's leg to prevent her narrowly rolling back into the ring did not feel out of desperation, but almost anger in coming so close to winning that in that moment she knew she couldn't win, but didn't want to lose. 

Also check out that Monchhichi ad. I don't think I realize those existed in Japan for so many years before arriving in the States. Backslide Breakers and Monchhichi. A country ahead of its time in every way.  

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Kumano! Masami!

75. 1979.11.XX2 - 03 Jackie Sato & Lucy Kayama vs. Mami Kumano & Tenjin Masami

K: This is a fairly throwaway formula match with good wrestlers in it. The most significant thing I'll point out is that Tenjin Masami gets a good showing, she's in the ring about as much as Mami Kumano but I don't think she ever looks like she's significantly less developed even if she doesn't have any signature moves yet. She looks nasty and fearsome, the screaming while on offense is probably a bit too much. 

The finish of the 1st fall was a bit off. It looked like they went for the finish a little earlier but there was some miscommunication, and then they repeated the set up almost straight after.

The Black team were very dominant for most of the 1st fall, setting up a babyface comeback and win, only for the heels to get even more vicious immediately on the 2nd fall's start and they introduce a chair to proceedings to even things out. I knew that was going to happen from having watched enough of these. After all of the wild weapons and methods of cheating we've seen before though, simply hitting someone with a chair felt kinda uninspired. Maybe this wasn't the right match to do anything special.

We didn't get to see much from Jackie until the 3rd fall. Selling for long periods of the match is Lucy's job, and since Black Pair were gonna be on top for most of the first two we were bound to not see much of Jackie. A cool moment is when she counters an Irish Whip attempt by just launching Kumano into Masami who was standing on the apron. Jackie follows up this with a whip of her own into a straight forearm or punch in the face that looked like it knocked Masami's lights out. Lucy gets tagged in to go for her Vader Bomb, but Masami is up too early so she turns it into a kind of reverse dropkick, also pretty cool adjustment that felt like it was on the fly. 

There's a really relentless bit of offense where we first see Jackie hit a big flying splash, the cover gets broken up  and Masami tries to escape by rolling under the bottom rope, but Jackie is too on the ball and drags her back into the ring before hitting her vertical suplex into a backbreaker move. All this offense from the babyfaces is just too much and takes us straight into a finish that felt satisfying. 

This was a promotion just spinning the wheels killing TV time till the next big show. First two falls were mostly filler. Jackie got to look like the worthy champ at the end, that’s all it really felt like it was trying to accomplish and I guess that’s all it needed to.

**1/2

MD: I’m glad we get to see Kumano a couple more times as we’re nearing the end of this stage of the project. This was another one of those very complete tags. My biggest takeaway was how much Masami felt like she belonged. I’m not sure I had the sense in previous matches, but she had as much confidence as I’ve seen out of her in this run and had found ways to stand out. Yes, there was the choking and the general aggression, but she really made use of her size, both in hefting people up with hanging tree chokes or pressing them over her head, but also by using Vader attacks or just having Lucy’s flying cross chop bounce off of her. Just real heft to what she did in a way that wasn’t a visually sure thing as it was with, let’s say, Hori.

Kumano was, of course, Kumano. An absolute bulldozer. Lucy (incredibly fiery and intense) had burst forth to take an early advantage but Kumano just shut her down, pulling her this way or that by her hair or dragging her face across the ropes or the mat. They had a great bit where Masami would grind the knee into the face before handing her off to Kumano for the dangling choke. Jackie broke it up once, but then Masami went after her and both of them ate it. Finish of the first fall was Lucy bouncing off Masami only to slip around her for a roll up. Clever stuff.

Second fall was a mauling as Kumano came in with a chair and absolutely brained Lucy and Jackie. That led to Masami holding one up for Kumano’s seated senton off the top and a missile dropkick. Third fall continued the mauling, including with object shots, until Jackie was able to reverse a whip crashing Kumano and Masami into each other. Lucy had a nice mule kick off the top (that I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen before), and then Jackie used suplexes and slams to win. She just sort of dropped down with an elbow to take it. Still hierarchy in this one as Masami was more likely to get swept under, but she was really more of the force that she would one day be here.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Ikeshita! Gomez!

72. 1979.11.XX1 - 03 Jackie Sato & Lucy Kayama vs. Norma Gomez & Yumi Ikeshita (2/3 Falls)

We start in the middle of the 1st fall. I found it a little hard to get into being dropped into it with Jackie getting double teamed by the Ikeshita and her Mexican ally, lots of choking for several minutes, and when Lucy got tagged in she just got more of the same. Then, in a blink and you’ll miss it transition, the babyface suddenly started steamrolling and were 1-0 up. 

But ok things pick up when we start the 2nd fall and Jackie is in a mean mood now. The fall starts with Jackie Irish Whipping Norma Gomez straight into Ikeshita on the apron, knocking her to the ground and drawing out a ‘woah’ from the crowd. Ikeshita is pissed and wants to fight on the outside and looks determined to get her vengeance. I thought it was interesting how she wins with the hurricanrana pin (after some very cool over the head backdrops), and even though Jackie makes contact jumping in to break up the pin, it still counts because she wasn’t able to actually break it up and Lucy’s shoulders stay down. I don’t know when it became a rule (or if it even officially is one) in wrestling that the referee stops counting the pin in a tag match if someone so much as taps the pinning wrestler on the back, but I don’t think that was a good change.

There isn’t much of a 3rd fall. Jackie does a cool backbreaker and looks like she’s going to really take charge, then a chair is being swung around, they’re fighting on the outside and the result is a countout. Oh well. I guess they just weren’t going to give away anything tonight. 2nd fall was good though.

**

MD: We come in JIP here. I didn’t really get a great sense of Norma except for that she was credible. She kept the pressure on, mainly with choking and mean shots and that was all that was needed because Ikeshita was going to come in with all the cool stuff. Also a picked up choke hiding. Eventually Lucy took out Norma on the apron and ran right to Jackie and they just mowed through their opponents like it was nothing. 

We had another transition in the second fall, but that was after some chaos on the outside. Again Ikeshita looked like a million bucks. Her delaying power slam off the ropes were brutal and the way she won the second fall with that elaborate over the top escape into the ‘rana was top notch. There were a couple of moments here where they said the crowd was going up big for Jackie and I just didn’t see or hear it. You watch the crowd and there aren’t those shots of wincing or screaming girls. Everything seems less hot than back during the Ripper feud and before, and I don’t know if it’s how things were mic’d or if they were just cooling down in general.

But that didn’t make Jackie any less of an Ace. When she took over in the last fall, it was brutal and without mercy or doubt. But then the chairs come in and everything breaks down and that was that.

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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: Lucy! Barkley!

63. 1979.10.XX - 02 Lucy Kayama vs. Winnie Barkley (Either late September or before October 17) 

K: And we're back with this interminable USA vs. Japan series. True to formula, Joyce takes control of the match right from the start with uninteresting offense including a couple of dropkicks that really didn't look good at all despite Lucy selling them. I won't fault her selling in execution but in context I wish she'd put up a lot more of a fight than this, but that's not the match they're going to have.

There's not much in the way of transitions here either. Lucy just grabs Winnie by the leg out of nowhere, pulls her down and puts her in a figure four and all of sudden she's on offense. Likewise for when Winnie gets to the ropes to break the submission, at which point she just gets up and with seconds is hitting snapmares as if she was on offense the whole time. We get a more aggressive one which sends Lucky flying through the ropes to the outside, at which point she gets stomped on by Moolah. I think this is the most Moolah has ever blatantly interfered in one of these USA-Japan series matches. Somehow, getting assaulted by Moolah only powers Lucy up, as she gets back in the ring, hits a bunch of her biggest moves including a Tiger Driver and gets the win.

The winning pin was very strange in that Winnie seemed to get her shoulder up at 3 and there was a slight delay in the referee calling it, except this was the heel American referee so why he'd do a dodgy looking finish that benefitted the Japanese wrestler is beyond me. This match really didn't make any sense. Seeing Lucy hit a clean Tiger Driver was cool I guess, but that's about the nicest thing you'll get me to say about this. I may be in a bad mood as while I was watching this match a bee or wasp flew in the window and stung me.

*

MD: Barkley was probably the least of the American contingent. If she had the Littlefeather gimmick maybe it’d have been different (I do believe that) because her spin through chop was pretty good. Otherwise, her best offense was just having Moolah stomp Lucy on the outside. She did throw herself into everything but even her chokes didn’t look great. When Lucy did fight back, her stuff was spirited and she had a nice finishing stretch with the leaping horizontal cross chops and the really deep gutwrench before hitting that inexplicable tiger driver. The ref wasn’t a huge issue here overall but there was no meat or substance to any of this anyway so it hardly mattered. We were better off when it was the Black Pair in just about every match. That’s for sure.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Grable!

59. 1979.09.2X2 - 02 Joyce Grable vs. Lucy Kayama (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: The Japan vs. USA series continues with another similar match to what we’d previously covered. I still dislike the structure of these and think they would work better if they didn’t insist on having the heel totally dominate the first few minutes of the match. At least let the Japanese wrestler get a hold in first or something. But nonetheless, this worked a bit better than average. Firstly the crowd was vocal in cheering on Lucy, which mitigated her getting beaten up without putting up much of a fight early on.

One of the memorable moments was Grable draping Kayama’s neck over the top rope, then again over the 2nd rope and sitting on it to choke her while (I think) Leilani Kai punched her from the outside. They made the most out of this as when Kayama’s comeback began, she managed to stay in control for quite a good bit, but then she went for revenge and tried putting Grable into the same choking predicament, but she wasn’t able to pull it off so well (perhaps she’s a lot less experienced in these nasty illegal maneuvers as the Americans) so Grable was able to escape. That was the decisive moment of the match, as Grable was able to take back control and before long won with a very good powerful missile dropkick to get a 3 count. Very low ceiling on this kind of match, but they did alright.

*3/4

MD: We’ve got a Japanese referee here (Yanagi?) so at least this will be clean. I don’t have a great sense of Grable and while a lot of her offense wouldn’t change the world, I really did like her reactions, both on top and when she had to work from underneath. She was jawing with the crowd and the ref and over the top as she’d bite the hand secretly when she had a wristlock. When Lucy did take over and did a drop down body scissors with roll back slams, she sold it as well as she possibly could. I kind of want to track down more of her stuff now.

Otherwise, this was a lot of what you’d expect by that point from Moolah’s camp. Grable controlled for the first five minutes. She had Moolah and Williams/Kai (I think) out with her and they were happy to help cheat and choke and what not. One was wearing a stenciled “American Power” shirt. Lucy had her cheering section and had a way of throwing herself into everything with abandon. She had her big comeback but then got hefted over the top as she went in for a knee by the ropes. Grable had a power advantage and pressed that towards the end to set her up for a second rope missile dropkick. Post-match Kayama took out the ref just for the heck of it. These US vs Japan matches have their ceilings certainly but I thought Grable had about half of what she needed here at least.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Tomi! Ikeshita! Masami! Komine!

49. 1979.08.XX3 - 04 Hiroko Komine, Tenjin Masami & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Jackie Sato, Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama (2/3 Falls)

K: Top babyface & two buddies vs. top (native) heel and two buddies. Jackie’s team really should have the clear advantage with her having Queen Angels as her partners and Yumi just has two rookies, but that’s not how the match goes. The heels dominate the early goings easily, but with Jackie never tagging in so it’s more that they’re dominating the lesser two of her team. Still it’s a bit surprising to see Hiroko Komine in control of them for so long. Unfortunately there’s a noticeable clip around here so we don’t get to see the first babyface comeback until it’s already started, or if it really even was a comeback or just an ‘extended hope’ as Yumi Ikeshita pretty quickly shuts it down. She does a cool move as she’s taking back control where she Irish Whips Lucy Kayama straight into Komine’s flying crossbody. Someone steal that. It made the Irish Whip look a lot more effective rather than just whipping someone into the ropes as there’s isn’t the time for the opponent to react.

There’s a couple more babyface comeback moments in this first fall, both of which are started by Lucy Kayama. The first one doesn’t go very far, she just counters a running move by tripping her opponent from the side, but before she gets much going Yumi Ikeshita bursts in and she has a new villainous trick for today. She has a towel wrapped around her hand and is using it like brass knucks. I guess that would probably work if the towel was tort enough. Football hooligans used to do that with newspapers around their fists, it’s called the ‘Millwall Brick’. This is what gets Jackie involved for the first time, she doesn’t stand much of a chance against Yumi Ikeshita and her towel though. The second bigger comeback from Lucy comes from a heel mishap. She moves out of the way of Komine charging at her, who knocks Ikeshita off the apron instead and they both tumble to the floor. With a good sense of urgency, the babyfaces isolate Tenjin Masami, Tomi is tagged into the do a flurry of dropkicks and a giant swing which sets up Jackie doing a big splash (stealing Lucy Kayama’s move) and she wins them the 1st fall.

The first thing I want to comment on from the 2nd fall is that Tomi Aoyama hits such an excellent violent looking dropkick it gets an audible gasp from the crowd. She follows that up with this pretty dynamic vertical suplex where she’s never stood up straight at any point, she just kinda falls into it and her opponent goes over with her. No wonder Ikeshita felt the need to bring out the towel to stop her momentum. This time she’s just strangling her with it. She even manages to simultaneously fight off Jackie trying to intervene by kicking her away while still using her arms to continue strangling Tomi. What a… villain. As we go into the finishing stretch for this fall Jackie really looks like a hero throwing everyone around. Queen Angels look cool in a different way with their cool moves. Lucy Kayama does a couple of proto Tiger Driver like moves setting up Tomi Aoyama to get the win with the Queen Special splash for a 2-0 victory. Good match.

***

MD: Maybe I’m crazy for saying this but I think certain structural things are starting to come together with the style. If you look at the matches from a year prior (or even six months), there were more momentum shifts but they all had less meaning. Now there’s more in the way of hope spots before they build to a big comeback. The large majority of this match had the Black Army controlling even though they didn’t pick up either fall and it felt a little like an initiation for Masami and Komine. Komine was slicker; she has this high-speed, too close, askew cross body that is very nice, especially when Ikeshita added oomph with a whip. Masami was more of a bruiser. She just runs headlong into people. Ikeshita was a force of nature like usual, just chucking people over her head at will.

We lose a little of one comeback due to a clip but we get this more or less in full otherwise. At one point they use a towel as a weapon, first wrapped around their hands, and then later, around Tomi’s neck. Jackie comes off like the star she is when she’s in there but she does get beaten around a bunch too. The finish of the second fall has Lucy with this run-into-the-corner headstand splash. I probably would have liked to see the Army get one fall but they did take most of this and the Angels and Jackie do come off like a super team of sorts.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Queen Angels! Black Pair!

39. 1979.07.31 - 02 Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (WWWA Tag Team Titles) (2/3 Falls)

K: This to me is the first match in the canon of the Joshi Classics. It’d probably be the weakest of the collection strictly in terms of quality, there’s still a few stylistic creases that they’d yet to iron out, but it’s definitely great and it hits a specific tragic emotional resonance that would become AJW’s speciality in the years to come.

In the intros it’s made clear that Lucy Kayama is coming in with an injured knee, and with her opponents being the nastiest and more ruthless heels imaginable you know that’s a serious weakness. So it makes sense that Queen Angels would go on a frantic attack as soon as the bell starts to try and get the advantage as quickly as possible. Immediately there’s an energy and urgency to this that you rarely got in the regular TV matches. Black Pair’s titles being on the line and Lucy’s injury being a threat double up the stakes. It’s a little hard to follow sometimes with how fast they move, but it also definitely feels like you’re watching a rough and frantic fight between wrestlers desperate to win. Black Pair manage to take control when Mami storms across the ring to attack with her wrench, and once that happens you feel impending doom.

Black Pair just cheat, cheat and cheat. They have so many tricks up their sleeve you never know what they’re going to do next. We didn’t even see Mami Kumano’s trademark in this match because she was too busy pulling other stuff out. Like this is really simple one, but rather than accept a tag from Yumi Ikeshita who wasn’t quite close enough, she runs across the apron, gets in the ring at the middle point and then jumps Tomi from behind like she’s a Maccabi hooligan and drags her across the ring meanwhile Yumi jumps into her corner as if a legal tag just happened. The ref just gets forced to accept this a done deal. When Lucy’s in the ring though they’re even worse, it just turns into a sadistic torture session as they hang her off the side of the ring choking her and wrenching her injured leg. Lucy then gets her bandages torn off and stamped on as the crowd shrieks. They keep part of the bandage wrapped around her knee but use the bit they’ve pulled out to tie around her neck, so when they kick at her knee and it moves Lucy also gets choked by the bandage. Quite the imagination this evil pair.

Unfortunately AJW don’t seem to have figured out how a ‘hot tag’ is supposed to work until a few years later, because the drama is hurt a bit by Tomi then just being allowed to be tagged in rather than this being built more effectively. Not that Tomi’s comeback attempt isn’t really good though. She shows a lot of rage and fire, even that Yumi Ikeshita doesn’t seem very keen on fighting her, so she throws her into her tag corner, grabs Lucy and pulls Lucy back into the ring to fight her instead, hah. Tomi actually tries to grab Lucy to stop her from being brought back into the match but she’s too late. Yumi gives Lucy two 2nd rope flying headbutts to the injured knee and then pins her with a sick suplex bridge and, with exquisite timing, Mami Kumano runs across the ring to cut off Tomi from making the save just as the count is being made. Great fall.

In between falls, it’s clear that Lucy’s knee is too injured to continue so she is removed from the match. So Tomi needs to either forfeit, or continue trying to win the tag titles in a 1 vs. 2 situation. This is a booking trope that the Matsunagas seemed to like to throw out once a year or two, and although they weren’t good booker generally speaking I think this is one tool they had good judgement in knowing when you deploy for maximised effectiveness.

The 2nd fall starts, again, with Black Pair just jumping Tomi. She gets a shin across her throat on the mat as she’s getting her head stomped in. She just looks so helpless and sad as she puts up this futile fight. We get one last hope spot from her, she gets Irish Whipped and counters with her spectacular boomerang flying bodypress. She isn’t able to nail the leap properly though so she comes a bit short, which actually worked in the match narrative as she’d been taking a hell of a beating. She still just about hits it though. This leads into her going on a rampage with kicks, dropkicks and later some suplexes. This feels like the big comeback the match had been building to and the crowd are super hot now. It feels like such a punch to the gut when she presumably goes for her over-the-top-rope dive onto Yumi Ikeshita, only for Mami Kumano to intercept with a chairshot to the head. Even when they have a 2 vs. 1 advantage they still pull out weapons to put the babyface down. It’s so wrong. She gets nailed with the chair a couple more  times before Mami puts her away to get the 1, 2, 3 to win two straight falls.

This must have been upsetting for the live crowd. The bigger effect it had on me was how heroic Tomi Aoyama came across as. Both in the first fall when she was doing every possible to protect her partner from getting mauled and injured, and again in second fall when faced with impossible odds she pulled out a superhuman effort to try level the playing field. Maybe if she hit that last dive she could have pulled it off, but she wasn’t quite superhuman enough.

****1/4

MD: You can really feel the build on this one. It felt like a big deal. The Angels were challenging and in matching gear (Lucy in red and Tomi in blue). Kumano’s cut off leather jacket thing remains cool, just like her. Lucy was coming in with a taped up knee. The Angels started out hot; they were absolutely wrestling to win, with Tomi charging forth with dropkicks and Lucy hitting her short arm shots. They hit a double team inverted gutwrench facebuster too. It looked like they had a real shot at it but the Pair struck from behind and started doubleteaming. They were able to switch off and fight back a bit but it was for naught.

To cut the momentum off, they started on Lucy’s leg, undoing the tape and wrapping it around her throat. They absolutely demolished her, finishing it with a bridging backdrop driver for the first fall. She had to get stretchered out leaving things in a dire spot for Tomi. After a few minutes of eating a beating, she hit her leap-to-the-top-rope bounce back body press (albeit not cleanly) and started to fire back. It looked like she might have a shot but both of the Pair ended up on the floor and when she charged after them, she crashed right into a chair shot. From there it was downright tragic with them crushing her with a chair and draining the last bit of life from her with Mami’s dangling chokehold. This certainly ended on a down note but the Angels had Lucy’s knee as an out and Tomi certainly came off as valiant in fighting them both off. Really though, it was the Pair who looked like an unstoppable force in the end.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Tomi! Ripper! Kumano! Ikeshita!

34. 1979.06.XX - Jackie Sato, Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano, Monster Ripper & Yumi Ikeshita

K: They made pretty clear at the beginning that this is a prelude match to the double main event on 7/31, but even if they’re naturally not going to go all out here I still think they delivered a pretty good match here. The first fall wasn’t much, both teams brawls around the place without much of a structure to it and then it was pretty out of nowhere when Mami Kumano got the win with a torture rack, I think the announcer wasn’t even sure why the bell was ringing for a moment.

The second fall was a big improvement though. Comfortable being 1-0 up, Black Army now start playing a bit more conservatively grinding their opponents down. This is the environment where Yumi Ikeshita really shines as she has the biggest arsenal of offense of them and she can work holds for prolonged periods as well. The Jackie vs. Monster square off was also really good, the messiness of the 1st fall meant they’d waited until the 2nd for the crowd to really see this pairing, and in contrast to the rest of the match which was pretty frantic, if felt like they were milking every movement and building tension with their clash. Jackie would try to go for Monster’s back or find a way to take her down, but she never gets far as Black Pair would run in and cause her problems whenever she got herself on top for very long. There’s a particularly good moment when Jackie ends up on the floor with Ikeshita standing on her arm, Kumano is scrunching her face up and at the same time Monster Ripper is headbutting her in the belly! Well that’s a bit of a weird combination but I think sometimes just being weird is a good way of getting people’s attention.

Jackie tagging out isn’t a hot tag here. She’s able to get to the ropes and get a partner in but that doesn’t lead to some big momentum shift, they have to work harder to earn that. It finally comes when Tomi Aoyama gets Irish Whipped into the ropes by the corner where Monster Ripper is standing, but she leaps impressively high in the air to hit a big dropkick to the face that sends Monster flying off the apron into the crowd. It reminded me of that moment in 6/9/95 where Kawada gets Irish Whipped but just kicks Misawa off the apron in the process, except Tomi isn’t an asshole haha. Anyway that exciting spot worked really well to set up the comeback, not just because it was exciting, but it believably took Monster Ripper out of the match for a good while allowing the babyfaces to just beat Black Pair without the Monster turning their plans upside down. Ikeshita does try to stop Tomi from pinning Kumano to get the win but it doesn’t work as Jackie is freed up to pull her away.

The third fall is when that cool spot comes back to haunt them. The babyfaces do maintain their momentum at the start for a bit, but Monster Ripper is going for revenge and the harsh reality is they still haven’t come up with a way to stop her. Jackie Sato does lose her shit a bit here and jumps in trying to strangle heels with a towel, but she’s not able to beat them at their own dirty way. Before long, Monster hits her unstoppable top rope seated sentient move and big splash (with a vertical suplex in between) and we know this means game over.

Full of flaws typical of the era, it’s all a bit primitive and sometimes the action meanders, but this is still a well laid out match and leaves me wanting to see that 7/31 show.

***1/4

MD: This was a set up for the 7/31 show with Ripper vs Jackie and Black Pair defending against the Queen Angels. The heels had a declaration of their unified maliciousness read before the match. Tomi and Lucy both got their names shouted fondly by the crowd when announced but obviously Jackie got a much bigger roar. Three falls with the first very short. Chaos to begin, then come back, and things breaking down outside, ending with a Kumano torture rack quickly. Second fall had Ripper and the Pair press their advantage, including more tearing at Jackie’s face. The comeback was great though, with Tomi turning a whip into a massive dropkick onto Ripper to knock her off the apron. With her gone, the Angels were able to hit a couple of quick double teams, including this great reverse gutwrench finisher. There was some more teasing of Ripper and Jackie in here, including in the third fall, but it was generally academic, with the bad guys back at full strength and able to double team and cheat and press down. Finish had them crush Lucy (literally) with a vertical splash off the top by Ripper followed by the suplex/big splash combo. This was all good and did a good job heating up the 7/31 show, with a great comeback for the end of the second fall.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Ripper! Ikeshita!

29. 1979.04.XX2 - Jackie Sato & Lucy Kayama vs. Monster Ripper & Yumi Ikeshita

K: This feels like a match that didn’t have much thought put into it. Just stick two of the top babyfaces vs. two of the top heels in a tag match and have it end on a double count-out because the company is saving the decisive finishes involving these wrestlers for a better occasion. It’s still an enjoyable match though. For some reason Jackie is wearing an eye-patch. I would have liked it if it factored into the match somehow but the heels didn’t target it, which makes me think it’s just a legitimate eye-injury rather than an angle. Someone should show this match to Shinobu Kandori to see what she thinks about that.

They did work it well to make Monster appear to be the bigger threat. A good moment was when Monster had been knocked to the outside, Jackie went really wild relentlessly hitting Yumi with her biggest bombs, as if she was thinking that she needs to do as much damage as possible now as when Monster’s back up then the opportunity would have been missed. That 1st fall was the best part of the match. It felt like they kind of repeated themselves in the 2nd fall in a not very interesting way except with the heels pulling one back this time. The double countout was far from the worst I’ve ever seen, but I had already got a feeling before the 2nd fall had even ended that that was going to happen.

**1/4

MD: Pretty solid fifteen minute tag here. Ripper emerged from her rope with a mighty scream to set the scene. Jackie had an eyepatch. We don’t know why. She’s actually taller than Lucy which is weird since Lucy’s gimmick is that she’s “Mt. Lucy” but I guess that’s more something to do with her legs. Some fun heel communication bits early as they use Ripper’s size against her to Ikeshita’s dismay. Jackie definitely came off as a star again, just a level above the other babyfaces in how she can slug and stand tall and take stuff. She was also smoother with things like her short headscissors takeovers.

First fall ended with Jackie holding Ikeshita for the Queen Rocket by Kayama. Second fall had that same spot set up with Ripper eating it this time, but Ikeshita showed her mettle by smashing everyone with a chair and letting Ripper get back into it so she could suplex Lucy. Ripper seemed much more confident in there than she had previously and could just mow through her opponents and toss them about. Ikeshita had some great powerslams where you think she’s going to do a tombstone but she falls forward instead. Lucy makes a comeback here but it all breaks down and becomes a double countout, which weirdly we haven’t seen a ton of yet.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Mimi! Yokota! Hanawa!

26. 1979.03.XX2 Lucy Kayama & Mimi Hagiwara vs. Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa (Before April 6th as Lucy is tag champ)

K: I really like this match. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to people though, I like it for very ‘me’ reasons. I don’t even think it’s all that good. It’s certainly very flawed. But I’ve still watched it several times since the full version popped up on YouTube about a year ago (before the only available version was missing the first 8 minutes or so). It’s a rarity to see 4 very inexperienced wrestlers (they all have less than 2 years experience) being sent out to wrestle a long match like this, not to mention they’re doing it in a pretty unique style at the time so it’s not like they had many examples to be copying. They’re very much working this stuff out as they go along, and the end result is pretty entertaining stuff even if everyone (and the style itself) is a work in progress.

The match it built around two very long face-in-peril segments from Mimi Hagiwara. She’s the most junior of the wrestlers here (class of 1978, the other three are 1977 debutantes) so by default she’s gonna suffer most of the punishment, and so Young Pair are gonna be the de facto heels. Even this early on, it’s clear that Mimi’s strength is her babyface selling. The 1st of the two face-in-peril segments is the more interesting one. I particularly like this double team move they did where Rimi pushes Mimi’s neck onto the top rope, Seiko from the outside pulls her head down towards the floor and as she releases, Rimi pulls the top rope up in a spring motion to propel Mimi by the head back into the ring. It doesn’t quite work… I don’t remember anyone copying this later, but it’s an example of seeing them refining the style in real time, warts and all.

Something that worked better was the more basic ways of preventing Mimi from making a tag, and how these tactics ended up backfiring at the end of the first segment as Seiko distracting the referee didn’t actually do Rimi any favours as Mimi was able to reverse a leg-scissors hold into a Boston Crab before making her way over to get the elusive tag. Seiko would have been better off running in and causing Mimi a bit of grief before the referee intervened. It’s cool to see how engaging everyone is when they’re on the apron. They’re active participants of the match despite not being legal in how they reach out for potential tags, are ready to brawl on the outside if it comes to it and you’ll get the occasion run-in if their partner is in trouble. This dynamic gets paid off when later in both the Young Pair put the opponents in stereo submissions in the middle of the ring like it’s Tsuruta-Gun vs. Super Generation Army tag from the early 90s.

This may be an average quality match, but it’s an impressive achievement and a historically interesting watch.

**1/2

MD: Hanawa is going to fall out of the footage sooner than later, but this was a very, very good look at the Young Pair together. It’s a long (~25 minutes) one-fall tag team match up against two babyface wrestlers that weren’t in their usual tag pairs. After some early chaos, The Pair’s familiarity came into play as they took over on Hagiwara with quick switches and front facelocks, interspersed with other punishment like standing hairpulls. This is maybe the first time Hagiwara’s selling in the moment really stood out to me. I don’t know if it’s her acting background or what, but she was incredibly emotive and sympathetic. All the while, Kayama was doing everything she could to get in.

Eventually, she was able to make it in and that slight height advantage had her tossing the Pair around. Hagiwara got her share of revenge too but was soon dragged down into a second heat segment where they really tore her leg apart. Lots of good submissions here and leg whips. Laser-sharp focus from the Young Pair. Hagiwara eventually mounted a comeback where she dropped the leg selling entirely (oh well), leading to more of Kayama crushing her opponents, including with a straight out tiger driver, before Hagiwara wipes out on an unfortunate body press into the ring. There’s a great bit towards the end here as the Pair put on simultaneous figure-fours on their opponents and it feels almost like one of those FTR bits where they’re trying to hold hands while both are in a hold. The finish was just Hagiwara getting swept under from the cumulative damage. There is almost a 90s AJPW feel to the finishing stretch where the Pair really have to neutralize Kayama as well or else they’ll never be able to score a pin. The dropped leg selling was frustrating but not surprising. Overall, this was a great look at the Young Pair as a unit and Hagiwara’s (short-term) selling in general.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Lucy!

24. 1979.03.XX1 - 01 Lucy Kayama vs. Monster Ripper

K: This was essentially a squash match, but you don’t get much more effective than this. I’m not sure how much this is due to them making some subtle improvements to Monster Ripper’s formula, Lucy putting in more effort, or the crowd being hotter than usual. Well actually it’s probably a combination of all three. I did particularly enjoy Lucy getting her own song chanted by some young women in the crowd who were very enthusiastic about her despite Lucy getting totally destroyed the entire match at that point. I also enjoyed Monster Ripper being announced as the WWWWA (4 Ws) North American Champion, a title I have no knowledge of ever existing outside of this match. She’s even wearing the belt!

This one has clearly been edited at a few points, which is a shame as one of the cuts felt like things were getting more heated but then suddenly the crowd noise drops substantially and Lucy was up on her feet despite being on the floor after having just been gorilla pressed 1 second before. Lucy sells it all pretty well and comes across like she’s fighting hard to find some kind of opening, I liked her previous match with Monster but she’s definitely giving a more engaging performance here. She has a similar gameplan to what Nancy was doing in her match with Monster where she seems to be going for a takedown, but Lucy is far more frenetic about it. She’s just throwing her head into Monster’s gut even. She goes for a flying crosschop but Monster just no sells it, which gets a mix of a gasp and laugh from the crowd. Either way it was an effective spot. A bit later we also get Lucy trying to do the AJW style Judo throw, where it’s serves the same function as a snapmare except it’s done via the arm, but of course it doesn’t move Monster an inch. Lucy has this kinda panicked expression on her face as she keeps trying lamenting that this staple move won’t work.

Lucy’s comeback comes when Monster goes for that same top rope seated senton that won her the Nancy match, so if she hits it we’re pretty sure that means 1 2 3, but Lucy dodges it just in time, and then Tomi Aoyama runs in and they do a double dropkick to take Monster down.

I didn’t like the babyface tag partner interference spots in the previous matches. I thought this one was fine though. Firstly, unlike the previous matches, Monster had been blatantly cheating multiple times without any repercussions. She’d been biting Lucy’s foot while working over her leg, and the commentary eagerly pointed out that she was using an illegal chokehold on multiple occasions, one time when she had Lucy in a backbreaker. So Tomi running in felt like she was just evening the scales a bit. Secondly, Tomi didn’t overdo it like I think the previous examples did. She just run in, hit a dropkick, and then got out.

Lucy’s comeback is really wild and ferocious. It really puts over that if she’s going to capitalise on this opening she really just needs to hit Monster with everything she’s got without any hesitation. We get a cool vertical suplex (very impressive considering the size difference), a top rope crossbody to the outside after Monster tries to roll out the ring to escape (the first time she does anything signalling she’s in some sort of trouble). After this Lucy just rams Monster’s head repeatedly into the ringpost and busts her open. The highlight is when she goes for the dive through the ropes Tomi holds Monster in place, but Monster just catches her and slams her on the floor! She then seems to grab Tomi by the neck and extracts some revenge, but the camera moves to watch Lucy grimacing on the floor so we don’t see what happened to Tomi…

We then get the finish of an angry bloodied up Monster just tearing Lucy after and before long submits her with a backbreaker. Awesome finish and made her look more fearsome than ever. This was really good and especially effective when the stipulation of the match was that if Monster wins, she gets to challenge Jackie Sato for the WWWA Singles Title.

***1/4

MD: This was a pretty awesome piece of business, actually, the logical conclusion to Ripper vs single members of pairs. If she won this match, she would earn herself a title match against Sato. She started out by dominating like usual, including dropping her leg upon Lucy’s repeatedly. Lucy would get in hope spots, but would just bounce right off of Ripper or be unable to move her, even if she broke free to try to for an armdrag, for instance.

Ripper went for the top rope vertical splash too early though and Lucy moved which let her get some offense in. She went so far as to hit a top rope body press to the floor and a chairshot that opened Ripper up, but when she went for the Queen Rocket plancha through the ropes, Ripper outright caught her and destroyed her on the outside. Great, shocking visual since that was such a protected and built up move. With Tomi’s help, Lucy beat the count, but ended up destroyed with suplexes and a nasty torture rack that ended it. Another very strong visual here as Ripper’s face was half bloody. Just a great way to build her for Jackie.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Charito! Kumano! Marina! Lucy! Maki! Tomi!

19. 1979.01.XX3 - 01 Charito Silver, Mami Kumano & Marina Figueroa vs. Lucy Kayama, Maki Ueda & Tomi Aoyama (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62xZh3Dq-DY&ab_channel=kadaveri)

K: The first few minutes of this were incredibly one-sided. We had Lucy in the ring for a minute or so and the closest thing she did to displaying any agency was reaching out to tag in Tomi, who then just got beat up by the heels, who were making lots of quick tags. I guess if it was trying to achieve anything it made Maki Ueda look better than them as when she was tagged in she was able to actually fight back. Marina Figueroa has a very weird but cool-looking standing splash. It looked a bit like Rob Van Dam’s Five Star except if it was done just standing in the ring. After dominating almost all of the fall, the heels lose control of things and the Queen Angels duo get to hit some offense. There’s a wild transition where Mami Kumano tries to hit Tomi Aoyama with a powerbomb, but Tomi just twists sideways out of it, lands of her feet and hits a snap dropkick. It’s the kind of thing you’d think a current day wrestler would copy if any of them watched this stuff. The running Queen Special is a cool tag team move. And then Maki Ueda hits the Beauty Special, a Romero Special (they sure do love their Special moves eh) and then gets the pin with a vertical suplex, which written down looks kinda funny but it worked. I think this would have been better though if the babyfaces weren’t so totally dominated, or if you’re gonna do that then let the heels take the 1st fall.

The 2nd fall is really different. The heels are pissed that they dropped that 1st fall and get way more vicious, right from the start people are being choked with nunchucks and there’s a wrench being passed around as a weapon. They chaos gets a bit hard to follow at times so it’s hard to single any wrestler/moments out or describe what I feel they were going for, if anything. Queen Angels have had their stats boosted anyway as they’re now fighting with the heels pretty evenly. Tomi & Mami have a punch-out on the outside which was pretty fun and mean-looking. Amidst all this chaos there’s a countout, but Lucy’s the only one in the ring so she gets her hand raised and… oh wow the babyface team won 2 straight falls. Quite the result considering how this started out. This was an entertaining match with some cool little moments but the structure didn’t make the most of things. 

**3/4

MD: Similar to the last match in the team make-ups in some ways. This time we just have Figueroa in for Ikeshita and both Queen Angels in with one of the Beauty Pair. I think the Golden Pair were on commentary. They’re showing the crowd a bit more and I wonder if the make-up of these crowds are shifting a bit, younger, more female? I can’t tell for sure though. There are also a lot of tight camera angles which was funniest at the middle of the first fall when Kumano comes in from off screen with a chair. The fall itself was solid with very focused Black Army control in the corner, the Mexican contingent working like a well oiled machine and Kumano just stomping on throats and asserting herself (including with her driving meteora). They cycled through the babyfaces with hope spots but got cut off until the end when they finally had an advantage but Kumano came over and crushed them all with steel. On the reset, Kumano was crushing Tomi with power bombs until she somehow flipped to her feet in a way I’m not sure i’ve ever seen and the babyfaces rode that momentum to eventual victory after some Queen Angels double teams and a Maki suplex. 

For the second falls, Kumano almost immediately dragged Maki around the ring throat first with a wrench and then the Army went into using the object at will as the ref tried to hold the babyfaces back like they were tecnicos. That meant that Kumano could do her dangling chokehold (weapon assisted this time) at will and, before long, some glorious chaos, including Maki getting tossed into the announcer’s desk and Kumano dragging people around the arena. Tomi mounted a comeback once they made it back to the ring but got dragged down quickly, with Silver and Figueroa just solidly teaming up to clubber her. Maki came in with a victory roll out of nowhere though and everything built to the Queen Angels hitting successive Queen Rocket planchas, some satisfying revenge shots into tables, and the heels getting counted out. I probably preferred the previous trios since it was a little more focused and contained but there was still a lot to like here.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Lucy! Maki!

16. 1979.01.XX2 - 04 Lucy Kayama vs. Maki Ueda

K: I did enjoy this, but it’s not a great sign that after watching this 20 minute match I don’t feel like I have that much to say about it. The match was mostly holds and targeting limbs, but there was a slight lack of urgency about the whole thing that kept it from being an overall good match for me. Lucy was able to take the advantage pretty early on, which is a bit surprising when she’s very much the underdog in this match as she has less than half the experience Maki does. Lucy’s work on top was mostly attacking Maki’s arm, but it doesn’t really lead to anything as Maki has enough of that after a few minutes and takes over, and she switches to attacking Lucy’s leg. I did enjoy when Lucy tried to escape one of Maki's holds and almost succeeded until Maki grabbed her by the ankle, leaving Lucy hopping on one foot trying to get away. It was slightly comical without being too ridiculous. This is probably the best segment of the match. It’s unfortunate that this also doesn’t end up leading to anything as Lucy just gets back on offense and the match just resets. We go to the time-limit draw soon after but it didn’t feel like either of them particularly wanted to win anyway. Again this was enjoyable, but it could have been so much better by just linking things up and putting a bit more conviction into trying to get the win.

**3/4

MD: A twenty minute draw, this might be the most complete singles match we’ve seen so far. It was hold based, certainly full of action, but everything still had room to breathe. There were momentum shifts but they never felt capricious or meaningless. Maki charged in early to get the immediate advantage but things went even with a test of strength and Lucy took over with her short elbow smashes, followed by a rolling guillotine (and subsequent roll back DDT). She shifted to the arm and they worked holds accordingly until Maki was able to stand up out of an arm puller and take over. She did some stuff out of a body scissors (including the lifting butt slams and rolling with it) before taking over onto the leg after Lucy came back in. Lots of legwork here which was dropped right when Lucy took back over, hitting a double arm backbreaker and atomic drop specifically using her legs. I need to just learn to be ok with it but it feels like an almost personal shot when the comeback offense involves the limb that’s just been damaged. That feels degrees worse than just dropping it. They’re all young but there should be an instinct away from that specific impulse. It was made worse because Lucy’s selling on the outside had been so good. Things break down into a pretty hot back-and-forth finishing stretch with the two of them spilling back outside and Maki finally getting on a tapatia as the bell rings. I’ve got my nitpicks but overall this would have stood up well against a lot of similar twenty minute draws elsewhere in the world at the time.   

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Kayama!

12. 1979.01.XX1 - 02 Lucy Kayama vs. Monster Ripper

K: They get over the psychology of this match at the start by having Monster act like a clumsy oaf just throwing herself at Lucy, missing the first couple of times as Lucy was able to move out of the way or use her skills to turn Monster’s momentum into a throw. Monster quickly takes over after this, showing that her power is too much for Lucy’s superior speed & technical skills, or at least what she’s shown. Monster’s impressive physical charisma makes this pretty basic layout work a lot better than what most people would be able to do with it.

I did pop a bit when a few minutes in, commentator Shiono notes that one ‘Tenjin Masami’ is at ringside watching. I almost didn’t recognise her as she has a plaster entirely covering one eye.

Lucy gets a bit of hope back when she locks in a figure four, more interestingly after Monster gets out of it, she then does a strange move where she holds Lucy’s legs apart, and then does like a jumping leg drop but coming down on each of Lucy’s legs like she’s forcing her to do the splits. The closest thing Lucy gets to any kind of sustained offense is when she gets helped out by Tomi Aoyama. At one point they do a double vertical suplex, Tomi holds Monster down and Lucy does the move I know as a Vader Bomb, but the commentator calls the Queen Angels Special!

This was an effective enough squash, both getting over that Monster is just too powerful for Lucy to be a match for her, but she’s not quite invincible.

**

MD: Ripper had tons of presence right from the get go. As she was announced she made herself as big as possible and screamed and you could practically see the power radiate off of her. Early on she had a clear advantage. Her offense for the most part consisted of taking the head and tossing it down. That could be with a front facelock or a hairgrab or a choke but she just drove Kayama down. Kayama would try to pry off an arm or a leg but she had very little luck until she finally got a single leg and locked in a figure four. For her trouble, Ripper bit the knee, clobbered the knee, and finally just pried the pressuring leg off with her strength. Oh and she started working on Kayama’s knee for revenge. This lasted until Kayama was able to get her up and over the top while she was being worked over in the corner. She followed it up with a huge dive to the floor giving everything a fairly iconic feel and then, just to take it over the top, her Queen Angels partner Tomi Aoyama came in to double team Ripper. They got her up and over for a suplex but the second Tomi left, Ripper took back over, including choking Kayama with tape. From there she started hitting bombs, including a great spinning torture rack and a deep delayed double underhook superplex. For a bit, Kayama was able to bridge her way out to get big pops but Ripper squashed her with a big splash to end it. Early on the commentators noted that Kayama had to use all of her “three-dimensional killing techniques” like the Queen Special but she probably needed some five-dimensional ones to really have a chance against Ripper. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: New Footage Wednesday? Beauty Pair vs Queen Angels!

1978.12.XX - Jackie Sato & Maki Ueda vs. Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama (WWWA Tag Team Titles)

K: Queen Angels are the defending champions here. To call this "action-packed" would be an understatement. The match begins virtually immediately with Tomi throwing Jackie straight out of the ring and then beating her up on the outside as the crowd screams their heads off. If the purpose was to establish that although this may be a babyface vs. babyface match, they're not any less determined to crush their opponents, well that opening certainly achieved that. It fits with the pace they're going at each other that the 1st fall is over pretty quickly (I didn't detect any clipping anyway). A difference in this era to now is that the referee doesn't stop a pinfall count just because someone TRIES to break it up, as happened here, you need to actually break it up.

The 2nd fall opens with Beauty Pair trying to keep Lucy in their corner for a bit. When Jackie tags out, Lucy takes the chance to escape and just gets out of the ring and legs it into the crowd. Maki is like 'oh no you don't, come back you here you little shit' and charges after her into the crowd and a brawl starts. I thought that was a cool way to get Lucy out of trouble, even if she didn't come out of it looking that good, but this is corrected somewhat by her taking control of Maki once they're back in the ring with some nice moves. This little period is about a close to a cooldown as we've got so far, but then Lucy tags in Tomi, who then hits Maki with a holy shit level Giant Swing. The speed of it was up there with Kyoko Inoue's version.

The description I'd heard of Beauty Pair is that Maki was usually the big seller and Jackie the hot tag, but it didn't really seem that way from the footage. This match however does very much fit that description and this is the first time I've watched it, so maybe it's more the footage I'd seen till now was unrepresentative. When Jackie manages to tag in things really fire up again. We get a cool little sequence where Jackie bodyslams Lucy and holds her down as Maki is getting to the top turnbuckle to do a frogsplash on here. But then, with perfect timing, Tomi hits Jackie with a dropkick that sends her flying over the top rope to the outside (2nd time Tomi's done that to Jackie), and with Lucy no longer being held down, she's able to move out of the way of Maki's frogsplash just in time. The timing to by all involved to pull that off without any hesitations/making it looking pre-planned was excellent. That this is also the transition that leads directly to the finish of the 2nd fall is a good choice.

To the 3rd fall now. Very early on and we get another moment I liked a lot. Jackie does a snapmare variant on Tomi, it works the 1st time, and then she goes for it again but this time Tomi rotates through landing on her feet and attempts a go-behind, but Jackie blocks it with a guillotine, but then Tomi counters that with a bear hug! Just something I don’t remember seeing before and was an interesting/believable bit of jockeying for position. I won’t go to play-by-play for the rest but this Jackie vs. Tomi section was one my personal highlights in that they switch to grappling and reversing basic holds in pretty interesting ways, it serves to cool things down for when the more spectacular spots are coming but it’s still engaging in its own right.

Things get way too hectic towards the end now for me to go into much detail without play-by-playing everything. The important bits are the dynamic between Jackie and Tomi gets more heated, at one point Jackie gets pissed at Tomi breaking up a pinfall and just drags her to the outside and lays a beatdown on her over the announcers desk. She gets her comeuppance a bit later though when, for the 3rd time of the match, she gets thrown over the top rope to the outside, by Lucy this time, and then Tomi follows it up with an Undertaker style dive OVER THE TOP ROPE straight onto her. It was pretty astonishing to watch that in a match from 1978, when it’s very rare now for women to do dives over the top rather than between the ropes. And not even a rotated one either, just straight up and over. What’s also cool is they make it matter, because that’s the finish. Jackie is so hurt from the over the top rope dive that she cannot get up to return to the ring. Queen Angels retain the titles.

This was a blast. I might rate it higher if the awful video quality wasn’t lessening my enjoyment somewhat. But it is what it is.

***3/4

MD: You have to love that this pops up just when we’re only a match or two off from when we would have covered this organically. Because we’ve been match to match and covering every full encounter we could find, when something like this pops up, which really does feel like a special match, there’s a decent amount of familiarity to it for me. That’s a lot of the point in this sort of immersion. It’s almost like immersing yourself in the language. You just get a better sense of the norms and can appreciate something like this more.

It was face vs face, but absolutely non-stop competition. The stakes felt huge. Passions were inflamed. The Queen Angels ambushed right from the get go and then, with Jackie out of the way, controlled on Maki until Jackie could recover enough to roll in and throw a dropkick. They got quick revenge and Jackie ended it with a downright sick looking reverse suplex (1978 vintage) on Lucy. The second fall was just as brisk and impactful as the first. Things spilled to the outside early and that’s where the Queen Angels seemed to have their best advantage. They were able to take over for a bit but the Beauty Pair had what felt like an unlikely comeback (including Jackie just mowing people down with big kicks), at least until they ran a great spot where the Pair had Lucy set up for a top rope splash only for Tomi to come flying in from off the screen with a dropkick sending Jackie into the ropes and causing Maki to faceplant. Just perfect chaos to end the fall (shortly thereafter with a Lucy gutwrench).

The third fall started with the spot mentioned above and I loved it as well; just a great sense of struggle. Nothing was easy. Everything was worked for. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty but there was a never-ending sense of scrappiness in this one, while still having just enough form to be coherent. Tomi locked in an modified Romero Special early and Maki snapped on a nicer one later. A giant swing in the second fall was followed up by an airplane spin in the third, etc. The Angels’ Queen Rocket plancha was built up early by the commentary and it really did feel like Kidman’s Shooting Star Press or Muta’s (1989) Moonsault, just the thing everyone wanted to see all the time, as if you wouldn’t go home satisfied if you didn’t see it. That sense of anticipation was paid off as they hit it and won by countout. I’m not saying this felt like a dream match but it definitely felt like a big deal, like two top teams facing off for the biggest prize and then having a match that lived up to that level of expectation.

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