80s Joshi on Wednesday: Kumano! Ito! Jaguar! Noriyo!

Disc 2 

11. Hiroe Ito & Mami Kumano vs. Jaguar Yokota & Noriyo Tateno 8/81

K: Black Pair and Jumping Bomb Angels are Joshi tag teams from totally different eras, so the biggest novelty of this match is that their careers overlapped just enough to see one of each team against each other. By 'just enough' I mean this is Noriyo Tateno's TV debut and, from the footage we have available, the last in-ring appearance of Mami Kumano. Noriyo is part of the class of 1981, and early in her career gets pushed as an understudy of Jaguar Yokota (or to be more blunt about it,  punching bag/pin-eater in tag matches).

It's also the first time that Jaguar Yokota is now 'Jaguar' rather than Rimi. So I can stop worrying about accidentally calling her Jaguar in these reviews. The other wrestler here is Hiroe Ito. She's in Black Gundan faction, part of the class of 1980 and will later get the ring name 'Wild Kazuki', and pretty soon after that will be put in a mask to wrestle as 'Tarantula'.

The start is kinda funny as Mami squares up to Jaguar, making you think she's actually gonna wrestle her, but then just charges at poor Noriyo on the apron and drags her in to beat her up. Signalling from the start that the heel gameplan here is to target Noriyo and act like Jaguar isn't even there. The beatdown is very vicious and very loud. Kumano and Ito are both big screamers but in slightly different ways (yes I'm gonna analyse Joshi screams). Kumano comes across more out of control maniac in her screaming, whereas Ito feels more like she's just really exerting herself trying really hard to hurt her opponents, and her scream isn't a high-pitched so it's not so grating on the ears.

The hierarchy and dynamic is pretty clear here. Jaguar is way better than everyone else, she's almost able to fight both the heels on her own if she can keep things in the ring. But it doesn't play out like that. She's either being thrown to the outside so the heels can target Noriyo, or we get some crazy fighting on the outside where Mami Kumano in particular is causing mayhem. It's kinda funny how unpredictable she is, even stuff that isn't technically impressive like how she just kept kicking at Jaguar on the other side of the announce table while standing on it. You'd think after the first couple she'd done enough but she wouldn't stop. She's just all instinct. Noriyo took a funny bump into the chairs, knocking over a bystander in the process.

They gave Noriyo a little bit of shine when Jaguar got control of things in the ring and actually tagged her in to help out. Noriyo did a few single-legged dropkicks which didn't look that good, but I guess they didn't really need to. Jaguar was getting pretty big reactions earlier on with her hip attacks. Big relative to the time period, despite the reputation of "80s Joshi", 1981 AJW crowds really aren't that loud at all.

Noriyo is left in the ring a little too long though, so we get the predictable result. In some classic early AJW they cut away to brawling on the floor during a pinfall so we don't actually see the 3 count. I don't understand how that happens on a taped show. Good match though. The kind of 10 minute tv tag that achieves everything it set out to do.

***

MD: Our last look at Mami Kumano and her cool leather jacket with one arm cut off. Our first look at Noriyo Tateno. Ships in the night. It’s not like I’ve never seen a Jumping Bomb Angels match. And I had vague working knowledge of Masami and Yokota coming into this. I certainly have a good sense of Chigusa and Dump and all that’s coming, but I did come into this footage a lot blinder than you might think. I’d probably never seen a full Jackie Sato match, or Mimi Hagiwara or Nancy Kumi or the Queen Angels. I certainly hadn’t seen the Black Pair. I have now seen more of them than any other joshi, quite probably, as we’ve gone through years of footage comprehensively. So it’s been a bit of a hit to my weekly watching to lose Tomi or Jackie and now we’re losing Mami Kumano who I’ve probably connected to as much as anyone in this footage. One last romp on the way out though.

The commentary tells us that Tateno had done the high jump and was good at swimming, so important stuff here as always. Anyway, after a failed attempt for handshakes by Yokota and Tateno, Kumani ambushed them and took right over. Ito stood out early, dragging Tateno’s eyes across the mat and jamming her elbow right in it. Good, vicious stuff. She jammed a suplex later and draped a knee right over Tateno’s throat, so she had gotten the correct Black Army tutelage. All that and a stomach claw, including in the tree of woe too. Kumano likewise did her usual stuff, including ramming Tateno into the post from the apron, which everyone at ringside took very seriously. She went for a cavernaria just by yanking Tateno’s hair too but that was broken up by Yokota quickly. And yes, we got to see her do her dangling Brody King style choke at least one last time too. The last big thing she did was stand on the commentary table and cause chaos while the commentator’s voice rose in pitch accordingly. Hot tag came after some heel miscommunication but the finish was Ito reversing a whip causing Yokota to hit a body press on Tateno. A fun changing of the guard of sorts in a way. Mami Kumano will be missed. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Mimi! Rimi! Kai! Kumano! Ikeshita!

Disc 2 

3. Jackie Sato, Mimi Hagiwara & Rimi Yokota vs. Leilani Kai, Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita 1/4/81

K: AJW traditionally do a good Korakuen show on or around January 4th where you’re almost guaranteed to get a quality main event even if they’re not almost the most consequential. This match is such a good example of what these shows were going for. Here we have probably the top 3 babyfaces in a company going up against the top 2 heels and one of the currently residing foreigners (who almost always align with heels) in a ⅔ falls match, which the main event tag matches usually were. 

Another note, Rimi Yokota vacated the Junior Title before this show to focus on challenging for the WWWA Singles Title (and I guess, outside of kayfabe, no one at the junior level was ever going to beat her for it). Before this match Tomoko Kitamura (later Lioness Asuka) defeated the obscure Noriko Kawakami to win the vacated title.

The heels are in control for an unusually long time to start off with here, especially since it’s Jackie Sato who they’re dominating first. I thought it was cool how Leilani Kai would have a lot of choking-centred offense, and when Yumi Ikeshita came in, she continued on that theme by switching up her offense to target the throat. For example she just stands on Sato’s neck disdainfully, and a bit later she changes her “plant opponent’s face onto sticking up toes” move so that she plants Jackie’s throat on it instead. When Rimi is able to tag in, there is no hot tag, as she just gets dominated as well. The comeback actually comes from Mimi Hagiwara, whose new gimmick is that she’s taken up boxing training and is now a fearsome striker. It’s a bit ridiculous when you describe it when she has such spaghetti arms, but I think it works at neutering a weakness by insisting in kayfabe actually Mimi is strong and punches really hard. The conviction she puts behind those haymakers and that they actually work in taking down Kai and getting the comeback going after everything else had fails puts her punches over as legit. You can make all kinds of things work in wrestling if you commit to them. They even come back to this in the 2nd fall, when Mimi clenches a fist at Kai and that’s enough to get Kai to back off into her corner.

The 2nd fall has a fantastic final few minutes where Jackie manages to tie up Leilani Kai and Mami Kumano in the ropes and so they can’t help their partner. Then we get ‘Flew Too Close To The Sun’ sequence where Yumi Ikeshita just gets battered with one move after another by Jackie & Rimi making quick tags in and out, before she gets pinned with a very spectacular move where Rimi runs at the corner pad and kinda dropkicks it to spin around into a running splash but with extra oompf. Great stuff.

In the 3rd fall all the tension and violence we’d seen building up in the first 2 just explodes. They’re quickly on the outside brawling and just punching each other hard like rival football hooligans. A chair gets introduced to Yokota’s neck. There is an unfortunate bit after this where Mimi Hagiwara’s in the ring with Leilani Kai and goes for a few poorly executed takedowns which hurt the previously ferocious momentum a bit, but Rimi rushes into to rectify that. We get a more measured cooldown when the heels take over on Mimi and get a measure of revenge when they trap her in the ropes and drop her throat first into it. This lasts just about enough for the crowd to get their energy back because before you know it all hell breaks loose, they’re all running into the ring and brawling and Jackie Sato & Yumi Ikeshita look like they’re damn trying to murder each other choking over out on the floor. The match fall gets thrown out and the match is called a draw.

Great match. Exciting all the way through, we got memorable interactions in a bunch of pairings and Mimi Hagiwara’s boxing deal is getting over (she’d done it before this but this is the first time you’ll see it on this set). They achieved all that without giving anything away, not even a real finish.

****

MD: On the one hand this devolved into chaos and got thrown out. On the other, some of the checkpoints along the way felt almost evolutionary as we move into 1981. Moving into 1981, I am acutely aware that we’re on borrowed time with some of these wrestlers. We’ll lose Kumano and (for the most part) Jackie, of course, by the end of the year. So I guess we appreciate what we have while we have it. 

Kai seems like she’d come along in the year or so since we’ve seen her. Still a lot of choking and Moolah-ism but more presence and confidence. The start was clever as she went to the floor to call out Jackie only to set up a distraction so the Black Pair could nail her from behind. They controlled from there on Jackie then Yokota (whose frame makes her a great FIP) and then Mimi. But apparently Mimi had developed as well because she had gloves on her hands and was now a great puncher apparently. She ducked a Kai shot and laid in a bunch of blows to turn things around. That let them do a big corner spot where Jackie and Mimi held all three of the heels so Yokota could come flying at them repeatedly. Ikeshita took back over with a nasty headbutt though and they dismantled Mimi with missile dropkicks, Ikeshita’s fall away slam, release bombs from Kumano, and then a big suplex by Kai to win the first fall.

Jackie asserted herself right at the start of the second fall, but the heels took back over, including with an Ikeshita seated senton out of nowhere. The babyfaces turned it around with one of the best things I’ve seen out of all of the footage so far. Kai and Kumano came over to menace Jackie on the apron but she and Mimi were able to get their heads tied up in between the ropes, allowing the babyfaces to switch around and completely demolish Ikeshita finishing with Yokota pressing back off the top turnbuckle with a ricocheting splash. The third fall had some spirited stuff on the outside, including a chair getting stuffed down upon Yokota by Kai’s partner (maybe Wendi Richter in overalls?), but it devolved into chaos and got thrown out. This built to some great moments and, like most of the 80s matches was a little more even than the 70s beatdowns so felt more complete. It was a good way to start the year. 

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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! 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: Kumano! Ikeshita!

76. 1979.12.11 - 01 Mami Kumano vs. Yumi Ikeshita

K: For the 2nd time this year, the two biggest heels in the company are squaring off in a singles match. This time Mami Kumano is the aggressor right from the start, running at Ikeshita taking swings at her head. Looking really keen for a big fight. Ikeshita backs off and leaves the ring. You could read it as her being a bit taken aback by how ferociously Kumano was coming at her, or maybe she was just being composed and frustrating Kumano's attempt to jump her.

There's a clip early on which does break up following narrative a bit, but it appears that whatever Ikeshita was trying didn't work, as Kumano is right at on the outside and is actually taking it to her really well, considering Ikeshita is the senior here (remember Kumano wasn't even in the original Black Pair). 

This is very clipped down so I can only cover this broadly but I think we saw enough to get flavour of what went down. Kumano continues to have the upper hand on Ikeshita, it would be one hell of a heel beatdown if Ikeshita somehow never comes across as sympathetic even if when I describe things it might sound like it's setting up a babyface comeback. We do get that comeback, but it feels more like revenge. She throws Kumano off the top rope and hits some good moves, to which Kumano retaliates by getting handed The Wrench and blasts Ikeshita in the head with it and doesn't even attempt to hide it from the referee. 

The referee however does feel the need to intervene when Ikeshita brings in a massive metal suitcase and starts clobbering Kumano with it. Not that that does much good, she just floors him with it before continuing to grind Kumano into dust like an angry maniac. The ref calls for the DQ  and that's the end of that. We only saw about 5 minutes and that was enough to see these are two meanass girls who wanna win fights by any means necessary. No sentiment between tag partners at all.

MD: I thought this was great for the five minutes, super clipped, that we have it. I wish we had the whole thing. I wonder if Kumano and Ikeshita talked about the fact that Kumano’s entrance jacket only had one arm and if Kumano tried to convince Ikeshita to have the opposite arm cut off? No? Kumano had a weird splash of color in her hair. Ok, enough about that.

What I loved here was the familiarity and the fact that when these two were in with one another, they’d push each other just a little bit more. Or at least that’s the sense I got. There was a transition where Ikeshita pushed off the turnbuckles and flipped to her feet out of a belly to back position. And later when Kumano tried the seated senton off the top, Ikeshita broke it up in a way I hadn’t quite seen before in the footage. 

After Ikeshita finally did take over, Kumano went for a small jagged object (Kad says a wrench). It was a bit jarring since it felt like a line was crossed between teammates. Ikeshita was able to avoid it and get her down but when she went for the pin, Ikeshita jabbed up at her. Again, striking stuff. Ikeshita came back with the dreaded metal box and caused havoc to the point the ref had to call it. Glorious chaos for the time we had. They went so hard against each other.

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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: Tomi! Kumano!

71. 1979.11.XX1 - 02 Mami Kumano vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: They do something pretty effective right at the start here which sets the tone that tempers are gonna flare for this one. Before the bell starts, they both square up looking like they want to bite each others head off, and then Mami quickly snatches at Tomi’s hair, and the crowd does an audible ‘wooah’. Spices things up nicely.

This then plays out as a match which has turned into a fight but it never really turns into an all out brawl either. Tomi’s superior technique is established early on when she counters a snapmare by kicking out upwards, knocking Mami off her feet (steal this…) and follows up with her single-legged dropkick. I think the reason no one does that anymore is it looks like an injury risk to the person doing it, so I’m less keen on demanding someone steal it. Still looks cool and unique though. Mami throws things out to the outside a couple of times and a bunch of chairs get knocked over, but it feels like she still wants to get the win rather than just beat Tomi up. The match having some stakes in that it’s setting up a match with Jackie Sato later down the line might enlighten us a bit as to why. Doesn’t stop her smashing an apple over Tomi’s head though.

I gasped when she pulled out the scissors from her top and stabbed Tomi in the head with it. Hardly the most violent scissor stabbing in AJW history, but I’ve been trained to shudder whenever I see scissors in a Joshi match. This has been a really good performance from Mami. I was going to say this that we’ve mainly only see her in tags, but I went and checked and this is actually only the 2nd Mami Kumano singles match we’ve covered (and the previous one was vs. Yumi Ikeshita, so this is the first time we’ve seen her in singles vs. a babyface). Being in singles requires her to fill up more time without using her signature spots and she’s doing that better than most here (certainly preferable to most of those Americans). She topped off the hie the weapon section by having Tomi snatch it out of her hand and use it against her, or at least try to, as the moment that started happening she reacted like a massive coward and fled the ring to Tomi’s totally justified attempt at vengeance and I enjoyed this a lot.

Tomi’s Giant Swing to end things was very impressive. Good stuff all around, but nothing remarkable and it felt like it ended before the peak.

***

MD: Oh hey, AJW is doing their own “World Challenger Determination Tournament” here. Winner gets to face Jackie. And this was really good. Just a great look at Mami and felt years before its time (not surprising with these two). They go all action right at the start but Mami gets Tomi on the apron (figured the choke was coming but..) and then smashes head into the post. On the floor she beats her with an apple (!) completely shattering it over her head, and then it’s back in the ring and time to play hide the object. The commentators call it “metallic madness” since they’re not sure what it is at first, but it is, in fact, a small pair of scissors.

There’s no color here but it’s really a brutal attack. Mami hides it pretty well in her gear and then just comes at Tomi’s skull again and again and again. At one point, Tomi tries to get it but Mami just bites her and keeps going. From there she does some flip bombs. Everything she does is devastating. Tomi’s comeback is great as she bites back and gets the scissors but things devolve pretty heavily from there. They kept trying to pin each other but the other would refuse to put shoulders down for even 1. 

It went back outside and Tomi got an abdominal stretch on, which pushed Mami over the edge. Once they made it back into the ring, she started using a chair, including on the ref. He didn’t DQ her though, and Tomi instead was able to turn things around and hit as long and fast a giant swing as we’ve seen in this 70s footage to put her away. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

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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: Jackie! Tomi! Kumano! Williams!

65. 1979.10.XX - 04 Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Vicki Williams (2/3 Falls)

K: It’s good to see Jackie again. It hits me right at the start that she has an aura which draws me into her matches, even the way she stalls still feels like she’s just getting you to brace yourself for what’s about to happen next. She’s a very cool wrestler. I noticed as well how Vicki Williams took such a big bump for Jackie’s offense when they first crossed paths. Felt like she was consciously conveying that Jackie’s a much stronger opponent than anyone else we’ve seen her go up against.

The 1st fall was a bit messy. I did like the spot where Mami Kumano has Tomi Aoyama on the apron and pushes her into the corner post, but when Tomi spins her around and tries to do the same thing in revenge the heel ref immediately intervenes to stop first. I haven’t been very complementary about his style of heeling but I’ll give credit where it’s due. Mami has pretty strong performance here, taking up most of the match as Vicki seems a bit off at times.

The 2nd fall was a bit more structured, but the biggest problem with it is the match felt more concerned with getting heat on the referee than the heel wrestlers. There were a couple of moments where Jackie got physical with him and looked like she’s on the verge of losing her shit, but it’s not much of a payoff and isn’t worth how much his antics break up the flow of the match. We did see a very good comeback that led to Tomi picking up the pin with her top rope boomerang, but the camera cuts missed it, they really seem to hate her.

Our 3rd fall only have one purpose. Jackie is gonna kick ass and win. She did tag out for bit in the middle so the heels managed to get a bit of offense in on Tomi, there was a weird spot where Tomi came back on an Irish Whip diagonally (which seemed to break the laws of wrestling physics) and pushed the heel ref into her opponents. I got the idea but I don’t think it worked. Maybe if they all tumbled over it would have been effective, if a bit more comedic than I think was the intent here. But once Jackie was back in the ring she just turned into a superhero, repeatedly smashed Vicki Williams into the mat and got the 3 count despite the ref doing a ridiculously slow count on her. He then gets beat up for his crimes. 

**1/2

MD: I’m not sure what happened to our beloved Queen Angels. I know that Lucy and Tomi wrestle at the end of the year but they were commentating like Jackie and Tomi were the strongest tag team in the world and we don’t see Tomi and Lucy team again in the footage. Williams (with Grable) was the NWA tag champion and she was fine here. You almost had to feel for her because Kumano would do her dangling choke (twice) to Jackie and then Williams would come in with a conventional choke, or Kumano would do her top rope seated senton and Williams would come in with a kick. What’s probably even going through her mind in that situation? The world is far bigger and more wonderful than Moolah told her yet she was trapped in her box forever.

This had a lot of heel ref shenanigans. It had plenty of outside interference from all of the American women. That said, it still worked just a little better than some of the other similar matches. Maybe it was just a bit more chaotic. Maybe it was because Jackie worked well from underneath and Tomi was fiery on the outside, dragged out again and again by the ref. Maybe it was because there were a few spots where the ref got comeuppance (or almost did like when Tomi pushed him into a double clothesline from her opponents). But it still didn’t clear the bar of if this was Jackie/Tomi vs Mami/Yuki. This was one where the ⅔ falls structure hurt a little too (and it usually didn’t) as the big comeback was deferred past a banana peel Tomi cross body pin to even up the falls. I wanted that big Jackie comeback and we didn’t quite get it. What we had to be satisfied with instead was the ref reluctantly counting three after Jackie’s belly to back and then him getting beaten up a bit post match (only to be helped out by Moolah; had to be an interesting tour for that guy overall, but boy am I sick of him).

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

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

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

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

Pretty inconsequential match, but fun for what it was.

**

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

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

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

55. 1979.09.21 - 02 Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi (WWWA Tag Team Titles) (2/3 Falls)

K: The introductions are pretty reserved considering what happens the moment the bell rings: Mami Kumano apron neck-swings both her opponents within the first minute while Yumi Ikeshita keeps the other at bay. From here Black Pair really dominate too things, probably a bit too much really, at times it’s hard to really root for Golden Pair when they’re taking such a prolonged beatdown without any significant attempt at a comeback, so it feels a bit of a fluke when they get one comeback together after Victoria hits a very high angle sunset flip that put Yumi almost vertical. The tides switch in a matter of seconds and Black Pair just take slam after slam plus a big splash off the top from Nancy and that’s enough to put them away for the 1st fall.

Usually when Black Pair drop a fall, the result is they up the brutality in the 2nd to turn things into their style of match. That isn’t really what happens here. Ikeshita does hit them with a bucket at the start, but by their standards that’s pretty mild weapon use. The rest of the fall is in the ring and Black Pair stay in control with just moves and they win the fall with a hurricanrana off the top into a pin. The 3rd fall follows a similar pattern. This time Black Pair bring in The Towel, but it backfires pretty quickly and it ends up being used on them more than the other way round. But they still turn things around pretty quickly by basically just outfighting Golden Pair and put them away with an even more spectacular looking sequence of offense.

This was mostly entertaining but I can’t help but feel like this match was incredibly one-sided. It’s not just that Black Pair dominated all 3 falls, but they did it mostly without needing to resort to weapons to interference so Golden Pair came out of it just looking out of their league.

**3/4

MD: It’s an exciting day for AJW as Jackie’s new song was about to be released (“A Pocket Full of Tears?”) but the video skips just as we’re about to hear more about it and I guess we have a Dark Pair vs Golden Pair match in front of us instead. It’s important you know that Kumano’s cool one-sleeve jacket is gone and she’s got a robe and a headband now instead. Ikeshita’s got sort of a black vest over a white collared shirt for her ring gear. We don’t care what the Golden Pair have (Ok, fine. Fujimi has her gi like usual. She’s the only one that wears one). As best as I can tell from the commentary, if the Golden Pair don’t win this one, they’re going to disband.

It didn’t start well for them as Kumano was dangling both with her choke off the apron within the first minute. They’d get one bit of hope in the first fall, and would actually tag quite frequently, but the fall almost completely belonged to the Black Pair right up until the end. Just the usual headbutts and violent shots. On the comeback, Fujimi hit her butt butt repeatedly and Kumi had her lifting drops from a northern lights position and finally a full suplex over to take things. They weren’t winning on points but they took the fall.

The Black Pair came back with the bucket at the start of the second fall. Ikeshita was hitting her tight scoop powerslams that were almost like gutwrenches. Fujimi’s attempt to save Kumi off the top failed as she crashed into her. Then she got tossed outside and the American contingent dragged her down. Meanwhile, Ikeshita hit a jumping ‘rana off the top, truly a thing of beauty, and that was that. Kumi started the third fall off scrappy, but ended up outside with the Americans again. Meanwhile, Ikeshita somehow got a Mickey Mouse towel and tried using it as a weapon as things escalated into a finishing stretch. The Golden Pair did okay for a while but Ikeshita pretty quickly caught them and started with these cool stalling fallaway slams. They then isolated Fujimi in the corner, did a lifting dangling choke on her, and set her up for a Kumano seated senton and torture rack. It was another solid Black Pair match but didn’t quite rise to either the chaos or the drama of some of their previous ones, despite the big stakes.

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

53. 1979.09.1X - 02 Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (2/3 Falls)

K: Jackie Sato & Tomi Aoyama are as big a superteam you can get on the babyface side right now so this is a big match we’re getting here. I popped right at the start when Mami Kumano tried to whip Jackie Sato into the heel corner only for Jackie to use the momentum to boot Yumi Ikeshita off the apron! Mainly coz it reminded me of the 6/9/95 spot, though I doubt that’s where Kawada got the idea. The hierarchy makes sense in that Black Pair do they usually shenanigans including a lot of weapon hiding, but they never manage to turn things totally chaotic and both Jackie & Tomi get a lot of hope spots in before the big comeback towards the end of the fall. Unfortunately there’s some awful camera work at the finish where they almost totally miss Tomi’s top rope boomerang, if it weren’t for having already seen her do the move properly I wouldn’t have known what happened.

We got the similar Black Pair formula after they drop a fall, they go totally nuts in the 2nd trying to turn the match into as insane a brawl as possible. About 50% of their offense here is hitting the babyfaces on the head with a metal bucket which has somehow entered the ring. At one point Jackie does a great heroic babyface spot where she fights both of them off at once and then gives them some well-earned revenge with some bucket shots of her own. Jackie hits a picture-perfect headscissors takedown that I don’t see anyone do anymore. Wraps her ankles around the opponent’s head and somehow in the motion it looks as believable as I’ve ever seen a wrestler try convince me that there’s no co-operation involved in this. When Black Pair get the fall back, it’s when Yumi Ikeshita runs in to break up a Jackie Sato big splash attempt, only to then hit a backdrop suplex and get the pin herself even though she clearly wasn’t the legal woman. Referee!

The 3rd fall has an even wilder start. Now Yumi has got a mop and is stabbing everyone in the throat with it. After it gets confiscated, Jackie comes back off the ropes and hits one of the best double dropkicks on Black Pair I’ve ever seen. There’s a dynamic, flowing element in how she moves across the ring even when she’s in the air she seems to change direction mid-flow so that she hits Mami with one foot but then Yumi a little bit later with the other foot once she’s closer. Such a special wrestler. Black Pair go crazy with weapons again this time with chairs and Yumi has what looks like a wrench, Jackie defeats her with her superior wrestling skill by countering an attempted wrench attack with a rollup. Good and fitting finish. They never felt like they were going to go into 5th gear in this match and there wasn’t any big angle, I’d say this is one of the best matches we’ve seen that was never trying to be anything more.
***1/2

MD: This was wild and it felt a little like a culmination of a lot of what we’ve seen so far. We never get any explanation why Jackie and Tomi are teaming. We don’t have Tomi and Lucy teaming for the rest of 79. The commentary did question if Tomi and Jackie would make a good enough team to overcome the Black Pair who had been teaming for a year and a half. It started, oddly enough, with some heel in peril with Tomi and Jackie thrashing Kumano and the ref refusing multiple out of position tags by Ikeshita (she got a shot in on the ref each time he pulled her back out).

Once they took over, however, they didn’t look back, playing hide the object for the next six or seven minutes. It was a bit down to dumb refereeing but there was that element of bullying the ref and the ref being afraid to do much that would be a hallmark of the style forevermore. They made some small efforts at least. Neither Jackie or Tomi could get anything on them until Jackie just had enough and let loose with one of her three big comebacks of the match, firing away and setting things up for Tomi to hit her comebacker cross body off the ropes for the fall.

With each fall, the Black Pair escalated their weapon attack. In the second fall, that meant bringing a bucket in. Again, that went well for a while until Jackie had enough and caught it and started firing back. Total star, larger than life. Everything was going pretty well for them, including an incredibly long Tomi giant swing until Ikeshita cheapshotted Jackie so that she’d fall on Kumano right when Tomi was coming off the top, letting the Black Pair take the second fall. The third fall escalated things to chairs and a wrench but Jackie was was able to hit a jumping rolling clutch out of the corner for a snap win. Maybe the hide the object bit went on just a little too long (maybe) and maybe we could have used a few more nearfalls or something in the third fall but overall, the highs were real high here and Jackie came off as larger than life while still giving a ton until it was time for her to do her thing (and Tomi fit right in). It was a main event and it felt like one.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Kumano! Ikeshita! Rimi (Jaguar)! Seiko!

50. 1979.09.13 - 01 Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa (2/3 Falls)

K: This is a Named Team vs. Named Team match so you know it’s a big show. Yumi Ikeshita is wearing a dinner jacket for the introductions. How I’m supposed to root against someone in such a cool outfit I have no idea. Actually I do, it’s Yumi Ikeshita she’ll make me snap out of it soon enough.

The start to this is wild. Young Pair try to jump Black Pair at the start but it backfires and then get beaten the hell out of and thrown out of the ring to the screams of the fans and all of that action happens in 15 seconds. Once Hanawa is back in the ring Mami Kumano has got out THE TOWEL and uses it to strangle her, but she also does this kinda funny thing where she’s constantly shifting her body around to block the vision of the referee who knows she’s doing something untoward but can never quite see it… If anything Ikeshita then ups the ante when she’s tagged in, using the towel to strengthen her punches before just assaulting Hanawa’s face and dragging her face all across the mat like she’s trying to make her look ugly. We’re two minutes in when Young Pair get a moment’s reprieve to regroup. They achieved a hell of a lot with those two minutes making the Black Pair look both like absolutely vicious ruthless animals and the Young Pair look brave by daring to try stand up to these awful people.

That 2 minutes was like a compact preview of the 1st fall. Things are less chaotic, for the most part, but you never really believe Black Pair were ever at serious risk of losing control of things. Maybe the closest that comes to it is when things spill to the outside and Young Pair come into the ring swinging chairs, but they’re quickly overpowered. Actually it wouldn’t make sense for them to beat Black Pair at their own game.

I felt like the 2nd fall played off this, as Young Pair manage to even things up after they manage to turn it into a competition of technique, and Rimi pulls off a nifty rollup to get a pin. The 3rd fall then follows that up as Black Pair start by just immediately blasting their opponents with some metal bins and turn things chaotic and full of rampant rule-breaking again. It works because it feels like both teams are trying to change the dynamic of the match to fit their styles. The 3rd fall is really good stuff and Yumi Ikeshita really feels like she had to power up at the end to get the win for her team. This is the best Young Pair have looked so far.

***1/2

MD: This was an absolute mauling. The Young Pair tried to ambush at first and they just got thrashed and the Black Pair didn’t look back. A lot of variety of violence overall. Early on they used the towel and shots to the throat. Yokota wiped out huge with a posting from the apron. Just a lot of kneeing and stepping to the throat. As the match went on thee was a flowing element to the carnage. They’d sweep an opponent across the ring with a yank and then whack them in the back of the head, one side of the ring to the other. They’d hide a choke from the ref almost dancing around the ring with their opponent. And when things escalated they escalated big, like with Ikeshita’s hanging tree choke.

Yokota and Hanawa did better when they could double team but they’d be quick to miss a move or just to get cut off. A chair picked up on the outside jammed into a stomach, a bucket wielded across the skull, the Black Pair were simply unrelenting. The end of the first fall had the Young Pair grab chairs and attack Ikeshita and Kumano in the middle of the ring. Ikeshita absorbed it with her gimmick hard head and Kumano caught it, set it up, and choked one of the Young Pair with her dangling choke. Just unstoppable. In the second fall, the Young Pair did get a banana peel roll up and it made the comebacks in the third fall exciting because it did seem like maybe they could get lucky again but no, no they did not. A fun thrashing which really showed the power and presence of the Black Pair and what made them special.
 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Kumano! Nancy! Rimi!

48. 1979.08.XX3 - 03 Mami Kumano & Monster Ripper vs. Nancy Kumi & Rimi Yokota

K: The opening to this was strange. The first pairing is Monster Ripper vs. Rimi Yokota, but it looks like Monster has no interest in wrestling little Rimi, she ushers for Nancy to get in the ring. Rimi tags Nancy in. Monster and Nancy size each other up a bit, but before and contact is made Monster seems to change her main and tags in Mami Kumano. Nancy beats up Mami but a bit, but then Monster Ripper bursts in just pummels her. Maybe they’re getting across that Monster is a bit unpredictable/won’t just fight fair and square even if she is already the biggest and the strongest.

After that, this is a very one-sided mauling. The babyfaces get to tag in/out a couple of times, but only because Monster’s so strong she sometimes throws her opponent to the other side of the ring and isn’t able to stop them from making a tag in time. Not that it matters, as she just beats up the new person instead anyway. I had expected this to be a bit more competitive, not for any real reason tbh, but I should have remembered Monster’s the WWWA Singles Champion now and has a title match with Jackie Sato to build, so there’s not much to be gained in heating either of these two up against her.

So I’d accepted by the time we got there that there wasn’t going to be a big morally vindicating comeback. Instead, Rimi & Nancy managed to successfully double team Monster for a while in a way that didn’t really make them look that good, but it was fun. Especially when Mami ran in swinging a chair trying to save things but just hit Monster by accident. But still, Monster Ripper was able to overcome these little twerps. It took a few more moves to finish her off, but once she hit that big flying seated senton on Rimi, that was the end of her getting any more offense.

**1/2

MD: This was a mauling with a hot comeback at the end. They announced Yokota by noting her nice smile, but it was Kumi who struck first, dragging Kumano in from the outside with a double underhook and sort of turning it into a slingshot butterfly suplex. That’s about all she got as they got dragged down immediately thereafter. They had one bit of hope where they both got a shot in on Ripper together but then she ran through him. The brunt of the rest of the match was the Black Pair destroying Yokota, including some extended masterful hide-the-object work from Kumano (not that she needed an object). She showed some other stuff we hadn’t seen out of her like a cavernaria and bow and arrow type stretch.

The comeback came with Kumano getting too close to the ropes as she was using the object and getting pushed out. That let Kumi and Yokota get a shot or two in on Ripper before trying a double suplex. They were struggling but Kumano still went for a chairshot only to miss and hit Ripper. Unfortunately, despite buying themselves a minute of advantage, they couldn’t put Kumano away in time and Ripper, once recovered, absolutely crushed them. After the top rope standing senton and vertical splash by Kumano and Ripper respectively, she finished Kumi off by grabbing her arm leg and giving her a giant swing that way. They were building to the next Jackie match but also raising the specter that Ripper might take the belt back to the US as a truly unstoppable force.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Seiko! Kumano! Ikeshita!

43. 1979.08.XX1 - 03 Jackie Sato & Seiko Hanawa vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita

K: There’s an annoying clip very early on which makes it hard to assess the opening portion of the match. We get the standard-fare feisty babyface Seiko launching right into the attack, then later Black Pair have taken control and we didn’t really see how. But their section mauling Jackie Sato especially is pretty good. Highlights included pulling Jackie’s arm out tort and then headbutting her in the shoulder, and a bit later Yumi would grab Jackie by the back of the head and launch her face-first through the ropes into Mami’s outstretched knee through the other side of the apron. Absolutely every piece of offense Black Pair do just looks dirty. It’s just cheating, or just ugly and unsporting at the very least. It felt near miraculous when Jackie was able to get a comeback in by dodging a double-team so Mami kicked her own partner by mistake, and once she got the ball refused to let go until she picked up the first fall. What a hero.

There’s a noticeable change in pace and tone in the 2nd fall. Whereas the 1st was messy and driven by the heels just causing mayhem, this time Black Pair were being far more measured and controlled in taking apart their opponents. It felt like they were reacting to a chaotic situation of their doing backfiring on them to cause them to lose the 1st fall, so they’re not going to allow that to happen again. After taking out Jackie with a weapon (hiding it from the referee for a bit of extra heat), Mami Kumano just voluntarily allows Jackie to go over and tag a very angry Seiko Hanawa in, who is also protesting to the referee about the weapon use. Black Pair are happy to have Seiko as their target though rather than the superhero Jackie. She also gets meticulously taken apart and beaten. The third fall follows much the same pattern, but this time they capitalise even more by tying Jackie’s leg up in the ropes to finish off Seiko quickly. Nice match this, the 1st fall probably went on just a little too long but that’s just about the only negative thing I’ll say about it.

***

MD: A couple of clips in here around transitions which is never the best but what we get is pretty substantial even if the last few minutes of this is the end credits. Hanawa had to be inspired teaming with Jackie because she attacks right from the get go. We miss how the Black Pair take over, but they sure do take over. This is a great dominant performance from them. They control at length multiple times in the match but the longest is in the first fall where they destroy Jackie. I’m usually higher on Kumano and she has her usual wild abandon and violent stuff, including some new things like a dragon sleeper into a stomach whack. Here though Ikeshita really shined, just rubbing Jackie’s face all over the mat.

At some point they switch over to Hanawa but that really just lets Jackie recover enough to be ready for Hanawa to turn it around on them for a hot tag. She almost reminds me of Hogan in some ways by this point (some might consider that blasphemy). She’s great at taking and taking but when it’s time to give, she’s larger than life, just kicking through faces, just dropping people straight down from a belly to back position, and hitting her cross attack with great camera angles. As noted, the Black Pair did take back over and things got wild on the outside as one might expect. The trick was to isolate Jackie and they did so with the help of their seconds on the floor. In the last fall, they managed it by tying up Jackie’s leg in the ropes. Hanawa was fiery but ultimately doomed.

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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: Nancy! Tomi! Kumano! Ripper!

37. 1979.07.XX - 03 Mami Kumano & Monster Ripper vs. Nancy Kumi & Tomi Aoyama (2/3 Falls)

MD: Almost 40 matches in, I’m wondering if we haven’t questioned the fact that there are so many makeshift teams enough. Obviously the footage is only a small percentage of the matches that were taking place, especially if you believe the numbers they mention on commentary about how many matches wrestlers would wrestle per year. But we rarely see the set teams actually team with each other. It’s much more likely we see one member of the Young Pair or Golden Pair or Queen Angels team with each other than with their own partner. It’s a little strange. Here we have a member of the Golden Pair (Nancy) team with a member of the Queen Angels in Tomi. I’m not sure if they were in front of the same crowds all the time and needed to keep things fresh or what.

Kumi hasn’t exactly impressed so far and comedically, here, she dodges Ripper once and then tags out to Tomi. Then Tomi dodges her repeatedly but doesn’t tag Nancy back in. The plan was to frustrate Ripper enough that she’d tag Mami in and then swarm Mami. Problem was that Kumano was a monster herself and caught Tomi immediately. Ah well. Good try Golden Angels. The rest of the first fall was a mauling after that except for one great moment where Tomi was able to bound onto the middle of the ropes and leap backwards in a spot that would absolutely be impressive today. It only got them so far before the Black Army took back over and Ripper set her up for Kumano’s driving seated senton off the top.

Second fall was more of the same with Ripper and Kumano immediately catching Tomi with their double bearhug squish. From there Ripper did her lifting choke and Kumano did her dangling choke on both Nancy and then Tomi. Nancy was able to turn the tide by reversing a whip and ducking out of the way to cause Kumano to crash into Ripper and knock her off the apron. From there they unloaded 2 on 1 on Kumano. Nancy had repeated Northern lights liftup flapjacks until she dropped her back with a suplex and Tomi hit some great dropkicks and then a vader bomb off the top for the pin. Third fall was pretty quick with Ripper reasserting herself and a Kumano getting a chair only for it to be turned back around on her. Ripper no sold it though, and made short work of Nancy with a spinning torture rack into a toss. This went about as you might have expected it but had some fun moments while it lasted.

K: I’ve seen Matt’s write-up before doing mine so I’ll bounce of his a bit. I don’t know any of this for a fact, but from my knowledge of the scene/era this is what I think the logic of the tag team booking was, but first, I’ll lay out the terrain.

70s AJW was a very isolationist promotion. Not out of choice, but for the simple reality that there was no other women’s wrestling in Japan except them. They did bring in wrestlers from abroad for runs like Monster Ripper, but they could never be scaled up to something like a US territory where loads of guys were constantly being cycled through the system to keep things fresh. AJW also had a fairly small roster, certainly if you’re just counting the wrestlers capable of delivering in big matches. All that means they had a very limited number of match ups which could draw well for their big shows.

AJW was also very much a tag team promotion. Look at any of these shows where we have multiple matches and you’ll see the majority of matches were tag team matches. Their most popular act ever till that point was a tag team, Jackie Sato never drew anywhere near as well on her own as Beauty Pair did.

Put those together and I think it makes sense that you’d regularly see makeshift teams on the regular TV tapings. When we see Named Team vs. Named Team matches, those happen at the biggest events of the year.

Now to the match itself. Nancy & Tomi start the match by winding Monster up by making it look like they’re going to go toe-to-toe with her but dodge at the last second and she screams in anger. Let’s see if their “annoy the Monster” strategy will pay off! Well, Monster seems to collect herself, tags Mami Kumano in, who quickly beats Tomi up and then tags Monster back in to get some revenge. So no it didn’t. This was quick hell-dominated fall, the highlight was Tomi doing a boomerang hip attack off the top rope as part of a brief comeback before she gets put down by Mami Kumano.

Tomi gets the highlight of the second fall as well. She hits Mami Kumano with 4 dropkicks in a row. A criticism I generally have with these kinds of spots is they usually look like video game animations in that each individual strike looks the same. This is more how the person takes the dropkick, they usually get into the exact same position each time. But Tomi does the dropkicks so fast that Mami doesn’t have time to do that, by the time of the 4th dropkick she’s barely even halfway up before she gets dropkicked in the head back done. It looked really urgent and ferocious looking and gave this segment the ‘desperate to level the score’ vibe it warranted. Good stuff.

There’s been a theme in Monster Ripper’s matches though that whenever babyfaces make her mad, it just results in her killing them. Well we got that again here in the 3rd fall, where Monster goes bananas whacking people in the head with a steel chair. And that was the end of that really, she just wins. There may have been some editing here, but that certainly felt like a short ⅔ falls match. More about getting Monster Ripper over as possibly unstoppable for her title challenge against Jackie than having a ‘good match’ here I think. But it was still pretty good.

**3/4

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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: Kumano! Ikeshita!

33. 1979.05.XX3 - Mami Kumano vs. Yumi Ikeshita

K: This is a spiritually satisfying match. A trope of more recent times that I both dislike and don’t really understand is when heels are pitted against each other in round robin tournaments, you expect them to not take the match seriously enough. Well, I’m sure the idea is to get themselves heat by not giving the fans a good show. They’ll just dawdle about barely even pretending to make an effort against each other. Sometimes there’ll be a creative twist on it, like the Taichi vs. Taka Michinoku match where they did as much offense as you could possibly imagine without ever touching each other. It’s not for me though. I also don’t think it really even works as intended. Any heat generated is dissipated by the time it’s over anyway.

This the earliest heel vs. heel match we have from AJW, where they take the opposite approach. If anything, the take these matches as an opportunity to unleash all these bottled up resentments they stored up for the other. Right from the bell they’re not just trying to win, but there’s a nastiness to all of it. These two are just not nice people at all. But fortunately for us, it’s entertaining, and who doesn’t want to see these two maim one another anyway.

I’m not sure about this thought, but if there’s a slight nuance to the alignments here, I’d say Ikeshita may be working very slightly more babyface. She has more of an earned comeback about 5 minutes in than Kumano ever does. It’s done with a surprising kip-up, and a bit later she goes for what looked like the beginning motion of Sliced Bread #2, but instead of the neckbreaker motion she just lands on her feet behind Mami and then quickly hits her with that signature twisting slam. There’s a flicker of the spectacular with some of Ikeshita’s offense that we never see from Kumano.

But I may be reading too much into that, as before long Ikeshita is also upping the ante in terms of pure viciousness when she gets hold of the microphone cable and strangles Kumano with it like she’s just trying to murder her. The match descends into both wrestlers mainly just trying to strangle and choke each other actually. It’s really ugly stuff that part of you feels like you’re a bit of a sicko for watching this. Especially when you’re not rooting for either of them. But also, I feel like I have to watch it not just out of enjoyment of seeing the heels get hurt, but I want to see how far they’ll go. How much they piss each other off. Seeing them competing over who can be the most vile also benefits future matches, coz even if we’re not rooting for anyone here, the memories of this will be in the back of our minds when we next see this evil pair up against wrestlers we do like. So even if the match is only in the good - not - great range, it achieves something beyond that.

***1/4

MD: This was a league match to help pick the six women for the Japan side. And it is the Black Pair exploding. And it’s great. We don’t know what we don’t know and we don’t have what we don’t have, but these two really do come off as the prototypes for every major joshi villain for the next decade. They’re screaming, merciless, violent, dynamic, interesting monsters. I’d say that Kumano was stronger and fiercer but Ikeshita was more athletic, but it didn’t really matter. They were more than the sum of their parts and their parts were pretty formidable.

This was a war; no quarter was given. Kumano rushes right in with nasty hairpulls and she escalates soon enough to these rigid neckbreakers where she just tries to twist Ikeshita’s head off. Kumano does damage on the outside first but Ikeshita spends the first chunk fighting back whenever she can, going for a leg or a face or whatever in reach. She finally fires back with a slingshot body press followed by these pendulum power slams, but Kumano’s right back with the seated senton off the top.

When things boil over, they really boil over, with Ikeshita destroying Kumano with nasty chairshots on the outside and Kumano having a fit in return, grabbing a chair and fighting her way back in with it. She was able to get her dangling hanging chokehold on the apron but when she went for it again Ikeshita’s familiarity won out and she was able to make both of them tumble. She missed a death stomp to the floor and they ended up choking each other almost to death with a microphone cord and beating each other with the microphone itself. It all devolved into a double countout, but it was some beautiful chaos while we had it.    

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