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

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

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

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

**3/4

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Figueroa!

15. 1979.01.XX2 - 03 Marina Figueroa vs. Rimi Yokota

K: A rare chance to see Yokota on the receiving end of a squash match, this time from the veteran Marina Figueroa. Figueroa doesn’t seem to be able to move very fast so some of Rimi’s usual spots probably aren’t available to her here, so this is mostly just her getting beat down in an effective but not very interesting manner. The most interesting part is when Marina started targeting Rimi’s arm, I liked how she yanked on Rimi’s arm and yanked it into the top rope to put an little spin on a common move. Rimi’s comeback though wasn’t very good as she just brushed it all off and when into a standard comeback as if she’d hadn’t just had her arm-worked over. Marina took over again fairly quickly where Charito Silver got involved from the outside and then puts Rimi away.

*1/2

MD: As best as I can tell we only have a couple of Figureoa matches but she had been wrestling for a couple of decades at this point. Here, she dominated the first half of this, refusing a handshake and then rushing right in as Yokota had turned around with a youthful shrug. She had a way of moving Yokota exactly where she wanted her and doing a very specific sort of damage. Her shots didn’t look particularly impactful but they all hit in the worst possible places, the gut, the nose. Very targeted. That led to her smothering Yokota while twisting the nose and to Yokota diving deep into the well with a very jaguar like bite on the hand that was smothering her to escape.

Yokota tried to work the leg but had to settle, after a figure-four that made it to the ropes, with just containing Figueroa with a headlock. Marina turned that into a nasty headscissors and opened things up to working over Yokota’s taped-up arm, with some nasty and consistent offense. We’re starting to see this sort of selling dropped quickly though, and it was here, as Yokota came back with a cross chop and abdominal stretch that both heavily used the arm that was just getting wrenched over the top rope. There was also a piece of blatant second interference to break up the hold letting Figueroa take over to finish the match with a quebradora and a backbreaker stretch over the knee. Dropped selling aside (only an issue because of the limb being so specifically targeted and so specifically used), it was good to see Yokota in a match where she was positioned more as a babyface and to see Figueroa and very focused, very nasty offense.

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