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

Volume 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**1/4

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Nancy!

Disc 2   

10. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Nancy Kumi 8/81

K: 1981 after Jackie Sato drops the belt is the period of AJW where it's most difficult to date anything precisely. The company is at a relative lowpoint in popularity, and for whatever reason I've struggled to find many sources referencing it so have had to just depend on what's on the footage itself, which for some reason is even more sporadic than 1979 or 1980 was. Hopefully the matches on the set are at least in the correct airing order, but it's hard to give much more context of what's going on. We're just watching a good match here.

Having debuted in 1976, Nancy Kumi is now the most senior wrestler on the roster and the only one left who debuted before the 'classes' system introduced when the company was overwhelmed with applicants inspired by the Beauty Pair boom. This cool and collected veteran role is the best fit for her talents than anything else I've seen her do. She's dominant on the mat, twisting Mimi up (mostly targetting her arm) and coming across like she's clearly just superior in this field and Mimi's going to have to pull something out of left field to get the better of her. 

I never feel like there's much effort to get Mimi over as anything other than a sympathetic babyface. She sells well, a bit melodramatic and screamy sometimes but it never gets too much for me that I find it annoying. She never gets anywhere near the passionate reactions Beauty Pair used to get, but that might be a harsh comparison as she's clearly still over.

There's a cool moment where Mimi attempts a flying crossbody off an Irish whip, but Nancy ducks out of the way with excellent timing (it really looked like Mimi intended to hit that crossbody), and with impressive speed Nancy quickly grabs Mimi off the mat, throws her to outside and dumps her into chairs, for which Mimi does a committed bump and sell. That's how they end Mimi's brief respite, as when she gets back in the Nancy locks in her a figure four, and this gives Mimi and opportunity to sell and scream her head off.

Mimi's second respite comes when she counters Nancy into a rollup. In what feels like more emotion and revenge than a well thought-out gameplan, Mimi immediately throws Nancy out of the ring when she's still a bit dazed from kicking out of the rollup, and tries to throw her into chairs. It doesn't pay off, as Nancy just blocks it and Mimi eats chair once again. In cool fighting babyface energy, Mimi doesn't just let the momentum fall away from here. She keeps fighting and when they're back in the ring, does another counter which leads to her doing a big elevated backdrop from Nancy being up on the ropes. The announcer puts this move over as the 'Mimi Special'. Looks like something Misawa could have used as a secondary finisher.

There's not much time left so they go right into the desperation cover attempts after this trying to sneak out a win. This is probably the best example of that we've seen so far. It's lots of kickouts but nobody hits anything big enough that it makes it feel excessive/cheapening moves. It's a time limit draw. A result which puts Mimi over a little bit.

***1/2

MD: This felt like a pretty strong one overall. Kumi had a strength advantage. Hagiwara had a speed/agility advantage. They met in the middle on technique. What stood out the most were transitions, so essential in a babyface vs babyface match like this, especially one going to a draw. You need those momentum shifts to give it all substance. 

They were even early, with both wrestlers really scrapping. Kumi tried to heft her up into a gorilla press but she got out of it. Maybe Kumi had a slight advantage from the get go but Hagiwara was able to open things up with a front dropkick to the gut and a great headscissors takeover followed by a bridging surfboard. Kumi came back with a kick off the ropes and cemented it with power moves (including two fireman’s carry lawn darts across the ring) and then went in hard on the arm including a short arm scissors. Hagiwara was able to come back off the ropes and started in on the leg. That would pay off later with a revenge figure-four from Kumi but not before Hagiwara missed a body press and Kumi beat her around ringside, tossing her into chairs multiple times.

They went into a hot finishing stretch after the figure-four (and Haigwara getting some revenge on the floor as we’re seeing more symmetry in these matches) with a lot of nearfalls and shooty pin counters, before time ran out. Kumi probably looked a little stronger and might have won it on points but Hagiwara had no quit in her. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Rimi! Nancy! Ayumi!

Disc 2 

4. Ayumi Hori & Nancy Kumi vs. Jackie Sato & Rimi Yokota 1/6/81

K: This match is Red Phoenix vs. Dynamic Jaguars, i.e. the two babyface factions going up against each other. I noticed at the entrances that Ayumi Hori is now being billed as ‘Super Jumbo Ayumi Hori’, she’ll get her name changed to Jumbo Hori soon after this.

This is worked a very fast pace, certainly unlike most wrestling of its time. But what also stands out about it is despite that, it’s still quite mat-focused and they get a lot of movement out of struggling for holds. There isn’t much targeting of a limb over a long period, it’s more that they just grab at whatever they can when they get an opening and improvise from there. There are some patterns though which fit the wrestlers we’re watching. For example Rimi is a lot more ferocious than Jackie and likes to come in all guns blazing hitting fast offense from the get go, whereas Jackie is more content to take control with an armbar or something. But Jackie comes across as the better wrestler here as her approach actually does work the vast majority of the time, whereas Yokota sometimes overextends herself with her flying around and throws momentum to the Red Phoenix team when one of her moves doesn’t hit. 

Likewise, Hori is clearly presented as the weak link in her team. Her size does come into play a few times, for example it feels like she was only able to counter one of Jackie’s headscissor takedowns because she was physically bigger rather than her having much technical skill. But that’s all she really has to offer here and so spends most of her time on the defensive or trying to tag Nancy back in so they can get back into the match. I did enjoy her cocky smile squaring up to Jackie though, like she really thought she was in with a chance there before Jackie wrenched her shoulder out and started running circles around her on the mat with impressive ease.

Jackie isn’t able to do this so easily against Nancy though. When we restart for the 2nd fall things are pulled back and they do a really good Greco-Roman style struggle. Nancy actually gets the better of Jackie in this, one clever more is when they’re on the mat she pushes her knee against Jackie’s chest for extra leverage in pinning her down. Jackie backs into her corner to allow Rimi to tag in, and we get that contrast again when Rimi charges in trying to beat everyone up at once, looks amazing for a few seconds before it backfires and now Red Phoenix are back on offense. Whichever way it goes for her though, Rimi is a thrill to watch.

The 3rd fall is a bit slower worked than the previous two, I think they convey well that the battle has been taking its toll. Hori did sell her leg a little bit earlier on but not much amounted to that until here, where we get a protracted stretch of her leg being worked on is cut off from tagging Nancy in because of it. She even gets a bit of shine here in being allowed to sell. The finish, this is going to sound like I’m being “early 2010s WWE fan” funny here, but I have to describe it as Ayumi Hori hits Rimi Yokota with an Attitude Adjustment, then picks up Rimi to hit a 2nd one but Rimi does the CM Punk counter of landing on her feet and pivots into a quick rollup for the win. 

***3/4

MD: I’m pretty sure Hori and Yokota were tag champs at this point which is interesting given the factions. We don’t usually get to see the wrestlers coming down to the ring up to this point, so it’s nice to see Jackie slapping hands and what not. She’s leaning hard into the Jaguar theme with one on the back of her coat and the pattern worked into her gear. Kumi and Hori have blue matching coats so not rocking the Red Phoenix literally.

This was action packed right from the start. It was driven pretty well by the contrast between the four. Kumi and Yokota were explosive (with Yokota more so). It doesn’t mean Yokota wouldn’t pick up even Hori and drop her on her face, but they were more likely to just throw themselves at their opponents. Jackie and Hori leaned more on dominant strength. This was the biggest I’ve seen Hori work so far though she might have been too giving at times. In general, though, there was a sense that she was a mountain to be climbed, a problem to be tackled, though Jackie was so often up to the task. When things picked up at the end of they fall, they really picked up, which was saying something given the pace up til then. Jackie survived a front flapjack by landing on her feet and immediately headscissored Kumi over, following it up with her slingblade type neckbreaker drop whip off the ropes and her belly to back drop. Yokota came in with her press up vertical seated sentons off the rope and things kept swirling faster and faster until Jackie slammed Kumi and Rimi hit her triangle ricocheting splash off the turnbuckle pad and Jackie finished her off with her bodyslam backbreaker. It’s all a lot and was a lot within the span of seconds really, but it was very exciting stuff that didn’t feel weightless or tacked on. It felt more like a fast break from a couple of great athletes. 

Second fall started with some really nice close-up struggle as Kumi was able to turn a test of strength around on Yokota by pushing her over with the knee. From there they worked her over, almost leaning heel in their aggression. She was able to slip up out of a pin with a shocking bridge to get the tag to Jackie and everything broke down into chaos on the outside after that. Everything comes back together for Kumi and Hori both putting on figure fours (again, struggle: hori has to really kick at Jackie to get it on) and then Yokota has another electric comeback and they head outside again and the match has sort of lost the plot even if it’s all very exciting. They do find it again as this leads to Kumi beating the count to take the second fall.

Third fall has some struggle (very good stuff with Jackie fighting for every inch) to start before things settle down for very nasty legwork on Hori. Yokota just stomping on it looks absolutely brutal. But none of it matters because once she makes the tag, she’s fine. Finishing stretch has more beating on Yokota until she starts to cartwheel and bound and every time she does it, you have to pause and go back and see it three times because you almost can’t believe your eyes, even with footage from 45 years ago. Hori catches her after the first but then she bounds out of a FU attempt and wins with a roll up. I don’t 100% know what’s coming, but given how she’s come along and what she can do, I can’t wait to see where Yokota is at this point in 1982 for instance. Lots of good action in this one even if because of the length and the lack of a clear heel, it did sort of go all over the place. The Jackie/Rimi team is something special given their differences and strengths.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy!

Disc 2 

2. Jackie Sato vs. Nancy Kumi (WWWA Singles Title Tournament Final) 12/16/80

K: This will be far more of a write-up than a ‘review’ as only about ⅓ of the match was broadcast so there’s not much to meaningfully assess. I generally didn’t even consider including such incomplete matches in this set but I made an exception here because the narrative importance to the promotion. Simply put, you gotta see who won the tournament!

This felt like an elevation of Nancy Kumi. She’s not depicted as being Jackie’s equal here I don’t think. For instance in the opening she’s able to grab a hold on Jackie briefly before Jackie’s able to escape. They then lock up again but this time it’s Jackie who is able to apply the hold, but when Nancy tries to escape the leglock Jackie just switches into a headlock on the mat, and then moves up into a standing headlock as Nancy tries to fight her way out but it takes her a relatively long time to break out. 

The clipping makes it impossible to follow what the narrative is after this but we do get a pretty dramatic finishing stretch for the last few minutes of it. Nancy’s able to hit some big power moves. It’s cool to see her like this where she’s clearly wrestling on a higher level than we’re used to seeing her. But it’s almost as if the story here is that Jackie’s big moves are just a bit more damaging than Nancy’s are, and once she gets to hit a few Nancy’s just not able to recover quickly enough for anything before she’s hit with another one. It helps that Jackie’s execution is really snug and powerful, I think you wouldn’t need any pre-existing knowledge of the promotion to recognise she’s the top dog here. She’s finishes Nancy off with a big tombstone to begin her 3rd world title reign.

No rating.

MD: Interesting match, though we definitely lose a lot of it and potential coherence from clipping. Apparently this went 35 and we have about ten of it. This was the finals. Jackie had beaten Yokota in overtime. Kumi had somehow bested Monster Ripper. What we do get here is very good. Kumi starts with a go behind trip and then Jackie follows suit. That doesn’t sound much but we really haven’t seen that sort of parallel construction much in these matches so far. Things open up with Jackie getting a roll up and a few moves in and then Nancy taking over with a roll up and some stretching and a few moves of her own. 

There was a very strong sense of sport and competitiveness here. They were both babyfaces but they rode on different buses and were in different units. The camera shots were great to capture the struggle, with Nancy pulling at Jackie’s hair to get her into a hold and you could see Jackie emoting pain and frustration. I’m not sure we can fully extrapolate out the ebbs and flows of this one overall, even if we can get a good sense of the tone and feel.

They did have a hot and iconic finishing stretch. Things spilled to the floor with brawling and Kumi took clear advantage on the way back in, stringing together one move after the next after the next. It felt inevitable maybe, a changing of the guard, but Sato slipped behind her with a roll up and took right over, dropping her again and again with her big bombs. Kumi managed to survive but only right up until the point where Jackie crushed her with a tombstone. We’d seen the Black Army use tombstones before to varying effect, I think, but they were fairly rare. This one was brutal and as Jackie celebrated her victory, Nancy was carried off to the back in a heap (if results I see are correct, it would be a bad couple of days for her as she’d lose the tag titles to Hori and Yokota the next day). From what we saw here, this was clearly good, especially considering Jackie had already worked a long match and Kumi had probably gotten tossed around by Ripper earlier in the night, but I find it hard to say definitively.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Ikeshita! Nancy!

Disc 1 

14. Nancy Kumi vs. Yumi Ikeshita (WWWA Singles Title Tournament 1st Round) - 11/5/80

K: The most striking thing here is that Yumi Ikeshita starts this match with some MMA style gloves and starts throwing punches. The announcer is calling “body blow, body blow!” as she corners Nancy Kumi and pummels her in the gut. Nancy reacts to it like something illegal is happening, turning to the referee as if to protest but the ref is allowing it. I’m not sure what they’re trying to convey to the audience here. The referee only objects when Ikeshita starts doing the face-scrunching.

Until now Ikeshita has came across to me as more of a badass than a villain. For some reason, after Nancy scores a takedown on her, she takes off her gloves, passes them to a second and squares up for some grappling. She gets the better of Kumi here, enough that when she takes down Kumi to the floor, Nancy reacts by scrambling for the ropes to force a break rather than trying to wrestle her way out of it. When Nancy gets the better of the 2nd exchange, trapping Ikeshita in a headscissors, Ikeshita then does one of the slickest kip-up out of the headscissors that I’ve ever seen. In kayfabe it also kinda makes it look like Ikeshita is the superior mat wrestler here that she didn’t need to go for the ropes.

An interesting little twist is that it’s actually Nancy who escalates things. After getting beaten on the mat for a while and bullied out of the ring, Nancy reacts by grabbing Ikeshita’s foot in a rage, pulling her out of the ring and throwing her into chairs. Ikeshita gets back in after a tense standoff but her rhythm has been broken and Nancy is able to take control for this segment and goes to work on Ikeshita’s leg.

We’re now 12 minutes in, so it takes a lot longer than usual for her to get tired of trying to win the match legitimately and start resorting to blatant cheating. This time she’s playing hide the wrench, before whacking Kumi in the head with it a few times. One time she’s trying to prevent Kumi from applying a Figure Four by wielding the wrench, but the ref snatches it off her and Nancy powers through and is still able to apply the submission despite taking those wrench shots. This time it’s Ikeshita who is forced to crawl to the ropes to force a break.

It’s around this point that I feel like they lose the thread a bit and just start randomly doing stuff including a walk and brawl on the outside before getting back in and going back to same grappling. It’s not bad but it does make me lose interest compared to the first 15 minutes or so. They get back on track when Ikeshita counters an Irish Whip by hitting a big back drop where they both land on the back of their heads and stay down on the mat as the referee counts, scenes reminiscent of the 1/4/80 Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama finish, but Ikeshita is up, and before Kumi can collect herself she gets hit with a nasty piledriver. 

Fast forward a bit, Nancy has Ikeshita in an abdominal stretch. Ikeshita makes it to the ropes, but Nancy pulls her off and hits her with a big back drop of her own onto the back of her head that again feels like a significant moment where she establishes a bit of dominance. The announcer is alerting us that the time limit is close to expiring so things get a bit more hectic. Nancy goes in for the win a bit too hastily so Ikeshita is able to hit her with a quick knee to the jaw from the floor, which was a nasty and believable way for her to get back into this. The time limit expiring just means a brawl on the outside with chairs being wielded. 

AJW has a way of resolving draws in matches like this where you really need a winner. They’ll do an ‘extra time’ period, usually 5 or 10 minutes, where either the match will be decided in the usual way, but if that time limit expires, a winner will be announced based on who had the best performance in that extra time. So that’s what we’re getting here. There’s a massive escalation in intensity here as Ikeshita immediately just tries to jump Kumi on the outside, but it backfires as in the chaos Nancy is suddenly swinging a chair around, gives Ikeshita a few shots to the head, jumps into the ring and before you know it Ikeshita has been counted out! Ikeshita screams on the mic that Kumi cheated, which is pretty funny coming from her.

I do think this is a good match but I’m not a fan either. This is a relatively well known one (well by early 1980s AJW standards anyway) and I know some people are a lot higher on it than I am. I think the biggest flaw in it is it just feels too pedestrian for most of the match, things never really get ‘exciting’ until the last minute. Dare I say it could have done with a couple more cool fighting sequences in the middle part of it? Also, I just don’t think Nancy Kumi is a very compelling or sympathetic babyface at all. 

***1/4

MD: And we’re on to the Singles Title Tournament. We actually have some announced brackets but I’m not sure I was able to catch all of them. But the winner here will face the winner of Lucy Kayama vs Monster Ripper. And then on the other side Irma Gonzales would face Rimi Yokota and Jackie would face someone (I think Masami but I’m not sure. The next match on the set is Masami vs Jackie, so maybe that’s it?). They said it had to do with the rankings. Regardless, this goes 45 and we have about 30 of it.

While we miss things, of course, to me, the story of the match was that no matter what Ikeshita tried, Kumi had her number. Ikeshita started wearing thin black gloves and boxing, so somewhere along the line, apparently she’d picked up that gimmick. After one too many takedowns from Kumi, she gave up on those and tried to work the mat. When Kumi got the better of her, she started to slam her head on mat instead, and when that failed to work, she got an object and started hiding it, including trying to stop a Figure-Four by jabbing Kumi in the head. The ref caught her and Kumi pressed up with the Figure-Four doing some damage to the leg. 

Where Ikeshita had the most advantage was with power moves, including a double underhook slam and a belly to back. But even then, Kumi jammed her and rolled to the outside (though that played into Ikeshita’s strengths). As things headed towards the stretch, they both threw bombs, missing off the top rope one after the other. Ikeshita was able to jam an irish whip into a belly to back but Kumi turned a rope break into a cobra twist and then Ikeshita caught her with a kick as she was going to pin her shortly thereafter. It was a fairly exciting bit of scrapping as the time ticked down to the bell. Once they hit a draw, however, it was decided they had to continue in overtime. Things completely broke down on the outside and in the chaos, Kumi rolled back into the ring to beat the count and win. Post match-Ikeshita destroyed the ref at least. This felt like a fairly impressive 45+ minutes but it’s hard to tell with the clipping. I did get an underlying story of Kumi having an answer for most things Ikeshita tried but that might have just been because bits of heel control were clipped out. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy! Rimi! Romero! Ripper! Masami!

Disc 1 

10. Chabela Romero, Monster Ripper & Tenjin Masami vs. Jackie Sato, Nancy Kumi & Rimi Yokota - 5/80

One of my rules for making this set is I tried to get at least 1 trios match for each year. I'd be surprised if anyone picked one of them as their favourite match (though I've been surprised before), they're more used to build towards a blowoff/give the top stars something to do in between rather than trying to be a great match. But capturing the overall vibe of 80s Joshi was one of my aims, so these matches need to get featured.

It was also common for a trios match to be 2/3 falls if it was the main event of that TV taping. 
So this is mostly about Team Jackie vs. Team Monster. They're building to another title match between these two on 8/8/80, which we won't cover because unfortunately the footage is missing. It's probably because of that their interactions are going to be limited. We do get quite a lot of Masami and Yokota though, who even without the benefit of hindsight I think look like the most promising junior babyface and heel prospects on the roster.

When we do get Jackie vs. Monster in the ring together, Monster is pretty decisively dominant and Masami behaves like a nasty pest on the outside getting her shots in. She makes the mistake of getting in the ring to try fight Jackie instead, and gets hit with a really forceful Irish Whip into a strike. I wish more wrestlers would do Irish Whips with the commitment and conviction Jackie does here. There's also a great little moment where Monster is on the apron facing the crowd yelling at them, which annoys Jackie enough that she comes over and just shoves Monster off the apron to the floor. I found it funny how nonchalant Jackie was about it. 

I also liked the sense of camaraderie from the babyfaces here. Like, Yokota is too small to really put up a fight against Monster on her own, but she's skilled enough to confuse and distract her while Nancy Kumi gets into to hit a dropkick or something. Masami on the other hand, tries to make up for her obviously (in kayfabe) deficiencies as a wrestler but just being crazy and bringing chairs into the ring (only to fail most of the time).

To start off the 3rd fall, we got a fun spot I still see used today. The heels attempt an ambush, but it backfires when they all get trapped in the corner by Jackie & Nancy while Yokota hits them with two consecutive dropkicks. Heel team looking a bit silly again. There isn't much more of this, soon after Jackie Sato hits her awesome vertical suplex into a backbreaker move on Masami for the win.

I guess the other thing I should comment is that Chabela Romero was extremely forgettable in this, ha. Wasn’t bad or anything but felt like a servicable passenger in a good match.

***1/4

MD: I’m always fascinated by where the flowers come from. It’s really only with Japanese wrestling and it’s best when you get a wrestler that interacts with them somehow, like Hansen. We are informed they’re from the Yamanouchi Line Tourism Association, so that’s good to know, right? No? Probably not. You will be glad to know however that Monster Ripper DOES chuck them into the crowd after the kid gives them to her. What a champ. Only other thing of note pre-match is that Yokota has a superhero type eyemask that she takes off on being announced.

This was 2-out-of-3 falls with fairly short falls. They kept it moving. Nancy started. I feel like we haven’t seen as much as others, but she looked good here. Yokota was far smaller than everyone else in the match in a way that was impossible to miss. She came in and got swept under almost immediately, but took all the offense (especially Ripper’s) extremely well. They cycled Jackie in eventually and things were obviously heated throughout between her and Ripper. There was a moment where she reversed a whip where the whole world seemed to change for everyone in that crowd. Just an ace being an ace. 

When they cycled back through again and it came time for Yokota to get press slammed by Ripper once more, she actually managed to land on her feet, which set things up for the babyfaces taking the first fall. Ripper was pretty much able to singlehandedly equalize things though especially once things spilled out to the floor. She had a great torture rack samoan drop that I hadn’t seen her use much before this. Third fall started with everyone holding Ripper in the corner as Yokota pinballed off of her with dropkicks in a nice visual. The heels worked together to have Ripper come off the turnbuckles at people right until that backfired. From there the faces didn’t look back with Jackie winning it with a suplex into a backbreaker which is another new one as best as I can tell. 

This had clear momentum shifts and accomplished a lot in fifteen minutes or so. Everyone felt like they belonged, including Masami who was sufficiently malicious and Romero who had big powerful looking offense. And it kept things moving towards an eventual Ripper vs Jackie rematch. 

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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: Jackie! Nancy!

78. 1979.12.11 - 03 Jackie Sato vs. Nancy Kumi (Only 9 Minutes of 30 shown)

K: They only show about 9 minutes of a 30 minute long match here so this will be a brief post. I did think it was interesting that they actually acknowledged the cuts by putting what minute of the match we’d skipped forward to in the corner. I don’t remember ever seeing that in any other match AJW match. They’re more famous for being excellent at seamlessly editing matches to fit the TV time.

The context of this is that they’re building up challengers for Jackie’s title. They seem to do a lot of these non-title matches vs. the champion where you’d think the challenger was high enough in the pecking order to just get a championship match, but the booking philosophy seems to be that title defences only happen at the biggest shows. Nancy looked like she was putting in a strong effort here (which is another way of saying she wasn’t being boring as hell). I would have liked to see this in full because they really did have the crowd hot in the latter stages. There’s a nice cut to some very concerned fans as Jackie is fighting to break out of a Boston Crab; which was followed up by Nancy hitting a sunset flip that was impactful enough it was almost a proto-Code Red. 

The taper also screwed up by seemingly changing channels for a few seconds just as we were at the finish. Have to just laugh at that.

MD: Yeah, I was going to say that we miss the actual draw and the last nearfall for some cartoon or another, and that’s the way we end our trip through all 70s footage that we have. Come on!
But we’re lucky to have this at all, even cut up, I suppose. I will say that Kumi’s come a long way in 79, especially in the back half as she was not someone who particularly asserted herself in matches, just a cipher to get beat around the ring by the Black Army and she’s pretty formidable here as she was in the Moolah match. 

We get the feeling out to start, which was a little clumsy even with Jackie carrying herself like she thought she was the best in the world. She was unquestionably an ace. Then it cut to a middle section with Nancy hitting a neckbreaker drop and her lifting flapjack. Somewhere in there, she worked the leg too and I think that would have been a huge chunk of the match. They said everyone was chanting for Jackie but it seemed at least a little split to me. The half crab attempt was compelling because Nancy just collapsed trying to twist her around.

And the finishing stretch was a legitimately exciting few minutes. Jackie really did have a great small package out of nowhere and that almost got her the win once or twice. Nancy ended up on the defensive but she kept on kicking out even as Jackie tried more intense moves. It seemed like they were going to end it on a roll up as the bell rang, but that’s when the cartoon cut in. They already had Jackie's next opponent lined up in Tomi (just coming off of her match with Lucy) so this elevated Nancy just a bit more while keeping Jackie strong. 

That brings us to the end of the footage. We’ve talked about the next thing we’ll do (which is pretty logical considering where we are and what was released just about a year ago now) but I imagine we’ll be back in a week or two with some general thoughts about the 70s AJW footage first.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Nancy!

74. 1979.11.XX2 - 02 Nancy Kumi vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: Unfortunately the Golden Pair vs. Queen Angels series of matches from 1978 are unavailable except some very brief clips, but that’s enough to know that these two are established rivals meeting again in singles competition.

There’s a very gradual pace to this that’s a bit uneven. Sometimes it does feel like they’re building up to something, I thought Aoyama’s armwork was pretty cool and so were the battles over the leglocks and figure four. There’s a moment where Aoyama’s getting really feisty about it and pushes away the referee when Nancy’s in the ropes and he tries to break it up. But the moments are all a bit disconnected from each other and it just feels too much like they’re stalling for time rather than stalling to gain some kind of advantage. It would be better if one of the wrestlers was primarily responsible for the stalling and having the other trying to get to keep the match going so you could create some narrative tension with it, rather than them both just doing it. Even when they do some action, for example right at the start they take turns to kick each other in the back of the leg and take a slightly off-timed backbump, it just ends in a reset.

Zooming in a bit though, the work was mostly good. The holds were worked quite tightly and were believable, as well as most of the transitions. They managed to establish a bit of a contrast between Nancy going for more brute force whereas Tomi was more flashy. A good moment for Nancy was when she lifted Tomi up in the atomic drop position and then just planted her straight down on the mat with a look of annoyance. Things did heat up well in the last few minutes, but the lack of a finish hurt it. It felt like they should have started the “finishing” stretch a bit earlier so there was more tension going into the time limit, but it being so late in the match it never really felt like either had gained enough of an advantage to win anyway.

Tough match to assess really. Felt like a super flawed and primitive version of something that could have been great.

**3/4

MD: I thought this was supposed to be the finals of the challenge series to see who would face Jackie but of course it was inconclusive (a 30 minute draw). Maybe this was just part of the series as we still have a Kumano vs Ikeshita match ahead of us. It was pretty heated all things together. Rivalry between the teams or no, this felt to me like two people who had been honed into razor sharp steel by fighting off the Black Army for the last few years. Aoyama had been elevated even as a singles but Kumi felt elevated here too. 

I did see a bit more of an advantage by Aoyama but some of that might have been due to the ten minute cut. Aoyoma had pressed her advantage hard trying to hit her back press off the top rope (rope not turnbuckle) and top turnbuckle but neither worked and she had controlled the arm. When we came back from the cut, Kumi was briefly in control. Then, though, Aoyama went to the leg and really did a number on it. When she had the figure four on and then Kumi did finally get to the ropes, she kicked the ref away a couple of times. That’s how heated all of this was, babyface vs babyface or no.

But all of this allowed Kumi to come back and attack Aoyama’s leg and get her own figure four. I thought her selling was quite good as she took back over right until they both decided to drop it for a bit (though Kumi was able to stay in it during Aoyama’s last press by sniping at the leg once more in desperation). Aoyama hit the Queen Rocket for a very dramatic 18 count where Kumi just barely made it back in but by then time was almost up and Kumi survived one last suplex and it ended up a draw. The cut was kind of brutal here since it was one third of the match but I thought what we did get was one of the better singles matches we’d seen in a while.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jumbo! Nancy! Rios! Masami!

70. 1979.11.XX1 - 01 Ayumi Hori & Nancy Kumi vs. Raquel Rios & Tenjin Masami

K: The Americans are out and now we get a look at the mysterious Raquel Rios, who I'm assuming is a Mexican wrestler or at least that's where she seems to have worked most often, but it's hard to find info online so I'm not sure of that. 

Nancy Kumi gets quite the roar from the crowd during the introductions. I've never got why she seemed perpetually over (at least before matches start) when she rarely looks like a star after the bell rings. Anyway she sells being hurt on the outside early on and leaves Ayumi Hori to sell in the ring for the heels. Masami is incredibly expressive and loud, but lacks much offense at this point. It's interesting though that despite her being such a junior worker, she actually gets to look more dominant beating up Hori that Rios did, who when she tags in gets the tables turned on her. Devil also manages to get a comeback on Nancy after she returns to the ring by just physically overpowering her. The strangest move of the match was definitely Devil jumping up sidewards onto Hori's shoulders to do a headscissors. I didn't know what on Earth was going on at first, it was a bit too cute but fun I guess, She attempts it a 2nd time but it gets countered and allows for Nancy to get a hot tag where she does some exciting offense for about 10 seconds before it all fizzles out.

I'd normally describe this as a Tenjin Masami showcase. She certainly was the wrestler who did most of the memorable stuff in this match and showed some improvement since we last saw her. Certainly everything until the brief finishing stretch where Nancy got some nice strikes in and we saw a cool top rope crossbody from big Ayumi Hori. I'm not sure if it was deliberately laid out to get Masami over or if it was more the more pushed wrestler not bothering to do much until it was her time to get the win, but that's how it came across.
**

MD: While this did have Rios from Mexico, it’s nice to be back to normal in this footage with the Americans headed home. This was a good check in on Hori and Masami. Masami especially. She was absolutely coming along. Not everything hit clean, but everything hit with enthusiasm and verve. She had a way of hitting from every angle, and with consequence. For instance, she was able to plow right through Kumi with her charging Vader Attack style body block, but when she tried it with Hori both went down, due to Hori’s size. The commentary called those “dump truck collisions.” At one point when Rios was pinned, she walked right in and stomp the ref instead which popped basically everyone but the ref who was furious at her. I also liked her (late) Honky Tonk Man styled neckbreakers where she didn’t go over with them.

Hori had a bit more oomph behind what she was doing. Sometimes it worked out well like when she and Masami did a bit based around flying headscissors, where Masami got her over the first time but got shrugged off big the second time. Sometimes less so, like when she couldn’t get a slam off the ropes to work the first time around. Rios fit in well enough, participating in the violence and throwing headbutts. 

This was pretty chaotic throughout but had an extra bit of it early when it seemed like Kumi might have been hurt. She came back and came in hot though, flying around and hitting stuff with confidence. The finish had her hit multiple Northern Lights styled face first drops onto Masami before taking her over all the way with it. Biggest thing to see her was how Masami was just rising up the ranks of the Black Army and becoming more of a force.
 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Moolah! Nancy!

67. 1979.10.17 - 02 Fabulous Moolah vs. Nancy Kumi (NWA Women's Title)

K: This is a big match for Nancy Kumi. Even if the NWA Women’s Title wasn’t as established in Japan as the Men’s equivalent, I have to assume the prestige of the organisation would make it being defended here feel like a big deal. Nancy did have a couple of tag title reigns before this (with Jackie Sato, and later with Victoria Fujimi as Golden Pair) so it’s not like she isn’t an established star. But from watching the footage, she frankly has rarely came across as one, albeit we’re missing any from those aforementioned reigns so it may be a sampling anomaly.

Moolah succeeds in coming across as all Queen evil here. I don’t think her wrestling is very entertaining or effective really, it feels like she generates more heat just from her personality than anything she physically does, so the result is something that feels like it might get good but never does. Plus we’ve already seen so much of these American heel tactics (including the crooked ref) that they feel burned out already. If Moolah came out as some Final Boss of the Americans who brought the heeling to higher levels maybe it’d work, but it’s just more of the same choking, hiding the weapon and dodgy refereeing. I did like her trapping Nancy’s head in between the ropes at least.

But the only good reason to watch this is Nancy’s comeback, the best we’ve seen her look to date. There’s a big roar of the crowd as she starts losing her shit on the outside, first turning Moolah’s weapon against her and then beating up the referee when he tries to stop it. She really kicks his ass and leaves him on the floor reeling. Her fury turns her invincible as she lays into Moolah in the ring, but she’s apparently too insane with anger to realise that she can’t win with her pin attempt as she just took out the ref. The DQ was obviously going to happen, so that puts an end to that. Pretty fun way to rage quit.

**

MD: Pretty fascinating match all things considered. I don’t know the last time I saw a Moolah match, no matter how many Martin/Kai matches I’ve seen. This was for the NWA belt (the one with her face on it) and she’s striking and ghoulish. Watching this and knowing more about the times, I wonder how much of this phase of Moolah’s career was inspired by Bette Davis and Jayne Mansfield in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It’s a horror movie and she was horrific. I had always thought she had been hanging on to youth with the dyed hair and painted on eyebrows and wasn’t really fooling anyone but herself and those who had to be her sycophants, but it comes off as far more self aware than I expected here (even if I knew it did a few years later). The faces she makes, the things she says, she comes off as absolutely, gleefully monstrous. 

Kumi misses a dropkick early and Moolah chokes and knees and grinds. She’s entirely professional here, which means when Kumi takes over, she feeds big for all of the monkey flips and what not. When she takes back over it’s by grabbing a can and a towel from her minions and using them as weapons. I don’t think anything in the first two thirds of this are entirely unexpected.

What is unexpected is Kumi’s big comeback at the end. This had our nemesis the heel ref we’ve been dealing with for the last month or two of footage, and Kumi ultimately has enough, first getting the can and then a chair and she comes off like a completely unhinged star full of righteous fury, just smashing Moolah to pieces with it before she turns it on the ref. She starts slamming his head into the post and it’s very satisfying (even if you knew the finish, after a visual fall, was going to be very unsatisfying). I don’t think this payoff is necessarily worth all of the frustrating heel ref antics BUT in the moment it was pretty great and if Kumi came out of this a bigger star (I have no idea if she did but maybe Kad can speak to that), maybe it was worth it after all.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Nancy! Kai!

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

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

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

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

**1/4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***½

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


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

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

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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: 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: Nancy! Seiko!

44. 1979.08.XX2 - 01 Nancy Kumi vs. Seiko Hanawa

K: Matt is correct in that this show is actually from July, as the commentary hypes the Jackie Sato vs. Monster Ripper title match on July 31st. To prepare for this project, I made a good effort to catalog every 70s AJW match there’s footage of and put them in chronological order, but because of the lack of dates in written sources/me not understanding Japanese, a lot of that came down to just looking at the footage and guesswork. The auto-translated captions on YouTube have since given us some new insights.

I’m writing this very shortly after seeing a tweet saying “Everyone knows the legend of Jackie Sato. But Nancy Kumi was one of the best of the 1970's.” It’s not my style to call anyone out in these posts but I’m going to use that as bouncing off point, as I certainly have not come to this conclusion about Nancy Kumi from the footage we’ve made our way through so far. She’s been an extremely uninteresting wrestler. But I’ll give her another shot here as she faces her junior Seiko Hanawa.

Well the first thing of note I saw was Nancy miss a flying crossbody, but Seiko just stood there for a couple of seconds looking a bit confused before deciding she’s supposed to go on offense now. That was a bit strange. But then again this whole match is a bit strange. They both seem to be working heel for some reason, at least in terms of structure. Seiko’s control isn’t the most engaging wrestling ever but when Nancy counters a headscissors and takes over everything grinds to a halt as she sticks her knee into Seiko’s back and, well do you know this hold where they just do that but also with the feet as well? This goes on for a minute or so and the commentary really put over how important this is by cutting to one of the announcers walking around chatting with fans.

Most of the match is Nancy in control, and it’s not that bad in a vacuum. She does have some malice in her hits and normally I’d want to get behind whoever she’s whacking with a chair on the outside. I think really Hanawa is the bigger problem here. She just doesn’t really do anything to make you want to get behind her, though like I said it’s like she was working heel earlier in the match. This all comes together when we get Hanawa launching into her comeback to utter silence and it’s just sad. Crowd could not care less about what’s happening in the ring at this point. The only thing that wakes them up a bit is when Nancy goes up top to finish this failure of a match.

3/4*

MD: This was the US vs Japan preliminary league and I’m not convinced this isn’t from July and not August due to the commentary. Lots of distraction as they had fun with the high school boys in the crowd so they weren’t fully focused on the match. They did list off some of the standings and it was more than I could follow.

Kumi was the primary aggressor here. They both went for dropkicks at the start but immediately thereafter, Kumi was slamming Hanawa around ringside. Hanawa came back after a missed move off the ropes and had a nice rolling headlock but Kumi deadlifted her up by her head out of it and took over for most of the match. That included some brutal chairshots on the outside and a bridging figure four.

Hanawa came back with this impactful gobehind roll up that almost felt like a snap German and then had a great fiery comeback with a lot of takeovers before Kumi shut her down. Kumi finished her off with these sort of Northern Lights Gourdbusters and a top rope twisting splash. Pretty good sprint overall. The legwork went nowhere, of course, but I liked the transitions and that goes a long way. I'm kinder to it than Kadaveri was but certainly not required watching.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Nancy! Victoria!

42. 1979.08.XX1 - 02 Monster Ripper vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi

K: We’ve seen Fujimi face Monster Ripper in a handicap match before teaming with Masumi Tsumaki, Nancy Kumi should be an upgrade in kayfabe as these two are former tag team champions. The booking here is a bit peculiar because you could read it as Monster Ripper being unfairly softened up being put into these difficult handicap matches when Jackie Sato is due a title rematch, but I don’t think anyone watching is seeing it that way. More like everyone on the roster who isn’t Jackie doesn’t even stand a chance against her so let’s give them a fighting chance.

Nancy & Victoria seem to be playing different roles. Nancy’s being more of a straight wrestler just taking the fight to Monster, which isn’t going to work, but she’s got Victoria running around being a little trickster helping to balance the scales. For example there’s a couple of spots where Victoria just repeatedly rushes between Monster’s legs, apparently confusing her. What I’m paying attention to when I watch these matches is any kind of clue for what Monster’s weakness is. Is someone - by trial and error - going to expose the flaw that someone can build a working gameplan around to beat her?

This isn’t the best match for that though, as the only times the babyfaces get any real advantage is when they double team, and that’s not going to help anyone beat her for the WWWA Singles Title (well, assuming nobody’s going to just outright cheat). I did enjoy the comeback moment where the Golden Pair look like they’re trying to get Monster up for a double vertical suplex, but she’s too heavy to rotate over, but they do get her up most of the way, so they just drop her back on her face. That seems effective enough so they do it again! Maybe forsaking regular moves for just dropping Monster on her face is part of the path to victory.

**

MD: To be fair this was Ripper against a set tag team, being the Golden Pair, but this probably went around the loop one or even two too many times. Past one time that Fujimi went through her legs, Ripper dominated any time it was one on one and half the time that it was one on two, but she did get swept under quite a bit. The most definitive time had them hit two double gourdbusters in a row on her followed up by a figure-four/splash off the top combo. By the time it spilled outside, there was a chaotic sense of Ripper swiping at fiery small creatures that just wouldn’t quit. It actually took some miscommunication and a double team backfiring after they hit a double suplex on her for Ripper to really take them out. At one point, I thought she was going to grab an arm and a leg and do a giant swing like that but it didn’t quite work. I do like Ripper (Who I think they said was 17) still trying to figure it all out and being creative as a monster, learning on the fly, but as the champ, she probably should have mowed through these too with a little less effort.

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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: Nancy! Victoria! Kumano! Ripper!

 30. 1979.05.XX1 - 01 Mami Kumano & Monster Ripper vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi

K: This was a very similar kind of match to one we covered last week and the main purpose was clearly building up Monster Ripper for her title match against Jackie Sato on 7/31. To avoid repeating myself I’ll just focus on the different aspects. Firstly this was two falls but the two falls played out very differently. In the first fall Monster was just dominating both the Golden Pair she barely even needed Mami’s help. Monster’s getting a bit better at these long heat segments, they do start to get a bit repetitive once she’s been at it for more than a couple of minutes but she’s lacking the pauses/hesitation that hurt some of her earlier performances.

In contrast, the 2nd fall was descended into a chaotic brawl quite quickly. Golden Pair apparently decided they weren’t going to bother playing by the rules and just started double teaming, even attempting a double pin at one point. This livened things up a lot. Nancy Kumi actually made an effort for solid minute or so. The first fall arguably set the scene for things to get more hectic here, but it’s definitely the more entertaining portion. Especially when Yumi Ikeshita gets involved on the outside and starts throwing people around into the chairs. Monster once again won with her big splash of terror.

So it turned into a decent match but forgettable match on the road to 7/31.

**1/4

MD: This one somehow felt less complete than the last tag, though it went about the same time. Given some of the time calls after the first fall, we may have lost some of this. It started with Ripper …well, ripping up a Jacky poster, so that was fun. At times, the Golden Pair could use their superior teamwork and speed to bedevil Ripper, or just run right through her together, but Fujimi came in heavily taped up and that made her a big target for Ripper, first with a shoulder claw, but really just in general. Kumano got in on the act too with a hair-pull assisted torture rack and over the shoulder backbreaker. They were able to hit a series of flapjacks/goardbusters on her and hurt her knee, but it didn’t even the odds for long.

That was especially so because, as opposed to the last match, the outside members of the Black Army got involved to help do damage on the floor. Moreover, and object (maybe a soda can? Hard to tell) came into play though at least they were able to fire back on Ikeshita with it. Fujimi was just too hurt to give them a chance for long. By the end, Ripper was more or less playing with her food, holding out her hand until Ikeshita could sneak behind her and they could do a double crash into her repeatedly. Ripper’s suplex was more or less a death move. She followed it up with a splash and the deal was that the victim’s partner simply couldn’t pull her off. The act was down by this point at least and the act was solid.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy! Tomi! Kumano! Petrelli! Ikeshita! JACKIE!

25. 1979.03.XX1 - 02 Jackie Sato, Nancy Kumi & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano, Marlene Petrelli & Yumi Ikeshita

K: The picture is weirdly blurred on the footage of this one so we can’t see any detail of anyone’s faces on the hardcam shots. It looks like someone’s censored them. Thankfully everyone has fairly distinctive outfits so I never mixed anyone up.

This is in front of a pretty lively and excitable crowd, which the wrestlers play into well and makes what would otherwise be a rudimentary trios match into something more memorable. Jackie being the centrepiece of the whole match also helps as she’s by far and away the most over person in this match. In the first fall the heels are all over her before she has much of a chance to do anything. A new bit of villainy is Mami stealing her entrance jacket and using it to try and strangle her. There’s a moment that made me smile when Jackie struggles her way out of this, and the camera cuts to two fans who do a ‘high five’ esque motion to each other, now just delighted to see Jackie get out of that predicament but in a way which felt like they’re part of the team.

This is ⅔ falls, and another thing I found memorable is that all 3 finishes were someone being pinned despite a partner(s) trying to push the winning wrestler off the one being pinned but failing. That never seems to happen at all in modern wrestling, for some reason just touching someone while they’re in the middle of pinning someone just breaks the count even if I’ve never heard it said that that’s an actual rule. I’ve seen it happen in Monster Ripper matches where she’d get a pin by just powering through opponents trying to break it up but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen in all 3 falls.

Another general point is the lack of any real spectacular moves or high-flying, even with Tomi Aoyama being in the match. The one exception was Yumi Ikeshita’s hurricanrana pin move, but that was the finish to the 2nd fall, it wasn’t just randomly thrown in anywhere. It was very efficient in how good this was despite them leaving loads of tools still in the box, which helps avoid diminishing returns when they do pull those tools out.

The finishing stretch was really cool in how one-sided it was. Jackie, who had been prowling up and down the apron looking all agitated at what was going on in the ring, gets tagged in and her mean mood just seems to make her unstoppable. She takes out all three of her opponents one by one with a different move each time (coz they keep getting up for more), and gets the win with a very aesthetically pleasing backdrop. Tomi & Nancy both have good timing in storming across the ring to prevent the heels from breaking up the pin. It doesn’t quite work (Jackie’s too superpowered to pull off though so that didn’t matter), but that kind of thing gives the vibe of this being a team sport and they’re putting tactics into practice that they will have done drills for in training.

Really good and well put together match

***1/4

MD: It’s been building over the last few months here, but we’re in a new world now. There’s a different level of energy, like always, when Mami tags in early and starts beating on Tomi, but the second Jackie comes in, it goes from energetic to absolutely electric. The crowd has changed. The screams are now ever-present. The passion is flowing. Mami, arch villain that she is, immediately snatches Jackie’s robe from the cameraman (it has the name of her new song on it) and starts choking her with it, the others in the makeshift Black Trio joining in and the crowd shouts out in agony at the affront. The world will never be the same again.

Jackie, like all of the great babyfaces, takes and takes, and then when it’s time to comeback she hits her float over head drop and unleashes fury upon the heels. Petrelli, billed as one of Burke’s crew, takes all the offense well, including a giant swing to end this fall and an inverted whirlybird from Tomi towards the end. Tomi and Nancy are in this one and they assert themselves at times, including Nancy looking as much of an entity as we’ve seen her with a chairshot on the outside, but this is the Jackie Show.

The Black Trio takes the second fall with a great Kumano assisted springboard seated senton to a standing opponent followed up by Ikeshita (who is a slugger herself)’s top rope arm hook rana, but Jackie comes back strong in the third fall, taking on everyone all at once like an absolute super star as the crowd goes wild. It just feels like we’ve entered a different one, one more reminiscent of what’s to come in the 80s.

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