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

Disc 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

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

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

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

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Tomi!

Disc 1

3. Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama - 1/4/80

K: This is probably the biggest match the company could put on at the time. Company Ace vs. Heir Apparent, World Champion vs. All-Pacific Champion. It’s non-title and had a 30 minute time limit (title matches would have 60) so they’re telegraphing a bit that this isn’t THE match between the two, but it’s still a pretty big deal to see these two in a singles match.

The crowd were pretty hot for the previous Junior Title match and they’re even hotter for this one. When Tomi Aoyama climbs to the top turnbuckle the screaming is so loud it comes out a bit distorted in the audio. There’s a couple of young girls in the front row I noticed who are really getting into it and reacting to the big spots. True wrestling connoisseurs there. 

When the match starts they both have these fighting pose stances squaring off at each other and it feels like they’re both taking each other seriously. Tomi is a bit more aggressive, which I think works in the matches favour as it benefits her to come across as confident, Jackie doesn’t need that so much as she’s already the Ace. There’s a cool little spot where Jackie launches Tomi into the corner, and Tomi counters it by leaping to the top and going for a boomerang splash or something, but Jackie just does a backroll to get out of the way and Tomi adjusts to land on her. I say this a thousand times watching this stuff but that’s a cool logical spot that someone should steal now and it’d fit into modern wrestling fine. 

I feel like if I’d seen this after watching the 70s stuff I’d be surprised how much of the early match is taken by Aoyama. Not just that, it’s that she’s in control primarily through mat wrestling rather than any of her high-flying. In fact, the couple of times she does actually go for a top rope roof Jackie able to just move out of the way. It feels like Jackie has her scouted for what she’s most known for, but is struggling to deal with her on what is supposed to be Jackie’s superior domain. There’s a couple of occasions in this early period where a hold gets broken and they had a soft-reset, and you think “ok this is where Jackie takes control”, but the back-and-forth doesn’t happen, Aoyama quickly gets back on top each time.

I thought this structure worked great. It gives a big boost to Aoyama’s credibility/levels her up a bit without hurting Jackie’s stature at all. It works all the better that when Jackie does get a comeback - and her comebacks comes not from one of those soft-resets, but a proper fighting comeback - her offense looks fantastic and clearly more damaging than Aoyama’s. It’s just she hadn’t been able to deploy it yet. She’s also just cool. She does a Big Boot so casually like no one else I’ve seen in that she just lets her foot just hang in the air for a couple of seconds after clocking her opponent with it. She makes it look easy.

Jackie isn’t able to consolidate control though. Aoyama actually gets a comeback in pretty quickly by countering a headscissors into a hold of her own to start her 2nd prolonged period of control. This 2nd one differs in that while the 1st was established her as on Jackie’s level on the mat, this was getting her over as a real threat to win the match. She’s a lot more vicious now and her offense is mostly targetting Jackie’s leg. There’s cool moment where she goes for a Figure Four but Jackie spins over onto her front before Aoyama can lock it in, but this makes it an even bigger moment soon after when Jackie isn’t able to block it and we get cuts to the crowd looking very distressed as Jackie is put in the submission and has to clamber for the ropes. 

It feels very cohesive that Aoyama loses this 2nd period of control not by losing on the mat, but she went for a piece of her signature high-flying offense (a dropkick) but Jackie countered it. The counter is awesome. Jackie just sidesteps the dropkick, puts out a knee and drops Aoyama straight onto it to turn the dropkick attempt into a gutbuster. This leads us into a huge 3rd act/climax of the match where they go 50/50 or close enough. Jackie sells the leg quite well I thought for the first few minutes of this, hobbling a bit on it while on offense or moving until she gradually shifts back into moving normally. I don’t think Aoyama had done serious enough damage to her leg to warrant selling more than that. There’s a great moment where, after initially failing to do a Giant Swing, Aoyama manages to hit Jackie with a dropkick - the first time her flying offense actually pays off; and then goes for the Giant Swing for the 2nd time and she’s able to get Jackie up and spin her around.

They finish this with another great scream reaction from the crowd for Jackie missing a dive and crashing into the outside, only for Tomi to crash and burn even worse when she goes for a (this time deliberate) dive to the outside. She’s able to beat the 20 count back into the ring, but then Jackie hits her with a sick backdrop that lands her on the back of her head and they are both counted for a double KO. I’ve sometimes complained about non-finishes in a lot of the 70s matches but this is a draw where it felt like that match had built to that conclusion so I have no problem with it.

I love this. Desperation to win, gritty matwork, innovative spots, lots of little narratives that get paid off within the match, and of course someone getting dropped on their head. The first Zenjo Classic.

****1/2

MD: I’m curious to see where Kadaveri is going to fall on this relative to everything we saw in the 70s but this might be the best match we’ve seen so far, and the most complete. This was non-title and they were really pushing this as the match up that would take them into 1980. The idea was that if Tomi had a good showing here she could get a title match or at least that she’d need a good showing to have momentum for a title match. There was a real tension here, with a hot, vocal crowd, the hottest we’ve seen in a while. It should be noted that a lot of the transitions came after moments where they were tussling for pins and trying to hold each other down, for instance.

I think there was just more of everything. This felt more complete and actualized than a lot of what we’d seen in the 70s. There was a higher level of familiarity. Tomi rushed in with dropkicks but she went for both a dive (though not the Queen Rocket) and her jump to the top finish early only for Jackie to get the heck out of the way quickly. Later on in the match she had to really work for the giant swing too. 

There was also more limb targeting and selling, even on offense. It didn’t make it through act breaks but it was more tangible and made it farther into the match than usual. Tomi went to Jackie’s leg early and she leaned hard on it with a lot of different flexibility-enhanced holds. Jackie had a comeback with a few power moves but Tomi cut her off by going back to it and when Jackie was able to come back again, she was noticeably stumbling until they moved on to the next big theme.

The finish was very self aware and smart, heading towards their next match. Jackie had dominated for a time, using all sorts of offense like her belly to back toss, falling power body slams, and these wrenching backbreakers. She had hit a couple of her off the rope cross takeovers (not sure what to call them. They’re like flying cross chops but she grabs the head and tosses her opponent down but it’s a trademark of hers). After a tussle, Tomi had come back and they faced off at the twenty minute mark to finish things up. Jackie got an advantage with a roll up into her belly to back suplex, but she missed another one of her flying cross attacks and rolled out. Time seemed to stop as everyone knew it was time for the Queen Rocket. Tomi wiped out though. She made it back into the ring but Jackie went to put her away with another belly to back. She pressed off the top rope to counter it and they both crashed down, unable to beat the count, leaving things even for their big title match (though fate, or booking, I’m not sure which, would have other things planned for that). 

It was still rough around the edges at times (though generally in ways that added as much as it potentially took away) but when you combine some of the evolving smartness and self-awareness to the work with a hot crowd and big stakes, this felt like a step forward for the promotion. We’ll see if it’s part of an evolutionary line or just a momentary blip though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: 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: Tomi! Kumano!

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Ikeshita!

66. 1979.10.17 - 01 Tomi Aoyama vs. Yumi Ikeshita

MD: Commentary gave me a bit on this one. First, They say Tomi has the Hawaiian Pacific title and I have no idea when or how that happened (or even what that is). Second, they say this is for 3rd/4th place in the league and count Ikeshita on the US side actually. The finals between Vicki Williams and Jackie would come later. It does give you some sense of hierarchy, both in Tomi being second behind Jackie (we more or less knew that) and Yumi being above Mami though it might have been a wash really. Third, Yumi has a cool new jacket with tassels on one arm which kind of matches Mami’s cutoff jacket in its own way. Important stuff here. 

K: This is a big match on paper, but unfortunately it’s 16 minutes (if I heard the timekeeper right) cut down to 5 for TV, so I can’t meaningfully assess it. It didn’t feel like they were putting in any special effort even in the short amount we saw, that it was ending in a double countout anyway usually puts a cap on these matches. Yumi Ikeshita goes through her hide the weapon routine but in a kinda going through the motions way. I wasn’t even sure what weapon she was hiding she was doing it a little too well. Then things spill out to the outside, with Ikeshita actually being the one to go for a big dive to the outside but pays the price when she misses, then Tomi gets a more impressive looking one over the ropes (with hands) before they’re counted out. Looked like it might have been part of an exciting last few minutes, but what else can you say when you know you didn’t see most of it.

No rating.  

MD: Clipping is definitely unfortunate here. You’d almost buy that this was one coherent piece but you didn’t get any of Tomi comeback attempts and obviously less of Ikeshita grinding down on her. Tomi came in hot but got headbutted to oblivion and beat around the ring. The second act was all Ikeshita hiding an object in four different pieces of her gear. Then the last act was everything going crazy on the outside with Kumano interfering. This had Ikeshita miss a nasty kneedrop from the apron to the very hard floor and Tomi hitting her angel dive to (I think) the interfering Kumano before both of them got counted out as Ikeshita wouldn’t let Tomi get back in. Ikeshita had a nasty bruise on her leg on the finish. Bet this was pretty good overall but we’ll never know. It is a great snapshot look at just how versatile Ikeshita was as a heel though. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

**1/2

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Williams!

60. 1979.09.2X2 - 03 Tomi Aoyama vs. Vicki Williams (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: Well I agreed way back when we started this over a year ago that I’d do a write-up for every 70s match we had, and I don’t regret it, but boy I’m glad that AJW stopped having Moolah’s girls taking up so much space on the cards pretty soon after this. Who is to blame for this is another article in itself, but the result of her methods is a bunch of wrestlers who almost always just work the same kind of very limited match and everyone else just has to work within it. Things did improve a bit later on with some of them (I’m thinking Judy Martin & Leilani Kai especially), maybe because Moolah herself stopped being a prominent part of the tours.

This is similar to the last match with the twist that the babyface gets way more offense in, so I guess there was booking logic in putting them back to back. At least we have the Queen Angel with the more exciting offense so we get a few fun moves heh, that’s not something I’d usually single out for phrase in a match but you have to take what you get here. Tomi has incredible energy to her. In one of her big outbursts she does a very cool flying kick (not a dropkick she’s almost vertical throughout) which Vicki Williams springs up to in one of the freakiest ways I’ve ever seen I’m not even sure how to describe it. It looks like she’s a puppet and there’s someone pulling her up with strings.

I noticed the fans heckling the ref with the “referee kaere” chants (literally means “Go home referee!”, but it sounds ruder in Japanese). Shiro Abe wasn’t the first to get that thrown at him. This did get better heat than most of these matches, but within a couple of minutes of this hinting that it might even get good they just go to a double countout after a bit of brawling on the outside and that was the end of that. Well actually the end was Tomi getting revenge on the referee by dropkicking him in the back to a big pop. I guess that added to things. This was one of the better Japan vs. USA matches, but I don’t want to see any more of these.

**1/4

MD: Wright (at least I think that’s his name) was the referee again and by this point it’s just getting frustrating. The tags aren’t so bad but these singles matches are getting painful, especially after considering the standard level of quality (not through the moon or anything but definitely consistent) earlier in the year. That’s not to say this one was a particularly bad offering in these US vs Japan matches because it wasn’t. Tomi came back over and over and when she got dragged down it was due to the ref and interference, so there was a flow to this. Plus the big stuff was pretty big. Williams would take big bumps (and had one weird bridge up that was like nothing I’d seen before). She crashed into chairs. Tomi almost decapitated her with a catapult onto the bottom rope (the ref stopped her). There was a nasty bit of hairpulling as all the American team worked on her from the outside as Vicki held her legs on the inside. Vickie survived the giant swing through both hook and crook (the ref delayed the count but only after Tomi missed her first splash attempt), and things spilled out to a chaotic mess of chairshots and grabbed legs to spur a double countout. Post-match Tomi dropkicked Wright into everyone and got some revenge and the fans popped for it but this really should have been done and over after the Jackie match and the moment that the Japanese referee came in to intervene.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Martin!

54. 1979.09.21 - 01 Judy Martin vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: I didn’t think much of this one. There was a lot of interference from the Americans patrolling the ringside area; my main thought about it was how much it seemed to disrupt the flow of the match and every time Tomi got back in the ring it felt like a reset. I’m not sure what the difference is because Black Pair of course do interference in their matches but it usually works a lot better than this, like it’s just part of the greater package whereas here it’s more of an irritating intrusion.

When Judy and Tomi are just in the ring the work is fine but nothing really of interest. Judy dominates the vast majority of the match, which I don’t think is ideal, and Tomi just gets one big comeback with her top rope boomerang and a giant swing into the big splash and that’s the end of that.

*1/4

MD: Judy Martin is a favorite and it was great to see her here so maybe I’m biased towards this one. She’s sort of the best possible manifestation of Moolah-ism, that style known for hair throws and clubbering and slams, just an excellent base to give structure and form to all the fireworks around her. I was wondering how fully formed she’d be here (maye three years in they said, and age 20), but nope. She drives Tomi right into the corner with nasty shots to start. This is Judy Martin, fully formed already basically.

This was the first match of the long awaited Japan vs US series and it functioned almost like a lumberjack match with both teams on the outside. Martin would control and toss Tomi to the floor where she’d get beaten on for a bit before her team broke things up and she fought her way back in. Just solid, well-formed stuff overall. Great finishing bit where she Tomi hit her comebacker body press off the ropes (very nice camera angle on it) but just for a 1. It served as the last transition though as she mowed through Martin and flung her about in a fantastic screaming giant swing for the win.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Day! Tomi!

41. 1979.08.XX1 - 01 Cheryl Day vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: I usually do my write-ups going through the match chronologically while trying to explain my thoughts rather than just doing a play-by-play. I’m going to break that habit here though because this match really felt they started with that spectacular finish in mind and then worked backwards. Tomi counters an Irish Whip with a top rope boomerang into a flying bodypress for the three count. I thought this spot was ahead of its time when I saw Manami Toyota do it in the mid-90s so imagine my shock learning that someone was doing this in 1979. In more recent years when I’ve watched Toyota do her boomerang leaps I’ve noticed Aoyama being referenced on commentary, so the Japanese fans got what she was doing. It really helps in understanding Manami Toyota when you realise- contrary to Western fan conventional wisdom - she wasn’t supposed to be an innovative wrestler at all. She was being a stylistic throwback. That’s why she had such a plain look with the long black hair, basic black gear and was all softly spoken in promos. The ‘traditional’ girl presentation matched how she wrestled in the eyes of longtime AJW fans.

I hope you’ll pardon that digression, it’s just the rest of the match doesn’t really invite analysis. Tomi takes control early until she misses a dropkick and then Cheryl Day starts her heat section very early on with a series of strikes targeting Tomi’s throat before settling on working her arm, but the match doesn’t go on long enough for that to really go anywhere and they were probably just killing time to get to the big finish. They put some physical effort into the body of the match though, I don’t think it was ever boring. Pedestrian seems a fair description though.

**¼

MD: This was a pretty complete piece of business. Day took over early with a quasi-dropkick right to the throat, intentional enough as she followed it up with a throat chop. Then she took the arm and bulldogged it down right onto her knee. They worked the brunt of the match after this with Day grinding the knee into the arm and eventually Tomi coming back with kicks to the legs and working it over. Eventually Day got her out and beat her up a bit but Tomi came back on the inside with a flurry of her own and it was all spirited stuff. Obviously you’d rather the arm and legwork matter in the end but expectations are what they are and they at least framed things well enough due to one bit leading to the other. Finish was Tomi’s leap back body press where she lionsaults-styles her way to the very top back onto a standing opponent and it would be an impressive spot in 2024 let alone 1979.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****1/4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**3/4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/4

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Tomi!

31. 1979.05.XX1 - 02 Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: This one feels like a stylistic shift as we move on from the Beauty Pair era, with Jackie in particular portraying herself as a more serious straight-shooter wrestler. The opening half is played very straight, revolving around her and Tomi grappling for holds. Tomi is more aggressive, but also comes across a bit more frantic in her temperament whereas Jackie is a bit more reserved and psychologically in control of everything. Even when Tomi has her in a whole, Jackie has this unphased aura of "no need to worry, I'll get myself out of this before long." I say 'psychologically' because I'm not saying she's always physically in control, in fact something I like about how she sells is she makes it look like she's really getting thrown about and is only just about able to stop herself from falling. The way she takes an Irish Whip for example is much better than most wrestlers.

There's not much focus on a specific body part or anything. It feels like whatever limb they grab is more just seizing opportunities as they appear rather than them working to a gameplan. I think the match would have been better with some kind of hook like that, though what we what was still good and I don't think it ever felt like basic logic fell apart.

Tomi does a really cool counter in the opening portion that - I say this a lot - someone should steal. Jackie tries to wrap her up from behind, but Tomi blasts her away with a reverse dropkick, if that's the right word for it.

They built things quite well in that first half for things to get increasingly heated in the 2nd, and that's where Tomi starts throwing her more spectacular moves. I think this is the first time chronologically that we see her do her boomerang move off the top rope. It's pretty wild to see that in 1979. I remember seeing Manami Toyota do that move in the 90s and the commentator calling out Tomi's name in response. Tomi also does an over the top dive to take out Jackie on the outside, and it actually gets her a countout win. Jackie was about to get back in just in a time but Tomi kicks her from inside the ring to seal it. It's a relatively weak win, but it's still a big win because it's Jackie Sato she's beat. It's also nice that we got to see the Beauty Pair vs. Queen Angels match, as I now know that Tomi's already scored a win on Jackie with that move before, albeit that was one fall in a 2/3 falls tag match, so this feels like a bit of a progression in a rivalry.

***1/4

MD: This was from the “White” league of the mythical US-Japan league that they mentioned previously. They claim that so far Jackie is 6-0 and Tomi is 5-0-1 and that seems dubious to me. But then midway they start to mention the women (I picked up Moolah, Vickie Williams, Joyce Grable, Judy Martin, Lealani Kai, and one more). I guess we’ll see if this happens at some point. I think they mentioned September.  No more eyepatch for Jackie. This was nominally a babyface match (the crowd is obviously with Jackie).

Tomi came in hot with a lot of dubiously spaced flying kicks where the sum of them is worth more than any individual one. She controlled for the first few minutes, primarily with a cross-toehold but this was fairly even and back and forth, but with longer periods of control. Tomi fought furiously but Jackie was just on another level with her execution. There was a lot of force behind everything she did and when she locked on a cobra clutch for instance, it was very mean. Hot finishing stretch where Jackie inadvertently sent Tomi over the top and started crushing her with big moves after she got back in, only for Tomi to do a great press off the top rope to hit a body press and come back. They ended up tangled in the ropes and Tomi, apparently hot over what had happened earlier in the match, cheaply sent Jackie over. Then Lucy (on the outside) went so far as to hold Jackie so Tomi could hit the Queen Rocket and get the shock countout (using her foot to keep Jackie out at the last second). It felt a bit like a heel turn though I’m not sure it was played that way. Still, it felt like a big deal in the moment.

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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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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: Charito! Kumano! Ikeshita! Jackie! Nancy! Tomi!

18. 1979.01.XX2 - 06 Charito Silver/Mami Kumano/Yumi Ikeshita vs. Jackie Sato/Nancy Kumi/Tomi Aoyama

K: This JIP in a strange way, they do all the ring introductions then just when the match is about to start it skips ahead into the match already in progress. This gets very chaotic very quickly. They’re brawling on the outside and a moment I really liked was just the way Jackie smashes Yumi’s head into the announcers table with real vindictiveness, Yumi actually half-rotates over the table like she was taking a bump and making it look really impactful, and then immediately afterwards Jackie has her by the throat and just starts murderously strangling her. Just to add the chaos we then cut to Tomi Aoyama doing an over the top dive to the outside. Rarely have I seen the vibe of 70s Joshi so concisely encapsulated in a 12 second sequence. And right after Yumi Ikeshita gets the win with a top rope hurricanrana into a pin to take the 1st fall. Ikeshita is a really amazing heel in that she does all this cool innovative stuff yet is such a constant villain that it never really detracts from her act.

Tomi Aoyama looks pretty good in the 2nd fall when she goes on offense. This doesn’t last long though as the majority of it is Mami Kumano going wild with a hidden wrench hitting everyone in the face with it while distracting the referee’s view. Tomi somehow manages to roll her up while everyone’s running around and the ref counts it for quick 2nd fall, which made her look pretty cool. At this point I’ll note that Nancy Kumi has done virtually nothing of note, I just remembered she’s there.

Well we do get a bit of Nancy in the 3rd fall. She comes in, hits a few moves and then tags out. And that’s the last of her contributions to this bout. Jackie comes in though and puts things straight into finishing stretch mode as she’s almost immediately ganged up on by the heels in their corner, but she manages a fan comeback where she beats up two of them at once to set up some 1vs1 action against Yumi, and after letting Tomi Aoyama in to just hit a very fast Giant Swing, Jackie gets back in and manages a snappy sunset flip to win the match. I’m going to sound a bit repetitive with my closing thoughts but, it’s just the case that a lot of these matches are like this: it has a few really good moments and spots, but as a match it doesn’t amount to much more than just being fun.

***

MD: Our first trios match has me worried about how unhinged and hard to track all of this will get. It’s the Black Army vs a group of babyfaces I can’t make sense of as they all seem like they’re from different factions (Golden Pair, Queen Angels, Beauty Pair). It does start out somewhat subdued as everyone beats on Tomi, but nothing can make a match come unhinged quite like Mami Kumano hanging them by their throats and dangling them back and forth off the apron. She cycles through with it against her opponents. Jackie comes back though which lets Tomi hit the Queen Rocket plancha but it’s all for naught as Kumano powerbombs her twice and sets her up for nothing short than a diving ‘rana off the top from Ikeshita.

The second fall is wild back and forth stuff. If it just had more time to breathe it’d all be amazing. Kumano is such a force, starting the fall by hitting a driving calf branding style meteora and then later on playing hide the object into everyone’s face. Tomi had gotten in some butt butts and Jackie an airplane spin but they’re only able to take the fall with an up and over small package out of nowhere by Tomi in the chaos as Kumano was cutting people down with her object. After the fall, Kumano tossed the ref around.

Tomi landed on her feet early in the third fall and was able to turn things around for some quick but impactful shine including Nancy finally getting to do something. Jackie ended up in the Army’s corner however, and things spilled out shortly thereafter with the Army pressing their advantage in the chaos. Jackie was able to fire out of the corner when they came back into the ring and they rushed to an exciting finish including Tomi swinging Ikeshita about as perpendicularly as you’ll ever see and Jackie turning around Ikeshita’s second attempt at a fallaway slam off the ropes to get a sunset flip for the win. This felt just a little clipped but was just grounded enough and always exciting enough to still work for me. Ikeshita and Charito are good but Kumano stands out above anyone else we’ve seen in the footage so far.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***3/4

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

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

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

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