70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jumbo! Jaguar! Victoria! Gomez! Rios! Ikeshita!

73. 1979.11.XX2 - 01 Ayumi Hori, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi vs. Norma Gomez, Raquel Rios & Yumi Ikeshita

K: This didn't go anywhere I didn't expect from the start, but still, it felt like it overachieved somewhat considering it included two unfamiliar Mexican wrestlers and a very green Ayumi Hori, who actually got more focus than anyone.

The first half of the match was mostly a drawn out face-in-peril segment for Hori, who is so outmatched that she never really even attempts to make a comeback so much as just try to make it to her her corner to tag back out. It makes you wonder why her partners let her tag in in the first place. There's an interesting moment when she almost makes it to her corner but Ikeshita just covers her. Not a pin attempt, they're clearly in the ropes, but it just stops Hori from making a tag. She's looked pretty weak on offense in previous matches (which really is a drawback when you're the biggest wrestler on the roster) so at least this role avoids that. She at least does a decent job of repeatedly reaching out her hand to signal she needs to tag out, although in one moment she reaches out her hand to the wrong corner. Maybe Ikeshita’s face-targetting offense disoriented her.

When Victoria Fujimi gets to tag in she's immediately on the receiving end of more offence, these tags are almost always very heel dominating. She is established as being a bit above Hori in the hierarchy though by letting to fight back a bit and things spill out to the outside for some rudimentary chaos.

Things pick up when Ikeshita is back in the ring and is taking everyone out with a metal bucket. After that's taken off her though she more than holds her own with the slickest moves of anyone, and finishes things with a fantastic looked-like-a-deadlift pile-driver that the second she hit it I thought had better be the finish as I don't remember seeing her hitting a better one. It's just a bit of a shame that Yokota had so little to do here when she already looks like the best wrestler on her team and is started to get hyped up on commentary. Solid showing though.

**3/4

MD: Some interesting commentary notes I picked up on. They indicated that Fujimi was probably the leader of her team since she was most seasoned. And they likened the future Jaguar to Mariko Akagi and said that she was following her path. 

No big surprises for this one. It’s interesting to see Hori work from underneath because other than people having to punch up at her, they treat her just like anyone else. Rios had some size and they had a brief beatdown but it wasn’t really a Clash of the Titans. When Hori’s on offense, she just crashes into people though. I liked Gomez more here, even if she just choked and shoved a finger into someone’s throat for the most part. 

Primarily and unsurprisingly, this was an Ikeshita showcase. They always are unless Kumano’s there to share the load. A headbutt to take over, dragging a face over the mat, the obtuse angled slams. Things broke down and the babyfaces had more luck after that (after a brief series of bucket shots), but only so much, as Ikeshita reversed a tombstone attempt and absolutely planted Yokota with a sit down pile driver for the win. Not as much substance to this than if it went longer but you may not have gotten that substance in the first place, so I’m not complaining too much. It was solid for how long it went.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Grable! Kai! Kumano! Lucy! Rimi! Victoria!

68. 1979.10.17 - 03 Joyce Grable, Leilani Kai & Mami Kumano vs. Lucy Kayama, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi (2/3 Falls, first part of match corrupted)

K: There's a chunk of this match missing as the tape got screwed up and when the picture comes back we're in the middle of a heated 1st fall. Shame because this looks like the best match we've seen in a while. The heels have Lucy Kayama isolated in their corner and take turns to take her apart before getting the win. We don't really see any of the other babyfaces really do anything before they drop the fall but Lucy looked good taking the beating. 

The 2nd fall starts with Lucy back in the ring again squaring off with Mami Kumano, and before long she's stuck in that corner again. It's probably just a result of much of the 1st fall being missing but it's kinda funny that more than half of the run time of this 2/3 falls trios match we have consists of 1 person being tripled teamed and their partners being powerless to  do anything about it. Victoria Fujimi does run in a couple of times when Mami Kumano started to fight a bit dirty but she's only able to disrupt a pinfall or two before the ref throws her out. And that's for the best as it's Lucy who manages to get the comeback together by herself, including a sick release Tiger Driver. It's a shame the hot tag itself wasn't really built to, in fact it happens off screen as within seconds of that Tiger Driver Fujimi is now in the ring apparently legal. Still the comeback was satisfying and Lucy even got the pin with her special splash. This has been quite exciting and lively (the crowd are pretty good too).

The heels are feeling rattled as now Mami Kumano has brought out THE TOWEL. She tries to jump the babyfaces with it but it BACKFIRES BIG TIME with Rimi Yokota stealing it off her and using it on the heels herself, making them look very foolish. Another cool moment was Kayama doing a kind of Rainmaker Elbow move where she pulls her opponent into her but it's an elbow to the face rather than a lariat. Lost Move Alert. She's really having a good performance today. The one drawback is the finish was a bit out of nowhere. That's not necessarily a bad thing in match as fast-paced as this but it felt like it could have done with a few more minutes.

***

MD: We come in JIP (due to a corrupted tape) midway through the first fall. The heel ref has his head bandaged, which is pretty funny. I sort of miss the introductions since we’re so used to getting them. How cool did Kumano’s jacket look (she has boots with her name on them). Did Kai do her little spin dance? (She has boots with LK on them). Lucy is in all white. Important stuff here. 

First fall has Lucy getting a tag but then cut off by Mami and a rope to choke her with. Her shots both coming in and then firing back on Kai look pretty damn good though. Kai and Grable are able to double team her (missile dropkick from Grable as Kai holds her and then a double slam) to end the fall. Second had a spirited comeback after a missed top rope splash (this was weird as Kumano was in the ring and distracted checking on her partner who missed it and that’s how Lucy fought back. Wasn’t as clean as it could have been if she wasn’t legal). Some big offense from the babyfaces including a Lucy Tiger driver and Victoria gourdbusters.

Final fall was chaotic. Kumano came in with a towel but Yokota got it and started choking. Obviously the heel ref got involved and again later when he prevented a legal tag from taking place. There were some big bombs and Kumano had this neat body scissors pin that she did. The heels took it with Grable’s over the shoulder backbreaker in the end. I assume this was a way to save face with Sato about to win the $30,000 in the main event.

ER: The main story of this, for me, was how ferocious Mami Kumano was. I love the heel team, Grable and Kai as the two larger Americans flanking Mami, and I thought the Americans were good here, especially Grable. But Grable and Kai worked as more overpowering heels, and I was drawn to Mami's wild animal heeling. She goes after Lucy Kayama in the footage of this we have (who knows what the dynamics were in the opening we didn't see) and it's all aggressive asshole stuff, treating Lucy with real disdain. She had this release swinging neckbreaker that she used to fling Lucy toward their corner, and I'm not sure I've seen that before. The 2nd fall started with Mami keeping the bandaged ref in between she and Lucy until the right moment, then grabbing hair and quick punching her in the back of the head as she's throwing her to the ground. There were six people here and Mami was the only one grabbing hair for real. Everyone else was working strikes, not blowing each other up on body shots, not playing dirty, but Mami is in there pulling hair as hard as possible, which only made her hair based throws and set ups look better. She was working on a whole different level from the others, even breaking out a slick scissored takedown of Victoria that looked more innovative than anything else in the match. She was also great at getting her ass kicked when Lucy finally tagged out, flying up for Victoria's big release front suplexes and going up for Yokota's backdrop and pancake. Everyone here brought something, but I kept waiting to see what antics Mami Kumano was going to get up to next. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

***½

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**3/4

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

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Victoria! Day!

47. 1979.08.XX3 - 02 Cheryl Day vs. Victoria Fujimi

K: Cheryl Day starts this match with a strange leaning back a few inches more than you’d expect pose like she’s about to start doing the limbo. Whatever this tactic is it doesn’t work as Victoria takes over the match pretty quickly with one of her typical flurries of screaming offense, only to get over-zealous on one of her flying crossbodies and crashes and burns.

The match then follows that basic formula through to the end. Cheryl Day continues to aim for the throat in much of her offense, but there’s not that much malice to it really and she just moves a bit too slow for it to feel like she really beating Victoria down. I get leaving space between moves to ‘milk’ things but it wasn’t effective here. I did think it was a little bit interesting that both of Victoria’s comeback moments where basically her being on the outside and then storming into the ring throwing everything she had at Cheryl. It’s not a comeback I remember seeing very often yet she does it twice her, the second time Cheryl was unable to turn the tables on her and she got the win with what the announcer called a ‘Manji’, but really was an Octopus Hold.

But overall, not a memorable match at all. Looking forward to the next two matches we have from this card though.

**

MD: We’ve seen almost 50 matches now and this is one of the first ones where I came in thinking that we weren’t going to learn much of anything from. And that was more or less true. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t competent. Day was very good at controlling the pace and her stuff absolutely looks credible. She has a lot of different knee shots, single and double. Her stuff looks consistently good but even when she’s causing havoc on the outside, it never quite transcends in the way the Black Pair do, for instance. There were good and even memorable bits here, the two of them standing up and slugging (and Day’s slip under armdrag), Day basically flipping a table on to a heavily selling Fujimi (helped by Kumi) on the outside, and the two big comebacks were Fujimi rushed in from the floor with big fiery flurries. That included the finish where she hit a really nasty gourdbuster more or less stopping time from the impact, before finishing Day with maybe the first Octopus Hold we’ve seen in the footage. I don’t think the sum of the whole was greater than any of the parts here. Both Day and Fujimi are better as role players for someone else’s story maybe?

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Victoria! Day! Masami!

45. 1979.08.XX2 - 02 Cheryl Day & Tenjin Masami vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Victoria Fujimi

K: This has a crazy start where Victoria Fujimi just recklessly launches herself through the air only to splat herself on the match. Well that set the scene for a wild match. Strangely though, she tags out for Mimi Hagiwara soon afterwards and then barely does anything for the first half of it, and this is a very long one.

There’s little to criticise about the work in the moment here. Mimi’s selling of strikes stands out as particularly good. But this is just way too long and they aren’t able to structure things out for us to have anything to really dig our teeth into. It feels like they keep backtracking on themselves to pad the length out. For example there’s two separate segments where the match spills out into a brawl on the floor, but the 2nd time they do this it’s played out so similarly it’s also as if they forgot they’d already done this. So you don’t get any feel of progression watching it, they’re just doing stuff. It’s never exactly ‘boring’ but it doesn’t exactly suck you in either.

If anyone felt like the weak link here it was Tenjin Masami. She’d go on to be a far greater wrestler than any of these three, and she does clearly have a good presence about her here. But she just hasn’t really figured out how to wrestle properly yet. You won’t hear this said about a young wrestler very often, but she actually seems like she’s less of an athlete here than she’d become several years down the road. She’s a bit stiff in the way she moves, and she doesn’t seem to have the strength to just launch her opponents. Obviously I’m watching this being familiar with her peak and maybe it’d be better if I didn’t think about things that way, but I can’t really help it.

I liked the finish though. Cheryl covers Mimi after a butterfly suplex and Masami dashes across the ring to cut Victoria off before she can break it up. It felt like the finish to a shorter match though, which this should have been.

*3/4

MD: Long tag match that probably would have benefited from being two-out-of-three falls instead of just the one fall tag it was. It went probably around 24 minutes which is as long as just about any tag we’ve seen I think. It was structured with heel offense early after Fujimi crashed and burned at the start, a long heel-in-peril bit in the middle and then chaos over the final third. You could have inserted falls in between each of those segments and it would have flowed better.

Masami was still just showing us the start of who she’s going to become, but she’s weighty and solid here. She hit hard. Her stuff had heft and force behind it. Day had a lot of throat based offense (even her one foot dropkicks) and she struck a bit more like a surgeon. The two of them together, even as things were breaking down in the end, never portray the same sense of mayhem that the Black Pair do.

Fujimi had come a ways since we first saw her. She even had her own cheering section! I like her hefting gourdbuster that she used down the stretch a lot. The middle section here was the two of them working over the legs and Hagiwara is a natural figure-four user. Masami kept trying to interfere and the ref stopped her which was a little odd since usually the heels get to do whatever they want. The biggest chaos in the match actually took place with Yokota, seconding Mimi and Victoria, zeroing in on Masami and dragging her around the ring to inflict violence upon her. That led to the heels finally coming back though by then it was a 50-50 stretch. Day was able to split Mimi and Victoria apart well enough to pick up the win though. I’d argue that this was probably structured backwards and if it was ⅔ falls then it probably wouldn’t have mattered as much, but since it wasn’t, it did. That’s not to say they didn’t fill the time in an entertaining manner though.

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

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

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

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

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

**

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Day! Tsumaki! Masami! Mimi! Jaguar! Victoria!

35. 1979.07.XX - 01 Cheryl Day, Masumi Tsumaki & Tenjin Masami vs. Mimi Hagiwara, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi

K: This one looks a bit different as it’s outdoors, you can see the odd tree peaking up in between the stands. Anyway I’m in very familiar territory from the jump as we get a bit of outside brawling and then Tenjin Masami taking great delight in noisily beating up Mimi Hagiwara. I keep my knowledge of future events on these pieces to a minimum, but seeing how this is the earliest footage we have of Masami, it’s too fitting to leave unmentioned how she was torturing poor Mimi from the start. Sometimes two wrestlers are just made for one another.

We get a really long period of control from the heel team. The execution of everything in the micro was quite good, but the whole thing went on a bit too long without the faces getting any hint of a comeback at all so by the last couple of minutes I was waiting for it to end. A flawed structure can undermine something even if the wrestlers are really doing anything bad in the moment.

Referee Miyuki Yanagi tries to stop the heels cheating but is thwarted when Masumi Tsumaki gets sick of her and just throws her out the way. This actually got a bit of laugh from the crowd, which doesn’t usually happen. They then double down on this bit by doing it a few more times, getting increasingly overtly comedic and more laughs. It’s not clear to me if the wrestlers planned to do that from the start or they just saw the crowd seemed to enjoy that so gave them some more, but it was pretty interesting to me.

Once Yokota gets the comeback spot in and tags out the match becomes a lot more enjoyable. Everyone gets to show their stuff now but the heels aren’t just totally dominated. Mimi’s cute armbar takedown thing (I’ve always been bad with move names…) is certainly aesthetically pleasing here. Tenjin Masami doesn’t look out of place at all, in fact she may be the strongest performer of the heel side in this. She has been wrestling almost a year at this point though, even if it’s the first time we’re seeing her wrestle. She does a really great but simple bodyslam on Yokota towards the end of the match where she’s holds her up in the air just for a couple of seconds after her shout gets your attention, and it just builds a bit of suspense for her hitting the move and makes it feel bigger than if she just did it immediately.

The finish was Rimi Yokota just hitting a frantic flurry of flying offense and then a big butterfly suplex to get the win. I don’t remember her ever hitting a sequence of moves with such urgency before this. What really made it hit home is when she did a flying crossbody onto Masumi Tsumaki from behind rather than wait for her to turn around to take it normally, which made it look a lot more violence and certainly got a reaction from the commentator.

Slow start, turns into a good match and a strong showing from Yokota and Masami at this stage in their careers.

**3/4

MD: Spirited match here with our first look at Tenjin (Devil) Masami. Assuming that she and Tsumaki were the up and coming bad guy bench for AJW, they were in good shape. Again, we get a mismash of heroes with the Young Pair, the Golden Pair, and the ever-adaptable Mimi coming together. Everyone was civil until the bell but then chaos ensued. It seemed like Mimi and co. would turn things around but they got swept under early and spent most of the rest of the match working from underneath with a few big comebacks interspersed.

Day came off as credible with big mares and face rakes. Tsumaki had some very nice neck twists and imposed as you’d want her to (including taking out the ref at least once), but all eyes ended up on Masami. She was pretty formidable already, with a few different choke variations, one of the knee and a nasty hanging tree choke. During one of the comeback bursts, she went rope running with Yokota (including Rimi sneaking around for a slick pin). The comebacks, when they came, were energetic. Lots of big moves (Fujimi’s bodyscissors rana and goardbusters, Mimi’s neckbreakers and gutwrench suplexes, Yokota with big flapjacks). The cutoffs came quick though and the overall story more or less flowed. The finish had Fujimi hitt some butt butts out of nowhere setting things up for Yokota to get the pin on Tsumaki after a dangling butterfly suplex. It’s well worth noting how far the babyface side had come in the last year or two.

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

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

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

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

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

**1/4

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

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

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Silk! Fujimi!

22. 1979.02.XX1 - 01 Indian Silk vs. Victoria Fujimi

K: I don’t have a whole lot to say about this match as I thought it was very mediocre without being awful or anything. Indian Silk totally dominates the first few minutes, but it doesn’t really build up much heat because compared to the antics of the Black Pair etc her heeling is incredibly tame. It comes across like she’s just winning the match. Indian Silk is working like she’s a big monster, but she isn’t that big, so that aspect doesn’t work well either.

I was also thrown off with how Nancy Kumi was constantly interfering to help Fujimi; it felt completely unwarranted the first few times, I’d expect to have seen some egregious cheating from the heels before a babyface second would actually attack their mate’s opponent. The referee did start heeling it up later in the match, maybe Nancy knew he was going to that, but the sequence of events was backwards.

The few seconds where Indian Silk did a pendulum backbreaker hold where she’s pulling Victoria’s head up and down was pretty neat though. But otherwise, pretty dull and weird match.

*1/2

MD: Most notable thing about this one was that we had a leaning rudo ref. That meant that Nancy Kumi (Fujimi’s Golden Pair partner) felt it perfectly acceptable to dash in to interfere now and again. It gave everything a bit of a weird tonal feel overall. Maybe the other side of it was that Silk (who had an Indian gimmick, yes, but that they said was Mexican) was supposed to be a monster.

She manhandled Fujimi through a lot of this. A lot of choking her over the bottom rope or lift up drop down flapjacks. She had a really nasty deep cobra clutch which she pressed over her knee repeatedly as well. Whenever Fujimi got an advantage, she was equally fierce, including a fairly brutal gourdbuster and cobra twist, but the ref contrived to cut it off. Finishing stretch had a bunch of bombs by Fujimi, including this great running press off cross body in the corner and high vertical splash sentons before winning with a deep roll up. Maybe it was just me but I felt a disconnect here. Anyway, post match Fujimi got to beat up the ref so this felt somehow years before its time.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Ripper! Fujimi! Tsumaki!

17. 1979.01.XX2 - 05 Masumi Tsumaki & Victoria Fujimi vs. Monster Ripper

K: I believe Masumi Tsumaki is Victoria Fujimi’s sister. There’s not much information about her. She’s better known as a masked wrestler called ‘Silver Satan’ who tagged with Mariko Akagi as Silver Pair. They both retired together later in 1979.

We get a bit of stalling to start this off including Yumi Ikeshita punching the referee to a little chuckle from the crowd, perhaps a foreshadow of what’s to come? Victoria is the smaller of the two, she tries to use her speed to keep out of the way of Monster’s attacks, which works the first couple of times but once Monster lands a hit then she’s knocked down easily. When Masumi she actually tries a takedown, and despite her being a bit bigger than Victoria that approach has even less success.

There’s an odd moment where Black Pair on the outside trap Victoria’s feet over the ropes, and then Monster comes over and after a senton just keeps picking Victoria up by the head and just dropping her. There’s something really ‘primitive’ about her offense, it sometimes feels like she’s just making it up as she goes along with her brute strength rather than actually having moves. I read the purpose behind these Monster Ripper matches as putting her in different situations where various members of the roster have to come up with a way to take her down, and thus far we’re seeing none of them succeed, or at least never for very long. She just seems unbeatable as she’s so much more powerful than anyone else.
The match does drag a bit in the middle where they start getting repetitive with the ‘Monster is too strong for this to work’ spots that it gets a bit redundant. Things heat up some more when the sisters start double teaming her and have things spill to the outside. We get to see Mariko Akagi throw some shots when the brawling starts, which was nice. But Monster just bashes everything in her path and soon gets the win.

**


MD: This was 2-on-1 but the rest of the Black Army (or Black Trio) were out there and so were a bunch of red-jacketed allies of Tsumaki and Fujimi. They seemed to call Victoria and Masumi the “Tsukisaki Sisters," which Kadaveri has maybe explained. This more or less had tag rules though it got more chaotic as it went and started with Fujimi and Ripper. Victoria went through her legs a couple of times but quickly got caught and all it took was one shot and one toss.

A couple of normative things. At first the Black Army would only interfere when Ripper already had a clear advantage and basically just to set up Ripper jumping on her opponents by holding them in the ropes for leverage. Then they’d interfere when Fujimi and Tsumaki were trying to get an advantage with a double team (like a double crab). Then finally, they’d just do it when one of them had gotten over on Ripper, like when Fujimi had been able to get a toehold on. Likewise, Ripper had a tendency to more and more hide chokes behind the refs back.

In general, Ripper looked more developed than she had previously, but she still had a ways to go. At one point, Tsumaki ran in trying to pick a leg and Ripper just lifted her up into an over the shoulder backbreaker. But later on, she didn’t seem sure what to do so she just did it again. On the other hand, at one point, she jammed them on a snap mare attempt and it looked like the most foreboding thing imaginable. She’d just crash down with vertical Earthquake splashes again and again too. The amount of chaos that ensued here, with a half dozen people getting involved on the outside and Ripper just fighting off everyone like she was King Kong felt like an escalation from what we had seen so far. Just a new level of chaos. In the end though, this was inevitable and Ripper just slammed one on top of the other and pinned both.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Hanawa! Kumi! Fujinami!

11. 1979.01.XX1 - 01 Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi vs. Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa

K: The referee of this match appears to be Miyuki Yanagi, who goes as far back as any of the wrestlers we’re going to be seeing in these reviews. She debuted in 1955 in All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling Association (not the AJW we’re familiar with, a similarly-named precursor company when the Joshi scene was split between multiple promotions) and from what I can tell wrestled for the Matsunaga brothers through the pre-TV period, holding the WWWA Tag Team Titles with Mariko Akagi as late as 1974. That’s interesting because she would have been a champion in AJW at the age of 36; the whole “mandatory retirement at 25” rule fans in the West are aware of really wasn’t a thing for very long, nor was it ever consistently enforced. After retiring she became a trainer, and can be seen in various road skits on AJW TV in the 80s running training drills and the like.

To the match. The opening of this was characteristic relentless offense from both teams, with neither getting much of an advantage. Golden Pair (Nancy & Victoria) are higher up in the hierarchy though, so it opening like this really means they’re not going to get an easy fight. After a couple of minutes of this, everything just stops and we get Victoria & Seiko doing a tentative staredown before going for grappling. If you’d played this match from 2 minutes in, you’d probably think that was the start.

We get a sustained period of Young Pair dominating things, mainly just keeping Victoria cut off on their side of the ring and smother her with moves. When Golden Pair manage to turn things around, we get pretty much the same kind of thing from their end. There is a focus on attacking Hanawa’s arm though, whereas Young Pair didn’t seem interested in any kind of limbwork. This pattern gets broken up though when they go outside the ring and throw each other into chairs/the outside wall for a bit. It’s something which happens in these matches a lot. I wonder if it’s a tactic for when they’re not sure where to progress whatever they’re doing in the ring, or feel like the crowd isn’t into it and they need to shake things up. It serves as a reset though, as they take their time to all get back in the ring while the referee counts.

After this ‘reset’ the match does go in a different direction, as now Young Pair are being more blatantly heelish. Things open with Rimi clawing at both her opponents eyes, and then raking Victoria’s face across the top rope, ignoring referee Miyuki’s warnings. It’s noticeable a bit later on when Nancy manages to escape one of Rimi’s holds and starts a bit of a comeback, she gets a bit of a cheer and applause from the crowd. When Young Pair get back into it, things spill outside again and they run right to the other end of the venue where we can’t see what’s going on, and we get a double countout.

Pretty enjoyable match with a few interesting moments. Things improved after the 1st run and throw around on the outside, but it never really went into another gear with a new narrative hook even if the action itself didn’t let up.

**1/2

MD: To remind everyone, Kumi and Fujimi are the Golden Pair and Yokota and Hanawa are the Young Pair. My impression was that the winners would get to challenge for tag belts but I’m not 100% clear on this. It was played up as a big opportunity for the Young Pair and they certainly made the most of it. This was wild, non-stop action but it followed more or less of a narrative. The Young Pair ambushed right from the get go and they pressed at full speed. That was, according to the commentary, their big advantage. They were absolutely relentless. Early on Kumi and Fujimi got some shots in but they were dragged back under. Probably most memorable here was Yokota with some lifting flapjacks and Hanawa pressing back with a headscissors and rolling with it on Kumi. Just brutal looking stuff. The ref would break it and she’d come right back in with it.

The Golden Pair had a size advantage though and were able to power their way back. That led to a series of nasty gourdbuster style drops by Fujimi. That’s one of my big takeaways from this one actually. For a lot of this, what they were doing didn’t feel like conventional spots or move so much as just them finding a way to drop their opponents on their face as much as possible. That was true for both parties. Also, so many back body drops and some of them were so quick that the camera had to shake all over the place to try to capture it. The Young Pair took over in the most dynamic way possible; Hanawa grabbed Kumi and literally ran her all around the arena before tossing her into a wall. It’d go back and forth after that before crumbling apart to their equivalent of “walk and brawl” which was more like dashing and brawling in the stands. The Young Pair almost made it back into the ring to beat the count but were held on to and the match ended as a draw.

So much happens in these that it’s hard to cover all of it. I’m glad there’s two of us working on this. It’s exhausting and they very often decide not to sell in order to just keep the action moving and the violence going but that doesn’t usually impact the overall momentum shifts so it’s a little more forgivable, even if maybe weird and preventative when it comes to the crowd really getting into things (though everyone did, as always, get a kick out of Fujimi’s butt butts). There was a moment on the tape where they cut to calmly interviewing some guests while the four were screaming and killing each other in the ring and when it cut back you really had to wonder if you missed anything essential for the match or just more of the continuous punishment. That doesn’t mean this wasn’t wild and fun to watch though.

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70's Joshi on Wednesday: Akagi! Ikeshita! Kumi! Fujimi!

8. 1978.09.XX - 02 Mariko Akagi & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi (2/3 Falls, probably September)

K: Nancy Kumi and Victoria Fujimi are the ‘Golden Pair’ and would have been WWWA Tag Team Champions shortly before this match. They had some acclaimed matches with Queen Angels (Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama) earlier in 1978, you can see about 3 and a half minutes of one of them in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRFTRPDFG_U&t=1154s It’s not enough footage to meaningfully assess so it’s not been given its own entry here, but it’s interesting to have a look at for historical reasons.

Mariko Akagi is also a significant name. She debuts in 1970, had two WWWA Singles Title reigns and appears to have been regarded as one of the best/most influential workers of the era. She’s called the “Queen of the Ring” in the Beauty Pair movie and is depicted (in kayfabe) as having recruited Jackie Sato into AJW. But, as is becoming a theme of this project, this is just the first of two matches we have of her before she retires in 1979. There’s a few more very brief clips out there of wrestling but that’s it. This match is the best evidence we have to see if her reputation is deserved.

Here we go then. Akagi and Ikeshita are both behaving like rotten hooligans from the start storming the ring with chairs, and when the referee appears to calm things down to start the introductions they jump Golden Pair and the match just starts. The first 9 minutes just Golden Pair getting demolished in all kinds of villainous ways. Ikeshita is her usual self, relentless cheating. Akagi is cheating as well but she feels less outright evil and displays more of a ‘determined to win at all costs’ kind of heeling whereas Ikeshita is just being cruel coz she enjoys it. That’s how I read it anyway. I also see a bit of Jaguar Yokota in how Akagi moves around the ring with such constant energy and motion. I really liked all of this, the flaw though is when Nancy eventually manages to get the hot tag they’d been building to it feels way too easy. Like Ikeshita just lost focus for no real reason and suddenly she was able to tag in Victoria.
 
But leaving that aside, the hot tag is really fun from the off when Ikeshita grabs Victoria by the arm apparently to lock in some kind of hold, but Victoria uses both Ikeshita AND the referee as a base when she flips around out of it and hits Ikeshita with a judo throw. Now that is a spot someone needs to steal. You can’t exactly be mad at Victoria for using the ref like that coz he’d already made a bunch of bad calls not spotting Golden Pair’s tags coz he wasn’t looking, yet letting the heels get away with coming in and out without tagging. Victoria follows this up with a really awesome gutbuster (actually Ikeshita bumps for it incredibly).

Skipping ahead a bit, the heels get back control when Victoria tags Nancy back in (Nancy is clearly the weak line), and when Nancy’s on the mat Akagi does a jumping footstomp TO THE FACE. She doesn’t get much high on it thankfully but still that looked nasty and not a move I remember anyone doing. Funnily enough Nancy manages to tag Victoria because Ikeshita AGAIN seems to lose focus and lets her get away and tag. Unless they’re trying to get over Ikeshita as an absent-minded heel it’s a bit weird that’s happened twice. Here Victoria does a spinkick which Ikeshita ducks, but Victoria quickly follows it up with a second one to the head and takes her down. Interesting because Meiko Satomura has a very similar spot (albeit her opponent is usually on a knee rather than standing in her version).

Annoyingly, the camera is focused on Nancy Kumi on the outside nursing a hurt knee and totally misses the move which gets Victoria a pinfall on Akagi to take the 1st fall.

The 2nd fall is quite short. I’ll note that Akagi hits some really good looking moves in this, her dropkick is very good and I also spotted she did the knee-drop from the top rope. That move seems to have a bit of lineage in AJW with only one wrestler really doing it at a time. The lineage I believe goes like this: Mariko Akagi > Mimi Hagiwara > Noriyo Tateno > Takako Inoue. I mention this because one of the quirks of AJW is that the wrestlers weren’t supposed to copy their senior’s signature moves, but they were allowed to ‘inherit’ them after that wrestler retires. That convention is part of the reason why so many AJW wrestlers invented their own moves. They had to!

Before the 3rd fall Akagi is very angry for some reason, so angry that she starts throwing water at the crowd and gets some loud boos. The heels pretty much just pick up where they left off. Nancy is getting dominated by the pair of them for a good while until, you’ll never believe this, Yumi Ikeshita snapmares her towards her own corner and loses control of her allowing Victoria to be tagged in. If I were Akagi I’d be fuming. The match ends pretty soon after when they all start fighting outside and it ends in a double countout.

It’s definitely a good match with lots of cool stuff, but also a bunch of structural flaws and a flat finish.

***1/4

MD: Akagi and Ikeshita really stood out here. I’m pretty sure we’re still in Hawaii thanks to the flowers in the ring and the talks of rainbows. The Golden Pair of Kumi and Fujimi (with her gi) get announced but then Akagi and Ikeshita (who had made it to the ring first brandishing chairs) immediately swarmed and it’s ten minutes of pure heat after that. We’re in southern tag land. Fujimi would get hope spots with missed spinkicks. Kumi would try to punch from underneath. They even managed a hot tag only to get cut off when Kumi missed a dropkick. The babyface on the apron would try to get in and the ref would get drawn to stop her causing doubleteams and illegal switches, but the heels were so good at taking advantage that they held the heat instead of it going onto the ref. They played hide the object. They choked with a rope. They went after the eyes again and again. Maybe the most striking visual for me was the utilization of hair-pulling not as an end unto itself but as a means to get the hair away from the eyes so that they could be targeted. There weren’t many moves in the first fall, though Ikeshita threw some nasty headbutts. When the real hot tag did finally come, Kumi wiped out again, this time hurting her knee and it was up to Fujimi to fight until she was recovered. This time, her first spin kick was missed but she hit a second and soon managed a clutch pin.

The second fall, however, was all Akagi and Ikeshita. Ikeshita had power moves, a high fallaway slam, a gutwrench slam, standing headbutts off the top, and the arm hook ‘rana to pick up the fall. Akagi had a lot of fast firebrand offense off the ropes. In between falls, she spiked a water bottle while Ikeshita shouted on the mic. Fujimi’s leg was bandaged up in between falls and she was able to come back with Fujimi in the last fall, but things devolved into pure chaos on the outside and everyone got counted out. This particular version of the Black Pair was a blast and I wish we had thirty more matches with them as a unit. Ah well, getting used to that sort of disappointment is a necessary part of this project.

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70's Joshi on Wednesday: Hagiwara! Hanawa! Yokota! Fujimi!

5. 1978.08.XX - 01 Mimi Hagiwara vs. Seiko Hanawa (JIP, Month Guessed)

MD: We come in JIP here and get about seven minutes of action to the finish. Right from the start it’s already more measured and methodological than what we’ve seen so far. That doesn’t mean they ever really stop, just that it’s a little more hold driven and mat based to start. After escaping from a couple of Hagiwara’s holds (like a fairly nicely entered cross-armbreaker) Hanawa took over by chaining a cross toehold into a nasty surfboard into a seated bodyscissors with thudding drops and then finally into a leg nelson. It was all pretty well done. Hagiwara fired back after getting knocked outside but I get the sense she was still working things out on offense. Her punches and neckbreakers didn’t have a lot behind them. Hanawa came back after dodging a flying cross chop and hit these great short rope-assisted fireman’s carry takeovers. She landed a few big back body drops but Hagiwara snuck in a small package out of nowhere for the win. Hagiwara’s best stuff at this point seemed to be her pin attempts (Victory Roll, Sunset Flip, etc.) but she had ok fire and we should get to see her develop in the footage to come. Interestingly, the commentators were talking about an “industrial event” in Hawaii and how well received the Beauty Pair were upon arrival and I wonder if we can find out anything more about that.

K: Mimi Hagiwara is an unusual wrestler. She's also an actress best known for playing Choko in the original Kamen Rider TV series, a rare case of an AJW wrestler already having some fame before wrestling. She did her tryout under a mask to stop the media finding out she was trying to become a wrestler. She also debuted at the age of 22, which is very old by their standards. Seiko Hanawa is best known as Rimi Yokota's partner in the 'Young Pair' tag team, she disappears from footage by late 1979 so not much else to say about her.

The match is JIP. There's a funny moment at the start of this where Seiko is holding on to the rope to try break Mimi's submission, but the referee just kicks the ropes so she loses grip. The rule on rope breaks here is that you must secure the rope to get the break, not just touch it, so the ref kicking it is just testing to see if you've secured it or not. They're both just working very basic holds here. Mimi is a bit slower on executing things but she has the right idea and sells underneath ok. Mimi gets kicked out of the ring, when she returns she starts her comeback with punches. They don't look very good but that she punches hard is part of her gimmick we're just supposed to accept. Seiko takes back control with a lot of repeated moves which are a bit boring, but then Mimi rolls her up out of nowhere to get the 3 count.

Not much of a match.

6. 1978.08.XX - 02 Rimi Yokota vs. Victoria Fujimi (Month Guessed)

MD: Alright, this seems to be a broadcast from Hawaii, apparently from the Civic Center in Hilo, Hawaii. We’ll see if Kadaveri has any more info on it as I’m getting to this first. It’s our first look at the future Jaguar. She had a cape with “Rimi” on it and worked at least de facto heel here. Fujimi had a karate gimmick including the gi and early kicks and over the shoulder throws though she settled into more conventional offense later on (a figure four, a butt butt, and then these nasty dropping goardbusters down the stretch). If you told me that Rimi got the Jaguar nickname for biting people, well… this match would be good evidence. She got out of a tough bodyscissors that way and later, after taking over on the outside and starting on the arm, gnawed on Fujimi’s hand while she was in control. She balanced a bunch of dropkicks and cross chops with that mean armwork, the brutality on the outside, or just a running forearm down the stretch. This had a great comeback at the end with Fujimi shedding her gi jacket as if she was Lawler dropping the strap and rushing the ring. She hit a huge Thesz press and then this giant ‘rana with the legs locked around the arms in a unique way, and then those goardbusters. Yokota bullied her way back into it but Fujimi hit a sunset flip out of nowhere for the win. I wasn’t too sure about the heel/face dynamic here but I thought the transitions worked really well.

K: I’m pretty sure this is the chronologically the first Joshi match we have in full, so very fitting that has it has Jaguar/Rimi Yokota in it, who is still wrestling full time to this day. This is all her era. She is introduced as part of ‘Young Pair’ and Victoria as part of ‘Golden Pair’, her tag team with Nancy Kumi. This is the era where rather than having stables almost everyone is put into tag teams. And a note to Matt on how she got the name ‘Jaguar’, I’m not 100% sure this is THE reason but it seems the most likely explanation. The AJW roster used to travel separately in three buses, in August 1980 they were given stable names after which bus they travelled in. The girls who rode the ‘Jaguar’ bus were called the Dynamic Jaguars, Rimi was one of them. This was their entrance theme as a faction:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=U0FgzA7oLhw By mid-81 she’s being called Jaguar Yokota.

The opening is just them exchanging moves, the back and forth signifies that no one is really getting an advantage. There’s a fun moment where Rimi stands on Victoria’s foot to stop her from dodging a strike which knocks her over, but when Rimi goes to run the ropes she gets tripped by Victoria still on the ground. This sets up Victoria locking in a bodyscissors to gain the advantage, which Rimi tries to counter with BITING THE TOES AHHHH. People generally wouldn’t call her a ‘heel’ as she’s not part of the Black Legion official heels, but in terms of working the match she’s the heel here it’s just slightly more subtle.

Rimi dominating most of the match builds up to Victoria taking off her gi and jumping into the ring to get a comeback in and we get some back and forth excitement. Victoria eventually wins on a sunset flip before doing a very pleasing backwards roll into an arm-raised leap of delight. If we’re being objective this was no better than average quality wise, but it’s a lovely match to have.

**

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