70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Nancy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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