[1996-07-07-JWP-A Fair Wind] Dynamite Kansai & Cutie Suzuki vs Hikari Fukuoka & Kaoru

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

Fukuoka & Kaoru are one of my favorite teams ever as their styles just perfectly complimented each other. Wish their run would have lasted longer as it was only a little over a year but they had some great matches in that time and they go out here putting on a really good one for their final pairing.

 

Old music video I made last year in tribute to them

[Loss]

I love the Italo disco-sounding Fukuoka/Kaoru entrance music. It sounds like it was produced by Giorgio Moroder.

 

Anyway, this match kinda annoys the fuck out of me early on. Kaoru does a gazillion dropkicks to Kansai that she doesn't sell in the least. If being kicked in the face really hard doesn't phase Kansai, I have to ask why we should buy any offense Kaoru can possibly dish out. Also, usually your monsters like Vader or Yoko at least sell the body language that they've been rocked. Kansai didn't move at all. She just kind of ignored it. Ugly stuff, and there are a half dozen better ways to get Dynamite over as a monster.

 

That made me really want to tune out the rest of the match, and the clumsy brawling in the moments after didn't help much either.

 

There's this moment where Kansai goes to hit Kaoru with a kick and misses and hits Suzuki instead. Pretty standard tag spot. Then she reacts by just ... standing on the apron. Kaoru goes for the cover and there's a dramatic save, but why did there need to be when Kansai was right there? Because all saves are supposed to be at 2.9?

 

This is simulated wrestling at its finest. Kaoru's facial expressions are similar to those of a woman who was mildly amused by something she heard on a subway. Weird.

 

Coolest moment of the match: Kaoru countering a Dynamite powerbomb into a sleeperhold, which is ruined by only keeping the hold on for about 3 seconds.

 

This match left me clamoring for Toyota. Cutie Suzuki vs Hikari Fukuoka in singles would have been much better.

[Tim Evans]

I really liked the spot that looked like a 450 dropkick. This was a good match and I kinda want to seem more of Suzuki and Kaoru.

[Zenjo]

What an absolute joy and pleasure this was to watch, a real treat. You didn't see matches like this in Zenjo, the style was distinctly JWP. First off it was a high quality wrestling match with everyone looking good individually and gelling collectively. That was only the base really. What made it so special was the superb psychology and acting. Cuty was a delight as she bitched it up and dished out filthy looks like they were going out of fashion. It's hard to articulate how much fun her performance was. The team with Kansai had great chemistry, they were adorable together. The Kicker/Beauty combo was a popular idea at this time. Dyno picked her spots well and looked so powerful. Both opponents facials and reactions helped put over her badass credentials even more.

 

The high flying duo of Fukuoka & Kaoru also had great chemistry as a team of peers. The fight went back and forth with an exciting stretch. Had it been purely action then the crowd heat might have held it back. To me the psychology rendered that unimportant because I was so into what they were doing. This was probably Cuty's finest hour.

[KB8]

I'm more with Loss here, even though he tends to like joshi a lot more than me. I was pretty much indifferent to this. Kansai kicked hard as always, and she felt like a wrecking ball at times, but I just have such a disconnect with a lot of joshi that I'm taken out of matches and probably miss the story they're trying to tell. I lose interest early, and I never really recover.

[PeteF3]

Another "perspectives" thing--some of the stuff Loss jumps on is stuff that I'm sure he'd be used to watching from the start of the decade. Hell, Bull Nakano did a far more egregious no-sell of those kendo stick shots in 1990 which was a spot that a lot of other people loved but I hated--and that criticism comes up here, for a spot that didn't really bother me in this case. There are other issues with joshi far more prevalent than things like that. Anyway, I thought this was awesome, a real throwback to the JWP stuff of 1990-91 that I loved. Kansai is utterly dominant, but they at least carry that psychology throughout the match with Suzuki being a weak link and Fukuoka/Kaoru only getting in occasional hope spots when Kansai is in. But effective hope spots they are--Fukuoka's somersault dropkick was awesome and Kaoru gets a good near-fall by countering the Splash Mountain. Cutie still works lighter than a typical WWE Diva but she's sort of inherited Hasegawa's role as joshi's premiere person-in-peril. Kaoru & Fukuoka kept me in suspense as to what the final result would be throughout even though they looked overmatched for most of this, which is pretty much the quintessential definition of a good wrestling match. I'm with Zenjo--this was a joy.

[soup23]

With PeteF here as I really thought this was a great upstart vs. established duo match. The spot Loss mentions didn't bother me too much as it showed how overmatched the young team was and they really had to combo and use their speed to have a fighting chance. Kansai did look like a monster here and did a great job overall. This made me want to seek out more of Fukuoka and Kaoru as a team. ****

[tim]

Damn! I really wanted Fukuoka and Kaoru to win! The structure, selling and roles in this match actually worked to make me feel personally invested in the outcome, which I can't say happens very much when watching 20 year old matches. Kansai starts out as a force of nature with awesome strikes and a monster demeanor. But Fukuoka and Kaoru work more as a cohesive team, and by working together they are slowly able to overcome her, and Kansai is great at selling and getting over her vulnerability. Some really great team spots from Fukuoka and Kaoru. Some of the nearfalls really had me biting. I loved this match.