I stumbled on a clip from Madusa's podcast discussing Bret Hart & Curt Hennig wrestling each other. It's pretty entertaining and I think is referring to their '91 Summerslam match which is probably a classic. And this got me thinking about Madusa's time wrestling in Japan. I went through her backlogs to see if there's any reference to wrestling the AJW women or wrestling for AJW. And lo and behold, there were a couple clips. Then that led me to want to check out if she had any interesting match ups. I wouldn't say I have sought out her matches in AJW but I never thought that they were crap either. One thing led to another and I watched a clutch of her matches from AJW in 1989-1990...one of my favorite periods of Japanese wrestling. This is a quickie so I'm just going to provide some takeaway remarks. If you're interested, go check 'em out!

Mitsiko Nishwaki vs Madusa (AJW - JGP Final 8/24/1989) : A good match that was a showcase for both. It's only 5 minutes so there's not a lot to it but they certainly put on a good show with the time they were given.

Mitsuko Nishiwaki & Madusa vs Yumiko Hotta & Reibun Amada  (AJW 10/8/1989 - Tag League the Best Match): You could look over this match but you'd be missing out on something really cool. They bring the action but the bring the nastiness too. Madusa does not back down from Hotta one bit. Nishikawa (Hotta's Fire Jet partner) is really good as well. 

Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Mitsuko Nishiwaki & Madusa 10/8/1989 - AJW - Tag League the Best Match): Nishiwaki & Madusa are a women's team that Tenryu could endorse. Just a face punching, head slapping and back breaking non cooperative tag team. If you can believe it, they are the reason you wanna watch this & not the Toyota & Yamada team. Really good stuff..that goes for this match as well as the one prior.

Madusa, Noriyo Tateno & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto (01/04/1990 - AJW) : Fun, fun 10 minute match with the heel team doing all sorts of things. Aja beating up the one guest at ring side. Madusa stiffing Aja and Aja responding. Kimura & Grizzly were generic yet competent in their heel performances . Tateno & Kaoru had some fun spots. Yeah this was a gas!

Noriyo Tateno vs Madusa (AJW JGP 6/17/1990): Excellent under 10 minute match that's head and shoulders better than the '89 JGP match. This was full of chained moves and was absolutely what made this so damn good. This one is worth checking out! 

I'm not going to watch it since I'm not a fan of the AJW kickboxing shoot style matches but there's Madusa vs Aja Kong 07/21/90 out there.

Bison Kimura/Madusa Miceli vs Mariko Yoshida/Yumiko Hotta (11/14/90): A fierce frenetic fight! Keep it simple stupid with Madusa & Bison being hard hitting heels and Yoshida & Hotta being the athletic baby faces. This was just a bunch of fun...absolutely what you want for a mid card tag match.

Aja, Bison, Madusa, La Diabolica & Xochilt Hamada vs Toyota, Mika, Kaoru, Yoshida & Moreno (11/17/90): Whoa!! This is a great 10 woman match! It's an elimination match too but the pace is fast and the action is top notch. And on top of that the final section is just awesome. You might think Madusa is the odd woman out in a way but she provides the kind of variety you want. Maybe the case of low expectations on such a match but this was sweet!

Jungle Jack (Aja Kong & Bison Kimura)/Madusa vs Manami Toyota/Mika Takahashi/Suzuka Minami (12/01): This is very fun stuff but not much pacing or storytelling. Barely features Madusa at all. I'm not sure if there's a personal problem or maybe she was injured and she had to take it easy. It was Jungle Jack vs the other team. Definitely a respectable under card match.

I gotta say Madusa in this period is really good...and has given me a new opinion on her as a wrestler. It's raised her stake in my eyes. Hopefully, it'll do the same for you

Thanks for reading!