Alex

With the exception of the MCU, there definitely isn't a monoculture anymore that's for damn sure. As a latino (my name may not show it) millennial, my interest in watching American wrestling weekly crashed when Eddy died and Rey got shat on hard. It didn't help that there was no real competition to the WWE, and the UFC got bigger and more accessible, and I'd rather watch MMA tbh. I got pulled back in when the pipe bomb went viral and Daniel Bryan earning his Wrestlemania moment, but we all know how happens after those events. At this point, I only watch WWE every once in a while to watch the women's division, and I probably watch WWE/AEW on Botchamania more than anything else.

Can we have a VG-like thing for sharing media? I have a lot of Joshi I can share, but stuff like Zenjo Classics gets copyright strikes on Youtube.

Maika grounds the champ early with some armwork. She gets a Fujiwara, a standard armbar, and an armbar/triangle choke combo. I like the struggle for Maika's superplex. Maika's backdrop driver looked brutal. Utami is able to make comebacks with lariats, goes for a Black Tiger Bomb, but Maika escapes to get the katahajime and Utami uses the ropes to slam Maika down. Maika eats a huge bitchslap and a torture rack slam for a two count and then the Black Tiger Bomb for three. Not bad, I liked how just about everything had some kind of struggle, nothing was easy, but this did meander when Maika was on offense.

Stardom 10th Anniversary 2021.01.17 Tokyo, Korauken Hall Watching the Samurai TV version. Future of Stardom: Saya Iida (c) vs Unagi Sayaka Huge cut into the match, pretty much the finishing sequence, after the introductions. You would think Iida, with her power, would be able to get a good spinebuster, but nah. Match was mediocre at best, no real flow whatsoever. Natsupoi vs Konami Big cut into Konami controlling Natsupoi and then Natsupoi takes over with her flashy offense, and she is hitting things pretty clean. Konami goes for two armbars and gets a cool a tarantula type armbar in the corner. Konami goes for a kimura type thing and gets Manami Roll’d in return, but ends up getting a Rings of Saturn. Konami didn’t want to let go of the hold and hits the ref and gets DQ’d. This looked like it could have been really decent in full. High Speed Title: AZM (c) vs Kaori Yoneyama Nice quick sprint, lots of action packed in for sub 6 minutes. The only thing I wasn’t really a fan of was that huracanrana thing that AZM did, it looked really awkward. Seemed like some slight miscommunication during all those quick maneuvers during the final stretch (waiting on Yoneyama, also being a mile away from the high kick). Overall, pretty fun. Natsupoi challenges for the title afterwards. Tam Nakano vs Starlight Kid Match is JIPed and starts with Nakano controlling Kid with very basic offense and heeling. Kid gets a nice plancha. Girls have a forearm war which Nakano wins convincingly after a minute. Both girls attempt tiger suplexes, but after a quick sequence, Kid hits the tiger for two. Kid struggles to hit another one and Nakano hits a spin kick. Nakano goes for another tiger suplex, which gets reversed and we get multiple reversals into pins, but Nakano hits two shining wizards (including to the back of the head) and gets the Tiger Suplex Hold with a sick bridge for the pin. Pretty good match, probably could have had fewer pin reversals. Queen's Quest (Momo Watanabe & Saya Kamitani) vs Donna del Mondo (Himeka & Syuri) vs Oedo Tai (Bea Priestley & Saki Kashima) vs STARS (Mayu Iwatani & Ruaka) Match starts with a three-way, which thankfully ends quickly, once Priestley is in and the ring gets cleared. Then Iwatani is the only girl left and she is posing and smiling to the crowd. Mayu hits a plancha to all the girls on the outside. STARS get eliminated first after Iwatani gets launched off the top rope. Oedo Tai gets eliminated shortly after a dragon sleeper. Watanabe hits a shitload of strikes on Syuri and hits a release tiger suplex. Kamitami has to fend off Donna del Mondo for a lot of the final fall, until Donna fuck up and Watanabe gets involved. Kamitami hits the Star Crusher for the win. This match didn’t work for me, felt like filler match. Somehow how too much going on and too little going on in the same match. Wonder of Stardom No Rules Match: Giulia (c) vs Natsuko Tora Worked sort of like a Dump vs technico match. Lots of use of weapons, some contrived use of chairs, and having the technico use their technical ability to outlast the monster and her team, Oedo Tai. Tora is a much better technical wrestler than Dump, but doesn’t really have the charisma or presence of her though. When the match was purely technical it was decent. Oedo Tai interferes big time and Tora does a splash through a table, which Giulia practically no sells, that or there was a big cut. Tora with blue mist to the eyes and a diving leg drop. Ref almost counts Giulia down and her team, Donna del Mundo, bails her out. Tora tries to use a chain again but it backfires and gets choked, Giulia struggles to get her finisher, but hits it to get the three. Definitely not a great match, but it was ok. Giulia does a promo quickly afters, and she looks pretty cool covered with the blue mist. World Of Stardom Title Match: Utami Hayashishita (c) vs Maika Maika grounds the champ early with some armwork. She gets a Fujiwara, a standard armbar, and an armbar/triangle choke combo. I like the struggle for Maika's superplex. Maika's backdrop driver looked brutal. Utami is able to make comebacks with lariats, goes for a Black Tiger Bomb, but Maika escapes to get the katahajime and Utami uses the ropes to slam Maika down. Maika eats a huge bitchslap and a torture rack slam for a two count and then the Black Tiger Bomb for three. Not bad, I liked how just about everything had some kind of struggle, nothing was easy, but this did meander when Maika was on offense. Overall, the show was decent, but there was nothing great to watch. Matches of the night were the undercard matches of Konami/Natsupoi, Nakano/Kid, and AZM/Kaori. Nothing was really bad either, so I can say this show is very mild recommendation.

Are we doing Tag Teams again? I didn't do 2016's poll for either, but will try in 2026, but it seemed like the Tag Team poll had exhausted voters. Would you considering doing both at the same time?

Watched from Samurai TV. Match is JIPed and starts with Nakano controlling Kid and being a rudo. Kid gets a nice plancha. Girls have a forearm war which Nakano wins convincingly after a minute. Both girls attempt tiger suplexes, but after a quick sequence, Kid hits the tiger for two. Kid struggles to hit another one and Nakano hits a spin kick. Nakano goes for another tiger suplex, which gets reversed and we get multiple reversals into pins, but Nakano hits two shining wizards (including to the back of the head) and gets the Tiger Suplex Hold with a sick bridge for the pin. Pretty good match, probably could have had fewer pin reversals

Nice quick sprint, lots of action packed in for sub 6 minutes. The only thing I wasn’t really a fan of was that huracanrana thing that AZM did, it looked really awkward. Seemed like some slight miscommunication during all those quick maneuvers during the final stretch (waiting on Yoneyama, also being a mile away from the high kick). Overall, pretty fun. Natsupoi challenges for the title afterwards.

I can't lie, I still mark out big for Goldberg, and I like that Goldberg matches are short. Even though he is pretty fucking old and not as ripped as the 90's, he still looks pretty cool. Oof, that Jackhammer didn't look good. Definitely no where near as good as the 2nd Lesnar Wrestlemania, but that match hit everything perfectly and looked amazing, even the camerawork was fantastic. This didn't have any of that, but it was a fine short PPV opener. Can't complain that much.

I know that AJW is definitely in a transition period with it being post-Crush Gals and not yet reaching the GOGOGO era. The red belt has been vacant for over three months (holy crap) since Lioness Asuka retired. Time to crown a new champion! First show - Tokyo Korauken Hall (1990.01.04) mixture of La Hora Retro and AJW TV Mima Shimoda (c) vs Kaoru Ito (AJW Junior Title Match) Pretty nothing match, good thing it's short. Manami Toyota vs Suzuka Minami This wasn't on the OG telecast. I didn't expect to see Toyota Pearl Harboring Minami coming, she doesn't even let the introductions or streamer collection finish. Starts off really fast, with a bunch of brawling and whips into the barricades. Minami eventually gains control and works on Toyota's leg and Toyota was selling it until, you know, she has to go on offense. Nothing but aerial moves, thankfully doesn't botch anything but she was real close once. Minami has the power offense and gets a flying crossbody. She gets a backslide pin reversed and then we go home. Minami gets a flying elbow and misses another one and gets rolled up for the three. Manami goes for a handshake and Minami is like nah bitch. Weird roleplaying here and a crap finish. OK TV match though, goes about 10 minutes. Madusa & Noriyo Tateno & Kaoru Maeda vs. Aja Kong & Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto Only have the OG version of this trios match. We get a heel ref and Aja Kong beating the shit out of an announcer. So much camera time on this announcer (and he leaves and comes back). Grizzly gets away with everything. Definitely more of a match to put over Jungle Jack than a good tag team match. Yumiko Hotta & Akira Hokuto vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita This was on the 1990's yearbook, and I've seen it before, it was a really good tag team match when I watched it then. Loved that the match starts with a botch. Dream Orca is very over with the school girls. Pretty fast match and really puts over the Yamada and Hotta rivalry. Hotta really sells the hell out of that sleeper from Yamada! Hokuto makes Mita look like a scrub! I never thought I'd say it, but I love all the sleeper holds in this match! Pretty good home stretch with Mita getting payback after Hokuto embarrassing her, but Dream Orca fuck up a double team move. Hotta and Hokuto take control and Hokuto hits a diving dropkick for the three. Mita is bleeding and selling that match hard. Bull Nakano vs Mitsuko Nishiwaki (WWWA Title Match) And here we go, start of a new era. Love how grimy and 80's Nakano's theme sounds. Nishiwaki tries to get an advantage right away with a clothesline and gets dumped out immediately afterwards. Nishiwaki gets back with a bloody face...and then we get the introductions lol. They were going for a speed vs size/strength thing here, but Nishiwaki just doesn't really have any that much to offer. She eventually gets to work over Bull's arm though and Bull does her best to sell. Cool transition from armbar to sharpshooter. In the home stretch, both girls get German suplexes and power bombs, but Nakano's was way more brutal looking. Pretty short title match, felt strange that a vacant title match wasn't hyper competitive, but I don't think you could really do that considering how much better Nakano is. Next event: 1990.01.05 in Korauken Hall Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada This match uses mostly kickboxing rules but they're also allowed to grapple. I already AJW like to have this matches, but they usually had like Bat Yoshinaga or some person I don't care about doing them. I have no idea why anyone would want to pay full price for this on VHS back in the day (it has one match on it!), hell, I didn't even like the idea of buying a DVD of this. Even from the introduction of the event, you can tell these girls can't throw a punch, they shadowbox worse than Ronda Rousey. The sleeper hold comes back here from the tag bout the previous day, but it doesn't look good with boxing gloves on. Girls get super gassed play boxing, and it goes all 6x3 minute rounds to a decision. Toshiyo gets the decision. Ok, not watching this again, this didn't do it for me at all. Next event: 1990.02 (have no idea what the full date is, comes from Joshi Mix - I am grateful for the Joshi Mix guy for archiving this stuff, but he adds in his wrestling photos in the ad-breaks, and they are creepy as hell, so fuck this guy at the same time.): Kyoko Inoue & Kaoru Maeda vs Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda I think this is the earliest pairing of LCO I have on tape, obviously they're not LCO yet, but this is kinda neat. Kyoko Inoue doesn't have the face paint either. Match starts off real fast, with Mita eating offense. Mima Shimoda with some awful dropkicks. I liked the part where Mita throws Maeda right at Inoue when Inoue is trying to help her teammate. Shimoda and Maeda trade some near fall sunset lips. Shimoda hits a badly executed sunset flip on Inoue for the 3. Match didn't have a good flow until the ending stretch. We get a few minutes out of 12:47. Akira Hokuto vs Bison Kimura Kimura slaps Hokuto during the introduction, and Hokuto slaps her back. For some reason, Hokuto held out her hand as a sign of respect before the bell starts, Bison pulls a Ronda Rousey. Man, Hokuto's half crab looks incredible for a while. Bison gets a nice German with a bridge and starts rag dolling the shit out of Hokuto, followed by a tombstone. Hokuto bridges out of everything and she is doing some good selling. Every bridge looks like a complete struggle for her. When it's time for Hokuto to comeback, she lands a huge slap to the face, dumps Bison out of the ring, and hits a great plancha. Home stretch here, girls reverse a bunch of moves until Hokuto slips out of another backdrop and hits a tiger suplex for the win. This was a pretty good TV match, definitely enjoyed it. We get about 10-11 minutes out of 16:57. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Fire Jets 2/3 Falls I think this is earliest I have of Toyota and Yamada pairing also, so kinda neat show. The Hotta/Yamada rivalry continues! Toyota has two sections of selling in the first fall, first time she has her arm worked over, second time over her leg. First exchange of Hotta and Yamada was so weak considering their rivalry, but eventually Hotta beating up Toyota throws her like a scrub into Yamada for the tag, and here we go, this is what I wanted, MORE FIRE. Fire Jets quickly get the first fall after the tag. Hotta and Yamada open up the second fall, Hotta with shit punches. Yamada now the FIP for a while, taking a lot of offense. Nishiwaki totally no-sells Toyota's interruption twice, which I thought was kinda funny. Yamada eventually make a tag to Toyota, I think, Toyota never comes in. Double missile dropkick to Hotta, and Yamada misses by a country mile. Yamada still in this and gets a flash schoolboy pin after a reversal on Hotta for the second fall. That felt really weak. Yamada and Hotta open the third with a kicking contest. Toyota with a hot tag in, hits a like 6 dropkicks on the Fire Jets. Toyota tags out pretty soon after (!), Yamada gets a nice snap suplex on Nishiwaki. Toyota comes back in, hits a bunch of moves on Nishiwaki and totally pulls a Sabu. I should forward this to Maffew. Small brawl on the outside. Toyota gets controlled, Hotta throws her into Yamada to get the tag, Hotta throws Yamada into Nishiwaki. This quickly goes to the ending stretch to the outside. Hotta and Yamada kick each other outside, Yamada and Nishiwaki are brawling also, Nishiwaki barely beats Toyota into the ring to get the countout victory. This wasn't bad, but I didn't think it was that good either. Majority of the match is shown. 1990 Ranking of Matches (so far): 1. Yumiko Hotta & Akira Hokuto vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita (1990.01.04) 2. Akira Hokuto vs Bison Kimura (1990.02) 3. Bull Nakano vs Mitsuko Nishiwaki (1990.01.04) 4. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Fire Jets (1990.02) 5. Manami Toyota vs Suzuka Minami (1990.01.04) 6. Kyoko Inoue & Kaoru Maeda vs Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda (1990.02) 7. Madusa & Noriyo Tateno & Kaoru Maeda vs. Aja Kong & Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto (1990.01.04) 8. Mima Shimoda vs Kaoru Ito (1990.01.04) 9. Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada (1990.01.05)

Next event: 1990.02 (have no idea what the full date is, comes from Joshi Mix - I am grateful for the Joshi Mix guy for archiving this stuff, but he adds in his wrestling photos in the ad-breaks, and they are creepy as hell, so fuck this guy at the same time.): Kyoko Inoue & Kaoru Maeda vs Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda I think this is the earliest pairing of LCO I have on tape, obviously they're not LCO yet, but this is kinda neat. Kyoko Inoue doesn't have the face paint either. Match starts off real fast, with Mita eating offense. Mima Shimoda with some awful dropkicks. I liked the part where Mita throws Maeda right at Inoue when Inoue is trying to help her teammate. Shimoda and Maeda trade some near fall sunset lips. Shimoda hits a badly executed sunset flip on Inoue for the 3. Match didn't have a good flow until the ending stretch. We get a few minutes out of 12:47. Akira Hokuto vs Bison Kimura Kimura slaps Hokuto during the introduction, and Hokuto slaps her back. For some reason, Hokuto held out her hand as a sign of respect before the bell starts, Bison pulls a Ronda Rousey. Man, Hokuto's half crab looks incredible for a while. Bison gets a nice German with a bridge and starts rag dolling the shit out of Hokuto, followed by a tombstone. Hokuto bridges out of everything and she is doing some good selling. Every bridge looks like a complete struggle for her. When it's time for Hokuto to comeback, she lands a huge slap to the face, dumps Bison out of the ring, and hits a great plancha. Home stretch here, girls reverse a bunch of moves until Hokuto slips out of another backdrop and hits a tiger suplex for the win. This was a pretty good TV match, definitely enjoyed it. We get about 10-11 minutes out of 16:57. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Fire Jets 2/3 Falls I think this is earliest I have of Toyota and Yamada pairing also, so kinda neat show. The Hotta/Yamada rivalry continues! Toyota has two sections of selling in the first fall, first time she has her arm worked over, second time over her leg. First exchange of Hotta and Yamada was so weak considering their rivalry, but eventually Hotta beating up Toyota throws her like a scrub into Yamada for the tag, and here we go, this is what I wanted, MORE FIRE. Fire Jets quickly get the first fall after the tag. Hotta and Yamada open up the second fall, Hotta with shit punches. Yamada now the FIP for a while, taking a lot of offense. Nishiwaki totally no-sells Toyota's interruption twice, which I thought was kinda funny. Yamada eventually make a tag to Toyota, I think, Toyota never comes in. Double missile dropkick to Hotta, and Yamada misses by a country mile. Yamada still in this and gets a flash schoolboy pin after a reversal on Hotta for the second fall. That felt really weak. Yamada and Hotta open the third with a kicking contest. Toyota with a hot tag in, hits a like 6 dropkicks on the Fire Jets. Toyota tags out pretty soon after (!), Yamada gets a nice snap suplex on Nishiwaki. Toyota comes back in, hits a bunch of moves on Nishiwaki and totally pulls a Sabu. I should forward this to Maffew. Small brawl on the outside. Toyota gets controlled, Hotta throws her into Yamada to get the tag, Hotta throws Yamada into Nishiwaki. This quickly goes to the ending stretch to the outside. Hotta and Yamada kick each other outside, Yamada and Nishiwaki are brawling also, Nishiwaki barely beats Toyota into the ring to get the countout victory. This wasn't bad, but I didn't think it was that good either. Majority of the match is shown.

Next event: 1990.01.05 in Korauken Hall Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada This match uses mostly kickboxing rules but they're also allowed to grapple. I already AJW like to have this matches, but they usually had like Bat Yoshinaga or some person I don't care about doing them. I have no idea why anyone would want to pay full price for this on VHS back in the day (it has one match on it!), hell, I didn't even like the idea of buying a DVD of this. Even from the introduction of the event, you can tell these girls can't throw a punch, they shadowbox worse than Ronda Rousey. The sleeper hold comes back here from the tag bout the previous day, but it doesn't look good with boxing gloves on. Girls get super gassed play boxing, and it goes all 6x3 minute rounds to a decision. Toshiyo gets the decision. Ok, not watching this again, this didn't do it for me at all.

So I'm still in lockdown here in the UK and I've been converting lots of joshi (and every once in a while, lucha and AJPW). I figured I should start journaling my thoughts on AJW. I think I have everything from El Jefe, Miguel Liger, and from Los Clasicos and La Hora Retro, plus some handhelds from 1990 and 1991. Youtube playlist for 1990 Yearbook is below and in progress. I know that AJW is definitely in a transition period with it being post-Crush Gals and not yet reaching the GOGOGO era. The red belt has been vacant for over three months (holy crap) since Lioness Asuka retired. Time to crown a new champion! First show - Tokyo Korauken Hall (1990.01.04) mixture of La Hora Retro and AJW TV Mima Shimoda (c) vs Kaoru Ito (AJW Junior Title Match) Pretty nothing match, good thing it's short. Manami Toyota vs Suzuka Minami This wasn't on the OG telecast. I didn't expect to see Toyota Pearl Harboring Minami coming, she doesn't even let the introductions or streamer collection finish. Starts off really fast, with a bunch of brawling and whips into the barricades. Minami eventually gains control and works on Toyota's leg and Toyota was selling it until, you know, she has to go on offense. Nothing but aerial moves, thankfully doesn't botch anything but she was real close once. Minami has the power offense and gets a flying crossbody. She gets a backslide pin reversed and then we go home. Minami gets a flying elbow and misses another one and gets rolled up for the three. Manami goes for a handshake and Minami is like nah bitch. Weird roleplaying here and a crap finish. OK TV match though, goes about 10 minutes. Madusa & Noriyo Tateno & Kaoru Maeda vs. Aja Kong & Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto Only have the OG version of this trios match. We get a heel ref and Aja Kong beating the shit out of an announcer. So much camera time on this announcer (and he leaves and comes back). Grizzly gets away with everything. Definitely more of a match to put over Jungle Jack than a good tag team match. Yumiko Hotta & Akira Hokuto vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita This was on the 1990's yearbook, and I've seen it before, it was a really good tag team match when I watched it then. Loved that the match starts with a botch. Dream Orca is very over with the school girls. Pretty fast match and really puts over the Yamada and Hotta rivalry. Hotta really sells the hell out of that sleeper from Yamada! Hokuto makes Mita look like a scrub! I never thought I'd say it, but I love all the sleeper holds in this match! Pretty good home stretch with Mita getting payback after Hokuto embarrassing her, but Dream Orca fuck up a double team move. Hotta and Hokuto take control and Hokuto hits a diving dropkick for the three. Mita is bleeding and selling that match hard. Bull Nakano vs Mitsuko Nishiwaki (WWWA Title Match) And here we go, start of a new era. Love how grimy and 80's Nakano's theme sounds. Nishiwaki tries to get an advantage right away with a clothesline and gets dumped out immediately afterwards. Nishiwaki gets back with a bloody face...and then we get the introductions lol. They were going for a speed vs size/strength thing here, but Nishiwaki just doesn't really have any that much to offer. She eventually gets to work over Bull's arm though and Bull does her best to sell. Cool transition from armbar to sharpshooter. In the home stretch, both girls get German suplexes and power bombs, but Nakano's was way more brutal looking. Pretty short title match, felt strange that a vacant title match wasn't hyper competitive, but I don't think you could really do that considering how much better Nakano is. Ugh, next event has Hotta vs Yamada in kickboxing rules match.

That hammerlock to the outside bump was fucking cool. Liked Cody's work on the arm. I have to agree with ShittyLittleBoots, this match was pretty good/great until that finish.

Man Justin Robert's introduction for Kenny was like a fucking essay. Keep it short son! This is a pretty damn good curtain jerker. Nice stiff chops, big bumps, and good athleticism. Still can't be an Omega match without some crazy head drop move to get a two count.

I do like me some Sasha Banks, she definitely goes hard on PPVs when she super cares about the match. I also have not been watching the WWE regular for years, so I'm not really understand the full context of everything. I did like this match, it was really good, but for a what they were going for (well at least I think they're doing a blowoff of a 'blood feud'), there was too much cutesy shit, I would prefer if they kept it simple. I always like when Sasha gets the Bank Statement and she goes stomping on her opponent. Is this the first time Sasha won a singles title on a WWE PPV?

Here's the match if anyone wants to watch: Yeah, this match was really solid. Lots of good matwork, lots of fire, really made Devil Masami look super super strong considering Jackie won the vacant strap again in a couple of weeks.

Found this to be mostly boring. I need to have more fire and nice offense in between all the holds to keep me interested. It took like 20 minutes or so to get some fire. Then I wondered how well this did with the DVDVR poll and saw it wasn't even nominated. Not a bad match but it was fine as a dream match oddity watch, definitely don't want to see it again any time soon.

I tried joining that Slack, and I got a message saying:

Happy New Year! So I took a break in uploading videos, but I've started up again. More stuff is in the playlist. Here's some early Jaguar on a variety show in 1979:

Takeover was alright. I don't think I've ever seen an outright bad Takeover yet. MVPs were McAfee and Thatcher. Shirai bounced back pretty well after that early botch, looked like she hurt herself for a little bit. Match was fine, though the ending was flat. Main event was definitely not good.

McAfee is a natural, that might have been the most entertaining match I've seen with Adam Cole.