FLIK

CMLL 7/16/1993 Chris Jericho & Ultimo Dragon vs Negro Casas & El Dandy One of the better tags i've ever seen, lucha or otherwise. Heavy mat work based match which I love since that's my favorite kind of lucha these days and there were some awesome exchanges here. They were pretty strict about pairing off in each fall so you didn't get a lot of interaction between teams in this but that's more of a minor anoyance. It's a staple of a lot of lucha matches I know but with them going almost 40 mins here it was a bit more noticable. Casas/Ultimo continued their great rivalry and Dandy/Ultimo looked every bit as good as Casas/Ultimo. Jericho/Dandy was the least of the pairings as that saw Jericho mostly on top. He was still really early into his career at this point and really comes across like a boy among men in comparison. Not to say it was bad either, I actually thought that in a diffrent setting it would probably be something that would garner a lot of praise it's just that everything else around it was so much better that the Dandy/Jericho just came across as being noticably weaker. Casas/Jericho saw Casas take the lead and was a huge step up, another great example of why Casas is one of the best ever. Fans throw money into the ring post match and it was well earned.

Copying this over from the what are you watching thread CMLL 7/16/1993 Chris Jericho & Ultimo Dragon vs Negro Casas & El Dandy One of the better tags i've ever seen, lucha or otherwise. Heavy mat work based match which I love since that's my favorite kind of lucha these days and there were some awesome exchanges here. They were pretty strict about pairing off in each fall so you didn't get a lot of interaction between teams in this but that's more of a minor anoyance. It's a staple of a lot of lucha matches I know but with them going almost 40 mins here it was a bit more noticable. Casas/Ultimo continued their great rivalry and Dandy/Ultimo looked every bit as good as Casas/Ultimo. Jericho/Dandy was the least of the pairings as that saw Jericho mostly on top. He was still really early into his career at this point and really comes across like a boy among men in comparison. Not to say it was bad either, I actually thought that in a diffrent setting it would probably be something that would garner a lot of praise it's just that everything else around it was so much better that the Dandy/Jericho just came across as being noticably weaker. Casas/Jericho saw Casas take the lead and was a huge step up, another great example of why Casas is one of the best ever. Fans throw money into the ring post match and it was well earned. Really surprised to see this wasn't on the set. Curious to know if it was a case of just not knowing about it, not having room (with intros and post match and other stuff it takes up about 45-50 mins) or just not thinking it was that good?

They weren't. The point I was trying to make was that Hayabusa was a last minute choice who had all the odds against him working in the role as new top guy coming out of this and FMW wasn't exspected to last a year post Onita. Onita was a big ego maniac who didn't really care what happened to the promotion after he left and sold it to Shoichi Arai a few weeks before his retirement match. Tarzan Goto who was in the #2 spot behind him hadn't ever been a major success on his own the few times they tried to headline with him previously and he saw that he'd be set up to fail by losing this match (Onita refused to put him over too) and then being exspected to carry the company afterwards so he quit instead taking Mr Gannosuke & Flying Kid Ichihara with him to IWA (Goto was the main FMW trainer at the time so they were loyal to him)

Ah gotcha I haven't seen it yet but I know they had another singles in 94 that Psicosis also won so that could have played into it too.

Been a bit too long since I last watched this to recall a ton of details but I know I didn't have/notice the same problems you did with the match and def recall it being pretty great. Not really. Just speaking in terms of generalities, wrestler A kicks wrestler B's butt but B never gives up and perseveres to pull out the giant comeback/upset win is a pretty common story in wrestling.

Looking through more Hamada's UWF tape list there's a 2nd Asai vs Casas match and a 3rd Perro vs Hamada match both from 3/2

Tito's a weird wrestler for me. I've seen a million of his matches and I own his El Matador action fig that's pictured on the 1st page but asside from that gimmick he never left much of a lasting impression on me. Been racking my brain for a while today and not 1 thing comes to mind when asking myself what was a really great Tito Santana match I saw. Not like I ever thought he was bad either...just forgetable to me for some reason...

Hamada's UWF 6/1/1990

Am I imagining things or is that Meltzer in the background in the black shirt?

Hamada's UWF Vol 6 Comp - 1990 Joshi So a few years back Jeff Lynch put together a 7 volume comp of Gran Hamada's Universal Wrestling Federation and I ended up picking up the last 2 volumes which focus exclusively on the women's matches that took place in the promotion. AJW & UWF had a working relationship at the time so they would trade talent back & forth, mostly AJW girls appearing on Universal shows but a occasionally you'd see the UWF men wrestling on an AJW card too. Don't know how well it worked out for UWF but it exsposed the AJW girls to a lot of new fans and i've always heard it credited as being 1 of the things that helped eventually grow their audiance and led to more male fans showing up at shows as opposed to the school girl dominated crowds of the 80's. Anyways, i've never seen any of this footage before and only maybe 5 or so UWF matches period so this will be interesting to take a look at. 3/1/90 - Xochitl Hamada & Mika Takahashi vs Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto This is from UWF's debut show. Ah Xochitl, Ayako's lesser known but just as talented older sister, glad to see more footage of her. You can really tell this is def a diffrent audiance who doesn't usually watch much joshi based on the crowd reactions. A lot of stuff that's routine on AJW shows like the screaming and certain other spots gets a lot of laughter and bemusement from the audiance, at the same time, they also pop for a lot of the big moves and seemed into it by the end. Mostly a by the numbers formula tag. The Outsiders Bison & Grizzly mostly dominate things with their rough, heel style with Hamada & Mika making the ocasional comeback only to get cut off and the beating to continue. Of the 2, when they did get on offense Hamada got to shine the most and really looked like the star of her team. Ending comes when Mika & Hamada get a hold of the Outsiders Kendo sticks and start caning the crap out of their opponents and the ref who happens to be Wally Yamaguchi of WWF Kaientai "Choppy choppy your pee pee" fame. Kind of funny since in AJW this wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary but apparently UWF has stricter "rules" so the ref calls for a DQ. More chaos follows but eventually gets settled down. Nothing special but a pretty decent match. 3/2/90 - Xochitl Hamada vs Bison Kimura Based on how the last match ended you'd exspect a heated follow up but no. Sadly they just have a low end house show match. Lots of basic mat work mixed in with a couple bigger moves. Didn't help that this took place in a darker building with a quieter more subdued crowd too. Hamada again looks good with a few nice highspots at the end including a crazy out of control plauncha but not too many highlights besides that. Match ends in a double countout shortly after. 3/5/90 - Xochitl Hamada & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura Starts out a little bit similar to the 3/1 tag. Kaoru & Hamada get in bigger stretches of offense then Mika & Hamada did but the early going is still largely heel dominated. Hamada & Bison really clicked here for the 1st time and had some great exchanges and a nutty Flair/Garvin level chop war. Ending comes when all 4 get in the ring and they go for one of those complicated lucha sequences whear everyone's doing mirror spots at opposite ends of the ring and there's a bunch of heel miscomunicaion stuff. Sorta falls apart a little at this stage but they recover nicely and bodies go flying all over in a cool dive train. Back inside Kaoru & Hamada score the win with tandem roll ups on their opponents. Overall a damn good match and the 1st to really show off how good the AJW girls could be. 6/4/90 - Manami Toyota, Mika Takahashi & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto They switched things up and brought over an AJW ref to handle things, nothing against Yamaguchi but that's def a wise move. You can tell the girls had really started to get over with the new audiance at this piont as the crowds hyped for this one. Funnily enough it's the Gokumonto heels that are the one's who have the biggest cheering squad too with Aja especially being crazy over. In a funny bit they chant her name in tune with every offensive move she hits or when the ref counts a pinfall for her like the ECW fans chanted Shaw for Hack Myers. Hilarious stuff I really can't do justice describing. On the opposite end, the crowd doesn't dislike Honey Wings DX either, they'd ohh, ahh and applaud when they'd do a big move or cool spot but they're not as into them as they are their opponents. Match itself follows the previous pattern of the heels kicking all kinds of ass and the faces having to bravely fight back. All 6 really busted ass in this one and near the end Toyota & Kaoru are getting big chants as well after making their comeback. Near fall exchange is really good down the stretch and ends with Aja & Toyota going at it. After escaping a suplex attempt Aja backfist Toyota and puts her down with a huge german suplex of her own to win. This wouldn't crack my top 10 for AJW in 1990 but i'd say this is def somewhear in the top 20. Great great match with a hot crowd, nothing not to love about this. 6/7/90 - Madusa, Mika Takhashi & Kaoru Maeda vs Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto 3rd Show in a week Universal had run at K-Hall so the crowd's not as hot at this point though still into things a good bit. Compared to the previous tag this has more back & forth stuff with no team getting controlling for too long. Aja & Madusa were in the middle of their feud at this point so there's a big focus on them well. The stuff between them is pretty good as they had decent chemistry together. Madusa working with the others is a bit hit & miss so thankfully Honey Wings do a majority of the work in this. Last few mins are a bit odd. Goku are in controll and go for what I can only describe as a traingular belly bump of doom but it backfires and leads to everyone fighting outside. Big dive train follows and in the midst of all the chaos Madusa & Bison end up going at it in the ring. A small USA chant of all things breaks out for Madusa and after accidently running into Aja, Bison gets pinned out of nowhear with a rollup. Def a step down from the previous tag and the finish was pretty anticlimactic but overall still a good match. 6/1/90 - Bison Kimura vs Kyoko Inoue Not much to this as they have a pretty by the numbers match. Kyoko was still a no name with a bit of potential at this point as she didn't get her big break until the end of the year. She got to get in just enough offense to not make this a total squash but never really looked competitive enough that you ever thought she had a chance of winning. Bison wins with that weird drop to your ass backslide she was doing for a while. 11/9/90 Kaoru Maeda & Mika Takahashi vs Xochitl Hamada & Esther Moreno More Esther Moreno is always great in my book. Somewhear along the way Honey wings seemed to have developed some bad blood with the luchadoras as they rush the ring and attack before the intros even start then throw their oppenents out into the crowd. Back inside both Kaoru & Takahashi run through some cool highspots with Moreno before things slow down and the Moreno/Hamada team gains controll. Only last a couple mins as they go right back to fast more fast paced back & forth action. After a couple double teams including a pretty sweet stereo elbow drop on Moreno, Kaoru gets the win over her with a german. Damn good match, whole thing only last maybe 10 mins but they packed a lot in. Excited to see the 2 rematches they have a couple days after this. Kaoru & Takahashi get in a few exsta punts to Moreno's head as they leave just because. Moreno & Hamada give ref Yamaguchi a giant back body drop before making their exit...just because JWP TV 2/11/1993 - (Sumiko Saito Retirement Match) Hikari Fukuoka vs Sumiko Saito Sucks Sumiko didn't stick around longer and retired just as joshi was begining another boom period. The few times i've seen her in the past I was pretty impressed. Match is JIP with Fukuoka dominating things and getting in a big flurry of offense coming close to getting the W a few times but Saito isn't going down easy in her last match. Tide changes once Saito is able to grab an STF, followed up by a few suplexes and another STF for a near submission. They go back and forth a bit more with Fukuoka coming out on top, a couple of big powerslams including 1 off the top rope and a cross armed german get her the win. Good little match for Saito to go out on, about 10 mins aired. Your usual joshi retirement ceremony follows. - Devil Masami & Debbie Malenko vs Dynamite Kansai & Plum Mariko Always thought it also really sucked that Debbie got hurt shortly after this and had to retire before getting to mix it up with JWP girls like Plum. Quite excited when I found out this match existed as I didn't know it had even taken place until a couple of months ago. Pre match promo Debbie puts over everyone involved and says she's just happy to be thear. JIP with her locking in a Fujiwara arm bar on Kansai, once she escapes they blow a running headscissors spot but recover nicely. Debbie & Plum have a short section that sees Deb drop her with a few suplexes. Devil comes in and gets worked over for a while, long long boston crab spot from Kansai that goes no where. Things pick up when we get more Deb/Plum action and finally get to see them take it to the mat a tiny tiny bit. Devil comes back in and does that nasty spot whear she press slams folk onto the top turnbuckle which always looks like it sucks to take. Kansai comes in and eats a giant powerbomb to hell from Devil for her trouble as well. Match goes outside and we get a cool dive train starting with Plum climbing up Kansai's shoulders to hit a diving cross body and ending with Debbie doing her crazy suicide dive as a follow up. Back inside Debbie gets the armbar in on Plum as they go at it a little more, her & Devil hit stereo superplexes on both in another big highlight. Finish sees Kansai & Devil throwing bombs at each other, funny moment as Kansai tries to call out Debbie so Devil straight arm lariats her right in the face for ignoring her. Few moments later Kansai makes her pay with some stiff kicks and gets revenge for earlier with a big powerbomb of her own which backfires as Devil reverses the pin attempt into a cradle to get the win. Post match Debbie & Plum talk shit to hype up Dreamslam whear it was supposed to be Debbie in Ito's place vs Plum & Fukuoka. I was pretty disapointed we didn't get more exchanges between the 2 in this, especially on the mat as that's what I most wanted to see. I imagine it got left on the cutting room floor as while we got about 17 mins of this, in full it was 33+. Still, taking this for what it was instead of what I wanted it to be it was a damn good match, especially Kansai & Devil opposite each other, worth checking out for sure.

Finished watching all the 1990 footage off of this. Matches 1-8 are all clipped to hell (#4 isn't even on the disc). After that everything else except match 13 airs in full or close to it. From 3/5 Super Astro & Lizmark vs Casas & El Espanto Jr and Perro vs Hamada both looked awesome based on the highlights, might be worth tracking down the full version. Of what aired complete i'd consider these 3 absolutely must have matches 6/1 Gran Hamada vs Perro Aguayo - Felt like a war, like the lucha equiv of Finlay vs Regal as they just lay into each other with brutal shots. 6/7 Yoshinari Asai vs Negro Casas - Don't know how this compares to their other matches but in 1 word i'd call this brilliant. 1 of the most well thought out matches i've ever seen whear every second feels important and there's a million little things that blew my mind like Casas trying to counter a figure 4 with an ankle lock or desperatly avoid being put in a surfboard, stuff that makes perfect sense but you rarely if ever see anyone else do. Wouldn't call it the MOTY for 1990 but i'd be surprised if there's more then a tiny handfull of matches better then this. Easy top 10 world wide candidate atleast, possibly top 5. 11/17 (Elimination Match) Aja Kong, Bison Kimura, Madusa, Tarantula & Xochilt Hamada vs Manami Toyota, Mariko Yoshida, Kaoru Maeda, Mika Takahashi & Esther Moreno - about 15 of 25 aired on the version i've got, dunno if there's a more complete version or not. Either way this is one of the greatest elim tags i've ever seen. From this i'd add the 6/4 Aja, Bison, Grizzly vs Toyota, Kaoru, Takahasi tag to the must have list as well. Great action with a super hot crowd. The AJW girls working on Universal shows helped gain them a lot of new fans this is a perfect example why. Couple more mentions for the good to include if there's still room pile from AJW 5/13/1990 (Glove Match) Madusa vs Aja Kong - They had a big feud that year and this is the best of the bunch. 3/2/1990 (AJW Tag Titles) Etsuko Mita & Yumiko Hotta © vs Manami Toyota & Mima Shimoda 3/2/1990 Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta vs Suzuka Minami & Mitsuko Nishiwaki

So, just to reorganise stuff i've allready mentioned since Loss wanted "tiers" - MUST HAVE AJW 1/4/1990 Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita vs Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta 5/13/1990 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami © vs Yumiko Hotta & Mitsuko Nishiwaki 6/17/1990 (JGP FINAL) Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta 7/21/1990 (3WA Title) Bull Nakano © vs Manami Toyota 8/19/1990 Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Bull Nakano & Grizzly Iwamato 8/19/1990 Akira Hokuto vs Manami Toyota 9/1/1990 (Cage Match) Aja Kong vs Bull Nakano 11/14/1990 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Akira Hokuto & Suzuka Minami © vs Manami Toyota & Kyoko Inoue 11/14/1990 (Cage Match) Bull Nakano vs Aja Kong Hamada's UWF 11/17/1990 (UWA 6 Man Tag Titles) Los Brazos © vs Gran Hamada, Kendo & Blackman FMW 4/1/1990 (Texas Death Match) Tarzan Goto & Atsushi Onita vs Dragonmaster & Masanobu Kurisu - Strong Recomendation AJW 11/14/1990 (Lucha Libre Rules Elimination Match) Hyper Cat, La Diabolica, Miori Kamiya & Mayumi Yamamoto vs Esther Moreno, Xochitl Hamada, Takako Inoue & Noriyo Tateno 11/14/1990 Los Brazos vs Gran Hamada, Kendo & Yoshihiro Asai Hamada's UWF 11/17/1990 Yoshihiro Asai & Kato Kung Lee vs Blue Panther & Black Power FMW 11/5/1990 (WWA Brass Knuckles Title - Texas Death Match) Atsushi Onita © vs Mr. Pogo - Good to Have if there's still room 2/12/1990 (Carribean Barbed Wire) Masanobu Kurisu vs Atsushi Onita

Meiko got put over in feuds by Kansai, Devil & Hokuto as well. She also beat Kaoru, Yamada, OZ a bunch of times, scored atleast a few wins over Toyota & while she didn't beat her in singles until the last night, Meiko did go over Chigusa in a few tags. Nagashima got put over heavily by OZ & Aja, Devil was going to put her over too in their feud but got injured in the match. She beat a bunch of other vets along the way. Aja put over Sugar in their feud, Kaoru put her over too. Yamada put over Toshie in their feud, D-Fix got Sakura over as something other then a comedy wrestler for the first time. There's others but that's what comes to mind off the top of my head. Again, pretty much all the vets except Lioness ended up jobbing in feuds/major matches to the younger girls atleast a couple times. They won their fair share too but still Heh naw, you're way off on that one. Some undercard stuff would be clipped (it was on GAORA after all) but you always got atleast a 2 or more longer matches per show. A ton of 15 - 20+ stuff aired in 99. They didn't really start cutting down majorly until 03-04 with 04 especially being bad as you'd rarely get to see anything over 15 but still you'd atleast get 10-11 min matches. She was fine when she came in full time in 2000 though she was pretty crummy her last few months in JWP before jumping over. 2001 she fell off a bit when she was doing the football gimmick though at the same time she was in the 2nd best match of the year and she had good stuff feuding with Meiko early in the year. 02 she got really motivated again about mid year when Toyota jumped over and they ran the Ex AJW vs GAEA/Others feud, had some great matches around this time. Most of 03 she didn't do much of note but was mostly decent and got really motivated again in the late part of the year when they gave her a mini push back up to main event and she had the short run as champion to transition the belt from Toyota to Hamada. Rest of 04 until GAEA shut down she continued the pattern of being atleast solid most of the time and busting out the ocasional really good match every couple months. Yamada was still great up until late 02 or so, after that injuries caught up to her and she slowed down with her back being so shot by the end she couldn't actually wrestle her own retirment match. Still for 03 & 04 she'd also still have the ocasional good match too. Hokuto largely stunk when she came back from her first kid in late 99 until late 00 - early 01, i'll give you that. She was great during her first run in 96 - 98 however and still really damn good during her last year & 1/2 or so. Lioness, Kaoru & Chiggy i'll just say I disagree on too Btw, do you remember who was the first person that started calling Chigusa Chiggy? I stole it off of you actually but i've long since forgotten if you actually came up with it. Haven't seen much ARSION past 99 actually, only heard the stories. It's the promotion i'll dive into more heavily after I eventually finish picking up the last few GAEA shows I haven't gotten yet.

I did occasionally wish things got a little more time but by and large I was fine with it. It's not like the matches were SUPER short either, at the peak in the 2000's on average most matches still got 10-20 mins which is plenty for the style they were working and when it comes to that "High Spurt", smash mouth style they were the masters at it. And hey, don't forget in peak ARSION they weren't exactly putting out a ton of 20 min + matches either buddy Lots of their best stuff didn't even go 15 That's pretty much a myth that only spread due to ppl half paying attention to the booking, blindy hating that the vets weren't swept to the side and being impatient that the youngsters who'd only even been wrestling a handfull of years weren't immediatly shot to the top of the card the second they showed potential. Saying that they had a glass cieling is only true if you ignore that every vet they had except Lioness (who's a whole other story) put over multiple ppl from the younger generation multiple times, clean, in high profile matches. Everyone who actually had the potential to be a top star eventually did get their big run and those that didn't got pushed about as far as their talent allowed. Also misses the point that the goal was never to have the younger generation surpass the older generation anyways, it was to bring them up to an equal level. With Meiko & Nagashima and a few others they were pushed just enough that they were credible main eventers, the fans saw as big deal stars you could draw with and buy as being able to beat anyone they were put against. At the same time they weren't going to start totally jobbing out the old stars or regulating them to permanent mid card status since 1) they were still bringing in fans and 2) even if they weren't as good as they used to be they would still ocasionally have flashes of brilliance. Kansai's a good example of that as she'd be average for a while but then just when you'd start to write her off as "washed up" she'd bust out one of the best matches of the year and remind you she still had a lot of value when used right.

It turned out to be that they were only bringing him back to try out for an agents role. Dunno if he's still thear or how long he lasted if not though.

Hamada's UWF 6/4/1990 Aja Kong, Bison Kimura & Grizzly Iwamoto vs Manami Toyoda, Mika Takahashi & Kaoru Some hilarious crowd reactions in this one. If you didn't know better you'd swear this was taking place in the ECW arena not K-Hall in Japan. Most notably, every time Aja would do a move the crowd would loudly chant AJA AJA in tune with the move like the ECW crowd chanting Shaw for Hack Myers. Damndest thing i've ever seen....

Indeed I loved this feud, it was mostly played out on Pro or Worldwide, can't remember which, but it was 1 of the C shows that aired super fuckin early in the mouring that DDP got banished to exclusively for what I recall being a large chunk of time. Anyways, DDP would always come out and do arm wrestling challenges, mostly against jobbers but then 1 day he got into it with Evad and one thing led to another and it turned into him & Kim having a secret friendship and she gave him the Rabbit and then the Rabbit got put up for grabs and Kim got put up for grabs and then Evad's piggy bank he'd been saving since childhood got put up for grabs and I forget how it all ended but DDP came out of it getting a big push by the end of the year.

GAEA along with FMW are easily hands down my 2 favorite promotions ever. For about 8 of the 10 years it existed I thought it was the best joshi company around. Well, it's not all or even mostly crazy brawling but GAEA was built on well booked feuds leading to exciting, well put together action packed matches. Also helps that she is only like 30 at the time this is taking place so still well within her peak in terms of pyshically being able to go. Always liked the gimmick myself. It didn't always produce great matches like this one, it was more built around spectacle & presentation then flat out workrate (MUTA vs Mutoh if you will) but I usually found most of the Super Heel matches to at least be fun & enjoyable on some level. Guess just depends on what you want out of your wrestling and if you can accept the more whacky aspects of it OZ & Chiggy had allready been feuding since early to mid 94 so this is more a continuation of the feud then the set up. Sorta yes and sorta no Looking at it within the context of the time yeah you're absolutely right. Looking at it in hindsight knowing how much time OZ & Devil would spend in the promotion in the early days and that those 2 along with Kansai would eventually jump over to GAEA full time within a few years after this anyways you can still consider this a fair representation of what they're all about. Hmmm, i'd say maybe sometime in late 96 - early 97. GAEA's roster to start out with was Chigusa, Kaoru, Bomber Hikaru & 6 rookies they trained so for about the 1st year & 1/2 or so they had to rely really heavily on using outside talent from JWP, LLPW & FMW along with whoever else they could strike a deal with. After that Hokuto joined the company, followed shortly by Yamada, they'd had a 2nd wave of trainees debut and their 1st class of Meiko, Kato, Nagashima, Toshie, etc.... had started really steping things up. Once all that happened they were able to scale back on how often they worked with outsiders and book a lot more high profile in house matches/feuds.

Meltzer said he think's it's for Taker

I'm totally blanking on this. Anyone have links to clips? The only appearances Andre made in '91 was on crutches in the corner of the Bushwhackers, right? EDIT: After scouring youtube, I found this and it kind of brought it back for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=KFkUFhrmrbM Watching that clip, Andre totally had it coming. No one likes a liar and he was rude to boot, good for you Jimmy Hart...

Hm. Didn't she leave shortly after she realized they would not use her as a wrestler much and would probably be forced to get a boob job ? Zah, I used to know this but i'm blanking on the exact reason now, it wasn't either of the 2 things you mentioned though. I want to say it was because they low balled her on money but again my memories fuzzy. You could tell she was pretty pissed/stoped caring at the time too cause she just went right back to working AJW but was super lazy in the ring for a while afterwards.

You're def right in that they really didn't do much to directly set up the switch but at the same time they had enough prior history & Toyota was a big enough star that I don't think it was a big deal. Aja vs Toyota was a more subtle long term secondary rivalry and i'd put Toyota in the same cataroy as Hokuto as far as being someone you could buy taking down Aja at any time. A large part of 91 was was about Toyota trying with various partners to try and take take down Aja/Bison until she finally pulled it off in early 92 with Yamada. Plus you can toss in their 30 min draw in mid 91 The rest of 92 was a reversal with Aja & various ppl taking on Toyota/Yamada. Notably you had the 2 big tags with Kyoko that they split and the 2 JGP matches they split. 93 nothing too major hap between them since the focus was on AJW vs the World but they were opposite a fair amount of tags a good number of which saw Aja pin Toyota directly. Most of 94 saw the same thing, though of note you've got another Toyota/Yamada vs Aja/partner tag title match and the Dome singles. You can toss in other things if you want to stretch it like Aja beating Toyota for the AJW title in 89.

Would have strengthened WCW significantly but outside of Savage I don't think any of those guys leaving would have been a huge blow to WWF in 89/90.

Ah, that's depressing to hear. On paper it does seem like something that should be pretty rockin.

When the 94 set rolls around be interesting to see how you compare this to the Kansai/Devil/Chigusa vs OZ/Cuty/Plum 2 count match.