ohtani's jacket

Selected matches from All Japan. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi, 1/24/92 Eh, there were early signs here of a move away from heel work, injury angles & face in peril stuff. Kinda makes me wanna jump off the early 90s bandwagon, but I guess this feud was running out of steam. There's only so many times you can rough up a young guy before he needs to show something... That he can not only work through it, but prevent it from happening in the first place. There were a few opportunities for sustained heat here, but it felt like the young guys wanted more of an even keel. Jumbo/Taue vs Kobashi/Kikuchi, 1/26/92 OK, but the intensity wasn't there. Kobashi & Kikuchi's double teaming is really annoying. Kawada vs Taue, 3/31/92 Blah, this is one of those cases where the workers don't know what kind of match they want to work. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi, 5/22/92 A last hurrah? Honestly, there wasn't much life to this feud anymore. There was still a lot of heat, but it wasn't the same shock and surprise as before. Nothing really new about this match, except for Taue's injury angle (which was a shoot & then adlib, if you ask me.) Jumbo/Taue vs Misawa/Kobashi, 6/5/92 Excellent, slow burning tag. This felt like the first "90s" tag match of the era. Jumbo was getting smaller and smaller throughout '92 (both physically & presence wise), but this was a big match performance from him. They managed to blend Jumbo being Jumbo with the kind of big tag build that was pressing. Some kinks, but one of the better matches from '92. Strange year. The work wasn't bad, but there weren't as many epics.

Jumbo vs Kobashi, 5/24/91 Hard to know how good this is... The Sapporo crowd is hot (I guess they didn't get many shows up that way) and what's shown is well laid out. I don't like Kobashi that much (don't like his moveset for a guy that size), but he was perfect in the young wrestler role & the commentating keeps driving that point home. Jumbo/Fuchi/Ogawa vs Misawa/Kawada/Kikuchi, 7/26 Eh, this is an example of them working a 6-man without any story or major booking point. The work is good, but the intensity is several notches below the best 6-mans. The finishing stretch was excellent, as usual. Jumbo/Taue vs Misawa/Kawada, 11/29 Great match. Actually, this might be the most exciting match of the year. This is a match-up I've really come to love, which is strange, because as a tag team I think Misawa and Kawada had very little rapport. Nevertheless, this was great. It was almost like a coda for the entire year -- a year in which these guys really tried to physically hurt each other. The result didn't really matter to me because the intensity never dropped off. As popular a heel as Jumbo was, this was one of those matches where he was just out-and-out pissed & Misawa came into this match with a target on this forehead (or under his eye(s) as the case may be.) On a side note, I thought Taue was brilliant in his secondary role in this match. Dunno what the elbow pad was there for, but the legitmacy of Taue the worker continues.

1991 All Japan Kawada vs Taue, 1/15/91 Such an awesome match. It's like a throwback to 80s brawling, but with cool new spots. Courtesy of Taue. Taue in the early 90s was more visibly "on" or "off" than most wrestlers, but "not so good" workers simply don't have matches like this. Taue owned this match. Hell, that was the story of the match, which made the finish beyond awesome. And that cheap shot at the end was such class. Tenryu would've been proud of that. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs Misawa/Kawada/Kikuchi, 1/27/91 In the grand scheme of All Japan 6-man tags, I guess this is just another good one, but rewatching this stuff I keep finding that the 6-man tags are the best way (for me) to enjoy All Japan. The multiple story threads & shifting dynamics are more engaging than the single match structure. I liked how this shifted from Kawada vs. Taue into Jumbo getting all pissy with Kawada, to the point where he's even shoving Fuchi out of the way. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi, 4/20/91 The type of match that makes me wish I went to shows back in the day, though if this really went past midnight (as the analogy goes), I'd miss the train & that'd be a bitch... I was impressed that they kept up this pace for 50 minutes without running out of ideas. It was held together by two story threads -- the first was Kawada vs. Taue, the second was a reprise of the 10/90 match where Kobashi had his nose broken. The latter came just in time for people like me who have a hard time sitting through long matches. Fuchi was such a prick in this. I gotta say, though, that was dumb of Jumbo to go after Kawada on the outside when his man was in a pinning predicament. Misawa/Kawada vs Jumbo/Taue, 9/4/91 Cool match. It seemed like they were putting a different spin on the 12/90 match, where Jumbo was laid out on the floor. At first I thought Misawa made his comeback too soon, but they beat him down & it was all good. The finish came out of nowhere, similar to Misawa's original victory over Misawa, so either Misawa wasn't good at working to a finish or they wanted to play it that way. The captions at the end are cheesy. I don't know if they're direct quotes or not, but you're not missing out on anything. Jumbo/Fuchi/Taue vs Misawa/Kawada/Kikuchi, 10/15/91 I thought this was the most exciting match of the year. Maybe I'm partial to a big story match, but I really felt like everything came to a head in this match. I mean there was so much shit boiling over in '91, and this was the match where it all got nasty. Interesting that Taue was the calmest guy in the ring, despite the fact he was being a real asshole. Jumbo vs Kawada, 10/24/91 A good match, but it felt a bit stark to me. It didn't have a big arc -- Kawada basically tried to wear Jumbo down, until Jumbo shrugged it off and killed Kawada, reaffirming what we already knew, that Jumbo was still _The Man._ To be honest, I thought their exchanges in the 6-man tags were more exciting than this, and I'd expect a singles match to escalate that, not fall into predictable patterns.

I didn't know about this. Downloads please.

Today's offering from Mr. MXNT41: AJW 2/5/80, Osaka Jackie Sato vs. Yvonne Jennings (WWWA title) Yumi Ikeshita/Mami Kumano vs. Nancy Kumi/Lucy Kayama (WWWA tag titles) -- Sato/Jennings is WAY better than I thought it would be. It's a short match, but they kept it really tight & I like the work they did in close quarters. Jennings does a sweet dropkick & their punching was really cool. -- The pre-match interview where Jennings says her breasts are her favourite thing about her body & the interviewer wonders whether they get in the way is so Japanese. I dug it as a heel promo, though. Gotta love the look on Jennings' face throughout and the interviewer's "Hello" is classic. If you're wondering about Mimi's English, she went to an international school & studied abroad in Switzerland. She spoke several languages & had a bit part in Robert Aldrich's final film All the Marbles/The California Dolls in 1980. -- The tag match is really cool. The Black Pair were such great rudo workers & Kayama is the perfect girl to take a beating, even if her strikes kinda suck. Earlier I said Kayama was cast aside in favour of Aoyama, but she had this run with Nancy Kumi & she was in the All Japan title picture, so they were still using her. -- Nancy Kumi, on the other hand, was struggling to stay relevant at this point. She'd gotten an idol push in the Beauty Pair era, had a bunch of singles, a record, TV drama appearances, everything that entailed, but after the end of the "Pair This, Pair That" era, the young girls regarded her as an oba-san (old Japanese woman) & Dump Matsumoto accused her of being hysterical in her autobiography. There's a really weird story from Dump's book about Nancy forcing Dump to crawl around on all fours like a turtle. -- Still, the pairing of Kumi & Kayama here and the rudos working over the senior's "younger" partner works really well.

In case anyone's wondering, the interview with Aoyama at the beginning of the Ikeshita/Kayama match is about Aoyama's knee injury, which forced the ref to stop her January title match against Jackie Sato. The doctors told her that if she keeps wrestling on her knee, she'll risk not only her career but the possibility of leading a normal life. Even on one leg she wants to fight Sato, but she realises there will be more opportunities in the future (I don't think there ever were), so she vacates the AJW title and the commissioner appoints her March WWWA title shot to Monster Ripper. I forgot to mention that youtube also has one of the Chigusa/Leilani Kai matches that sold me on Chigusa. I think it's the '86 match. Not sure if it's the TV version or from AJW Classics.

Jumbo/Taue vs. Misawa/Kawada, 12/7/90 Enjoyable match, but not as good as the Anniversary show. They tried to work a story of Jumbo being laid out on the floor while Taue got a working over, which is the classic AJPW tag story, but Misawa and Kawada weren't aggressive enough & Taue's selling wasn't the greatest, not that he was given much to work with. The house was rocking at the end, but it didn't have much to do with Taue in Peril. Still, Misawa taking Jumbo out at the end was awesome. I thought Jumbo overplayed it a bit & look like an oyagi (Japanese old man), but it was an awesome spot. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi, 10/19/90 Y'know for a match that's famous for Kobashi getting his nose broken, it really is a short piece of adlib. Nevertheless, that short adlib raised this match from really good to a classic. Timing is the key to these type of matches. Beautiful rhythm and a fantastic match. Taue's sumo ruled. Jumbo vs Misawa, 9/1/90 I never really liked this match. It's one of the biggest matches of the year, and the crowd is hot, but Misawa keeps taking them out of it with aimless, meandering shit. It seems like Misawa had no idea how he was supposed to work this match. Their June match is hardly a perfect piece of wrestling, but it has a more logical build & the characters are more clearly defined.

NEW MATCHES -- Our great friend MXNT41 continues to put up AJW from 1980. Mimi Hagiwara/Chino Sato vs. Tenjin Masami/Hiroko Komine Rimi Yokota/Tomoko Kitamura (Asuka) vs. Wendi Ritcher/Leilani Kai AJW 2/21/80, Nagaoya Tenjin Masami vs. Ayumi Hori Rimi Yokota/Chino Sato vs. Patty Steiger/Hiroko Komine Lucy Kayama vs. Yumi Ikeshita (for the vacant AJW title) Nancy Kumi/Jackie Sato vs. Yvonne Jennings/Mami Kumano Let's see: -- This was an interesting period for AJW from Maki Ueda's retirement in February 1979 to Jaguar winning the Red Belt in February 1981. The Beauty Pair break-up & Ueda's retirement was actually a forced retirement due to injury, so that obviously had an effect on the All Japan booking office. The Matsunagas being younger meant they were a lot better at running the business than in later years, but the Beauty Pair were finished & these were wilderness years. The mood & tone of the promotion are completely different from the "Beauty Sunshine, Beauty Pair" days, and although Jackie was still popular, their efforts to team her with Aoyama (and push Aoyama as the next idol) failed when Tomi retired in August that year. At the same time as their early booking plans to create a new Sato and a new Black Pair were faltering, it seems evident that the seniors (Jackie, Nancy Kumi, Ikeshita, etc.) wanted to push the in-ring work in the direction of serious girl wrestling. Everything goes in cycles, & there's the occasional shot of a Chigusa having the seed planted early. Keeping this in mind, the crowd is more diversified than people might expect. Meltzer used to float the line that men didn't watch women's wrestling in the 80s, but they did. -- From this "serious girl wrestling", the brief Jaguar/Devil/Mimi era emerged... And the fact that Jaguar was never that over with the schoolgirls is probably a result of this (and the fact that Mimi was an idol for men)... At this point, however, nothing was set in stone. What's noticeable is how Jaguar went from strength to strength throughout 1980. Until you see Jaguar in the ring against American girls like Ritcher and Kai, you don't get a sense of how short she really was. She's the same height as Mayumi Ozaki, if you can believe that, but Jaguar in 1980 has to be the fastest I've ever seen a wrestler progress, culminating in the awesome 12/16/80 WWWA title tournament match against Jackie Sato, where it's night and day between the Rimi Yokota of January (in the AJW Jr title match against Chino Sato) and the December Yokota. -- Chino Sato would've played a part in the next era if she hadn't retired, and that may have been a huge break for Mimi Hagiwara, because I can easily conceive of Sato being the girl to beat Ikeshita for the White Belt in '81. As it was, Sato retired on the same show. The first of many retirements in 1981. I guess she was either injured or intended to get married. -- Asuka with big hair is a little strange. Not one of my favourites but she looked like a natural from the start, which is in keeping with the New Wave theme. I was surprised that she sold so much. She learnt some bad habits later on. -- MXNT41 lists Hiroko Komine as the future Tarantula, but Komine only wrestled for a few years & retired around the same time as Hanawa. Tarantula was a girl named Hiroshie Ito, who made her debut in 1980. -- Yumi Ikeshita vs. Lucy Kayama is a really cool match. Simple, but one of the best matches from 1980. Ikeshita was such an awesome worker. Aoyama had to vacant the title due to injury, which is the reason for the drama at the beginning. Perhaps my wife will translate that part later, if we're lucky.

How much people get out of Dump depends on how much they like heat in wrestling, I guess. Dump was a fine actress... From all accounts she's a good natured person & extremely funny, but she played a world class bitch. She joined AJW quite late, trying to help her family buy a house (a working class dream in Japan), and like most girls, she was a fan of Jackie Sato & wanted to be the idolised type. She had her reservations about playing heel, particularly at the height of her run when people hated her guts, but she made it work. She spent her early days in AJW as a driver (despite passing her audition), and general dogsbody (as Mami Kamano's kohai, which basically means she did whatever she was told) & suffered a fair bit of humilation from Nancy Kumi, who didn't like her for some reason. Dump wasn't a particularly good brawler, but there are some matches where the spectacle clicks (the Dump/Bull vs. Chigusa/Lioness, TLTB '85 match comes to mind.) A lot of it was tedious. We tend to think of 80s AJW as a TV product, though, when really it was a houseshow business. I've heard that Devil and Dump used to really go at it in some of the prefectures outside of Kanto (Tokyo), which gave rise to the rumours that the two didn't like each other. Almost everyone considers these matches folklore in AJW regional wrestling, but they're barely highlighted in the TV we have. Dump took Devil's spot & a lot of people felt Devil became insular after that, but as good as Devil was, it's hard to imagine her being as good in Dump's role. The schoolgirls who hated Dump were the same ones crying when she retired. Dump used to whip them into a frenzy and deep down they loved it. That's the reason they tuned in week after week & forced their parents to buy tickets to the shows. In her early matches she was a more mobile and dynamic little big woman. When she slimmed down after '86 and started wearing that badness Samurai get-up, she threw suplexes and was mixing it up on the mat. She sacrificed a lot of what we'd consider "good work" to help fuel a nationwide boom.

BIG MATCH UPDATE -- A guy named MXNT41 on youtube has posted a bunch of stuff from 1980. Some of it might be from '79, since they're still wrestling on the giant sunflower. Monster Ripper vs. Lucy Kayama Nancy Kumi vs. Seiko Hanawa Fujimi/Hagiwara vs. Devi Masami/Cheryl Day Jackie Sato/Aoyama vs. Ikeshita/Kamano (2 falls shown, 3rd fall no finish) Rimi Yokota vs. Ayumi Hori Rimi Yokota vs. Patty Steiger And from the big 1/4/80 New Year's show: Nancy Kumi vs. Rena Blair Rimi Yokota vs. Chino Sato (for the vacant, newly created AJW Jr. title) Jackie Sato vs. Tomi Aoyama (WWWA title) Points of interest: -- Nancy Kumi has more rumours about her than any Japanese wrestler I know of. In terms of how good she was, she was a power wrestler basically, with some good mat skills. What struck me about her match against Hanawa was that it was hold-for-hold the kind of match Devil would later have, which either means she was Devil's senpai (which is highly likely) or this was a standard AJW way of working in a junior (which is also possible.) She had to mix it up a lot more in the Blair match & I thought she did a pretty good job of working a small scale spectacle. -- I dunno if Kayama worked in Mexico, but I'd like to know where she learnt topes and planchas to the outside. -- Victoria Fujimi RULES. Small, compact... She's the original Yumi Ogura. There's a lot of great work with her and Mimi working over Devil's leg. Fujimi is boss. She even does a huracanrana. -- Cheryl Day with the finger jabs. -- I swear Devil Masami has a different hair style in every piece of footage from the 80s. -- The Black Pair rule too. Kumano used to get a lot of heat for looking like a street walker with her hair & make-up & Yumi Ikeshita is the greatest pint-sized heel ever. I've never seen her make a facial expression once. Just cold hard stares from under that perm. Aoyama is pretty good in this as the distraught youngster prevented from tagging in. -- Jaguar and Jumbo had great chemistry together, even as juniors. Really tight match. The Jaguar/Sato match was one of Jaguar's first big singles matches. Sato is a worthy challenger to the AJW Jr. crown and you'd have to say that despite being juniors & losing track of the match at times, it was a fine display of talent. A bunch of their trainers are involved in the commentary, and I'd say they were pleased. The old line of thinking was that Jaguar was the first modern looking worker in All Japan Women's -- not true at all -- but she soaked up wrestling like few rookies ever have. Credit to Sato, though, who wasn't around later on. -- The Jackie/Aoyama match is a long, excellent title bout. Jackie really gave Aoyama this match. It's the best I've seen her look. Not sure if that's tag restrictions, face vs. heel booking or Sato being a great worker, but Aoyama looked like a girl they wanted to push. It's no surprise that she didn't last, however. She was in no way, shape or form made for wrestling. Not as skinny as that.

Harley Saito vs. Takako Inoue, JGP '93, 5/8/93 This is one of the best Joshi matches of the 90s and smokes anything Akira Hokuto did in the 1993 Japan Grand Prix. Here you've got Harley Saito who's best work nobody sees because early JWP was barely recorded & nobody can be fucked watching LLPW, and Takako Inoue, who was the hardest working midcarder in AJW at the time, tearing it up for 30 minutes in a match that shouldn't be anywhere near this good except Saito's a fucking pro & Takako was so game in '93. Beat for beat this is near perfect for 30 mins. I have no idea how they managed this. I guess they just went from one beat to the next, got into a groove & it all flowed together. While I was watching it, I kept thinking some dumb shit was bound to happen, but no... Instinctively, I agreed with every thing they chose to do. Anyway, this is built around some really good themes, the predominant one being a rib injury to Saito. I don't think Takako had any idea how good a worker she could be when her confidence was up. Awesome.

Jumbo/Taue vs. Misawa/Kawada, 9/30/90 Like many people I went through a phase of wanting to get into Misawa vs. Kawada like Norman Mailer got into heavyweight boxing. Now, the older and tireder I become, the more simple I want things to be. That's why Misawa vs. Jumbo is great to kick back to. Jumbo's selling in this match is top shelf. The way he carries himself, the way he fills in the gaps between moves. A lot of wrestlers don't sell well on offence. When Jumbo hits a move, there's always a reaction and it's that beat between moves that paces a match. He's always selling the match -- on the apron, on the floor, when the camera isn't looking... I've seen it described as playing for the front row or playing to the back. Jumbo plays to the house. The camera guy probably sees Jumbo and says, "I need a shot of this" and the director says, "Great, I can cut to Jumbo here." Misawa and Kawada are quite good at this too, but in a more subtle way. Jumbo's theatrical by comparison. It's a good thing too, because if we're being honest Jumbo has some problems with his movement & execution that would be more pronounced if he wasn't so demonstrative while doing moves. Then there's TAUE. Akira Taue is the All Japan wrestler I like most. I don't understand why people think Taue only became a good worker in 1995. He's the same Taue here only less stiff. This is the match where he takes an asskicking from Kawada and Misawa, reopening a cut to the head... He takes his beating like a MAN & his desperation lariats are awesome. Just like his sumo-style tachiais & that tope... I love Taue, so I love Taue offence, but that tope is ridiculously great. So bad. So very, very good. This match has great rhythm and keeps up a nice pace for 40 minutes. The only downer is that it's a draw, and like most draws, loses its shape towards the end.

DUMP MATSUMOTO -- Dump has a rep as a great heel, perhaps the greatest monster heel ever. Some might argue she was the greatest heel full stop. She was certainly one of Joshi's biggest stars ever. Yet, surprisingly, there was almost nothing original about her. Dump's heel act was almost entirely cribbed from The Black Pair, Monster Ripper, Devil Masami & a host of American and Mexican women who came through Japan, most of whom were better workers than Dump & more importantly better brawlers. And while Dump took carnage to new heights, weapon shots, brawling outside the ring & the abuse of referees were all staples of Joshi from the late 70s onwards, perhaps earlier. Even Dumo's Army wasn't an original concept, since Devil had her own Army & heels had always formed allegiences. Probably the most original thing about Dump was her dyed hair and make-up, which, given how impressionable the audience was, can't be underestimated in getting her over. In a sense, Dump was classic AJW heel booking on a much larger scale than ever before, which was fitting given it was the height of the bubble era. But while it's easy to dismiss Dump as booking -- Dump and her cronies were only pushed to give Chigusa and Lioness the type of rivals Beauty Pair had in the earlier Joshi boom -- try imaging someone else in the role. Other girls had the look and even the charisma. What set Dump apart was the intensity. youtube has the second Dump vs. Chigusa hair match from '86. The look on Dump's face while she gets her head shaved is the scariest fucking thing ever. It's like she's staring right through you. The match is an angle basically, but it gives us as good an idea as anything as to why, at the height of her heeldom, a crazed fan tried to break into her parent's home. AJW used to be shown on Sunday evenings during the 80s & apparently the ending to the first Chigusa/Dump hair match was so graphic and so cruel that AJW was taken off the air in many parts of the country. As a result, the postmatch from this match wasn't shown on TV, at least not everywhere. Funnily enough, this was kinda the end for the Dump gimmick. The next era in AJW were the Lioness/Chigusa/Omori years. Dump gradually turned into a babyface leading up to her retirement (which drew a massive TV rating) and shed quite a few pounds. The slicker Dump was a hell of a lot better in the ring to boot. She went into show business after her retirement and was a variety show guest & comedian (along with Omori.) It's a measure of Dump's intensity in the gimmick that Japanese fans still reckon she was a locker room bully & that she had legit heat with Devil Masami. These things may be true & Dump herself released an autobiography where she accused Nancy Kumi of all sorts of shit, but the way she played her gimmick made it all the more believable for the fans.

Mean Gene made that guy put his cigarette out.

Man, Gorilla and Jesse & Gorilla & Heenan would be the last thing I ever criticised in wrestling. The sheer amount of shit they commentated through is staggering. I love Lance Russell and Ken Walton, but Lance would need a whole 'nother carton of cigarettes to get through that shit.

LUCY KAYAMA Lucy Kayama was one half of the Queen Angels (w/ Tomi Aoyama), a sort of late 70s version of the Jumping Bomb Angels. You can see brief highlights of one of their matches against the Golden Pair (Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi) from 8/9/78 if you search for Queen Angels on you tube. After Maki Ueda retired in February of '79, the Matsunagas decided to push Aoyama as Jackie Sato's new tag partner. The new Beauty Pair was short lived, however, as injuries forced Aoyama to retire. (The late 70s may seem like a simpler style, but they were working 300 dates a year & girls like Aoyama didn't really have the body to take that sort of punishment.) Kayama didn't last much longer, but some of her best work is from the period where she was cast off. Youtube has a new match up -- Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Lucy Kayama (1980.) It's a good watch. Mimi with her big hair and early selling prowess is rake thin, and you can see that she really did put on 10kg to keep wrestling. Jaguar was AJW Junior Champion at this point & Hanawa was her regular tag partner. She's a bit of a mystery like Chino Sato, neither were around long enough to really know what happened to them. They're a solid, young girl team. Kayama, unbelievably, is a veteran (!) with three years experience. And she's great in this & really does wrestle like a pissed off vet. 80s AJW is something I like to sample. It always throws a curve ball or two. Pissed off Lucy Kayama is the latest surprise. It didn't last for long, but the more I think about it, the more I agree with mandatory retirements. Here's some bonus, rare photos -- Jackie Sato's return to the ring against Kandori in 1986:

Who would've thought they'd be MIKA KOMATSU matches on youtube? Mika Komatsu was part of the largely unknown 80s AJW midcard. She was a tag wrestler primarily, and after a few stints through Calgary with Yumi Ogura, they won the WWWA tag titles as the Calgary Typhoons. The ever popular Ogura became AJW champion during their tag reign & they had a sort of "respect" feud over the title (including a title change in Edmonton), similar to Yoshida and Takako Inoue in later AJW booking. She retired in '89, got married and had two kids. youtube has Mika Komatsu: vs. Machiko Saito (rookie tournament; Saito is Condor Saito) vs. Crane Yu (3 min clip, no finish) w/ Hisako Uno & Kanako Nagatomo vs. Mitsuko Nishiwaki, Yumi Ogura & Kazue Nagahori ('86) The last match is the one you want to watch for a good example of AJW undercard work from this era. It's actually quite different from the 90s style. And if you search for Four Women Tag, you'll get Komatsu & Nagamoto vs. Ogura and Nagahori from their juniors days. I'm a really big fan of the Ogura/Nagahori team, Red Typhoons.

Michinoku Pro is something I've never really been into, so I decided to watch a batch of stuff from '93 to see how I like it. Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title vs. mask, 7/24/93 Great Sasuke/Sato vs. Super Delfin/Gran Naniwa, 7/26/93 (handheld) Great Sasuke/TAKA/Sato vs. Delfin/Shinzaki/Naniwa, 8/19/93 (handheld) Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title match, 8/24/93 Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), 9/28/93 Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), mask vs. mask, 12/10/93 Rudo Super Delfin was the revelation here. Not in the sense that he was a great rudo... I have no idea why they gave him this role, he didn't look the part and wasn't that great at playing the part... What surprised me was that instead of being spotty like I thought he would be, he worked a slower, more methodical style. The opening minutes are crap, as they are in a lot of juniors matches... And not just aimless matwork; aimless opening exchanges with no theme to them at all, matwork or otherwise... But once they settled into the heel taking the lead, Delfin did a lot of really good stuff. The 8/93 match against Sasuke is a really good title match. If Delfin had been a more charismatic rudo & Sasuke a more sympathetic babyface, it might have even been a great match. I was looking forward to seeing some early Dick Togo, but he was really green & his gimmick sucked. He was a power wrestler, who could do cool moves for a guy his size, but like most young wrestlers he concentrated on getting his offence right & hadn't developed a character or any of the other nuances of performance. The mask match isn't bad, but I gotta question the booking of why anyone would care that Dick lost his mask at this point. The tag matches aren't flash, but it's worth noting that they're closer to Lucha than the later M-Pro stuff. All up, not bad from a small company in its first year.

Bull Nakano vs. Aja Kong, cage match, 11/14/90 This is unbelievably bad. Honestly, this has to be one of the worst "big match" match-ups of the 90s. Bull Nakano vs. Manami Toyota, 7/21/90 Typical "Bull as Monster Heel" delayed squash. Toyota has no fucking clue what to do when she gets on offence.

CHIGUSA NAGAYO -- I mentioned before that Jaguar Yokota is the greatest women's wrestler ever, but on the strength of Chigusa's work from '85-87, I reckon you could make a reasonable case for her too, she was that good. Japanese fans sometimes talk about who was the "female Inoki" (Inoki is considered the greatest men's wrestler in Japan.) It usually comes down to Jaguar Yokota vs. Akira Hokuto, with the general feeling being that Hokuto is the greatest women's wrestler. I favour Jaguar for a number of reasons, but I think Chigusa's work gets slept on. Chigusa vs. Dump was synonymnous with Chigusa's popularity, not her work. Chigusa's peak in '86 was probably the peak of the AJW promotion in the 80s. Nevertheless, by the end of the 80s Chigusa had lost it. The more she bulked up, the more serious she came about being a legit worker, adding strikes, stand-up fighting and mat based submissions to her work. The schoolgirls still cheered for her like mad, but God knows what they made of the stylistic change. In her last year with AJW, Chigusa was angling for a big interpromotional match with Shinobu Kandori, but the Matsunagas wouldn't go for it. If you want to see a good example of the stylistic mess that was late 80s Chigusa, check out the Crush Girls vs. Marine Wolves, 4/27/89 tag on youtube. Hokuto & Minami simply didn't have the offence to work with Chigusa and Asuka & there's a God awful sleeper segment that goes forever as a result.

No problem. JUMPING BOMB ANGELS -- The Jumping Bomb Angels were a midcard, workrate team that were pushed for a while in an effort to replicate the idol success of Beauty Pair and the Crush Girls. It didn't work out, but for a time they were the top tag team in AJW while Chigusa & Lioness pursued singles success. Yamazaki has long been considered the worker of the team & Tateno a bit of baggage. I always thought that was a little unfair on Tateno. AJW at this time had massive tryouts, and even if some of the girls they scouted didn't try out (I've met a few who didn't), you didn't pass a tryout, survive training and get a debut without talent. If you look at the whole roster from the 80s there's not one girl who stands out as having no talent. Yamazaki was a better worker than Tateno, mainly because Yamazaki was awesome on the mat, but Yamazaki wasn't charismatic. Well, she was charismatic in the sense that she was a really good worker, who sold well in a work sense (realism & believability as opposed to drama), but Tateno was there to be the less talented worker who took more of a beating. Tateno being the weak link was more or less a role she played, in large part I imagine to the Matsunagas realising she wasn't good enough for singles after her AJW Junior Championship push. Youtube has the following JBA stuff: vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 3/20/86 (2/3 falls, WWWA title match) vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 9/14/87 (TLTB) Mimi Hagiwara and Noriyo Tateno vs. Masked Yu and Tarantula (1982, one fall shown) Veoh has Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Leilani Kai ('86) vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 9/14/87 (better quality) vs. Yukari Omori and Hisako Uno (Akira Hokuto), August '86 The March '86 Crush Girls vs. JBA title match has incredible heat and is one of the best full length AJW matches available from the 80s. Probably in the top 5. Chigusa was awesome at this point. 1986 was probably her peak year and she's at the height of her powers here, to the point where you wish she wouldn't tag out. (I'm not a big fan of Asuka or Crush Girls, particularly their double team moves.) You need to see the Chigusa/Yamazaki stuff in this match. The '87 match also has mad heat, since Crush Girls didn't tag so often at this point, but Tateno looked in bad shape and I don't like the booking. The tag against Omori and Uno shows how quickly the JBA fell... This was right after Omori beat Chigusa in the JGP '86 Final. I don't think she'd won the Big Red Belt yet, but she was being heavily pushed as Chigusa's next big rival/feud after the second Chigusa/Dump, hair vs. hair match. They feuded through TLTB '86 and into the next year. Tateno looked better here, selling for Omori. She gets mauled in the Mimi tag, so she had the smaller girl gets destroyed role down pat. Finally, the Yamazki vs. Leilani Kai match is OK, but it's held back by the booking. Leilani was too good a wrestler to be working an overbearing heel shtick. Fortunately she got more opportunities in those great matches against Chigusa. This type of match does show the kind of limitations Yamazaki had as a singles worker. She was really smooth on offence, though, and that continued through to her JWP work. A lot of girls wanted to be like Jaguar, few pulled it off quite as well as Yamazaki.

DEVIL MASAMI -- Devil Masami in the early 80s was the heel act that bridged Black Pair to Dump Matsumoto, mangling Mimi Hagiwara's arm every time they fought and acting as the No.1 native challenger to Jaguar Yokota after the retirement of Jackie Sato and phasing out of Monster Ripper, Rhonda Singh. When Dump started taking off in popularity, Devil turned face. She got over as a babyface on the strength of her singing. Almost every girl had an album at this time, but Devil was by far the best singer and had a couple of songs featured in TV dramas. God knows I have a hard time getting Silent Goodbye out of my head. I guess a lot of people have seen her now famous match against Chigusa Nagayo from 1985. If you're wondering if there's more Devil matches like that, the answer is that she didn't really reach that level again until the JWP match against Kandori. Devil was a good worker for twenty years, but her prime (in my opinion) was actually '93-94. Early 80s Devil is fun, she just got better later, like Bull Nakano. youtube has Devil vs. Chigusa Nagayo (early 80s squash of Chigusa) vs. Chino Sato (1979?) w/ Monster Ripper vs. Mimi Hagiwara and Jumbo Hori (one fall only shown) The Chigusa match has some classic Devil offence she'd use on JWP girls years later. The Sato match is decent. Devil was still a bit green, but she had a fair idea how she was gonna work things as a heel . Sato was quite a good worker. I still haven't found out what happened to her. The tag clip shows how much extra ommph Devil and Mimi had in their work when they matched up. Devil was doing some fairly basic heel work at this point, nothing Kumano or Ikeshita hadn't done before, but it looks nastier with Mimi's selling.

JAGUAR YOKOTA -- Jaguar is the greatest Japanese women's wrestler ever, and if the stories about her training are true she worked harder than anybody else to become the greatest ever. Jaguar was small and didn't have the physique for wrestling, but as a 16 year old she would always get through her exercises faster than anyone else in training, which shows a massive amount of commitment for someone at such a young age. Her father was a drunk and beat her mother. When her mother divorced him, they moved to another part of Tokyo, and Jaguar had to find a job to support her family. So, she came from a disadvantaged background, but single-mindedly and with a fair degree of stubbornness she didn't let that stop her. Youtube has the usual Jaguar matches -- the famous '85 match against Lioness & a few of the La Galatica matches too. It also has two gems: vs. Jumbo Hori vs. Irma Gonzalez Jose talked about what a great worker Hori was and how he was his find of last year. The match is from around '82 and Hori was only starting to become a good worker. Jaguar was still wrestling as Rimi Yokota. Jaguar had a few long title matches with Devil Masami around this time, which I always hoped would air on AJW Classics but never did. From the clips I've seen of those matches, the Hori match is better. It's a clipped draw, but it's the same dynamic as Jaguar/Devil minus the Devil heel act. Jumbo was 180 cm -- probably the tallest girl to ever work in wrestling. Jaguar was like a legit 159 cm. Hori got boxed into a heel role later on, but here she's a face & what's shown is really good. The Gonzalez fight shows something that people might not be aware of. The Japanese girls often weren't that co-operative with foreign talent, but Jaguar was by far and away the most co-operative and she pretty much gave every foreign girl on tour their best match or their best minutes of ring time. That's one thing I always admired about Jaguar -- it didn't matter who you were or where you were on the card, she was all about wrestling you. When she retired, the younger girls were so devastated because she commanded everyone's respect. When she was a trainer, Aja Kong refused to call her Jaguar-san, sensei, senpai or anything that someone in Aja's position in Japanese society should do, but she eventually broke through to Aja too and when Aja won the WWWA title, she was clearly moved. Just a champion. Wouldn't even let being over 40 stop her from having a baby.

BULL NAKANO -- Bull was a solid midcarder in the 80s, part of the strong AJW undercard during the Crush Girls era. I can honestly say I've never seen her give a bad performance in the footage I've seen. She was just incredibly solid. I guess that's the reason why she was pushed as Dump's #2 after Masked Yu retired, although, like all of the young girls, she didn't want to play a heel and apparently she cried bitterly the first time they shaved her hair. One of my wife's friends grew up in the same part of Saitama as Bull and described her as a loner, which goes with the misfit image some people have of wrestlers, but she spent the 80s growing into her heel role, and had one important member in her official or unofficial fanclub -- a young Akira Hokuto. Youtube has Bull: vs. Itsuki Yamazaki, 2/25/85 (aired on Classics) w/ Lola Gonzales & ???? vs. Chigusa, Lioness & Itsuki Yamazaki ('85) w/ Condor Saito vs. Yumi Ogura & Kazue Nagahori ('86) Veoh has Dump's Army vs. Yukari Omori & Co. from '86 (elimination match) The Chigusa tag is after the first Dump/Chigusa hair match, since Chigusa is sporting a mean buzz cut. She has an awesome staredown with Bull & the match is great whenever they're in together. It's cool to see Bull as the main heel as well. The Dump's Army tag is the typical Dump brawl/orchestrated madness... The Saito tag is a good example of the solid Bull/Saito midcard heel team. They had better matches with Ogura and Nagahori, but along with the Yamazaki singles match it shows that Bull was a good hand in the ring.

JACKIE SATO -- One of the biggest disappointments about the various incarnations of AJW Classics is that we never got to see the 60 minute Sato/Ueda title match from '77 or a full version of the retirement match from 1979. Hardly any of the Beauty Pair footage that's available shows Sato in the kind of positive light that her early 80s matches against Yumi Ikeshita or Rimi Yokota do. Watching Beauty Pair & her New Beauty Pair team w/ Tomi Aoyama, it's always the Black Pair that come out looking best. They were great workers, Ikeshita especially, but they control 90% of the matches. youtube has some Sato stuff: vs. Mami Kumano vs. Vicki Williams w/ Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano and Yumi Ikeshita Voeh has Beauty Pair vs Mami Kumano & Chabela Romero. Sato is better in singles & the two bouts are post-Beauty Pair, so that's good. I always thought Sato had some problems in the ring because she was tall and lanky (she was recruited from basketball), which meant a lot of her stuff looked a bit awkward, particularly off the ropes, and at this point structure was still a bit iffy. Well, structure in Joshi is always a bit iffy, but when she kept it on the mat she was generally very good and some of her offence is nice. The real question for me was how good a babyface she was. She has some decent matches against Monster Ripper, which was her big feud after Beauty Pair retired, and the schoolgirls go nuts in those fights... A large percentage of that is the dramatic structure the Matsunagas had in place for making the schoolgirls go nuts... She was kinda straddling the line between being an idol and being sort of stoic, a transformation Chigusa would later go through. The picture on Sato has always been a little incomplete for me. I wonder if Jose, DanG or anyone else has seen matches that shed some light on Sato.