[1996-06-22-AJW-Champions Night] Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue vs Manami Toyota & Mima Shimoda

[Zenjo]

That said, I've been pretty sour on 1996 AJW and the wheel-spinning is palpable. Shimoda taking Yamada's place as Toyota's tag partner seems to be the only real major "elevation" of a star to take place from 1990 until this moment. They're a little higher up on the cards, and Bull and Kimura and Hokuto are gone, but otherwise it's the same core group of people, working an unsustainable style. Even AJPW, for all their criticism, seems to have had a better track record in developing future talent. Who has debuted for AJW in the '90s who compares to Tamon Honda or Satoru Asako, much less a guy like Akiyama?

 

Shimoda looks pretty, but so far I can't remember a single really memorable performance of hers. She just seems to be there, as opposed to Yamada who was far more memorable and was a fun contrast to Toyota's style.

At this point in time you could split the roster between wrestlers who debuted in the 80's and those who debuted in the 90's. There wasn't so much a status gap between them as a chasm. None of the 90's girls received any sort of push during the 90-95 period, even to the middle of the card. In 96 they started to pay some attention to the youngsters with themed Junior shows and teaming them up with veterans for feature matches. They were generally too inexperienced to pose any sort of credible threat yet as rookie recruitment was minimal until 94. The only survivors from the classes of 90-93 were Kumiko Maekawa, Rie Tamada and Chapparita Asari. They actually dumped Maekawa and Tamada during their rookie year, but brought them back later as they couldn't find anyone better. I like both Maekawa and Asari quite a bit, although other Joshi fans might not rate them highly.

 

As for Shimoda you probably haven't seen the best of her from the Yearbook project. She'd been in plenty of good matches by this stage but not the high profile bouts that generally make the sets. Her peak came in the late 90's once she'd reformed LCO with Mita and went on a rampage. She'd previously teamed with Toyota in their early days. By this point in time they didn't have much chemistry as a unit. Unlike Toyota/Yamada and Mita/Shimoda who were perfect for each other.

[soup23]

This match was a complete mess for me and went on FOREVER. There was so much going on but no overarching story, lacking execution, and moves just for a moves standpoint. Extremely disappointing since I tend to really enjoy all four of these women at different points. **1/2

[...TG]

What is the deal with the dead crowds for AJW during this period? They sat on their hands until the finishing stretch of the third fall, and even then they weren't exactly hot.

[tim]

If you just had the first two falls as a one fall match this would have been pretty damn good. Lots of energy, non-stop action and some really cool spots. But that's the story of joshi in 1996 it seems -- if large chunks of the matches were shaved off, you could have some good stuff. The third fall decidedly brought down the match as a whole, but I still don't think it detracted from it as much as others do. But it definitely detracted. They brought it down a gear or two, and the thing is it was still a moves-moves-moves kind of match, just with less energy (without the kind of selling you need to make a less energetic finishing segment work) and the spots were less interesting.