[1993-05-05-FMW-Origin] Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyoda vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Lots of good action, and the match built well. Yet another strong performance from Toyota, who spends most of the match selling and seems to be having an excellent year. It's interesting how they react to almost nothing when they try to build sympathy on Toyota, but when Kudo is on the defensive, the crowd starts to wake up. I guess it's because the FMW audience is way more comfortable with Kudo and Toyoda, so they probably should have put the AJW team over a little stronger out of the gate. Because when they start dominating again, now they have heat because they're wrestling against two people the crowd has now seen be effective. Interesting the psychology behind that. This match is terrific for building to what seems to be a finish, then giving a kickout and taking the match to a different level, then doing the same again and again. Yet they are smart enough and in tune with the audience not to take it too far either. Kudo finally pins Toyota, but it takes a doomsday device (which looks incredible), some type of straitjacket powerbomb (which is slightly botched) and a tiger suplex. Excellent match! Stuff like this will never compare to the best All Japan tags of the year, if only because the roles are a bit interchangeable, but then again, the All Japan action will never quite get to this level either. They seem to be setting up something with Kong and Toyoda in the post-match, but she gets along very well with Kudo (and may be asking her on a date ...)

[FLIK]

It's interesting how they react to almost nothing when they try to build sympathy on Toyota, but when Kudo is on the defensive, the crowd starts to wake up. I guess it's because the FMW audience is way more comfortable with Kudo and Toyoda

Shouldn't be underestimated how big of a star Kudo was at the time. There's a reason their previous match got main event at the 1st Dream Slam.

 

They seem to be setting up something with Kong and Toyoda in the post-match, but she gets along very well with Kudo (and may be asking her on a date ...)

Aja/Combat thing never went anywhear but Aja & Kudo end up having a title match later on that year. All 3 originally trained together in AJW so there's history thear.

[BackToBionic]

I don't care what comes after, Aja's Cross Colours leather (!) jacket is the fashion highlight of 1993.

[Zenjo]

Aja, Combat and Kudo all graduated from the AJW class of 1986. Along with Bison Kimura, Kaoru, Miori Kamiya (Cooga) and Mika Takahashi. With the awesome '85 class as well it was a talent surplus and Kudo got dropped.

 

This was a rematch of the somewhat disasterous Dreamslam main event. Thankfully they worked a lot better together 2nd time around. Both teams were effective units and the construction was sound. The finish was particulaly impressive with elaborate and brutal moves utilised. The result was in the balance too as the FMW team wrestled like peers to the Zenjo girls. There were strong moments but a few sloppy moves held it back from being anything special. Still it's satisfying to see them redeem themselves after the previous debarcle.

[PeteF3]

Dear God, this is the worst ring announcer of all-time. He sounds like a Japanese version of the Pimply Faced Teen from The Simpsons. That aside, this was an improvement over DreamSlam--a match that I liked, but almost 100% because of Toyota and Yamada, who put on a performance of a lifetime trying to drag Team FMW to something great and almost succeeding. Here the FMW girls pull their weight and are treated more as equals--even Combat looks good here! She's also utilized really well, coming off as a true monster and only sort of like somebody cosplaying as Aja Kong, especially towards the end when she's making saves. And we also get Toyota's incredible backflip bump off a Combat lariat again. Truly Toyota is the Johnny Rich to Combat's Sid Vicious. The FMW makes a spirited comeback when it looks like Kudo is about dead, thanks to Combat and some timely double-teams, and Kudo picks up a huge pinfall on Toyota. An excellent bout in a unique atmosphere.

[WingedEagle]

Nice opening attack by FMW. Maybe I'm crazy, but the proximity of the cameras and mics to the ring here made Toyota's screaming especially insufferable here. Toyota's bridging up on pinfalls also feels very out of place in this setting. Cool spot with Toyota dropkicking Kudo right into a Yamada German for a near fall. Stiff double powerbomb on Combat, who after a Kudo save returns the favor with a powerbomb to Toyota. Yamada accidentally nails Toyota with her jumping spin kick, then Kudo with a nice jumping kneedrop to Toyota. Toyota absolutely wipes out on a moonsault and doesn't seem to hit either FMWer. I couldn't explain how this is sold, but certainly not that way. Gross double bomb spot on Kudo, then double flying headbutts for near fall. Kudo rolls away from a Toyota moonsault for big pop. Combat turns Toyota inside out with a lariat, then again on an awesome looking Doomsday Device. Kudo near fall for some kind of powerbomb variation, and finally wins with tiger suplex. Aja Kong is in after to confront Combat and shake hands with Kudo.

 

This reads a lot better after the fact than I thought of it while watching. I can't put my finger on whether it was the screaming and Toyota's pacing that brought it down, but the whole fell short of the sum of its parts here.

 

***1/2

[soup23]

Love the vibe of this show. That said, this was a frigging blast and reading the backstory here only makes it better. Team FMW was vicious but sympathetic when they needed to be. Toyota has really shined so far in 93 and hit the perfect balance of dynamic but restrained to a slight extent on the matches we have seen for her. The FMW securing the win felt like a big deal. Super stuff. ****1/4

[garretta]

I couldn't get into this very much, not that there was a whole lot to get into in the first place. It was one long finishing stretch from the start, and those kind of matches, where nothing is ever allowed to breathe or develop, annoy me. They mostly seem to happen in joshi, too.

 

A few of the spots were impressive, though, such as Yamada deadliting Kido into a giant swing, which I've never seen before. You wouldn't think she was that strong just to look at her.

 

Manami's bridges were extra annoying because Megumi and Combat were working specifically on her lower back at the time she was doing most of them. I guess I shouldn't get on her, because almost all of her offense depends on a healthy lower back and strong legs, but then why have opponents work on those parts if she's more or less forced to no-sell work done on them to be effective in the ring?

 

The Doomsday Device should have been the finish; we didn't need the powerbomb and suplex afterward. It's almost like they'd gotten to the finish, then remembered that there were a few moves that they (Megumi and Combat) hadn't used yet and wouldn't finish the match until they'd gotten those moves in.

 

Aja's cameo was nice, but did anyone notice that Combat looked more like her than she did herself?

 

Maybe part of my disappointment with this match was that it wasn't a hardcore match. I shouldn't say "disappointment", I guess, because I hate the thought of women pounding each other with foreign objects and such, but I expected a harder-hitting style since this was an FMW card.

[ohtani's jacket]

#314

 

This is a match I never really cared for in the past, but I thought I'd give it another chance and I really enjoyed it this time round. It's nonstop action with constant tagging and big move after big move, and you really need to adjust to that otherwise it's just too much. I was listening to "Cantonese Boy" by Japan while watching this and that helped me concentrate on the ringwork. Once I found the rhythm, this was an enjoyable bout. The standard of execution was much higher than in their Dream Slam bout and there was a different edge to the bout with the FMW team being on home soil. I loved the competitive streak between Toyota and Kudo. That was a budding rivalry that never took off. I always dig how Toyoda brings 110% to her matches. It was a nice contrast to have a bigger brawler in there with the shooter and the two flyers. The Doomsday Device was devastating. I had to rewind and watch it twice. Nice bout if you can get into it, which I admit I may not have been able to do on another day.

[Makai Club #1]

Kudo and Toyoda were very over with the crowd. Maybe that was in comparison to the AJW duo but they had the crowd behind them whether they were in the driving seat or working from beneath. Toyota, to her credit, was great in spite of getting little from the crowd. She had some great sequences that she strung together. Toyoda was a good base for her high flying. Yamada kicked ass with her stiff kicks. Kudo was a strong sympathetic character with her selling and charisma. And her string of offence to put away Toyoya was awesome. ****

[Mr JMML]

Before we begin, yes Atsushi Onita vs Terry Funk happened in the same show, a match very superior to this one but this project is about Megumi Kudo and she’s a highlight in this match, if you like crazy spotfests full of head drops this is for you if not don’t watch it, sometimes those spots feel uncomfortable to watch, not in the same way that Kana vs Kyoko Kimura was but still pretty unsettling nonetheless. It’s the same pairing from Dreamslam 1 the FMW team of Megumi Kudo and Combat Toyoda vs Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada this time in FMW’s 4th anniversary show, I can’t help but think that the outcome of this match was determined by politics. It’s something similar to what they did four years earlier with the Atsushi Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi trilogy, you win the first two I win the last one kind of deal. I don’t think that the FMW deserved a win considering their position in the world of Joshi at the time, they were basically nobodies in comparison to AJW’s up and comers, I think their win against LCO was justified but this one, there’s just no way to justify it, there’s no build up to the victory, it feels forced, that decision doesn’t feel right.

The match began with some brawling in the outside of the ring, then it settled, in the ring the action was what you could expect, a suplexfest without anything resembling a match narrative and the before mentioned head drops that plagued this particular match, as you can probably tell from the last paragraph the FMW team won against all odds. I can’t wait to do a Terry Funk deep dive so I can review the greatest match of this show.

If you like suplexes and head drops go watch this, this is not a masterpiece or anything but it was fun.