[1993-08-21-AJW-Grand Prix] Akira Hokuto vs Yumiko Hotta

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

They both worked hard, but I couldn't get into this. Hotta sometimes seems like she's wrestling in a vacuum, like what her opponent is doing isn't impacting her. It's not no-selling as much as it no-reacting. I know Jerome chalks it up to unprofessionalism, but I wonder if it's more just that compared to her peers, she's limited. Because of the pacing and match layout, this is still a pretty good match, but that's almost all on Hokuto carrying this. Excellent individual performance and a good match.

[Ditch]

Hokuto's decision to arbitrarily stop selling the leg bugged the crap out of me. The last 5 minutes were great but only in a vaccum.

[El-P]

They both worked hard, but I couldn't get into this. Hotta sometimes seems like she's wrestling in a vacuum, like what her opponent is doing isn't impacting her. It's not no-selling as much as it no-reacting. I know Jerome chalks it up to unprofessionalism, but I wonder if it's more just that compared to her peers, she's limited.

Yes, of course she's limited, she's just not a good worker. Then, she also sometimes is unprofessional, mostly when she works interpromotionnal matches in which she thinks she's above the other promotion's girls. But she sure was very limited as a worker to begin with.

And yeah, Hokuto was awesome here.

[PeteF3]

Hokuto put on a fine performance for the most part, but by the end this was getting absolutely silly. There are hot false finishes and then there's 2.9 bullshit, like Hokuto taking a straitjacket superplex and a straitjacket power bomb and kicking out. I was marking out when Asako was kicking out of bombs a few matches ago, but here I was rolling my eyes. And since Hotta is constantly cutting her off and Hokuto's on the defense the whole match or so it seems, the move she actually hits for the pin doesn't really mean anything other than, "This is where we were told to go home." Hokuto's victory doesn't come off as a gutsy comeback, it just comes off as a fluke. I'm fine with fluke finishes, but I don't think this is quite the same as Akira getting a win over Aja or Bull. I think Loss still liked this more than me, but I was heartened to the relatively cold reaction to this because I suspect some people had hailed this as a classic.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't agree that Hokuto stopped selling the knee. She sold it the way a legit knee injury should be sold, not in some kind of bullshit Bret Hart way where he sells the knee so much he should be out for the season. I liked the way they treated the injury here. It was an issue and everybody knew it, but there was no need to be demonstrative about it. Hotta went after it, but not in a frenzied way. She was like a tennis player taking advantage of an opponent's injury by hitting to the parts of the court the opponent can't get to. She could have gone after the knee in a more viscous way, but she wasn't a heel and Hokuto already had the crowd's sympathy. I expect a lot of people would prefer if they'd played it up more, but this kind of spartan approach is a nice antidote to overly loaded Japanese wrestling. Of course, they moved into the finishing stretch and there were some pretty big moves, but watching it off the cuff and not as part of the yearbook I thought it was pretty organic and not excessive. Hokuto sold the knee afterwards, though it wasn't really selling since she was dealing with actual pain. Not a spectacular match or anything, but better than Hokuto/Kong from Big Egg Universe as a comparison.

[Zenjo]

Hokuto's victory ensured a satisfying finale to one of the finest tournaments in the history of wrestling.

 

Both women were unsurprisingly tired after prior exertions. It's not fair to judge Hotta too much off this bout as she looked notably less athletic than normal. The action during the build was quite slow and uninspiring, running at least 5m too long. The storyline was strong however as it looked like Hokuto's brittle body would cost her the title once more. The closing 5m jumped up several levels as they both unloaded everything to provide a dramatic conclusion. All's well that ends well I guess. Won't quite make my top 100, yet the stretch and the storyline made this good overall.

[soup23]

Opening moments of this were great with Hotta attacking the leg and really cranking it. Then, that gets forgotten real quick and it all goes off the rails. I can't forgive the gravity of how the limb work was blown off in this match given the emphasis it had in the first half of the match. Good for Hokuto with the long night she had, but this was a real disappointment. ***

[garretta]

I thought the storytelling was actually better here than in the semifinals. Hotta destroys Hokuto's leg for the first few minutes, then decides she's done enough of that and proceeds to power moves. She gets several openings to go back to the leg again, but she doesn't take any of them, and her hubris ends up costing her the loss and the tournament.

 

There were two differences between this and the semifinal. One is that Hokuto sells the leg throughout instead of jumping right up to do her signature moves regardless of it. The second is that the leg work ends early enough in the bout that there's a clear transition between it and the other part of Hotta's attack. She's not pounding on the leg one second and suplexing Hokuto into oblivion the next. On such little things like that are proper storytelling built.

 

Hokuto's finisher was definitely helped by the knee injury, as it's obvious that Akira can't hold Hotta's weight for long, so she decides to unburden herself and win the match at the same time, spiking Hotta right on her head in the process.

 

What was the deal with Hokuto throwing the check and the trophy away? Was she trying to say that she didn't need such things, that beating her opponents was enough for her? I sure hope so, because any other reason would be stupid both in kayfabe and real life.

 

We get on certain joshi wrestlers for not selling properly at all times, and Hotta's halfhearted selling of the scorpion is yet another example. Sometimes she remembers the danger she's supposed to be in and throws in a scream or two, but most of the time the camera catches her not doing much of anything. Maybe the AJW cameramen shouldn't zoom in for so many closeups.