[1992-07-09-JWP-Thank You] Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai

You can feel the tension in the air even before the bell rings. A really violent match, not in terms of brawling & blood and weapons and stuff like their more famous matches but just in the amount of intensity and stiffness they exhibit. They kind of take you on a roller coaster ride in this match though. Kansai brought the stiff kicks, just punting OZ as hard as she possibly could in the back of the skull at times, Ozaki brought it just as hard and wasn't afraid to hop up and boot Kansai in the Jaw. They'd punch each other, thorw elbows, throw each other into the railings, chairs and lots of other things but every time they'd have a brutal exchange like that one or the other would slow it down and grab a hold. Mostly pedestrian stuff, a headlock here, a camel clutch, a leg bar or something to break things up. Gave the match the feeling that chaos could erupt at any moment as you kept hoping for them to stop holding back and go full force. In the later part of the match it looks like they're going for just another rest hold spot but OZ decideds to really crank the fuck out of an armbar and that really picks things up. OZ keeps up working on it and Kansai does an awesome job selling the pain. Even after she makes her comeback she continues holding her arm for quite a while and puts over how much it hurts her to execute moves even if they don't involve the arm directly. Eventually they move away from that to go into the final stretch but by then enough time had passed that it wasn't a big deal. This is one of those cool matches that starts out good but you kind of wonder what the big deal is at first. By the end while I wouldn't call it one of the top matches of the year things just kept getting better and better over time as they built up to the final climax and by then you're loving every minute. Great stuff for sure. OZ wins after a surprise roll up counter to a powerbomb. Went almost 30 mins and it just flew by.

[Loss]

Everything was sold well and the match was paced well. But sadly, I thought it was on the boring side, despite that they were doing everything right. They definitely wrestle an aggressive style, and the big picture seems to be advanced nicely, but this just felt like they were holding back the whole time for some reason. I like deliberate wrestling, but this was almost too deliberate. It needed to be on the yearbook, if for no other reason than to put Dream Rush in its proper context, but I'm fine not watching it again. The last five minutes or so were better, but not spectacular, and I don't think there was enough build to the finish.

 

I think my first instincts would be to compare this to Toyota/Yamada, mainly because like Toyota and Yamada, these are two rivals that ended up teaming later in the year to defend their promotion. But this isn't really similar as a match. Where Toyota and Yamada was a rivalry, Kansai/Oz feels more personal. While Toyota and Yamada teamed while feuding, Oz and Kansai really didn't at this point. There is the overarching similarity of two wrestlers that have been to hell and back together -- as teammates and foes -- but that's really where the comparisons should end.

[Tim Evans]

I gotta agree about this being boring. It was technically nice and Dynamite was pretty stiff with her kicks but it was nothing I would remember at the end of the yearbook. Didn't really feel important.

[Kevin Ridge]

The kicks from Dynamite were quite stiff and loud with no commentary talking over the match. There was also alot of screaming and yelling so I had to lower my TV volume to know scare off the neighbors. Match was on the long side.

[WingedEagle]

I liked this a lot, especially as a contrast to some of the gogo AJW matches. Lots of stiffness here -- elbows, kicks, with Kansai playing the role of monster pretty damn well. She's a pretty mobile monster though, wiping herself out on a tope. Oz back to working the arm with Kansai doing a *fantastic* job selling. She counters it with a neat toss to finally break the hold, which didn't feel at all like a slow rest spot. DK catches Oz in a dive and hits a piledriver on floor to surprisingly little reaction. Lots of good countering which is presumably part of a backstory I'm not familiar with. Kansai goes for splash mountain, and Oz counters into roll up for what feels like a pretty big upset.

 

***3/4

[PeteF3]

I like the more leisurely JWP pace but this did probably go on a bit too long, to the point where the ladies seemed to run out of things to do--as evidenced by the repeating of the "Kansai tries a Northern Lights and gets DDT'd" transition. Also, Kansai's kicks were approaching the level of being uncomfortable to watch rather than merely stiff. Everything else they did made sense, though, and both workers stayed true to the characters they established in the early going. Good match but the '91 JWP stuff was much better.

[Robert S]

I really prefer this pacing to the AJW go-go-go style.

[...TG]

Crowd seems really dead here for what was such an important match. I'd ask if it's a JWP thing, but I felt the same way about much of the AJW in the 92 yearbook.

[garretta]

This was much more meat-and-potatoes than the flashy AJW style-match. I loved Ozaki's focus on Dynamite's arm, and it was an effective way of neutralizing Dynamite's size and strength advantage. Dynamite did an excellent job of selling the injury; she wasn't helpless and could occasionally will herself to use the arm effectively, but if she tried to use it too often she was in trouble, as we saw at the finish.

 

There was a little bit of action outside the ring, but unlike Aja and Bull at times, these two didn't overdo it, at least not here.

 

Dynamite is definitely this promotion's answer to Aja and Bull, but she gave a lot more to Ozaki in order to set up a rivalry.

 

My move of the match was what looked like a piledriver on the floor from Dynamite, executed from powerbomb position. Considering that she'd already had her arm worked on quite a bit, this was even more impressive than it reads on paper.

 

I'm looking forward to more of JWP in general and these two in particular.

[Jetlag]

Mayumi looked like a borderline wrestling genius in this match. She looks like she's 5'0 and 85 pounds, taking on the tank that is Kansai, yet she was able to believably work over her opponent and counter Kansai's brute force. The stiff elbows, kicks to the face aswell as the leg trip during the opening exchange all ruled. Ozaki trying to contain this stiff beast by repeatedly taking her down and grounding her made sense and it lead to a great spot where she almost dislocated Kansai's shoulder with an armbar. She also did some neat details between moves and played up the size difference in a remarkable way. I thought Kansai's dive was weak, but other than that her selling of the arm was excellent, and I loved her planting Ozaki with surprise powermoves. Needless to say Kansai also dished out some of the stiffest kicks you will ever see in a worked match. Thrust kick into lariat combo was also fucking badass and timed perfectly. Great match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Man, this took me back to the days when I was buying tapes and even when I first came to Japan and rented them from Champion. These two were such favourites of mine when I was young that I was kind of afraid it wouldn't hold up, but I'm pleased to say it held up pretty well. There are things Ozaki does where she's just not big enough for them to be believable (a lot of her strikes lack any real force, for example), and they could have trimmed the fat a bit here and there, but I liked the way that both women sold. Ozaki was always brilliant at selling, and i thought rolling herself into the fetal position (or a little ball) to guard herself from Kansai's kicks was a nice visual. She also did a great job of contorting herself when she went for submissions on Kansai. That wasn't any real surprise, though. What surprised me was how good Kansai was. It seems that she was a better seller than I remember. The Fujiwara armbar sell that was mentioned above (and the awesome counter) was a great piece of selling, but she was solid all round on offence and defence. The layout was a bit "samey" in that they repeated the same sequences over and over. Some of the submission parts were well worked and others felt like restholds. I didn't much care for the stuff outside the ring but it was kind of necessary to keep things rolling. There was a risk that the match could have been choppy with all the moving about they did, but there were a lot of cool spots and I found it engrossing for such a long bout. I don't think it had a big enough arc to call it a great match, and I'd probably call it more solidly good than brilliant, but I liked it a lot.

[dawho5]

I loved this compared to the AJW style.  Everything had meaning and room to breathe before the next major development came along.  Loved the arm work after Oz realized there was no way she was going to beat Kansai at her own game.  And Kansai's selling.

As a BTW, if a person who knew how to kick did that to somebody on the ground like they meant it it's either the hospital or the morgue.  Nasty kicks.