[1995-08-30-AJW] Manami Toyota & Sakie Hasegawa vs Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I had high hopes for this based on the reputation, but this really didn't do much for me. Objectively, I guess it's a really good match in terms of layout and action, but there are too many things that don't make sense that make it hard for me to really get into. First of all, Kyoko Inoue never works as a monster. In previous matches with Sakie Hasegawa, she has never worked monster. So why is she doing it here? It just popped up out of nowhere and frustrated me when she started doing her brick wall stuff with Hasegawa only.

 

Also, they repeated some of the same spots too many times. Hasegawa, who I normally like, is just a series of exploders and not much else. Kyoko's big offensive move against Hasegawa is the no-sell followed by the clothesline over and over, and when she's not doing that, she's doing a camel clutch.

 

Believe it or not, Toyota is the glue holding this together in terms of trying to keep the match at a pace that's easier to follow, involving the crowd, and even selling. It was a surprisingly excellent performance from her, but Kyoko just really brought the match down elsewhere. This doesn't hold up very well either, with them kicking out of way too much in the closing few minutes. The January tag with these four just blows this out of the water.

 

This will do okay when I rank matches of the month, just because in spite of all that, it's a good match. If you don't know Kyoko Inoue is not a monster, she does a good job with the role. If you don't know how well the finishers are established, the final stretch is really exciting and well done. I can only guess those are the reasons this has the rep it does -- it's a well-executed match. It just doesn't fit into the big picture or how they normally work very well at all. And this is a match that foreshadows the decline of wrestling really well, with all the finisher kickout abuse and stuff that's really cool for one match, but subtracts from the big picture because it doesn't make sense.

[FLIK]

Hasegawa, who I normally like, is just a series of exploders and not much else.

Lol, wait, you just now noticed that?

 

Sakie's all about nothing but matwork and spaming lots & lots of spin kicks, suplexes and exploders over & over again.

[Tim Evans]

The last 5 or so minutes of this are exciting. You got Kyoko almost slipping running up the ropes but making a good save throwing Toyota. Then Toyota gets dropped on her neck numerous times with double team moves and gets pinned. Sakie could have been replaced by Harvey Wipplemman in drag and I wouldn't have noticed.

[ajsmith_7]

Just watched this and really enjoyed it, I'm only just getting into Joshi hard in the last month or so which may have helped with my enjoyment as Loss said because I really don't know too much about the background of the 4 women involved.

 

For me, Takako Inoue was the MVP of this match, what an absolute bitch!! From the way she throws knees to the head whilst holding her opponent in the tombstone position to the way she punched the shit out of Toyota as a receipt for kicking her in the head and the choking and flipping off the crowd, I just loved her performance.

 

Hasegawa didn't do a lot for me but she didn't bring the match down either.

[PeteF3]

I can't say that they ever made me care too much about who won or lost, which is almost a deathblow for creating a compelling match. It was well-executed, but had a lot of problems. Loss touched on most of them, but also they really didn't do a good job of the "big pin attempt while partner holds off the other opponent from making the save" stuff that's so standard in puroresu--doubly disappointing because these two teams should be well-familiar with each other and have their chemistry down cold. While I liked Kyoko quickly equalizing in the second fall, the falls felt incredibly disjointed, much like the spots closing down the stretch. Kyoko kicks out of the JOCS, which draws a big pop and should be treated as a huge deal, but really isn't as that's quickly forgotten about so they can get in another 10 near-falls. And man oh man do I HATE that beat-before-the-3-count thing the AJW ref does. Hate hate hate it. And it's even more annoying here than it's been in the past. This is decent, since they execute what they do well and Toyota does some really nice spots, but that's it--there's nothing new under the sun here.

[Zenjo]

The opening fall was quite strong with fast paced action. Kyoko impressed initially with her execution, but became repetitive as the match progressed. It was surprising that Hasegawa wrestled as a weak link #4 at this point in time. The segunda was sub-minute. Then the final fall was 15m of closing stretch. It really did suck. I was begging for a mercy killing. The near falls were horribly overdone. It might have been okay if they hadn't done any in the primera. As they had it was way OTT. Physically they put it all out there. Everyone apart from Kyoko was visably hurting afterwards. Takako looked like she might have been concussed. There were much better instalments of this matchup.