[1991-11-15-AJW] Manami Toyota & Akira Hokuto vs Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

- Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Akira Hokuto & Manmi Toyota

Initial thoughts were this was a really good but sloppy spot fest. Watching it a 2nd time I noticed the match has a lot better build then I first gave them credit for. While Toyota & Hokuto's feud has died down & been settled they still aren't a super buddy buddy cohesive unit & the 1st part of the match is all about showing off how much better Kyoko & Yamada, fresh off their Mexico tour are at working as a team. They get 2 long controll segments on Toyota & then Hokuto and it's only once Toyota gets taged back in that it turns into your traditional faster paced joshi workrate tag. During all the action Yamada takes a few nasty bumps on her head which I fig 1 of which must have rung her bell because there's a couple sections whear she blows a lot of spots but each time they recover nicely. These 4 could easily do better on another night but this still ended up being a really great match and for 30+ mins the time blew by.

[Loss]

This is definitely Toyota and Hokuto showing off how great they are, and it's definitely sloppy. I wasn't really into this one too much, as it hand the worst tendencies of the Joshi that has showed up on these yearbooks. Surprisingly, Toyota was an innocent bystander. Yamada was the sloppiest of all, seeming to botch nearly everything she tried. I do think the Toyota/Hokuto team looked great, but they completely outclassed their opponents, and the Yamada/Kyoko victory seemed awfully hollow.

[PeteF3]

Sloppy as all get-out, with nothing really mattering all that much in terms of any story being told. There were certainly some nifty double-team moves never seen before, even if a few were better-looking on the drawing board than in execution. Totally agree on the hollowness of the victory--by all rights, Inoue was dead save for a few (blown and late) pin saves. Their finisher was certainly quite finisher-worthy, at least. Pity Hokuto's shoulder was clearly up. Joshi is clearly a "big picture" style, for the most part, and thinking about the little details too much--no rules to speak of, refereeing and counting that doesn't come close to resembling even an illusion of actual officiating--will only make your head hurt. There must have been 3 or 4 separate occasions where a team clearly got a fall and the match ended on what clearly was not a fall. MLB umpires could take note.

[Zenjo]

Kyoko and Yamada came to the ring wearing sombreros. You can't beat the wacky entrance attire. I've watched this match several times now over the years and it gets worse with each viewing. Had it's good parts but was extremely sloppy and messy at times. Lots of experimentation that didn't work. Yamada/Kyoko kept trying all these double teams where they seemed confused over what move it was they were doing. At 32m went on too long. The whole match was flashy and unfocused, promoting style over substance.

 

This show also had a very long main event cage match with Jungle Jack vs Bull/Monster Ripper. I've seen some high praise for it over the years from some and others who agreed with me that it sucked. Certainly a polarising match. I thought the undercard Takako vs Malenko contest was better than either of the two main events.

[soup23]

I like all involved but couldnt get into this one at all as it seemed aimless for most of the time and did indeed have a lot of slop like others have mentioned. Really disappointing and long. This disc overall has been an enigma of good to great matches that come out of nowhere and then backed up with disappointing stuff.

[garretta]

I'm not sure what all the complaints are about, because I liked this one just fine. It was end to end action, with plenty of great submission work in the first half and lots of innovative doubleteams in the second. Things went back and forth from minute to minute, not in a your turn/my turn sense but in the "match could go either way at any time" sense. It's true that a few of the moves weren't exactly crisp, and things tended to get sloppier as the wrestlers got more tired. But the lightning-fast pace and their willingness to try things that we've seldom seen (especially in women's wrestling) more than make up for that in my eyes.

 

This may not be a first-tier joshi match for '91, but by my reckoning it's got a firm spot at the top of the second tier.

[rzombie1988]

I reviewed this match here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-japan-womens-wrestle-marinepiad-91.html

 

Thoughts: Kyoko Inoue beat Akira Hokuto after a powerbomb/spinkick combo. One of the ultimate flash over substance matches. So many cool and dangerous moves, little meaning to them, little story and little selling. They did a million things here and at the end they all just popped up like it never happened. Really disappointing as all of these girls know better and a lot of those bumps were for nothing. Check the gifs for the various spots as there were no lack of them but a huge lack of any of the good stuff that makes wrestling work. Tons of botches here as well with Yamada/Inoue being way too cute and not being able to hit everything they could do. It stopped feeling like a match after a while and was most of a cool moves exhibition. Very disappointing overall despite tons of effort likely put in.

 

Some shots from the match:

[dawho5]

Sloppy spotfest seems about right. I liked the early lucha stuff from Inoue and Yamada (when Yamada could execute it). But nothing ever stuck. If somebody wasn't in the process of eating a beatdown it was as if nothing had happened to them. I don't think I've ever seen Yamada this sloppy. Inoue seems to get knocked for a loop on the double dive, hitting her head on the railing, then landing on the back of her head right on top of Toyota's knee. I just wish somebody had sat somebody down in the early 90s in AJW and said, "Look, I know you want to go a million miles per hour out there. But can you just slow it down to about 750,000 or so?" These women are such incredible athletes and they can do so much, but they feel the need to go so fast from one thing to the next that nothing they do ever has any meaning. That's one reason I liked the early portions of the match where they were putting on the goofy lucha holds. They had to stop moving for a little bit and let things sink in. If they would just do some of that in the right spots as the match progresses, it becomes so much better. I agree with Pete on AJW's brand of joshi as a style. If you look at details it just hurts your head.