[1991-12-08-AJW] Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

- (Tag Leauge The Best 91 FINAL) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura

JJ's in full on heel mode tonight. Hokuto & Bull get nice ovations from the crowd on their way out and the place is going nuts for Yamada & Kyoko coming in, hoping they can pull out the win. Story of the match is Yamada & Kyoko are balls of energy, coming in with lots of fast paced attacks & wacky lucha submissions, Yamada even gives Bison a bloody lip early on with punt to the face but even though they're banged up & had just wrestled 1 match JJ are still too tough to take down easily. Jungle Jack uses a lot of power stuff, crowd brawling & weapons to controll a majority of the match, Aja going nuts with the trashcan being one highlight. In the end though, you can see the effect going 45+ mins over 2 straight matches was having on Jungle Jack as they pretty noticably ran out of gas by the end which is what allowed Kyoko & Yamada to pick up the win with a last minute burst of energy using a cool powerbomb, flying enzugiri sequence of moves. Real good match though not on the level of their one in October.

[Loss]

The story seems to be a fresh Yamada and Kyoko coming after a tired Jungle Jack. Which makes Jungle Jack still getting so much offense interesting. It seems like that would be a weird story to tell, but it does somehow work. They're dominant, but not as dominant as they normally would be. I think they did that so the fresher team getting the win would still seem like an earned victory instead of something they only won because they were facing a tired team. This was pretty tricky to pull off, and I give them credit for getting it right.

[PeteF3]

I don't have much to say about this either way, except that holy Lord was there some vicious kicking going on here. Mostly from Yamada of course, but everyone else gets their shots in as well. I couldn't envision Jungle Jack winning both matches but there's a good, long, gradual beatdown of Aja towards the end--with a few teased comebacks--to put the outcome in doubt.

[Zenjo]

Rather than back to back I watched the two matches on separate nights. This was still exhausting!

 

Yamada & Kyoko were an exciting young team with plenty of fan support. It was gut check time for the tag champs as they went another 23m. So sick that they went this long again and it actually worked. Obviously the pacing wasn't breakneck but the workrate was still impressive. Bison took such a pounding and had a huge bruise on her arm. It was one hell of an effort from the Beasty Lady. JJ were able to turn it into a fight with plenty of outside action. It built up nicely to the finish and was a fitting finale. Yamada was killing Aja with vicious kicks, swinging away and looking like she was out of control. This led to the pin and joyous celebrations afterwards. The BTL was always a nice way to finish the year for Zenjo, and not at all copied from the RWTL.

[soup23]

I think I liked this better slightly than the other match but they are close together and yet another *** 1/2 match in the glut of them in 1991. Feels like something weird to complain about and I am not per say, but there has been a ton of them this year. JJ really took it to Kyoko and Yamada but I liked all the openings that Yamada took when they could. The brawling through the crowd was getting long in the tooth but we cut quickly to Yamada in the ring a glimmer of hope and I was invested in that point forward.

[garretta]

This match was all about desperation: Jungle Jack's desperation to win it before they completely ran out of gas, and Kyoko and Yamada's desperation to get the fall on Bison before Aja made her presence felt. This makes it all the sweeter that it's Aja whom they beat to win the tournament. The action was so fast at times that I had trouble remembering who was supposed to be in the ring on each side, but I actually liked both the quick pace and the fact that Jungle Jack wasn't shown as being tired until the very end.

 

I probably could have done without the weapons section un the middle and the brawling all over the arena, but as I've said before, the crowds have come to expect it in Aja matches by now, to the point where they'd probably be upset if there wasn't one. Besides, she looks like such a monster swinging that trashcan!

 

I liked Kyoko and Yamada crying in the middle of the ring after the win; it helped to get over exactly how big an accomplishment beating even a weakened Jungle Jack was, especially in such a prestigious setting.

 

Where was Bison at the finish? I seem to recall her getting knocked out to the floor, but she was nowhere to be found even after the pin, when the officials were attending to Aja in the ring. You'd think she'd have come back in for that at least.

[dawho5]

There were noticeable moments in the match where Aja just came in the match and basically said "Enough of this lucha bullshit." Bison continues to be hyper aggressive on offense and I like seeing that side of her. I think the lucha submissions really throw off both Kyoko/Yamada and their opponents since they came back from Mexico. Yamada whiffs a few kicks while trying to put Aja away and it is too much to ignore. They did this mostly right and it was an impressive match. But the bad spots are pretty glaring.