Lioness Asuka

[Loss]

Lioness coming back in the 90s as this older, really pissed off bitch who would take everyone to the mat and make them suffer has become something I've really enjoyed. She really seemed to work a totally different style than everyone around her, and in some ways, came across as more credible than even Kong and Kansai. What post-Crush Girls Lioness do I need to see?

 

I'm also not remembering much about her in the 80s. Was the 90s a drastic style change for her, or was she always sort of like this?

[ohtani's jacket]

Lioness coming back in the 90s as this older, really pissed off bitch who would take everyone to the mat and make them suffer has become something I've really enjoyed. She really seemed to work a totally different style than everyone around her, and in some ways, came across as more credible than even Kong and Kansai. What post-Crush Girls Lioness do I need to see?

 

I'm also not remembering much about her in the 80s. Was the 90s a drastic style change for her, or was she always sort of like this?

I haven't seen that much of Lioness' J'd or GAEA work and not much of it is online. Flik is your man there.

 

As for 80s Lioness, my recollection is that she liked being on offence and wasn't interested in selling. In the 90s, the athleticism of her 80s work appealed to the likes of Lorefice because workrate was king at the time. In the 00s, we tended to find her work flawed compared to Chigusa, who sold more, and Jaguar, who had a more commanding aura. I was down on her quite aggressively at one point but haven't delved into that stuff for years so I don't have a strong opinion on her one way or the other. I went to the 10th Anniversary GAEA show in 2004 and I thought the Crush Girls were head and shoulders above everyone when it came to popping the crowd and that included just about every other name girl that was still working.

[ohtani's jacket]

Just out of curosity I watched the Jaguar/Lioness 4/14/96 match, which is online. They do a lot of cool shit in the match, but they don't pace their selling to get as much out of the spots as they could. It's really no different from how they wrestled in the 80s the spots are just modernised. It wasn't a bad watch, but I didn't get a lot out of it. Lioness did some decent stuff on the mat but the holds were dropped after a few seconds so they could keep moving.

[El-P]

I'm so far removed from my joshi watching days that I couldn't point to references at this time. I enjoyed Lioness in Jd' and NEO facing fat Kyoko or still slim Jaguar, doing garbage inspired brawls/all action go-go-go matches. But Lioness had this issue with selling that made her annoying after a while. When she came to ARSION she really derailed what was left of the old-style (which wasn't much) and buried everyone to put herself over. That was my big issue with her. Very selfish worker. She could go but would only give to her "peers", she never did shit to elevate the great Bloody or Yuko Kosugi in Jd'. Her brawling matches always looked the same after a while, and the lack of selling was just tiresome. I enjoyed her a lot, then less so, then less so, then was annoyed. In her prime she just wasn't nearly as good as Chiggy, basically for the same reasons. Not even close to Aja Kong or Dynamite Kansai as a worker to me. Way too selfish. Against the right opponent she could have very fun match if you enjoy go-go-go style, which has fell out of favour these days. The Kyoko feud in the laste 90's is the best stuff she did post-Crush Gals, and I give credit more to fat Kyoko for bumping like crazy and killing herself, which made Lioness look a lot more dangerous and bad-ass than she really was. In a way she was a bit like Mike Awesome during this time, she needed a huge-ass bumper would could also give her back some stiff shit (although Awesome wasn't a selfish worker, but they had the same limitations).

[MJH]

There's not a great deal I can add here... she suffers in the '80s having Chigusa there, which would seem somewhat unfair of us were it not for the fact that the issues with her work are clear (and Dan's right on with that statement).

 

I haven't watched the Kyoko feud in a while, but Kyoko was truly bumping her ass off in a way that almost becomes uncomfortable because she (Kyoko) is more talented than being a bumping prop (Jerome's comparison to Mike Awesome - with Kyoko as Tanaka - is fitting). And, by the time she came to ARSION, you had Yoshida there who was obviously great at what she did.

 

That being said, I don't think Asuka is/was, by any means, bad per se, I didn't mind her brawling as a change of pace at first, and compared to someone like Hotta (who has similar issues) Asuka has the advantage of being a significantly bigger star in her pomp. She's just someone who it's better to dip into once in a while.

 

I'd never object to her old Lorefice '80s rep as it gets people to watch Chigusa. And, for all the issues one might have with her work, the crowd and atmosphere will ensure it's never dull or unexciting, and you can kinda excuse her "must... do... offence" nature. But, as Jerome said, whereas with Chigusa the more I watch of her the more I think she might well have been the best Zenjo worker at the time, even more than Jaguar, Asuka does begin to wane on you.

[Loss]

I'll just say I'm surprised that she has the go-go-go rep, because the slower pace has been something that has stood out in what I have seen - the Hotta Queendom match and some of her matches with Bison Kimura in Jd'. I was thinking that maybe she was like a meaner Devil Masami, but Devil really is an example of a wrestler who stayed relevant so long because she was smart.

[El-P]

I'll just say I'm surprised that she has the go-go-go rep, because the slower pace has been something that has stood out in what I have seen - the Hotta Queendom match and some of her matches with Bison Kimura in Jd'. I was thinking that maybe she was like a meaner Devil Masami, but Devil really is an example of a wrestler who stayed relevant so long because she was smart.

You know what I think about the Hotta Queedom match. And it was a one of a kind experiment that doesn't reflect Asuka's style. And slower pace comes from Bison Kimura. Lioness was a go-go-go worker at heart. She was interested in doing a lot of spots, not in selling.

[ohtani's jacket]

All Joshi workers are go-go-go at heart. We tend to think of it as a flaw but at some level their was a deliberate, conscious decision to wrestle that way. I think Asuka suffered the most from a lack of personality. Devil was part bitch, part mother wolf and Kansai was leader of the little engine that could promotion. Asuka didn't have much of a discernible personality.

[FLIK]

......don't feel like going into a big thing at the moment so i'll keep this short.

 

I think a lot of the criticism directed at Lioness is both fair & unfair at the same time and completely ignores a lot of the context in which her work was taking place.

 

She's a very unique product of the environment she came up in. One of the top 5 most famous joshi wrestlers of all time in the 80's and #2 babyface in the company, working in an era that increasingly focused more on fast paced, flashy action. Forced into retirement before she was ready. Allowed back into wrestling 5 years later but now treated as a mid to upper mid carder, mostly putting over a new generation of girls who'd now taken her spot. Leaves with Jaguar & Bison to form her own company whear she's once again a main eventer and working on a roster full of mostly rookies. Now takes on the role of top heel, mixing her usual workrate style with the psychology of what a classic joshi heel should be, the kind she grew up fighting in the likes of Dump & crew. Mean, violent, dominant, cheats, brawls, uses weapons and gets lots of help from her buddies & underlings. After that, constantly involved in a death feud of some sort against a crew of faces usually led by an older vet or after she turned face again to reform Crush, a crew of heels usually led by older vets.

 

All that said to say this, given the character she was portraying in stories they were trying to tell. Slower paced matches, looking really vulnerable and elevating the mid card younger generation weren't things that really fit. Whether you enjoy the story or not is up to the individual.

 

I wish she'd done more of the latter myself but I atleast get why she didn't. And while she never lost to a youngster ever, she atleast didn't hog the spotlight to the point whear they could never have any of it and when the time came she did plenty of jobs to her fellow vets if nothing else. I never had a problem with her selling either at any point in her career and she wasn't unwilling to take her share of punishment from anyone when it came down to it.

 

So yeah, i'm a big fan of Lioness still.