Leilani Kai

[pantherwagner]

Good stuff OJ, I never thought much of Kai until I started getting the Ginetty tapes and saw her stuff with Chigusa. Her early 80s stuff is pretty good too.

 

The guy who uploads that stuff, through no fault of his own, has summer footage listed as "early 80" and stuff like that.

The majority of that stuff is from Ginetty's 70's/80's AJW comp set (a little might be from Lynch too) and that's just how it was labled originally on there

 

I can take the blame for that, I tried to catalog all of that almost a decade ago (when there were less online resources) and often I had to take a guess, many of them will surely be wrong.

 

Also, is there any wrestling show theme even remotely close to being as awesome as the AJW theme?

[Badlittlekitten]

No!

 

All the music in 80s AJW is fantastic and one of the reasons I'm so fond of that era. I mean listen to this, Dumps theme. It's already a cracking piece of disco funk and out of nowhere the vocals come in and put it over the edge. I love this stuff.

[Indikator]

I was mesmerized the first time I heard Dumps theme, which probably was the first Hair vs Hair Match against Chigusa.

 

I should point out that the Italian tv intro was neat as well as it was vintage Italo Disco (there is also a

version)

[pantherwagner]

I was mesmerized the first time I heard Dumps theme, which probably was the first Hair vs Hair Match against Chigusa.

 

I should point out that the Italian tv intro was neat as well as it was vintage Italo Disco (there is also a

version)

That's tremendous, as living in Spain I listened to a lot of Italo-dance back in the 80s. Hey it was the rage then.

 

The first time that I ever saw early 80s AJW I'm pretty sure was from a recording I got from a guy in Italy. Well either that or Pro Wrestling This Week's "Best Of" tapes from PWI, I'm not sure.

[ohtani's jacket]

Dynamite Girls vs. Leilani Kai & Terri Shane, 11/83

 

Easily the worst thing I've seen so far. Whose decision was it to give the Dynamite Girls the WWA tag titles? Granted, everybody got a turn with the WWA tag titles, but trying to dress Jumbo Hori and Yuraki Omori up like babydoll idols is a strike against the Matsunagas in my book. This was just a rubbish match and so heatless that the highlight was Terri Shane letting out a huge "SHIT!" during a nearfall. I desperately need to see some good Jumbo Hori.

 

Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Ohmori vs Leilani Kai & Velvet McIntyre, '82

 

This wasn't much better. Mimi held up here end, but this was another really dull tag title match. I tend to blame the promotion here. Instead of booking week to week television like say, Portland, it was the filmed houseshow format. On one hand, you get to see all of the wrestlers facing each other instead of squash matches, but on the other hand it gets redundant seeing the same matches over and over again with little or no progression. It's fun seeing these girls running around in the early 80s, but there's nothing to sink your teeth into.

 

Mimi Hagiwara & Nancy Kumi vs. Devil Masami & Leilani Kai, '81

 

Having said all that, there's a match with four of the best workers in the company at the time that's not perfect but manages to deliver what you'd expect from the girls involved. The 2/3 falls format hinders it and on top of that you have the clipping for television, but it's as good as it gets on a regular card as far as I can tell. I definitely think Joshi Pro would have been better off with single fall tag matches, but 2/3 falls was in vogue at the time. On a lighter note, Devil Masami's perm here is a monstrosity.

[ohtani's jacket]

Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano & Leilani Kai vs. Lioness Asuka & Mika Komatsu & Noriyo Tateno, 6/85

 

Well, this was refreshing. It's interesting how most territories were in the midst of an irreversible decline by '85 yet Japan actually got better in the second half of the decade. Everybody knows about Dump vs. Chigusa, but this is the lesser known Dump/Asuka subplot. It was a nice change of pace from the pre-Crush Girls era, though I'm sure if you watched a whole bunch of it, it would get monotonous. Whenever people bring up the Bull vs. Aja debate, they always overlook Bull's 80s work. She was a really good worker, really early in her career. She even had me marking out for Asuka's Takada-like kicks during her nunchakus act, though Asuka killed it for me by botching the final take down. The finish saw Komatsu (IIRC) bump big on a Dump lariat.

[GSR]

Part way through the Leilani Kai RF Shoot interview, especially by the standards of RF shoots it's pretty damn good.

 

- Moolah comes across like the biggest ass hole in the world from the stories Kai tells.

I listened to this over the weekend and Moolah doesn't half come across terribly.

 

In addition to her sabotaging the proposed match at Wrestlemania IV, Kai talks about how all her money would go through Moolah. She talks about one instance where someone from the Office came to give Moolah the money for the girls transport for the week and they ended up going into another room to sort it out. Kai and one of the other girls then listened in to the conversation at the door and heard the office guy give Moolah $150 for each of the girl trans costs, and then said to the other girl lets see how much she gives us. Moolah ended up giving the girls just $50 each, and pocketed an additional ton from each of them so she got her $150, plus $300 that she'd took from the others. That was pretty much the last straw for Kai when it came to trusting Moolah, and she says to this day that she has no idea how much money she made for Wrestlemania I. She also says that she was reluctant to work Wrestlemania X for fear of seeing Moolah, and that she recommended Debbie Coombs to work with Blayze instead of her.

 

There is also a story she tells of Moolah giving Jeanne Kirkland a stiff headbutt, then making a remark about how it shouldn't hurt 'her sort'. She also says that she had no idea about the double cross on Wendi Richter and if she did know prior to it taking place then she would have told Richter as she liked her.

 

Despite Feinstein's efforts (first new interview I've seen from him in about a year and it's still the same old, same old questions 'you travelled with the Bulldogs then, Dynamite was a legendary ribber, what's the best rib you saw him pull?') I thought this was a good interview and especially if you're interested in the women's scene in the late 70s and 80s.

[Al]

I watched Leilani Kai vs Vicki Williams on Youtube. Sounds like it was from the NWA Classics collection, the year given as 1979. Leilani was 19 at the time, she strikes me as a tremendous worker for someone that young. Though she was certainly a seasoned veteran even by then. She got more big matches than most American women of her era, but she still is really unappreciated.