Mariko Yoshida

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[ohtani's jacket]

Completely hinges on how well her ARSION work holds up. I'll hand the floor over to Loss.

[Jetlag]

Seems like a good example of a worker that's a favourite but not a great. Her big advantage is her fairly unique style, at her best being reminiscent of Negro Navarro or Tamon Honda with all kinds of neat grappling and an endless array of unorthodox submissions (perhaps too endless and unorthodox). Some strong showings in 1999 (which was a dire year otherwise), but after that there's not many great matches despite making tape plenty of times. It would be interesting to go and watch her work as a veteran in her own Ibuki promotion, as I feel she played second fiddle to her opponents a bit too much.

[El-P]

My favourite wrestler ever from 99 to 01. Then I pretty stopped watching current joshi. The female Volk Han, with the added bonus of hot spider outfit. Classiest of them all, really.

[Loss]

To anyone who kept watching, how was Yoshida as the 2000s progressed? I know the Fujii match from 2003 gets a lot of praise, and I can't imagine her ever slipping below very good as long as she worked that style.

[MJH]

Were I to make one, she'd rank pretty high on my "hurt by lack of quality opponents" list. Some styles are more conducive than others to carrying limited opponents; Yoshida's wasn't one of them.

[El-P]

She did carry Mika Akino to a tremendous debut match. Although she trained Akino, who was a prodigy rookie herself, so that must have helped.

[elliott]

I need to take a closer look at Yoshida outside of her peak. Late 90s-early 00s she is an undeniable all time great. Has anyone looked much into her later career work? How was she when she was in her final years as a full time performer? What about this brief 2016-17 comeback?

She's someone who is a lock for my list based on her prime years. But I could imagine her absolutely flying up the list. 

[KB8]

I've favoured peak a little more than longevity from all the way back when the first GWE started and Yoshida's peak, even without yet having seen her most widely acclaimed match from that run, is one of my absolute favourite runs from any wrestler ever. I've only seen bits of her 90s AJW stuff, but she was really fun mixing it up with Kyoko in a few of the matches I watched a while back. Just a really fun underdog babyface.

Then ARSION comes along and she's amazing. One of the all-time best at milking a near submission and making people genuinely buy her giving up to wrestlers several rungs down the ladder. Obviously her grappling is stellar and the more of it I watched the more she felt like a hybrid of Kiyoshi Tamura (the speed and explosiveness) and Trauma I (the inventiveness of her matwork without feeling like it was done for the sake of flashiness). I actually watched some mid-2000s Yoshida and, I think I mentioned it in the general 2026 thread, but even if she wasn't *as* awesome as she was in '98/'99 she was still excellent. The Yoshiko Tamura match ruled and she was hand-leading a Cheerleader Melissa who'd had about three months' experience and most of it wrestling in a fairground to a decent bout. There's also a match against Atsuko Emoto (whom I'd never heard of and had never seen before or since) from a 2007 Ibuki show that had some fantastic stuff in it, though unfortunately the version I saw only had 17 minutes of the 30 minutes they wrestled. 

I'm a stupid huge Yoshida fan and I'd like to do a full Complete & Accurate over the next five years just to see how high I can justify having her. As of right now it might be top 30. 

[Reel]

I'm only in 99 in my Arsion watching, but Yoshida is already so great, head and shoulders above everybody in that promotion, really.

The Fujii match is good, and a testament to Yoshida having that match with somebody who was, I believe, only training grappling at Hiroyuki Abe's gym at that point. The only other later-period match I've seen is the Becky Lynch one, which didn't really grab me, but has become a neat pairing in hindsight. 

[elliott]

I would absolutely take the Mariko Yoshida complete & accurate journey with you. 

[DylanZero]

On 4/10/2021 at 5:39 PM, elliott said:

I would absolutely take the Mariko Yoshida complete & accurate journey with you. 

Everyone should take this journey. Let's take it together. 

[KB8]

Fuck it

 

[Jetlag]

On 9/21/2014 at 11:26 PM, Jetlag said:

Seems like a good example of a worker that's a favourite but not a great.

Probably the most regrettable thing I wrote in the last project, but it was before my ARSION megawatch if I recall Yoshida is a lock and probably Top 20 Japanese wrestlers of all time. She had a few good matches in places like AJW and IBUKI too. I want to go around and fill in the gaps and find some gems. The one regret is how hard ARSION buried her after 2000 or so.

[KB8]

I had Yoshida at 69 in 2016, and I've said it already but she'll be a good bit higher than that next time. I don't really have much more to say about her right now, because I sort of covered it up the page a bit already, but one of the most exciting things is that I have three or four of her most highly-regarded matches still to watch. So there's scope there for her to keep shooting up the ballot. Probably my favourite female wrestler ever, and definitely someone I imagine even non-joshi fans would be able to get into without much problem. Yoshida was amazing. 

 

MARIKO YOSHIDA YOU SHOULD WATCH:

w/Takako Inoue v Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa (AJW, 4/25/92)

v Mikiko Futagami (ARSION, 5/5/98)

v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 9/26/99)

v Carlos Amano (GAEA, 4/30/04)

v Yoshiko Tamura (NEO, 11/3/06)

[Tetsujin]

On 4/16/2021 at 9:53 PM, KB8 said:

Fuck it

 

Yassss thanks!!!

[Ma Stump Puller]

Idk if this'll fit in with everything else but I've basically watched a grand majority of her post-ARSION/A-Z to see just how great she was past her peak given that seems to be a pressing question that was never conclusively answered.

The only things that aren't here are her 3-minute exhibitions she did near the end of her career because those weren't even in full last I checked and skipped some nothing comedy matches because....they were nothing comedy matches. Other than it was a very interesting watch. Bolded are recommended watches.

2004/2005

Spoiler

2004 is annoying because a LOT of Yoshida's matches simply weren't televised; she wrestled mostly in her kinda/sorta successor to old ARSION in M's Style, which got zero coverage bar I think the first show which will be covered here. Everything else? Pretty much impossible. For example, she was in a intergender tag match against  Thanomsak Toba (!!!) during the old days of DDT, so that's the kind of quality we're having to skip over here. Some stuff is available though.

 

Carlos Amano vs. Mariko Yoshida (GAEA 30.04.2004)

Pretty great! This was worked like a uber-urgent shoot style bout where the two basically just wrestled though a bunch of awesome sequences of mat-wangling. The start focused on defence (or lack of it) as Amano got sloppy at the start and almost died to a Spider Twist while Yoshida was too comfortable afterwards and got thrown into a standing armbreaker submission. After that the two were a bit more tentative, with Yoshida winning out due to her superior wrestling. Carlos has a harder head though so she went into throwing sick headbutts and doing Samoan spots like Yoshida hurting her hand off trying to punch the hard part of said hard head. Everything felt like it could've logically ended the match and the pair really got that over with their big bombs and submission counters being treated as uber deadly, with struggles convincingly drawn from escaping these potential moves. Yoshida's best material comes from more simplistic narratives like this where she's just trying to hit a specific move (or struggling against one done to her) and yeah it was no shock that these parts were tense and strong.

One might be wondering "you can't build a match off submissions and headbutts only? " but you actually can when you're as good as these two. The finish is a bit weak as Yoshida basically eats a ton of offence before hitting a wiffed boot in response to a running headbutt before hitting another one + Air Raid for the win. I guess it fit the frantic nature of the match however for me it seemed a tad disrespectful to Amano to be basically eaten up so easily. Post match is funny with Carlos trying to Fujiwara out of a handshake offer before Yoshida rolls out, boots her again, then Carlos offers a second handshake, this one being legit. It was a good spot if only because of how Carlos sold it afterwards as more of a moment of legit frustration rather than anything truly malicious. Anyway, this was very solid, probably one of the better shoot-style experimentations post-PRIDE all things considered, even if it leers on the less serious side of things (as opposed to the hyper-realism from U-Style/RINGS)

 

Makai Majo #1 & Makai Majo #2 vs. Mariko Yoshida & Michiko Omukai (M's Style 04.04.2004)

The only M's Style match televised that has Yoshida on it and it's a crappy NJPW tie-in and sloppy brawl. Who are these mysterious Makai Club goons? Well we know Majo #1 is Kaoru Ito, who's supposed to be quite legit. The second.....no idea. Murakami also being here is super fun though given he gets to just punch people at will and have no one tell him off for doing so. Omukai blades early but you'd be hardly sinning if you didn't notice that given how messy this was. It's a shame as well because her selling for this was pretty solid all things considered, and Yoshida having a awesome hot tag and doing Murakami's corner foot stomps was a very cool spot. The second half honestly is half-decent because we actually get some wrestling with Yoshida doing all of her usual spots before Omukai got back in and things got all messy again with random dives to the outside and triple powerbomb spots. Lots of stuff happens here and while it's pretty all over the place it's AT LEAST cool-looking stuff so I can't complain that much. Everything seems lost as Murakami marches back in for punches, then the Makai goons end up bashing each other and Omukai gets the upset with a Shining Wizard for the pin. Skip the nothing first half and this is actually quite good for a crazy spotfest. 

 

Kyoko Inoue vs. Mariko Yoshida vs. Takako Inoue (NEO 14.08.2004)

 Matches with three people in them are always a bit messy and this was no different. The main gest of the match was that they wanted to do comedy spots and as such this is mostly comedy spots, who knew? Double Inoue despite being against each other in theory obviously really aren't, so this is more of a 2 v 1 with occasional moments when Takako would run in to try to steal the win or backstab. I guess if you like mid-2000's Joshi comedy then maybe this'll be worth something of a mention or watch, but this went a bit too long for my liking given what this was trying to be. Kyoko could still kinda go though, a shame it had to be wasted on something like this. The finish being Taka botching a backfist to then get caught with a running reverse Victory Star from Kyoko was funny enough to finish this off despite the rest dragging. I guess if you like this stuff then MAYBE give it a watch but otherwise it's just a waste of time. Depressing having this be alongside the Amano match, that's how this goes I guess.

 

Kyoko Kimura & Yuka Shiina vs. Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani (NEO 05.05.2005)

This was basically a IBUKI-themed match on a NEO show; much like those this seemed to be clipped by a couple of minutes. Shibu is super green given she's only five months into wrestling and it really did show despite having Kyoko Kimura guiding her as best as possible. She's fine, but lots of mistimings and weird stuff that just didn't click. Yoshida comes in only for a few minutes and those were easily the best bits. Kimura Pummelling her arms mid-bomb to throw her into a double wrist lock backbreaker before Yoshida caught her in a headscissors was epic stuff, so much so that they rip this exact sequence for future matches together. Got some real snappy sequences with her and Shiina as well as she kept trying to wangle in submissions while Yoshida used her slippery defence to keep in the game. Shibu got back in to basically do the job as she ended up doing the usual friendly fire with a missed dropkick on Yoshida instead, meaning Shiina was free to stick her in submission chains until a STF Dragon Sleeper tapped her out. Really robust sprint that despite some green stuff was still super good, lots of fast paced sequences on the mat, super fun. Sleeper hit all things considered, solid watch.

 

Ayumi Kurihara & Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida & Megumi Fujii (IBUKI 05.06.2005)

Megumi Fujii in action is always worth a long watch, even if this match was messy in places. The main issue is that these are two of the greatest female mat-wrestlers to ever do it vs two gals who aren't really close to that level of skill, not even close in fact. That being said this was still REALLY good, the first fall coming after Fujii tripped Kimura up before rolling back into standing position into a slick Triangle choke and winning in the first minute of the match was a amazing spot alongside Kimura just being shocked afterwards. The fact that they run it back with Fujii doing a slick Frankensteiner only adds to proceedings. The pro-style duo try to use double-team antics to stop another fall but Fujii's so sick that she easily dodges a Kuri dropkick to go for a nasty-looking inverted toe-hold. Kuri's limpy stomps and dropkick aren't so hype, but then we get a absolutely amazing back and forth between Kuri's pro-style rollups and moves while Fujii just relentlessly keeps finding ways to transition into a armbreaker until she ends up tapping out! Crazy stuff. Yoshida comes in basically just to feed for the two as they use some dirty rudo-style antics to keep control. Of course this doesn't work for long as Yoshida escapes a attempted kneebar to go into lucha submissions. Her stomping on Kuri's back and raking her shoes on her shoulder while she's trying to reach for the ropes is just plain revolting. Kimura strikes are good, Fujii does a tornado DDT transition for a front guillotine until Kimura actually manages to overpower her for a Fujiwara armbar before trying to pin her off the threat of a double wrist lock.

The duo continue with Kimura just straight punching Fujii at one point to set up a Poetry in Motion-lite dropkick. Fujii escapes a powerbomb and instantly goes into a fast rolling toe-hold. The last third gets a bit weak in places as Kimura has to get over her no-selling shtick a bit too much for my liking. Kimura gets in some spirited offence and kick-outs before a Air Raid firmly ends the match. This was more or less a squash and operated that way, with a lot of room made to show off Fujii as a complete killer. Mission accomplished there: she's pretty damn amazing for her second match ever, some occasional sloppiness but that's acceptable. Everyone else works fine.....well mostly. Kuri felt like a weak link and Kimura's gimmick gets old fast, even if Yoshida works with it well with some real stiff stuff. It just never really fully clicked despite the quality spots and sequences on display here. 

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Nozomi Takesako (T-1 23.08.2005)

Smack bang average. Takesako is a very small wrestler with sloppy offence......and she's a Emi Sakura trainee! Shocker. Yoshida is just basically here to embarrass her with endless submissions and bullying routines. Particularly funny bit where Take goes for a sloppy Frankensteiner off the corner and Yoshida doesn't even bother bumping, though she does for a Kelly Kelly-tier flying scissors hold. Yoshida most of the time isn't even bothering to sell, she's just staring and waiting for the next spot to happen so she can do whatever. You get the idea that this is to get her over and it has numerous moments where Yoshida is clearly trying to do that with Take getting the usual roll-ups and the like in response to the proper match-ending bombs but like, she's not good, and Yoshida slapping her around just feels like a burial more than anything else. This never was going to be that good, and the finish gives off that impression as Yoshida just does default spots until the pin is obtained. Nothing much else to say.

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Rebecca Knox (APW 28.10.2005)

The infamous "Yoshida wrestles a young Becky Lynch" match that's probably her most well known post-ARISON showing. Knox has never been that smooth in the ring and you especially feel it here as she's quite slow and a bit janky when it comes to working in stuff. The match is still relatively decent though; they have some neat work together as Yoshida plays the confident vet while Knox has to operate mostly from behind as the less experienced talent that can only get small pockets of offence in before getting countered and thrown back into things. Aside from that....this honestly wasn't that impressive. Knox has a couple of really niche lucha holds that definitely impress but other than it's mostly just occasional counters or bad forearms to the chest. She throws in a decent Exploder (and a outright rough looking top rope leg drop) alongside a backslide, however it's all for nothing as Yoshida tags with a solid boot and facebuster to finish things up. This was basically just like the average Yoshida work you'd see in ARISON, just a run-through of some transitions, some good work and then closing up shop. Ref and commentary weren't very good either which dragged this down a notch. I mean I'd say give this a shot if you want something outside of the grain but far from the better material from around this time.

 

Bambi & Mariko Yoshida vs. Kaoru Ito & Shuu Shibutani (IBUKI 13.11.2005)

Oh lord it's great when the first minute is just trashy brawling that looks like shit, wonderful. I mean Bambi's supposed to be good but at this point she was very hit and miss so she's hardly going to be much worth talking about. Ito gets in and you immediately see a difference in the work; it actually looks clean and properly aggressive. Her shit looks like it's actually supposed to hurt- it's not just goofy forearms to the shoulder. Even the way she does a Figure-Four looks like she's trying to break the fucking leg as she twists into position rather than just sitting in it lol. Yoshida bumps well for another one of her students (Shibu) doing her usual Tenryu impression with stiff boots to the head and some proper rough submissions. Unlike some of the other rookies Shibu looks actually quite good, at least her spots anyway given she perfectly nails a springboard bulldog and seems to have a good grasp on timing as she battles against Yoshida's bombs with roll-ups as per standard. Typical antics, but Yoshida can do these sort of matches in her sleep at this point so it never feels overtly weak.

Bambi struggles until Yoshida gets in to pull Shibu off the top rope by her hair before getting caught with a corner crossbody for a near fall. Double submission spot from the two, no tap-out though. Bambi botches a Northern Lights as the two stumble over, the second time looked flush though. Ito comes in to do some more sick stuff like a bottom rope dropkick to the duo on the outside and a brutal powerbomb. They work the foot stomp well into the finishing sequences as Yoshida has to do a lot to stop Bambi getting wrecked off it, with the first one being delayed and then countered with a big boot and dodgy Shining Wizard. Bambi is isolated for the actual finish as Ito and co hammer on the pressure, and so Ito ends up finally winning off a violent foot stomp to finish things out. This was another fairly decent rookie showcase, even if the rookies are obviously not quite fantastic. Bambi's worked a few years at this point but this was mostly limited DDT stuff so her experience is noticeably quite lacking in places. Yoshida felt pretty passive in this one as Ito and Shibu really cranked things up with the action and aggression. Really mean undercard that starts hard-hitting and ends the same despite some shaky moments. 

 

Dark Angel vs. Mariko Yoshida (JD' 27.11.2005)

Wild that the full show is lost to time but you can find this random match on YT to this day without any trouble. It's a sign of the very bizarre old wrestling scene and the likely very many hidden gems that are covered up due to being long in the tooth, tons of channels being removed and bad titles burying them. Dark Angel is apparently real good but this is still fairly fresh into her career and before the more well-known material from her Stardom days would be a thing. She still looked fine enough grappling and her spots didn't seem overtly out of place for what this was. I think all things considered she was one of the more proactive one-off grapplers that didn't just seem like she was there to sit around, instead always either seeming like she was looking for a counter or changing things up.

Yoshida went along fine (even with Angel's less than stellar strikes) and even mixed it up with a lucha wheelbarrow submission out of nowhere which was a fun surprise. This honestly felt more like the old Yoshida lucha matches rather than her more shoot-style work all things considered with what she was throwing out. The second half was conventional with Angel throwing out some cool power moves and submissions to work on the back before Yoshida started to toss in the usual counters and signature spots, finishing up with the Fujiwara into Spider Twist transition she does regularly for the submission win. Not a hidden epic but a good example of her working well with a random opponent and showcasing their best features, I'd say better than the Knox match easily.

 

Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada & Hikaru (OZ Academy 11.12.2005)

This was potentially going to be great, but you can very easily notice the odd one out here. I'm not going to diss Hikaru; someone has to take the beatings here; but she's miles off these three and the match doesn't even try to pretend otherwise, she's basically set up to fail. Yoshida throws her around on the mat and Kong doesn't have to sweat much to throw her around. Speaking of Kong, this was a bit of a day off for her. Lots of goofing off, just not really taking anyone seriously until way at the end. She gets hit with the worst spear probably ever from Hikaru at one point and just flops over to take some crappy forearms, lame. She has some better exchanges with Yoshida who's more generous with her bumping and selling alongside some stronger work around Yoshida trying to crank her head off with whatever she can grab on.

I hoped that Hamada's work was going to be a lot stronger, but she was very reliant on weapon spots and spamming the exact same spinning kick for offence which was also a shame. Her trying to outstrike Kong barely looked convincing. She did attempt a good chair-mounted moonsault at one point before Kong just blasted her away with her legs lol. The usual Kong in danger routine near the end with some double-team antics before she inevitably pushes though and wins with a second rope elbow + two Uraken shots on Hamada to finish things up. Kinda felt like a typical B-show outing with everyone just doing stuff until the end. Hamada looked shockingly lazy and Hikaru was just mostly a super weak link. Yoshida and co were noticeably putting in a bit more into this but it just never clicked for me, I'd say skip.

 

 

 

2006/2007

Spoiler

Akiko Narikuni & Mariko Yoshida vs. Atsuko Emoto & Shuu Shibutani (IBUKI 29.01.2006)

Emoto and Yoshida start and it's a pretty good exchange, with both women throwing some mean shots. The grappling is a little bit too slick for my liking but it worked in fine into the match. Narikuni is a pet-project of IBUKI and Yoshida in particular, green as grass, her stuff is kept to relatively tight sequences. Shibutani is lanky and focuses on lots of lucha-style offence, some parts she doesn't really fit doing (like senton splashes and the like) yet mostly seemed competent like last time. Was funny seeing her screaming her head off while Yoshida did boots to the face though only for her to flop over when she got nailed with a pretty on the money big boot. We got more of Nari and it was mostly her doing her amateur-wrestling shtick, so lots of takedowns, slams, all that shit, she's like a more mailed-in Angle if that makes any sense, pretty sweet. Weird edits are used to hide some of the botches here; one has them mistime a standoff and they just cut to the next thing instead of showing that. Nari no-sells a dropkick like she just shit herself before Emoto runs in to bonk her with a wiffed forearm. Shibu tries to get her in a backslide but Nari can't stay in place so the spot gets blown. It's weird how she can't do basic stuff like that, but a whole sequence involving multiple twisting neck takeovers into a weird slide leg takedown into a inverted figure four w/ hair pulling (seriously wtf kinda move was this?) is all done perfectly. Bizarre stuff. 

Shibu taps out to a choke for the first fall. They scrap again but Nari makes the mistake of trying the same trick twice and ends up dropkicked in the face instead. She no-sells to do multiple suplexes and a body slam because of course. Despite getting in trouble again she spears the opposing pair (badly) and tags out. Yoshida gets in some more solid knees to the face before mostly selling and bumping for the duo. Nari has to fight to get in to break things up with a rough running shoulder charge. Generic double-team with Yoshida doing her Air Raid/Spider Twist while Nari also did stuff in sync. The sprint for the finish with Emoto speedrunning though roll-ups and bombs to try to take a win was solid, even if Yoshida immediately no-selling a dropkick to the back of the head was pretty stupid. She finishes off with a stiff boot and second Air Raid to close things out. This promises to be real good in places and doesn't quite hit that mark for me ultimately. There's some definite pacing issues where the match will go from 1 to 10 out of nowhere. This mostly just exists to give Yoshida and her student a nice little main event outing and hey, if you like what she puts to the table, this definitely won't disappoint, I just think this could've been way better with some actual experience on the table.

 

Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani vs. Megumi Fujii & Natsuki Head (IBUKI 19.03.2006)

The Shibu/Natsuki bits were just generic rookie joshi puroresu sequences, lots of dropkick exchanges, bad forearms to the chest, hair-pulling, all the usual beats. The Yoshida/Fujii spots are EASILY the best parts of the match, these two were basically built for each other. Of course we still have to had Yoshida bumping to the lamest cross-chops you've ever seen, but they actually built a nice little narrative around Natsuki being a shit and trying to grab Yoshida's body in side-mount and hook the arm and the leg to try to get a cheap-ass pinfall which Yoshida then does to her to basically mock her attempts back, which then results in Yoshida eating a uber close near fall when she gets complacent while bullying her around. This sets Yoshida off for a rear-naked choke into extended rolling Spider Twist which gets the first fall fairly early into things. Yoshida is on a power trip as she tries for a immediate Air Raid as soon as the bell sounds and gets predictively punished by a Nat sleeper. Yoshida tries this again on Fujii a minute later and it's the same result, only instead we get a really awesome submission exchange between the two where they go from hold to hold with ease. It's not done for the sake of flashy transitions: Yoshida really makes a marked attempt to showcase Fujii as this amateur demon who just dominates with speed and aggression, forcing Yoshida to snap on some pro-wrestling stuff to survive as it's not her forte. Because Fujii is so light as well she can fling herself around for bumps; either to grab the back, or to go flying after a bow and arrow is stuck on her and Yoshida lets go. Stuff like that you simply don't see often if at all.

The stuff between her and Shibu is cool as well, she tries for some lucha stuff but that just turns into her trying for roll-ups before Fujii does a super sick roll into instant kneebar for the second fall. This keeps the tension well as the two teams get on some submissions that you are never quite sure will be the conclusive finish or not. Fujii even works her own Spider Twist on Yoshida to rub it in and it leads well to her being in danger of being choked out from a follow-up Guillotine and Nats sleeper, crowd buy it because it's been built up well from early on. Yoshida counters a running takedown into probably the sickest Sugar Foot transition ever but that gets hooked into a pin attempt instead. We get more Yoshida in Danger spots as she gets hit with a accidental dropkick and some additional sick roll-ups. After this the match does somewhat turn into the usual ho-hum rookie exchanges with the occasional decent bit, it did lose that intensity that it had built up for the first half. Nats doing Honda-lite headbutts is great but that isn't enough to make this much interesting. The finish is Shibu doing this weird wonky arm-trap side German suplex as well that sucked, boo. First half is a amazing blend of shoot/high-flying work before it settles into a decent but lacking stretch. Needed more Fujii and Yoshida doing cool grappling ngl.

 

Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani vs. Meiko Satomura & Tomoka Nakagawa (IBUKI 06.05.2006)

Meiko still looks super young and hasn't aged a day since her GAEA stint pretty much. This is another Yoshida/rookies match, only it's got one of Meiko's underlings as well to boot. As you might expect they tend to lead things. Meiko's even nice enough to bump for Shibu after a series of dropkicks turn out to be tougher than expected to no sell, which was a cool subversion of the usual bully vet routine (maybe a callback to Gaea Girls? That'd be funny if it was) Shibu does lots of screaming but her work is standard and pretty flush all things considered. We get a small tease of a potential Yoshida/Satomura singles (that NEVER actually happens ffs you had one job) their stuff is, of course, super sick. Yoshida is more of a grappler while Meiko leads with kicks, though she does slap on a lovely rolling cross armbreaker after a kick at one point. The pair exchange some nasty suplexes as well, Yoshida gets in a deep head-spike Exploder and then eats a cartwheel gutwrench afterwards. The mat-work is dominated mostly by the latter as Meiko's arm gets wangled with multiple awesome submissions like a deep Spider Twist double wrist lock and a no-hands shoulder separator using Yoshida's leg as leverage to try to basically snap the arm off. Like I said, super sick. We get the typical Yoshida/rookie bits as Naka has to use headbutts (!) and cheap roll-ups to get the advantage.

This bit is noticeably cut up a fair degree, which is a shame. Naka's arm is damaged in a cross armbreaker and that becomes the focus of team IBUKI as they hammer that down. She's done, so Meiko comes in to kick the dogshit out of everyone before leaving again. There's a amazing bit with all of the scuffle going on where Meiko jumps off the apron for a foot stomp on Yoshida only for her to then get ankle locked out of that so she can interrupt the other submission. Lots of pin interrupts, lots of screaming, crowd loved it though. The finish is smart as Meiko's kick-happy attitude gets punished with her accidently kicking her own partner in the back of the head via Shibu's antics, letting her get the finish with her typically terrible arm-trap side suplex thing. This was good for a midcard outing; it's the typical IBUKI pace for the most part, however it's the slower half that seems the strongest. Yoshida got to cook very well with someone like Meiko and it's a international tragedy that they never followed up with a singles after this, because it could've easily been a all-timer. Rookies got good shine and they were actually good this time despite being fairly bland. If you liked the other Yoshida/rookie feature matches this is basically the same but with more meat on the bones. 

 

Kaneko Yurie vs. Mariko Yoshida (Sendai Girls 09.07.2006)

Basic rookie squash on the first Sendai card. Mostly Yoshida dominating on the mat with great leg submissions, Yurie selling hard and running to the ropes. Yoshida is great working as a bully vet that eggs Yurie on to throw more takedowns while she either counters or sprawls out of them. Eventually one works but when she tries to take a leg Yoshida just spins her around for a mean facelock. Yurie does better in the second half with conventional bombs as Yoshida keeps missing her boots, leading to lots of neckbreaker spam. Predictable sloppy stuff near the end as Yurie gasses up and starts to fumble, especially with the finish which was outright botched. Yoshida does her own version of the classic Tiger Mask Victory Roll kneebar transition and wins off that with a tap-out. As I said this was a basic rookie squash, honestly it's not that great of a match but it was fine for what the format required.

 

Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida (IBUKI 16.07.2006)

Reviewed this before, probably one of Yoshida's best performances.

 

Cherry & Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida & Toshie Uematsu (IBUKI 10.09.2006)

More Kimura/Yoshida, god is good. Cherry is....eh, and Toshie Uematsu is fucking awesome, she gets no credit smh. She was a bit hit and miss here though; her bullying of Cherry at the beginning was fine, but it never really got to a degree where the heat could've really been at, it always just stays acceptable on the degrees of violence. Sure Cherry screams a lot and does some suplexes, that's not really much to talk about there. Kimura is again a good hand, fiery, didn't really do anything wrong here all things considered. Yoshida is mostly here to get Cherry over with a sequence of fairly smooth lucha-lite roll-ups and submissions. Her selling is also solid in the middle half where she's having to endure the two working on her arm before a Dragon Screw though the rope on Kimura mid-boot opens her up for submissions. This is more or less a rehash of the singles match, however we also get to see Kimura work in a new counter to the Air Raid via turning it into a Cobra Twist, so that's cool. Yoshida works in a counter to the big boot with a rolling calf crusher, also pretty sick as a continuation from their singles.

They do a good job subverting the usual tropes as Kimura slaps on a cross armbreaker to counter, Yoshida tries to roll out as per standard to escape, fucks up on doing so and just ends up almost choked out as a result from Kimura's free arm grabbing on a bulldog choke. All in all, felt like a solid addition to their singles last show and definitely not just a repeat. Only thing that bugged me was Kimura basically no-selling a Air Raid to then go for a roll-up during the near fall, that felt cheap. Typical scrappy finish with everyone getting their shots in (including a well-timed top rope dropkick to Kimura mid run by Uematsu) before Yoshida aims for the leg again and actually gets the submission win with a figure-four on Kimura after a Air Raid near fall. All in all, this was decent. There was a few issues with Cherry and Uematsu not exactly adding a whole lot to things (maybe that's the slight clipping, who knows) and a fairly tame tempo that never really got past second gear. Yoshida and Kimura showed some solid chemistry here again though, definitely best part of this. It's not essential for Yoshida/IBUKI viewing but if you liked everything else this is pretty much going to still hit the spot.

 

Bambi & Rei vs. Mariko Yoshida & Tojyuki Leon (29.10.2006)

Yoshida/rookie matches are super hit and miss depending on who we get showing up and it's not a particularly compelling selection bar Leon. This was mostly focused around Rei/Ray and Leon doing lucha work and it's fine, just really basic transitions and whatnot. Yoshida and Bambi also do some scrambling on the mat that's smooth mostly but a bit heatless bar a early rear naked choke attempt by the latter. The middle portion is cut a fair degree, it seemed to be Rei being worked over by the pair. Her chops are garbage but they thankfully move away from that to instead do more high-flying work. Bambi tagging Yoshida with a roundhouse was a cool enough spot, as was the STF attempt afterwards, though it was used as a choke and not as it's supposed to be (the F is for facelock smh) but whatever. Yoshida bumps and sells well for the duo as she struggles to outpace her faster opponents, having to rely on the classic boots to catch them mid-run. You notice Rei's getting the classic rub as Yoshida gets caught with the same few counters to her big bombs (backslide, sunset out of Air Raid, etc) she does eventually get some shots in but it's just to lead in Leon for more work.

She hits a forearm before botching a springboard bulldog, then we get a decent spot with Rei hurling a fancy back high kick to knock her up and over the top rope. Rei gets in a solid moonsault to the outside and a weird rope/handspring dropkick off the top rope, looked good enough for this though. Last few minutes is a sprint focused around the masked duo doing fairly decent sequences involving Yoshida ending up bonking Leon with a big boot by accident and Rei half-botching her weird cartwheel roll-up. It's all good though as Leon ends up winning anyway with a frog splash. This had moments of being solid but I think Yoshida moving to the side here to let the younger talent shine was actually a mistake, because her sections are better than theirs pretty much. Rei and Leon at least seemed robust for what they were here to do despite little interest in what they were actually trying to do.

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Yoshiko Tamura (NEO 03.11.2006)

Despite not shown in full anywhere (the best you get is the Battle Station version which clocks at 17 minutes, a far cry from the 23 minute length) this is still fantastic. You got the feeling from the start that this could've easily been a NJPW-tier match where it was mostly just sitting in holds and dancing around for the first half, but it wasn't thankfully. Typically Yoshida matches are very limb-orientated, working around her arms or legs. This was the latter, with Tamura working them after a low dropkick, but focusing on the knee as well. Yoshida generally had to work a bit smarter on the mat, using lots of catch-style stuff where she's basically just dragging submissions out to soften the opponent up before then pulling for the real submission after. Tamura had her own sort of bombs to beat up the knee. Yoshida's arm work was great; lots of defensive antics, snippy counters, and moments of her just throwing vicious strikes to open up her opponent.

Selling was top notch as well, always drew focus to it even when she was doing spots and moves as a dangerous factor. The fact that her main plan here was just to do all of her big plays as soon as possible to win rather than drag things out with her crappy knee made lots of sense and actually created a need for urgency beyond just doing big movez. Tamura's stuff being mostly just roll-ups and hitting good strikes was cool, and it built well with her surviving long enough to throw her shots and win off a running elbow. I don't think this got quite to the top tier level that others have put it as, but it's still relatively solid as a outing. The two work well as a pair and Tamura held well working a Yoshida-style outing.

 

Aoi Kizuki & NAO vs. Mariko Yoshida & Yuka Shiina (IBUKI 17.12.2006)

This was fine but felt back by some imbalanced opponents. I mean Shiina is decent but this is way at the backend of her career and after a long struggle with knee problems, and Kizuki is just sloppy as shit. NAO ironically was probably the second best here and she was still a very inexperienced rookie. Of course she was trained by Yoshida, so there you go. She's got some snappy amateur-wrestling takedowns and submissions, which looked good alongside her mentor moving well for them. Shiina looked fine here but her limited involvement is somewhat telling. Kizuki as per expected from a Sakura trainee moves like shit, almost everything she does looks light and unconvincing, and she screams a lot: classic antics there. This was worked as a typical rookie squash match though, so a lot of it was just built by those sort of expectations. At one point Kizuki hits Yoshida with some terrible stomps and she gets pissed enough to audibly slam her head into the turnbuckle, yikes. Probably the spot of the match was NAO moving at incredible speed to slap on a inside cradle before going for the La Campana....of all things, but it was awesome either way.

The ref basically got shat on for the last third as the rookies kept just doing double team moves with little protest, these were fine but it was all just a rush of spots as everyone at times were waiting on the side for their cue to jump in. Finish came with a double submission as Shiina throws on a cool deep rolling Dragon Sleeper. Post-match Shiina gets a nice little celebration with flowers as this was presumably during her retirement tour before bowing out later in the month. This was...fine. I think Yoshida and NAO could've had a solid matchup, but this'll do all things considered. Shiina noticeably didn't bump a whole lot, but she still looked quite capable despite limited interactions. Kizuki is just bad but thankfully mostly kept to leaping off stuff, which she's the least bad at.

 

Atsuko Emoto vs. Mariko Yoshida (IBUKI 28.01.2007)

Already done, probably one of Yoshida's best matches all year around.

 

Atsuko Emoto vs. Mariko Yoshida II (IBUKI 18.03.2007)

These two had a 25 minute match to follow up their fantastic first outing! It was cut to 8 minutes. Sigh. I mean it's expected from indie shows, this is taking the piss though. It's a shame as well because these two have a pretty heated match for what we see, with lots of hard hits and Emoto really pushing herself with some big spots. Most nasty spot was unintentional: she went for a Tenryu back elbow off the middle rope, Yoshida gets the knees up and she goes basically headfirst onto them, oof. Yoshida was doing some murder-time shit, stiff slaps, going for a weird botched Steiner Screwdriver thing (? ) and Emoto ends up having to eat a few near falls before just spamming lariats for what seemed like forever. She then hits her suplex/Flowsion variant for the clean pin! Yeah it's a shame this is so chopped to pieces; it seemed like a fairly solid outing. Either way, blame the editors, most evil indeed. Just pretend this happened right after their draw to settle the score and enjoy.

 

Hiroyo Matsumoto & Shuu Shibutani vs. Mariko Yoshida & Meiko Satomura (IBUKI 05.05.2007)

This was disappointing. You'd think with a still pretty young Satomura and Yoshida alongside two growing talent (Matsumoto especially, who even here looked solid) that you'd get something solid, but this just never fully composed itself. The main issue is that this match NEVER slows down. There's no weardown spots, no long submissions, no heel/face heat, it's just moves into moves into screaming into more moves. This means you aren't likely to get bored, but it also means that we have a lot more sloppiness and the match never settles enough for the crowd to get into the characters and their dynamics. I'll also say that Shibu was really not that good here either. She's got a few good spots, other than that her strikes suck: wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't paired up against prime Meiko, who, like, is one of the greatest aggressive wrestlers ever. All of her stuff clicks, she's stiff as hell, and her intensity radiates hard, even in this kind of match. Yoshida is also fine, but she sticks to lots of her regular routines (some Spider Twist transitions, boot exchanges, etc) and doesn't really get much of a opportunity to actually work nuanced mat-work in this one, so it's not her prime element.

This is basically just a generic Joshi squash for most of it as the younger talent mostly struggle to do much of anything bar double-teaming and some spirited comebacks. The big fumble comes when Sato roundhouse kicks Yoshida by mistake, allowing Matsu to get in their big bombs before Yoshida actually jobs to a solid Dangerous Backdrop, though she no-sells right after. This felt built around the fluky finish: having it relatively short and action-filled as to get though everything and justify said fluke without it seeming forced or awkward. It surely seemed a bit that way, but a Dangerous Backdrop + extra moves is definitely enough for me. The match suffered as a result, however, stuff just drifts past without much attempt to ground it in anything, so you get a mostly nice slice of action then said slice is replaced after you've had the first bite....just seems a bit annoying given the talent we've got working together. Oh well.

 

Aoi Kizuki vs. Mariko Yoshida (Gannosuke Produce 29.11.2007)

It says a lot about the amazing talent of Yoshida that she can even make terrible Emi Sakura students look good. Kizuki is pretty bad: her strikes are shoddy and she has that signature Sakura-charm in that almost everything she does wiffs and looks off. Yoshida feeds and bumps for her for about the first two minutes before she just has enough of this shit and turns a hair pull into a cross armbreaker before transitioning into a figure-four necklock from the side. She dominates with basic but effective offence, including boots in the face, headlocks, etc. She goes from a headlock into a kneebar and that looks sick as shit as per standard. Kizuki eventually gets back into this with three limp crossbody drops, all with extended screaming because why not. She also does probably the worst stomps I've ever seen and Yoshida just has to sell and lay down for it, sad stuff. She tries for some sort of leg hold, but she's so inept that she can't even attempt it properly and Yoshida has to basically no sell and beat her ass more. She tries to work over the back for psychology, even sticking her in a really nasty looking Bow and Arrow, but Kizuki just no sells everything to land two running forearm/elbow shots and a scoop slam for a pin. Yoshida keeps cranking the back with submissions until her opponent counters a clothesline into a plodding backbreaker rack before doing a second rope senton.

She falls back first as well on Yoshida with no give, basically how Jeff Hardy did his Swanton Bomb....expect Jeff was in his mid 40's and was broken down at that point, so there's not really any excuse for the crappy work here. Her big move is some wacky top rope side moonsault thingy: I'm trying to be nice but it looked like she just leapt sideways off and did a lazy moonsault, basically. Yoshida chokes her out with a Guillotine for a near fall until she springs to life randomly to shit all over the move so she could get more movez in, but her terrible leaping splash misses and Yoshida lands a vicious scoop slam into backbreaker. Kizuki throws shitty forearms and we get a bunch of random roll-ups until Yoshida finishes her off with a big boot and Boston Crab. This had WAY too many near falls for a Joshi rookie match, and it doesn't help Kizuki is utterly dreadful in the ring so Yoshida REALLY had to put her foot into gear and make this decent, which it did end up being. Fine for a example of Yoshida carrying lesser talent to better things, but other than that this wasn't very refined and certainly not that enjoyable.

 

 

I'll probably finish off the rest later. 

 

[elliott]

9 minutes ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

Idk if this'll fit in with everything else but I've basically watched a grand majority of her post-ARSION/A-Z to see just how great she was past her peak given that seems to be a pressing question that was never conclusively answered.

The only things that aren't here are her 3-minute exhibitions she did near the end of her career because those weren't even in full last I checked and skipped some nothing comedy matches because....they were nothing comedy matches. Other than it was a very interesting watch. Bolded are recommended watches.

2004/2005

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2004 is annoying because a LOT of Yoshida's matches simply weren't televised; she wrestled mostly in her kinda/sorta successor to old ARSION in M's Style, which got zero coverage bar I think the first show which will be covered here. Everything else? Pretty much impossible. For example, she was in a intergender tag match against  Thanomsak Toba (!!!) during the old days of DDT, so that's the kind of quality we're having to skip over here. Some stuff is available though.

 

Carlos Amano vs. Mariko Yoshida (GAEA 30.04.2004)

Pretty great! This was worked like a uber-urgent shoot style bout where the two basically just wrestled though a bunch of awesome sequences of mat-wangling. The start focused on defence (or lack of it) as Amano got sloppy at the start and almost died to a Spider Twist while Yoshida was too comfortable afterwards and got thrown into a standing armbreaker submission. After that the two were a bit more tentative, with Yoshida winning out due to her superior wrestling. Carlos has a harder head though so she went into throwing sick headbutts and doing Samoan spots like Yoshida hurting her hand off trying to punch the hard part of said hard head. Everything felt like it could've logically ended the match and the pair really got that over with their big bombs and submission counters being treated as uber deadly, with struggles convincingly drawn from escaping these potential moves. Yoshida's best material comes from more simplistic narratives like this where she's just trying to hit a specific move (or struggling against one done to her) and yeah it was no shock that these parts were tense and strong.

One might be wondering "you can't build a match off submissions and headbutts only? " but you actually can when you're as good as these two. The finish is a bit weak as Yoshida basically eats a ton of offence before hitting a wiffed boot in response to a running headbutt before hitting another one + Air Raid for the win. I guess it fit the frantic nature of the match however for me it seemed a tad disrespectful to Amano to be basically eaten up so easily. Post match is funny with Carlos trying to Fujiwara out of a handshake offer before Yoshida rolls out, boots her again, then Carlos offers a second handshake, this one being legit. It was a good spot if only because of how Carlos sold it afterwards as more of a moment of legit frustration rather than anything truly malicious. Anyway, this was very solid, probably one of the better shoot-style experimentations post-PRIDE all things considered, even if it leers on the less serious side of things (as opposed to the hyper-realism from U-Style/RINGS)

 

Makai Majo #1 & Makai Majo #2 vs. Mariko Yoshida & Michiko Omukai (M's Style 04.04.2004)

The only M's Style match televised that has Yoshida on it and it's a crappy NJPW tie-in and sloppy brawl. Who are these mysterious Makai Club goons? Well we know Majo #1 is Kaoru Ito, who's supposed to be quite legit. The second.....no idea. Murakami also being here is super fun though given he gets to just punch people at will and have no one tell him off for doing so. Omukai blades early but you'd be hardly sinning if you didn't notice that given how messy this was. It's a shame as well because her selling for this was pretty solid all things considered, and Yoshida having a awesome hot tag and doing Murakami's corner foot stomps was a very cool spot. The second half honestly is half-decent because we actually get some wrestling with Yoshida doing all of her usual spots before Omukai got back in and things got all messy again with random dives to the outside and triple powerbomb spots. Lots of stuff happens here and while it's pretty all over the place it's AT LEAST cool-looking stuff so I can't complain that much. Everything seems lost as Murakami marches back in for punches, then the Makai goons end up bashing each other and Omukai gets the upset with a Shining Wizard for the pin. Skip the nothing first half and this is actually quite good for a crazy spotfest. 

 

Kyoko Inoue vs. Mariko Yoshida vs. Takako Inoue (NEO 14.08.2004)

 Matches with three people in them are always a bit messy and this was no different. The main gest of the match was that they wanted to do comedy spots and as such this is mostly comedy spots, who knew? Double Inoue despite being against each other in theory obviously really aren't, so this is more of a 2 v 1 with occasional moments when Takako would run in to try to steal the win or backstab. I guess if you like mid-2000's Joshi comedy then maybe this'll be worth something of a mention or watch, but this went a bit too long for my liking given what this was trying to be. Kyoko could still kinda go though, a shame it had to be wasted on something like this. The finish being Taka botching a backfist to then get caught with a running reverse Victory Star from Kyoko was funny enough to finish this off despite the rest dragging. I guess if you like this stuff then MAYBE give it a watch but otherwise it's just a waste of time. Depressing having this be alongside the Amano match, that's how this goes I guess.

 

Kyoko Kimura & Yuka Shiina vs. Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani (NEO 05.05.2005)

This was basically a IBUKI-themed match on a NEO show; much like those this seemed to be clipped by a couple of minutes. Shibu is super green given she's only five months into wrestling and it really did show despite having Kyoko Kimura guiding her as best as possible. She's fine, but lots of mistimings and weird stuff that just didn't click. Yoshida comes in only for a few minutes and those were easily the best bits. Kimura Pummelling her arms mid-bomb to throw her into a double wrist lock backbreaker before Yoshida caught her in a headscissors was epic stuff, so much so that they rip this exact sequence for future matches together. Got some real snappy sequences with her and Shiina as well as she kept trying to wangle in submissions while Yoshida used her slippery defence to keep in the game. Shibu got back in to basically do the job as she ended up doing the usual friendly fire with a missed dropkick on Yoshida instead, meaning Shiina was free to stick her in submission chains until a STF Dragon Sleeper tapped her out. Really robust sprint that despite some green stuff was still super good, lots of fast paced sequences on the mat, super fun. Sleeper hit all things considered, solid watch.

 

Ayumi Kurihara & Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida & Megumi Fujii (IBUKI 05.06.2005)

Megumi Fujii in action is always worth a long watch, even if this match was messy in places. The main issue is that these are two of the greatest female mat-wrestlers to ever do it vs two gals who aren't really close to that level of skill, not even close in fact. That being said this was still REALLY good, the first fall coming after Fujii tripped Kimura up before rolling back into standing position into a slick Triangle choke and winning in the first minute of the match was a amazing spot alongside Kimura just being shocked afterwards. The fact that they run it back with Fujii doing a slick Frankensteiner only adds to proceedings. The pro-style duo try to use double-team antics to stop another fall but Fujii's so sick that she easily dodges a Kuri dropkick to go for a nasty-looking inverted toe-hold. Kuri's limpy stomps and dropkick aren't so hype, but then we get a absolutely amazing back and forth between Kuri's pro-style rollups and moves while Fujii just relentlessly keeps finding ways to transition into a armbreaker until she ends up tapping out! Crazy stuff. Yoshida comes in basically just to feed for the two as they use some dirty rudo-style antics to keep control. Of course this doesn't work for long as Yoshida escapes a attempted kneebar to go into lucha submissions. Her stomping on Kuri's back and raking her shoes on her shoulder while she's trying to reach for the ropes is just plain revolting. Kimura strikes are good, Fujii does a tornado DDT transition for a front guillotine until Kimura actually manages to overpower her for a Fujiwara armbar before trying to pin her off the threat of a double wrist lock.

The duo continue with Kimura just straight punching Fujii at one point to set up a Poetry in Motion-lite dropkick. Fujii escapes a powerbomb and instantly goes into a fast rolling toe-hold. The last third gets a bit weak in places as Kimura has to get over her no-selling shtick a bit too much for my liking. Kimura gets in some spirited offence and kick-outs before a Air Raid firmly ends the match. This was more or less a squash and operated that way, with a lot of room made to show off Fujii as a complete killer. Mission accomplished there: she's pretty damn amazing for her second match ever, some occasional sloppiness but that's acceptable. Everyone else works fine.....well mostly. Kuri felt like a weak link and Kimura's gimmick gets old fast, even if Yoshida works with it well with some real stiff stuff. It just never really fully clicked despite the quality spots and sequences on display here. 

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Nozomi Takesako (T-1 23.08.2005)

Smack bang average. Takesako is a very small wrestler with sloppy offence......and she's a Emi Sakura trainee! Shocker. Yoshida is just basically here to embarrass her with endless submissions and bullying routines. Particularly funny bit where Take goes for a sloppy Frankensteiner off the corner and Yoshida doesn't even bother bumping, though she does for a Kelly Kelly-tier flying scissors hold. Yoshida most of the time isn't even bothering to sell, she's just staring and waiting for the next spot to happen so she can do whatever. You get the idea that this is to get her over and it has numerous moments where Yoshida is clearly trying to do that with Take getting the usual roll-ups and the like in response to the proper match-ending bombs but like, she's not good, and Yoshida slapping her around just feels like a burial more than anything else. This never was going to be that good, and the finish gives off that impression as Yoshida just does default spots until the pin is obtained. Nothing much else to say.

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Rebecca Knox (APW 28.10.2005)

The infamous "Yoshida wrestles a young Becky Lynch" match that's probably her most well known post-ARISON showing. Knox has never been that smooth in the ring and you especially feel it here as she's quite slow and a bit janky when it comes to working in stuff. The match is still relatively decent though; they have some neat work together as Yoshida plays the confident vet while Knox has to operate mostly from behind as the less experienced talent that can only get small pockets of offence in before getting countered and thrown back into things. Aside from that....this honestly wasn't that impressive. Knox has a couple of really niche lucha holds that definitely impress but other than it's mostly just occasional counters or bad forearms to the chest. She throws in a decent Exploder (and a outright rough looking top rope leg drop) alongside a backslide, however it's all for nothing as Yoshida tags with a solid boot and facebuster to finish things up. This was basically just like the average Yoshida work you'd see in ARISON, just a run-through of some transitions, some good work and then closing up shop. Ref and commentary weren't very good either which dragged this down a notch. I mean I'd say give this a shot if you want something outside of the grain but far from the better material from around this time.

 

Bambi & Mariko Yoshida vs. Kaoru Ito & Shuu Shibutani (IBUKI 13.11.2005)

Oh lord it's great when the first minute is just trashy brawling that looks like shit, wonderful. I mean Bambi's supposed to be good but at this point she was very hit and miss so she's hardly going to be much worth talking about. Ito gets in and you immediately see a difference in the work; it actually looks clean and properly aggressive. Her shit looks like it's actually supposed to hurt- it's not just goofy forearms to the shoulder. Even the way she does a Figure-Four looks like she's trying to break the fucking leg as she twists into position rather than just sitting in it lol. Yoshida bumps well for another one of her students (Shibu) doing her usual Tenryu impression with stiff boots to the head and some proper rough submissions. Unlike some of the other rookies Shibu looks actually quite good, at least her spots anyway given she perfectly nails a springboard bulldog and seems to have a good grasp on timing as she battles against Yoshida's bombs with roll-ups as per standard. Typical antics, but Yoshida can do these sort of matches in her sleep at this point so it never feels overtly weak.

Bambi struggles until Yoshida gets in to pull Shibu off the top rope by her hair before getting caught with a corner crossbody for a near fall. Double submission spot from the two, no tap-out though. Bambi botches a Northern Lights as the two stumble over, the second time looked flush though. Ito comes in to do some more sick stuff like a bottom rope dropkick to the duo on the outside and a brutal powerbomb. They work the foot stomp well into the finishing sequences as Yoshida has to do a lot to stop Bambi getting wrecked off it, with the first one being delayed and then countered with a big boot and dodgy Shining Wizard. Bambi is isolated for the actual finish as Ito and co hammer on the pressure, and so Ito ends up finally winning off a violent foot stomp to finish things out. This was another fairly decent rookie showcase, even if the rookies are obviously not quite fantastic. Bambi's worked a few years at this point but this was mostly limited DDT stuff so her experience is noticeably quite lacking in places. Yoshida felt pretty passive in this one as Ito and Shibu really cranked things up with the action and aggression. Really mean undercard that starts hard-hitting and ends the same despite some shaky moments. 

 

Dark Angel vs. Mariko Yoshida (JD' 27.11.2005)

Wild that the full show is lost to time but you can find this random match on YT to this day without any trouble. It's a sign of the very bizarre old wrestling scene and the likely very many hidden gems that are covered up due to being long in the tooth, tons of channels being removed and bad titles burying them. Dark Angel is apparently real good but this is still fairly fresh into her career and before the more well-known material from her Stardom days would be a thing. She still looked fine enough grappling and her spots didn't seem overtly out of place for what this was. I think all things considered she was one of the more proactive one-off grapplers that didn't just seem like she was there to sit around, instead always either seeming like she was looking for a counter or changing things up.

Yoshida went along fine (even with Angel's less than stellar strikes) and even mixed it up with a lucha wheelbarrow submission out of nowhere which was a fun surprise. This honestly felt more like the old Yoshida lucha matches rather than her more shoot-style work all things considered with what she was throwing out. The second half was conventional with Angel throwing out some cool power moves and submissions to work on the back before Yoshida started to toss in the usual counters and signature spots, finishing up with the Fujiwara into Spider Twist transition she does regularly for the submission win. Not a hidden epic but a good example of her working well with a random opponent and showcasing their best features, I'd say better than the Knox match easily.

 

Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada & Hikaru (OZ Academy 11.12.2005)

This was potentially going to be great, but you can very easily notice the odd one out here. I'm not going to diss Hikaru; someone has to take the beatings here; but she's miles off these three and the match doesn't even try to pretend otherwise, she's basically set up to fail. Yoshida throws her around on the mat and Kong doesn't have to sweat much to throw her around. Speaking of Kong, this was a bit of a day off for her. Lots of goofing off, just not really taking anyone seriously until way at the end. She gets hit with the worst spear probably ever from Hikaru at one point and just flops over to take some crappy forearms, lame. She has some better exchanges with Yoshida who's more generous with her bumping and selling alongside some stronger work around Yoshida trying to crank her head off with whatever she can grab on.

I hoped that Hamada's work was going to be a lot stronger, but she was very reliant on weapon spots and spamming the exact same spinning kick for offence which was also a shame. Her trying to outstrike Kong barely looked convincing. She did attempt a good chair-mounted moonsault at one point before Kong just blasted her away with her legs lol. The usual Kong in danger routine near the end with some double-team antics before she inevitably pushes though and wins with a second rope elbow + two Uraken shots on Hamada to finish things up. Kinda felt like a typical B-show outing with everyone just doing stuff until the end. Hamada looked shockingly lazy and Hikaru was just mostly a super weak link. Yoshida and co were noticeably putting in a bit more into this but it just never clicked for me, I'd say skip.

 

 

 

2006/2007

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Akiko Narikuni & Mariko Yoshida vs. Atsuko Emoto & Shuu Shibutani (IBUKI 29.01.2006)

Emoto and Yoshida start and it's a pretty good exchange, with both women throwing some mean shots. The grappling is a little bit too slick for my liking but it worked in fine into the match. Narikuni is a pet-project of IBUKI and Yoshida in particular, green as grass, her stuff is kept to relatively tight sequences. Shibutani is lanky and focuses on lots of lucha-style offence, some parts she doesn't really fit doing (like senton splashes and the like) yet mostly seemed competent like last time. Was funny seeing her screaming her head off while Yoshida did boots to the face though only for her to flop over when she got nailed with a pretty on the money big boot. We got more of Nari and it was mostly her doing her amateur-wrestling shtick, so lots of takedowns, slams, all that shit, she's like a more mailed-in Angle if that makes any sense, pretty sweet. Weird edits are used to hide some of the botches here; one has them mistime a standoff and they just cut to the next thing instead of showing that. Nari no-sells a dropkick like she just shit herself before Emoto runs in to bonk her with a wiffed forearm. Shibu tries to get her in a backslide but Nari can't stay in place so the spot gets blown. It's weird how she can't do basic stuff like that, but a whole sequence involving multiple twisting neck takeovers into a weird slide leg takedown into a inverted figure four w/ hair pulling (seriously wtf kinda move was this?) is all done perfectly. Bizarre stuff. 

Shibu taps out to a choke for the first fall. They scrap again but Nari makes the mistake of trying the same trick twice and ends up dropkicked in the face instead. She no-sells to do multiple suplexes and a body slam because of course. Despite getting in trouble again she spears the opposing pair (badly) and tags out. Yoshida gets in some more solid knees to the face before mostly selling and bumping for the duo. Nari has to fight to get in to break things up with a rough running shoulder charge. Generic double-team with Yoshida doing her Air Raid/Spider Twist while Nari also did stuff in sync. The sprint for the finish with Emoto speedrunning though roll-ups and bombs to try to take a win was solid, even if Yoshida immediately no-selling a dropkick to the back of the head was pretty stupid. She finishes off with a stiff boot and second Air Raid to close things out. This promises to be real good in places and doesn't quite hit that mark for me ultimately. There's some definite pacing issues where the match will go from 1 to 10 out of nowhere. This mostly just exists to give Yoshida and her student a nice little main event outing and hey, if you like what she puts to the table, this definitely won't disappoint, I just think this could've been way better with some actual experience on the table.

 

Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani vs. Megumi Fujii & Natsuki Head (IBUKI 19.03.2006)

The Shibu/Natsuki bits were just generic rookie joshi puroresu sequences, lots of dropkick exchanges, bad forearms to the chest, hair-pulling, all the usual beats. The Yoshida/Fujii spots are EASILY the best parts of the match, these two were basically built for each other. Of course we still have to had Yoshida bumping to the lamest cross-chops you've ever seen, but they actually built a nice little narrative around Natsuki being a shit and trying to grab Yoshida's body in side-mount and hook the arm and the leg to try to get a cheap-ass pinfall which Yoshida then does to her to basically mock her attempts back, which then results in Yoshida eating a uber close near fall when she gets complacent while bullying her around. This sets Yoshida off for a rear-naked choke into extended rolling Spider Twist which gets the first fall fairly early into things. Yoshida is on a power trip as she tries for a immediate Air Raid as soon as the bell sounds and gets predictively punished by a Nat sleeper. Yoshida tries this again on Fujii a minute later and it's the same result, only instead we get a really awesome submission exchange between the two where they go from hold to hold with ease. It's not done for the sake of flashy transitions: Yoshida really makes a marked attempt to showcase Fujii as this amateur demon who just dominates with speed and aggression, forcing Yoshida to snap on some pro-wrestling stuff to survive as it's not her forte. Because Fujii is so light as well she can fling herself around for bumps; either to grab the back, or to go flying after a bow and arrow is stuck on her and Yoshida lets go. Stuff like that you simply don't see often if at all.

The stuff between her and Shibu is cool as well, she tries for some lucha stuff but that just turns into her trying for roll-ups before Fujii does a super sick roll into instant kneebar for the second fall. This keeps the tension well as the two teams get on some submissions that you are never quite sure will be the conclusive finish or not. Fujii even works her own Spider Twist on Yoshida to rub it in and it leads well to her being in danger of being choked out from a follow-up Guillotine and Nats sleeper, crowd buy it because it's been built up well from early on. Yoshida counters a running takedown into probably the sickest Sugar Foot transition ever but that gets hooked into a pin attempt instead. We get more Yoshida in Danger spots as she gets hit with a accidental dropkick and some additional sick roll-ups. After this the match does somewhat turn into the usual ho-hum rookie exchanges with the occasional decent bit, it did lose that intensity that it had built up for the first half. Nats doing Honda-lite headbutts is great but that isn't enough to make this much interesting. The finish is Shibu doing this weird wonky arm-trap side German suplex as well that sucked, boo. First half is a amazing blend of shoot/high-flying work before it settles into a decent but lacking stretch. Needed more Fujii and Yoshida doing cool grappling ngl.

 

Mariko Yoshida & Shuu Shibutani vs. Meiko Satomura & Tomoka Nakagawa (IBUKI 06.05.2006)

Meiko still looks super young and hasn't aged a day since her GAEA stint pretty much. This is another Yoshida/rookies match, only it's got one of Meiko's underlings as well to boot. As you might expect they tend to lead things. Meiko's even nice enough to bump for Shibu after a series of dropkicks turn out to be tougher than expected to no sell, which was a cool subversion of the usual bully vet routine (maybe a callback to Gaea Girls? That'd be funny if it was) Shibu does lots of screaming but her work is standard and pretty flush all things considered. We get a small tease of a potential Yoshida/Satomura singles (that NEVER actually happens ffs you had one job) their stuff is, of course, super sick. Yoshida is more of a grappler while Meiko leads with kicks, though she does slap on a lovely rolling cross armbreaker after a kick at one point. The pair exchange some nasty suplexes as well, Yoshida gets in a deep head-spike Exploder and then eats a cartwheel gutwrench afterwards. The mat-work is dominated mostly by the latter as Meiko's arm gets wangled with multiple awesome submissions like a deep Spider Twist double wrist lock and a no-hands shoulder separator using Yoshida's leg as leverage to try to basically snap the arm off. Like I said, super sick. We get the typical Yoshida/rookie bits as Naka has to use headbutts (!) and cheap roll-ups to get the advantage.

This bit is noticeably cut up a fair degree, which is a shame. Naka's arm is damaged in a cross armbreaker and that becomes the focus of team IBUKI as they hammer that down. She's done, so Meiko comes in to kick the dogshit out of everyone before leaving again. There's a amazing bit with all of the scuffle going on where Meiko jumps off the apron for a foot stomp on Yoshida only for her to then get ankle locked out of that so she can interrupt the other submission. Lots of pin interrupts, lots of screaming, crowd loved it though. The finish is smart as Meiko's kick-happy attitude gets punished with her accidently kicking her own partner in the back of the head via Shibu's antics, letting her get the finish with her typically terrible arm-trap side suplex thing. This was good for a midcard outing; it's the typical IBUKI pace for the most part, however it's the slower half that seems the strongest. Yoshida got to cook very well with someone like Meiko and it's a international tragedy that they never followed up with a singles after this, because it could've easily been a all-timer. Rookies got good shine and they were actually good this time despite being fairly bland. If you liked the other Yoshida/rookie feature matches this is basically the same but with more meat on the bones. 

 

Kaneko Yurie vs. Mariko Yoshida (Sendai Girls 09.07.2006)

Basic rookie squash on the first Sendai card. Mostly Yoshida dominating on the mat with great leg submissions, Yurie selling hard and running to the ropes. Yoshida is great working as a bully vet that eggs Yurie on to throw more takedowns while she either counters or sprawls out of them. Eventually one works but when she tries to take a leg Yoshida just spins her around for a mean facelock. Yurie does better in the second half with conventional bombs as Yoshida keeps missing her boots, leading to lots of neckbreaker spam. Predictable sloppy stuff near the end as Yurie gasses up and starts to fumble, especially with the finish which was outright botched. Yoshida does her own version of the classic Tiger Mask Victory Roll kneebar transition and wins off that with a tap-out. As I said this was a basic rookie squash, honestly it's not that great of a match but it was fine for what the format required.

 

Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida (IBUKI 16.07.2006)

Reviewed this before, probably one of Yoshida's best performances.

 

Cherry & Kyoko Kimura vs. Mariko Yoshida & Toshie Uematsu (IBUKI 10.09.2006)

More Kimura/Yoshida, god is good. Cherry is....eh, and Toshie Uematsu is fucking awesome, she gets no credit smh. She was a bit hit and miss here though; her bullying of Cherry at the beginning was fine, but it never really got to a degree where the heat could've really been at, it always just stays acceptable on the degrees of violence. Sure Cherry screams a lot and does some suplexes, that's not really much to talk about there. Kimura is again a good hand, fiery, didn't really do anything wrong here all things considered. Yoshida is mostly here to get Cherry over with a sequence of fairly smooth lucha-lite roll-ups and submissions. Her selling is also solid in the middle half where she's having to endure the two working on her arm before a Dragon Screw though the rope on Kimura mid-boot opens her up for submissions. This is more or less a rehash of the singles match, however we also get to see Kimura work in a new counter to the Air Raid via turning it into a Cobra Twist, so that's cool. Yoshida works in a counter to the big boot with a rolling calf crusher, also pretty sick as a continuation from their singles.

They do a good job subverting the usual tropes as Kimura slaps on a cross armbreaker to counter, Yoshida tries to roll out as per standard to escape, fucks up on doing so and just ends up almost choked out as a result from Kimura's free arm grabbing on a bulldog choke. All in all, felt like a solid addition to their singles last show and definitely not just a repeat. Only thing that bugged me was Kimura basically no-selling a Air Raid to then go for a roll-up during the near fall, that felt cheap. Typical scrappy finish with everyone getting their shots in (including a well-timed top rope dropkick to Kimura mid run by Uematsu) before Yoshida aims for the leg again and actually gets the submission win with a figure-four on Kimura after a Air Raid near fall. All in all, this was decent. There was a few issues with Cherry and Uematsu not exactly adding a whole lot to things (maybe that's the slight clipping, who knows) and a fairly tame tempo that never really got past second gear. Yoshida and Kimura showed some solid chemistry here again though, definitely best part of this. It's not essential for Yoshida/IBUKI viewing but if you liked everything else this is pretty much going to still hit the spot.

 

Bambi & Rei vs. Mariko Yoshida & Tojyuki Leon (29.10.2006)

Yoshida/rookie matches are super hit and miss depending on who we get showing up and it's not a particularly compelling selection bar Leon. This was mostly focused around Rei/Ray and Leon doing lucha work and it's fine, just really basic transitions and whatnot. Yoshida and Bambi also do some scrambling on the mat that's smooth mostly but a bit heatless bar a early rear naked choke attempt by the latter. The middle portion is cut a fair degree, it seemed to be Rei being worked over by the pair. Her chops are garbage but they thankfully move away from that to instead do more high-flying work. Bambi tagging Yoshida with a roundhouse was a cool enough spot, as was the STF attempt afterwards, though it was used as a choke and not as it's supposed to be (the F is for facelock smh) but whatever. Yoshida bumps and sells well for the duo as she struggles to outpace her faster opponents, having to rely on the classic boots to catch them mid-run. You notice Rei's getting the classic rub as Yoshida gets caught with the same few counters to her big bombs (backslide, sunset out of Air Raid, etc) she does eventually get some shots in but it's just to lead in Leon for more work.

She hits a forearm before botching a springboard bulldog, then we get a decent spot with Rei hurling a fancy back high kick to knock her up and over the top rope. Rei gets in a solid moonsault to the outside and a weird rope/handspring dropkick off the top rope, looked good enough for this though. Last few minutes is a sprint focused around the masked duo doing fairly decent sequences involving Yoshida ending up bonking Leon with a big boot by accident and Rei half-botching her weird cartwheel roll-up. It's all good though as Leon ends up winning anyway with a frog splash. This had moments of being solid but I think Yoshida moving to the side here to let the younger talent shine was actually a mistake, because her sections are better than theirs pretty much. Rei and Leon at least seemed robust for what they were here to do despite little interest in what they were actually trying to do.

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Yoshiko Tamura (NEO 03.11.2006)

Despite not shown in full anywhere (the best you get is the Battle Station version which clocks at 17 minutes, a far cry from the 23 minute length) this is still fantastic. You got the feeling from the start that this could've easily been a NJPW-tier match where it was mostly just sitting in holds and dancing around for the first half, but it wasn't thankfully. Typically Yoshida matches are very limb-orientated, working around her arms or legs. This was the latter, with Tamura working them after a low dropkick, but focusing on the knee as well. Yoshida generally had to work a bit smarter on the mat, using lots of catch-style stuff where she's basically just dragging submissions out to soften the opponent up before then pulling for the real submission after. Tamura had her own sort of bombs to beat up the knee. Yoshida's arm work was great; lots of defensive antics, snippy counters, and moments of her just throwing vicious strikes to open up her opponent.

Selling was top notch as well, always drew focus to it even when she was doing spots and moves as a dangerous factor. The fact that her main plan here was just to do all of her big plays as soon as possible to win rather than drag things out with her crappy knee made lots of sense and actually created a need for urgency beyond just doing big movez. Tamura's stuff being mostly just roll-ups and hitting good strikes was cool, and it built well with her surviving long enough to throw her shots and win off a running elbow. I don't think this got quite to the top tier level that others have put it as, but it's still relatively solid as a outing. The two work well as a pair and Tamura held well working a Yoshida-style outing.

 

Aoi Kizuki & NAO vs. Mariko Yoshida & Yuka Shiina (IBUKI 17.12.2006)

This was fine but felt back by some imbalanced opponents. I mean Shiina is decent but this is way at the backend of her career and after a long struggle with knee problems, and Kizuki is just sloppy as shit. NAO ironically was probably the second best here and she was still a very inexperienced rookie. Of course she was trained by Yoshida, so there you go. She's got some snappy amateur-wrestling takedowns and submissions, which looked good alongside her mentor moving well for them. Shiina looked fine here but her limited involvement is somewhat telling. Kizuki as per expected from a Sakura trainee moves like shit, almost everything she does looks light and unconvincing, and she screams a lot: classic antics there. This was worked as a typical rookie squash match though, so a lot of it was just built by those sort of expectations. At one point Kizuki hits Yoshida with some terrible stomps and she gets pissed enough to audibly slam her head into the turnbuckle, yikes. Probably the spot of the match was NAO moving at incredible speed to slap on a inside cradle before going for the La Campana....of all things, but it was awesome either way.

The ref basically got shat on for the last third as the rookies kept just doing double team moves with little protest, these were fine but it was all just a rush of spots as everyone at times were waiting on the side for their cue to jump in. Finish came with a double submission as Shiina throws on a cool deep rolling Dragon Sleeper. Post-match Shiina gets a nice little celebration with flowers as this was presumably during her retirement tour before bowing out later in the month. This was...fine. I think Yoshida and NAO could've had a solid matchup, but this'll do all things considered. Shiina noticeably didn't bump a whole lot, but she still looked quite capable despite limited interactions. Kizuki is just bad but thankfully mostly kept to leaping off stuff, which she's the least bad at.

 

Atsuko Emoto vs. Mariko Yoshida (IBUKI 28.01.2007)

Already done, probably one of Yoshida's best matches all year around.

 

Atsuko Emoto vs. Mariko Yoshida II (IBUKI 18.03.2007)

These two had a 25 minute match to follow up their fantastic first outing! It was cut to 8 minutes. Sigh. I mean it's expected from indie shows, this is taking the piss though. It's a shame as well because these two have a pretty heated match for what we see, with lots of hard hits and Emoto really pushing herself with some big spots. Most nasty spot was unintentional: she went for a Tenryu back elbow off the middle rope, Yoshida gets the knees up and she goes basically headfirst onto them, oof. Yoshida was doing some murder-time shit, stiff slaps, going for a weird botched Steiner Screwdriver thing (? ) and Emoto ends up having to eat a few near falls before just spamming lariats for what seemed like forever. She then hits her suplex/Flowsion variant for the clean pin! Yeah it's a shame this is so chopped to pieces; it seemed like a fairly solid outing. Either way, blame the editors, most evil indeed. Just pretend this happened right after their draw to settle the score and enjoy.

 

Hiroyo Matsumoto & Shuu Shibutani vs. Mariko Yoshida & Meiko Satomura (IBUKI 05.05.2007)

This was disappointing. You'd think with a still pretty young Satomura and Yoshida alongside two growing talent (Matsumoto especially, who even here looked solid) that you'd get something solid, but this just never fully composed itself. The main issue is that this match NEVER slows down. There's no weardown spots, no long submissions, no heel/face heat, it's just moves into moves into screaming into more moves. This means you aren't likely to get bored, but it also means that we have a lot more sloppiness and the match never settles enough for the crowd to get into the characters and their dynamics. I'll also say that Shibu was really not that good here either. She's got a few good spots, other than that her strikes suck: wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't paired up against prime Meiko, who, like, is one of the greatest aggressive wrestlers ever. All of her stuff clicks, she's stiff as hell, and her intensity radiates hard, even in this kind of match. Yoshida is also fine, but she sticks to lots of her regular routines (some Spider Twist transitions, boot exchanges, etc) and doesn't really get much of a opportunity to actually work nuanced mat-work in this one, so it's not her prime element.

This is basically just a generic Joshi squash for most of it as the younger talent mostly struggle to do much of anything bar double-teaming and some spirited comebacks. The big fumble comes when Sato roundhouse kicks Yoshida by mistake, allowing Matsu to get in their big bombs before Yoshida actually jobs to a solid Dangerous Backdrop, though she no-sells right after. This felt built around the fluky finish: having it relatively short and action-filled as to get though everything and justify said fluke without it seeming forced or awkward. It surely seemed a bit that way, but a Dangerous Backdrop + extra moves is definitely enough for me. The match suffered as a result, however, stuff just drifts past without much attempt to ground it in anything, so you get a mostly nice slice of action then said slice is replaced after you've had the first bite....just seems a bit annoying given the talent we've got working together. Oh well.

 

Aoi Kizuki vs. Mariko Yoshida (Gannosuke Produce 29.11.2007)

It says a lot about the amazing talent of Yoshida that she can even make terrible Emi Sakura students look good. Kizuki is pretty bad: her strikes are shoddy and she has that signature Sakura-charm in that almost everything she does wiffs and looks off. Yoshida feeds and bumps for her for about the first two minutes before she just has enough of this shit and turns a hair pull into a cross armbreaker before transitioning into a figure-four necklock from the side. She dominates with basic but effective offence, including boots in the face, headlocks, etc. She goes from a headlock into a kneebar and that looks sick as shit as per standard. Kizuki eventually gets back into this with three limp crossbody drops, all with extended screaming because why not. She also does probably the worst stomps I've ever seen and Yoshida just has to sell and lay down for it, sad stuff. She tries for some sort of leg hold, but she's so inept that she can't even attempt it properly and Yoshida has to basically no sell and beat her ass more. She tries to work over the back for psychology, even sticking her in a really nasty looking Bow and Arrow, but Kizuki just no sells everything to land two running forearm/elbow shots and a scoop slam for a pin. Yoshida keeps cranking the back with submissions until her opponent counters a clothesline into a plodding backbreaker rack before doing a second rope senton.

She falls back first as well on Yoshida with no give, basically how Jeff Hardy did his Swanton Bomb....expect Jeff was in his mid 40's and was broken down at that point, so there's not really any excuse for the crappy work here. Her big move is some wacky top rope side moonsault thingy: I'm trying to be nice but it looked like she just leapt sideways off and did a lazy moonsault, basically. Yoshida chokes her out with a Guillotine for a near fall until she springs to life randomly to shit all over the move so she could get more movez in, but her terrible leaping splash misses and Yoshida lands a vicious scoop slam into backbreaker. Kizuki throws shitty forearms and we get a bunch of random roll-ups until Yoshida finishes her off with a big boot and Boston Crab. This had WAY too many near falls for a Joshi rookie match, and it doesn't help Kizuki is utterly dreadful in the ring so Yoshida REALLY had to put her foot into gear and make this decent, which it did end up being. Fine for a example of Yoshida carrying lesser talent to better things, but other than that this wasn't very refined and certainly not that enjoyable.

 

 

I'll probably finish off the rest later. 

 

 

I appreciate you for doing this! Thank you! 

[Ma Stump Puller]

Yoshida 2 

I actually went proper back and found some really old YT stuff for Yoshida that to my knowledge isn't anywhere else. I'll include these here because why not? I'll get the rest of the matches up soonish.

BONUS

Spoiler

Mariko Yoshida vs Cheerleader Melissa vs Hailey Hatred vs Jessica James vs Reggie (Cauliflower Alley Club 10.06.2006)

This isn't in full with the only evidence of it even being recorded being a terrible 6 minute segmented video with The Who dubbed over it. Why? Fuck knows, it's a cool match though. Most of it is focused around just a sprint of everyone getting their shit in (this is a elimination match, so no worries about accident finishes) before Yoshida and Melissa basically have a mini singles match as the last two left. This is obviously the best combination you could get and it shows from the more scrappy grappling we end up having, including the two just throwing hands at each other. Melissa at one point does Vader hammer blows to stop Yoshida targeting the leg, more of that from wrestling please. The cuts hurt this a far bit but the two seem to really throw some cool stuff on the other as Melissa refuses to get caught with any of the old tricks, they exchange forearms and Yoshida then quickly ends things with a boot and Air Raid. The quality hurts this bad, but if you want (to my knowledge) the only partly-intact interaction with Yoshida/Melissa bar their heavily clipped ARISON match then this is definitely worth seeking out.

 

Hiroyo Matsumoto & Mariko Yoshida vs. Ray & Tomoka Nakagawa (ICWA 07.07.2007) 

German Catch matches are historically not that well documented footage-wise (let alone way past the peak of wrestling popularity there in the 2000's) but some random fan like 16 years ago caught this full thing on camera and so this is preserved pretty much perfectly. The match itself is fairly by the numbers and something that would be fairly decent on a IBUKI card but nothing that great. What makes this so good however is the German crowd, who are very receptive to everything on display here.

As a result the four tend to switch up things for more of a casual house show feel, with Yoshida doing funny stuff like Lawler turnbuckle punches and heelish antics to get over the younger talent. It's awesome to have a crowd that pop at a crossbody or a backslide rather than do cringe chants or try to get themselves over, and that's most of the appeal of this match all things considered, the crowd heat is solid and the talent involved adapt with that to give a more traditional match than what you might have seen before. Matsumoto especially thrives on this to be a annoying sidekick heel who interferes and taunts the crowd with her antics. The finishing stretch is solid with Ray throwing in a cool top rope backkick before finishing off Matsu with a near perfect moonsault. Not amazing workrate-wise but it's cool to see a change of pace from the usual matches I'd seen from the four, that's always welcome. 

 

 

[fxnj]

Did you miss Yoshida/Fujiwara vs Ishikawa/Amano from Chigusa Nagayo Produce or are you just not including that because it's not family friendly?

[Ma Stump Puller]

1 hour ago, fxnj said:

Did you miss Yoshida/Fujiwara vs Ishikawa/Amano from Chigusa Nagayo Produce or are you just not including that because it's not family friendly?

I think I watched that for a couple of minutes and just tuned out after the admittedly impressive first half. Ishikawa being creepy didn't help

 

[Ma Stump Puller]

3 part

2008

Spoiler

Why only one year this time? We'll get to that.

AKINO & Mariko Yoshida vs. Command Bolshoi & Megumi Yabushita (WAVE 23.02.2008)

This was fairly good in places despite it mostly being worked like a bang average show. Yabu's cross armbreaker shtick is fun and there are a couple of spots where this feels like it could be building around a nice technical showcase and then it'll go into just crowd-pleasing spots instead. Bolshoi landing a top rope foot stomp on AKINO while she was in a figure-four looked like death though. This instead felt like more of a lucha match where stuff is generally more faster paced, more spot and heat-focused, etc, at least for the first half anyway. Yoshida still gets some of her ballpark involved as her and Yabu have a pretty great back and forth submission war between armbreakers and the lot, and we also get some of that illusive Bolshoi/Yoshida encounter as Yoshida escapes the same Frankensteiner to triangle armbar transition from their 2000's match, but then gets stuck in it anyway after Bolshoi grabbed her arm and effortlessly spun around to reapply the hold! Cool stuff. They milk a long rear naked choke as Bolshoi escapes a Spider Twist yet still gets drawn down anyway; it's a bit too long to be realistic mind you, however it worked to get the crowd heated up. Lots of double team stuff as we get dual submissions. Bolshoi sells her ass off until a clip occurs (there's a version without it, it adds nothing) then she's fine and snaps this bizarre sunset flip onto a bottom-rope Tarantula? Either way it's a top tier sick spot that you could only really do at her size and height, Bolshoi be the GOAT as per standard.

The last five minutes are just a burst of spots pretty much as Bolshoi goes though her arsenal of lucha flash pins/submissions on AKINO, then her having to endure even more from her partner. There's a couple of mistiming, that's expected with something as fast-paced as this was. Yoshida wasn't involved much bar some involvement at the end with big boots. Ultimately the selling goes completely out of the window as AKINO no-sells a powerbomb to then do one or two spots to win the match...felt a bit unearned given the asskicking she'd taken, alongside them just ignoring the arm work that was present for certain portions of the match. This was still solid, though it didn't really have much of a structure to it ultimately, it was essentially all four choosing to do cool spots at the end of the day. Yoshida felt more of a afterthought; she gets some shine in the middle half, otherwise you could honestly side her out with nearly anyone and you couldn't really tell the difference. In general this was fine as a movez match, adds nothing to Yoshida's case though.

 

Haruka Matsuo & Ray vs. Kyoko Inoue & Mariko Yoshida (NEO 20.04.2008)

It's not a NEO match if it doesn't take place in the middle of nowhere with only about a few dozen people! Yeah this wasn't amazing. It's cool that Yoshida came down to work with Ray (around this time they'd actually had a good few matches with each other) but this still felt like a house show all things considered. Lots of stalling, lots of basic wrestling, just the usual gimmicks to drag this out. Matsuo looked pretty great for this quality of show spot-wise. Kyoko Inoue of course right after just stinks things up with long holds and endless hounding for clapping. The younger talent take their lumps as the vets basically control the pace of the match for the middle half, namely for the heat antics. The comebacks would go from eh to decent, depending on who was selling and who was doing them. Ray shockingly didn't look that flush here at all and was way overshadowed by Matsuo.

Not terrible, but definitely not her best work, she was tripping over and looking off. Mistimed dives to the outside with some Inoue usual power moves, etc etc. Ray looked better near the end with some usual spots, though Inoue wasn't bumping for much here at all lol. The finish was just generic as hell as Yoshida ran though all of her stuff before finishing off with a Air Raid. As stated this felt relatively low effort with only a couple of moments really impressing. Matsuo felt WAY too good for this shit as she mostly got squashed by Inoue's plodding power-based offence. Yoshida was more or less the person bumping for next to everything so I guess that's cool?

 

Atsuko Emoto & Kyoko Kimura vs. Io Shirai & Mariko Yoshida (IBUKI 03.05.2008)

We only get a couple of minutes of this, though it's notable for having a appearance from a uber-young blonde Io who's unrecognisable. She's got some decent dropkicks, mostly gets beaten down by the far more competent and balanced opposing duo though. Despite all of this she still pretty much nails all of her spots, including a Muto-style back elbow/bulldog and a great moonsault, even this early she was pretty good at this wrestling stuff. Emoto quickly gets back the advantage with some rough lariats and a near fall from a top rope back elbow. We get a awesome spot where Emoto grabs on a inverted figure-four before turning it into a Giant Swing! After she has her fun she just sinks in the hold to make her tap out for the easy win. It's hard to judge this because there's a fair degree clipped purely as a Io showcase, but I think for what it's worth it was enjoyable and clearly everyone was taking it more lax given this was more of a house show. Check out for the oddity factor mostly.

 

Hiroyo Matsumoto & Misaki Ohata vs. Mariko Yoshida & Ray (Hirotsugu Suyama Produce Hardcore Ladies 04.05.2008)

Everyone in this match bar the obvious was trained by Yoshida, how cool is that? This was the only match on the card that wasn't hardcore rules, which is both good and bad, mostly bad because of the morbid curiosity of how they'd work a match like that is gone. The match went 12 minutes, we only see around about 8 in total. The match itself was more of a opener kind of pace with lots of cool Yoshida-style grappling. She wants to get over the newer talent who are on the other team, so they function as the underdog babyfaces that her and Ray control for a while. They after a while take back control by working over the crappy taped up arm of their mentor and some miscommunication. There's some clearly botched bits that do kill the buzz of the match at times, but it never gets overtly over the hill in terms of quality. Yoshida eventually hits all of her usual hits until a Air Raid beats Ohata clean. The match itself was fine.....the crowd was just so dead for this though. Bar Yoshida they don't react to anyone really despite all of their spots, even for the finish. It's not like they were dead in general because they were loud and mostly into the matches afterwards, so I guess this was either a old AJPW majority crowd that are conditioned to not care about undercard matches or they didn't give a shit about this non-hardcore stuff, either can be likely. Middle of the road, done well despite poor reception. If you do watch this also check out the main event, it's awesome. 

 

Mariko Yoshida vs. Toshie Uematsu (NEO 05.05.2008)

Annoyingly cut to 5 minutes from the original 10, because we needed all the time for a obnoxious eight-man 30 minute Iron Man match (wtf) I guess. This looked pretty solid with the two working a more scrappy pace. Seen a few too many of the "x steals the Spider Twist and almost wins" sequence at this point though. Middle half had Uematsu focus on the throat, namely choking on the ropes and kicks. Strong offence continues with a dropkick to a kneeling Yoshida and a mean Dragon Suplex, just all of the good stuff. Yoshida inches back with punches to the body and face alongside her signature boots, both scrambling for counters. There was a cool subversion of the usual Air Raid spots/expected counters as Yoshida actually hit it flush, but Uematsu just managed to wangle her for a roll-up anyway by overextending for the move itself. That still stuns her enough for Yoshida to just creep up and quickly steal the win with a rollup right after anyway. I mean it's hard to judge this completely because the clipping removes the starting work, however I'd still say this was enjoyable given who was involved. Nothing to really be amazed at but if you tend to like more sprinty Spider Yoshida matches then this is definitely one to search out.

 

Kyoko Kimura & Mariko Yoshida vs. Misaki Ohata & Ray (IBUKI 25.05.2008)

I could only find a 6 minute version of this so eh. Good violence between Ray and Yoshida as they went back and forth, with Yoshida having to heavily rely on her boots and usual bombs to keep things under control. The main theme was that Ohata was the weak link that simply couldn't keep up with anything. Ultimatley there isn't really a moment where this changes, she's still useless up until the finish where they do the usual "Yoshida gets hit by her tag partner by accident" shtick, only it's a Kimura big boot instead and that's more than enough to win off a mean Frankensteiner. There's just not enough to judge this reliably despite what remains being pretty good for what it was supposed to be.

 

Chihiro Oikawa vs. Mariko Yoshida (Battlarts 08.06.2008)

By far the superior Oikawa/Yoshida match, probably because they actually showed it in full for one. Opening exchanges get Yoshida over as clearly the superior mat-worker, but Oikawa has the gift of being a little shit so she goes for slaps, hair pulling, and even headbutts when needed. Such a brutal series of moves naturally makes her the clear babyface for the blood-hungry maniacs that are the Battlarts crowd, and so Yoshida works this as a heel in response, bullrushing her after some kicks to get the upper hand and doing some really nasty shoot-bully antics like grabbing her arms in full mount and wrapping them together to try to make her choke herself out or doing horrible facelocks. They worked well to Oikawa's clunky roundhouses getting some falls and even some cool submissions until this inevitably ended with Yoshida crawling out of a desperate armbreaker to effortlessly apply a rolling Spider Twist for the win. Robust and super easy to watch, pretty good introduction into the kind of stuff Yoshida is really all about style-wise. I feel bad that Oikawa didn't wrestle more because she looked smooth and confident working her despite this being her first official match as a wrestler (the first two before were exhibitions, basically). Great watch. 

 

Chihiro Oikawa vs. Mariko Yoshida II (IBUKI 28.09.2008)

Yoshida's back to working starting matches with promising ex-MMA rookies! This is cut to about 5 minutes though, so bad vibes already. Oikawa is obviously green, but her striking shtick is awesome, she's not smooth and definitely no Tiger Mask when it comes to hitting with precision, instead going for more clunky roundhouse kicks and whatnot to get the job done. Yoshida does her usual selling and bumping routine to get over her as a dangerous threat (including some great submission work) but ultimately she gets the win after baiting Oikawa to the mat with a Fujiwara armbar set-up, catching her with a Spider Twist when she tries rolling to escape by hooking the back, a standard sequence all things considered. This seemed solid enough for a opener with a sprint-ish pace to it as the two went though their main moves fairly quickly. Nothing groundbreaking, just a solid sturdy performance from both. Again I'd kill to see more Oikawa in action. 

 

Fuka vs. Mariko Yoshida (19.10.2008)

This was alright, mostly wrestled like Fuka wanted to do a ARSION match 10 years late. Fuka is one of those quite rare cases of someone being not as remarkable as a wrestler than they are as a trainer. As a wrestler most of her stuff was in the Dark Ages of Joshi in the early to mid 2000's where nearly all promotions were untelevised, massively reduced in availability or downright went under, so the stuff available is limited and not particularly in depth, seems ok though. As a trainer she basically trained up half of the old Stardom roster and mostly the good ones at that like Mayu or Starlight Kid....not hard to see which one comes out better. Yoshida was more than game to work the more slower methodical style Fuka wanted to do, even Fuka's actual wrestling was a bit limited in what she could do that looked good. They worked some nice drama with Yoshida mostly stretching out the legs while Fuka got the occasional counter, but her main gift was her kicks, which she used for the most advantage here. Yoshida mostly carries this with her usual spots and some great wangling on the mat. Fuka answers with a weak spinning headscissors and a shit 619, not great. This was another match that focused around Yoshida's crappy bandaged arm with dropkicks, kicks, and armbreaker spam.

Fuka's stuff looks good and Yoshida's selling is as per standard quite solid, she built up some good tension around not being to use the arm for her usual bombs and forgoing her usual aggression for Fujiwara-lite passivity and defence, waiting for Fuka's kicks to then snap into submissions. Fuka runs out of tricks and thus keeps spamming the armbreaker Kashin-style, even rolling out of a Air Raid to do one. They build to a good pace as Fuka throws out about everything and then some to get a upset (including lots of roll-ups!) but she eventually gets choked out by the Fujiwara transition into Spider Twist spot for the TKO. The mat-work isn't anything special though with Mariko Yoshida matches: you really get a bit spoilt given how beastly she is at making these sort of things work. Fuka is game; despite her size and height being less than convincing she does a good job working around that to be a believable threat. The second half is more frantic to the degree of a usual finishing stretch of the time, if you can get into that the match is quite rewarding, even if I think better exists pretty much everywhere else.

 

Mariko Yoshida vs Random German wrestler/Tom Delacroix (ICWA ??? 2008)

I debate even having this here given it's not even a match (instead being more of a training session for Delacroix) but it's still wrestled to a fall so I'm counting it, sue me. It's pretty cool to see Yoshida doing a Fujiwara by doing this exhibition in casual attire and fooling around with someone clearly not in their league, that's basically the main appeal of this match all things considered. Dela isn't the most clean and is generally kinda the standard indie wrestler at the time (little to no definition, wearing a shirt and long trousers, kickpads, etc) but he at least seems to be fairly decent as a cocky counterpart that Yoshida gets to work around with inverted kneebars, double wrist locks and....eyepokes? I guess? Delacroix pushes his luck when he tries to choke Yoshida out and gets vicious clubs to the back before she boots him once and gets the pin off that lol. I mean listen if you've watched THIS far it's not going to wow you at all, it's just a funny laugh watching one of the greatest grapplers ever do stupid Catch with some no-name for a couple of minutes. 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilderness Years

Spoiler

After 2008, Mariko Yoshida basically vanishes from wrestling, publicly at least. The main story is that she wanted to instruct women in self-defence and follow up on her ambitions in exercise therapy so she didn't have time beyond that and apparently helping to train other wrestlers. We do get her back two years later, but only for two exhibitions that combined go up to six minutes. I skimmed these a while back, I honestly couldn't say anything on them. 

She'd wrestle a fair bit in Pro-Wrestling Diana and such, but these shows to my knowledge were mostly unaired. Some outside of Diana were, but good luck finding reliable versions of those either, every search has went up cold on those and I'm not spending 40 bucks for a potentially good match via DVD copies either lol. As such, we only have a few matches to go though, not including her one minute of action against Manami Toyota for her retirement bout, because no.

 

Keiko Aono vs Mariko Yoshida (Diana 17.04.2011)

This was quite solid. Especially so when you consider the fact that Yoshida had been out of regular wrestling for multiple years now. She's lost some of that infamous shredded look that she sported then, but the skill and experience are all still intact. Keiko Aono is a sleazy LLPW talent that does kicks fairly hard. Yoshida always sells great for strikers, and this is proven very early on as she sells a roundhouse Kawada-style with the glazed eyes and crumbling up. She takes control in the first half with kicks and bombs until Yoshida is able to bait her into a Spider Twist. From then on it's a battle of attrition as the two exchange strikes to submissions, each focusing on either the head (Aono) or the arm (Yoshida) whenever they can.

This felt like more of a establishing of Yoshida as a act; she goes over a lot of the usual spots you'd expect, the cross armbreaker, the Irish Whip kneebar counter, etc etc. Felt like she was going more back to basics with this, which makes sense given how out of wrestling she's been. Things get good in the last few minutes as Aono hits some stiff kicks and keeps doing a cool Shining Wizard variation where instead of a knee she just bonks you with a foot lol. Despite a very dodgy spinning wheel kick she's still quite good. Finish felt a bit cheap as Aono just kicked Yoshida in the head a few times and won. Sure it's realistic, but it didn't really build to much. Yoshida also felt quite protected here as she got in her spots but never really went for much else. Good outing but the lackadaisical finish drags it down.

 

Ayako Hamada, Cherry & Misaki Ohata vs. Mariko Yoshida, Moeka Haruhi & Yumi Ohka (WAVE 17.07.2017)

The names here seem all random but all of the opposing team are Yoshida trainees! That's a cool touch. Cherry and Yoshida start with some slow grappling that wasn't great before we go right into a long nothing outside brawl. Opposing trio beat her up a bit with hair pulling before more outside antics; yeah it's one of those matches. Cherry's stuff is pretty rough, her dropkick is basically her flopping down on one leg with no real impact. Bar that Ohata and Hamada are great as the roughhouse heels of the bunch, especially Hamada as she pulls from her extensive rudo playbook with lots of double teaming and such. Haruhi spends most of the start and middle being worked over until she gets a ok hot tag to Yoshida for big boots and then we get to see Ohka in action. She's tall....that's about it for distinct features. She does the big boot and generic tall spots, even does a lame version of Taue's Snake Eyes off the ropes.

She bumps well at least and does a solid backdrop driver so that's something, still feels like a even tamer Lady C all things considered. Yoshida comes in to work in her signature bombs and spots (including some old counters to the Air Raid! ) alongside bumping big for Ohata and Hamada though the latter's stuff was predictively the best out of the bunch. We got some trio spots involving a triple submission and suplex, that's all fine. Haruhi does some alright high spots with some bad botches in-between. Everyone brawls and breaks up some near falls until Hamada hits her Fisherman's Buster two times over to finish things. This was fine enough for a enjoyable rush of old faces to scrap with the new in typical Yoshida-fashion, but the match itself wasn't that interesting bar some decent exchanges. Yoshida for what it's worth still looked great inside a ring and probably could've easily kept going into her 50's if she really wanted to do so, her style is that low-impact. 

 

Ayako Sato vs Mariko Yoshida (Diana 01.10.2017)

Potentially could've been lost, but Sato apparently had this recorded and uploaded to her channel so I guess she had some sort of fancam version available. This is also Mariko Yoshida's last singles match for Diana before retiring at the end of the year. I will say that this being clipped is quite annoying; we get about 7 minutes of the 13 runtime; but for what it's worth I don't think this was that special to be going crazy over that. Most of this was worked around Sato targeting the back with dropkicks and submissions, which caused Yoshida to sell hard and also get her revenge later on with her own back work. Sato looked flush with her work as she aggressively pushed the boundaries of what the vet could handle, from dropkick spam to upping the pace when needed. However I'd say this never really got that interesting; it was mostly Yoshida pushing though with the usual bombs and signature bits before Sato escaped a Air Raid to throw on the usual roll-up, but ultimately got wrecked off a big boot and a proper Air Raid to finish things up. Felt really basic and by the numbers, I don't know if it was because of the clipping but there just wasn't any real meat or heat to make this a worthwhile watch. Yoshida still felt flush in the ring and Sato has clearly impressive atheticism, I'd say all things considered I was left waiting for the two to really click though.

 

The final three matches happen on her own indie card on 19.11.2017, so no need to address the date for these ones. 

 

Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida vs Debbie Malenko, Jaguar Yokota & Kaoru Ito 

This was the opener, so no crazy moments all things considered. It was really cool to see Debbie back in a ring after 20+ years out of action, especially with the way she went out before. She wasn't obviously going to be amazing, but she looked confident working basic technical work with Yoshida and didn't seem rusty. Kyoko and Ito produce the BEEF with stiff lariat exchanges, that's fun. Yoshida also gets to struggle against Ito as powerhouse and that's also quite a lot of fun for what its worth, what with the attempted murder from a Ito foot stomp and senton splash. Second half was more comedy focused as the trio try to catch Yokota out with double teaming, but she's just too good with her lucha roll-ups to get caught. She does eat a German off Takako AND a superplex off the other Inoue, which is fairly crazy all things considered. 

Much like Tenryu Yokota hasn't really aged a whole lot since the 2000's, she's just basically doing all of her old spots lol. Malenko gets in for the last few minutes to take the usual bumps and land a fairly weak Northern Lights, though applies a STF correctly (gets ****1/2 from me). Everyone gets thrown out for a brawl bar Yoshida and co as per standard (including Kyoko going nuts with lariats and Taka dangling around a stunstick) Yoshida did a few of her old lucha roll-ups before finishing off with the Spider Twist for the tap-out on Malenko. Nothing much special here, just a fun vet showcase. 

 

Aja Kong, AKINO & Mary Apache vs Leon, Mariko Yoshida & Melissa 

We got Yoshida's past, now we have her ARSION/2000's contemporaries, from her trainees (Leon/AKINO) her CMLL leanings (Apache, who took the gimmick from Lady Apache, old nemesis of Yoshida's lucha days etc) and even some wacky faces (Cheerleader Melissa!). Obviously given their history no one on the opposing side wants to shake Yoshida's hand. AKINO offers later but then tries for a backslide! What a sneak. This was worked as a more fast-paced lucha style with everyone working at a sprint more or less. Apache was awesome and moved tremendously well for someone who wasn't exactly small, also got in some cool spots and exchanges whenever. Match slowed when Aja was around, that's to be expected though. Her and Yoshida had some decent back and forth stuff, mostly Aja throwing people around and mean-mugging. AKINO came in to do the usual "stealing the Spider Twist" bit but it had good heat so I can't complain plus it led to a cool submission exchange. 

Melissa more or less did most of the actual heavy-lifting, doing some cool top-rope spots and moving around the more immobile characters involved. They thankfully build the finish around Leon doing cool stuff on AKINO while everyone else tries to interrupt and do their own stuff. Everything seems lost when Kong and co clean up and leave Leon on her own, yet she's able to dodge her and Apache to take them out. Finish is solid as she throws kicks and ultimately gets caught with a tremendously smooth AKINO Frankensteiner for the pin. This is much better than the last match given the faster pace and stronger focus on action, even if Yoshida (by design) takes a backseat here in favour of her students. 

 

Hiroyo Matsumoto vs Mariko Yoshida

The guts of Yoshida to wrestle her retirement match as a spoiler-heel is pretty amazing. She starts off with a emotional handshake offer before going for a backslide a-la her stealing AKINO's shtick and then starts doing hair pulling lol. This is a retirement match so we get some nonsense involving Yoshida getting beat down by all of her closest peers and numerous people she's trained with. I loved her playing dead after some of them just to get pulled back up into position. Matsumoto spends most of this beating her mentor down with stiff slaps and whatever she can think of while Yoshida can do very little but cry and hope for the miracle submission, which she does indeed get in the middle, leading to some solid grappling on the mat. Yoshida is still slick as anything and she pulls out all of the stops to try to stop her much stronger opponent despite the impending doom this match carries. The two have a strong sequence where Yoshida gets countered out of her Air Raid and into a deadlift powerbomb out of a sunset flip before she herself counters the bomb for a near fall sunset flip, probably one of the best examples of a Air Raid sequence all things considered.

Yoshida's strikes suck, but that's kind of the point: she's just not good enough anymore to handle Matsumoto's insanely beefy forearm smashes. We get a lovely near upset as Yoshida counters a backdrop attempt seamlessly into a Air Raid for a super near fall, but she eventually can't keep the pressure up and loses to a lariat and a backdrop for the win. This was honestly pretty great for a retirement match: Yoshida is 47 years old and still goes pretty much the same pace as her prime bar a step or two lost. Matsumoto is also a solid final opponent with her bombs and big offence fitting in perfectly as a direct foil. They really paced this out and definitely didn't waste any time getting their stuff over, and said stuff was flush and worked in the context of the match. All in all, a solid outing; fitting given the talent involved.

 

All in all, I'd say every bolded match included here is absolutely worth watching one way or another. Does that mean everything not bolded isn't? I'd say no. There's definitely still plenty to be found with those and if you like them more than me, that's also cool as well. I think the main thing I got from watching all of these was that Yoshida was in the very rare position of being a tremendously gifted wrestler who was equally as generous to boot. As Jetlag said above, she tends to play second fiddle to other wrestlers; this is on purpose mainly to show them off. The issue is that she's STILL head and shoulders above pretty much all of said wrestlers, so it never really clicks. If she had more of a ego, could've had led to her having bigger and better matches? I'd say so. 

I think the other issue is that Yoshida was never really challenged in the same way she was in the ARSION work; you didn't have a Hiromi Yagi or a Megumi Fujii to really get her on her feet proper, meaning a lot of the matches feel like her more or less in second gear, not in her full element all things considered. Still solid, but it's a waste having someone who was clearly very talented on the mat not be able to experiment as much as those late 90's years. Regardless she's still a pretty stellar GWE addition that can't really be argued against given her wealth of solid matches, tremendous match-carrying and incredible consistency. 

 

 

[ohtani's jacket]

Did you watch the Yoshida/AKINO vs Bolshoi/Yabushita tag from 2004?

[Ma Stump Puller]

5 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Did you watch the Yoshida/AKINO vs Bolshoi/Yabushita tag from 2004?

Nope

 

[Jetlag]

The 2003 Hotta AtoZ match is sick as hell. I'm shocked almost nobody has brought it up in all these years. They do some really cool grappling and then just rain hell on each other like a high end BattlARTS match. At one point Yoshida took her glove off to punch Hotta straight in the face.