Jackie Sato

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[ohtani's jacket]

Jackie wasn't a bad worker, which she got to show more of after Maki retired, and I like the way she fits into the lineage of AJW ace's, but you'd have to say that both Mariko Akagi and Jaguar Yokota outshone her as pure workers from the same era and showed what Joshi was capable of in an era when it wasn't supposed to be very good. You could add Yumi Ikeshita to that list too.

[Jetlag]

How much Mariko Akagi is there? She's looked pretty good on some of the 70s AJW TV that I saw, but it seems there's only short bits, while Sato's had some very good lengthy singles matches.

 

I think Sato's pretty badass. Top 100 of all time is probably a stretch, but definitely watch her matches vs. Yokota and Aoyama. AJW had a very unique style then with lots of gritty matwork and she was great at it.

[GSR]

How much Mariko Akagi is there? She's looked pretty good on some of the 70s AJW TV that I saw, but it seems there's only short bits, while Sato's had some very good lengthy singles matches.

 

I've done a search on Dan's 150+ disc AJW set and just found two matches for her, both from 1978. A singles match against Chino Sato and a two out of three falls tag with Yumi Ikeshita against the Golden Pair.

[Jetlag]

I hope people will give Jackie Sato more attention this time around. She was quite the badass and with more eyes being on that era of joshi and more footage becoming available people should watch. The Yokota match is brilliant and Sato is every part of it.

 

There's also some of her JWP work becoming available, something that was completely in the dark to me 5 years ago. It seems she pretty much reinvented herself. She had an interesting superstar match against Nancy Kumi. I also just now watched her in a tag where she grappled with Shinobu Kandori like a BattlARTS match.

[Tetsujin]

The few things I watched from her, I was mesmerized. She's totally a revolutionary wrestler. Would love more recs.

[club]

Definitely want to check out more of Jackie Sato. Her post-Beauty Pair 79-81 stuff in AJW ranges from good to excellent. Wish there was more Beauty Pair available. The only thing I’ve seen is a clipped match of theirs from 76 vs Black Pair which was ok. Ditto for her JWP run.

[El McKell]

11 hours ago, club said:

Wish there was more Beauty Pair available. The only thing I’ve seen is a clipped match of theirs from 76 vs Black Pair which was ok.

There is also this: 

But yeah there's not much Beauty Pair you can watch out there

[club]

2 hours ago, El McKell said:

There is also this: 

But yeah there's not much Beauty Pair you can watch out there

Thanks, this was tremendous.

[GOTNW]

I watched the first two volumes of the 80s Joshi set Kadaveri set up, which cover the 80-81 period of AJW and go past Jackie's retirement. Commenting on 10 year old posts might seem kind of rude, especially since we're talking about a worker whom barely anyone hyped-up to begin with, but there aren't a lot of them in this thread and some of them I intensively disagree with so let's just get at it:

On 9/21/2014 at 3:35 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Jackie wasn't a bad worker, which she got to show more of after Maki retired, and I like the way she fits into the lineage of AJW ace's, but you'd have to say that both Mariko Akagi and Jaguar Yokota outshone her as pure workers from the same era and showed what Joshi was capable of in an era when it wasn't supposed to be very good. You could add Yumi Ikeshita to that list too.

I have yet to watch a Mariko Akagi match or get to Jaguar's prime, so I can't really comment on that. However I totally disagree with the notion Yumi Ikeshita was better than Jackie. I really like Ikeshita, she brings the vibe of intensity and aggressiveness I live for, but AJW didn't have a very deep roster, and when you compare how they fared at getting good matches out of whatever Nancy Lucy Cindy Mimi the AJW idol factory produced, which is going to be a lot of what they were doing at the time, Jackie completely blows her out of the water.

 

On 11/4/2014 at 9:33 PM, Jetlag said:

AJW had a very unique style then with lots of gritty matwork and she was great at it.

I have yet to really find the proper words to describe the AJW style, but the only thing I can clearly pinpoint to is that there was a lot of moves and irish whips. "Gritty matwork" really seems to be connected to Sato as an individual worker than the house style. Which just makes Sato that much cooler in my eyes.

 

On 4/26/2021 at 10:33 PM, Jetlag said:

The Yokota match is brilliant and Sato is every part of it.

I think this is an unfair description. From my point of view, Yokota had some raw skill and a sense for putting together exciting movement, but she wasn't exactly some sort of genius worker in 1980-1981, and to claim Sato was "every part of it" is to approach the matches in reverse of how they should be. The matches are great, but they are much closer to a Billy Robinson/Terry Funk vs Jumbo Tsuruta where the veteran is clearly leading the young up and comer than they are to an equal effort. Yokota was nowhere near Sato's level at that point.

 

That's it for now. I'm counting on OJ and Jetlag to be in good spirits and not get mad. I'm gona put the Joshi set watching on hold because I'm really dreading the idea of watching AJW without Jackie Sato and Yumi Ikeshita, watch some more Sato and come back to this thread to hopefully hype her up with more detailed arguments.

[Jetlag]

I don't really have a problem with these comments. At the time I had watched a bit if 70s/early 70s AJW and I recall seeing cool matwork in other matches too. There were definitely lots of irish whips and typical joshi style 'hit the same move 3 times in a row' stuff. I think there are like 2 Mariko Akagi matches on tape and they are short forgettable undercard bouts so I'm not sure where that comparison ever came from, I am guessing that comment was based on hearsay. I'm just glad more people are checking out this era of AJW now.