[1996-02-16-GAEA-War is a Friday Night] Eagle Sawai & Jen Yukari & Michiko Nagashima vs Chigusa Nagayo & Bomber Hikari & Sonoko Kato

[PeteF3]

Talk about it here.

[PeteF3]

Well, you certainly can't accuse this of being boring. 12 minutes of non-stop violence, with maybe two or three legal tags the entire match. Sawai and her big fat offense impress, and I think Eagle Sawai & Tomoko Watanabe is now my joshi dream tag team. All six ladies are killing each other all over Korakuen, with Nagayo and Eagle fighting into the concourse and then the balcony before returning to the ring. Most of this centers around Nagashima, who's constantly elevating the action by using a kendo stick and a chain. She works hard, but she really doesn't have 1/10 of the panache and charisma of Takako Inoue or someone like that--she comes off as someone using the weapons because she's a heel and she's booked to use them, rather than someone using weapons because they want/have to. The babyfaces sort of fight on the level for most of this before paying the opponents back by using every weapon against them, but Kato taking the sort of overmatched Sakie Hasegawa babyface role gets power bombed and pinned by Sawai. Even Nagashima's post-match promo sounds tepid in comparison to other Japanese ladies on the mic, and Nagayo is clearly a more compelling speaker with greater control of the crowd.

 

Fun match, though there are other better joshi brawls. With 6 people however, the action never stops, and at 12 minutes this doesn't wear out its welcome. Generally crazy brawls shouldn't go much more than 15, in my view. As workers, Nagayo and Eagle were the only ones to really stand out even though Nagashima got a lot of focus. Still early in the GAEA learning process, so hopefully I'll have more to say as the year goes on.