[1996-04-29-GAEA-Gaeaism] Sugar Sato & Aki Kanbayashi vs Chihiro Nakano & Makie Numao

[PeteF3]

Talk about it here.

[PeteF3]

There's good work among all four ladies, but GAEA's refusal to air the ring intros is frustrating for a noob such as myself. I had to search around in a futile attempt to figure out who was whom and I still don't know Numao from Nakano. Anyway, Sato shows off some cool mat skills and the girl in the full leotard throws some awesome kicks, like a poor woman's Kansai. Action is good but marked by some sloppiness down the stretch, like a reverse flying elbow from Sato that misses by a mile, and some bad timing on the pin saves. Sato taps the kicker-lady with a leglock to win.

[Jetlag]

This is another really trippy recommendation as it's a battle of 4 rookies none of which ended up having much of a career. This was typical solid rookie action, some mean stomps and elbows, nasty boston crabs, and Numao running around like a Mini-Chigusa kicking really hard. It really picks up for the last five minutes with Numao brutalizing Sato with kicks, Nakano grabbing awesome legbars for nearfalls, some great nearfalls for basic moves and time limit coming into play. The first half of this was solid but probably a little lacking in structure for me (lots of back and forth this girl eats offense – transition – now the next girl eats offense) but that ending run made this worth checking out. The crowd was hugely into this too and I totally can see why someone would remember this fondly after years.