[1996-11-18-GAEA-Best of Ones Wrestle] Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima vs Chihiro Nakano & Makie Numao

[PeteF3]

Talk about it here.

[PeteF3]

This is for the AJW Tag Titles held by the Oz Academy team, even though it's a GAEA show--I guess they're quasi-freelancers. This is another established-team vs. youngsters GAEA-style match and another good one for the style, though you pretty much know the youngsters aren't winning so the drama is starting to get sapped. Numao & Nakano do beat the living shit out of the champs, though, and I'm starting to wonder if Sugar Sato in particular wasn't miscast and better off as a babyface, because she does some fine sympathy selling here. There are the usual near-falls down the closing stretch but they change things up a little by having submission attempts take center stage. I'm running out of things to say about most of the standard matches on FLIK's list, but this was another good match for the promotion. Even if they're not really as good yet, it feels fresher to be watching GAEA's young talent, which seems miles ahead of what AJW is offering in the mid- and under-cards.

[Zenjo]

Oz Academy was originally a cross promotional stable comprised of Ozaki, Sato, Nagashima and Reiko (Carlos) Amano. Sato and Nagashima were GAEA full time. Amano was a JWP worker who didn't join GAEA until 2002. Ozaki was a JWP original that over time had more GAEA appearances before jumping ship in 1998.

 

GAEA PRODUCED ROOKIES

 

- Sonoko Kato (1995)

- Sugar Sato (1995)

- Chihiro Nakano (1995)

- Chikayo Nagashima (1995)

- Toshie Uematsu (1995)

- Maiko Narita (1995)

- Meiko Satomura (1995)

- Makie Numao (1995)

- Maiko Matsumoto (1996)

- Rina Ishii (1996)

- Sakura Hirota (1996)

- Hiromi Kato (1997)

- Saika Takeuchi (1999)

- Aya Sakurai (2001)

- Ayane Mizumura (2004)

- Hitomi Hayashi (2004)

 

So all four of these girls were second year pro's. With that in mind this is one of my favourite surprise Joshi matches, when I wasn't expecting much going in and got way more than I bargained for. Hikaru vs Mika Nishio from 11/7/04 was probably the most surprising on that list.

 

Even the most hardcore fans would probably be wondering who on earth are Chihiro Nakano and Makie Numao? They didn't make much of an impact on Pro Wrestling. It's a real shame they couldn't stick it through Chigusa's training regime, which was insanely brutal to be fair. You could only say 7 of the GAEA trueborns had full length careers. Nakano and Numao were both real losses to the promotion. Here they brought aptitude, aggression and teamwork. As did their opponents. All performed like experienced wrestlers in their prime. There was great intensity throughout and the champs in particular connected with the crowd. High quality and exciting. I just loved the style they were building with the submissions and counters being added to the traditional Joshi. A fair bit of chair usage as well. With the complexity and ambition I was expecting disaster at some point. There were times it wasn't perfect but they kept it all on track. Everything worked out as well as it could've done.