[1978-AJW] Maki Ueda vs Lucy Kayama

[Jetlag]

Maki Ueda!!! At this point, I'd kill to see some of those longer title matches from the Budokan that AJW had. This was quite the spectacle - as it was a 20 minutes clean technical bout. Just a chance to see Ueda being quite the skillful grappler. Kayama was good too, but kind of along for the ride. Not for the faint of the heart, as they do a bunch of limbwork that isn't really sold, but it's such an oddity that I can forgive it. Interesting holds and throws a plenty. Interesting fact: According to wrestlingdata, both Maki and Jackie Sato were trained by Umenosuke Kiyomigawa. Who is Umenosuke Kiyomigawa, you ask? Kiyomigawa is a guy who has spent quite a bit of time wrestling in central europe, and is the one japanese guy that I've heard european wrestlers speak highly of. Klaus Kauroff even credits Kiyomigawa with training him. Maybe that explains the unique grappling style the AJW girls used that seems more advanced than anything I've seen from japanese natives at the time, besides the occasional Fujinami match.

[paul sosnowski]

This is from late 1978/early 1979 but I cannot find the correct date