[2002-01-20-Jd'] Sumie Sakai vs Megumi Yabushita

[Jetlag]

This match was like a joshi version of Atlantis/Blue Panther. Just what the hell was going on with these two girls? I'll just assume that this is how Jaguar Yokota taught them wrestling is supposed to be like. Just a straight up grappling match with a ton of legit ability in both workers and a strange lucha influence to keep it sweet and graceful. I swear to good some of the sequences here wouldn't look out of place in a 1991 CMLL title match. At one point, Sakai floated into a flying headscissor, which turned into a standing choke, that Yabushita then countered into an ankle pick. Really unlike anything I've seen in a wrestling match before. Same for Sakai's strange huracanrana where she slipped underneath almost as if pulling guard and then gracefully rolled into a pin. That kind of stuff could look cute and contrived, but they had their timing down pat and the rhythm was just right, moving from matwork, to sparringly used rope usage, to hellish suplex moves. Yabushita again went for the arm like a bat out of judo hell, and the selling was top, adding just the right kind of fatigue and desperatin. Some of Yabushita's armlocks were straight out of Negro Navarro's book. Really I've no idea what was going on with these two to have a match like this in a dying promotion. I guess it's just a thing between two workers who trained together and just did they kind of bout they enjoyed.

[El-P]

FWIW, they were two judo girls.

[ohtani's jacket]

This was a neat contest. It was very much a hybrid style that encapsulated a lot of the strong points of ARSION and BattlARTS, as well as some of Yokota's personal style. In fact, at times it was reminiscent of Yokota vs. Chino Sato. They didn't have quite as much intensity, but they were committed to the bout. It was nice to see a match that was a grappling contest at heart. Good stuff.