[2000-04-23-AJW] Manami Toyota & Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa & Nanae Takahashi vs Dynamite Kansai & Ran Yu Yu & Commando Bolshoi & Kayuko Haruyama (Elimination)

[soup23]

Interesting that Ran Yu Yu gets announced after Kansai. Kansai and Takahashi start out. Really hot start with Nanae throwing the kitchen sink at Dynamite before her weathering the storm and pinning her with a lariat around 2 minutes in. Maekawa pounces right where Nanae left off. Kansai and Maekawa have a good sequence built around strikes and submissions. At one point, Nanae comes rushing back in and the match breaks down with everyone going after each other. This resulted in a double countout. Commando and Hotta are brawling with chairs so they are the next to enter. Hotta keeps going for tiger drivers and big bombs and puts away Commando in around a minute with a straightjacket powerbomb. Haryuyama enters and she is the one I am least familiar with. She is no match for Hotta who gives her two knock out blows and pins her. This leaves Yu Yu vs. Hotta and Toyota so the odds don’t look good for team JWP. Hotta starts methodically picking Yu Yu apart. Submissions and ground game are the key focal points. Hotta does go to the outside about five minutes in and Kansai has had enough by taking some shots at Hotta. Hotta misses a spinning back kick giving Yu Yu a hope spot but she is back executing a Tiger Driver for a nearfall a minute later. Hotta continues her attack, locks on the cross arm breaker and the referee calls the match for team AJW without Toyota even getting in the ring. After some promo work we get an 8 person tag match proper with Yu Yu and Toyota starting. Toyota is awesome here as the prick and her execution is flawless. A big dive train breaks things open. Team JWP is working much better together as a cohesive unit and we get a nearfall after a Kansai Splash Mountain on Toyota. AJW comes back with a vengeance and they are able to isolate Haruyama. Haruyama is able to show some resilience taking a good bit of punishment and kicking out but eventually she falls to Toyota and AJW wins this one as well. Kansai is one frustrated woman looking on at AJW celebrating. Really good segment going on that set up a lot of future stuff in the future. ***3/4

[Loss]

This is really two matches - I guess? - with the first being a 4 x 4 elimination and then the second being an impromptu standard tag right after that. The match started off strong and I liked the Hotta-Ran Yu Yu work quite a bit. It's totally made by Hotta as the subtle heel and Ran's outstanding selling of the cross armbreaker as a death move. I hated Kansai interfering when the work had done so much to establish Ran as an isolated and overmatched underdog. This didn't have much heat, and I think the reason is that no one expected the match to end at that point since Toyota had not even entered the ring yet. The finish was a bit of a surprise, to the point that I thought it made the JWP team look like chumps, but whatever. Toyota is just phenomenal in the second match -- mixing in her smirking heel persona with her energetic wrestling style and immediately boosting the heat. This was never once really presented as competitive, but it was good to see Ran Yu Yu in another strong match, and also good to see Commando Bolshoi, an underrated wrestler, getting some time to shine. Kind of an uneven viewing experience overall, but the moments that everyone was on were sharp. ***3/4