DVD #1: Chigusa Nagayo vs Dump Matsumoto

[Loss]

Talk about it here when you get it.

[JHawk]

While I will readily admit to having seen very little Japanese women's wrestling prior to this, this was absolutely nuts. Theyplayed the size demographic beautifully, with Nagayo having trouble overcoming Dump's superior size. Before long things get extreme, with both women using every weapon they can get their hands on. Chigusa bleeds like a champ before finally losing via KO as half the roster protests.

 

Excellent brawl with insane heat.

[World's Worst Man]

I can't help thinking that this would have been better if Chigusa had actually got some offense in, and if Matsumoto had actually sold at all. This was essentially a one-sided slaughter, and while Chigusa was incredible in her selling, the weapon usage was repetitive and the finish wasn't timed well, nor did it seem like enough was done to warrant a KO. And as mentioned, the main source of drama in these kind of matches (the comebacks) were sorely lacking. I'm more of a fan of the Stan Hansen style slugfest brawls, rather than repetitive weapon shots + blood stuff, but even so, I don't think this match really pulled it off particularly well.

[Dylan Waco]

I hadn't seen this in a long time and I admit that I have ver odd feelings about this. On the one hand it is a match with incredible atmosphere, as everything from the interences, the crowd, to the demeanor of the performers is just outstanding and very hard to beat. It's also a match filled with more violent visceral hatred than virtually any other match you can think of and certainly more than any other puro match I can think of.

 

That said I am not as high on Dump as others. Yeah she is a transcedent wresler in a way, and it is hard to imagine Joshi without her. But there is something about her that I have never really been able to grasp as strongly as other Joshi fans. I can't really put my finger on it, since she is awesome performer, but yeah. Honestly I think if I had gotten into Joshi before Garbage wrestling I would have a different view,but alas I didn't.

 

Anyhow the match is very good, but discomforting. I recently watched and reviewed an SD squash where Brock Lesnar pretty much killed Zach Gowan..here is what I had to say..

 

""Just watched Brock v. Zach Gowen on dailymotion and holy shit this match is disturbing. Alot of people talk about how Foley "went to far" with the HITC and the I Quit match, but neither bothered me as much as watching this. I'm not sure if that is a testament to how good both guys were here or not.

 

Either way the reason the match comes off as such a massacre is not entirely because Gowen has one leg..in large part is because of the fact that Lesnar really is perfect as a the boneheaded jock that made fun of handicapped kids in school, getting a chance to beat the shit out of one right in front of his family. This is a total squash, with Gowen getting offense only as a result of distractions and Lesnar running right through him. Gowen is just crazy here taking insane bumps off of powerbombs and f-5s that no reasonable person should take and then eating one of the nastiest chairshots you'll ever see. By the time the match is over he literally looks like the victim of a U.S. ariel strike, lifeless, missing limbs and totally immersed in his own blood.

 

Really a horrifying spectacle."

 

Now Chiggy is a much better Gowan, and Dump is Dump, but I get a similar feel with this match. It's a very good spectacle,but at times it feels like choreographed rape, espcially postmatch as the headshaving is just emotionally apalling in a way that really shoudn't be possible with something as goofy as pro wrestling.

 

Point is that the match is a realistic massacre. Maybe to realistic. The closeup shot of Chiggy getting shoot stabbed with scissors is really cool..kind of...

[Loss]

I would say that's a valid complaint about this match.

 

The main reason I included it was to show the atmosphere of 80s AJW, and how it really tops anything any other promotion has ever done as far as creating life-or-death drama and evoking emotion from an audience. Fans crying in the audience at wrestling matches has happened in other cases, but never anything like this.

 

Chigusa Nagayo is my favorite female wrestler ever. She was over at a level no one has ever been over in wrestling. Ever. You can talk about Hogan and the Rock in the US, or even Inoki in Japan. Chigusa was Madonna. She didn't have to work as hard as she did. She could have coasted. But she didn't. Just six days before this, she had an incredible match against Devil Masami (look for it soon), who you see here as one of the many trying to save her.

 

I really want someone to do a Chigusa Nagayo comp at some point, especially focusing on her 1980s career.

[Dylan Waco]

A Nagayo comp would be awesome.

 

Also you are absolutely right about the drama and atmosphere of AJW.

[ohtani's jacket]

In the rematch, Dump has the scariest motherfucking look on her face while they shave her head.

[Guest Real Man's Man]

I don't think it's likely that I'll want to watch this match again, but that is not a reflection on the match itself which I thought was excellent in terms of achieving it's goals. The individuals involved understood their target audience, and for the most part, got the most out of them that they possibly could have (and doing it with a target audience this emotionally charged is going to wield some very powerful responses). On a personal level, I found it provoking, but like I said before, not something I would want to watch again. Not for the same reasons, but I suppose on some level it's like how I realise the effectiveness of "The Wicker Man", and I'm glad that I saw it, but have no desire to watch it again.

 

While I don't so much want to comment on the match for the match itself, I do want to briefly comment on individual performances of the key players here, purely in terms of character.

 

I think Dump Matsumoto is terrific, and I tend to find her to never be less than effective whenever I watch her. I always trust she is going to at least hold her end of the bargain, and I reckon she did so here. That said, I didn't think this was her best night, and I wouldn't really use it to show someone an example of Dump. Still, her crowd taunting worked wonderfully, and her sadistic facials of joy when cutting Chigusa's hair were perfect.

 

Chigusa is terrific in this match, and of the 2 main performers is clearly the one who deserves more credit. She manages to continually give the crowd glimours of hope, while at the same time getting destroyed (and doing a great job of showing she is getting destroyed), until the point of no return is reached. She is terrific at keeping the crowd involved to the highest level possible, even allowing for the fact that this is an audience that would obviously be into her virtually regardless of what she did.

 

That said though, I honestly thought that Devil Masami was the standout here. She was amazing as the pained Chigusa supporter/compatriot, from the supporting during the match to the hugging and consoling at the end, and was the one that really ended up catching my eye. Maybe it's her unusual ability when it comes to facial expressions, but I couldn't help but respond to her reactions, as they managed to come across so realistic to me. I also love the human element that it shows, in that even though Masami and Chigusa had been involved in a titanic struggle just a few days earlier, that didn't mean that she couldn't stand up and be there for Chiggy when the situation called for it.

 

Watching Devil in this match made me think of the Perrito/Santo match from 2004 that people were raving about a while back, in that for me Casas as a non-active performer was the one who really stood out in that match, although I found Masami's performance in this match to be on a higher level to Casas' performance in that match.

 

Asuka was a disappointment. Always tend to get the feeling with Asuka that she just doesn't know how to pull something off "in the moment". It clearly doesn't come naturally to her, and it always feels like she is actively thinking about what to do without really being sure of what to do - be it a Crush Gals dancing/singing performance, a gesture in a match, or her reaction to a powerful situation, such as this. I'll freely admit I still haven't seen that much of Asuka, but if there is any match/situation where she shows she can be good when it comes to that side of things I would like to be pointed towards it.

 

Just a quick final note. Watching this, at the end I was really wanting Chigusa to throw off the towel and cry something to the fans to get a huge response. I know she said something to the audience, but she kept the towel over her head. It would have seemed an appropriate way to signify that her spirit hadn't been crushed. Maybe I'm loony or off-base for having hoped to see that, but I was kinda disappointed it didn't happen.

[ohtani's jacket]

Just a quick final note. Watching this, at the end I was really wanting Chigusa to throw off the towel and cry something to the fans to get a huge response. I know she said something to the audience, but she kept the towel over her head. It would have seemed an appropriate way to signify that her spirit hadn't been crushed. Maybe I'm loony or off-base for having hoped to see that, but I was kinda disappointed it didn't happen.

That's not really a Japanese thing to do. Besides, Chigusa showing her shame and humiliation just milked things more for the rematch. If I were Loss, I would've included the rematch, too, plus Dump attacking Chigusa while she sang and slitting the chicken's throat at the press conference.

 

Asuka was just poor at selling & that included angles, too. I don't know why people in the 80s thought she was better than Chigusa, something that people like Lorefice have clung to. There's actually a Dump vs. Asuka match from the JGP '86 that shows how good Dump was at setting up spots that made the schoolgirls implode. One of Asuka's more dramatic matches, and one which doesn't involve divided loyalties.

 

The other thing people don't realise about Dump is that either side of this period -- when she weighed less -- she wasn't such a bad athlete and did a lot more moves.

[Guest Real Man's Man]

Fair enough about it not being a Japanese thing to do. I was thinking about how they were milking things more for the rematch while watching it, and that was fine, but at the same time it just seemed that given the fans response, and how much they obviously looked up to Chigusa it would have been appropriate for that to happen. Not a criticism of what they did, just a personal thought.

 

And if that Dump vs Asuka JGP match you mentioned is the one from AJW Classics then I will give it a watch in the near future, though from your description it sounds like a case of Dump orchestrating things and Lioness just being there to try and go along with it.

[Loss]

The Lioness match is really good, but there is also a match against Itsuki Yamazaki around this time that I think is better, that's pretty much the same layout.

[ohtani's jacket]

Fair enough about it not being a Japanese thing to do. I was thinking about how they were milking things more for the rematch while watching it, and that was fine, but at the same time it just seemed that given the fans response, and how much they obviously looked up to Chigusa it would have been appropriate for that to happen. Not a criticism of what they did, just a personal thought.

Funnily enough I remember my wife saying she really hated Dump Matsumoto at this time.

 

I hope more people watch those Chigusa/Leilani Kai matches. Great stuff. And I'm sure Jose will agree that the best Asuka match is the '85 one against Jumbo Hori, but again it's because of Jumbo.

[Guest FlairPinnedMe]

Ok, so I finally got around to watching the rest of this DVD.

 

I’m another person who hasn’t seen too much Japanese women’s wrestling. I’ve seen a lot of the main 90s stuff, but nothing really from the 80s. So this was pretty interesting.

 

From the entrances and the crowd, it’s made very clear from the beginning that this match is a big deal – with the language barrier it’s pretty cool how well they can convey this. The atmosphere is completely unreal and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed wrestling with this much heat. It’s incredible.

 

Dump asserts herself early on as the bully, beating up and not giving any chances. The weapons come out real early too, which surprised me for some reason. She chokes her with the chain, and then uses various other weapons. A cool spectacle I guess, I’m not too into hardcore wrestling though.

 

Chigusa plays the babyface in peril excellently, and I’m not sure I can think of many people who were this over with the crowd they were in front of. Anytime she even made the slightest comeback, the place would go absolutely NUTS. The reactions of this crowd are just amazing.

 

So they eventually throw in the towel, which is cool as she doesn’t really give up so it sets up for the rematch. The emotion of the crowd afterwards is unreal too, as many are crying. The post-match was very uncomfortable and not something I’d want to watch again.

 

I enjoyed this match, and would like to see the follow up.

[kjh]

Very heated and intense brawl, but I think it was the post match angle that put it over the top as such a lengendary deal. I don't think I've ever seen an angle that evoked such raw, visceral and genuine emotion. It seems like it was perfectly played to make Chigusa more beloved and Dump more loathed and hated. Good stuff!

[gordi]

A perfect example of how great it can get when the booker gets their audience, and plays to their emotions, and builds things slowly and pays them off properly. I think it's one of those matches that works much, much, better in context... but the crowd reactions, the honest emotion, obviously comes across very strongly no matter how much you know about what's going on around this match.

[S.L.L.]

I had seen the rematch a number of times. While I always felt it was very, very good, it never quite hit me the way it was supposed to. It was the finish, I think. I knew why they did it, and this match illustrated it even further, but it just never looked right to me. Chigusa nearly gets KO'd again, gets up, flash pin, it's over. I dunno. There's nothing wrong with it, technically speaking, it just didn't feel right to me.

 

So I'm not surprised I liked the finish to this match better. What did surprise me was how much better I liked just about everything else. Everything else in the rematch was great, and I had always assumed that was the big match, whereas this was mainly notable for the finish. Nope. As good as the rematch was, this blows it's doors in. I don't know if I've ever seen a wrestling match with the level of organized chaos here. Every moment is a life or death struggle. The brutality of Dump, the spirit of Chiggy, the madness, the blood, the weapons shots, the seconds, the rudo ref, the hysterical schoolgirl crowd, and the greatest head shaving in wrestling history. This is one of the best matches I've ever seen.

[CodySave]

This match is insane. I've never seen anything like this in pro wrestling before. Sure, I've seen really heated crowds and really intense, hate-filled life-or-death brawling, but I've never seen them combined quite like this.

 

I'm not even sure what I think after first viewing other than I've just watched a hell of a spectacle. I'm definitely going to rewatch this a couple times, because it was just a blur of bloodiness and brawling the first time. And the people crying, both in the crowd and in the ring...god damn. I've never seen wrestling this emotional before.

 

I feel like I just watched a half-hour of wrestling where no one involved - wrestlers, crowd or otherwise - was told "Hey - wrestling's fake, you know." That goes for the brutality as well as emotions. This came off WAY more like a real fight, shit, a real savage beating, than any sort of pro wrestling match.

 

It would help me tremendously if someone could briefly describe the back story going into this match. I've never followed Joshi, and while it's certainly clear they hate each other, I feel I'm missing some important elements.