[1982-07-19-AJW] Jaguar Yokota vs Devil Masami

[Clayton Jones]

For Jaguar's WWWA Championship. This looks and feels like a historically significant match but I couldn't find much written about it. The one review I read criticized it for starting slow but praised it for turning into an out of control brawl by the end. I felt the exact opposite, that this was outstanding until Jaguar's dive (points for effort) but the ending felt forced to me. Was it typical of a big joshi title match in this era to break down into chaos like that? Or was it just about hatred between these two? There was an edge to the way they worked but I thought it was more of a competitive rivalry up until that point. And even though I didn't like the finishing stretch I loved 3/4s or so of this match. I've watched a lot of great wrestling lately and this had as big of a title fight feel as any of it. The pace for most of the match was more deliberate than you might expect but I was a big fan. And it's still action packed by 1982 standards. Both Jaguar and Devil look world class here and I can clearly see I need to keep digging into 80s joshi.