Yoshiko Tamura

[Grimmas]

donsem43 said: "I was going to nominate her for the last list but there were a few YouTube channels that had quite a few matches of her were all deleted and that nuked my motivation. There's a bit more of her out there now but not a lot so hopefully more stuff pops up over the next few years, especially early '00 NEO. 

Early in her career, she felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole while in AJW as she was a more methodical, mat-based wrestler than the typical worker in that company. Things picked up for her in the rebooted NEO, where she was someone who was influenced by the AJ Classics that were airing at the time as she took the 70's NWA style that was used in AJPW but modernized the moveset and picked up the pace. She also faced pretty much everyone who was any sort of name in the 00's which should be enough for anyone to make up his/her mind about her."

Match Recs:

vs. Toshie Uematsu - 7/19/97

vs. Azumi Hyuga - 12/24/06

vs. Ayumi Kurihara - 12/31/10

[Jetlag]

Overrated worker who had some really soul crushingly slow and long NEO title matches in the early 2000s. The 60 minute Hyuga match is almost unwatchable, too. I dig the stiff elbows and she has good chemistry with some workers once in a while.

[elliott]

You are invited to talk about the wrestlers you actually like. 

[Jetlag]

I've nominated plenty of wrestlers in the project so far I might throw up some more nominations given how things are turning out.

[DylanZero]

Entirely too harsh, that match with Hyuga was unwatchable? What. For an Ace vs. Ace match that went 60 I thought they did a great job and deserve a ton of credit for effectively filling it, particularly against their contemporaries and even successors who have tried similar length matches. To me compare that match to basically anyone who got famous through the Western Japanese Wrestling Boom in the 2010s like Naito, Okada, Omega, blahblahblah and that match blows them away from a pure wrestling standpoint. Not saying it's perfect or anything because who can really fill that length outside of the true all time greats of wrestling completely but come on now. It wasn't a 0 either, far from it.

 

Tamura has great matches, wish there were more there. Would take Hyuga of the dark ages of Joshi stars in-ring and she's a fringe candidate at best despite being one of my favorites of that era. This time has been lost to time hard and it's gonna be hard to justify her because of that but if you just watch those 3 matches in the OP you'll have done well for yourself for 2 hours or so. Vs. Uematsu was a legit MOTYC for 1997 and the other 2 were not only good but also she performed her role well in both of them. Good suplexes and stiff strikes shown even to the end of her career.

[elliott]

Tamura had a match against The Bloody from 9/20/04 that is a ridiculously spectacular match that everyone should watch. 

[Jetlag]

On 6/7/2021 at 10:05 PM, DylanZero said:

Entirely too harsh, that match with Hyuga was unwatchable? What. For an Ace vs. Ace match that went 60 I thought they did a great job and deserve a ton of credit for effectively filling it, particularly against their contemporaries and even successors who have tried similar length matches. To me compare that match to basically anyone who got famous through the Western Japanese Wrestling Boom in the 2010s like Naito, Okada, Omega, blahblahblah and that match blows them away from a pure wrestling standpoint. Not saying it's perfect or anything because who can really fill that length outside of the true all time greats of wrestling completely but come on now. It wasn't a 0 either, far from it.

 

Tamura has great matches, wish there were more there. Would take Hyuga of the dark ages of Joshi stars in-ring and she's a fringe candidate at best despite being one of my favorites of that era. This time has been lost to time hard and it's gonna be hard to justify her because of that but if you just watch those 3 matches in the OP you'll have done well for yourself for 2 hours or so. Vs. Uematsu was a legit MOTYC for 1997 and the other 2 were not only good but also she performed her role well in both of them. Good suplexes and stiff strikes shown even to the end of her career.

If there's any particular NEO from that time period you'd like to see, let me know because I have a ton of it from the 2002-2004 years. If you ask me, most of that stuff has been forgotten for a reason because the promotion was largely terrible from the little I've seen, but if other people enjoy that style of wrestling I won't stand in he way.