[1990-03-30-JWP] Devil Masami vs Mami Kitamura

[Ma Stump Puller]

This match is fascinating but not for the reason you think: if this was just a regular squash I wouldn't be bothered. I'm typically not a huge Joshi guy but when I seen this, a early JWP taping of a match that happened in America (in the 90's, of all things) I had to check it out for myself. The match itself is just another Devil rookie squash, done a million times before, nothing special there. Kitamura is the usual rookie for the time: she's fine enough but obviously very limited, green, and not exactly amazing at much. They initially work it as per usual for the first minute: Kitamura is the snappy rookie who's throwing herself all over the place for Devil, trying to get sympathy with extended headlocks to control the dominant force, etc etc. Here's the weird thing: the crowd cheers for Devil, not for Kitamura lol. She's kinda taken aback by it first, then she plays up to it and the crowd love it. From then on in she's working as a dominant babyface squashing the jobber, and you can tell how she mixes things up to cater to them, though that's not hard when even the hair pulling gets strong approval from the crowd. When she starts throwing Kitamura's head into the turnbuckle they absolutely get behind it, and she in turn plays up to that by getting them to count along to her turnbuckle smashes, prolonged pauses to get them more heated, etc. 

It's so....weird. Kitamura still works her side of the match the same (and actually gets some boos for that when she starts getting stuff in proper) But Devil quickly gets back in control with the usual shtick. The finish has her land the usual big Devil lariat for the three count, but the reaction is HUGE: if you told me the reaction was for Hogan landing his Leg Drop on some random B-tier house show I'd be none the wiser, it was bizarrely awesome. Match wasn't anything much special though, I just thought it was really impressive that Devil was not only massively over here, but she had the sense to play up to that rather than continue to do a heel routine. It's not like everyone here got that same treatment either as the other matches on the card weren't nearly as hot (apart from maybe the last minute of the main event?) so there was definitely something there. Interesting oddity for sure.