[1980-08-AJW-Guam] Yumi Ikeshita vs Rimi Yokota

[SAMS]

1980-08-XX
AJW
Yumi Ikeshita vs. Rimi Yokota
Guam
★★★

Firstly, these shows surely had one of the coolest ring mats of all time. It was dark blue with a vibrant flower design and what I think were palm tree leaves in the corner. Very striking indeed. I may be mistaken but all these matches came from their Guam tour of late August.
Ikeshita is the current All-Pacific champion coming in, but I’m pretty sure that this was a non-title match. I felt that they told a really compelling story here. Yokota is improving month on month but Ikeshita is willing to stoop low and do what it takes to win, plus she had the numbers advantage with Masami roaming on the outside and willing to interfere when it mattered. Yokota brought it to Ikeshita to start but a few cheap shots gave control to Ikeshita and she started working at grinding Yokota down.
Yokota had a moment where she ducked a lazy punch and countered with an Abdominal Stretch, and for a minute or so she had swung the momentum, but it was clear that unless she was willing to fight fire with fire she was going to come off worse. Ikeshita began focusing on the leg very intently, locking in a figure four and then a series of other leg holds. She benefited from Masami knocking Yokota’s hands away from the ropes and some incredibly lenient AJW refereeing, and was able to keep up the attacks on the leg for a considerable portion of the match.
Sometimes the outside interference works against these AJW matches, but here the involvement of Masami worked really well. She didn’t do too much and it felt like Ikeshita was maintaining the advantage mostly on her own merit, and especially during the home stretch, it was only in the desperate moments did Masami really interfere. 
The turning point was actually Ikeshita introducing a foreign object into the fray. This seemed to be the catalyst Yokota needed to dig deep and something snapped within her. She fought back, got hold of the object herself and then laid waste to Ikeshita, Masami and even the referee (at least the leniency went both ways). Finally Yokota was upping the aggression and doing what she needed to overcome her opponent and things were far more 50/50 as things rolled towards the finish. 
Once the countdown began it was clear we were heading for a draw, but the way they worked this I thought was perfect considering the finish here. Yokota, just within this match, grew a lot and changed her approach when required and Ikeshita still came off as a badass but clearly she knew that this was a close call by the end.
Sometimes it definitely goes overboard, but the weak referees and the constant numbers advantage the heels have in the promotion does stack the odds against the faces, but when they execute well and the face is able to succeed, it does deliver in a unique way, so I think that’s something to look out for in AJW’s booking approach moving forwards.