[1996-05-14-JWP] Rieko Amano vs Command Bolshoi

[Ma Stump Puller]

The culmination of Amano's rookie struggles against Bolshoi and her first major win is.....well it's clipped for one, so we only get about 8 minutes out of this. I imagine the length was close to the first two matches they had together (so the 10/15 mark) but who knows. The match is also kinda iffy. Bolshoi just spams 5 Uranage throws in the first showcased minute + a top rope dropkick, and Amano no sells to go into terrible forearms and a weird botched sequence that Bolshoi just flat-out refuses to try again so she does yet another Uranage for a near fall.

The above pretty much spells out the sheer roughness of the match. It's not pretty at a lot of points. Even when stuff comes out good (like Amano builds on the O'Connor Roll shtick from before with a cool middle rope version of the move to catch Bolshoi out after the two throw some stiff slaps to each other) it feels very herky-jerky and not at all smooth. This honestly makes the match better as a whole, especially given Amano's tourney has had her get wrecked two times over now by Bolshoi; she feels more desperate to finish things off as opposed to the first match where she was simply in the position of the rookie squashed without much thought put into it. Now that she knows Bolshoi can be taken to the brink, there's more of a confidence behind her big pushes and kickouts.

Bolshoi is equally as eager to get this over and done with, mind you. After a few minutes she's immediately into big moonsaults and top rope Uranage slams, extremely confident that she has her opponent completely scouted. She taunts both her and Ozaki at ringside, does multiple Jericho-style cocky pins, etc etc. She just doesn't really give a damn about potentially losing this, perfectly illustrated by throwing four big powerbombs in a row on Amano, getting a near fall with each, then letting go at the fourth one before she could've maybe finished this whole thing. At this point it's more of a lesson being taught than a match wrestled. She doesn't want to just win, she wants to win without any doubt. I guess you could put this up to the second pairing wherein Bolshoi basically won off a fluke submission counter.....knowing better that probably wasn't intended, yet it's still a great story beat to add in. 

Finish is super simple and plays off the second match again by having Amano counter a top rope Uranage with a Fujiwara armbar like before and Bolshoi similarly countering it with ease, only to get firmly trapped in a flash cross armbreaker out of nowhere. Bolshoi has zero warning of this happening and as such she has to abruptly tap-out much to her annoyance. There's some goofy ahh melodrama at Ozaki showing up and giving Amano a big hug that's a bit sappy however it's a nice bit to finish off Amano's struggles as a random rookie alongside this match. I'd probably say the second one is better purely off it having more footage and a more substantial formula (this sorta cuts to the chase, though that's by design). This has more action in turn while the second outing had that pretty bloody solid blade-job and a far more conditioned audience to really dig their nails into it. Is this still quite good? Definitely so, just not as much as I think it could've been.