[1999-01-17-GAEA Side Winder] Meiko Satomura vs Rieko Amano

[Ma Stump Puller]

This for a good while was only available as a chopped up match that removed the majority of the starting grappling exchanges, which for a match like this you'd kinda want to see out of these two lol. Thankfully the full version has now shown up and not shockingly is very good. 

Mainly what works about this match (as well as any involving this two, really) is that they compliment each other well. Amano I've found does her best work when using her technical wizardry first and foremost, mainly in give-and-take formulas where she mostly has heelish tendencies during her control spots, attacking weak limbs like a injured shoulder or a bad leg as the main lead-in for everything else on the table. Meiko around this point excelled at emoting/selling, working from under a more confident opponent alongside throwing out crazy bombs to get the maximum amount of action. You can see how that pairing works before this even started. 

The first 5/10 minutes is mostly dedicated to grappling, mainly Amano using Meiko's bandaged arm to do some cool submission spots. The bit where she counters a toe-hold by forcing Meiko's head down to pop up her shoulder for a double-wrist lock in mount was really cool, not anything you'd see today at all or done that smoothly anyway. The grappling isn't insanely complex (Meiko was never particularly known for her mat-work to be fair) but is carried well by the pacing, with both getting the chance to slap on holds and sell pretty strongly, though Meiko stands out as the far greater of the two when it came to just communicating a mix of pain/frustration. It bubbles through when she's trying to use her bad shoulder for stuff and clearly hurting. Stuff like the Boston Crab for instance; typically only dangerous for rookies; is put over as much more dangerous than otherwise because Meiko can't use her arms to push herself up (which is the usual kayfabed way to deal with that kind of move) so she's forced instead to slowly crawl to the ropes. 

The middle portion diversifies by throwing in OZ Acad interfering and some outside brawling. This stuff is fairly fine yet not my cup of tea all things considered. I don't think it's done bad or anything though and the crowd are clearly very into it from the get-go so I can't moan too much lol. Meiko's improvised brawling with her throwing water bottles and buckets was funny though. They do pick up the intensity well as Meiko throws some convincingly solid strikes (including a shockingly sick ankle lock counter to a roundhouse while on the top rope!!!) and really gets the crowd invested in her comebacks. In turn they amp up the interference to establish that while Amano is fairly good, she just doesn't have the edge in striking that her opponent does, forcing her to exploit the arm more. One bit they had here was like her doing a underhook suplex into butterfly lock which looked absolutely nasty, shocked no one tried to steal that.

Last third is mostly focused around the threat of Amano's many armbreaker transitions, which was a treat for someone like myself who had a good idea of what they were going to use (the one off the top rope, the standing one) with a couple of interesting changes and mix-ups that honestly I hadn't seen before. They build up the interference even more to the point of them basically just turning into a mob hurling chairs around. Satomura's mastery of doing these sort of chaotic finishing stretches where there are counters on counters into big moves is well documented but it definitely shines here, with her playing dead for submissions before somehow almost managing to hit the DVD anyway. It's the big death-move of the match and clearly the one she needs to hit yet every attempt just never seems to work properly, with loads of teases and cute transitions into it that ultimately never get enough time to breathe before the next counter.

Alas there is one botch where they seem to fuck up the timing on the ending as the ref counts Meiko out during a arm triangle. The bell is even rung and then they awkwardly just continue anyway. It's bizarre and doesn't add anything to the match bar being confusing. Other than that it was basically next to perfect as we get a couple of big roundhouses by Meiko into a huge underhook for the symbolic three count (interference again rip) before Amano eventually reverses out of one too many bombs and manages to win with a rolling armbreaker. 

As I said above this match works primarily because the two involved are great matches for the other; every one of their matches is good to great, this being their best naturally given the fantastic blend of tense grappling with a ton of drama to get the crowd from fairly cold to being all over this by the end. I wouldn't say in terms of Amano matches that this was as up there as Yoshida '04/Bolshoi '02/Hyuga '02 as all of those are just a bit more focused on the technical side of things, a bit cleaner, a bit more varied etc. Top 10? Yeah sure, definitely.