Lioness Asuka v Jaguar Yokota

[Loss]

Lioness Asuka v Jaguar Yokota - 08/22/85 (AJW)

 

After watching the last match, this match left me cold. Perhaps I'll come back to it later, but my first instinct is to say that while it was a great match, it wasn't quite the classic it has been pimped to be. I enjoyed watching it, but compared to Devil/Chig, it's shallow. I'm impressed by how much offense Jaguar gives Asuka, considering that she's the babyface; the very beginning stages see Jaguar firmly in control, but after Asuka finds an opening, she keeps it for quite a while. Jag is the first to establish a strategy, targeting Asuka's leg, a plan she would later have thrown back at her. She's getting outwrestled in the early stages, but she keeps rallying back. Jaguar continues to go back to the leg every chance she gets though, eventually going into a great sequence where she applies a figure four and the teenage crowd comes unglued, rooting for their favorite to beat the odds. She does, but not without a major struggle first, where she attempts to reverse the figure four, only to have the reversal reversed, putting her back where she started. She tries to fight out of it, but is eventually left with no choice and reaches the ropes. At this point, Jag's leg has also been weakened by all the reversals, but not enough for Asuka to basically hulk up and stop selling the damage, performing an all out assault on the WWWA champ. Jaguar's comebacks are infinitely better than Asuka's, as she briefly regains control, but falls victim to Asuka's kicks in the end. After attempting to fight out of another leg hold, Yokota, like Asuka earlier, finally has no choice but to reach the ropes, but Asuka does her one better and drags her back to the center of the ring.

 

The match goes into the final stretch soon after, with no real transition from Lioness' control to the flurry of false finishes. They trade some exicting moves, with Jag finding small success here and there, but Asuka still strongly in control, throwing everything she has at her -- a running tombstone piledriver, an airplane spin immediately followed by a giant swing and finally the most brutal punishment of all. Asuka catches Yokota in a vertical suplex position, only to throw her all the way to the floor and follow her out with a suicide dive into a splash. It would appear that any chances Yokota has of retaining her title at this point are gone, but miraculously, she kicks out after being put back in the ring. Three different suplexes -- a slingshot suplex, a German suplex and even a straitjacket suplex -- aren't enough to put Jag away, as she continues to kick out. She finally wins by landing a belly-to-back suplex while grapevining the leg, a move that comes out of nowhere, which is just enough to retain her title.

 

There are two ways to look at this match. The first way is that Jaguar Yokota did a masterful job establishing Lioness Asuka as a worthy contender without actually dropping the title to her. She gave her the majority of the match and only won because she was lucky. The second way is that the finish totally contradicted all the work before it, that the vertical suplex face first to the floor followed by the suicide dive should have ended the match immediately and that everything thereafter was excess. I can see both schools of thought here, but between the two, I have to side with the latter view. Giving the challenger so much credibility is always a good thing, but the finish deserved a more prolonged build. Still, this match is incredibly exciting, and all the work on the way to the final destination is terrific.

 

****1/4

[goodhelmet]

This fucking rocks. We need to move quickly on the Reviews folder Loss.