Joshi Spotlight: AJW in Jan. 2000 (Toyota vs. Hotta for the Red Belt!)

AJW in JANUARY 2000:
* Here’s some stuff from a pair of Zenjo shows in January 3rd & 4th from Korakuen Hall! A double-whammy sees the Tag Champions defend their belts against a Veteran/Kid squad of Manami Toyota & Miho Wakizawa, then the Wacky showcase continues as she fights Kumiko Maekawa for the All Pacific Championship the next night! And then a big WWWA World Title defense as champion Yumiko Hotta defends against the only one in the company who could beat her- Toyota!

WWWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES:
BEST 2 of 3 FALLS:
TOMOKO WATANABE & KUMIKO MAEKAWA vs. MANAMI TOYOTA & MIHO WAKIZAWA:
(Jan. 3rd 2000)
* A bizarre tag title match, the Tag Champs end up fighting a Main Eventer and the World Title contender on a show the very next night… and newbie Wakizawa. I can’t imagine anyone thought Wacky’s team had a chance here (she’s way too green to have a hope against either champ), making this an odd “filler” bout. The champs are in blue tasseled gear, Toyota’s in red & gold, and Wacky’s got like… a red, white & yellow top with a belly cut-out and a white skirt attached. A weird combination of “ugly 1980s singlet” gear with modern stuff. It clashes.

FALL ONE: Toyota eggs on Wacky to dropkick the champs before the bell, then plancha them so Manami can add her Running Springboard Plancha. An octopus hold sets up a tag to Wakizawa, who’s all “YAY, EFFORT!” and does some falling clotheslines until Kumiko gets tired of her and kicks her in the face. Pump Kick flattens her and the kickout is soooo weak and soft. Wacky finally recovers enough to hit some sloppy rollups and literally hugs the corner after tagging out, so Manami hits a rolling cradle. Kumiko keeps slapping herself to “wake up” from the dizzying moves in a nice touch and finally face-kicks her and tags out. Tomoko can’t get her Screwdriver on Toyota, but boomerangs onto both opponents and ligerbombs Toyota out of a Manami Roll attempt. German Suplex & Moonsault get two-counts for Manami, but Wacky eats the mat on a splash and has to be saved after a lariat. She tries hard but overshoots on a tiger driver counter and weirdly hangs there after Kumiko’s Ax Kick until she collapses- Manami saves, but Kumiko REALLY cranks her (lol looks like she got her in the face) on another try, getting three at (7:04 of 17:07 shown).

FALL TWO: Wakizawa indeed appears to be dead between falls, so we’re JIP with Manami while Wacky tries to recover on the floor, and she misses a moonsault and eats an Ax Kick into Tomoko’s Screwdriver (one-armed ligerbomb) for two. Wacky finally un-dies and Germans Kumiko, but the champs stop a double-team only for Tomoko to lariat her own partner in what looked deliberate since they were outta position. Kumiko kicks out after a Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex (!), but misses an Ax Kick and gets hung up on the ropes, allowing a Doomsday Device JOCS to pin her at (1:58 of 6:15 shown)!

FALL THREE: JIP with Wacky falling on Tomoko out of her finisher and hitting her Fisherman’s Buster for two, Kumiko flinging back to save. Manami accidentally missile kicks Wacky, and Tomoko Screwdrivers her for two- Toyota saves. Wacky with another sloppy rookie rollup for two, and the Fisherman’s Buster does as well, then Kumiko rushes in with an Ax Kick to stun her. Toyoyta charges in and immediately gets whipped onto her head by Tomoko, and the Hellsmasher (high-angle tiger driver)/Ax Kick combo finishes Wakizawa at (2:09 of 2:59 shown). Tomoko gets on the mic afterwards to issue challenges, which lures out Las Cachorras Orientales, setting up a MASSIVE series that runs the whole year (I catch them wrestling three separate times!).

This more or less went the way you’d expect- Toyota can fight either champion, but Wakizawa just gets killed. She’s all energy and effort and zero ability at this point, at least being able to lean into that as part of her “rookie energy”, all cheering herself on and being SO eager even as she sloppily dives in on wrestlers and messes them up because she’s all limbs and doing off-kilter rollups and backslides & shit. What they have clipped was mostly showcasing her (such as it is), with her Fisherman’s Buster being a recurring near-finisher. Given this is January and I see she challenges for belts later on in the year, I’m guessing 2000 is “The Year of Miho Wakizawa Pushing” as they reassess people at the start of the year for pushes. Assessing the whole match is tricky because it’s essentially one decently-long fall and two 2-minute ones. Seemed okay but EXTREMELY sloppy- all the Wacky stuff was flailing around. Which can have a certain appeal and fits her rookie (well, uh… 4-5th year) status and lower level (it’s not like she has a real chance without luck).

Rating: **1/4 (seems perfectly fine, but losing more than half the match makes it hard to tell)

JAN. 4th:
* The following all takes place at a Korakuen Hall show the next night.

ZAP T vs. CHAPARRITA ASARI:
* A really weird one, as Tomoko Watanabe’s masked heel incarnation faces freelancer ASARI in a mismatch.

We’re shown random clips of them fighting, then ASARI hitting a plancha to the floor. She recovers slowly, and back in the ring Tomoko whips her off the corner with a NASTY German. ASARI comes back, but is tripped up by ZAP I (Kaoru Ito) and whipped around the stands for a while and buried in chairs. ASARI backflips out of the corner in a good visual to avoid a backdrop superplex, then hits a Super Rana for a nearfall- ZAP I bashes the ref with a stick to break up the pin. But ASARI flies off the top right into a Ligerbomb for two, only to counter a wheelbarrow to a flash-pin. ZAP T clobbers her with a lariat for two, takes another flash-pin (they mess it up but recover well), then bashes her with a shinai to stop a charge. Screwdriver gets a nearfall, and an EMPHATIC Hellsmasher crushes ASARI at (5:10 shown). JESUS the landings on that are always so terrifying. Match looks fine, but very “filler” and we only get part of it- ASARI slowly works through some counters but is mostly stunned out of her own running spots by Tomoko’s power advantage and/or cheating.

Rating: ** (clipped up it’s… shockingly equal to the prior match still, haha)

ALL PACIFIC TITLE:
KUMIKO MAEKAWA vs. MIHO WAKIZAWA:
* Kumiko is an upper-midcarder by this point, frequently holding the White Belt. Miho is way below her but they seem to be giving her a big push this year. But this is one of those “no way is this going to the kid” matches, probably meant more to showcase Wacky’s potential.

We see some big Kumiko front kicks in the clipped stuff, but we’re JIP with Wacky reversing one with a leghold, then a nearfall off a flash-pin. Her falling clothesline spam gets two, but she faceplants off a flying splash and gets German’d for two. A spinkick gets two, but Wakizawa counters her to a German. failing on the bridge and deciding to just go right to a methodical missile dropkick. But Kumiko just starts absorbing her shots and kills her with a kick to the face after halting on a whip. Wacky gets another last-second flash-pin for two, then a perfect plex, but tries to whip Kumiko off the ropes and eats another big pumping front kick to the face. Wacky kicks out of that and hits a quick Fisherman’s Buster for a near-fall and Kumiko looks dead. But once she’s picked up, she knees out of another Buster and hits a dramatic Ax Kick, freezing Wacky in place. A shitty rolling kick hits, but Kumiko, realizing it was weaksauce, Ax Kicks her again… for two! Good reaction for the good-ol’ “kicked out of a sure thing” finish. An Ax Kick to the shoulder finishes at (5:12 shown).

This was a tricky one- nobody would have bought Wakizawa winning, so they throw in near-falls to “trick” the fans. Kinda worked, as that’s the only way it was ever gonna happen, and her Fisherman’s Buster reversal is a pretty good way to draw some good reactions. And then Kumiko throws one of those kick flurries where every other one looks great, letting Wacky get the “OHH!” kickout that nearly ALWAYS works in these one-sided match-ups.

Rating: ** (looked like another solid one-sided contest)

uh, spoiler alert.

WWWA WORLD TITLE:
YUMIKO HOTTA vs. MANAMI TOYOTA:
* So the #1 and #2 wrestlers in Zenjo battle for the Red Belt yet again. Both have aged and slowed considerably, and have the weirdest chemistry ever- having either phenomenal Match of the Year Contenders or complete messes that make you wonder what world they were on. Hotta as World Champion is always interesting, as she’s by far the most credible wrestler in the company left, to the point where outside of Toyota, only the stars of other promotions are believable challengers. Zenjo is uhhhhhh not so good at building up contenders at the worst possible times. Like if they’d spent 1995-97 building up Ito & Watanabe as challengers they’d have been in a way better spot in 1999. Hotta’s in black with white as normal, and Toyota’s red gear now has a lot more fanciness to it, like a poofy golden sleeve and gold accents on the chest.

Both are ready to charge as soon as the bell rings, and Toyota runs straight into a rolling kick! But Hotta immediately goes for a quick Tiger Driver, gets backslid, and swings into a Toyota German and has to stop to avoid a knee. Good opening. Toyota manages some missile kicks and then slows it down with basic stretching, and responds to a test of strength by biting Hotta and hitting a JB Angels armdrag into her “tied in the ropes” dropkick to the spine. She hits a Japanese Ocean (cross-armed) Suplex to counter a whip and more resting into her Muta lock, a surfboard thingie, then dropkicks her in the back again as we’re running through all her starter stuff. Manami bites her and ducks an enzuigiri, then does her insane missile dropkick suicida and drags Hotta up the aisles of Korakuen to clap for herself and do a somersault dive off the entranceway. lol I know I saw someone do a spot like that super-recently- I wonder if Toyota was like “me too!”. Extra points for walking along the sloped sides before doing it, which looked like it could have gone REALLY sideways. That gets a pretty good reaction, so… of course Toyota does another one. That’s our Manami, haha!

And after 10 straight minutes of Manami offense, she misses a moonsault in the ring but gets a Rolling Cradle. Hotta counters another moonsault and Toyota has to missile kick her and FINALLY gets the Moonsault for two. Hotta sits out of the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex attempt and gets one of those swiping kicks, then finally gets her Tiger Driver after two attempts in this match, openly whipping Toyota over to “kick out” (lol did she nail her for real?). Another couple counters sees Hotta charge out with her rolling kick, then miss a second so Manami (selling the knee) does a double-hammerlock suplex for two. Hotta jujigatames out of another JOCS attempt, and a Pyramid Driver (cross-armed ligerbomb) gets two. The Caribbean Splash (crossarmed super-german) gets the same. Pyramid Driver #2 also fails, and Toyota tries the “doesn’t hurrrrrrt!” thing, but like… kinda unconvincingly because she does it super-slow and almost appears to be lying to Hotta to rip on her, haha. or she’s just tired! Speaking of, Hotta just stands there looking defeated and casually turns around after eating a gut-kick so Manami can hit her with the Pumphandle German for two. Hotta powers up… but casually does it again and Toyota has to actually deadlift her for the next P-German. oh god, just go home, already! Hotta again powers up, and responds to a slap with a big one for two, then tries a Ligerbomb, Toyota backdrop-rolling her into a pin. Hotta kicks out and puts Manami up top, but Manami does her evasive slide into the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex, then rolls FURTHER to hold Hotta down- three (20:51)! Manami Toyota is the new WWWA Champion! Hotta is suddenly like “GOOD JOB!” and shakes her hand and happily leaves as Manami looks dead to the world and can barely react to her third title win.

woof- that was a LONG one, and almost 90/10 in favor of Manami. That’s the weirdest Hotta performance I’ve ever seen- 90% of her matches are based around “Hotta is Tough”, with her refusing to sell unless pressed and usually dominating the first ten minutes of a match, so it’s wild to see her just casually get her ass kicked during the entire match, slowly ambling around and eating stuff. Until she’s completely bagged at the end, which makes her earlier lack of offense and effort look even worse, because now it’s HER TIME to do stuff and she can barely manage anything. So it’s just Manami splurging out her entire moveset on Sleepy Yumiko, hitting unanswered move after unanswered move and largely not even having to deal with lethal kicks or submissions (usually Hotta’s go-to counters and big possible-enders). So it looked like Hotta was mostly disinterested and defeated while defending Champion, more or less giving up and letting Toyota beat her, lol. I wonder if she just ran outta cardio some time during the beating, leaving her with nothing to come at Manami with once it was “her turn”, cuz usually the Zenjo cadence is to allow someone to control most of the match only if they’re losing, so they can get some cred/assuage their IRL ego. But this… it’s hard to rate a match highly if only ONE person is wrestling, you know?

Rating: **1/4 (more or less an extended squash. Pretty good execution throughout until both were just wiped out, Hotta in particuar looking distinterested and tired all match)

Soooooooooo that was a bunch of matches! Yeah, they’re cutting up a lot of these for TV, giving us some less-illustrative matches but showing what’s going on… and then they go a full 20 minutes for two bored veterans slogging through a World Title change in a major disappointment. The “Let’s Showcase Miho Wakizawa!” note appears clear… but she’s really not any good. Which is unfortunate because I declared on my last “Year-End” report that she was gonna be my new “Inexplicable Favorite” thanks to her raw effort and energy, but she’s SUPER sloppy and her shit isn’t credible yet, so as of yet it looks like other wrestlers are attempting to deal with her flailiness.