Joshi Spotlight — page 10

It’s another one-match Joshi Spotlight! The only thing I could find from Aug. 22nd 1997 was this bout between four of AJW’s top stars, only two days after Kyoko lost the WWWA Title to Yumiko Hotta. Come see LCO churn out ANOTHER insane banger of a match!

LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda, w/ Saya Endo) vs. MANAMI TOYOTA & KYOKO INOUE:
* It’s another clash of “LCO vs. The People Who Hate Them”, this time with the entire list narrowed down from “everyone” to “Manami & Kyoko”. Kyoko & Aja just beat LCO earlier in the month, and this is another non-title match. LCO are in the usual purple & white gear, Kyoko’s in rainbow gear & Manami’s in black & gold. Manami vs. Shimoda matches tend to be an extra level of psychotic, since for some reason Manami only accesses the “tear their hair off” aspect of her personality when her ex-partner’s in the ring.

AJW BUDOKAN QUEENS- BRIGHTNESS:
(Aug. 20th 1997)
* And now we come to the last great hurrah of AJW, as the promotion more or less falls apart by we get two major matches- a “Graduation Match” of Aja Kong as she takes on her craziest opponent and best in-ring competitor, Manami Toyota just before Aja leaves AJW for good, and then it’s the World Title match, as Kyoko Inoue defends the Red Belt against Yumiko Hotta, one of the last holdouts as a bankrupt AJW loses almost all their big stars! Despite a year of pretty poor business, this one appears to have packed them in a fair bit, as AJW *gasp!* SHOWS THE UPPER DECKS! Aja is definitely a big draw of it here, as she’s already announced her impending departure.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand on this show (not aired here) Kyoko gets on the house mic in the opening ceremony and announces she is QUITTING THE PROMOTION, taking a few stars with her to form a new company! AJW management is understandably furious, and the heat for her World Title match tonight is therefore destroyed cuz like… everyone in the arena knows what’s gonna happen. haha, well serves ’em right for not paying her.

AJA KONG GRADUATION MATCH:
MANAMI TOYOTA vs. AJA KONG:
(Aug. 20th 1997)
* It’s Manami/Aja! One last time in a major contest (the others are far later and way past the prime of either)- the two have had more than one ***** match together, so hype would be high for this one. Aja’s in green & black and Manami’s in black with a gold chestpiece.

JWP PURE-HEART FESTIVAL:
(Aug. 17th 1997)
* A big JWP show at Korakuen Hall happens on August 17th, featuring a day show and a night show (with everyone wrestling on both shows). If I’m reading the date right, this is filmed literally the day after Plum Mariko was killed in the ring by Mayumi Ozaki’s Ligerbomb. If so, HOLY SHIT.

This one also features the Retirement Match of Candy Okutsu, as her real-life best friend Hikari Fukuoka defends the JWP Title against her, but can’t hold it together for the match- it’s a pretty unique display. How many matches do you see where one person is sobbing the entire time?

Note that there’s a Day Show and Night Show, but I can only find one Day Show match.

DAY SHOW:

TOMOKO KUZUMI & SARI OSUMI (JWP) vs. COMMAND BOLSHOI (JWP) & EMI MOTOKAWA (IWA):
* It’s lowercard madness, with the best of JWP’s rookies (Kuzumi) teaming up with brand-new rookie Sari Osumi against Bolshoi (a midcarder at this point) and the future Emi Sakura, who wrestles for IWA in its tiny women’s division at this point. I imagine Bolshoi’s team is taking this rather easily. Kuzumi’s in neon splatterpaint in an “Idol” outfit (all the cut-outs & fringe is a dead giveaway), Osumi’s in the most hideous black singlet with green leaf designs ever, Bolshoi’s in the same gear as last match & Emi’s in orange/black.

They both abuse Osumi for a while with basic stuff, and she reverses a whip to escape only for Kuzumi to now eat a beating. Bolshoi resthold, Emi flying splash & surfboard, and then Bolshoi misses a moonsault but lands on her feet, then slingshots onto both rookies, only for Kuzumi to do the same to HER team. Bolshoi quickly gets a German, and we’re clipped to Osumi eating more punishment. She gets a pop for kicking out of a rock bottom and escapes after a while, then Kuzumi hits four backbreaker variations on Bolshoi for two. Bolshoi counters up top and moonsaults Kuzumi for two, then Osumi stops a double-team and Kuzumi gets a butterfly superplex- Emi has to save. Kuzumi charges herself up, but is horrified when Osumi tags herself in and is too far away for a top-rope move so just runs up for a shitty splash pin that Emi half-heartedly breaks up. Emi runs into Bolshoi by accident and the kids set up a Doomsday Device, but Bolshoi & Osumi fuck up what was supposed to be a rana reversal and Bolshoi just punches her for the pin at (9:29 of 13:38 shown). Oh come on- at least improvise a better finish!

Boring filler match with Osumi just being abused and even Tomoko not getting to do anything. Bolshoi just kind of ate both of them alive, possibly in anticipation of their attempt to make her a bigger star. Kuzumi got a good run with her backbreakers and top-rope suplex, which means there’s a lot of hope for her. Osumi was sucky but that’s expected in her first year- her size was an issue for Bolshoi (Osumi is only 5’4″ but way taller and bulkier than Bolshoi), who should really be better than this at this point. The finisher is also on Bolshoi- she didn’t get enough elevation to spin herself around Osumi, getting her leg caught on the shoulder and then falling on her ass. Also, who does that spot with a rookie?

Rating: 1/2* (some okay stuff from Kuzumi but awful otherwise- like ten minutes of rookie beatings)

MAYUMI OZAKI (JWP) vs. YUMI FUKAWA (AJW):
* Ozaki takes on AJW’s newest wannabe Idol, Yumi Fukawa, in an interpromotional match! Few are better at getting something out of a green opponent than Ozaki, so this will be interesting. Fukawa’s in a very sparkly white outfit with blue on it- clearly someone is putting a lot of effort into her gear.

AJW (Aug. 8th 1997):

And now it’s time for a throwback- the very first column I posted to this site was a review of this match. I e-mailed this review to Scott, figuring if he didn’t want a Joshi column I’d just ship it to 411 or whatever, and he approved it (I’m 99% sure he just did it without checking, lol). And so now I’ve finally reached the point in my timeline where this match sits, so I can re-post it.

So come and read the recap of maybe the wildest and greatest of all the garbage brawls in history! This time with less ALL CAPS BECAUSE OF HUGE MOVES OMG YOU GUYS!

This also features a Semi-Final for the Japan Grand Prix 1997 (mostly unavailable on YouTube- a big channels I pull from got deleted so I don’t have much else)- Manami Toyota vs. Kaoru Ito in another great performance!

JAPAN GRAND PRIX (Semi-Finals):
MANAMI TOYOTA vs. KAORU ITO:
* It’s a big one! Ito has been getting the “Jesus Push” all year, proving nigh-unpinnable all of a sudden as AJW does the classic “OH SHIT- We forgot to push anyone to the next level!” thing (or this is just how they naturally do business every January) and then Ito is randomly impossible to hurt and beating Main Eventers. She drew with Aja, and then pinned Manami (who had only lost the 3WA Title a month or so before)! Then she went to a 60-minute broadway with Kyoko Inoue, who vacated the belt and beat Ito for it in a title match. So now this one has real drama and an “either can win” atmosphere. Manami’s in black with white fringe and Ito’s in the white with black & orange fire.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- AKEMI TORISU:
Billed Height & Weight: 5’5″ 220 lbs.+
Career Length: 1990-1992

-Yeah, it’s a “Short Article” week, so I figured I’d do a bio of one of the failed nobody joshi of the ’90s! Akemi Torisu is barely remembered by anyone, and those who do just recall this giant stiff. Worse still, AJW put a bunch of work into her, but it never panned out and she retired young, so it was all a waste.

The idea was… well it was doomed to failure. All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (AJW) had a legit bad-ass who could do shoot matches in Bat Yoshinaga (a short but burly karate expert), and Akemi was brought in more or less as her own personal jobber. But like… in real life, as these matches were meant to add variety to the shows. Akemi had a background in karate and so actually skipped the typical “audition process” for AJW and was hired on directly to fight with Bat and be a rival for her.

However, she struggled with her weight and just didn’t pick up wrestling (granted, she didn’t have much time to do it) and faded away in a hurry. And she was AWFUL, too- even two years into her career, she moved like she was made of wet bags of cement, with most of her offense consisting of running into people. She was too big in the wrong sort of way- Aja Kong & Bull Nakano were big but could bump and choose when and how to sell or get moved, while Torisu appeared to have difficulty being moved about at all. TO BE FAIR, she was green as grass and was chosen without having to audition- there was no chance she’d have been good in only two years.

GAEA JAPAN (July 21st):
* So only two days after a major GAEA show propping up all their rookies in huge, hard-fought matches, here’s another show! Hey, why did their rookies get shitloads of injuries early on and most of them retire early, again? This one is interesting because it features a Pancrase Rules match where Toshiyo Yamada, more familiar with “Shoot-Style” wrestling, goes up against KAORU, who is the opposite sort of worker and has to adapt. Then it’s Chigusa Nagayo & a 3rd-year against two other 3rd-years in a “What have you learned?” match, and finally an interesting one where Yamada dresses up as Akira Hokuto’s masked identity and wrestles a completely opposite type of match herself. I mean, you don’t see THAT very often, and hell- it’s an impressive performance!

PANCRASE RULES:
KAORU vs. TOSHIYO YAMADA:
* Okay, so KAORU is wearing the GAEA kickpads Chigusa gifted her a few shows ago, so there’s continuity here. An all-new look for her, too, as she’s dropped the one-piece singlet look for a sports top and long shorts, plus has much shorter hair. And she’s up against the new big star of GAEA in Yamada, fresh from AJW. Both are in black in the same gear and OH, this is that Pancrase Rules match I read about on Quebrada.net! Okay, then. So Pancrase was a then-popular shootfight promotion, which a VERY controversial amount of works (those within it deny that there were many, but the fact that there were any AT ALL throws absolutely everything into question)… so this is fought like it’s UFC but it’s a work. Oh, and you get four rope-breaks before you lose.

GAEA JAPAN- THE SECOND JUNIOR ALL-STAR:
(June 19th 1997)
* A big GAEA show from June 19th, showcasing a lot of their rookies, and those from other companies. Interpromotional Rookie Mayhem abounds! Toshie Uematsu defends the WCW Cruiserweight Title against AJW’s Yoshiko Tamura, in the most effort either has shown to this level! Several people have REALLY good tag team matches while you get to see others have the same type of match with way less experience, so you can weigh just how much such things count, haha. But really, it’s like several versions of the “Flair/Steamboat of Inexperienced Rookie Matches”.

This ends up being a MONSTER review, oddly, because there’s just so many damn matches on it, and many are quite long.

SAKURA HIROTA, RINA ISHII & HIROMI KATO (GAEA Japan) vs. NANA FUJIMURA, AYA KOYAMA & MIHO KAWASAKI (Big Japan):
* hahah, good lord! BIG JAPAN of all companies had a women’s division! Mostly known for its deathmatches, Big Japan was Indie Sleaze personified from everything I’ve seen. It now sends its rookies (whom I’ve never seen before) to wrestle GAEA’s most minor recurring wrestlers. Sakura’s in pink, Rina’s in orange, Kato’s in black, Nana’s in black (but with armbands!), Toyama’s in floral-printed white & Miho’s in baggy red pants and a white t-shirt.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- UTAKO HOZUMI:
Billed Height & Weight: 5’2″ 117 lbs.
Career Length: 1989-1994

-One of the “forgotten wrestlers”, Utako Hozumi has the bad luck of wrestling for Ladies Legend Pro Wrestling (LLPW), the least-hyped and popular women’s companies of 1990s Japan. Performing as an “Idol”-type wrestler, she was fairly undersized and not that experienced, and never quite got out of the midcard before she retired.

Having watched a lot of her stuff, she was… fine. She needed to be carried against anyone good but she could hold up her end of a match and at least TRIED to have a character, unlike a lot of others in her company who were just kind of “there”. Mike Lorefice once bemoaned how “Hozumi is one of the marketable talents LLPW managed to completely squander. One would think a league where none of the stars had any sex appeal might do someone with one of the best looking women ever to compete, especially since she was also a good wrestler. Hozumi was a better worker than Cuty Suzuki, who was so crucial to JWP becoming the more watched promotion once the original league splintered into two.”

GAEA JAPAN- PERFECT GAME:
(May 5th 1997)
* It’s another GAEA Japan show from the Champ Forum TV show, but only two matches from it ended up on their YouTube channel. We miss what’s apparently a pretty good Akira Hokuto vs. KAORU match, possibly ending their feud that was materializing earlier in the year. Mike Lorefice says it was Hokuto’s best match of the year, even though “KAORU is just a spot machine”.

Following that, it’s some stuff from early July, though the next review later this week will sport the full July 19th show- a pretty big one for GAEA.

CHIGUSA NAGAYO vs. KAORU:
* The two top originals in GAEA fight once again! Actually they were hesitant to run this for a while at first because they were the only two actual stars there, but now that Hokuto is here it’s probably fine. Chigusa appears to have more professionally-made gear than her kinda messy usual- more streamlined tonight with the black & red and the gold stars. KAORU’s in white.

JWP IN MAY 1997:
* So “1997- The Year Joshi Was Cursed” is assuredly a thing, as not only does AJW go bankrupt, but JWP becomes one of the only companies to have an active wrestler die of an injury in the ring. This is three matches featuring what was going on in Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling in 1997! All with the standard “gotta go to 20+ minutes” JWP effect, but there’s good effort throughout, including a big Dream Match as Jaguar Yokota & Devil Masami form an ’80s Superteam up against Dynamite Kansai & Candy Okutsu!

Also, tragically, this is the last Plum Mariko match ever recorded, as she wrestles in a very good tag match alongside Cutie Suzuki against the JWP Tag Champions, Hikari Fukuoka & Devil.

And AEW fans might get a kick out of seeing AEW star Emi Sakura in her rookie years as she joins a trios match!

DYNAMITE KANSAI, SARI OSUMI & EMI MOTOKAWA (IWA Japan) vs. CANDY OKUTSU, COMMAND BOLSHOI & TOMOKO MIYAGUCHI:
(May 10th 1997)
* It’s an interesting trios match, with the former Ace teaming with two barely-trained jobbers against Candy & Bolshoi, who are way beneath Kansai but far above the jobbers, and Miyaguchi (the future Ran Yu-Yu, which I keep having to remind myself). Also Emi, currently a second-year, is the future “Emi Sakura” and is currently an IWA-Japan wrestler. The psychology here will be interesting, as Kansai can annihilate anyone here, but her partners are weaksauce and can easily be beaten by any of the three opponents. Kansai’s in black w/ neon yellow, Sari’s in a jobber swimsuit with green leaves on dark green, Emi’s in black & orange (with a sorta-skirt), Candy’s in black, Bolshoi’s in an extremely elaborate pink/blue/black bodysuit & Miyaguchi’s in white with red.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- COMBAT TOYODA:
Real Name: Noriyo Toyoda
Billed Height & Weight: 5’6″ 195 lbs.
Career Length: 1986-88 (let go from AJW), 1990-1996 (FMW)

-Megumi Kudo’s great rival and partner, Combat Toyoda is the OTHER “Good Female FMW Wrestler”, and the most unfortunate thing about her is her entire career runs the length of Aja Kong’s, who did exactly what she did but was better in every way because Aja’s one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, while Combat was merely “very good”. But Combat herself has a match many would consider *****- and in her RETIREMENT match- the No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch against Kudo herself!

As the other big female star in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW), Combat was a perfect rival to Kudo, who was pretty, slender and sympathetic. A big, mean powerhouse, Toyoda could launch people around, defiantly no-sell, and believably crush opposition. Combat was really good as the “Monster”-style worker, particularly because she had one of the most important things a Monster needs: SELLING ABILITY. Underrated since by all rights, Monsters are defined by the difficulty in getting them to sell at all, but it’s the timing of said selling that makes it work. Combat was really good at no-selling, but only up to a point- it’s when you start selling the fourth and fifth attack that the fans start to react, as even by ignoring the first couple, you’ve “put over” your opponent by going “HOLY SHIT- that one actually hurt!” to their last shot. She doesn’t just gobble people up- like the best Monsters, she eats offense and sells when it’s time to, and makes it look like her opponent has a chance.

It’s time for another Joshi Spotlight, this one a bit of a flashback, as I take a look again at Megumi Kudo’s final run. Here, it’s a pair of Shinobu Kandori matches I missed, as they have a regular one to set up a bloody No-Ropes Barbed Wire Deathmatch shortly before Kudo hangs it up! I also found a compilation of Kudo matches from FMW & LLPW, as she faces Yasha Kurenai and does a tag bout against Rumi Kazama & Utako Hozumi!

MEGUMI KUDO (FMW) vs. SHINOBU KANDORI (LLPW):
(FMW, 12/11/1996)
* Here’s a Battle of the Aces, as Kudo takes on LLPW’s Shinobu Kandori, whose super-shooter aura used to be uncontested- this could have real Hokuto/Kandori potential given how good Kudo is at psychology. Kandori’s got blonde hair and a purple singlet on, while Kudo’s in the black one-legged get-up.

Korakuen Hall has featured a lot of great tag matches over the years, but not a lot of ones where someone gets thrown off the goddamn balcony!

AJW TWO DAY RIOT:
(June 18th 1997)
* It’s time for more AJW! However, much of this show is missing from YouTube, but at least I got the old 3WA Tag Title match from my Tomoko Watanabe spotlight! And that one’s an all-timer tag match that establishes the threat of current LCO, as they lay waste to the Tag Champions and one of them even falls off the balcony of Korakuen Hall! This is the day after the preceding show I reviewed, meaning some of these people are putting on ****+ matches two nights in a row. There’s also one hell of a sell-job from Manami Toyota as she’s brutalized by Yumiko Hotta & Kaoru Ito, then fires back with some ridiculous potato shots as SOMETHING is definitely going on.

It’s important to note that by this point, according to Evito-X, the talent hadn’t been paid in at least a month. We’re not long from the bankruptcy here- about two months, and they start losing wrestlers before that. So this is one of the last big “Full AJW Roster” big shows left!

ALL JAPAN WOMEN’S TWO-DAY RIOT:
(June 17th 1997)
* It’s time for more AJW! We hit the middle of 1997, and though business is down, the CRAZINESS is afoot, as Las Cachorras Orientales have reunited and set the company on fire with banger after banger after banger! Come see LCO vs. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada as the now main event heel duo actually make MANAMI bleed and show just how much mayhem they can fit into a basic tag match! Also it’s the WWWA Decision Match of Kyoko Inoue vs. Kaoru Ito for the vacant Red Belt!

The YouTube videos for most of this have been axed between when I reviewed it and when I posted this, but I found the Class of ’87 Clash up above there.

CMLL WORLD WOMEN’S TITLE:
MARIKO YOSHIDA vs. RIE TAMADA:
* Okay, this one’s a bit weird. The CMLL Women’s World Title is largely a trophy belt created in Mexico for AJW’s women to use, but is occasionally traded to Mexican talent like Lady Apache. But Akira Hokuto won it as the masked “Reina Jabuki” until late 1996, when she was stripped of it for appearing on WCW Nitro to do a quick job in the Women’s Title Tournament (which of course Akira won… but not as Reina). Apache won the belt but vacated it herself, and Mariko won it in Feb. 1997, and is now using it as a trophy. ie. AJW realizes that they have something in Yoshida, but not enough to like… give her an IMPORTANT belt, so she has this and defends it. Like when Manami had the IWA Title in 1992.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm5y0yCoivA

BISON AND SOUL:
(Jd’, 1997)
* So this is some retrospective on Bison Kimura’s career, and boy it’d be well-timed because she retires in only a few months due to injury. First, we see her joining Dump Matsumoto’s Atrocious Alliance in its later days, using “evil heel eyeshadow” and teaming with a young Aja Kong. She joins Bull Nakano’s crew when Dump leaves, gaining a signature weapon with her tonfa rods. She & Aja form Jungle Jack and feud with Bull, becoming a legendary tag team and winning the WWWA Tag Belts, but Aja turns on her and slaughters her way to the World Title alone. Bison temporarily retires (probably forced out by AJW management) and later joins the new company Jd’ as its signature star.

She wins a variety of interpromotional matches in JD’s main events, but does a quick job to JWP’s Dynamite Kansai in 11 minutes via an armbar. She rallies back with a win over FMW’s Combat Toyoda via moonsault… and Combat gets the win back in home FMW territory, and Manami Toyota beats Bison, too. Then she fights Lioness Asuka- I thought I reviewed this one, but it’s an other bout they had and OH GOD THAT RUNTIME:

BISON KIMURA vs. LIONESS ASUKA:
(JD’, 5/2/1996)
* Asuka’s in black & white, while Bison’s in yellow & white.

Oh fart- they deleted the video before I could post the review! You’ll just have to take my word for it then!

AJW TV (May 11th 1997):
* It’s finally time more more AJW stuff! This time we get a 1:22:00 TV show. This show is a really interesting one from a booking perspective, as MANAMI TOYOTA AND TOSHIYO YAMADA team up again, as the former champs for a huge chunk of 1992-95 come calling for the current champs, Tomoko & Kumiko! Though it’s non-title. I don’t know how much drama this would have had at the time (Yamada is donezo as a threat) but it’s super-interesting for me. Also the WWWA Champion Kyoko Inoue takes on Kaoru Ito, in what’s likely a match to establish just how high-tier Ito is with her new push- she tied with Aja and BEAT Manami Toyota, so in a sense she’s a worthy challenger… as much as she has a snowball’s chance in hell with this one.

Also, we get the return of JUNGLE JACK, as Aja Kong & Bison Kimura re-team to take on another old-school team, Takako Inoue & Yumiko Hotta. They’re in the Nagoya Arena, which has blackened out nearly EVERYTHING- the signs of a really dying fanbase.

We start with a goofy pair of TV hosts taking us to an AJW arena show. The guy ogles Yumi Fukawa’s new bikini photobook while she does the “hide her mouth” shy laugh (they were selling Fukawa photobooks and not MITA photobooks? No wonder they went bankrupt in 1997!), then knock on a door and Aja Kong comes up behind them and starts swatting the dude with papers, then the photobook.

“The pain of barbed wire matches is beyond imagination, but when I think of the harm that she has done to us- Tsuchiya bullying rookies and forcing Combat (Toyoda) to consider retirement, I could overcome the fear with anger and a sense of responsibility.”
-A very calm, placid all-timer of a babyface promo.

31 Days of Move Origins #5 – Megumi Kudo's Kudo Driver (Vertabreaker)
byu/BrokenMasterpiece inSquaredCircle

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- MEGUMI KUDO:
Real Name: Megumi Kudo (married as Megumi Takayama)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’4″ 132 lbs.
Career Length: 1986-88 (retired/let go early), 1990-1997 (FMW)

-Interestingly, among the biggest stars in the history of women’s wrestling didn’t wrestle for All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling much at all, but was the superstar mega-babyface of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, acting as a female version of their dominant Ace, Atsushi Onita. Kudo had actually started with AJW (the same graduating class as Aja Kong, in fact), but retired young and was later hand-picked to be the center of FMW’s women’s division, mostly made up of Kudo and fellow babyfaces against an army of evil, merciless heels right out of the ’80s- so it was “nice, normal girls” vs. “facepaint-wearing Nazi harridans”, which Kudo’s professional training backing up a division of mostly horrendous workers with the barest idea of what they were doing. And she was SO GOOD that FMW maintained a very nice run of ***-ish women’s matches at the top spot despite her & Combat Toyoda being the only two women in the company worth a damn in the ring.

And like… remember the Hurricane? And his crazy finisher the Vertebreaker? It was invented by Megumi Kudo- called the “Kudo Driver”. A convoluted spinning  set-up into one of the more profound neck-bumps in wrestling.

MEGUMI KUDO- QUEEN OF THE DEATH MATCHES:
* So Megumi Kudo is set to retire at this point in my timeline, so I figured I’d finally review one of those Kudo Compilations that shows up on YouTube from time to time. I hear FMW stuff gets stricken down all the time, and it’s almost never around when I want to review it, but I’ll try this one out.

BARBED WIRE STICK MATCH:
LIONESS ASUKA & SHARK TSUCHIYA vs. BISON KIMURA & MEGUMI KUDO:
(FMW Winning Road 1997)
* This one features a pair of JD’/FMW teams, as JD’ Ace Lioness Asuka teams with FMW’s top female heel against Kudo the Ace and Bison Kimura, whom JD’ was using as a common main eventer. Bison’s in khaki gear this time, and Kudo’s & Shark are in jeans and a black shirts- Asuka’s in all black.

JWP- LIFE IN THE BATTLE (April 8th, 1997):
* Here it comes- a major JWP show! Their online content is not up to snuff from 1995-97 sadly, so I feel like there’s a LOT of stuff I’ve missed out on. For example, even the disparate stuff that’s shown up on Rico Kasai’s YouTube channel has been very sparing for Hikari Fukuoka’s matches, and they’ve been building her up into a credible World Title challenger all this time! And here it is- the show where the colossal Hikari vs. Kansai match takes place for the JWP Openweight Title! An absolute banger and one of the best joshi matches from this time period!

Matches We Miss:
Tomoko Miyaguchi d. Sari Osumi (9:47): Osumi only lasts a year in the business.
Command Bolshoi, Devil Masami & Plum Mariko d. Candy Okutsu, Tomoko Kuzumi & Tomoko Miyaguchi (20:47): … man, they saddled Candy with two green rookies against Devil & Plum’s team? Crazy. And 20 minutes!

CUTIE SUZUKI vs. KANAKO MOTOYA:
* Motoya, still pretty green, gets to be demolished by Cutie Suzuki, who at this point is kind of just in the “still kicking” phase of her career. She still lasts until late ’98, but I’m to understand that she was half-assing it until then, her push long since over. Motoya’s in pink & white, looking like a Megumi Kudo clone, while Cutie’s in white ruffles. Cutie has this Takako Inoue-like “How DARE you try to be as pretty as me in my ring?” look to her, so if she leans into that, this could be fun.

GAEA JAPAN- SECOND ANNIVERSARY SHOW (Part Two):
(April 29th, 1997)
* So a week after the April 21st show comes another “Second Anniversary” special. This one features yet another WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Title defense by Toshie Uematsu, Chigusa and the first “Chigusa Clone” (Toshiyo Yamada) against the best of GAEA’s first generation of rookies (Meiko & Kato!), and Akira Hokuto teaming with Maiko Matsumoto- a rookie just entering her second year- against Mayumi Ozaki and her best goon, Chikayo Nagashima!

Oh, and it’s the debut of Chigusa Nagayo’s heel character ZERO! So, uh, there’s that. For all you Zero fans out there. Wait am I supposed to capitalize her name now?

WCW WOMEN’S CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE:
TOSHIE UEMATSU vs. SUGAR SATO:
* Toshie now defends WCW gold against the OZ Academy turncoat. Sato’s now in a more elaborate version of her white gear, with lots of strings and cut-out bits. We’re JIP here.