Joshi Spotlight — page 11

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.

GAEA JAPAN- SECOND ANNIVERSARY SHOW:
(April 21st 1997)
* It’s time for more GAEA Japan! And it’s their Second Anniversary show! As AJW stuff becomes more and more sparse, it looks like GAEA was the only promotion really busting it out there. This April show features Toshie Uematsu defending a *WCW* belt, as she faces AJW’s Yuka Shiina for the WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Title!

Unfortunately, this show is quite massively clipped and only has two matches available. But there’s another show a week later… and it features the Japanese debut of ZERO!! Wait with baited breath!

WCW WOMEN’S CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE:
TOSHIE UEMATSU (GAEA Japan) vs. YUKA SHIINA (AJW):
* Yup- it’s April and Toshie’s already defending her newly-won WCW gold against another promotion’s wrestler, as Yuka Shiina comes in from AJW for a shot. Shiina is now angry-looking, in a red top & white shorts, looking a bit less like a jobber. Toshie’s upgraded past her green singlet and is now wearing a lot of green frills on a leotard. The giant kneebrace is a sad sign of things to come.

Two Joshi Spotlights in one week? Why, it must be “write a bio of someone with a short career” day!

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- FUSAYO NOUCHI:
Real Name: Fusayo Nouchi (somethings Anglicized as “Nochi”)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’2″ & 128 lbs.
Career Length: 1992-1996

-Yes, it’s time for another “Wait, Who?” bio, as I look at Fusayo Nouchi, who I mostly recognize as “The One Who Isn’t Candy Okutsu”, as the two were paired up in similar outfits for ages on undercards for Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling. Her career was so short (only four years) that a proper assessment is difficult, but she seems like a pretty solid undersized rookie. She probably would have been a bigger star in the later era, where teeny-tiny girls were the norm and being 5’2″ didn’t make you look like a dwarf up against monsters like Dynamite Kansai & Devil Masami, the main eventers during her run.

She seems quite good for her experience level- she’s quick and spry in the mostly undercard stuff I’ve seen- when wrestling Hiromi Sugo (just a bit below her in experience), her stuff looks good and Sugo’s looks terrible. Nouchi could generally be relied upon to hit **1/2 or so in undercard stuff, and mostly just lacked diversity in her offense- as a rookie she was mostly enforced to do the basics until she started getting a push, and that never really came. I’ve seen a match against Candy Okutsu (who was slumming it) where Nouchi’s selling was pretty great, at least. Generally, her stuff looked tight and good while not necessarily being outstanding. Though one of her final matches sees her hit a Super Saito Suplex and that was pretty awesome.

It’s a double-thing this week, as I take a look at a 20+ minute match between dethroned champ Manami Toyota and JWP’s Hiromi Yagi from one of the earliest shows of 1997! And then it’s a re-watch of Manami vs. Kaoru Ito from March’s Wrestling Queendom 1997, and a recap of the rest of the show.

MANAMI TOYOTA (AJW) vs. HIROMI YAGI (JWP):
(JWP, Jan. 8th 1997)
* Okay, here’s an interesting one! Some guy is uploading stuff in a “Best of Manami Toyota” collection and I randomly found this one from Jan. 1997 against Hiromi Yagi. Yagi at this point is still in the undercard of JWP, but possibly a bit higher, and Toyota is now in her “Rookie-Destroyer” phase even as she is considering retirement. Yagi’s in black tights with a black top that has a weird purple collar on it, while Manami’s in the usual black.

Hokuto with her weird “Gas Mask/Michael Jackson” gear, fronted by Sonny Onoo, Eric Bischoff’s friend and manager to all Japanese heels in WCW.

JOSHI IN WCW (1997):
* And we’re back with more of WCW’s Women’s Division! So in early 1997, they try to make a “go” of the division, largely by having Akira Hokuto and Madusa feud, occasionally with Hokuto’s ally (enemy in GAEA) KAORU getting involved, and GAEA Japan’s Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato brought in a jobbers to the heels, and Malia Hosaka (of Japanese descent, but a Hawaiian trained in the U.S.) as a general jobber. But we also bring in Toshie Uematsu, and she gets the one WCW Title NOBODY ever remembers (as a 30-something, I learned of its existence and went “whhaaaaat?”)!

Ironically WCW attempts their Women’s Division around the same time joshi in Japan is about to go through INCREDIBLE disarray, but we’re not quite at AJW’s bankruptcy just yet. It’s mostly “Madusa & Hosaka with GAEA Japan”, and never improves with any homegrown talent.

Akira Hokuto has oddly become the first Champion- given how Madusa (always in her two-piece American flat outfit to show off her figure) was carried as the division’s “Ace” this feels peculiar, but is likely part of why GAEA agreed to it, and it at least gives Madusa someone to chase and a credible enemy instead of Madusa winning the tournament and the fans thus not buying ANYONE against her. And the division is gone before the summer ends- shockingly, it’s belts become defended in Japan!

AKIRA HOKUTO (w/ Sonny Onoo) vs. MADUSA:
(WCW Worldwide, Jan. 12th 1997)
* A Starrcade rematch on the D-show (thus, it’s non-title)- Akira’s in green & Madusa’s in the usual.

Yes, current legend Meiko Satomura actually has WCW Nitro appearances. Wrestling is weird.

JOSHI IN WCW (1996):
* And now I take a look at a pretty weird time for WCW- that early 1997 period where they actually try to have a WOMEN’S DIVISION! This actually slips between the WWF’s two big ’90s attempts at it, as the “Alundra Blayze and one heel” era and “Sable and one heel, then pra & panties matches”- this is the time when Madusa showed up in WCW, dumping the WWF Women’s Title in the trashcan, and then acting as a central star in the WCW women’s division… in which she never wins the belt. Yeah, instead AKIRA HOKUTO is the champion, which creates a pretty strange situation.

Unfortunately since these matches are all WWE property now, I can’t post them here, but YouTube has them all! Alas, I’m missing the big PPV matches (all two or three of them, I guess?) so this and next week’s column will both be a tad incomplete.

The Women’s Division:
-So the women’s division was pretty much just the GAEA Japan promotion in WCW, mixed with Madusa and Japanese-American wrestler Malia Hosaka, plus Luna Vachon sometimes. Chigusa’s young charges Meiko Satomura (who is a WWE employee today, oddly enough), Sonoko Kato and Toshie Uematsu in fact made up the backbone of the division, alongside KAORU. However, nearly every TV match is under four minutes long, and the vast majority of them appear on the D-shows like Worldwide. I was watching the HELL out of WCW at the time and I only barely remember Hokuto and Zero (just wait), much less all these subordinates.

The style used in these matches was far less risky and crazy in the US as well- they seemingly knew to take it easy on American cards, because even Hokuto is ending matches with a basic bridging suplex in nearly every match- hardly one of her more elite finishers. That Madusa is a pretty horrible worker by joshi standards (she’s sometimes okay but mostly below-average, being clumsy, slow, hesitant and a bit flaily).