Joshi Spotlight — page 13

AJW JAPAN GRAND PRIX 1996 (Part Two):
(July 28th & Aug. 4th, 1996)
* Another set of mostly-clipped matches! This time we get full clips of TWO Chaparrita ASARI matches, as the company focuses on her more and more- we see her take on Kyoko Inoue and Mariko Yoshida in separate “come from behind” matches! Also come see just how serious AJW was about pushing Reggie Bennett in 1996, as she gets some of the biggest matches of her entire career! Also a full-length “Class of 1987 Reunion” match between Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs. Las Cachorras Orientales!

Crazy upsets abound as AJW’s booking combines the “Flukes can happen in round robins” puro trope with panicked booking!

MIHO WAKIZAWA vs. YACHIYO KAWAMOTO:
* Good heavens, who are THESE two? I’ve never heard of them. Expecting rookies who retired early (common to AJW at this time) I was surprised to find Miho had an 18-year career, moving on to Stardom, mostly in tag success. Yachiyo lasted… two? I think? One match in ’94 and a bunch in ’96? Miho’s in yellow (and is quite tall) & Yachiyo’s in black.

AJW GRAND PRIX 1996 (Part One):
(July 14th 1996)
* It’s time for another Grand Prix show! Though sadly, this one is 90% clipped matches- AJW was really cheaping out on tapes as profits fell by this point, I think. We do get a full Yumiko Hotta/Aja Kong match and they’ve had some REAL bangers, and a Manami Toyota/rookie vs. Kyoko Inoue & Chaparrita ASARI match, as AJW gets serious about pushing ASARI, though!

The opening clip shows Manami Toyota’s two 1995 Title wins- against Aja Kong and against Dynamite Kansai, then clips of other women’s faces beside the 3WA World Title and a Manami promo. Finally, the entrants enter the ring wearing sashes to denote their entry- we have exclusively AJW wrestlers this time around, meaning there’s no fun Interpromotional stuff, sadly. This one drops the concept of “Blocks” and is now a single 12-woman round robin tournament.

Our Participants:
* Kyoko Inoue: the heir apparent to the 3WA World Title and Manami’s longest rival. Probably gonna win, if AJW’s typical way of doing things holds true.
* Aja Kong: The dethroned champion. Was maybe gonna be pushed down the ranks like past champs, but is now just there again.
* Yumiko Hotta: Has now been training for shootfights for a while, but AJW wants to keep using her as a great “threat” to any top wrestler, despite never beating them.
* Takako Inoue: Amazing, underrated wrestler, but never QUITE pushed to the next level. Is All Pacific-level now, and if they’re smart, this should be a big run.
* Kaoru Ito: Now the highest ranked of the Class of ’89. Clearly meant for big things. Will probably earn middle ranks.
* Tomoko Watanabe: A rising star who is just now picking up some wins in tag matches. Has a bright future, and will probably score some suprise wins and earn middle ranks.
* Mariko Yoshida: Has been back from injury for a year, occupying an uncomfortable “middle ground” between pushed stars and midcarders. If they’re gonna push her, now’s the time (she’s easily better than either Ito or Tomoko at this point).
* Mima Shimoda: Now the current Tag Champion and has been in successful teams for a year now, but never quite does well in singles. They seem to see a future in her, so she should HOPEFULLY do well.
* Etsuko Mita: Now without Shimoda for most of a year, she’s floundered in the midcard, and has likely entered the “Suzuka Minami” role of being a gatekeeper. Probably won’t do well.
* Reggie Bennett: Foreigner powerhouse with some big title runs last year- again, a strong contender to do more, especially as she’s not as “tired” as the other stars yet. Her introductory interview, in English, was clearly not planned out ahead of time (“with the, uh, opposite belt and won the uh, six-man championship…”.
* Toshiyo Yamada: Gone are her All Pacific runs and now she’s just kinda ambling about the company. Injuries and motivation seem to have done a number on her.
* Chaparrita ASARI: No chance, but a stupendous acrobat they still wanna do things with. She has super-long hair now and no longer looks 13. Obviously gonna be in last place.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- KAORU:
Real Name: Kaoru Maeda (aka Infernal KAORU, Dara)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’5/12″ 139 lbs.
Trained By: Jaguar Yokota
Career Length: 1986-2021

-One of those joshi whose career just lasted FOREVER (eclipsing Manami Toyota’s by quite a few years, and going well beyond Etsuko Mita, Akira Hokuto and others), Kaoru Maeda (usually called KAORU, Because Japan) was never a top star, but was a great utility player who was also an elite trainer judging by GAEA Japan’s first class (you can thank her in part for Meiko Satomura, for example), and is virtually the “Terry Funk” of Japan- constantly reinventing herself to match a new “thing”. She was a generic acrobatic wrestler, a luchadora, then a kinda lazy midcarder when she returned to AJW… then suddenly shows up in GAEA and got VERY good, then modified that into a career as a trashy hot girl brawler in OZ Academy and other places. Billed as the “Original Hardcore Queen” in one era, what kind of match you’re gonna get with her really depends on the year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eBEzHWMht4&t=1069s&ab_channel=GAEAISM%E5%85%AC%E5%BC%8F%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8D%E3%83%AB

Proof Joshi didn’t suck after 1996! Mostly because LCO remained awesome for years!

MONEYBALL MATCH:
D-FIX (Mayumi Ozaki & KAORU, w/ Police) vs. LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES (Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita)
(GAEA Japan, Dec. 15th 2001)
* So here we look all the way into the future, when GAEA was the biggest joshi promotion on Earth (in a scorched industry, to be fair) and the other companies kept losing talent there- at one point in the 2000s, almost all of the big stars were there (if as freelancers). And Ozaki’s formed an evil stable with a weird  cheating asshole named Police as their minion, with her & KAORU looking like a pair of trailer park MILFs, and they’re such a pair of b*tchpies that MITA AND SHIMODA now come off like lovable babyfaces, and they’ve come to kick some Japanese Peg Bundy tail. The match stipulation is effectively a Ladder Match (but I guess there’s also pins), but the winning object is just this big ball full of money, and it’s only a little bit off the mat, so you could stand on a chair and get it. Shimoda humorously implies in the pre-match that Ozaki’s too short to get it. The gear here has to be seen to be believed- LCO in their wild technicolor geisha & cowgirl outfits, and D-FIX in denim skirts & boots and lacy shiny tops (TOO lacy, as it turns out).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE1A6f2lU_8

JD’ BEAUTY ATHLETE:
(May 5th 1996)
* May 5th sees another JD’ show, this one only an hour long. This was apparently taped MUCH earlier, in Dec. 1995, as Bull Nakano is wrestling, teaming with Lola Gonzalez against Jaguar Yokota & Flor Metallica! The show looks to be taking place in a REALLY smoky hall- the kind of place Vince McMahon thought wrestling existed in before 1985. There’s some oddly-tight camera angles as a result throughout the show, and the whole thing comes off like a house show they just happened to film.

JAGUAR YOKOTA vs. LOLA GONZALEZ:
* JD’s founder takes on Lola, the first champion. This looks like it takes place in a smoky bingo hall, with Jaguar in silver & Lola in a hideous floral-print singlet. Christ, are those legwarmers?

Jaguar hits her Straightjacket German IMMEDIATELY, Lola getting the ropes. Jaguar commands “shi ne!” (“DIE!”), but is whipped to the ropes, but slingshots off with a great headscissors, putting Lola on the floor. Some half-hearted brawling on the floor leads to Lola taking over with brawling (the huge close-ups are, um, NOT advantageous), and tosses Jaguar off the top, but she bridges out and hits a rana for two. Another try sees her powerbombed, Lola hauling her up for a spinning/giant swing variation of it for two. Senton off the 2nd rope misses and Jaguar hits an enzuigiri & the Vertical Drop Pedigree for two, but misses a flying thing and Lola ties her up in the “Rock the Cradle” submission & surfboard into a powerbomb & senton for two. She hits another powerbomb, but goes up and takes a butterfly superplex for two. She tries her “lockup to Straightjacket”, but Lola takes a swing at her, ending up in a Leg-Trap Backdrop Hold for the three (5:32 of 19:19) shown.

AJW IN JUNE 1996:
* Now we finally hit the mid-point of the year (though I really haven’t seen a lot of AJW stuff on YouTube from earlier in the year), and we have the big World Tag Title match- Manami & Shimoda vs. Kyoko & Takako! I’ll also run notes on what happened at Wrestlemarinepiad 1996 (spoiler alert: Not Much!).

AJW actually ran an interpromotional “All Rookies” show May 1996, which is the most promotion-packed show I’ve seen in ages! Nothing appears online, the show was mainly clipped on the VHS release, and the results are mostly “Rookie A beats Rookie B”, but there’s a few notes:

A “Woman’s Graduation Tournament” has Semi-Finals & Finals here- Sugar Sato d. Aki Kambayashi (7:54), Misae Genki d. Kiyoko Ichiki (9:38), then Genki wins the tournament, beating Sato at (6:56). JWP’s Hiromi Yagi & Kaori Nakayama defeat JWP’s Kanako Motoya & AJW’s Yumi Fukawa (11:18). Yoshiko Tamura defends her AJW Title, beating JWP’s Tomoko Kuzumi (11:15). GAEA’s Chikayo Nagashima & Sonoko Kato fight AJW’s Kumiko Maekawa & Tanny Mouse to a (20:00) Time Limit Draw (OH GOD A TWENTY MINUTE TANNY MOUSE MATCH!). In the biggest bout, Chaparrita ASARI wins a vanity-belt, the WWWA Super Lightweight Title, in a match against GAEA’s Toshie Uematsu (14:35). Finally, a 4-way interpromotional match, as Chikako Shiratori (JD’) & Michiko Omukai (LLPW) beat Rie Tamada (AJW) & Meiko Satomura (GAEA) in (20:50).

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

Remember: JD’ is pronounced “jay-DEE-star”!

JD’ BEAUTY ATHLETE- COMING TO TOKYO:
(April 14th 1996)
* Oh hey, look! The OTHER joshi splinter promotion of 1996 shows up in my Spotlights! Mostly because MoskowDiskow was like “Hey if you’re in 1996 you should have JD! There’s 4-5 videos on YouTube!” and I was like “huh? There is?” and he linked me one person’s poorly-labeled channel. I mean, typing in “JD” into a search engine ain’t gonna net you a lot, right? But here’s an April ’96 show!

So the deal with JD’ is that some company had a TV contract and were able to lure away Jaguar Yokota, wonder-trainer of AJW’s ’80s wrestlers and a big star in her own right, along with two forcibly-retired buddies in Bison Kimura (billed as a top star) and Lioness Asuka (a huge ’80s star). Like some Ted Turner dude was like “I wanna get into the wrasslin’ business! I remember Jaguar & Lioness- get ’em for my company!” because he was old and those were the stars he remembered. And they threw together a weirdo promotion of bizarre gimmicks, terrible rookies (Chikako Shiratori) and freelancers. And now I got all these damn people to look up because I have no idea who most of these people are, lol.

We start off with a highlight reel, mostly made up of big flying moves, plus a Bison Kimura/Manami Toyota match that headlines this show. Then the CGI opening, looking like a first generation PlayStation game to a hilariously nostalgic degree, leads to mini-bios of the wrestlers. For some reason there’s super-quiet commentary AND a voiceover, like they recorded both channels and played them over each other.

GAEA IN SPRING 1996:
* Here’s a pair of GAEA shows featuring the usual assortment of rookies and bigger stars, complete with the goofiest battle royal you’ll EVER see (you think Chain Sleepers and other comedy bits are new? Check GAEA doing it in 1996), and the GAEA Junior Star Tournament to crown the best rookie! Come see the best friggin’ match two one-year veterans could possibly have!

NEO QUEEN HISTORY ’95:
SONOKA KATO vs. TOSHIE UEMATSU:
* Two of the most elite rookies go at it in the rookie tournament. Kato’s in blue & Toshie’s in green, as always.

They do the typical GAEA start with a ton of running attacks, Toshie using her “backflip off their chest” move and rollups, but Kato uses her bulldogs when Toshie tries to many running headlocks. Toshie dodges a legdrop and hits a victory roll & dropkicks, then a missile kick for two, but a flying splash hits knees. Kato gets a sleeper and they spam running attacks back & forth as this is frenetic, but quite sloppy- most things have very poor execution, but that kind of “they’re fighting for it like it was real” scrappy thing that joshi sometimes has. Toshie’s offense is like 60% flash pins. Kato finally catches her with the Tornado Bulldog, but Time Expires at (6:01 shown).

FMW MEGA-SHOW:
(Kawasaki Stadium, May 5th 1996)
* And here’s one of the biggest joshi shows in FMW history, as we get not only Chigusa Nagayo vs. Shark Tsuchiya in a rematch of their miscarriage of justice from late ’95 (when Shark won only because it was basically a 3-on-1 handicap match thanks to her subordinates), but it’s MEGUMI KUDO vs. COMBAT TOYODA, the top two women in FMW history, in Combat’s retirement match! And it’s one of the best women’s singles matches ever, to boot! And probably the best Barbed Wire Deathmatch there ever was, making maximum use of the gimmick!

Here’s a random one-off review, as Evito-X has been uploading old-school joshi among the great rarities on his YouTube channel, and I wanted to check it out.

WWWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES:
BEST TWO OF THREE FALLS:
THE QUEEN ANGELS (Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama) vs. THE BLACK PAIR (Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita):
(7/31/1979)
* It’s time for some 1970s joshi! The Black Pair were set up as heels in opposition to the Beauty Pair- this is a latter incarnation, with Mami Kumano replacing Shinobu Aso. Yumi’s in black boots and Mami has red boots (both have black swimsuits and ‘fros, so that’s how I can tell them apart, haha). The Queen Angels appear to be babyfaces, with matching swimsuits with white polka-dots on them- Lucy (in red) is one I’ve seen before in a variety of old matches, usually featuring Jackie Sato. I’ve never seen Tomi (in blue) before, but she’s a hell of a high-flier, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/stardomjoshi/comments/87xj1c/tomi_aoyamas_springboard/.

GAEA JAPAN- GAEAISM GRAND OPENING 1ST ANNIVERSARY:
(April 29th 1996)
* GAEA Japan is now one full year old! With the greatest inaugural rookie class ever but shows still dependent on other companies to fill out the card, it’s maturing quickly. This set of matches is all clipped, but it’s got the final ten minutes of a BIG one- LLPW’s most credible wrestler, SHINOBU KANDORI (aka the woman who fought two classics with Akira Hokuto) comes calling, bringing rookie (and future terror) Michiko Omukai up against the biggest women’s star in history- Chigusa Nagayo and her own rookie, Sugar Sato. The match proves fun mostly for Kandori’s antics as an elitist shooter- she’s a truly underrated character.

The GAEAISM channel is missing a few matches:
HIKARU FUKUOKA (JWP) d. BOMBER HIKARU (GAEA) (15:45): this seems oddly padded and kinda long for Bomber to last, but that’s the style of both companies at this point.
WONDERFUL FREE: KAORU d. Carol Midori (10:52)

GAEA NEO SOUL BATTLE NEW FACES:
RINA ISHII vs. MAIKO MATSUMOTO:
* Holy shit, NEW wrestlers! This is the first I’ve seen of either one, and is Rina’s debut. She lasts two years and Maiko three, so they’re not GREAT successes but at least stuck around a bit. They have to pick unique colors, as enough of the early crew are still around in their Arena swimsuits- Maiko’s in an ugly brown one, and Rina’s in a light… puce? Salmon? Google says that’s “coral”, I guess. It’s pink, I dunno. Rina is TINY and super-thin, probably around 5 feet tall, and Maiko is comparatively bigger and thicker.

JWP IN MID-1996:
* Hey look! More JWP! Because… okay I forgot to post the one below, and then I had an undated match I figured I’d find a place for! So it’s only a two-match review! The first one is really good, though! Eventually!

CUTIE SUZUKI & HIKARI FUKUOKA vs. ESTHER MORENO & HIROMI YAGI:
* The two top idols in JWP take on rising star Yagi and Mexican talent Moreno, who was also in AJW around this time- maybe doing a full tour of Japan? The latter are in black gear, Hikari’s in her leopard-print & Cutie’s in white.

JWP IN APRIL 1996 (Part Two):
* I split these up because some matches are IMMENSELY long. This one features the retirement of Hiromi Sugo, Candy Okutsu vs. comedy wrestler Saburo, Mayumi Ozaki vs. Hiromi Yagi, and a rematch between Chigusa Nagayo, Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato of GAEA and Devil Masami, Tomoko Kuzumi & Tomoko Miyaguchi of JWP! So comes see what JWP was doing in early 1996 (the answer: Lots of excessively-drawn out matches with aimless stretching! But some are okay!).

RETIREMENT MATCH:
FUSAYO NOUCHI vs. HIROMI SUGO:
(Thunder Queen Light up the Night, 07.04.1996)
* Here’s a match between two lower-level wrestlers, with Sugo calling it quits after only two years in the business, retiring to become a referee. Nouchi has really long hair here, while Sugo has the ugliest suit this side of Kaoru Ito- bright yellow with green designs… but with shorts for the legs.

JWP IN APRIL 1996:
* We’re back to more JWP stuff! Their YouTube presence is a bit odd, as it’s mainly limited to one guy’s account- Rico Kasai is the name. None of it’s dated, so it took a hell of a lot of work to find out when all of this happened. Some in my “Can’t find” pile should just be mass-reviewed at some point too, I guess. We last left off with them in September 1996, but also had the Tag Title change in December, but the last stuff of Kasai’s was a ways before that, so I haven’t gotten to his in a while. In any case, we have SIX matches from April 1996! One is an absolute BANGER that I’ve reviewed before in a Takako Inoue vs. Mayumi Ozaki spotlight- it’s a fantastic Interpromotional Tag Match between Dynamite Kansai & Takako vs. Kyoko Inoue & Ozaki- and in it, they go all-out and very clearly attempt to replicate the success of the famous Toyota/Yamada vs. Kansai/Ozaki series from 1993.

COMMAND BOLSHOI vs. RIEKO AMANO:
* Miracle rookie Amano (who gets good FAST- I’ve seen a **** match from only a couple years after this, tops) goes up against Bolshoi, who’s on the low end of the pecking order for “name” wrestlers, and is thus a good gatekeeper and “test” against the kids. Amano’s in a white & blue jobber singlet, while Bolshoi’s in the rad blue & green gear.

Bison Kimura: The world’s most photogenic kaiju!

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- BISON KIMURA:
Real Name: Nobuko Kimura
Billed Height & Weight: 5’6″ 165 lbs.
Career Length: 1986-1992, 1994-1998
Trainer: Jaguar Yokota/AJW Dojo

-If you’re like me and got into joshi around 2000, and mostly kinda focused on the Interpromotional Era with all the major companies sending their stars against each other, it’s easy to miss Bison Kimura, as her career took place mostly AROUND that major part of joshi history. She was mostly known as “Aja’s #2” back in the day, having started in the same Rookie Class as her (along with Megumi Kudo & others), then missed 1993-94 due to either injury or being forced out by AJW bookers (I’ve heard both), and so if all you got were the Dream Slams or the big AJW/JWP/LLPW/FMW cards of that era, you’d have missed her completely, and when she finally DID come back, she was relegated to “midcarder”, often being flattened by mid-tier acts in AJW. And then she switched off to Jaguar Yokota’s JD’ promotion, which was one of the least studied joshi promotions of the time, and peaked early and disappeared from the mainstream.

GAEA- WAR IS A FRIDAY NIGHT:
(Feb. 16th, 1996)

* With possibly the greatest show tagline of all time, we’ve got an interesting mixed batch here, as I found the first GAEA vs. *AJW* match I can find, as Sakie Hasegawa gets to go to GAEA Japan on her retirement road and face Chigusa Nagayo!! And Chigusa leads her girls against heel invaders from LLPW, with Eagle Sawai’s GUREN Corps showing up to act as ANOTHER “Evil Girls Group” against mega-babyface Chigusa.

CHIGUSA NAGAYO, BOMBER HIKARI & SONOKO KATO (GAEA) vs. GUREN CORPS (Eagle Sawai, Jenn Yukari & Michiko Nagashima) (LLPW):
* So what looks to be LLPW’s big heel stable at the time (Eagle had recently been LLPW Champion) invades GAEA, with Chigusa shoring up a lame “veteran” and a rookie against Eagle & midcarders Jenn Yukari (a person so minor I could barely find squat to focus on in a Spotlight just for her, haha) and Nagashima. Chigusa appears to respond to a GUREN invasion and taunt-job simply by asking two people to join her for an impromptu match. Chigusa’s in red/yellow/black, Bomber’s in black/green/white & Kato’s in blue, while Eagle’s in black, Yukari’s in red/green/white & Michiko’s in a black “Manami Toyota”-esque outfit with cut-outs.

AJW DOCUMENTARY- “LES DIABLESSES DU RING”:
* So in 1991, the “La Une” channel in France decided to do a documentary on All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling. They were invited to go on tour with the, interview the wrestlers, and see the day-to-day operations of the show. It’s about 55 minutes long, and focuses on a small handful of people: Highly-ranked Bull Nakano & Aja Kong, rising star Manami Toyota, and American trainee on an excursion Debbie Malenko. Thankfully, YouTube has an English subtitled version.

Despite pretty well everyone knowing the secret of pro wrestling by 1991, this whole thing is in kayfabe- rivalries are treated as real, people want to win matches to make more money, etc. Curiously, the promotion’s owners, the Matsunagas, are not really given much attention.

We start with Aja Kong & Bison Kimura doing a rad “Jungle Jack” theme song that sounds like it should be being played at the Foot Clan’s headquarters in the Ninja Turtles movie. The host speaks to the audience directly about how women’s pro wrestling is extremely popular in Japan, but it’s a harsh world where “The losers get no pay”, and while the top star is a Queen, everyone else are “like monks”, unable to have love affairs and have to do all the drudgery work like cleaning.

We start with Bull Nakano, then the Ace and WWWA World Champion- “The Blue Queen” makes 48,000+ yen per fight (like $409 in 1992 U.S. dollars?) and weighs 260 lbs. (she’s big, but that seems high- she’s only 5’8″! Are they using “Adam Cole pounds”?). Half-Black, Half-Japanese Aja Kong weighs 242 lbs. and makes 31K yen per fight. Glamorous Manami “Cinderella” Toyota weighs 138 lbs. and makes only half that. Okay, that’s news to me that either used those nicknames (unless the doc just invented it- the subtitles keep using “Manami” while the narrator repeatedly says “Cendrillon”- Cinderella’s French name). And they use that as Manami’s ONLY name during the advertising for one show! She hadn’t even won major singles gold at this point, so I have no idea why they decided to focus so much attention on her.

AJW TV (Feb. 1996):
* Aaaaaand everyone who saw me about to enter 1996 AJW warned me “I hope you like rookie matches”, so here’s one of those dreaded bouts. And also Tomoko Watanabe’s education continues, as she takes on the World Champ, Manami Toyota! That one’s not bad!

YUMI FUKAWA, MISAE WATANABE & MARI MOGAMI vs. NOBUE ENDO, KAYO NOUMI & MINA TANIYAMA:
* Rookie mayhem! AJW tries to push up some of their kids with another trios match, with established Fukawa on one team and bottom-tier Mogami & Kayo on opposite sides. Kayo’s in white, Mina’s in blue, Endo’s in black/red, Mogami’s in blue, Misae’s in black/white (and is the tall, gangly one), and Fukawa’s in blue/white. I think Fukawa’s the only success story of this bunch, unless you’re a huge Tanny Mouse (Taniyama) mark. My apologies to her legions of fans. (Edit- according to Manji they ALL did pretty well! Except Mogami, who quit right away)

Joshi is full of the wildest costumes designs you’ll ever see in wrestling, and wrestling’s most innovative moves… and then the crazy chick in red pants comes in and beats everyone with a stick.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- YASHA KURENAI:
Real Name: Rumi Yasuda (note: “Kurenai” is Japanese for “deep red”)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’3″ 143 lbs.
Career: 1989-1999

-One of the weirder “I don’t get it” things I find when I research joshi comments made back in the day is the whole “Yasha Kurenai SUCKS!” thing. I’ve mostly seen it from Mike Lorefice, but I’m sure I’ve seen it elsewhere, too. Her & Command Bolshoi got a lot of hate from old reviewers, arguing that they’re both horrible and ruin matches, and seeing their stuff I don’t get the hate. Bolshoi at least is a comedy wrestler, which has always been a controversial thing among “serious workrate” fans. But Yasha? Yasha seems FINE. Entertaining, even. Like, any healthy wrestling company has room for a Yasha Kurenai.

Yasha’s whole style, though, is a bit contrary to a lot of “MOVEZ!”-loving fans. Where most everyone else is doing “GO GO GO!” stuff and pulling out all these huge moves, here’s this squat, frowning brawler hitting people with a damn staff for a ton of her offense. Not just a “signature spot” like with Bull Nakano and her nunchucks, but using the weapon as a full-on part of her offense. Also, her brawling style is anathema to those who want more and more suplexes and/or flips. And granted it’s not MY preferred style, either, but if it’s only one wrestler, and she’s mostly a midcarder, I don’t mind it. It creates variety! Plus, it makes her look like a huge shitstain when she’s doing it to a babyface, and makes that wrestler seem a lot better for surpassing it and getting a win. And it’s not like Yasha was particularly dominant- she was never much more than a midcard worker!

Manami Toyota: Now Ace of the promotion, but the fans are gonna let her have it on this one.

AJW OTA-KU CHAMPION LEGEND ’96:
(Jan. 22nd 1996)
* Our first big AJW event of 1996, and it’s a doozy. Manami Toyota defends her newly-won WWWA World Title against longtime rival Yumiko Hotta, who set this up by beating Manami during the “Manami vs. 30 People” Gauntlet last month! There’s also a weird one as the former Dream Orca team up with Chaparrita ASARI to take on Mariko Yoshida, a rookie, and a random Mexican lady. Unfortunately I can only find those two matches.

The Rest of the Card:
ELIMINATION MATCH: KAYO NOUMI, KUMIKO MAEKAWA, MARI MOGAMI & YUKA SHIINA d. MINA TANIYAMA, MISAE WATANABE, NOBUE ENDO & YOSHIKO TAMURA (12:39): Mogami d. Taniyama (5:45), Tamura d. Noumi (7:02), Misae d. Mogami (8:02), Kumiko d. Misae (9:14), Kumiko d. Endo (10:19), Shiina d. Tamura (10:19). Kumiko & Shiina survive.

REGGIE BENNETT d. TOMOKO WATANABE (11:20): Tomoko’s getting a bit of a push, but not THAT big- Reggie way outranks her.

AJA KONG d. KAORU ITO (16:05): Wow- Aja should absolutely be beating Ito at this point, but it speaks wonders for Ito that the match goes 16 minutes.

SAKIE HASEGAWA d. BULL NAKANO (11:47): Sakie Hasegawa’s retirement tour continues as she takes on BULL NAKANO of all people in one of Bull’s final AJW matches! Shockingly, Sakie DEFEATS Bull, likely a parting gift from the former Ace.

WWWA TAG TEAM TITLE: DOUBLE INOUE (Kyoko & Takako Inoue) d. AKIRA HOKUTO & MIMA SHIMODA (29:47): Hokuto pins Kyoko at (10:30), Kyoko pins Shimoda at (19:53) and Kyoko pins Akira at (29:47). Thus ends the reign of Shimoda & Akira, the latter of whom actually leaves AJW after a very odd 1995. Seriously, she wins the V*Top Tournament at the Tokyo Dome in late ’94 and is then “just another wrestler” for 1995 until having a ***** match against Toyota and winning the Tag Titles for a run. Hokuto leaving the company kicks a MASSIVE hole in the match quality, too. Meltzer went ****1/2 for this, so I really wish it was on YouTube (looks like an older one was deleted).