Joshi Spotlight — page 19

AJW TV (Jan. 1994):
* And welcome to AJW in 1994! After several months of working on 1993’s shows, it’s fun to see a whole new “era”, as all the major story-arcs have ended and the feuds run their course- Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada have finally unseated JWP’s Ozaki & Kansai for the WWWA Tag Titles, and Akira Hokuto has given her win back to LLPW’s Shinobu Kandori. As a result, they’re gonna have to find all-new angles and feuds- 1994 has a handful less tapes available than 1993 did (especially if you count the Legendary Goddess ones), but builds to the biggest joshi show of all time by the end of the year- Big Egg Wrestling Universe.

This show is about an hour and a half, and covers the 1993 AJW Awards Party, as well as having four unique matches on it.

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: It’s a pretty interesting show in terms of bouts you rarely see- a rare Aja solo bout to build her up for Hotta’s Title shot in a week, LCO against a thrown-together team, and the Tag Champs facing the future Double Inoue!

Jaguar’s theme song is EPIC.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- JAGUAR YOKOTA:
Real Name: Rimi Yokota (aka Jaguar Y)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’3″ 128 lbs.
Career Length: 1977-1986, 1995-1998, 2004-today (rarely-wrestling freelancer)
Trainees: Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, Megumi Kudo, Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda, Kyoko Inoue, Toshiyo Yamada, Takako Inoue, Bison Kimura, Miori Kamiya, Combat Toyoda, Kaoru Maeda

ST. BATTLE DAY:
(20.03.1992)
* This is actually a bit of a throwback (since I just finished going through all of 1993), as I initially couldn’t find the full show on YouTube. Maffew uploaded it as “Indie Uploader”, but he was banned for copywrite violations, but someone else was good enough to upload it when I bemoaned that fact. So here we are! Finally!

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: One of the better tag matches of the year and a truly important title-change… and one of the worst AJW tag matches ever- a smorgasbord for Botchamania! Watch what happens when technical wrestlers try lucha!

Akira Hokuto: Tape traders used to sell a collection of JUST her 1993 matches! Find out why!

JOSHI IN 1993:

And now I’ve finally reached the end of 1993 in my reviews, so I can do a “Year in Review” post. Here’s my review of 1992: https://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2020/04/24/joshi-spotlight-joshi-in-1992/

I’d share the link to the YoutTube, but it turns out that Bull wears clothing and decorates her room featuring photographs of nude women on them, so I actually can’t, lol. So here’s that rad Bull Nakano fanart again!

And now it’s two remaining Legendary Goddess VHS reviews before I’m finally done with all the Joshi I could find from 1993! A “Year In Review” article will be up this Friday.

LEGENDARY GODDESS VII- BULL NAKANO:
* We get our “LG” tape release for Bull Nakano at last! And immediately it’s bizarre, as a denim-clad Bull, with normal hair and no flashy facepaint, walks gingerly through a ratty old shipyard while 1980s-sounding screeching guitars play. Bizarrely, her dour expression and outfit make her look older here than she does today. And then she starts breathing heavily and just goes mental on a chain link fence while her jacket is now made of leather, and says fuck across the back- God I love joshi.

Then she goes walking down some of the grimy bar-filled streets in Japan (that actually reminds me more of the real Japan than the shiny yachts & harbors they normally go on in these), shows that her jacket has a photo that is DECIDEDLY not safe for work on it (a topless woman pantomiming fingerbanging herself- well now I can’t put the YouTube video in the review, then!), then puts on a Chicago Bulls jacket, and prepares for her first match. Tremendous.

It’s time for another bunch of Legendary Goddess VHS reviews! Three at a time in this one, since it’s a lot of retread material, but DAMN some of it’s great footage.

LEGENDARY GODDESS IV- AKIRA HOKUTO:
* This one starts with some hilariously overwrought footage of Hokuto stalking around a temple wearing her traditional Noh theater garb, complete with big sound effects, which would be so incredibly stupid on anyone without Hokuto’s credibility. So instead it’s awesome. Partway through, there’s this “normal person” interview of her laughing and smiling on while some silly symphony plays, and it’s so unsettling to see the Dangerous Queen as a human being. Like, her mystique actually makes this stuff come off as odd. Then she strolls around in denim shorts and a floral-print shirt in black & white.

How many cards have had back-to-back ***** matches on them, anyhow?

AJW Tag League- THE BEST 1993 (Part 2):
(10.12.1993)
* And so we come to the last big tape release of 1993, and the capper on Akira Hokuto’s remarkable year, as Flying Dangerous (her team with Manami Toyota) have neared the finals, facing off against two of the other top workers in AJW- Kyoko Inoue & Toshiyo Yamada. Looks like much of the card wasn’t uploaded to YouTube, but the two big ones are. The original tape is apparently only 2 hours 30 minutes, making me suspect there was a lot of clipping.

This show is suuuuuuuuuuuuper famous (among puro nerds) because of the two matches at the end, which are the only time any wrestlers have ever wrestled back-to-back matches that got ***** ratings from Dave Meltzer. And of course, ALL FOUR people earned that honor.

Yes, that’s the image they put on the cover. They knew what they were doing.

LEGENDARY GODDESS III- MANAMI TOYOTA:
* And now it’s Toyota’s turn for her own “LG” tape release. This one actually contains two matches I’ve seen- one from the previous tape! The non-match bits are actually quite short, featuring her modelling (humorously, thanks to the wind machines to blow her hair around, she has to blink rapid-fire, making it look super awkward), walking around and buying something from a collectible shop, and a short interview.

LEGENDARY GODDESS I- TAKAKO INOUE:

* So the “Legendary Goddess” tapes are an octet of VHS releases at the tail end of 1993, each about an hour long, featuring a spotlight on one particular AJW wrestler. The top eight stars of the company at the time each had their own, with the UWA Tag Champs having theirs first. These LG tapes feature an odd thing where some tag matches have a laser-focus on only one wrestler- one camera man follows only the focus of the tape around, even if she’s just on the apron. Having watched most of them by this point, I notice that almost every single match is taken from the same handful of shows, as I recognize the unique arenas (“bright one with low-lying balconies”, “one with the giant stage behind a see-through curtain” and “outdoor arena one with dirt in the stands” being the most notable ones).

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: These tapes are a quirky look at some wrestlers, showing tours of their apartments or shots of them eating, and some of the matches are high-quality “House Show Effort” performances that give you a better sense of what a typical show from AJW is like. Also I toss in a recap of Wrestling Queendom I.

Beauty Pair’s signature song, aka “Every anime theme song during the 1970s”.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- THE BEAUTY PAIR:
JACKIE SATO
Real Name: Naoko Sato
Billed Height & Weight: 5’8″ 160 lbs.
Career Length: 1975-88

MAKI UEDA
Real Name: Makiko Ueda
Billed Height & Weight: 5’6″ 136 lbs.
Career Length: 1975-79

-Now this is a really deep dive into the history of Joshi- many fans online have no doubt at least HEARD of the Crush Gals, and how big they were in Japan in the 1980s, but it’s much less-known that they were begat (begotten?) by the Beauty Pair- Jackie Sato & Maki Ueda. Both groups were Joshi tag teams who were also “Idols” of a sort- becoming icons to teenage girls and even selling their songs! I’ve seen very, very little 1970s joshi, but you can see the after-effects of this style on all later stuff.

Of the two, Sato is by far the most famous and important, so this is largely a bio on Sato herself- she was the one whose career lasted longer, involved a push as AJW’s top star, and became central to another whole company (the first incarnation of Joshi Women’s Pro-Wrestling- JWP). Sato herself was a basketball player who turned to pro wrestling, and became the biggest star in joshi, though Ueda actually became WWWA Champion first.

Full Playlist here!

JWP THUNDER QUEEN BATTLE II:
(20.11.1993)

* This is yet another big Joshi show; actually the third last really big one of the year- only Wrestlemarinepiad ’93 and St. Battle Final come later. This is a sequel of sorts to the first TQB from the Summer, which had the famous “Multi-Person Iron Man Match” that saw JWP pull out a last-minute victory against AJW. Here, we feature a ton more Dream Matches, with more focus placed on singles contests between people who haven’t fought before.

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: Hokuto’s ridiculous run in 1993 continues with a match against Mayumi Ozaki, we get Manami Toyota versus her Non-Union JWP Equivalent in a match over ****, and one of the best tag performances you’re gonna see, courtesy of Devil Masami against old rival Chigusa Nagayo’s team. This show kicks some serious ass.

One of those wrestlers who doesn’t seem great on most cards, yet will have one of the most buckwild brawls you’re ever going to see at random. Ever wanna see someone take a bump so insane in Korakuen Hall that I don’t even wanna spoil it? Look here!

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- TOMOKO WATANABE:
Other Names: ZAP-T
Billed Height & Weight: 5’3″, 161 lbs. (it shifted a LOT, though- she was slender in the early ’90s, chubby later and really wide in the late ’90s)
Trainer: Jaguar Yokota
Career: 1989-today (still active)

-Tomoko Watanabe is one of those wrestlers who was quite good at times and has hit near-***** in multiple tag bouts, but has the bad luck of having some of the worst matches on the best Joshi cards of all time, owing to the Botchamania Highlight Reel that was the early part of her career. She was… very clearly the worst wrestler of the “Class of 1989”, with Sakie Hasegawa being the obvious future superstar with a huge push, Bat Yoshinaga being a great kicker, and Kaoru Ito being better than Tomoko and ending up the Ace when the company’s elder stars ran out of gas- both were a lot more athletic than the squat Tomoko. But still, she was okay! Eventually! I mean, it took a while but she eventually got VERY good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZAByPb6B4

Hostess Roll Toyota runs wild!

Something a little different today, as I could only find one Tag League match from a particular show, but also found an episode of Champ Forum TV featuring JWP matches from 1993 as well! So it’s a double-whammy today!

“TL;DR: What’s the Big Deal?”: The three best wrestlers in AJW in one tag match, with the other one being a rookie phenom who can hold her own. Plus an interesting look at JWP in “normal people” interviews and that ***** Bull Nakano/Devil Masami match I’ve reviewed before!

Thankfully, this uploader (Joshi Puro Oshi) puts all their stuff in a playlist.

LLPW WOMEN’S SPARKLING FIREWORKS (LLPW vs. AJW):
(11.09.1993)

* This show has popped up a couple of times during these Spotlights, as I recognized this extremely distinctive arena (looking like a high school gym with high bleachers on one side), but didn’t realize that these matches were all from the same show. This actually precedes the mega-show LLPW vs. AJW: Nagoya Super Storm by a couple of weeks, meaning this is much less of a big deal. But in that, you kind of get some freedom- silly matches, squashes, true rarities, etc. The Main Event is the cap-off to the Akira Hokuto/Rumi Kazama mini-feud that’s sprouted up over these shows during the summer months, while the Ace of LLPW is in a unique tag match right before the main, and AJW’s Ace is facing a jobber.

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: So the interesting thing from a “wrestling nerd” perspective is all these stars you rarely find on these shows otherwise, plus things like utter squashes. LLPW is throwing mid-tier star up against top-tier AJW foes, but also dumping many of their lower-tier stars in one-sided contests against big names. Some of the matches are clipped, but not by much.

The crowd here is REALLY sparse at first, with empty chairs seen everywhere. And there’s four weirdos who spend all the matches sitting in the aisle while facing the crowd, then stand up to block the fans during entrances. Are these out-of-work train workers?

AJW TAG LEAGUE THE BEST 1993- PART ONE:
(10.10.1993):

And as we wind down the crazy-ass 1993 in Joshi, here comes the end-of-year Tag Tournament once again! Except this time… it’s totally random-ass. Like, NONE of these people are regular partners! Except for LCO, I guess. The top teams in AJW are Toyota/Yamada, Hotta/Takako & Bull/Aja, and now they’re all split up. But now we get the debut of a NEW Big Gaijin star in AJW (the incomparable Reggie Bennett), and a trio of tag matches so random they look like a WCW “Lethal Lottery”- except all the wrestlers are good so it should be rad.

“TL;DR- What’s The Big Deal?”: The best wrestlers in the company putting their “big show” efforts into their matches, producing some of AJW’s better stuff.

PS I love that their sashes all read “TAG LEAUGE”.

I’ll be nice and not use the “Peter Pan” gear from 1993 as her image. Also I couldn’t find a good pic of it.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- KAORU ITO:
Real Name: Kaoru Ito (aka Black Blizzard, Makai Majo #1, ZAP-I)
Billed Height & Weight: 5’3″, 238 lbs. (was… MUCH lighter in her younger years)
Career: 1989-today (currently active)

-And now it’s time for a bio on Kaoru Ito, aka “The most terribly-dressed wrestler of all time” on any ’90s Joshi show you’ll watch, and the “wait, SHE became the top wrestler?” star of the same.

Shit like this is why Hokuto is an all-time legend.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- DEVIL MASAMI vs. DUMP MATSUMOTO:
* Okay, so with this week’s Spotlight being a tad short (a single match plus a recap of two old reviews), I figured I’d find some ’80s stuff, including a Devil/Dump match I was linked to weeks ago. And also, someone uploaded the Hokuto/Numacchi match from Super Whirlwind so I can review that arduous epic here!

So read on and see some of that wild 1980s Atrocious Alliance clusterfuck goodness! And an ultra-rare WWWA Title decision!

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT: AJW SUPER WHIRLWIND:
(05.09.1993)
Only one match from this show appears to be on YouTube, but the rest of the card doesn’t look too promising, aside from one match. This gives me the opportunity to review that one, then make notes on the two big Joshi shows that I already reviewed, but putting them more into the context of what’s been going on in the promotions, having seen much of 1993 so far.

The tag match itself features Takako Inoue & Yumiko Hotta fighting the reformed Marine Wolves- Akira Hokuto and Suzuka Minami.

AJW LEGACY OF QUEENS:
(25.08.1993, Tokyo Nippon Budokan)
* So this is a positively AWESOME AJW show devoted to the interpromotional rivalries going on, effectively doing another Dream Slam-tier show full of mega-Dream Matches- it’s easily one of the biggest shows of the year, surpassed only by Dream Slam 1 & 2 and St. Battle Final (later in the year). Much like the Slams, this features “AJW wrestler vs. JWP/LLPW/FMW wrestler” in one-of-a-kind bouts that, if they’re not competitive, are at least unique. And this time, it’s not AJW’s tag titles on the line- both their #1 and #2 singles golds are up for grabs, as Akira Hokuto defends against an LLPW wrestler and Aja Kong defends the Red Belt against the Ace of JWP, Dynamite Kansai! And LLPW’s Ace, Kandori, is up against one of AJW’s biggest stars in Kyoko Inoue, plus we have a duo of multi-person match sprints.

The setting is really awesome- like one of the early King of the Ring shows, with huge gated doors visible on the hard cam at the end of the aisle.

This show is MASSIVE and would prove a monster 2-parter to review, but thankfully I’ve reviewed three of the matches before on separate sets.

“TL;DR- Why Should I Care?”: This show is up there with some of the greatest, boasting FOUR MATCHES at **** and over, the legendary first Kong/Kansai match, a spectacular carry-job by Hokuto, and one of those unique situations where nearly every wrestler seems to be trying to show up every other wrestler.

Rumi Kazama! Google carefully.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- RUMI KAZAMA:
Billed Height & Weight: 5’0″ 136 lbs.
Career: 1986-2003

-Rumi Kazama is one of those “hey, who is that again?” wrestlers, rarely appearing on big shows and typically lacking a lot of extraordinary showings or a huge push in most of the Interpromotional stuff I’ve seen in the mid-1990s. She’s probably most recognizable for her weird ’80s-style gear, like leopard-print shoulder pads and chest-piece on a bright purple jacket, an all-tiger-print set of tights, and a purple leopard-print set with black epaulettes. Not to mention her hilarious “Soccer Mom Hair”, sporting this GIANT teased mullet on a few ’90s shows I’ve seen.