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[1994-03-03-AJW] Toshiyo Yamada vs Sakie Hasegawa


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

For the first part of this, they mostly work holds and then have quick flashes of highspots between the matwork. That's when the match is at its best.

 

Yamada's kicks are so brutal. Hasegawa is much more convincing and much better when she is taking a beating than she is when she is dishing one out, so the match suffers a little when she is in control or when they're working back and forth. I love Sakie, but I don't need to see her on offense very long. She is meant to sell and tease comebacks. Yamada throwing the kitchen sink at her while she finds a way to fight back - for brief spells - is when this match works best. While some of Hasegawa's runs of offense are really fun, she isn't quite peerless in that regard at this point, so it doesn't stand out as much.

 

Hasegawa is such a natural underdog babyface, and she's far from a bad offensive wrestler, but she comes across as a C-level Toyota when she's throwing everything at Yamada. The sprint-style back and forth exchanges aren't where she excels. As a result, when they are working even, the match is good, but nothing special in the context of other 1994 AJW matches. When Hasegawa is in control, the match drops in quality and is fun at times, but bland at times. When Yamada is in control and Hasegawa gets to sell and build sympathy, this is really great.

 

Add all of this together, and the end result is a match that I thought would have a wow factor, but instead is just a very good match with some really great moments. It's hard to call something this strong disappointing, but it was disappointing only because they abandoned things that were working at times to make sure Hasegawa got her stuff in. I guess Hasegawa was heavily influenced by Toyota and wanted to wrestle like her, not realizing that she was a different type of wrestler with a totally different sensibility. You could edit the best parts of this match into an all-time classic, and I do think these two could have pulled one off had they just narrowed their scope.

 

The finish had some emotion to it, because Hasegawa is such an awesome sympathy magnet that you believed that she really needed to get to a hospital quickly. The more she sells, the more she gets over.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I hate to agree totally with Loss here but that's what I'm going to do. I found the finishing run to be tremendously great actually. Hasegawa is outstanding at baby face sympathy selling. It's really remarkable if you think about it. There were times in this I just lost interest because Hasegawa didn't need to be having five to ten minute control segments. Overall, this was very good with an excellent finish. I believe it could have been a classic if it was just Yamada obliterating Hasegawa with hope spots in between control segments.

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I really wanted to like this match more than I did because I love cheering for Hasegawa and the story was strong throughout but this match just kept going and going. The opening matwork was gritty and cool. The ending I thought was also great with the trading of chokes. The middle just had too many down periods of aimless offense and Hasegawa was definitely on the offensive too much. Yamada has great kicks but her moveset is limited so in a thirty minute match there is a lot of "how many times is she going to throw a kick" going on. I just wish there could have been around 10-15 minutes chopped off this because with the strengths of these two workers there is a great match between them. Even with all the flows, I would still call this good and was glad to watch it. Hasegawa is quickly becoming one of my favorites while watching this yearbook.

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  • 1 year later...

Tend to agree with everyone else, though I thought that by the end both women had really run out of things to do. Doing a ten-count or dueling sleeperholds can be very dramatic, and it was here. But doing them over and over and over again...I was like, "Evidently she's not going to go down from being kicked, TRY SOMETHING ELSE." This needed to be reigned in a bit, because Hasegawa as underneath babyface could be very compelling. It brings to mind Dusty Rhodes' comments about why he didn't book the Rock 'n Roll Express to go 30+.

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  • 1 year later...

An interesting one here. It looked like it was going to be one type of match and ended up as something quite different. The theme was Hasegawa's continued push. She gave nearly as good as she got, and certainly threatened a win. The structure appeared to be set for a sub 15m bout with a B,M & E. Yamada controlling the build before Sakie came back and they had a finish. Instead it didn't end there and went on to become a real knock down, drag out war of attrition. A shoot style influence was plain to see. Lots of stiff kicks, submissions and down count spots. They were purposely trying to strip things down with regards to movesets. Yamada didn't even attempt her finisher. Bizarrely the most over move was the sleeper hold. Only in Japan. By no means perfect, yet I found it refreshing. It worked out pretty well. They told a story of guts and fighting spirit. Getting back up no matter how many times you get knocked down.

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  • 1 year later...

This was a tremendously grueling match...for the wrestlers!

 

Seeing how it was set as kind of a NJ/UWF strong style fight with the Yamada the kicker versus Hasegawa the wrestler, I had no idea it would go on for as long as it would. It never seemed to be dragging on though. Hasegawa would not back down to Yamada despite the amount of damage she was receiving. It showed real heart. The only real downside was the excution was spotty at times. Yamada doesn't always have the best accuracy with her more exciting kicks & Hasegawa is best on the mat & suplexing. Regardless the excitement from the crowd & the intensity of the combatants overshadowed this short-coming. Just a real battle.

 

I thought it was a great match and perhaps an almost classic especially as the AJW style shifted.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1994-03-03-AJW] Toshiyo Yamada vs Sakie Hasegawa
  • 3 years later...

I think people aren't aware that this match has a "Submission or KO only" stipulation, which is why it's worked differently to the average AJW match.

Anyway I thought this was fantastic and Sakie especially gave a really captivating underdog performance with her selling and the desperation she had in constantly going for the sleeper, which I think she does because it's simply the only way she's ever going to pull out a victory. She's not gonna outstrike Yamada. It is a bit repetitive but I think it's works here considering the context & stipulation. I was really really rooting for her to pull it out the longer this went on.

****1/2

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  • 4 months later...

This was a great match. It was kind of a hybrid shoot style match since Hasegawa didn't have much to offer outside of her strikes and a few choke submisisons, but what she lacked in technique she made up for with gutsy intensity. Is it possible that I've been underrating Toshiyo Yamada this entire time? This is isn't the type of Joshi match that was ever on my radar because as far as I'm concerned shoot style is shoot style and Joshi is another thing entirely, and the two should only meet if it's early ARSIOn Yoshida, however this was some first class striking from Yamada. It makes you wonder how far she could have taken this style if she was allowed to do it more outside of Korakuen Hall spot shows. She was a hell of a lot better at it than Yumiko Hotta, Lioness Asuka, or Rumi Kazawa. The last third of the match was outstanding. Sakie shrugging off the knockout hits and fighting back with slaps and kicks of her own was awesome, and the heat for the submission attempts was out of this world.  I actually thought this was legitimately one of the best worked time limit draws I can remember seeing as the match was still live up until the final count. So many time limit draws end with the workers dawdling about. This was still rocking right until the end. Yamada maybe should have gone over, but it's nice that they wanted to give Hasegawa some rub, and the moment where she blocks what should have been the finish was truly epic. It was long, but in a good way. Clearly if you're not enjoying it, you're going to dread the fact that there's more, but if you like the match as much as I did, it's a treat. I never really felt like the match was messy or rambling... it was just a great contest and a hell of a fight. 

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