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[1990-01-04-AJW] Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita


Loss

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My old review

 

Love matches like this. Starts out merely ok but then slowly builds and builds and by the end they've created something truely great. At 1st they just kind of go back and forth for a while with Hotta & Akira having the slight advantage. Things finally turn awesome once they start building the match around a game of my sleeper is deadlier then yours. Yamada's 1st up as her & Hotta have heated exchanges every time they go against each other here. Yamada gets her in a sleepr and they work a long section around that with Hotta putting it over huge, one of the best jobs i've seen someone do actually. She near passes out from it and once released, stumbles around and can barely stay on her feet for quite a while after. Mita tries her hand as well at the sleepr game to decent success but Hotta's able to tag out to Hokuto. Akira decides she wants in on this game and after kicking Mita's butt works the hold on her for a while. Hotta not wanting to be left out and having recovered tags back in, tosses Mita aside and bum rushes Yamada. She franticly fights to get the sleeper on Yamada and when she does they'd done such a great job of getting it over in the match that it gets a monster pop from the crowd. Turns into a war of attrition after that as all 4 girls are selling fatigue and desperately trying to win which finally comes after Hokuto puts away weak link Mita with a missile kick. Didn't go in with any kind of high hopes for this. Figured it's be good but not this good. One of the better matches of the year for sure.

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  • 3 weeks later...

One thing I really like about this is how mat-based it is. None of the four of them have fleshed out their personalities as much as they would later in the decade, but it's a little refreshing to see everyone working a lot more basic. Basic AJW is still a lot more action-packed than most styles, but I really enjoyed the relatively slow build. Hotta ends up isolated and worked over by Yamada, and later Mita by Hokuto, and I love how this reverse chinlock being sold as death gets over than a lot of the more daredevil stuff. The choke is a killer move here, even if they do hold on to it way too long to really seem as dire as they try to make it out to be. The crowd is also interesting here. AJW crowds were always unique, but they clearly don't sound like the interpromotional crowds yet. The teen girl screaming is still in half effect.

 

I think one of the things I'm looking forward to most after watching this match is seeing exactly how Hokuto went from this to Dangerous Queen.

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The teen girl screaming is still in half effect.

Yeah there's a big switch in crowd demo as 90 wears on, teen girls always remained a certain % of the audiance but by the end of the year you can def tell a lot of the old fans are gone, replaced with newer male fans.

 

exactly how Hokuto went from this to Dangerous Queen.

Well, she was allready the Dangerous Queen by this point, earned by breaking her neck a few years earlier but still finishing the match.

 

But I know what you're getting at as she's def diffrent hear then she would be a couple years later. I'd say the switch first starts around the end of the year with the Bull matches but most of it takes place in 91 & really kicked in in 92 when she had the big feud with Bull, formed LCO, etc...

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Well, I can only be slightly more insightful about joshi than I can about lucha, but this kicked ass. Hotta is the greatest seller of a sleeperhold ever, if she wasn't legitimately loopy. It is that go-go-go style that's hard to get used to after so much '80s viewing, but every transition made sense, there was great psych to the choke sleeper as a killer move and all four girls wanting to pay back the others by using it, and everything was executed well (save Hokuto's piledriver that almost saw her tear her own groin). Akira definitely was positioned as the strongest of the bunch, getting the winning fall, getting to no-sell some stuff, and being the only one not to work an "in peril" segment of any real length.

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Completely didn't recognize Hokuto here as missed the introductions at the beginning. The crowd was the first thing I noticed here as they are very vocal and it is mostly young females screaming and chanting. A difference compared to the other matches so far where crowds were quiet in my opinion. Really slow to get into this one. Not a whole lot of flash but I can agree the effectiveness of the sleeper/choke as it becomes a battle between the two teams to see who can put away the other with it. Yamada and Mita seemed overmatched at times but showed a lot of spirit.

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I felt like I was watching a different match than Loss and FLIK described. I didn't see a slow build at all; seemed like pretty typical Joshi, with them racing through most of the spots. That's not to say it was a bad match. The sleeper stuff was cool, and they didn't go into finisher/kickout overkill. I just never got the war of attrition feel.

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I had trouble connecting to this as well until the sleeper spots. I attribute some of that to the setting, crowd, and Hokuto's overall demeaner being so drastically different from what I am used to. Nice to see Mita working well this early on and her being bloody at the end and Hotta's loopy selling of the sleeper will be the takeaway points for me in this match. Felt like a good intro to joshi for 1990 but i hope better things are coming.

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I'll admit to not knowing much about Joshi at all (I even had to ask Bix for help identifying folks) but this seemed perfectly fine. Still not my cup of tea, but not bad. The schoolgirl audience was pretty awesome, and it's a shame that based by the comments that it's on the way out, because the heated atmosphere is what I liked most about this match.

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Did anyone here used to watch Prisoner Cell Block H? The range of slightly lesbian-y haircuts on display here reminds me of that.

 

I've never seen any Joshi period. Hotta is just fucking vicious here in the early going. Her kicks are insane -- doesn't the fact that she's basically a man give her an unfair advantage though?

 

Half-crab by Hokuto on Mitta looks really painful. The (I'm assuming) heels give Mitta a real good working over in this stretch sequence.

 

The screaming teenage girls are nuts, feel like I'm watching the wrestling equivalent of Manga. Ha ha.

 

Hokuto's matwork all looks like it really hurts and Mitta's screaming puts it over.

 

Jesus the teenage girls are singing now. If my wife walked in now she'd wonder what the fuck I'm watching here.

 

Hot tag to Yamada. Belly-to-belly. Sleeper. Hotta's not looking so tough all of a sudden. Wow that's just magnificent selling of the sleeper! Possibly the greatest ever.

 

Fuck, double sleeper now, the teenage girls are losing it! Head scissors from Mitta. Hotta is basically dead and tags out. Slapsies now and Hokuto is having none of it at all. That's one mean bitch. You get the impression that she could just beat the shit out of Mitta. Sleeper on Mitta. Hokuto looks like she's pulling her head off.

 

Sleeper from Hotta on Yamada now, revenge time. German! Gets 2.

 

Faces comes back and roll up Hotta. Thought that was it! UNBELIEVABLE. Mitta gets in some cool offense on Hokuto including a great double underarm suplex.

 

Hokuto gets the pin after a nasty looking dropkick from the top rope.

 

I really enjoyed this, excellent match and a great first look at Joshi for me. At least a **** in my book, if not more. This is pro wrestling!

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  • 2 months later...

I have no idea what 'Dream Orca' means and probably never will.

 

The class of '85 vs the class of '87 and there was a status gap, but not an unbridgable one. Compared to later years it was unrefined at times. They did their best to make up for it with passion and enthusiasm. The Orca in particular displayed great toukon, and brought an energy to proceedings. Mita ended up with a bloody nose. The key move was the sleeper hold which nearly brought victory to both sides. I found this different and refreshing. Hokuto and Hotta went over fairly convincingly at the end. Plus we have schoolgirls still. Hot-Ta Yu-Mi-Ko!

 

And just in case you wanted to know Yamada won the annual new years road race with Kaoru Ito as runner up.

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  • 2 months later...

This was marvelous. 1990s joshi puroresu is one of my favorite things ever. I’m totally in the joshi puroresu mode at the moment, so I really enjoyed this. It was great to see these workers at this stage in their career. All four would play a big role in joshi puroresu throughout the decade. Hokuto was such a great pure worker at this point in her career. While she would get better as an overall worker a few years later, her pure workrate was great here. Mita was not yet the imposing force she would later become. She was the weakest worker in the match and she was mostly selling in this match. Still, she did the best she could do at that point in her career and never dragged the match down. She debuted around the same time as Yamada and Hotta, but it just took her a bit longer to make in impact in the joshi puroresu scene. Hotta was at this time basically a more forgiving version of what she would later become, but already showed signs of her future viciousness. Yamada was great. I’m a big fan of her work, especially her late 1980s-early 1990s work. This match shows that there were still plenty of school girls in the crowd in early 1990. Not as much as in the 1980s, when the crowd almost entirely consisted of school girls. This match took place on the show where Bull Nakano won the WWWA World Championship.

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This was a joy to watch. The crowd was very loud for this, which is a nice change of pace compared to the other matches on this set that I've watched so far. Very intense match here with the use of the rear choke being the highlight of the match. Very nice intro to Joshi for the year and I am very much looking forward to seeing what else they can bring throughout the 90's.

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  • 2 months later...

I couldn't get into this. Yumiko Hotta worked distractingly light, and not just by her standards. Dream Orca is a weird name even AJW English standards. The blown near fall at the end was really messy. And Akira Hokuto has mom hair.

 

AJW is definitely in a transitional period here. There are plenty of male fans but they're not reacting to anything. The teen girls are LOUD though.

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  • 1 year later...

After a steady diet of the Lillian Ellison catfight school of women's wrestling, it was refreshing to see a match where the competitors actually knew holds and strikes. The sleeper selling was tremendous, as several people have already noted, and the pace was lightning quick. Was Etsuko busted open hardway at the end? I'm not sure if they allow women to blade in Japan or not.

 

This is neck-and-neck with Flair-Eaton for match of Disc 1 with one match left to watch.

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I'm not sure if they allow women to blade in Japan or not.

There would be occasional blade jobs but it was never a regular thing. That applies across all Joshi promotions through time. Female wrestlers are a lot less willing to have their foreheads turned into chess boards. Not that they were overly concerned about more serious injuries mind you.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Another huge blind spot for me is this All Japan Women's/Joshi/etc. I've seen Akira Hokuto but only in WCW when she came out wearing a fright wig and a gas mask, so I thought she was the gal in the pants until the pin. Anyway, this seemed really sloppy to me which made the strikes feel shoot-y at times. I really liked the pants lady selling the sleeper by running the ropes with limp limbs. Cool story trading off sleeper holds, and a hot finish to boot. I'm into it.

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  • 1 year later...
  • GSR changed the title to [1990-01-04-AJW] Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta vs Toshiyo Yamada & Etsuko Mita
  • 4 years later...

I'm not used to the presentation of early 90's Joshi where the target audience seems to be teenage girls instead of the general populace. It's a .... different soundscape, for sure, and the similarities in everyone's appearance from attire to haircut is borderline militaristic. Hokuto seems to be in her pre-Dangerous Queen phase, and it's like I'm watching an entirely different human being. Anyways, once the culture shock wore off, this was enjoyable. It's cut at a familiar Joshi pace, but with more of a conventional tag team structure to hold it all together. I can't imagine a sleeper hold being used as a high-spot better than it was here, but I suppose you can make any move seem like a credible finisher if conveyed with the proper emotion.

***

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