[1997-06-18-AJW] Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Tomoko Watanabe & Kumiko Maekawa

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Be patient, stick with them and this eventually builds into a great match. This felt really below par and second rate for a large chunk of time but when the fruits of their labor started paying off in the third fall, I appreciated the whole match and how they got there a lot more. This is definitely a match that gets way better the longer it goes. The LCO are an outstanding heel duo and give a performance for the ages. I'm not really a fan of Watanabe in this, but Maekawa shows a lot of potential. She isn't a great wrestler yet, but she's clearly going to be eventually. Ready for the next chapter in this feud, even though I wish someone other than Watanabe was on the babyface side of it. Hopefully, she becomes a little more charismatic as time goes on.

[FLIK]

I'm not really a fan of Watanabe in this

even though I wish someone other than Watanabe was on the babyface side of it.

On & off this is roughly a 5-6 year feud (more depending how you want to look at things) and prob my favorite joshi rivalry ever. Dozens of ppl pop in & out on both sides but Watanabe vs LCO was always the heart of things.

 

Be patient, stick with her

[El-P]

I'm not really a fan of Watanabe in this, but Maekawa shows a lot of potential. She isn't a great wrestler yet, but she's clearly going to be eventually.

Wait, what ? Maekawa sucked, she was a mediocre wrestler at her very best, and quite bad most of her career. Watanabe carried her ass for years.

[Loss]

I'm going off of this match only.

[soup23]

I agree with Loss that it took a while to get cooking but once it did, it turned out to be a pretty good match. There was still spots where the action dragged and I was looking around the room for something else to hold my attention but I appreciate the way LCO work as a cohesive unit.

[PeteF3]

Not as high on this--again, the stuff in the ring was better than the brawling outside, though admittedly it's closer here than some other 1997 matches fitting that criticism. AJW was attempting to shake up its booking with business plummeting, and part of that was semi-reinventing LCO as a super-heel duo and even booking some DQ finishes, as we get here. It doesn't really work--LCO use every weapon not nailed down and Maekawa gets disqualified for...punching, basically. I've LOVED the Watanabe I've seen on the Supplemental Viewing and was becoming the joshi worker I was most anxious to see more of, but I agree she didn't bring a whole lot here aside from a few cool takedowns. Maekawa is sort of a Poor Woman's Kansai but she does show lots of fire and kicks. There were several parts of this that looked uncooperative--whether that was just breaking the youngster in or by design or just LCO being difficult, I don't know. It didn't negatively affect the match but it was noticeable.

[Zenjo]

A great moment for LCO marks as the devilish duo win the WWWA Tag straps for the first time. Their matches provided many of the highlights of 1997 AJW. It didn't take their opponents long to don their crimson masks. Despite this handicap Watanabe was able to pin Shimoda for the first fall. The heels turned it around with some vicious work on the head of Maekawa. The youngster lost control and wouldn't stop punching Shimoda leading to the DQ. Mima was bloodified as a consequence.

 

Amongst the wild events the bottom rope would come off, the corner pad would be removed and used as a weapon. Oh and Maekawa was thrown off the balcony! I would not like to feel like any of the wrestlers would've done following this. Such a brutal match. There was lots of bad blood to go with the real blood. This rivalry brought out plenty of needle and hatred.

 

All three falls were of a similar length. The Segunda felt too long and lost some of the momentum. The match had many upsides yet was unwieldy at times and inconsistent. Maekawa had improved so much this year. She was really over with the fans. It was a striking contrast to her contemporary Rie Tamada who'd been treated as an undercard jobber earlier in the night. They'd started together and progressed at a similar pace in their formative years. Now Kumiko was looking like she belonged in big matches. She would always need the right opponents, but had become an asset now.