Sonoko Kato & Sakura Hirota & Hiromi Kato vs. Toshie Uematsu & Kyoko Ichiki & Rina Ishi
We get about 8 minutes of a 21 minute match. Hiromi Kato was playing underdog, and she is quite fun taking a beating and then randomly grabbing a torture rack. Thought Ichiki looked quite impressive acting like a gang leader for her team but also showing vulnerability after Kato had her in the rack. And the rest of the girls just have insane workrate. Wish we had more of this
WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship Tournament Semifinals
Chihiro Nakano vs. Sugar Sato
Makie Numao vs. Meiko Satomura
We get about 1 minute each of these. Numao vs. Satomura looked cool as both just grabbed crazy submissions and counters left and right.
WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship Tournament Finals: Sugar Sato vs. Meiko Satomura
Yes yes, the WCW Womens Cruiserweight title. I liked this a lot. Satomura outgrapples Sato early, so Sato takes a chair to her. Sato is kind of the stepchild of the GAEA rookie crew, as she‘s not a cool shooter and not really a tremendous athlete, but she always does things that stick. They settle into this really cool finishing run with both them busting out crazy submissions and pin counters. Sato won the previous match with a kneebar and Satomura won hers with an armbar, so the fans were rabid for all the submission attempts. Really good shit, unfortunately only 7 of 11 minutes were shown.
KAORU & Maiko Matsumoto vs. Chigusa Nagayo & Akira Hokuto
Damn great match. I‘m a fan of all 4 of these wrestlers, and I STILL didn‘t expect this to be so great. Virtually flawlessly worked underdog story match. Matsumoto has a knife in this gunfight of a match, and KAORU basically spends the first 5 minutes of the match saving Matsumoto from getting killed. Hokuto and Nagayo are pretty great launching an Anderson brothers like assault on Matsumoto here, cutting off the ring and acting all high and mighty. It‘s weird how joshi has this reputation for this go-go style with random moves and transitions happening by the minute and then you get hit with these ladies doing an expert job cutting off the ring and building to a momentum shift. Nagayo is established that she can end a match with any hold, so her putting all these shoot holds on Matsumoto garnered tremendous heat. Nagayo and Hokuto were treating KAORU like shit too initially, Matsumoto doesn‘t even get a hot tag, Hokuto just throws her to the corner and signals KAORU to come in, like she‘s tired of KAORU coming in to save Maiko, so she wants her to come in and kick her ass. Matsumoto helping out KAORU in turn was really great. I was also really impressed by Hokuto and Nagayo knowing exactly how much offense to give to their opponent. It can come across as dull when in Japanese wrestling a higher ranked wrestler no sells all of his opponents stuff, but in this case, when they acted unphased by Matsumoto it felt earned, and when Matsumoto was able to crack them it felt earned and accordingly great. Those Atomic Drops were great. Should also say KAORU looked great as an athletic, precise main player and had some great exchanges with Hokuto. It transitions to a finishing run where suddenly KAORU is getting destroyed and Matsumoto has to save her before the inevitable happens. Tremendous match that executed its story perfectly while delivering plenty of violence and heat.
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