Assorted NEO

 

Hiromi Yagi & Carlos Amano vs. Yuka Shiina & Chaparita ASARI, NEO 5/4/2001

This is the kind of joshi I love and miss dearly. 4 crazy grapplers going all out busting out crazy armbars and legbars left and right and fighting fiercely. My girl Yagi totally stole the show having some great exchanges. I was also super impressed with Asari. She is someone I usually enjoy, but she totally adapted to the others style and busted out some super dope shit including her awesome swinging rana into an armbar. I‘ve never noticed Shiina much but she was hellbent on choking someone out. Amano was her usual self. The finish was great with Yagi pulling out an incredible counter. It was something Fujiwara would do if he was a 95 pound lithe athletic girl.

Hiromi Yagi & Yuka Shiina vs. Tanny Mouse & Yuki Miyazaki, NEO 5/3/2001

Not a match people would seek out on paper, but there were some good standing exchanges here. Miyazaki and Tanny where kind of a workrate team in NEO while still doing some comedy. Some moments felt comedic but not like contrived jokes. And the rest of this was quite good, mostly built around flash submissions and cool hard head spots from Tanny. Shiina was once again working like a submission artist and I think she's becoming one to watch. She's really putting the Sleeper Hold to use and that's something that will always get a wrestler on my good side. The ending was built around her trying to choke Tanny out, finding various ways to lock in sleepers and Tanny desperately avoiding them until Tanny caught her in a her weird Pallo Special to get the submission herself. Fun match and an example of sprinty joshi done right.

Yuka Shiina vs. Chaparita ASARI, NEO 12/7/2001

Awesome match! Pretty much Shiina countering Asaris flying into her grappling moves, and Asari countering with surprising grappling skill of her own. I love a match where wrestler not famous for grappling reveals themself to be good at grappling, and this was that. And they stuck to this simple story and it really worked in getting me into all their exchanges. Once again Shiina was hyper focussed on the sleeper. It build to a great ending with ASARI trying to knock her out with shotais and Shiina going for Sleepers from different angles. It's kind of mind blowing how simple great matches can be sometimes. Add a neat finish and you have one of the best joshi matches of the year.