Harley Saito vs. Leo Kitamura
This was a clipped match I would‘ve loved to see in full. Kitamura had some serious fight in her in 1992. She want at Saito all fired up and then Saito would brutalize her with kicks and shoot submissions. Saito looks unstoppable for a minute and hits one of the craziest punt kicks to Kitamuras face I‘ve ever seen in a match in this. The match ended up being about who could weather the others storm first and it ended up being a nice little fight. I have no idea if Kitamura landing on Saitos legs with the moonsault was intentional but her following up with stomps to the legs was nice.
About everything you want from your 10 minute joshi match. Both these two are better than history gives them credit. Really nice aggressive fighting early, I really liked Hozumi working over Kazama with open hands and Kazama landed a hard open hand shot of her own to shut it down. I also enjoyed Hozumi landing a splash with Kazama pulling up her knees and Kazama then working over her stomach with more nasty kicks and stomps. A really simple bit that they moved on from quickly but it made the whole more entertaining. These two know how to hit their stuff in a bit more interesting ways than most girl workers and the finish was really nice with Hozumi moving into her suplexes from unusual positions and trying to catch Kazamas kick combos. Hozumis suplexes were cool, and Kazamas kicks looked brutal. I miss 90s wrestling.
Shinobu Kandori & Midori Saito vs. Noriyo Tateno & Mikiko Futagami
Interesting match up here as they paired the stars with rookies. Futagami trying to stand up to Kandori was fun and Kandori is just a walking badass in 1992. She will make even a bodyslam look brutal and her submissions are great. Tateno is too limited to really be a good antagonist to the mighty Kandori, but their exchanges still had a few cool moments. I thought they would go the cheap routine at the end by having Saito job to Tateno, but instead Kandori tagged herself in and slapped on a perfect armbar that stopped the match. Tateno got up and pulled a Gracie match claiming she didn't give up. And... that's it? Not even a post match brawl? Maybe it was clipped out. This only went 10 minutes and I wonder if they did that because they knew the commercial tape would only be 1 hour. Regardless, Kandori is great.
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