Sachie Abe vs. Miho Watabe
Watabe is the future Baby-A. She is really short and stumpy legged and has some fun spots. Abe didn't look like a good base but Watabe had the crowd behind her making this fun despite some hiccups. They clipped a 13 minute match down to 4 or 5 though so not much to say on this other than it looked like a fun match.
Miyuki Sogabe vs. Keiko Aono
Forgettable clipped match between two no name workers. Aono would go on to put on kickpads and be better in JWP.
Harley Saito vs. Noriyo Tateno
I was wondering how good of a match you can have with Tateno. Saito immediately went to batter Tateno with her kicks, but Tateno stood up and slapped the taste out of her mouth. The rest of the match was decent fast moving action, but that slap promised a more heated battle than what we ended up getting.
Handicap Elimination Match: Rumi Kazama & Michiko Omukai vs. Michiko Nagashima & Sayuri Okino & Miwa Sato
Really good, heated match considering this was the middle of the card. The heel trio played the numbers game and turned this into a brawl from the get go and brought chains, kendo sticks and biting. They isolated Kazama & Omukai and worked a few great cut offs creating tremendous heat. Kazama got choked out with a chain, which made the subsequent chain chokes feel more dangerous and also added even more heat when Omukai got beaten down while Kazama was laid out. Omukai wasn't yet the supermodel kickboxer, but she had serious fight in her and got insane crowd reactions. Everyone on the heel team looks good, and I loved the out of nowhere mist spot. Really good stuff that could've main evented other cards.
Shinobu Kandori & Mizuki Endo vs. Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa
This was pretty great and if you added 10 counts you'd have a high end BattlARTS match. Hotta & Maekawa were just ruthless here as they would attempt to pulverize their opponent with kicks aimed at the face and head whenever they found an opening. And they really emphasized the striker vs. grappler matchup here as the LLPW team used almost no strikes. The beginning is 100% already, Endo rushes Hotta and tries to land punches from the mount, but a few seconds later she eats a punt to the eye and gets just destroyed from there. Kandori was in the Tenryu role as the tough asskicking boss, drawing amazing reactions with STARES and GESTURES. There were also plenty of great reversals courtesy of her, including turning a sleeper hold into an STO. Also, Kandori choking Hotta unconscious after she made repeated saves was such a simple, great spot that really should be used more often. This was also the best I've seen Maekawa look as she was basically all flashy kicks that landed. I liked that when she missed an especially flashy kick, she just immediately kicked her opponent in th face. Endo didn't look too great but proved she was worth her salt by grappling it out. Awesome match, pro wrestling isn't the same these days anymore.
Eagle Sawai & Shark Tsuchiya & Lioness Asuka vs. Mikiko Futagami & Yasha Kurenai & Carol Midori
These heated LLPW main event brawls may be the best thing from the 90s that nobody talks about. Futagami, Kurenai and Midori wore matching outfits and tried to take down the monster trio of Tsuchiya, Lioness and Eagle. Tsuchiya and Lioness had their working boots and, they kept the match in the ring and worked a few fantastic cut offs mostly dominating the action and doing a great job creating heat. Yasha Kurenai was the star of the match once again, she got Sharks sickle to the face and the rest of the match lived off of her bleeding and showing awesome babyface fire. She got kicked and punched in the face a bunch during the heat section and knew exactly to show the right amount of fight before getting cut off to the keep the crowd engaged. When she tagged back in and went crazy with her staff beating the bricks off of the heels the crowd went nuts and it felt like the roof was about to fly off the building. Futagami and Carol played supporting players to Kurenais story, but they did a nice job. I liked how Carol, after getting the hot tag tried for a flash pin on Asuka, it was a small detail but it made sense to go for that kind of move on a megastar, you can hardly get a straight pin on her but a random flash move might work. I also really liked Sawai, who is basically Vader sized compared to everyone on the face team, so whenever she ate a move it felt huge, even though she actually bumped her ass off. Sawai and Lionesses double team moves were brutal, these two had a kind of HDA chemistry, I wonder if they have more great performances like that. Really a tremendous match, and just the second best on this card but still really great, I cannot recommend this stuff enough.
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