Even more AJW

 

Toshiyo Yamada vs. Sakie Hasegawa, AJW 3/3/1994

ANOTHER incredibly sick UWF rules match from AJW in 1994. This was an absolute monster match and I honestly thought it was up there with the very best of Futen/BattlARTS singles. Once again, they did some Irish Whips here, but because they kept the action so intense I didn’t mind. The violence was certified insane with a ton of sick kicks and suplexes, but a big part of why the match is so great is how hard they were going for such a long match. They basically started going hard at about 5 minutes into this – with Hasegawa going nearly KO on a Yamada choke and Yamada then trying to turn her lights out – and I was thinking “They are doing too much too early, there is no way they can keep this up”. But they keep it up! Holy fuck did they ever. There was a stretch in the middle of this that I thought was as good as any violent FUTEN end run, and they escalated the violence even more towards the end. And it wasn’t just moves-moves-moves stuff, they worked so many compelling transitions, teases, control segments etc into this, with a constant sense of going for the kill.

Hasegawa is once again the story in this. She’s not quite a shooter type but man does she ever establish herself here. She did a nice job stretching Yamadas leg in interesting ways, and her suplexes and kicks would have done anyone from the BattlARTS roster proud. The build to her uranages was great and when she finally got one on Yamada she absolutely spiked her. I also thought it was remarkable how they kept destroying each other and finding believable ways to comeback but also cut each other off. Like Yamada was getting killed until she was able to slip underneath and brain Hasegawa with one of her crazy jumping kicks, then she tried building up to her big kick off the top with Hasegawa desperately trying to prevent her, really great sense of struggle. I also really liked the bit where Yamada started suplexing Hasegawa, with Hasegawa barely preventing another suplex and Hasegawa then doing this “I don’t know where I am or what’s going” selling. Just a really good back and forth and despite all the violent exchanges they had me to the point where I was flipping out when Hasegawa locked in a sleeper. At that point I was already thinking that this match was on an insanely high level, and then they went even harder for an incredible last 5 minutes that saw Yamada trying to punt Hasegawas life out, a crazy palm strike exchange that was straight out of the best Tamura/Yamamoto RINGS matches, Hasegawa taking maybe the sickest bump on a suplex I’ve ever seen etc. There is some repetiveness and the referee was weirdly hesitant to start KO counts sometimes, but other than that I thought this was up there with any Misawa/Kawada, Ikeda/Ishikawa, Fujiwara/Maeda or whatever other incredibly great and violent match up in wrestling history you wanna come up with.

Aja Kong & Reggie Bennett vs. Lioness Asuka & Bison Kimura, AJW 5/7/1995

Badass match. This easily could have been throwaway mid card stuff, but leave it to Aja to make things ultra heated and unpredictable. Basically Kimura is out for Ajas blood here due to their history together, and Aja just doesn’t care for her and mauls her. Also, Asuka wasn’t super settled into her routine yet, so she makes a good opponent for Aja in a shooter vs. monster way. I was also surprised by how fun Reggie was in this, I mean Reggie is always cool but her power moves were just great and she also did a pretty good job stretching Bison. Bison getting frustrated and going for Reggies leg was great. I also loved her busting out the nightstick. So yeah, violence escalating in interesting ways, fun big vs. little spots, Aja mauling people, fast pace, this was really sweet.