More Joshi

 Mariko Yoshida vs Momoe Nakanishi, AtoZ 11/9/2003

Cool match. I’m surprised it’s not that well known since Nakanishi is generally well liked by joshi fans and Yoshida is well liked by, well, how can anyone not like Yoshida. This was Nakanishis go go style vs Yoshida booting her in the face and punching her and tying her up in submissions. It makes for a cool match because all Nakanishi knows is to go hard and she just keeps flying into the spiders web. Eventually she figures it out by going for chairs and trashing her opponent. Yoshida was really good as always, doing a good job using Nakanishi as a punching bag as well as not letting her get her spots in and giving her just the right hope spots. You know it’s good when there is actual build to Momoes spots. At 13 minute it was just right, too. Very good sprint.

GAMI vs Kumiko Maekawa, AtoZ 5/4/2004

I just love this match up. Maekawa is one of the most high end pro wrestlers you’ve ever seen, she just has some of the most ridiculously sharp kick based offense and does 30 minute matches in her sleep. And GAMI is, well, GAMI. This is just a super fun match built around GAMI annoying Maekawa in her unique ways, tying her up in holds, spraying mist in her face etc. There is one moment where GAMI fakes an injury and they treat it super serious and pause the match just for GAMI to get up and clock Maekawa with a paper fan that Maekawa of course treats like the joke it is. GAMI then uses Maekawas rage to mist her in the face with out even blinking. Maekawa spending the rest of the match with that pissed off look in her green face was gold. GAMIs few big spots (rolling kick landing in Maekawas face, big palm strike) were also spectacular. Now don’t get me wrong if this was 1998 shooter GAMI it would have been next level, but for this kind of neat character clash it was really cool. GAMI~!

Kana vs Tsubasa Kuragaki, JWP 3/31/2013

Very cool match up, I’m surprised this eluded me because both these two are among my favourites. Kana has a reputation for being a bit of a crowbar but there was little striking from her early on and instead she focussed on catching Kuragaki in submissions. Kana using Fujiwara-ish counters to contain the beastly Kuragaki was great. Kuragaki had some nice moments of her own using her power, including hitting an absolutely awesome out of nowhere deadlift suplexes. Second half has more stiff including a few gnarly backfists from Kana and Kuragaki busting out her trademark big offense. I liked that they didn’t overdo it considering this was a midcard match even though they were going well over 10 minutes. They could’ve just gone braindead and hit their spots but instead they told a story and delivered some cool wrestling.

A Sakura Hirota Match

 

Mio Momono vs Miyuki Takase vs Sakura Hirota (WAVE 6/29/2021)

The ruleset for this match was really cool. Basically it’s like a gauntlet match where you just try to survive both opponents. It starts as a 1 vs 1 match, the loser goes out, the winner stays in and fights the next person, and the first to get two straight wins is the winner. I don’t really like 3 ways so just doing them as a series of singles matches with an overarching story is a win for me.

The first match up is Momono vs. Takase. I haven’t seen Takase before but she was a pleasant surprise. She doesn’t do any flimsy offense, she focuses on the more solid stuff like snug clotheslines and she has a really great leg drop. Momono is one of those really fast moving modern day workers with endless cardio who can go really hard. Thankfully she doesn’t do anything stupid either. The opening goings are very fast moving without being too much. Joshi often has the problem that they throw everything out right from the get go, that wasn’t the case her as they start dodging moves, battling over moves, eventually being able to take advantage and zone in on weak spots. That also avoided another typical problem in joshi – random offense. Very targetted offense by both of them. Even basic fairly basic stuff like a backbreaker or dropkick to the gut felt important because it was followed up. It made everything important especially in the context that this was going to be a long match and both of them would probably have to go again after the fall. Nothing mind blowing but it was a good warmup for what was to come.

However the main selling point of the match is the performance of Hirota. Sakura Hirota is 42 years old and she has been largely doing comedy for the past 20 years. However, in this tournament she got humiliated by rookie and that caused her to transform into a serious wrestler and kick ass. No imitation jokes from her at all in this, and man judging by her performance here you wish she’d wrestle like this more often. After some going here and there she basically challenged her opponent to a straight wrestling match and they grappled it out. It was compelling because while Hirota was game and motivated, she was still facing a much younger, faster and more athletic opponent. As a result Hirota had to give it her all and that she did. She busted out all these awesome suplexes, submissions and counters and had one awesome exchange after another. What I love about this match format is that everything can truly be a finish. The roll up stuff was really freaking good and really helped by the fact that you by a roll up as a finish in this context. Not that any finish done here was cheap, everything was extremely hard fought. Honestly some of the best exchanges I’ve ever seen, they were that fucking great.

So Hirota was absolutely amazing. She was the star of the match, no doubt, but the other two were fantastic also. I was amazed they went such a long time without going into overly dramatic overkill or dangerous spots. The match didn’t even have a dive and they kept pretty much the whole 40 minutes or so in the ring. I loved the constant focus on the roll ups and pin attempts. Momonos out of nowhere dropkicks ruled and Takases power based offense was crushing. Often in Japanese big matches you have a bunch of nothing for the first 20 minutes before the last 10 minutes turn into a dancy reversal fest. Here the opposite was the case as they started busting out the fire works pretty early, but kept them going in a believable way by focussing on slick pin attempts and submissions, before settling into an amazing 50/50 finish with both the last surviving participiants busting out some epic counters and battling for control while selling this like a battle on the last few hundred yards of a marathon.

So, there you have it. You basically had several awesome singles matches sandwhiched into one coherent narrative over a 40 minute stretch that never got boring and provided plenty of highly intricate wrestling, plus the amazing story of Sakura Hirota being the biggest wily veteran underdog badass you’ve ever seen. Execution was good, action was tight, no silly antics aside from one very well timed joke that only lasted 3 seconds and served the narrative. Best modern joshi match I’ve seen by a mile. Hell it’s one of the best matches in any era. This was absolutely fucking mental.

2021 MOTYCs

More Sportiva Twitcastings

 

Hiroaki Ura & Kazuhiro Tamura vs Michio Kageyama & Toru Sugiura (Sportiva 1/23/2019)

Sportiva could still deliver the goods in 2019. Hiroaki Ura was their young hope, and watching his progression on the weekly bar shows is very intrigueing. The first half of this is nothing special, it’s solid enough but nothing you haven’t seen before as it’s mostly the non-Ura guys doing their thing. I will say that Toru Sugiura is always an impressive wrestler, he doesn’t get talked about much but whenever I see him he looks like one of the best guys going. Things get going when they start kicking Uras ass with Sugiura working him over with nasty stomps and face scrapes. The second half had lots of really well timed stuff and unpredictable twists inculding one nearfall that was unbelievably well done. Kageyama and Tamura also gave a shit in this match so that means they were quite good. These guys really know how to deliver a good match on these tiny shows without doing too much for their own good. In an era where everything is going for the grandiose and overboarding it’s nice to see some less is more pro wrestling where they still put in effort to make it interesting.

Hiroshi Yamato vs 801 Kenichi (Sportiva 1/30/2019)

Yamato is another really underrated wrestler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him shoot at his full potential but he always does cool stuff and shows he understands pro wrestling well. He did an impressive job crafting a neat little match around Kenichi. His technical prowress and bits of athleticism always keep things interesting and he manages to time Kenichs stuff very well. Kenichi is rather sluggish but because Yamato paced the match around him in such a way it didn’t really matter. Kenichi had one Thesz Press that actually looked awesome because of Yamato timing it as if it caught him off guard. Yamato also had this impressive sequence where he leapt to the top rope in a spider suplex position, threw Kenichi, then hit a missile dropkick and followed with a dive to the outside. It was like something Misawa in his athletic prime would do. Very nice stuff.

Hiroaki Ura vs Yusaku Ito (Sportiva 2/6/2019)

This was really fucking great. Getting to follow Uras weekly progression from tags to singles is awesome. He is still at the stage where something like a camel clutch might finish him, so just seeing him try his damndest to take a chunk out of Ito and get as far as he can go is great and a story to be invested in. Ito is awesome here, giving Ura the chance to catch him off guard. I won’t spoil too much but Itos strikes were absolutely vicious and getting into harrowing tier in the second half. He really cracked Ura with his kicks and elbows. Ura caught Ito off guard early and immediately capitalized working the leg. It didn’t last long but Ito sold the fuck out of that and it set up this awesome moment in the second half where Ura grabbed Itos leg like a terrier. It was that moment where you felt Ura started pushing beyond his limits and it was awe inspiring. The stuff they did with the basic submissions was awesome too and the way they worked them into the match was very inventive compared to your usual cliché submission reversal stuff. And because of Uras standing and Itos selling the crowd bought a tapout finish. Ending was sick too. This was a gem, one of the best rookie vs high ranked guy I remember in an awful long time.