A few Matches from LLPW The Kageki Renaissance! Grand Opening 2nd 9/24/1992

 

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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.

Utako Hozumi vs. Rumi Kazama

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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LLPW DREAM TARGET 1/4/1993

 

Utako Hozumi & Mizuki Endo vs. Noriyo Tateno & Yukari Osawa

Match was clipped nearly in half from 20 minutes to about 10 minutes. Hard to make a sense of what was going on, and looked like a typical undercard sprint. Tateno landed some nasty boots to Endos face.

Rumi Kazama & Eagle Sawai vs. Midori Saito & Rumi Yasuda

Another pretty clipped down match. Saito and Yasuda just got their asses kicked pretty much due to the difference in rank.. Kazama dished out stiff kicks and the ending was brutal with a spike tombstone piledriver and Sawai dropping her opponent with a nasty fire bomb.

5 vs. 1 Gauntlet Match: Shinobu Kandori vs. Harley Saito & Michiko Nagashima & Mikiko Futagami & Leo Kitamura & Miki Handa

Yes, it‘s Kandori taking on 5 girls in a row. It may sound preposterous on paper, but it ends up totally working in practise. You can talk about how this may have buried half the LLPW roster, but realistically only Saito and Handa have a chance of lasting longer than 5 minutes against Kandori here, and both are smartly placed at the beginning and end of the match.

This first match up is Kandori vs. Saito. I was worried about this, thinking Kandori might squish Saito, but they had a fierce competitive match. Both went for the kill right out of the gate and it was intense stuff. Saito belted Kandori with her signature hard kicks and Kandori fired back with her stiff offense and flash submissions. It was reminiscent of their classic 1990 encounter, not quite on that level, but it was damn good shit. Saito ends up pushing Kandori to the limit and Kandori wins on a fluke.

Pretty interesting way to start the match. Instead of a power start Kandori just went through a fierce 18 minute match against Saito and she looks pretty beaten up already. Nagashima comes in next. She‘s a rookie at this point so she does rookie stuff. She flies right at Kandori with a big dropkick and gets in some hip attacks, but Kandori snatches a half crab and almost rips her in half for the tap after about 1 minute. So now everyone remembers Kandoris submissions are really dangerous, and in retrospect Saito looks tougher for surviving them.

GAMI comes in next. It looks like Kandori wants to be nice to her and challenges her to a grappling match. They do about a minute of cool grappling before GAMI decides to stomp on Kandoris face and hit a pretty nasty knee slide. Big mistake as Kandori flips out and beats the shit out of her. GAMI lasts a bit longer and can get in some offense on Kandori – making you respect her – but falls to a nasty powerbomb pretty fast.

Leo Kitamura is #4. And Kandori is looking pretty spent now. I don‘t think Kitamura has ever looked threatening in a match, but damn she looks threatening now. She has the night of her life taking it to Kandori, trying to roll her up and hitting nasty looking elbows. Kandori catches her in a sleeper and she‘s fighting for dear life, and – the bell rings? Oh, this match had a 30 minute time limit? Kandori says she‘s done here, call it draw, but Leo is pissed off. Kandori seems to leave, but Kitamura gets on the mic and says something that causes her to come back. The match is restarted and Kitamura is going even harder at Kandori now, but Kandori keeps surviving until she‘s able to lock in a nasty chickenwing that fucks up Kitamuras shoulder. You did your best, Leo Kitamura, but Kandori was in beast mode that night.

The last one in the match is Miki Handa, and she goes for the kill out the gate dropping Kandori fat missile dropkicks and germans. Kandori looks done, but Handa misses an elbow. Now Kandori is all hitting crazy Fujiwara armbars from angles and just working like a wounded beast trying to tear someones shoulder out. Handa isn‘t much special but she can drop bombs and sell desperation. 44 minutes in and Handa ends up losing on a technicality and Kandori just walks away not giving a fuck while Handa looks on the verge of tears.

Post match Hokuto and her crew come in to wreak havoc, and we get a face off between her and Saito. This match was pretty unique and honestly great, if you can stomach watching something different. But Kandori looked like an absolute monster here destroying people left and right hich is what you want to see, and while she looked beastly she had to work hard for her wins, so you end up respecting everyone coming out of this. 

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LLPW The Kageki Renaissance! Grand Opening 8/29/1992

 Leo Kitamura vs. Mizuki Endo

Clipped down match which looked like solid rookie action. Kitamura attempted some more elaborate moves and slipped up. Endo looks nearly unrecognizable. Really liked when Endo powered out of a full nelson and Kitamura hit this neat jumping headbutt to her shoulder. It‘s little moments like that which really get me even into a brief rookie match.

Midori Saito & Rumi Yasuda vs. Mikiko Futagami & Yukari Osawa

Osawa is a JWP veteran from the original class of 1986. This was pretty much your typical joshi undercard action, lots of moves done in quick succession. Futagami looked spunky. Things got heated for a minute when Osawa got busted open and ate some elbows to her cut, but it didn‘t build much further.

Eagle Sawai vs. Michiko Nagashima

Pretty much a clipped down squash with neither of them looking all that impressive.

Noriyo Tateno & Harley Saito vs. Miki Handa & Utako Hozumi

They went 36 minutes here, full bore. I enjoyed the opening going a lot with Saito and Tateno working together to cut off and isolate their opponents. A bunch of limb work happens that doesn‘t go anywhere and they lose me a bit in the middle, since nobody except Saito here is very interesting, really. Saito was fun running in to kick people hard. There was a section where she just destroyed Hozumi with kicks. Hozumis big comeback was supposed to be a dive but she got caught on the rope and landed on her face. Tateno doesn‘t do much interesting on offense but she was in he position to bring some character to the match and for someone who really doesn‘t have much charisma or character she did a fine job. Handa and Hozumi doing everything to edge out the win towards the end was really fun and the crowd reactions to the nearfalls were amazing. I could see people enjoying this because it‘s a slower paced, different type of joshi match, but temper your expectations.

Shinobu Kandori vs. Rumi Kazama

Badass match. Basically what you want from two wrestlers trying to establish their new promotion, just two ladies swinging for the fences, working cool grappling exchanges and mauling eaching other in violent fashion. Kandori looked like the baddest woman on the planet as usual, and Kazama was quite the fine Hotta stand in throwing absolutely rotten kicks to Kandoris face. I like how Kazama challenged the grappler Kandori to a wrestling exchange and Kandori just punted her. Middle portion was slightly meandering although the work was good and everything made sense. Ending was just a brutal onslaught with Kandori surviving several suplexes, then mauling Kazama on the ground before clocking her with a sick lariat, it was straight out of the BattlARTS playbook. 

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