GAEA DEAD HEAT 7/2/1997

 Chigusa Nagayo vs. Rina Ishii

Usual good Nagayo rookie squash. Ishii has really good energy and survives some nasty punishment from Nagayo, who kicks and lariats her in the face and comes up with dangerous shoot submissions. Could've been something if Nagayo had sold anything that Ishii threw at her, but she just kept popping up. Valuable lesson for Ishii I guess.

Akira Hokuto & KAORU vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Makie Numao

This was JIP and looked like a really good match. Hokuto has her bad knee and does a bunch of really great desperation selling. You think Numao would get killed but she gets some nice bursts capitalizing on an injured Hokuto. In the end KAORU has to try and survive and it produces some neat exchanges. Yamada while not at physical peak anymore looks really good spin kicking people in the face and she and KAORU do some nice stuff working around her finisher.

Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima & Maiko Matsumoto & Hiromi Kato vs. Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato & Toshie Uematsu & Sakura Hirota

8 very talented rookies tumbling around.  Solid exchanges throughout, but it was largely mindless. They just kept cycling through the matchups and doing their stuff. Things reved up a bit around the middle point as Kato and Satomura had a scrappy exchange with Kato trying to target Satomuras bandaged arm. The Matsumoto/Hirota exchanges were really fun, I get plenty entertainment just out of Matsumoto hitting weird Atomic Drops. The finish was Nagashima vs. Uematsu and it was kind of the least spectacular match up.

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GAEA DEAD HEAT 7/6/1997

 Chigusa Nagayo vs. Makie Numao

Surprisingly cool match. Pretty much shootstyle and Nagayo gave Numao a lot. Numao thought hard and they had some good exchanges as well as traded some gross kicks. Of course, they only shoed 10 of 20 minutes. Numao getting to go that long against Chiggy is impressive though.

Akira Hokuto & Maiko Matsumoto vs. Hiromi Kato & Sakura Hirota

Pretty much Kato and Hirota doing their best to annoy Hokuto by double teaming her. Hokuto pretty much took the night off and Matsumoto tried to make up for it by being more energetic. Another very clipped match.

KAORU vs. Rina Ishii

About 5 minutes of 16 were shown. Would‘ve liked to see more of this. Ishii hit her stiff well and KAORU once again busted out a bunch of submissions. Nasty crab finish.

Chikayo Nagashima & Sugar Sato vs. Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato

Usual sprint action peppered up with some mean kicks and stomps from these girls. Once again, Only about 5 minutes of 17 were shown. Interesting that they let these girls get the main event over all the big stars on this show, though.

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GAEA Storm Signal #3 6/29/1997

 

KAORU vs. Toshie Uematsu

They show about 5 of 17 minutes. I hope this trend of clipped GAEA doesn‘t continue. KAORU was dominant and Uematsu made some aggressive comebacks. KAORU did lots of submissions here and had some slick transitions into the, for example hitting her springboard moonsault and moving right into an armbar. I wanna see more submission expert KAORU.

Sonoko Kato vs. Makie Numao

A match that was also clipped in half. Pretty fun BattlARTS approximation with both girls kicking each other in the face and fighting in and out of submissions. Some neat spots and stiffness level makes most current wrestlers look like absolute wusses.

Sonoko Kato vs. Rina Ishii

I don‘t know why Kato had to do another match against a fresh Ishii. I like Ishii and they had a decent go at each other here. Nothing stood out in particular though and it was hard to make sense of what was going on with the clipping.

Chikayo Nagashima & Sugar Sato vs. Hiromi Kato & Sakura Hirota

Typical GAEA sprint work although clipped down from 17 minutes to like 4 so the whole thing made even less sense.

Chigusa Nagayo vs. Maiko Matsumoto

We get mostly Nagayo stretching Matsumoto and Matsumoto clumsily trying to defensd herself. Nagayo has some cool stretches and it‘s probably her best role. Matsumoto was Matsumoto and didn‘t stand much of a chance. I guess because Nagayo is the boss they showed most of this match.

Meiko Satomura vs. Akira Hokuto

Only 6 of 20 minutes!??! Damn you to hell TV editors, because this looked GREAT! Chigusa was at ringside and initially this was about Hokuto trying to piss her off by torturing Satomura, only for Satomura to catch her with some harder stuff than she expected. Looked like another great match with both of them selling big, but man…. 6 minutes??

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GAEA JUNCTION 4/12/1997

 

Sonoko Kato vs. Sugar Sato

We get about 8 minutes of a 15 minute match. As usual we got some unique counters and transitions, although it didn’t set my world on fire because Sato is just not very interesting. It didn’t help that the ending run was built around Sato trying to submit Kato who had a bad leg with her dreaded kneebar only to fall to a random rollup. Good for an opening match I guess.

Chikayo Nagashima & Sakura Hirota vs. Rina Ishii & Toshie Uematsu

Typical GAEA rookie sprint action. The more young Hirota I watch the more I am annoyed she retired to comedy wrestling later because she was quite good in her role. The match was built around Uematsu and Nagashima having to protect their younger partners. It didn‘t have a ton of depth and once again we didn‘t get the full match, but it was solid stuff.

Chigusa Nagayo & Makie Numao vs. Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato

Another really good hierarchy driven GAEA match. Nagayo had been crushing her rookies, including in 2 on 1 situations, so Satomura and Kato were frantic in trying to not get blown away. Really good heated fighting here, with both of them just firing away at the legend, with Nagayo retaliating with some precise and often extremely well timed kicks. Nagayo blowing off Katos dropkicks and Kato immediately putting on a sleeper was another great, clever spot. Numao didn‘t get in much offense and played underdog to Nagayos overdog, although she does get to look badass unloading kicks at Satomura. She was also great during the finishing run busting out rad lucha rollups into shootstyle submissions, something that was quite state of the art in 1997. I‘m stunned how perfectly laid out these GAEA tags are, as this is the kind of stuff that should warrant a ton of praise and interest even from joshi sceptics. Watching everything in order helps, I guess, but the action here speaks for itself. They just did a great job establishing both the Nagayo as ultra-dangerous as well as the Numao as vulnerable underdog dynamic. Regretably only about half the match was shown.

KAORU vs. Akira Hokuto

Intelligent bombfest. KAORU gave her all here, and Hokutos selling of initially putting her opponent down and then slowly falling apart was pretty great. It’s fascinating how KAORU turned from an AJW undercarder to an excellent secondary player in GAEA hanging and banging with legends. I would’ve liked the match to be more focussed, and there was some no selling (particularily the insane reverse northern lights bomb from Hokuto), but all in all, it was the quality match that all their quality interactions in tags so far in the year have been hinting at.

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GAEA WRESTLING BIBLE 1/12/1997

Chigusa Nagayo vs. Sakura Hirota

Hirota and Nagayo would later form a comedy team, but at this point Hirota was still a rookie with serious ambitions. I dislike Nagayos big matches, but she is quite impeccable working these rookie squashes. This was pretty great, as it was basically a constant battle of survival for Hirota while she did everything in her power to not get swatted. Loved Nagayos kicks and leg sweeps, and Hirotas spinning backfist as well as attempted Fujiwara were awesome. Great finish, too.

Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima vs. Toshie Uematsu & Kyoko Ichiki

I‘ve enjoyed all these ladies before, but this was a big nothing. No heat and the match had no direction. It got a bit better towards the end as they started busting out some of their better moves, but this was a brutally long 20 minutes.

Bomber Hikari vs. Rina Ishii

Bomber Hikari was this powerhouse type worker. Hikari was working as some kind of monster in this with Ishii trying to hang on. I don‘t know why you would have two matches like this on a show especially when Nagayo is doing the other one. Ishii was quite athletic and interesting to watch. Hikari looked limited.

Bomber Hikari vs. Maiko Matsumoto

Why have Hikari do two matches in a row? This further exposed Hikaris one dimensionality. It could‘ve been good if there was some drama created by the fact Hikari had just done a match, but Hikaris wrestling was completely ignorant of that fact as she basically repeated her stuff. I‘ve liked Matsumoto before but she wasn‘t as interesting as either Ishii or Hirota.

AAAW Junior Tag Title Match: Sonoko Kato & Meiko Satomura vs. Chihiro Nakano & Makie Numao

Loved the opening section here which was basically a BattlARTs tag with all four girls hitting the mat and working really stiff. They move into a pro style match seamlessly, but I wanted a bit more shootstyle action. This also went 20 minutes but the GAEA rookies were so good they had no problem keeping it interesting. The match lacked structure, but they make up with double teams, surprise cutoffs and nearfalls out the ass. In fact there were so many nearfalls that I thought it was getting tiresome, but the crowd had a blast. I loved all of Nakanos knees, Numao for someone who I remember being pretty insignificant looked badass, and Satomura already stood out with her unique Billy Robinson influenced style.

Reina Jubuki (Akira Hokuto) vs. La Infernal (KAORU)

Weirdly subdued match that felt like a houseshow main event. They did their stuff, but there was never any heat, and the work was quite undynamic. Lots of just sitting in holds, and while there were some big moves and bumps there didn‘t seem to be a fight, unusual for a Hokuto match. I guess the point of this was to show the costumes.

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