Assorted Joshi

 Some guy is uploading a bulk of old joshi to YouTube again, so that's a good chance to check out some forgotten gems.

Cutie Suzuki vs Chikako Shiratori, JWP 10/11/1998

Total out of nowhere bloodbath. Right away Shiratori blasts Suzuk with a big backfist and it's a hate filled brawl. I've never really noticed Shiratori as a worker, and I've never seen anyone talk about her aside from her looks, but she looked really impressive controlling the action here. When Suzuki resisted the hair toss, Shiratori make sure to shove her knee into her throat and then drive her face right into the mat. Pretty violent. The match also had plenty of face stomps, biting, hard slaps, and the right sense of escalating violence with chairs and a kendo stick being brought in. You don't expect these two to wrestle like Pirata Morgan vs Faraon but they totally rock it. Even something like a missile dropkick from Shiratori landed flush in Suzukis face. Kendo stick shots looked really grizzly and I dug how Shiratori would seemingly summon that thing out of nowhere. By the end Shiratori was bleeding too and getting dumped by Suzukis crazy suplexes, including one with the kendo stick behind her head, pretty insane. Both were on their way to retirement (Shiratori would quit joshi orgs and instead work Osaka Pro for a year) and this kinda had the feeling that they both didn't care about keeping their faces unscarred and decided to do something really grizzly.

Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa vs Michiko Nagashima & Sayuri Okino, AJW 1/3/1998

Absolutely insane wild match. Eagle Sawai is with the LLPW girls in her awesome track pants and shirt, and right away she goes wild brawling before getting on the mic, apparently talking some trash to Shinobu Kandori who is sitting at ringside (looking amazing with her bleach blonde hair and suit). Kandori who has her arm in a sling gets attacked too, then Hotta jumps into the fray, chairs are thrown and this is crazy. Back in the ring the first thing Okino does is bite Hotta in the face, and sure you know the first chance Hotta gets she tries to kick peoples faces in. Okino and Nagashima are really good here brawling and doing chain punches. They handcuff Maekawa and Maekawa ends up taking a big beating, taking bumps with her hands cuffed on that ultra stiff AJW ring while Eagle and Hotta are brawling on the floor again. Hottas tag in and everything that came after building to her finally getting that big run of offense was pretty amazing. Hotta kicking the kendo stick is up there with the wildest kendo stick spots I've seen ever. The heat was super too with the crowd for some reason booing everything Hotta did, I guess LLPW fans must have done an invasion or something. Totally chaotic, violent and unpredictable fight, these kinda brawls are probably the most underrated part of mid-late 90s joshi.

Tomoko Miyaguchi & Kanako Motoya vs Tomoko Kuzumi & Dynamite Kansai, JWP 11/15/1998

I have to say, while some people say Kansai was largely done after 1997, I find she adds a lot to every match she's in simply by bringing a ton of violence and being a big menace. Not as hard as in 1993 but this is still a veritable great match largely thanks to Kansais presence. The match is fast action stuff when Hyuga is in, and focussed on young Miyaguchi & Motoya trying to take down Kansai when she's in. It leads to this really great sequence where they finally get her prone on the mat and start rushing her with all they've got, with Miyaguchi cracking Kansais jaw with probably the greatest elbow smash I've ever seen in a match. Hyugas all action stuff was good, Kansai as a hard to take down dangerous giant story was good, last couple minutes were pretty damn great with big bombs, Kansai kicking everyone in the face etc. Well worth checking out.

LLPW Live Battle '97 8/15/1997

Watch

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.

The Library

Assorted LLPW

 Shinobu Kandori & Yasha Kurenai & Rumi Kazama vs. Eagle Sawai & Michiko Nagashima & Sayuri Okino, LLPW 2/15/1998

Amazing match, which on first watch I thought was seriously fucking with some of the absolute top brawls in history. This was insanely heated and everyone was brutalizing each other, but even more they succeeded in conveying real desperation on the babyface side without going into hammy territory. Whole match was violent to the core and they never let up, these girls didn't hold back with chairs, kendo sticks, other plunder and just straight up kicking eachother in the face, and the heel team of Sawai, Nagashima and Okino was great at working cut offs, isolating their opponents and swarming them. Of course Kandoris superstar charisma is outstanding, and she will do cool things like look in flash submissions during brawling exchanges or counter a chain attack with a judo throw, but the stars of the match are somehow Yasha Kurenai and Michiko Nagashima. Eagle Sawai is also good her as just a big monster crushing people with body attacks and power moves, and Rumi Kazama is solid as a veteran lady wrestler who can kick hard. Nagashima looks damn good punching people in the face with her fist wrapped in a chain, hitting unexpectedly violent offense and taking nasty bumps. Kurenai is fierce booting peoples heads off and the heat segment on her ended up being seriously great due to being smartly laid out (in such a way that when you'd guess the hot tag would happen, it doesn't). It sets up a tremendous second half where Kurenai keeps running in, being a bloody mess and looking half dead, and going fucking crazy on the heels with kendo sticks and even a scissor, trying to take chunks out of Eagle Sawai. You really end up wanting her to get to win but also dreading her getting pinned due to how sympathetic she is set up to be. Shark Tsuchiya and Lioness Asuka interfere in the match along with like a dozen tracksuited ringside girls from LLPW and JD' trying to jump into the free, and while I normally dislike liberal interference in joshi matches, it felt like a frantic gang war here. I could see some folks being irked by them teasing some hot nearfalls and then doing an elaborate chain spot followed by another heat segment, although I thought everything worked and it was a suitably crazy moment. Finish was completely unexpected but great. I think the match would have moved into all-time territory if we had gotten Kandori choking some people out and Kurenai being involved in the finish to pay of her story more, but those are very minor criticisms for what was a damn great unpredictable brawl.

Yasha Kurenai vs. Michiko Nagashima, LLPW 6/21/1998

These two looked great together in that 6 man, and this was another wild workrate brawl. Great start with the floor brawling and both ladies punching each other in the face. We got lots of fast transitions, big bumps and both of them beating the hell out of each other with chains, chairs, tables and trash cans. In some ways this is an ECW brawl with more savage fighting. I loved Kurenai repeatedly burying Nagashima with the chairs, and Nagashima busting out a spike and stabbing the shit out of Yasha was sick. After she got stabbed Kurenais selling performance became a lot more desperate and exhausted. Great punch-out in the finish followed by sick chain strangulation finish. Apparently this was Nagashimas retirement, while retirement matches can often feel like exhibitions that absolutely wasn’t the case here, crazy fight through and through.

Yumiko Hotta vs. Mizuki Endo (LLPW 6/13/1998)

Cool little match which showcases Endos unique flash submissions and Hotta stomping on her face. Unfortunately only 5 minutes where shown and the camera men missed some of the action. Still worth seeing if you wanna see the cool shit Endo can do.

Shinobu Kandori vs. Shark Tsuchiya, LLPW 4/27/1998

I imagine this is the kind of match smarks haaaated at the time but I liked it. Basically, Kandori is the WWWA and LLPW unified world champ and Tsuchiya desecrates the title by using all kinds of foul tactics instead of having a noble workrate match. Shark is full blown comical evil here, taking a sickle to Kandoris face, having about a dozen minions jump into the match to take Kandori. I also thought Shark was effective trying to put some holds on Kandori early on with Kandori mocking her lack of skill. Kandori bled big and her eventual comeback was awesome. This also didn't overstay it's welcome. Better than a lotta Toyota WWWA title matches.