GAEA DEAD HEAT 7/21/1997

 Pancrase Rules: KAORU vs. Toshiyo Yamada

This was a straight UWF style match, which is something you don’t see much from the ladies. I wasn’t sure how KAORU would do in this, but she ended up doing well. Yamada looked badass as you expect. Some grinding matwork. KAORU initially forced her to the ropes and tried to upset her, but Yamada pushed back hard and almost obliterated her with a kick that would look brutal on a Maeda highlight reel. Exciting finish. Didn’t know KAORU had this in her. Really good stuff.

Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato vs. Chigusa Nagayo & Toshie Uematsu

Really heated, fast paced tag. As usual Nagayo disciplining her students and acting invincible provided plenty of entertainment, but I was surprised by how good this was when Uematsu was in the ring. Seems she was turning into a really great worker at this point. Satomura and Kato fought like mad, making some real dents into Nagayo, shocking the audience when Satomura even dropped her with the Death Valley Bomb. Unfortunately, only the last few minutes aired.

Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima vs. Reyna Jabuki (Toshiyo Yamada doing Hokuto's gimmick) & Infernal KAORU

High end workrate match where they went pedal to the metal in 10 minutes. Fast exchanges, cool double teams by Jubuki and KAORI, chair coming into play… they did everything, and did it so fast almost nothing stuck. Weird choice to run this kind of match after the much more heated, story driven Nagayo tag. The finish was really nice as Nagashima and Sato tried to set up the doomsday device but KAORU took out Nagashima with a springboard dropkick and Yamada got the pin with an impressive reverse rana into a pin combo. Other than that this was forgotten as quick as it was to watch.

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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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2002 MOTY Project Update #19

 14. Toshiyo Yamada vs. Sugar Sato, GAEA 12/15/2002

I wasn‘t sure what to expect from this, but ended up being a really great match full of neat moments, cool exchanges and the kind of super hard fought style of wrestling that I really liked. Sato has always been kind of the stepchild of the GAEA crew, not being as flashy as the others, but her aggressiveness and body checks and shoulder tackles style really clicked for me here. Opening was pretty great and closer to an 80s or 90s New Japan match as Sato tried to ground Yamada resulting in some really great struggling over basic leglocks and Sato trying to pounce on Yamada. I‘d say Yamada was pretty great here too and easily outshining her 90s peers. She was working like an aging asskicker, vulnerable but able to kick you in the face and put you to sleep. The match eschewed a traditional structure but they told their story – Sato being aggressive with her tackles and knee attacks while Yamada was selling, timing her comebacks and nearly KO‘ing her several times with unexpected kicks. The match had a few great spots which were the right mix of rugged and pretty, you had the barfight moves like Sato tackling Yamada through the ropes as well as the more flashier moments such as Yamada countering Satos running powerbomb with a beautiful rana. The pace was fast but they timed their stuff in beautiful fashion. I also gotta say Satos back body attack had to be one of the most beautiful, simplistic spots I‘ve seen due to the way it was timed and executed. Finishing stretch was great with Sato trying to avoid Yamadas finisher only to end up ending an Ikeda style punt to the face but still fighting her damndest. Amazing shit, I‘m not sure if this wasn‘t pretty enough for the joshi fans at the time or if they had simply all quit watching GAEA at this point. 

 

2002 MASTER LIST

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 4/29/1997

 Toshie Uematsu vs. Sugar Sato

We only get a couple minutes of this, which is a shame because it looked like a really good match. Largely built around tight pin combos and Uematsu overcoming a leg injury. Uematsu is certainly giving that WCW Womens Cruiserweight belt some prestige in 1997.

Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Chigusa Nagayo

Hey look, it’s Toshiyo Yamada. GAEAs top rookies run right into a brick wall in this match. Satomura and Kato tried, but they got blown off and ate an ass kicking. The two brief runs of offense felt lucky and were over as quickly as they arrived. Nagayo was definitely giving them the business in this one. Fun semi-competitive squash.

Akira Hokuto & Maiko Matsumoto vs. Mayumi Ozaki & Chikayo Nagashima

A match that was unsurprisingly centered around the animosities between Hokuto and Ozaki. I really dig Hokutos broken down but still arrogant badass act. Ozaki was fun when she was throwing hands and kicking people in the face, but I thought she was kind of no selling most of the time. Nagashima is a fun workrate partner to Ozaki but doesn’t really bring the heat. Matsumoto continues to be really effective as an underdog to her overdog partner. I didn’t love the whole match but it was good one overall.

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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 2/16/1997

 

Sonoko Kato & Sakura Hirota & Hiromi Kato vs. Toshie Uematsu & Kyoko Ichiki & Rina Ishi

We get about 8 minutes of a 21 minute match. Hiromi Kato was playing underdog, and she is quite fun taking a beating and then randomly grabbing a torture rack. Thought Ichiki looked quite impressive acting like a gang leader for her team but also showing vulnerability after Kato had her in the rack. And the rest of the girls just have insane workrate. Wish we had more of this

WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship Tournament Semifinals

Chihiro Nakano vs. Sugar Sato

Makie Numao vs. Meiko Satomura

We get about 1 minute each of these. Numao vs. Satomura looked cool as both just grabbed crazy submissions and counters left and right.

WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship Tournament Finals: Sugar Sato vs. Meiko Satomura

Yes yes, the WCW Womens Cruiserweight title. I liked this a lot. Satomura outgrapples Sato early, so Sato takes a chair to her. Sato is kind of the stepchild of the GAEA rookie crew, as she‘s not a cool shooter and not really a tremendous athlete, but she always does things that stick. They settle into this really cool finishing run with both them busting out crazy submissions and pin counters. Sato won the previous match with a kneebar and Satomura won hers with an armbar, so the fans were rabid for all the submission attempts. Really good shit, unfortunately only 7 of 11 minutes were shown.

KAORU & Maiko Matsumoto vs. Chigusa Nagayo & Akira Hokuto

Damn great match. I‘m a fan of all 4 of these wrestlers, and I STILL didn‘t expect this to be so great. Virtually flawlessly worked underdog story match. Matsumoto has a knife in this gunfight of a match, and KAORU basically spends the first 5 minutes of the match saving Matsumoto from getting killed. Hokuto and Nagayo are pretty great launching an Anderson brothers like assault on Matsumoto here, cutting off the ring and acting all high and mighty. It‘s weird how joshi has this reputation for this go-go style with random moves and transitions happening by the minute and then you get hit with these ladies doing an expert job cutting off the ring and building to a momentum shift. Nagayo is established that she can end a match with any hold, so her putting all these shoot holds on Matsumoto garnered tremendous heat. Nagayo and Hokuto were treating KAORU like shit too initially, Matsumoto doesn‘t even get a hot tag, Hokuto just throws her to the corner and signals KAORU to come in, like she‘s tired of KAORU coming in to save Maiko, so she wants her to come in and kick her ass. Matsumoto helping out KAORU in turn was really great. I was also really impressed by Hokuto and Nagayo knowing exactly how much offense to give to their opponent. It can come across as dull when in Japanese wrestling a higher ranked wrestler no sells all of his opponents stuff, but in this case, when they acted unphased by Matsumoto it felt earned, and when Matsumoto was able to crack them it felt earned and accordingly great. Those Atomic Drops were great. Should also say KAORU looked great as an athletic, precise main player and had some great exchanges with Hokuto. It transitions to a finishing run where suddenly KAORU is getting destroyed and Matsumoto has to save her before the inevitable happens. Tremendous match that executed its story perfectly while delivering plenty of violence and heat.

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Going through Shodates Best Matches of the 90s List Part 3

  The List

232. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Masahiro Chono, NJPW 5/31/1991 

Damn, I didn't expect to like this so much. Any Fujinami big match is guaranteed to have a ton of wrestling, and there was a lot of that here, but there was also a ton of disdain right from the opening which has Chono spitting Fujinami in the face. Chono is far from a great matworker, but he was game here, busting out an awesome calf slicer and a flying clothesline that was like something Necro Butcher would do. He also wasn't afraid to get into stiff slap battles and I liked his headbutts and mafia kicks he would use to combat Fujinami's mat prowess. Fujinami on his side had one of the most brutal dropkicks I've ever seen and an epic dive. This was a very typical NJPW style match, there was no grand finishing run with a ton of big moves to be kicked out of or something, instead it was about avoiding the other guy's finisher when push came to shove. That and the fact both guys sold a ton of exhaustion made the second half of this pretty great. Little bit of a lucha title match influence here with some dramatic bumps for momentum shifts and that sick guardrail dive from Fujinami. Great stuff, glad that this was brought up as the 232nd best match of the 90s

241. Meiko Satomura vs. Sugar Sato, GAEA 10/11/1998

Leave it to a pair of 18 year old girls to have an excellent lengthy match in 1998. The cool thing about the mat stuff they did here was that it wasn't shootstyle stuff, but closer to NWA-ish legbars and kneedrops, executed in really vicious fashion. Sugar doesn't have the high end offense of Satomura, but I thought she did well enough to mix it up and keep the match going. Everything made sense and built really well to their respective finishers (Death Valley Driver vs. Liger Bomb), and while there wasn't any super-focussed extended selling they worked hard to put eachother's offense over as devastating. Plenty of neat spots, including Sato finding ways to counter Satomura's arm attack stuff. Best GAEA match of 1998?

246. Bull Nakano vs. Shinobu Kandori, LLPW 7/14/1994

I was disappointed to see this not holding up quite well. I remember feeling there was something fishy about this when I first watched it years ago and now I remember why. This had the lamest crowd brawl in the middle. I enjoyed them punishing eachother with the chain and there were some great visuals here, but this could have been so much more. Outside distraction was crap, so was Kandori's armbar. I liked Nakano avoiding Kandori's feeble punches and just kicking her in the face. Finish makes up for the dragging parts. Good match.

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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