DG AJW 77

Crush Gals Sing!

 

Chigusa's haircut and stooped posture make her look like the Japanese Ed Grimley.

 

Mika Komatsu & Yumi Ogura vs. Monster Ripper & Monica Castillo

 

Ripper's belly bumps are great, and Castillo is fun, taking a crazy bump from the top rope to the floor early in the match. The natives look kinda shitty here, though, and Ripper's non-belly bump stuff was pretty bad. Not that good, overall.

 

Jaguar Yokota & Yukari Omori vs. Devil Masami & Jumbo Hori

 

It's been a while since I've watched any 80's joshi, and seeing this now, I think I just remembered why so many of your fancy-schmancy M0VES!! wrestlers don't impress me. It's because I've already seen Jaguar Yokota. When you've seen a wrestler who does two or three things per match that no one else has done before or since, and executes them flawlessly and in a way that makes sense in the greater context of the match, it's a lot harder for any given member of the Dragon's Gate roster to impress you.

 

Of course, I could only guess at the "greater context" of this match. The damn thing moved so fast that to try and point to an over-arching story is a bit of a struggle. But I can't - and won't - complain. The fact that a match from 1985 could still be this eye-popping in 2010, that it could move at this speed, and that all that high-tech offense could be executed so perfectly without giving me anything to get hung up about (well, OK, maybe Omori constantly wiping her nose when she wasn't doing or taking a move was a little odd...allergies acting up?) means that you can get away with "these are two teams in a competitive sport competing against each other" as your only storyline of note. I don't know how this will hold up as I go along, but just as a baseline for 80's joshi greatness, it comes on pretty damn strong, so I'm not gonna fight the feeling.

 

JB Angels vs. Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano

 

One thing you won't forget about 80's joshi even if you haven't watched it in a while is that Dump Matsumoto is a top ten heel of all time, and consequently, it's not hard to pick up on the context of this match almost immediately as she and Bull (who looks alarmingly like Shark Tsuchiya at this point, but thankfully doesn't wrestle like her) roll in, with Dump swinging her kendo stick at everything that moves. The plucky Jumping Bomb Angels aren't afraid to get in the grill of the big bullies, with Itsuki actually having the balls to shove Dump when she tries to intimidate her. This is all about the Angels trying their best to stand their ground as the heels pull every dirty trick in the book (many in full view of the ref, who I'm pretty sure isn't Dump's heel ref, unless she has two...and she's not afraid of pushing this one around) to try and get the win. Some of the stuff with the ref getting bullied didn't sit right with me, but fuck it, this was still a crazy great monster heels vs. plucky underdog faces brawl, and feels like an easy nomination. Bonus points for Itsuki monkey flipping the cowardly ref post-match.

 

Crush Girls vs. Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano (2/3, 1985 Tag League Finals)

 

Holy mother of fuck. This was like the best possible version of the Raven/Richards vs. Pitbulls 2/3 falls dog collar match, as it is just a total booking clusterfuck, but said clusterfuck booking was soooooooo good, and the in-ring action was able to match it. Dump's Army hits the ring dressed in identical kung fu uniforms and some of the best masks I've ever seen in wrestling, black with a red bird design over the face and a skull on the forehead. The Crush Gals roll out, and Lioness grabs away one of the planks that one of the army members was carrying and snaps it over her knee. Chigusa grabs another and bonks one of the Army members with it. Dump and Bull respond in kind by taking the bouquets given to the Crush Gals and violently chucking them aside before the entire army rushes them. The other babyfaces in the tournament, who have come to ringside to watch, get in the ring to even the score, and the whole thing is just insane in the best possible way. The ring clears out, and Bull goes into her nunchaku demonstration, but Lioness says "fuck that" and just kicks the shit out of her before unmasking her. Dump meets a similar fate soon afterwords, and then tempers flare and all the girls on the outside end up back in again. Dump's Army starts fucking up Chiggy's knee to the point that even her heel ref decides that enough is enough and awards the first fall to the Crush Gals by DQ. The second fall doesn't go quite so well for our heroines, as Lioness gets spiked with a piledriver en route to Dump scoring the pin to even things up. In a rare moment for puroresu, the piledriver is sold like death, and subsequently, the third fall becomes a glorified handicap match. Chigusa fights valiantly, and Lioness recovers a bit and tries to lend a hand (but gets choked out with Dump's chain for her troubles), but the heels continue to target Chigusa's bum knee. The girls on the outside keep getting involved, getting into fights with each other, trying to save their respective teams in the match, and one of the announcers even has to fight off a member of Dump's Army as she tries to steal a table from him to use as a foreign object. She doesn't need it, though. We get a false finish as officials hit the ring to determine whether or not the match should continue. They give the thumbs up, but a few more minutes of knee destruction later, and they have to declare Chigusa to be in no condition to continue, giving the match and the tournament to Dump and Bull. This wasn't perfect, but there were large swaths of this where it felt like the entire roster was living and dying on this match, and I think that makes it an easy nomination.

 

Recap of the Crush Gals singing

 

Jaguar Yokota vs. Monica Castillo

 

Match opens with a handshake, but Castillo goes rudo and blasts Jag with a flying headbutt when her back is turned. Jaguar gives it right back to her with a swank dropkick, and shit is on. This match is fairly light on Jaguar's high-end offense, focusing instead on these two ripping each other up on the mat. Extra special bonus points for Jaguar doing her awesome slide out from under a pin attempt right into an octopus hold. Dump's Army is ringside and gets involved at one point, but it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. This is about rough and tumble matwork, and it rules. Easy nomination.

 

Monster Ripper vs. Jumbo Hori

 

I was really tempted to nominate this, as there was some great action here. Ripper rushing Hori early and playing "hide the foreign object" was a lot of fun, and Hori's bayface comebacks looked good, and her threatening of the heel ref was awesome. But therein lies the problem - the heel ref. Firstly, is every ref in the promotion a heel? What gives? Secondly, while I liked the way the ref's obvious heelness built during the match (allowing Hori to disregard the rules as blatantly as Ripper to keep up appearances early on, to blatantly physically interfering on Ripper's behalf by the end), it's all undercut by the match ending in a DCO. It was a well-executed DCO (Ripper airplane spins Hori to keep her from being able to get back in the ring in time, but Hori has enough wits about her to grab Ripper's ankle to keep her from getting back in, too), but once the ref has actually held Hori in place so that Ripper can attack her, it seems like he's dedicated enough to the cause that he wouldn't let the match end in any way other that a Ripper win. I dunno. I'm OK with character refs, but this dude is no David Manning.

 

Crush Girls sing

 

Same crappy song as before. Chigusa looks less like Ed Grimley.

 

Mika Suzuki vs. Kyoko Aso

 

This is the first round of the New Person Tournament, and boy, does Kyoko Aso ever not let you forget that she is a new person, working like a CHIKARA trainee without the funny gimmick to fall back on. Mika is better in that regard, but this match is pretty weak overall. It also has the spectacularly strange finish of Kyoko scoring a near fall, Suzuki bridging up to break it, but Aso just staying on top and the ref counting three. Whatever.

 

Irma González vs. Mika Komatsu

 

Irma has a Mexican Vivian Vance-ness about her. She certainly wrestles like a grizzled veteran luchadora, and is totally awesome rudoing it up here, trying to corner Komatsu or get her trapped in the ropes whenever possible. She also busted out a double stump puller where she was biting Komatsu's toes while in the hold. Komatsu definitely held her own as the plucky young girl who refused to be bullied, constantly striking back whenever Gonzalez tried to push her around. There's a babyface referee here who doesn't take kindly to the shenanigans of Dump's Army at ringside (which gets him shoved down by someone at one point), which was a nice change of pace from the platoon of El Tirantes that AJW apparently used as the core of their officiating staff in the 80's. Also of note are the announcers. The cameras cut to their shocked reactions at several points in the match, including one point near the end where Komatsu is trapped outside the ring getting mugged by Dump's Army, and one of the announcers is actually standing up yelling at them. Finish is anti-climactic. I dug Irma's luchariffic pinning combination, but it was pretty abrupt. Still, I think I can push this as a low-end nomination.

 

Jaguar Yokota, Devil Masami & Yumi Ogura vs. JB Angels & Yukari Omori

 

Another M0VES~! match that Tyler Black cries himself to sleep at night over knowing he'll never be able to replicate it's quality. And this is a low-end nomination! That's largely down to Noriyo Tateno, who did plenty of awesome things, but seemed to struggle with the pacing of the match, either getting too far ahead or lagging too far behind at several points. The other five all came up big, though. Ogura may have been the star of the bout. Loved her jumping kneelifts, and the running somersault senton was amazing. Yokota was her usual awesome self. Seeing her bridge out of a pin right to her feet never gets old. Masami and Omori (who seemed to have gotten over her sniffles) definitely made things interesting. They slowed down the pace of the match a few times to show off their power and bruising abilities, both against each other and their opponents, but it didn't throw off the flow of a largely fast-paced match at all. It's like the bridge of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". You go from rocking to waltzing and back again without ever missing a beat. Masami's brutalization of Yamazaki particularly stood out. She lifted her for a vertical suplex, and then turned it into a military press, which was pretty impressive. And if then since dropping her with that apparently wasn't enough, she picked her up again for a fucking GANSO BOMB that was an instant replay moment for me. It lacked the dramatics that would make me push it harder, and like I said, Tateno was a bit off, but fuck, was this ever eye-popping.

 

Crush Girls vs. Irma Aguilar & Bull Nakano (2/3)

 

Aguilar's haircut, headband, and tasseled vest make me think of a transsexual Jerry Estrada. And well, we don't get Estrada-level bumping here, but there is some quality Estrada rudismo and stooging. She also looks facially like Sandra Bernhardt, which makes the arguing with the ref all the more amusing. But she is really good ripping at Chigusa's ear in between the comedy stuff. Crush Gals come up big as usual. They work really well as babyface team getting the better of stooging heels. And Bull adjusts to the stooge role well, though she can still get rough when she needs to. It helps having the creepy, masked version of Dump's Army standing sternly at ringside the whole time. Match is partially about Dump's former main heel ref trying to redeem himself, as he works this match straight and - while still being kinda lax with the rules - isn't afraid to admonish the heels or lay the count on them if they get out of line. Indeed, he lets the Army beat on the Crush Gals on the outside, but the first fall ends in a double count out as a result (and he may have been counting a little fast, at that, though maybe that's me reading too much into what was happening). Knowing they can't afford to screw around anymore, the second fall in all action. Irma plays "hide the foreign object" with Bull's nunchaku a little bit, but it's not a major focus of the match, and it's mostly about getting them to Bull. But once Bull gets them, Lioness cuts her off big time while she's showing off her skills, leading to our heroines taking the second fall and the win. Easy nomination.