A rare submissions/matwork based match for Joshi, and a very well done one at that.

 

I just saw that match and this topic was in first page on Google.

 

Commando Bolshoi was so good in this one.

This deserves some comments. These two had a studio TV match the year before that was really solid. But this is a different story. Bolshoi has evolved from Kid into Commando and added a bunch of flash submissions to her arsenal. The last match saw Plum putting Bolshoi away with a bunch of flash suplex moves, Plum deserves a ton of credit here for making Bolshoi look like the real deal. She ties her leg up in a nasty fashion on the buckle and can't do much in the match after that but is able to reverse some of Bolshoi's submission attempts. Most of the match is about tight submissions, knees and stomps. Really good finish in this match, both girls seem really underrated.

I don't know if either girl is all that underrated. This match is a bit of a perfect storm unless you really go on a crusade for either girl.

OJ, do you think it would be insane to consider Command Bolshoi among the best female workers? I really like the little I've seen from her.

She's underrated for sure. She got a bad rap because of the whole "Hotta punts the clown" bullshit. In order to consider her one of the best I think you'd have to have an alternate take on Joshi or a niche view of it, but stick to your guns.

I like Bolshoi a lot, especially after she adopted more of a Yoshida-like matwork style. Still, I'd have a tough time putting her in the top 10 of women who were part of the JWP active roster during their careers. You could say she was underutilized, but she been running JWP since the early 2000's, so that's kind of a weird point to make.

I certainly didn't expect the ending we got after Bolshoi spent the majority of the match destroying Mariko's leg, which was extremely well done. I also liked Mariko's work on Bolshoi's back, which was never quite forgotten. But the ending made sense in that Mariko's own leg was too damaged to properly apply submissions from a standing position, so she grabbed the closest thing handy which she could attack on the mat, which was Bolshoi's leg.

 

One other thing I liked about this bout was that there was very little stuff that didn't belong. We got a couple of suplexes and moonsaults toward the end and a high-impact move here and there, but other than that, this match was all submission holds, which seems like an obvious way to work a match like this but isn't done very often at all. Most of the time here in the States, the wrestlers have to go for pins five or six times each until the marks finally understand that they don't count, which renders the whole concept of a submission match moot. Here, not a single pinfall was even teased let alone attempted, which warmed my heart.

 

I'll definitely keep my wye out for these two ladies (neither of whom I'd ever seen before) in the future.

The earliest Bolshoi match I've seen had her spam nothing but moonsaults and brawl poorly, so to see her have a very good, smartly worked 15+ minute match with a tough gimmick to work with in such a short period of time is very impressive.  Very good performances by both women.