[2017-10-09-WAVE] Rina Yamashita vs Misaki Ohata

This is the third match that this two have had this year. They split their two matches earlier this year in the Catch the WAVE tournament with Yamashita winning in the final over Ohata and subsequently taking the Regina di WAVE title from Ryo Mizunami, Ohata's tag partner in Avid Rival.

The match starts out as a matchup of power versus technique. Ohata gets some early success by trapping Yamashita's right arm in various submissions which limits Yamashita's main offensive weapon. This force Yamashita to be more careful with how she uses her arm. She adjusts how she applies her sleeper by turning so that more of her body weight is on Ohata and she's more selective as to when she uses her lariats. Ohata does control a fair bit of match by having a lot of smart counters to Yamashita's attacks but in turn Yamashita always has the trump card of being able to hit the smaller Ohata really hard. Towards the finish though, Ohata starts to build to much momentum and hits too many of her big moves allowing her to put away Yamashita. Just an amazing match that managed to use simple story telling in an incredibly effective result. Easily the joshi match of the year, maybe even the last couple of decades. ****3/4