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AJW 2004 - 2005
A special project I ended up doing almost by accident here's
select matches and full show reviews (scroll a little down)
chronicling the last year of AJW's existence
Matches
4/18/04
Nanae
Takahashi & Hikaru vs Takako Inoue & Momoe Nakanishi
Runtime 30:00
Filesize 62mb
5/2/2004
Yoshiko
Tamura & Genki Misae vs Nanae Takahashi & Hikaru
Runtime 25:00
Filesize 54mb
(3WA
Title) Amazing Kong © vs Ayako Hamada
Runtime 33:00
Filesize 58mb
6/6/2004
Natsuki
Mizushima vs Kyoko Kimura
Runtime 12:00
Filesize 24mb
(All
Pacific Title Tournament Qualifier) Hikaru vs Saki Maemura
Runtime 21:00
Filesize 40mb
(3WA
Tag Titles - 2/3 Falls) Ayako Hamada & Nanae Takahashi vs
Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa
Runtime 44:00
Filesize 84mb
7/18/04
(All
Pacific Title Tournament R1) Mika Nishio vs Sasori
Runtime 13:30
Filesize 26mb
(All
Pacific Title Tournament R1) Hikaru vs Hiroyo Muto
Runtime 14:00
Filesize 25mb
(All
Pacific Title Tournament FINAL) Mika Nishio vs Hikaru
Runtime 22:00
Filesize 41mb
8/1/2004
(JGP
R1) Genki Misae vs Nanae Takahashi
Runtime 25:00
Filesize 48mb
(JGP R3) Hikaru vs Genki
(JGP R3) Kumiko Maekawa vs Takako Inoue
(JGP FINAL) Hikaru vs Maekawa
One
File
Runtime 27:00
Filesize 51mb
8/29/2004
Nanae
Takahashi & Hikaru vs The Bloody & Hiroyo Muto
Runtime 27:30
Filesize 57mb
(3WA
Title) Ayako Hamada © vs Kumiko Maekawa
Runtime 32:30
Filesize 61mb
9/23/2004
Amazing Kong vs Hikaru
Aja Kong vs Nanae Takahashi
One
file
Runtime 40:00
Filesize 74mb
11/7/2004
Momoe
Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi vs Ayako Hamada & Saki
Maemura
Runtime 20:00
Filesize 42mb
(All
Pacific Title) Mika Nishio © vs Hikaru
Runtime 28:00
Filesize 55mb
12/12/2004
Lioness
Asuka vs Hikaru
Runtime 15:30
Filesize 29mb
(#1
Contenders Match) Kumiko Maekawa vs Amazing Kong
Runtime 14:30
Filesize 26mb
(3WA
Title) Ayako Hamada © vs Nanae Takahashi
Runtime 32:30
Fileisze 60mb
12/26/2004
(Tag
Leauge The Best Final) Kumiko Maekawa & Saki Maemura vs
Yumiko Hotta & Kana
Runtime 25:30
Filesize 48mb
Momoe
Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi vs Aja Kong & Amazing Kong
Runtime 24:00
Filesize 46mb
2/19/2005
Ayako
Hamada vs Hikaru
Runtime 22:00
Filesize 44mb
(3WA
Tag Titles) Kong & Kong vs Maekawa & Maemura
Runtime 15:30
Filesize 28mb
3/6/2005
Amazing
Kong & Sara Del Ray vs Saki Maemura & Ayako Hamada
Runtime 15:00
Filesize 27mb
Final
AJW Show 4/17/2005
Highlights Only
1. Pretty Ota vs Mr.Buddhaman
2. Manami Toyota & Mima Shimoda vs Kaoru Ito & Tomoko
Watanabe
3. Mariko Yoshida vs The Bloody
4. Etsuko Mita & Yuka Shiina vs Yoshiko Tamura & Tanny
Mouse
5. Yumiko Hotta & Mika Nishio vs Kumiko Maekawa & Saki
Maemura
6. Jaguar Yokota & Noriyo Tateno & Takako Inoue vs Dump
Matsumoto & ZAP T & Sasori
7. Devil Masami & Amazing Kong vs Kyoko Inoue & Genki
Misae
8. Kumiko Maekawa & Tomoko Watanabe vs Amazing Kong &
Saki Maemura
9. Closing Ceremony
Runtime 57:00
Filesize 106mb
TV Reviews
AJW TV 4/18/2004
Tanny Mouse vs Nozomi Mizushima - 3 months into her career, the
future Natsuki Taiyo was allready better then the
mouse...almost...
Saki Maemura & Kaori Yoneyama vs ZAP T & Sasori - Dump is
at ringside getting heavily involved. Nanae tries to help out
with little success. Saki & Yoneyama bleed and bleed and
BLEED and get beat down and beat down and BEAT DOWN and no one
gives a crap. The lack of heat this got was kind of sad to see
but oh well. It was an ok brawl but nothing overly great and a
little boring at times.
Amazing Kong vs Kaoru Ito - Speaking of boring this legit nearly
put me to sleep. Didn't help that I was watching it at like 1 am
but still. So many rest holds. Like there was about a 5-6 min
period of Ito puts Kong in leg lock, Kong gets rope, Ito puts
Kong back in a leg lock - repeat. The starting brawl section was
cool and the ending exchange was pretty good with Kong busting
out some neat power stuff and top rope splashes and shit but
fuck, this was a hard 17 mins to get through.
After the match in the back Kong again proves that TNA are fools
for not letting her speak. She goes on a massive rant about her
upcoming matches with Aja Kong & Ayako Hamada.
Paraphrasing
Kong when some reporter dude who's like Hamada's spokesman or
something like that gets up in her face to ask her about Ayako
"Who give's a shit. Who care's about the tag belt? I got the
red belt and I got Aja Kong on my back, fuck Ayako"
Then the reporter dude says "Your name Amazing Kong? I think
AMAZING CHICKEN" then calmly walks away as Kong goes nuts
"AMAZING CHICKEN? FUCK YOU AMAZING CHICKEN" and is held
back from murdering the man.
Momoe Nakanishi & Takako Inoue vs Hikaru & Nanae
Takahashi - Good little AJW style tag match though nothing to go
out of your way to catch. The Momoe vs Nanae parts are especially
good as they work is extra stiff and heated for some reason. At
one point Momoe just punches her square in the jaw and it rules.
Takako & Hikaru did well too but were more seconday
characters.
Kumiko Maekawa vs Kayo Noumi - Noumi's retirement match and they
alternate between working this as a silly lets have fun match
with Nanae, Momoe (all buddy buddy again) and the allready
retired Waki running in for a Kiss No Seki reuinion attacking
both Maekawa & Kayo at times and working this as a serious
action match between just the 2 of them. The regular action was
ok and actually got good near the end with some good near fall
spots but then it ends with Maekawa putting her away. Afterwards
it's your typical joshi retirement ceremony that we've all seen
way too many times at this point. Only notable moments were a
short final Kiss concert and Mita showing up to give her flowers
but Mima no whear in site.
AJW TV 5/2/2004
Hotta vs Hikaru - Short brawl as Hotta's flunky young Yukari
Kitao jumps her and drags her to the back whear Hotta gives her a
giant one sided ass kicking, draging her around K-Hall, bloodying
her up and then finishing her off in 4 mins. Fun for what it was
Maekawa & Yukari Kitao vs Watanabe & Mizushima - Your
standard rookie/vet tag with a little bit of added hatred. Hotta
returns to ringside and runs interferance. Decent match with the
rookies looking good.
Eiger vs Sasori - Fucking awful. One of the rare times a match
sucks so much I just give up in the middle and stop watching.
Saki Maemura vs Takako Inoue - A few ok moments here and thear
mixed in with large stretches of boring & awkward. These 2
did not have good chemistry on this day.
Yoshiko Tamura & Genki Misae vs Nanae Takahashi & Hikaru
- Now THIS was a good match. Hikaru working double duty and team
NEO waste no time going after her cut and working her over for a
while. After that it turns into a war of attrition with no team
keeping the advantage for too long, going back and forth slowly
wearing each other down and building to a really hot finish.
There's a couple of missed moves here and thear (not that many
though) so this may not be for those of you who deamnd 100%
perfect execution but what it lacks in that department it makes
up for in build, drama & story. Victory through guts kids...
(3WA Title) Amazing Kong © vs Ayako Hamada - And THIS was a
great fucking match, one of the best Kong matches i've seen. If
you like Korakuen Hall brawls you'll love this, if you don't your
opinion may vary. Simple but cool story setting this up, a few
months earlier Kong beat her for the belt, cheating, using lots
of brawling and weapons. Now in the rematch, Ayako is pissed and
out for revenge. She jumps Kong from the start with a chair
busing her open in one of the few times (maybe only) i've ever
seen her bleed though it's only a tiny trickle amount. Ayako
continues beating her ass for a while and then they go crowd
brawling whear Kong returns the favor bashing the shit out of
Ayako with a chair as she comes running across the isle. Ayako
decideds she's going to show her how a real woman bleeds and half
her face is a crimson mask within minutes which dries out later
on making for a cool visual. Anyways, back ring side Kong misses
a running butt splash onto the edge of a table which doesn't
break in a painful looking moment allowing Hamada to take back
over. We then get a cool/funny little series of events as Ayako
decides she REALLY wants to moonsault Kong through a table only
the 1st two tables she puts Kong on break before she can do it so
in a moment of imrpovisation Hamada rushes across to the
anouncers table, tosses every thing off and uses that, then of
course after finally hitting her moonsault the table doesn't
break. 9/10 times a situation like that doesn't come off very
well but Ayako covers for things really well and it doesn't
detract from the match. Back in the ring they go back and forth
for a while with bigger moves and spots with Kong looking like
she's about to finish her off before Ayako comes back with the
big win. I don't think the crowd were exspecting it to end the
way it did at the time it did as it gets no pop but fuck em, I
won't spoil the ending since i'm putting the match up in the
matches folder so you can go watch for yourself but knowing what
the end to their 1st match was I thought the finish to this one
was briliant.
AJW TV 6/6/2004
To start with we get a few mins of highlights from the
Hamada/Nanae vs Hotta/Maekawa tag title match on 5/16. Looked
pretty good from what little was shown, with them brawling all
over the place. In the 3rd fall Hotta & Maekawa get too rowdy
and are disqualified for their evil ways so if you ever wanted to
know what you have to do to get DQ'd in joshi, you have to
dismantle the ring, punch the ref in the face with a chain then
pick him up and blow mist in his face.
It's so interesting watching these old AJW shows in hindsight
from their last year knowing all the stuff that would come later
on.
Natsuki Mizushima vs Kyoko Kimura - Case in point, this match as
we have Taiyo 6 months into her carrer taking on the Kimura who's
only 11 months into hers. I believe this may have been Kimura's
only AJW match, if she had others they weren't telivised. And I
believe this may have been Natsuki's 1st really good match as
from their 1st meeting these two proved to have good chemistry
together. There's girls with years of experience who aren't as
good as these two with less then 1 each.
Momoe Nakanishi vs Tomoko Watanabe - Lame lame lame. Watanabe
comes out in full Zap gear with Sasori in her corner. Momoe is in
no mood for this shit and demands Watanabe unmask and Sasori join
her instead. Watanabe refuses the 1st request but Momoe is able
to cast her lvl 2 charm magic and gets the scorpion lady to
switch sides causing Zap T to call out Ito to help her out
instead. Then they procede to alternate between decent but
unenthusiastic serious wrestling and whacky comedy mis time spots
with the seconds running in to disaterous results and the ref
getting tricked into attacking people.
Amazing Kong vs Takako Inoue - The most interesting part of this
match is Takako's "Ganja University" T-Shirt. Also,
since Inoue always has her stun gun with her Kong decides to
counter with a giant orange baton. Neither gets used though Inoue
does tease it giving Kong a scare. Aside from that, kind of
similar to the Kong/Ito match from a couple months before though
this time shorter. Kong getting dominated with rest holds does
not play to her strong points at all as her opponents show no
intensity applying the holds and Kong isn't overly great at
selling them so it just ends up as boring time filler. After a
few mins of that Kong has enough and takes over, wanting to turn
it into a brawl but Inoue fearing for her life stalls and kills
the momentum running around the ring to avoid her. Takako trying
to calm Kong down does result in a few funny moments though,
"see, no power" refering to her stun gun and saying
"PLEASE" with a cheesy grin on her face as she offers a
handshake. Back in the ring they meander along for a while with
Inoue again killing the momentum of the match spending like a min
trying to lift up Kong for a double underhook move of some sort.
She recruits poor Natsuki to come into the ring to lay in a few
kicks to help out to no effect then Kong takes back over and
kills Inoue with the spiral bomb for the win. On her way out the
door Kong also makes sure to smack around Natsuki for her trouble
as well.
(All Pacific Title Tournament Qualifier) Hikaru vs Saki Maemura -
Fuck to the yeah, this ruled. Back in January Maemura beat Hikaru
for the AJW singles title and now they're fighting again to see
who goes on to the tournament for the All Pacific title next
month after Kayo vacated the title when she retired. I wouldn't
say there was hatred in the air but there was a strong intensity
to everything they did.
After a short back and forth sprint to start they worked a lot of
holds but they actually put energy and emotion and passion into
it so the same moves that came off as boring in previous matches
felt exciting and interesting here. They also mixed in a lot of
striking and really put some added power behind a lot of their
blows. At one point Hikaru is going for a spear and Maemura just
drop kicks her right in the forehead. Hikaru pays her back later
on by kicking her square in the jaw but then Maemura retaliates,
punching her in the mouth. The finishing stretch is really good,
getting the crowd into things with lots of suplexes, cradles,
spears and other moves like that, nothing fancy but worked really
well before Hikaru finally puts her away with an Alabama slam
slam.
(3WA Tag Titles - 2/3 Falls) Ayako Hamada & Nanae Takahashi
vs Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa - The rematch and because
once wasn't enough we get another, shorter replay of the May
match before hand. This also turned into a damn good match. For
lord knows what fucking reason of all people NOSAWA & MASADA
come out with Hamada & Nanae but then leave once the match
starts. 1st fall is a quick 2 min sprint before the champs pick
up the win. 2nd fall is a long mostly clean back and forth match
with Hotta/Maekawa deciding they'd actually like to win the belts
so they play it safe, atleast by their standards and even the
odds. 3rd fall they just say fuck it and things turn into all out
chaos with chains and chairs flying all over the place for a
while before things get settled down a little for the finishing
stretch. Each girl has something that they bring to the table,
Hotta with her brawling, Maekawa with her kicks and submissions,
Ayako with her lucha flying and Nanae with her power stuff and it
all melds together really well so even though this was a long
match at 33+ it was never boring or repetitive and the time flew
by. The shit hits the fan for the ending as Gurentai run back out
with one of them distracting the ref while the other attacks
Maekawa allowing Ayako to take advantage for the win. After the
match Hotta & Kumiko are all pissy like hey, sure WE cheated
but atleast we did it on our own w/o help and Nanae is all like
hey WTF is this shit Ayako? Hamada for her part doesn't give a
shit and after her & Nanae get in a shoving match and
Gurentai beat up the young girls working ring crew, Hamada tells
everyone to kiss her ass and walks out with them, the belts and
the trophies. Whichever Matsunaga brother was playing the
commisher role gets in the ring and after talking with Nanae and
getting her to agree to it he rips up their winners certificate
and the tag belts are declared vacant. Nanae then pouts for a
while having lost her BFF, she ask Hikaru to be her new tag
partner but gets turned down seemingly by her as well.
AJW TV 7/18/2004
Main focus of this show is the 4 woman tournament to crown a new
All Pacific champ
To start We get clips of Hikaru beating Sasori from 6/6, Nishio
beating Gami at an AtoZ show from 6/16 and all 4 girls in the
tournament on a Samurai talk show on 6/30 with Nish & Sasori
getting into a shoving match
(Round 1) Mika Nishio vs Sasori - Crowds big into Nish, showering
her with streamers, poor Sasori gets none. She takes out her
frustrations early turning this into a short wild brawl with tons
of weapons and stuff all of which was perfectly fine with the ref
but fuck, when Sasori won't break on the ropes then it's DQ time.
Good while it lasted though.
(Round 1) Hikaru vs Hiroyo Muto - A very heated match with losts
of back and forth action. Also on the short side and lacked a
little something extra to make it special but still a good match.
Hikaru wins with a guilotene choke of all things....well, she did
have a shirt out at the time saying she's always evolving...
Ayako Hamada vs Saki Maemura - So in the middle of a show to
determine who gets the #2 singles belt we have a match between
the holder of the #1 & #3 titles. Not a bad match but kind of
disapointing, they could do a lot better. Ayako largely dominates
and while Saki gets in a few moves here and thear and gets to
kick out of some big stuff at the end it's still an easy win for
the 3WA champ who at no point looked like she was in danger of
losing. After the match Maemura is all sad and dejected in the
locker room while Ayako uses her interview time to shill
merchendise.
(Handicap Match) Nanae Takahashi & Natsumi Mizushima vs
Yumiko Hotta - NanaNat jump her at the start, taking it into the
crowd and sending old ladies scatering in fear in a funny moment.
Despite the stip it's never really a handicap match as Maekawa is
at ringside and interferes at will any time Hotta gets in even a
little trouble. After a while Momoe decides to jump in and take
her out turning it 3 on 2 and letting Nanae pick up the win.
After the match all hell breaks loose. Fun for what it was and
served it's purpose extending the feud.
Amazing Kong & Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe vs Kumiko
Maekawa & Takako Inoue & Rie Tamada - A Hodge podge of
the left over people on the roster with nothing to do that day
with special guest Rie Tamada, for some reason Tomoko gets top
billing on her team. A few light hearted spots, Kong gets tricked
into splashing her partners in the corner to start letting you
know right away this wasn't gonna be a MOTYC. Funny moment when
Takako hits a big suplex on Watanabe she screams out
"finish" so Kong knocks the ref over as he's counting
and yells out "no finish". When the ref gets back up
Kong just looks at him and happily proclaims "she started
it". Beyond that the rest was serious wrestling. Hated this
match the 1st time I watched it but I was 3/4 asleep at the time,
re-watching it I liked it more but they were still mostly in
house show mode, not really putting in any major effort and this
isn't a match i'll ever be watching a 3rd time. Scary moment at
the ending as Watanabe hits the Blue Thunder Bomb on Tamada who
lands badly. She was supposed to kick out but didn't causing the
ref to have to stop and pretend she did in an awkard moment and
then Tomoko picks her up but she's out on her feet to she just
gives her a weak clothesline and the ref counts 3 even though her
shoulder was up this time, wanting to end it. Tamada then lays on
the mat for a while, knocked goofy with everyone crowding around
her before they use a table as a makeshift stretcher and take her
to the back.
Before I got my hands on this batch of AJW, the last stuff i'd
watched regularly from the promotion was from mid 2002 or so and
it's weird to see how much the dynamic of the roster has changed
in just a short year and a half. Toyota & LCO are gone,
Miho/Kayo both retired, Black Joker's no more, Momoe's around
here and thear but not doing anything of note, Hotta &
Maekawa are still around as the top heels, Ito, Watanabe &
Takako are still around but are just mid carders of no importance
for the most part and Takako was trying to leave for the WWE but
they ended up not taking her after a try out. A lot of promotions
these days would kill to draw what AJW was for these K-Hall shows
but the crowds are still way down and there's noticbly empty
seats everywhear. That said, it's pretty clear that the fans that
are still showing up are doing so to see the new generation
stars. Which brings us to the main event.
(All Pacific Title Tourament Final) Mika Nishio vs Hikaru - The
crowd, after not making a ton of noise for most of the show is
going APE SHIT for this match. You'd think it was Chigusa vs
Lioness in the 80's or something....ok not really but still,
crowd is pumped and the crowd is also split. The young girls in
the crowd are cheering Hikaru like crazy whear as the Nish
cheering section seems to have a lot more base in their voice.
And these two did not disapoint, giving the fans an awesome
fucking match to cheer for. Much more of a brawl then i'd figure
as soon after starting they end up fighting all over the
building, into the lobby and in the stands. Back in the ring
things get a little more normal but no less heated, intense and
passionate as they trade punches to the face, kicks and other big
moves. Hikaru and her unique shoulder based offense (a pattern I
never really noticed until this match) almost had things won but
Nish is able to pull out the victory with one more punch and a
tiger suplex. After the match, chaos erupts as Sasori runs back
out to attack Nishio again and Sasori smashes her winners trophy
to the shock of the fans and myself since despite the large
amount of trophy presentations in Japanese wrestling you rarely
see that angle. This has me hyped to see a friggin Sasori match
for maybe the 1st time ever.
As the show ends, to hype up the upcoming JGP they show briefe
highlights from last years final between Nanae & Kong. To win
Kong runs across the ring, leaps over Nanae and in one motion
lands on the second rope and hits a spining leg drop which should
so be her new finisher in TNA, it was AWESOME and it'd probably
win her even more points with Hulk.
Watching this show you get the real sense that had AJW had better
financial management they could have eventually built the
promotion back up around their new talent. Instead they closed
down less then a year later, everyone splintered apart into
seperate groups and of the 15 girls on this show only Ito,
Takako, Hotta, Nanae & Natsuki are still around today in the
joshi sceen.
AJW TV 8/1/2004
It's Japan Grand Prix time, 10 woman field this year with some
weird bracketing.
Going back to K-Hall two weeks later with a 2nd tournament show =
not the best idea as the crowd is way down, less then 1/2 full
probably.
(Round 1) Sasori vs Saki Maemura - Ok stuff to start as they keep
it basic and low key for a while which isn't Sasori's strong
point. Maemura ironicly is the one who turns things into a brawl
but she comes out on the losing end of that portion when they go
fighting in the crowd though she does get in a cool running dive
off the stage. Back in the ring when things calm down Maemura
gets the advantage but can't put her away and loses out to
Sasori's Ki Krusher like move. Took a while for this to get going
but once they got into it this turned out to be pretty fun.
Sasori's someone i've seen a lot of in diffrent roles, young up
and comer as Miyuki Fuji, comedy wrestler with Sakura Hirota,
Dump Matsumoto lackey, and never thought much of her before.
Here, working on her own though as a 2nd tier heel she's actually
starting to impress me. The anouncers always bring up that she
used to do boxing and she does have really great punches.
(Round 1) Genki Misae vs Nanae Takahashi - About what you'd
exspect style wise between these two. A big girl slugfest with
lots of slams and suplexes and lariats and chops and stuff. Could
have done with out the crowd brawling in this one but it was ok,
at some point during that part of the match Genki gets her nose
busted open from I think a chair shot. Genki pays her back with a
G-Driver off the apron onto an un-breakable table. Overall a
pretty good match with your token tournament outsider Genki
picking up the slight upset win in 22 mins.
(Round 1) Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki - Didn't make tape, not
even a short few seconds of highlights. No clue why. If not for
the on screen graphic of the brackets showing us that Takako
advanced you wouldn't know this match took place at all.
(Round 1) Kumiko Maekawa vs Amazing Kong - Based on their
interactions in the tag on the last show I was actually really
wanting to see these 2 in a singles match but they weren't in the
mood to do anything special this day so it ends up being a
disapointment. Most impressive moment in the match for me was
seeing Kong hit a bridging vertical suplex which is something I
can't recall ever seeing before. I'm also getting sick of the
whip your opponent into the chairs spot as this is the 3rd match
in a row whear they've done that and it's usually done several
times per match. Maekawa wins it pretty convincingly with a spin
kick combo to the head, Kong throws a fit afterwards.
(Round 2) Hikaru vs Sasori - 4th match in a row with the same
damn crowd brawling spots to start. On it's own i'd probably have
enjoyed this a little more but at this point I vomited a little
in my mouth upon seeing this shit again. Back in the ring the
scorpion lady spends a few mins choking Hikaru with a chain
before getting caught in her guiloteen choke for the win. Atleast
it was short.
(Round 2) Kumiko Maekawa vs Tomoko Watanabe - 5th match in a row.
Managed to keep the vomit down this time though I did have to
fight the urge to jab my eyes out with a toothpick when they go
fighting into the crowd 30 seconds in. Take away those parts of
the match and the rest of this is pretty decent actually. When
Kumiko turned on Watanabe in 00, ending their long time
partnership to join LCO, their most hated enemies it was a really
huge moment in AJW and while they've fought many times since then
they never did do a big singles grudge match which I always
thought was a shame. Here on this night they decide to go the
more old school technical route. Kumiko throws a lot of kicks (if
you've never noticed) so Watanabe goes after her leg, a simple
basic story but it works. Tomoko isn't able to do quite enough
damage though as Maekawa still punts her teeth down her throat to
pick up the victory.
(Round 3) Hikaru vs Genki - A quick sprint. Hikaru blitzes her to
start with spears but can't keep Genki down who takes over
hitting a bunch of lariats and slams. Somewhear along the way she
ends up hurting her back and I can't tell if it's legit or not
and then Hikaru rolls her up for the win in 3 mins. Again, even
though the crowd isn't big, the people that did show up are
fucking going crazy for Hikaru. You'd think she won the final
given the celebration. People are jumping up and down in the
stands, streamers are thrown, it's amazing. Genki just smiles in
that "ah shucks I lost but didn't REALLY lose" way. Fun
while it lasted AND NO ONE GOT WHIPED INTO THE CHAIRS!!!!!
(Round 3) Takako vs Maekawa - Kick vs Uraken....Kick wins and
Takako just smiles in that "aww I lost? oh well" way.
This was also 3 minutes but they made sure to make time to throw
each other into the chairs....several times....I was too
distracted by Takako's short shorts to care...fuck....
(FINAL) Hikaru vs Maekawa - Can you guess who the crowd's for in
this one? Watching all this AJW i've still yet to quite figure
out just why Hikaru is so damn over. She's a really good wrestler
but there's lots of talented girls who don't get 1/2 the crowd
reaction she does so it's something more besides that gives her
that IT factor. She doesn't have a larger then life personality,
not that she isn't charasmatic but it's more in that average
every day person who made it big sort of way. I dunno. The
shorts, the jerseys, the hat, the shoulder throw offense, most of
her fans being young/girls...she's the female John Cena....AND
from the right angle she kind of looks like Kota Ibushi though
that may say more about Ibushi's girliness then anything else.
Irregardless there are NON STOP Hikaru chants for the entire
duration of this match. Slugfest to start which Hikaru comes out
on the losing end of and then it turns into a classic underdog
match with Maekawa dominating things and Hikaru trying to fight
back. They do the damn chair whip again, determined to literally
put a butt in every seat even if it's their own but atleast it
looked good this time. On a show whear that spot happened
probably 25+ times in 7 matches, Hikaru took it the best here as
rather then just sliding into it she fucking leaps into the
chairs and flies like 10-15 feet back. Maekawa didn't turn in a
great performance, not that she looked bad either but she'd
allready wrestled a combine 30+ earlier so she wasn't up for
going long and they take it home after a short 11 mins w her
picking up the win with more brutal kicks to the head. Really
good match overall though and it was more about telling the story
of Hikaru anyways which they did a good job with. Once she loses
the crowd just goes dead silent and Kumiko only gets a small
amount of polite applause during her post match celebration.
AJW TV 8/29/2004
3rd time within a month and a half in K-Hall for a tv taping and
the crowds just keep getting smaller and smaller.
Amazing Kong vs Sasori - These are two girls who are way better
on the offensive then defense so I didn't have high hopes for
this but Sasori made for a fine whiping girl. She gets the better
of things early on but then makes the mistake of whiping Kong
with a clothes hanger awakening the beast. Kong growls loudly and
then procedes to maul the scorpion, angrily beating her down.
Sasori gets another short flurry of punches and roll ups but it
has little effect before Kong kills her dead with the flying leg
drop at the 6 min mark. Pretty enjoyable squash. Funny moment as
they do the chair whip and Kong tries to slide into it but gets
no traction so she just stops on her knees before she can hit
them.
NEO Machine Guns vs Takako Inoue & Tomoko Watanabe - Oh
ladies, why must you play with my emotions so. Guns CAN have good
matches but they very very rarely want to. Inoue & Watanabe
have been 10 kinds of eh this year with Tak not giving a fuck
since her WWE deal fell through. I was all set to hate this but
then Inoue & Watanabe come out dressed as bad ass Yanki biker
chicks and my heart melts and I love this match.
Match starts and they don't wrestle in that gear so i'm back to
hating it. Guns do what I can only describe as a double team 69
indian death lock on Takako and i'm back to loving this match.
Then they wrestle some more and I hate it again. Guns do the
crotch spread move on Takako and I love it again, the dudes in
the front row who start clapping and taking pictures do too. Then
they wrestle some more and I hate it and Inoue & Watanabe put
the Guns in the crotch spread pose and I super hate it. Miyazaki
bends Takako over, spanks her ass, yanks up her thong and Tanny
tries to cut her underpants off...I love this match...Watanabe
stops them...I hate this match....Miyazaki kisses Inoue and grabs
her tits AND I LOVE THIS MATCH ***** . After 19 minutes it ends,
the winners are men everywhear....unless your last name is
Dino...
(AJW Title) Saki Maemura © vs Ofune - Wow, what a weird little
foot note in wrestling history Ofune the masked pink school girl
was. She was kind of popular for a short while but it was never
for her in ring skills. She tries really hard here though making
for a decent enough fun little match. While Ofune gets an A for
effort a lot of what she does is still sloppy and poorly
executed. You can really see the diffrence in the level of
training each girl got as Maemura out classes her in every way
pretty much and retains her title. And fuck, speaking of Odd foot
notes in wrestling, DJ Nira shows up after the match to make some
sort of challenge to Maemura. No clue what it's about, no clue if
it was accepted, so so so do not give a fuck either way so moving
on.
Nanae Takahashi & Hikaru vs The Bloody & Hiroyo Muto -
Pretty much what you'd exspect looking at it on paper. A very
good solid match. Muto & Hikaru have a little animosity left
over from last month but Team OK are able to beat her down for a
while. When Nanae tags back in things pick up and her and Muto
prove to have great chemistry together, really cool clash of the
big girls stuff. After 22 mins or so team future Sun wins hitting
their finishers at the same time on the former JD girls. Real
story is after the match when Kong, still in a foul mood runs out
and beats the hell out of Nanae & Hikaru. She gets on the mic
and says she's tired of them ignoring her and promises to murder
them next K-hall show. Why Kong wants them to pay attention to
her I have no clue since neither one has any titles or anything
but little details like that aren't important I guess...
(3WA Title) Ayako Hamada vs Kumiko Maekawa - Maekawa's reward for
winning the JGP. Great match and after being dead most of the
night, not even making much noise for Hikaru the crowd is super
into this. Surprisingly Maekawa seems to be the more popular one
too though Hamada has a lot of supporters as well. Slugfest to
start before Maekawa slows things down and works over Hamada's
leg for a while. Hamada limps for a while but she's able to
overcome it and turn things around. Hot finishing sequence as we
get lots of crazy dives from Hamada + her usual other big moves,
lots of painfull kicks from Maekawa, a ton of near falls and a
hyped up crowd. Hamada wins with the AP cross. Probably the best
match in AJW that year, atleast up to this point.
This show is a pretty good example that just because you have a
big main event doesn't mean you can half ass the rest of the show
and exspect people to show up. The Ofunes & Machine Guns of
the world aren't gonna cut it and as talented as they are Bloody
& Muto aren't draws either.
Really sucks that AJW house show results for this time period are
so hard to find. Judging from tv only, AJW lost a lot of the
momentum they had going earlier in the year thanks to the two
tournament shows. AJW's biggest feud the Hotta/Maekawa vs Nanae
& Pals thing got blown off in AtoZ instead and then Hotta
doesn't come back for a while. Nishio after winning the All
Pacific didn't return for a while either as she was also with
AtoZ at the time, no clue if the Sasori/Nishio feud was ever
followed up on. Momoe who WAS with AtoZ but then jumped to M's
Style but still worked AtoZ and AJW anyways and quit M's Style
soon after it started anounced her retirement. The Nanae/Hamada
break up didn't get followed up on and just fizzled out, they
meet later on in the year but it's months later. Fuck, people
think now is depressing, overall this was a way shitter time to
be a joshi fan, with so many wrestlers jumping all over the place
trying to find a ship that wasn't sinking or just quiting all
together. Besides the decline of AJW & GAEA, 2004 also saw JD
fire all their talented wrestlers to focus exclusively on their
Athress bullshit. Besides Momoe, from 04 through early 05 Kayo,
Toshiyo Yamada, Rie Tamada, The Bloody, Fang, Sugar Sato, Sakura
Hirota, Lioness, Chigusa, several promising rookies and prob a
few others i'm forgetting all retired too.
AJW TV 9/23/2004
Back again and there's only about 30-40 people sitting in the in
the section directly infront of the hard cam with the bleachers
nearly abandoned. Building's maybe 1/4 full in total....maybe...
(AJW Tag Titles) Saki Maemura & Kaori Yoneyama © vs Neo
Machine Guns - Last month the guns made a challenge for the
vacant 3WA tag belts, AJW for the 1st time in 8 or 9 months
remembers they still have these ones and decideds to give them a
shot for the jobber titles instead. At a NEO show earlier in the
month after the guns finish defending the prestigious Itabashi
& Kitazawa tag belts, Maemura & Kaori show up to make the
match official. Usual NMG crap, the thing with them is that their
act is entertaining the 1st few times you see it but they fall
into the same trap a lot of comedy wrestlers do and they almost
never change it up so if you've seen them once you've seen them a
million times, almost literally. Takako isn't around to distract
today so this ends up being a waste of a long 12 mins and to top
it off the Guns win the belts via submission, going after
Maemura's bad knee. After the match the Guns issue a challenge to
Inoue & Watanabe who come out and laugh at the idea of them
lowering themselves to even compete for those belts but they
accept anyways. As best I can tell, the October 04 k-hall show
doesn't exist on tape. If it does I have no clue whear to find
it, as I don't see it when searching through Lynch, PUNQ,
Quebrada or anywhear else. Inoue & Watanabe will end up
winning the belts on that show making them & thankfully not
the Machine Guns the last holders of the belts.
The Bloody vs Sasori - Decent match at times but they weren't
really in the mood to do anything above average to make this
special. A little mat work to start, a little brawling to end,
Bloody wins in 14 then chokes baldy mc-scorpion with her own
chain afterwards and talks shit on the mic just because....Sasori
throws a hissy fit and leaves all pissed off...
Kumiko Maekawa & Tomoko Watanabe vs Takako Inoue & Momoe
Nakanishi - Reunited and it feels so good. 3 time 3WA Tag champs
and one of my fav teams ever Maekawa & Watanabe are back
together again for this special tag. We get clips from Momoe's
press confrence a few days earlier anouncing she's retiring to
get married then we get a pre match interview with the other 3
ladies in this match sitting together and giving their thoughts,
Takako has a shirt that says "RICH BITCH" in big shiny
gold letters....yup. Long match, 24 mins, and they spend a lot of
time early on not taking things too seriously as this is just an
excuse for Momoe to get together one more time with some of the
people who've played a big part in her career before calling it
quits. And Momoe especially is in an evil playful mood, running
around like a kid hyped up on too much sugar, beating up the ref,
raking people's eyes, chasing her opponents around with Takako's
stun gun etc. For about the last 1/3 they flash back to 2001 and
start working like they give a fuck and it actually turns into a
fairly decent match before Maekawa wins with a kick to Takako's
dome.
Amazing Kong vs Hikaru - This was a lot more fun then their match
back in Feb. Hikaru gets off to good start but Kong soon takes
over. She bloodies her up, drags her all over the building, puts
her through a table, all around beats her ass and enjoys doing
it. For the most part it was almost an extended squash with
Hikaru olnly getting briefe flurries of offense and that's how
the match ends as Hikaru gets a flash roll up to pull out the
victory. Kong proves to be a sore loser and powerbombs Hikaru on
the floor for her troubles. Then she gets on the mic "OK OK
OK OK FUCK YOU, you beat me on a technicality BEYATCH but I
whoped your ASS. Nanae get your ass out here, I ain't scared
bitch" Then Kong starts huming Nanae's theme music, so
wonderfull.
Amazing Kong vs Nanae Takahashi - No Wait, before the match
starts Kong has more today "Ok Nanae you little cracker,
seein as i'm tired and I just lost on a "technicality"
(Kong actually does the finger quotes) I think i'm gonna rest for
today. SOOOO since i'm finished and A.Kong is on the card I might
as well bring out A.KONG" queue the music, queue Amazing
Kong playing fucking air guitar along with the music, queue after
7 years the return of Aja Kong to AJW
Aja Kong vs Nanae Takahashi - Ang the crowd goes mild. They're
into things by the end but Aja's surprise return doesn't get near
the pop you'd think. Slow start with them feeling each other out,
going back and forth a bit which I think was a mistake. Given the
ocasion I was hoping for a faster paced, more exciting opening
instead with Aja just destroying her. Aja does eventually get the
advantage and Amazing Kong is still ring side and interferes at
will any time Nanae starts to come back. By the end they're both
in the ring double teaming Nanae but can't quite put her away and
finally, Hikaru runs out from the back all bandaged up to make
the save and it turns into a crazy brawl with all 4 going at it
which finally wakes the crowd up. Too little too late though for
the sun shine girls and Aja urakens the passion out of Nanae for
the win. After the match more challenges are made and we end up
getting Double Kong vs Nanae/Hikaru for the vacant 3WA tag titles
at the untelivised Oct K-Hall show with the Kongs picking
bringing home the gold.
AJW TV 11/7/2004
So, in addition to the Oct show not airing at all, the Nov show
doesn't get a stand alone taping either. Instead these two
matches air on the 1/14/05 tv which also covers the 12/26/04 card
which i'll get to later. Whatever the promotion did between the
last show we got to see in Sept and now seems to have worked as
the crowd is way up, maybe 65-75% full building this time.
Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi vs Ayako Hamada & Saki
Maemura - Your typical AJW workrate style sprint match. Fast
paced non stop action, tons of big moves, tons of crowd heat. If
you've watched a lot of joshi before your know the style and if
you're into that kind of thing then you'll LOVE this match as it
fucking rules. Momoe brings her A+ game and is just a ball of
energy and excitement as usual, in a funny moment stealing
someone's purse during the crowd brawling section and just going
berserk smacking her opponents upside the head with it. The other
3 bring their A games as well, Maemura is out to prove she can
hang with the big girls, busting out some cool shit like a
standing slice bread and Nanae & Hamada bring the hate as
they have an upcoming title match and it ends with those two as
Nanae gets the pin over Hamada just as the time limit was about
to exspire.
(All Pacific Title) Mika Nishio vs Hikaru - Re-match of one of
the best AJW matches in 04 and they once again deliver big time.
They go almost twice as long so it's a little bit of a slower
pace to start with more mat work and stuff and then as things
build and build things just explode. Like the last match it turns
into a brawl by the end, lots more fighting in the crowd, lots
more stiff ass punches & kicks to the face, lots more passion
and intensity and excitement and again tons and tons of crowd
heat. Hikaru has a little more fans this time but it's overall
still split. The dudes in the front row for example pop big time
when Nishio just hauls off and punts Hikaru square in the jaw for
example. Unlike last time though, the Hikaru fan club gets a
happy ending today as she becomes the 45th All Pacific Champ and
the crowd goes nuts.
Wouldn't think this was a company 5 months away from going out of
business watching this show...
AJW TV 12/12/2004
Out in Kawasaki for this show so for the 1st time since since
like Feb we get to see a show from some place besides K-Hall.
Building's only only maybe 35 - 40% full though.
Takako Inoue vs Haruka Matsuo - Typical young girl vs vetran
match. Matsuo gets to show off and get a lot of offense in before
Inoue proves to be too much for her and puts her away with a
couple of diving knees. Always really liked Matsuo and she looked
good here and this being a bigger show Takako was feeling
motivated too so this was pretty decent from what was shown.
And now a couple matches from the 2004 "Tag League - The
Best". Much like the JGP it's just a single elimination
tournament this year and not an actual, you know, league but old
habits die hard....
(Round 1) Yumiko Hotta & Kana vs Tomoko Watanabe & Emi
Tojyo - One of these things is not like the other. Fuckin hell,
Emi Tojyo, what can you say, the girl most famous for getting
kicked out of wrestling in 2005 because she filmed a gang bang
porn inside one of the rings a lot of the promotions, mainly JD,
used. If she'd gotten gang fucked in an alley no one would have
probably given a shit but surprisingly enough the other girls
didn't want anything to do with her after she driped cum stains
all over the mat. And as far as this match, well, she made for a
better cum dumpster then wrestler is all i'll say so let's just
move on shall we. Hotta & Kana win after Hotta gets tired of
playing around and kills Tojyo. Oh, and a little over a year into
her career Kana was allready kind of nuts...
(Round 1) - The Bloody & Fang Suzuki vs Dump Matsumoto &
Sasori - Crazy brawl, what else. Dump's one of those wrestlers
who no matter what, you're working her style like it or not
because, well, she literally can't do anything else, atleast not
since making her come back. Between the last match and this one
Watanabe had time to throw on a track suit and mask so she's out
here as Zap T to help out. Waddling around swinging a stick can
be very tiring you know and Sasori can't carry things on her own.
The other 1% of Dump's offense that wasn't hitting people with
sticks consisted of choking, throwing a kick, hitting people with
other weapons and some weird move off the 2nd rope onto Fang that
I don't even know how to describe....it didn't end well. The
former JD team has never been shy about mixing it up hardcore but
this is largely a one sided beating since Dump can't bump either.
She does take a sunset flip whear she just gently rolls backwards
but that's about it. When Bloody & Fang do come back Dump
gets around having to take any other offense by occupying her
time beating up the ref outside the ring which eventually leads
to a DQ. Zap T puts Bloody through a table after wards.
Momoe Nakanishi vs Saki Maemura - Momoe Retirement road continues
as she's calling it quits a month from now. Little disapointing
coming off the awesome tag from Nov. They didn't half ass it and
it was a pretty good match but they didn't go full bore either.
Perhaps Dump ate all the cookies back in catering so Momoe wasn't
on her usual sugar rush? Clipped down to half didn't help either
but oh well. Kind of similar to the opener, young girl Maemura
gets to get all her shit in, coming ever so close to getting the
victory before Momoe reminds us all she's the vet, pulling out
the pro wrestling get out of jail free card and crushes little
Saki's hopes and dreams with a spin kick to the head. After the
match, Momoe, not wanting to wait for her upcoming marriage to
start mother hood kidnaps a small child out of the audiance.
Lioness Asuka vs Hikaru - Lioness also nearing her retirement
shows back up in AJW for the 1st time since 2000. On paper this
is a horrible match to run, not because it'll suck but because of
the booking. If there's one thing to know about Lioness it's that
she hates losing. She wouldn't put over any vetran unless she was
gonna get her win back and she NEVER puts over anyone from the
younger generation period. In the 6 years she was in GAEA she
lost to Amano one time off a fluke roll up and that was it,
literally. For a while I used to be able to name every ocasion
she got pinned off the top of my head, it happened so rarely.
Hikaru, the 2nd most popular girl in the promotion and at times
arguably the 1st, fresh off a big win for the All Pacific title
doesn't need to be droping pin falls. So that said, of course
Hikaru still comes out on the losing end but they worked this
perfectly as to not kill her heat atleast. Lioness spits mist in
her eyes right at the start, then she bashes her head into her
custom table causing her to bleed, though only a small trickle.
She then procedes to continue kicking the crap out of Hikaru for
quite a while with Bloody & Fang, Lioness' old cronies from
their JD days helping out with more table & chair attacks and
stoping Hikaru any time she turns the tide even a little bit.
Hikaru finally gets the advantage when Bloody's interferance goes
bad so Lioness throws a fucking fire ball in her face. Just a
tiny one though that only grazes her so it's not the finish. A
couple dudes in the 1st few rows stand up and applaud like yeah,
burn the witch, meanwhile the Hikaru fan club shrieks in terror.
Lioness throws her into the crowd and one fans actually has to be
held back from trying to help Hikaru out. Back ring side and
Lioness puts her through a table with a foot stomp but that still
can't put her away. Lioness gets a few more of her big moves in
and after all that Hikaru still makes a tiny tiny come back but
it's again shut down and Asuka finally puts her away with the LSD
II. A large one sided ass kicking, about 95% for Lioness but
again, I thought they did it in a way that didn't hurt Hikaru.
This wasn't her losing out because she was the inferior wrestler,
this was her losing out because it was a 3 on 1 beat down
involving chairs and fire and tables all kinds of other cheating
and even then she almost won. After the match, they shake hands
and hug....sounds like a weird thing to do but it made sense I
thought, or atleast didn't seem stupid within context.
(#1 Contenders Match) Kumiko Maekawa vs Amazing Kong - Maekawa
smiles that I know i'm going over smile and offers a handshake to
start then kicks Kong in the head to little effect. Some arm
holds and stuff to start and then we're quickly clipped to the 10
min mark. Just as well I suppose as they don't appear to have
done anything of interest in that time from the way they're
acting. Things pick up shortly after and the match becomes quite
good for the finishing sequence, big Uraken vs Kick battle, Kong
with the backslide and small package for near falls which pops
the crowd. Kong pulls out the Amazing bomb, press and leg drop
and still can't win and it ends the same way their last match did
with a kick to the head. A lot better then their JGP match but
still not the great match I was hoping for. They do enough little
things that you figure this would work great as a hated blood
feud but without that added element of emotion they haven't been
able to achieve that next level.
Amused that any time anyone does a splash off the top on this
show the commentators refer to it as the Flying Sausage which was
Jamal's name for it in All Japan at the time.
(3WA Title) Ayako Hamada vs Nanae Takahashi - Pretty cool history
package before the match including highlights of Ayako beating
Nanae in a title defense almost 1 year ago to the day in this
same building. No wasted time or slow build on this one, two mins
in and they've both hit their finishers and it just goes from
thear. Big move after big move, Hamada hits a rana off the top
rope to the floor in one highlight. Things slow down as Nanae
appears to hurt her leg, legit I think. She limps for a while
after the action resumes but toughs through it but then is back
to limping really bad once the match is over. They do a long
crowd brawling section and end up on the 2nd floor whear Nanae
tosses Hamada off the balcony then does a big dive onto her. Not
the hugest balcony or anything but still pretty impressive. Back
ring side and we get a weird moment as Ayako decides she wants to
do the Eddie Guerreo fake like you got hit by a chair spot which
makes Zero sense because unless you beat the ref within an inch
of his life or go really really REALLY out of your way, it's near
imposible to get DQ'd in this promotion. The ref tries to take
the chair away from Nanae though allowing Ayako to drop kick her
and gain the advantage she allready had anyways. They trade more
stuff for a while as this was a long one at 33+ cliped down to
about 22. Some of the execution was off a little at times, at one
point they try to make it look like Nanae missed a shining wizard
but it comes across like she just leaps onto Hamada's shoulders
for no reason. The selling isn't always the best in this either
and i'm rarely a stickler for suck things. But fuck it, for every
one weird/awkward moment in this match there were 10 awesome ones
so while it's not the greatest match this still falls deep into
good match territory. Nanae becomes the 58th 3WA champion turning
a top rope muscle buster into the Nanaracka to a huge pop from
the crowd. At the time all this originally went down I didn't
watch much AJW from this time period but I still followed it
closely and I was pretty pissed at the result. Didn't see Nanae
as a top level main event talent and really wanted Maekawa to get
it instead. Having now watched all this stuff, I still think it's
bull that Maekawa didn't get the 3WA 1st and i'd still go with
her if I had a choice but i'm not quite as down on them giving it
to Nanae anymore since if not Maekawa she was pretty much their
only choice. Course in hindsight now i'm half convinvced they
should have put it on Hikaru but that's more fantasy booking then
anything that ever actually had a realistic chance of happening.
After the match Maekawa comes out to talk shit and Hamada does
the passing of the torch thing, straping the belt around Nanae's
waist. Near the exit Momoe is thear to meet her with a big
tearful hug.
AJW 12/26/2004 TV
2nd half of the show that aired on 1/5/05
Back to K-Hall and for the 2nd time in a row and they again drew
a decent sized crowd in the 65-75% range.
Hustle Pink Hikaru vs Sasori - In something I vaugely remember,
Hikaru got signed by Hustle in their early days. They gave her
new gear making her look like a reject baseball player as opposed
to her normal reject basketball player look and this match is
just an excuse to show off her new look. Not really a comedy
match but they aren't taking things seriously, with Hikaru more
concerned with getting in the Hustle Hustle pose and she finished
off the scorpion lady easy enough in 4 mins. No clue why as I
don't think she ever even worked for them but Haruka Matsuo is
out thear as well in a Hustle shirt, helping Hikaru out and
posing with her as well post match. So so need to go back and
Arisin Z (Ayako Hamada) & Super Virus vs Hikaru &
Juventud Guerrera match sometime soon...
(Tag Leauge Final) Kumiko Maekawa & Saki Maemura vs Yumiko
Hotta & Kana - Highlight package before the match starts,
notable because like with OZ in the JGP they again avoid showing
anything of the GAEA talent that was involved as Ran & Toshie
were also in the tournament. This match started out really good.
Kana being Kana goes nuts and her and Maemura stiff the fuck out
of each other, then Hotta & Maekawa go at it. The vets start
with some shoot style mat work but soon they're having a strike
battle as well and things kind of go from thear, settling down a
little bit as time goes on. 2/3 of the way through Maemura lands
really badly taking a tiger driver from Hotta. She didn't rotate
all the way though and came down on her head. Hotta goes for the
pin but Maekawa breaks it up then quickly drags Saki outside and
the ref legit calls for a time out. They check on her for a while
and a couple mins later she's good to go, sorta. Rather the
having Maekawa take over Saki gets back in and wrestles for quite
a while longer and while she doesn't appear to have been severly
injured, she is a little out of it. They don't quite regain the
momentum they had going earlier but eventually they get things
back on track for the finishing sequence and Maemura gets the
victory through guts over Kana with a german. After the match
she's in near tears and has to be held up by Maekawa during the
trophy presentation.
MomoNana vs W Kong - Kong's jump to start and it turns into a big
crowd brawl. Cliped ahead Momoe is getting beat down, with a long
section of Aja vs Momoe making you really wish we could have seen
a singles. NanaMomo come back and we get your typical back and
forth section before it again becomes the Momo show with her and
Ms Amazing going at it this time with Kong picking up the big win
with the top rope splash. Really good match and turns out there
was a pretty good reason for Momoe doing most of the work.
Maekawa & Saki are back out after the match, they challenge W
Kong for the tag belts and Maekawa tells Nanae she wants her 3WA
singles match too but it's not to be. A couple days after this
show Nanae vacates the big red belt. Turns out she tore a
ligament in her knee during the Ayako match and messed it up
further by continuing to wrestle on it. Nanae would tough it out
to work Momoe in her retirement match on 1/7/05 then would end up
having to take a couple months off. Maekawa & Hamada would
have a match on 1/3 to determine a new champ with Maekawa finally
getting her long overdue reign as 3WA champ.
Oh the irony...
AJW TV 3/12/2005 covering
shows from Feb & March
The next to last AJW TV show. By this point Samurai had reduced
them to a 1 hour slot, but AJW had to be glad to even still be
getting any tv coverage at all. They ran two K-Hall shows back to
back in Jan on 1/3 & 1/4 but we don't get to see either which
really sucks since they looked awesome. The 1/3 show had Amazing
Kong/Momoe over Watanabe/Bloody, Hikaru over Maemura for the All
Pacific and Maekawa over Hamada for the vacant 3WA. The 1/4 show
had Maekawa & Genki going to a 30 min draw and Hikaru &
Mika Nishio over NanaMomo in almost 30 mins.
Samurai did atleast air the Momoe retirement show, giving it 3
hours which I have and may review later on as well.
2/19
Running in a much smaller, dark building for this show. They
couldn't sell that out either but it's mostly full.
Ayako Hamada vs Hiraku - Hikaru playing the underdog role to
Hamada's bully. First 1/2 is all Ayako kicking the crap out of
her,
beating her with chairs and stuff until Hikaru can take no more
and fights back. Then Hikaru starts getting in quite a lot of
offense
but can't put Ayako away either and they end up going to a 20 min
draw. Clipping hurt it a little as only maybe 10-12 aired but
what
was shown looked good. After the match Ayako goes to leave but
Hikaru gets on the mic and calls her a coward, chastising her for
having
to use a chair so Ayako rushes back in and we have 5 MORE MINS.
They go back and forth a while and it looks like Ayako is about
to win
but she picks her up at the 2 count wanting to punish her some
more which cost her in the end as the time limit exspires again.
The next day Hikaru would be injured in a match defending the All
Pacific title against Lioness when she lands badly doing a dive
and
messes up her leg. The ref stoped the match and awarded the title
to Lioness making her technically the last holder of the belt but
Asuka then turned around and imediatly vacated it. This company
is cursed, by the time Hikaru returned they were out of business.
(3WA Tag Titles, 2/3 Falls) W Kong vs Kumiko Maekawa & Saki
Maemura - Challengers make the mistake of jumping the Kongs and
quickly pay
for it. Maemura eats a brainbuster on the stage taking her out
and the champs easily finish off Maekawa 2 on 1 in few mins to
win the 1st fall. At the start of the 2nd fall Saki had managed
to slowly crawl her way back ring side and she's able to distract
Aja enough to allow Maekawa to exploit Amazing Kong's one big
weakness, being kicked in the head really hard and they even
things up 2 mins into the fall. 3rd fall sees Saki go for revenge
on Aja and they play a game of cat & mouse or Kong and girl
trying not be killed by Kong or something, while the other two
run interferance. Aja finally catches little Saki long enough to
put her with another brainbuster and diving elbow. Little on the
short side for a 3WA tag match at only 18 total but it didn't
seem rushed and they packed a lot in. Really fun match.
3/6
2 weeks later, back in the same tiny dark building for another
taping.
Amazing Kong & Sara Del Ray vs Ayako Hamada & Saki
Maemura - Sara exactly among the top women wrestlers in the world
in 05 but she was still pretty good back then. I've seen a lot of
her Japan stuff from 05 and this is one of her better matches
from back then. The 1st half is mainly Kong working with Hamada
& Saki, she kills the latter but Ayako is able to out smart
her and uses her good buddy the steel chair to her advantage.
Sara tags in and mainly works the 2nd half. Her part starts a
little slow, but when it turns into your typical joshi action
fest she fits right in doing that style and even picks up the
surprise win Maemura, LA Dojo represent. With Nanae & Hikaru
both out and Maekawa more of a tweener, Saki is the de-facto #1
face left on the roster so I was kind of thinking they'd protect
her or atlest have Kong & not the low ranked outsider pin her
but AJW would only run 5 more shows after this anyways so why
bother I guess.
After the match Kong promises to kill Shinjiro Ohtani in a week
which is another angle i'd forgotten all about. Kong was running
in on Z1 shows, trying to get let in to the Fire Festival. The
angle never went anywhear though and kind of fizzled out.
1 more to go
AJW TV 4/17/2005
1. Pretty Ota vs Mr.Buddhaman
2. Manami Toyota & Mima Shimoda vs Kaoru Ito & Tomoko
Watanabe
3. Mariko Yoshida vs The Bloody
4. Etsuko Mita & Yuka Shiina vs Yoshiko Tamura & Tanny
Mouse
5. Yumiko Hotta & Mika Nishio vs Kumiko Maekawa & Saki
Maemura
6. Jaguar Yokota & Noriyo Tateno & Takako Inoue vs Dump
Matsumoto & ZAP T & Sasori
7. Devil Masami & Amazing Kong vs Kyoko Inoue & Genki
Misae
8. Kumiko Maekawa & Tomoko Watanabe vs Amazing Kong &
Saki Maemura
The final AJW show, bringing together many of it's former stars
for one last time to say goodbye to the place whear all of them
got their start.
All the matches were clipped down to 2-4 mins so can't really
comment on anything individually. For whatever it's worth matches
2, 5 & 6 looked the best from what little was shown. Maekawa
& Hotta beat the snot out of each other in one highlight and
they drug out old Shiro Abe to ref Dump's match in another. He
fast counted to give her team the win but they restarted it with
Kunimatsu Matsunaga aka Jimmy Kayama as the ref leading to the
good girls picking up the win. In frustration Dump & Zap beat
up & bloody Shinobu Kandori who was just hanging around in
the back. Sadly, a few months after this show Kunimatsu would
commit suicide due to all the financial probelms the family was
going through.
The real story of this show was the lengthy post match interviews
in the back with each girl giving their thoughts. During that
portion Yoshida was the only one who started crying but there'd
be many more later on. After the main event they bring everyone
out for a 10 bell salute then everyone gets in the ring and they
pass the mic around letting the Matsunaga's who all look
depressed as hell and a lot of the older stars give final
comments and and at this point a lot of the girls are sheding
tears. Weird & surreal seeing big scary Dump, Kong &
Sasori cry for example. They clear the ring of everyone except
the remaining members of the roster which were the two midgets,
Watanabe, Maekawa, Saki, Hikaru, Nanae, Kong & Sasori and
they let them each say their final goodbyes with everyone but
Maekawa crying. We get one last group photo session, they play
the AJW theme, a few streamers are thrown and so ends one of the
most important and popular wrestling promotions in history. 37
years in business, a little over 10 years earlier able to
succesfully run the Tokyo Dome and now it comes to this.
The lesson kids, don't invest in real estate...
