WhiteTail Wrestling

With the ongoing Greatest Wrestler Ever (GWE) debate I feel like I need to watch some more wrestling and not just watching wrestling but good wrestling as I waste too much time watching bad or mediocre wrestling so I decided to put together a list and put a heap of shows into a randomizer and see what comes up.

With a long weekend here where I am I had some time to check out some great Joshi action from AJW.

AJW Kawasaki Crimson Struggle took place on the 23rd of August 1998 from Kawasaki City Gymnasium with a crowd according to Cagematch of about 4,350,

The opener was heavily clipped with Noriko Toyoda defeating Tomoka Isozaki. Takako Inoue squashed Sachie Nishibori. Momoe Nakanishi teamed up with Nanae Takahashi to defeat Megumi Yabushita and Sumie Sakai to become AJW Tag Team Champions. This went over twenty minutes so was perhaps slightly long but was a really fun match. Slightly slow early but picked up and had some good action but there were some minor botches as they tried to do things that were perhaps above their level but I still had fun watching this match ***1/2.

Kumiko Maekawa won a kick boxing match that I skipped and I have no idea why they felt the need to put this on tape instead of having the semi main in full. The Zaps defeated Miho Wakizawa and Yumiko Hotta in a heavily clipped semi main but what we got looked good. The weapons came out early with plenty of violence on the outside and back inside the action looked good.

The main event for the WWWA World Title as Shinobu Kandori defeats Manami Toyota to retain her title. A lot of heat right from the start with the crowd right into this intense physical action with some heavy hitting strikes and moves with an epic final few minutes with great heat and exciting action a crazy bump with Toyota flipped over the ropes onto Kandori who was on a table on the outside with the table refusing to break so this looked like a tough bump and Toyota only just managed to get the flip right so this could have been a disaster but ended up fine. Some near falls and submission attempts towards the end with crowd completely biting on a near fall after Toyota hit the Japanese Ocean Cycllone Suplex. Kandori retains after the submission ****1/2.

AJW was in Sapporo for the Zenjo Transformation tour on the 17th of June 1997 in front of a crowd of about 3,200. This was taped and aired on the 29th of June 1997 and what a show it was. One of the most fun episodes of TV you’ll see the Japanese ads were so entertaining and made this must watch but the wrestling took this to the next level with four really fun matches.

The first match that aired was for the CMLL World Women’s Title as Mariko Yoshida defended the belt against Rie Tamada in a really fun match this was fast paced and all action with some really solid work ***1/4. Next up was a six man tag as Kumiko Maekawa, Tomoko Watanabe & Yumiko Hotta defeated Aja Kong, Momoe Nakanishi & Takako Inoue. This was great fun with twenty minutes of exciting action as everyone involved got to contribute and add their little thing to the match. Hotta and Kong had an awesome kick exchange and Kong being a beast in general were highlights but I enjoyed everything here although I must say I was a little surprised that it was Inoue that ate the fall. Awesome TV match ****.

In a tag team number one contenders match LCO (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda) defeat Manami Toyota Toshiyo Yamada. After a slow start this got going when LCO got the weapons out and Toyoya got color they had a good brawl inside and outside the ring and then we had the final few minutes which had some great sequences with both Toyota and Yamada brilliant here and the crowd were right into it ****1/4.

The main event for the vacant WWWA World Title as Kyoko Inoue defeats Kaoru Ito in a pretty great match. It was a slow start but the action picked up and the finish was excellent with great action and drama ****.