Cero Reviews AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 2

[cero2k]

All Japan Women's "Retro Hour" Classics EP 2

April 1st, 2018
Retirement Exhibition Match
Mimi Hagiwara vs. Tarantula - 6/10
This was a retirement match for both women, so booked as an exhibition match with a 5 minute time limit. They went straight to the action and worked a fast pace in order to pack in as much as possible before the 5 minutes ran out, and indeed they ran out before they even tried any big near fall. Not much to recommend here, but for a 5 minute match, you got your money's worth.

Post-match - Tarantula unmasked in front of everyone. They got a nice song and flowers, they both had a chance to say a couple of thank you words

August 25, 1984
WWWA World Tag Team Championship 2-out-3 Falls Match
Dynamite Girls (Yukari Omori and Jumbo Hori) (C) vs Crush Gals (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo) - 9/10
This was great! At this point in their careers, the Crush Gals are incredibly popular, they're young idols with a couple of hits, but they haven't captured gold yet, and the crowd is hungry for them to do so.

Match was just full of action and drama. First fall went to the Crush Gals when they dropped Hori with a Spike Piledriver and Asuka got the pin. Second fall had a ton of great near falls at the hands of the Gals, coming close to the 2-0, but instead, Hori manages to reverse Asuka with a Fallaway Slam, and after a couple of moves, Asuka is pinned with a diving Crossbody.

Last fall was when the match kicked into second gear. Dynamites cut off Nagayo and worked over her a long time, tons of near falls. Eventually, Asuka got the hot tag and gained control of the match, and at the end, Nagayo returned to finish Omori with a German for the win.

The crowd went absolutely nuts for the win, tons of women screaming for their idols. This match had so much energy between the wrestlers and the fans, it just feels like a completely different thing from what we tend to get 35 years later.

September 17, 1984
Fuji TV Cup Tag League
Villainous Alliance (Dump Matsumoto and Crane Yu) vs. Crush Gals (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo) - 8/10
At this point in 1984, the Crush Gals are in a big feud with Gokuaku Domei, Matsumoto's group. Their battles have been crazy and violent, and this was no different. This was another super heated match, but in-ring, and outside with the fans going crazy about it.

This was just a violent brawl. Both teams had their chance on top, but it really all came down to Asuka and Nagayo working over Yu that things took a turn. The Gals are getting close to winning when Matsumoto starts cheating with a fork and a metal bucket and the referee is not doing anything, and so Asuka just snaps, she starts beating the shit out of the referee outside the ring, like straight up using a table as a weapon against the referee, she's had enough. The beat down reaches the point that the referee decides to throw the match out and call it a No Contest. At that point, the heat was so much that fans had a better reaction to a No Contest than the Gals losing.

September 17, 1984
WWWA World Championship and UWA World Women’s Championship Match
Jaguar Yokota (WWWA) vs. La Galactica (UWA) - 7/10
Good match. I have to imagine that someone that didn't know about their rivalry would have had a harder time getting into it. In 1983, La Galactica beat Yokota in a hair vs mask, title match. Yokota lost both her WWWA title and her hair to the cheating Galactica. While she was able to regain the title 25 days later, it was until this match that it's considered that Yokota really got revenge, as she was able to take Galactica's UWA title, and keep it for over 200 days.

The match was somewhat intense, especially towards the end. A lot of submission and limb work at the hands of Galactica early on, but it was until Yokota missed a Plancha Suicida that Galactica got proper control, and started going after Yokota's head, ramming her against the post and going for Piledrivers. After a while, Yokota turns the match around, repays Galactica by ramming her to the ring post too, and busts Galactica open terribly. After that, it was just Yokota slowly ending Galactica, who managed to kick out a couple of times before Yokota won with a Straightjacket German.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Another good show from AJW. This got confusing with matches from all of 1984. It really took an effort to research where we're at for each match. On EP1 we saw wrestlers like Tarantula, and here, they're retiring, or how both matches are main evented by Yokota vs Galactica, but the matches are a year apart.

The collection itself was good. The two tag matches were awesome, the Crush Gals are just a great tag team, super exciting to watch. The opener and the main event felt like big deals for different reasons, may not had been the better in-ring, but they surely felt like I was watching an important piece of history.