Cero Reviews AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 9

[cero2k]

AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 9
Aired: March 18, 2008
Taped: December 12, 1985
Ota Ward Gymnasium, Tokyo, Japan

Rookie of the Year Tournament Final
Hisako Uno vs. Akemi Sakamoto - Dud
Sakamoto is not a well known name, she retired in about a year in from her debut, at this point she had already joined Gokauku Domei, and so he had the Matsumoto look and style, which would be a good reason to give her the win for the tournament. The other, would actually go and have one of the most legendary Joshi careers in history, but under another name, Akira Hokuto. Uno here is less than a year in since debuting.

This lasted about 3 minutes and it was 50% dropkicks from Uno, and tosses from Sakamoto. It ended with a shoot pin, when Sakamoto legit put all her weight on Uno for the pin.

All Japan Championship Match
Bull Nakano (C) vs. Yumi Ogura - 5.5/10
This match was somewhat edited, so it came off as a dominant win for Nakano, but it could had been that the episode just wanted to showcase Nakano in singles competition. The action still looked ok and Ogura did have some offense early on.

Jumbo Hori Retirement Match
Jumbo Hori vs. Yukari Omori - 6.5/10
This was more of an exhibition match as Hori's final match. She wrestled her Dynamite Girls tag team partner. This HAD to be edited down, because the match didn't go long enough for an actual time limit draw, and while I'm sure the original match, being an exhibition match, couldn't had been that long, it surely must had been more than 6 minutes.

The match was back and forward, but Hori did end up having more offense by the time the match came to the time limit draw. It really was just about giving Hori one final showcase to the fans. The two of them really went all out on each other in terms of energy put into the match, they were slamming each other, striking each other, and what not.

Retirement Ceremony - Beautiful! Hori was quite emotional during the commission speech and hers, but then once she got her flowers and was carried to the back by her friends, things got really emotional back stage. Everyone in the back was crying, saying thank you to everyone, just a great thing to see.

WWWA World Championship & All Pacific Championship Title vs Title Match
Devil Masami vs. Dump Matsumoto - 9/10
Talk about synchronicity, I'm watching this match only a couple of weeks after the AEW and Impact World Titles were in a title vs title match, a week after Impact and AAA pact a title vs title match for the women's divisions, and now, without knowing, I had this match come up.

This whole thing started even before the bell rang. Both women are with their teams backing them up, then suddenly, to the surprise of many I would think, at least for me, Dump Matsumoto adheres to the "Code of Honor" and shakes Masami's hand, she even lets go of her kendo stick, everything seems to make us think that Matsumoto respects Masami and is going all out.

The match itself was a fantastic story. For the first time that I can remember in my experience, the story was about a wrestler, in this case Matsumoto, working over Devil Masami's eyes! Not a limb, just the eyes, she worked the eyes all match, and Masami sold it like she couldn't see for a long while, like if she was wrestling with a blindfold, against a cheating Matsumoto with a fork in hand, and the whole group of GD helping her quietly stalk the blind Matsumoto. It's usually the case that there is an eye injury and the heel takes advantage, but in this match, Matsumoto's plan all along was to go after Masami's eyes.

After a while, Masami managed to catch Matsumoto and take her down blindly, get some help from her corner to recover her sight a bit, make a huge comeback. The finish comes when GD aid Matsumoto to hit a Doomsday Device and so The Crush Gals and the rest of Masami's corner has had enough and a huge brawl breaks out, that ends with Masami being able to hit a huge Electric Chair on Matstumoto for the pin. Just an awesome story of a babyface overcoming the odds of a match she would had easily won, if she could have a clean match.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Really fun episode this week, it had a little of everything, and while edited down, none of the matches felt like we missed out a LOT as we have in previous weeks.