Cero Reviews AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 5

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Cero Reviews AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 5

Post by cero2k » Mar 19th, '21, 20:08

AJW Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 5
Aired: November 20, 2007

April 2nd, 1985
Fuji TV Cup Japan Grand Prix ’85 League Match
Jumbo Hori vs. Yukari Omori - 4/10
This was pretty boring. These two are part of the the Dynamite Girls team, former WWWA World Tag champs in '83. For this particular episode, it worked because it really introduced the idea that in a singles tournament, all friendships are out between ring bells.

The only story here is that Hori is coming in with an injured back, so Omori worked on it. Beyond that, not much happened, it was back and forward and it led to Hori making a big comeback at the end and destroying Omori with a piledriver and a couple of Backdrop Suplex for the win.

April 26, 1985
Fuji TV Cup Japan Grand Prix ’85 League Match
Dump Matsumoto vs. Crane Yu - Squash
This was something really special, it was a match by all means of technicality, but what this was in reality a 15+ minute one-sided beating, a really productive beating. Coming in to this match, we're days after Matsumoto and Yu lost the WWWA tag team titles to the Crush Gals, a result that created dissension between Matsumoto, the leader of Gokuaku Domei, and her stablemate, Crane Yu. The water is boiling between these two, but that's not all -- enter Bull Nakano. Ever since joining the alliance, Nakano is showing promise, and she is hungry to move up in the stable, and her means is by getting rid of Yu and taking her spot next to Matsumoto.

The match was just a beatdown, Matsumoto was a violent tornado over Yu, using a fork and chain and bucket and everything. Nakano kept joining in to attack Yu along with Matsumoto too. The violence was so much that not even referee Abe, who is already in Matsumoto's pocket, was able to stop them, and so at the end he just threw the match out. Crane Yu took that beating like a boss, respect to her for taking it like that.

Not long after this match, Crane Yu left wrestling for a while, this was in a way a successful angle to showcase the viciousness of Matsumoto, and set up Nakano's rise.

April 6th, 1985
Fuji TV Cup Japan Grand Prix ’85 League Match
Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo - 8/10
Easily the match of the set, this started strong and ended even stronger. At this point in 1985, these two are the top babyfaces in the promotion in terms of popularity, not even the Jumping Bomb Angels can touch them. They've had some matches before, but at this pinnacle, they're coming toe-to-toe and the crowd is crazy to see who the better Gal is.

They went the full 30 minute time limit draw with the perfect escalation of intensity. Asuka and Nagayo don't have first gear, they usually start their matches on second gear, and so they did it here too. Story here was that as one would gain some control, the other would get heated, and retaliate with a bit more intensity, only to provoke the other, and so on. There was a lot of mirroring in this match, if Asuka started kicking Nagayo, then Nagayo would pay her back with kicks and go for a sharpshooter, and so Asuka would come back with a sharpshooter too, and so at the end, they're both just trying to drop each other with piledrivers and Germans and slaps, but neither can manage to get the 3-count and so the time runs out. It seriously was the best match that you could had given the fans that night.

OVERALL THOUGTHS
It's hard to say that this was a good show overall, only one match was good, but I like I mentioned, if we see the Matsumoto vs Yu match as an angle, it was indeed good. I liked the idea of compiling these matches for this episode though, it's not like we were going to get the full GP, so giving us a compilation of matches with three tag teams that we've been following, and putting the members against each other, it made for an interesting episode. I wouldn't mind for a second GP episode with the actual top matches of the league.
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