All Japan Women's Classics ~Retro Hour~ EP 3

All Japan WomenAll Japan Women

By GARZA
From January 06, 1985
Discussion

October 6th, 1984
WWWA World Tag Team Championship 2-out-3 Falls Match
Crush Gals (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo) (C) vs La Galactica and Lola Gonzalez - 8/10


This was fucking crazy! Galactica has been a heel for a while in AJW, Lola Gonzalez (from my hometown!) is her first time featured in these compilations. Crush Gals sound like they're on their peak, the fan reaction for them is crazy.

Match saw the Gals win the first fall, but then the second got crazy. Dump Matsumoto and Crane Yu are outside the ring and constantly interfering to aid Galactica and Gonzalez. The match spilled out of control with one pair of women attacking Asuka, the other going after Nagayo. They busted Asuka open and it was horrible, just blood all over the place, and so the Mexicans got the second fall. Third fall saw the Gals make a comeback and beat up Gonzalez among having to survive brawling with the other three, reaching the point that when the match finally got under control again, the Gals had the upper hand on Gonzalez. Asuka hits a full rotation suplex on Gonzalez and gets the pin.

As fans, I think we're so jaded to think that brawls and interferences are bad, but put yourself in the context of the 80's in Japan and it just works.

October 6th, 1984
All Japan Women’s Championship Match
Itsuki Yamazaki (C) vs Yumi Ogura - Squash


Yamazaki is one half of the Jumping Bomb Angels, already popular and champion. This championship, even if called by the same name of the promotion, is not the top title of the promotion, the WWWA championships trump it. Nonetheless, a championship.

This was virtually a squash, it wasn't short and Ogura did had some offense here and there, but it just felt like a squash for how dominant Yamazaki was. Even when Ogura did something, Yamazaki would quickly recover. Yamazaki won with a double underhook suplex.

January 5th, 1985
2-out-3 Falls Match
Crush Gals (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo) vs Dump Matsumoto and Rosy Moreno - 6.5/10


Rosy Moreno is the former wife of Dr. Wagner Jr, sister to El Oriental and Cynthia Moreno, so she's a pretty big deal in Mexico. She actually retired in 2020 after a long career that started in 1978.

As you would imagine, this is the Gals vs Gokuaku Domei, Matsumoto's stable, so yeah, it was all over the place, tons of cheating from the heels (the referee was a heel too), lots of weapon use, brawling all over the place, and a lot of babyface fire too. The match followed the same formula with the Gals winning the first fall and the heels the second, but the difference came with the third, where the brawling got so intense and all over the place, that the referee started counting and even with Asuka making it to the apron at 19.5, he called it a double count out on the third fall.

I think for many other matches, this finish would had been annoying, but it just worked here, because we all knew that the Gals had won, but the referee just going to stick to his decision.

January 6th, 1985
WWWA World Tag Team Championship 2-out-3 Falls Match
Crush Gals (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo) (C) vs. Jumping Bomb Angels (Noriyo Tateno and Itsuki Yamazaki) - 7/10


For the chance of pace, this was just a straight match, no shenanigans, just two babyface teams going at it. The action was good, the fan reactions were at top for the Gals, and the Angels looked good, but something was missing. I was expecting maybe a team to cut someone for a while for a big comeback, but we just saw Gals win the first fall, Angels the second, and then at the end, Gals won the third in a couple of minutes. The falls felt short and aside from Tateno, none of the women seemed like they were struggling that much. Good match, just not memorable.

OVERALL THOUGHTS


Good show overall. I think after two episodes with the Crush Gals being featured, this felt like the big feature episode to get to know them deeply, we saw them do two types of matches for it. In addition, we've started the introduction of the Jumping Bomb Angels, who will likely be heavily featured as we go on. If this had been watched in a vacuum, it really would had felt like watching a 'Best of Crush Gals' show.

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