My Joshi Journey #1: Intro + 1/9/1984

I haven’t talked about it much on this blog (whenever I sporadically post), but I am a massive wrestling fan. One of my favorite things to do when it comes to wrestling is projects of various kinds. The important project for this post is when I decided to start watching joshi wrestling (women’s wrestling in Japan) starting in 1984 using the guide provided by wrestlingplaylists.com. Along the way, I decided that I wanted to start blogging and reviewing the various wrestling I watch so here we are.

My history with joshi is fairly simple. I had watched it on occasion before just by stumbling upon it but had never taken a deep dive before last year. All of the content for joshi on this blog until the early 90s will probably be from a company called All Japan Women’s Wrestling or AJW for short. They are known for having some of the best wrestling of the 80s and 90s featuring wrestlers such as the Crush Gals, Dump Matsumoto, Jaguar Yokota, the Jumping Bomb Angels, Aja Kong and Devil Masami among others. The one important rule to keep in mind for this company is they had a mandatory retirement age which will come up more in the mid 90s when various joshi wrestlers start their own companies to avoid having to retire in their prime. As for the wrestlers themselves, my opinions and their histories will be explained as we cover them.

One small note about my ratings before we begin. I am often lenient when it comes to bad matches and strict when it comes to good ones. Essentially, expect a majority of my ratings to fall in the 2–3.5 range. I hope this gives some added context and lets people realize I am not being harsh when I give something a 2.5 or a 3.

For this first post, I will be covering the four matches that took place on 1/9/1985. This is a good starting point as it is very early in 1985 and features a majority of the main players for the promotion both from the past year and the one upcoming.

Crane Yu/Keiko Nakano/Rossy Moreno vs. Devil Masami/Jumping Bomb Angels:

Background: This is a fun place to start a deep dive as this tag has a lot of the midcard players at the time. Devil Masami was the All Pacific champion which was their secondary singles title. The JBA’s were only just coming into their own in the past few months so hadn’t become the stars they eventually would be. On the other side, the three women are all underlings for Dump Matsumoto (who we will see later).

Review: As for the match, I don’t quite know how I feel about it. The first half pleasantly surprised me as both sides came out swinging with a frantic pace. AJW tags are at their best when they follow this kind of structure. The issue I have with this comes when it slows down. They proceed to settle into the classic tag formula of beating on the faces until the faces end up winning. The problem with that is outside of Crane, none of the heels are particularly good at their roles. The Angels and Devil are good but they don’t get a lot of offense for longer than I would have liked. Overall, this blog project starts with a solid 2.5/5.

Jaguar Yokota vs. Yukari Omori

Background: Our second match of the show features two of the more established names in AJW. Jaguar Yokota is one of the best and most well known singles stars in company history. With that being said, she has been my biggest disconnect throughout 1984 as she hasn’t quite connected with me like she has others. Omori is known for being one half of the Dynamite Girls and for a singles match with Dump in 1986 which we hopefully will cover eventually.

Review: As I mentioned in the background for this match, something about Jaguar doesn’t fully click for me and this is another example of that. Nothing in this match is bad or annoying. With that said, it just felt like these two were holding back from going to that next level. I don’t know if the reason for that was this only being around 10–12 minutes but I just could not get fully invested. 2.5/5.

Jumbo Hori vs. Yumi Ogura

Background: There isn’t as much background here as there was for the last two matches but here goes. Jumbo Hori is the other half of Dynamite Girls with Omori. Yumi Ogura was still a junior at this point with this match being sandwiched between her two reigns with the Junior belt.

Review: Out of the three matches reviewed so far, this one was my favorite. It is very similar to the Jaguar/Omori match but the intensity and pace is just slightly better. AJW definitely thrives in their tag matches, so getting two straight singles matches isn’t something I am used to. It also feels very weird having an AJW show have two straight matches without outside interference/shenanigans like I am so used to. 2.75/5.

Crush Gals vs. Dump Matsumoto/La Galactica

Background: When looking at this card for review, this is the match that stuck out to me. I will start with the wrestler I am least enthusiastic about in La Galactica. That may sound like an insult, but trust me it is not. In fact, she was ¼ of my MOTY for 1984 AJW against these same Crush Gals. Her partner is Dump Matsumoto aka one of the coolest wrestlers of all time. Everything about her just exudes confidence and she is rightfully considered one of the best bully heels (and heels in general) of all time. That brings us to the Crush Gals. I won’t hide my opinion on them: I wholeheartedly believe Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo are the greatest tag team of all time. Any match I watch that gets below a 3 is a disappointment. They are just the ideal babyfaces and perfect foils for Dump as we will see throughout the rest of their careers. Get ready for a lot of gushing praise for them in the coming installments of this journey.

Review: This match was contested under best two out of three falls rules as most AJW tags were. This is on the lower end of Crush Gals vs. Dump tags but was still good. It has a lot of the staples of their matchups both good (constant action/vicious offense) and bad (heel ref). Every time I watch a Crush Gals match, I always appreciate how they do the small stuff so well. Any modern babyface needs to study some of the things they do. Whether it be diving on top of their partner if they are getting double teamed particularly violently or not letting go of a submission right away when the heel’s partner tries to break it up, they make sure they don’t look like pushovers. With that being said, they also take a beating super well which is key when facing someone like Dump as a bully heel can only be effective if the face is willing to bump and sell for them. Dump is her usual violent self in this even if she holds back a bit from her best performances. 3/5.