Jackie Sato v Tomi Aoyama (AJW, 1/4/80)
Jackie Sato is a treasure. She carried herself like a Fujinami level ace, cool and confident while selling the danger of Aoyama. I'd never seen Aoyama before but she was all about the dropkicks early and there were two moments where she went for broke only for Sato to calmly walk out of dodge (and on the first occasion Aoyama crashed and burned). This had some cool tricked out matwork, though most of it was built around Aoyama working the leg and going to the figure-four. Sato would repeatedly roll out or manage to block it, so at one point Aoyama grabbed an Indian deathlock type thing and started stomping on Sato's back. She also went to the shin breaker a handful of times and man did that crowd live and die with Jackie Sato. When Sato took over she rolled out a bunch of neat offence. Her backdrops looked killer - super high angle and impactful - and she did a sort of hair-pull Slingblade that ruled. Finish might be a touch anticlimactic, but it certainly looked plausible. Whole match pretty much flew by as well. Feels like way more people should be talking about Jackie Sato and I guess what I'm saying is someone should do a deep dive on her and chronicle their findings.
Man what the fuck? Honestly, how is Jackie Sato not beloved among internet wrestling geeks like the other joshi stars? I'm assuming the obvious answer is something like "barely anybody has watched this era of joshi compared to the 90s boom period," but in a JUST and RIGHT world we shouldn't accept that. We should one and all be waving the Jackie Sato banner. Every time I've seen her - all of the maybe five or six matches I've actually watched - she's been tremendous and this was badass as hell. I wonder if I'd have become a bigger joshi fan over the years if I'd started out with stuff like this. I love ARSION and chunks of other 90s joshi hits the sweet spot, but for about fifteen years now it's been a style I've quite often struggled with, especially if I'm jumping into it cold after a while away. I really need to settle into the rhythm of it and watch matches in bunches so the momentum shifts and all those other joshi-isms that have been talked about forever don't bother me quite as much. I had no problem jumping straight into this though, and it's the sort of thing I feel like doing a proper binge watch of because stylistically there's a lot about it that's way up my street (and I've watched enough from this period to know that it's not exclusive to this match alone). Everything was done here with such snap, like they were trying to slam their opponent clean through the mat (that made a super satisfying *thwack* every time). Jaguar was a terror with how she'd go for limbs, the way she'd just lunge at Sato and grip her in a bodyscissors or drag her to the mat with an ankle pick, but the way both of them worked holds and fought for submissions was amazing. At times it was dang near beautiful, super graceful and rapid quick, yet never did it look cooperative. It's about as engaged as I've been by non-shoot style or lucha matwork in ages and it kind of caught me by surprise. Sato trying to contain this young whirlwind was a great story as well, how she'd get more frustrated over time and slap the mat after being forced to scurry to the ropes. And holy shit were some of those backbreakers/neckbreakers brutal. I guess I'd have liked them to make more of the hand stuff, because Jaguar trying to rip Sato's fingers apart with the ring ropes was awesome, but for how long it was actually a focus and the fact Sato took control for a stretch after it I don't mind too much. This was the absolute business.
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