Saturday 17 April 2021

Revisiting 90s Joshi #31

Mariko Yoshida & Aja Kong v Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue (AJW, 3/21/95)

This was a semi-final match of a one-night tag tournament (at least I think it was one-night) so they never went full bore, but I thought they played to their spot on the card really well. Under different circumstances maybe they'd have gone longer and built to a bigger finish, but even at 16 minutes they still managed to do their thing and it's not like the finishing run was a lead balloon. Aja was outstanding in this. She didn't even do that much, it was mostly standard fare for where she was at in '95, but where she was at in '95 was top of the mountain (for another few days at least) and she very much carried herself as someone at the mountain top. She also thumped the hell out of both Inoues, and often at that. There was one stretch where she just volleyed Takako up and down the place and looked to be having a great deal of fun doing so. Yoshida was almost little sister to her in this, where she would come in and try to sustain the advantage, but rarely would she actually gain it for her team. I was looking forward to her exchanges with Takako but it seems the former teammates didn't harbour any ill will towards one another. Maybe their pairing ended amicably and not with one of them throwing the other head first through a barber shop window. I had no idea who was winning this so the last few minutes were pretty exciting, and the finish itself ruled. 

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