Thursday 1 September 2022

Revisiting 90s Joshi #41

Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue v Eagle Sawai & Leo Kitamura (LLPW, 6/15/93)

The inter-promotional wrestling brings us the goods once again. This was mostly about the Aja/Eagle pairing for me. There was a wee bit of ill will there from the last tag they were on opposite sides of, so it meant we got plenty of meaty shots and parts where they'd just Vader-style run into each other. I couldn't tell you if I'd seen one Leo Kitamura match before this but she was a pretty great whipping girl on the night. She was kitted out like Kyoko with the face paint and tassels, and I'm not sure if she did that as a deliberate wind-up but she got her clock well cleaned for it. You could make a good case she was the star of this with her scrappiness and sympathy-garnering. Aja was thoroughly dismissive of her and at points it looked like she maybe even felt bad about walloping the poor girl. She'd take her down after Kitamura threw some feeble slaps, but then instead of pounding her head into the mat like she would against many others, she just tagged out and let Kyoko deal with it. Aja was also really fun taking whatever offence Kitamura could muster, the best being her quick springboard elbow out the corner where she went full bodyweight into Aja's chest, bounced off her like a crash test dummy, yet stunned her briefly enough so Kitamura could make the tag. An extended heat segment would've really pushed it over the top, but what we did get was the sort of thing you want and by the end Kitamura looked like she was struggling to even stay upright. I don't have much to say about Kyoko. I've largely avoided her going through this stuff unless she's opposite someone I really like and I came out of this thinking that if I was going to watch someone dressed in Kyoko Inoue garb I'd rather it was Leo Kitamura. 

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