Sunday 20 September 2020

Revisiting 90s Joshi #8

Shinobu Kandori & Harley Saito v Yumiko Hotta & Toshiyo Yamada (AJW, 4/9/94)

This wasn't up there with the truly elite Kandori/Hotta bouts, but it's still Kandori/Hotta and we take every bit of Kandori/Hotta that we can get. You pretty much know what to expect from them -- they hate each other with a passion and they smack lumps out each other. It's great. I also liked the inclusion of Saito and Yamada as it's always interesting to see how other partners fit around them. Saito is a bit of a throwback but always really fun whenever she shows up. She took a bit of a back seat here in terms of stature and Kandori was clearly the one who'd need to pull team LLPW through. Kandori is such an awesome defensive wrestler. Her selling of strikes is always on point and it's cool seeing her match up with Yamada. It has a sort of Fujiwara/Takada vibe, where Kandori will need to absorb shots and try to find openings through her grappling, and once or twice she just plucked Yamada's leg out the air and set about twisting it off. The Fujiwara/Takada comparison also works for me personally as I'll watch the former in pretty much anything, the latter doesn't do a whole lot for me, but matched up against the former it becomes an altogether different prospect (although I don't know if they ever had a singles match, despite their interactions in tags being really good). 

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