Pro wrestling is usually at its best when it's easy to follow. Keep it simple, stupid! Or, you know, whatever it was the Beastie Boys said. But really, it doesn't need to be complicated. Good versus bad, big versus small, strength versus speed, those are the sort of dynamics that have worked since time immemorial. This was a story of cold ruthlessness versus dogged determination - a little more purple than your good versus evil maybe, but I promise you it's no less easy to follow. Satomura was nineteen years old here. Nineteen, fuck sake! I don't even remember what I was doing at nineteen years of age. Probably drinking Jameson out a jug at the halfway line of the local ash park, still dreaming of making it as an Olympic level athlete, and here's Satomura doing this. It's damn near crazy how a nineteen year old could be involved in a match this good and be as responsible for its overall quality, but here we are. Aja was Aja and if you're reading this stupid blog then you know what that entails. You'll also have a pretty good idea who in this tale is responsible for the cold ruthlessness and who's responsible for the dogged determination. For the majority of this it's pretty much an Aja domination. Meiko fires back with a few short burst, one flurry of leg kicks that even takes Aja off her feet, but really she's pissing in the wind and it's barely even competitive. I liked how scrappy Satomura was though, how sometimes her offence never quite hit great and how her timing wasn't always perfect. It gave what she was doing a hint of desperation, like she was going off the cuff because what the hell else COULD she do? She'd chip away, but it looked like most of what she did had next to no effect and Aja just kept coming. Aja took her time as well, like she was savouring the moment before sticking Meiko with a piledriver or squashing her in the corner. Then the longer it went you could see Aja start to tire a bit, like she was having a little more trouble stringing all that offence together. Even if it might not have been her intended strategy it looked like Satomura had allowed herself to be beaten so badly that her assailant had worn herself out! The coolest part in the last third was how Meiko went about making her comeback. It still came in bursts, but those bursts were more frequent and they lasted a little longer too. She'd target Aja's arm, initially by pulling out an amazing cross-armbreaker counter to an Aja top rope elbow, and that sort of opened the door for her to try the death valley driver, which was treated as a huge deal and a legit (potential) match-ender. My favourite part of the whole match might've been when Meiko just started twisting Aja's arm at an ugly angle and how it allowed her to hit the DVD, which sent everyone completely ballistic. The finishing stretch was super tight as well; there was no excess and it felt epic without ever going overboard. Aja scooting out the back door of another DVD and taking Meiko's jaw off with a backfist was unbelievable, and I'd completely forgotten the result of this so I was as invested in that last sequence as I've been in ages. Just a sensational match and probably a joshi MOTD candidate.
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