It's been entirely too long since I've watched any Yumi Ikeshita. How is something like this happening in 1980, btw? It starts hot with Yokota handspringing across the ring, Ikeshita blocking a strike flurry and hitting a quick hurricanrana like this is 2022 Dragon Gate and not nineteen-fucking-eighty. Ikeshita immediately going to the throat was great because nobody works as vicious as Yumi Ikeshita. This might be reactionary on my part but I'm telling you now, if she had a career half as long as someone like an Aja or Ozaki then we're proclaiming her the GOAT running away. I love how she jabs the throat with her thumb, really pulls Yokota's head back by the chin so she has easier access for squeezing the windpipe, drops the shin on the throat, just a bunch of awesome, nasty stuff. She even does the bit where she has the knee across the throat while arguing with the ref' and these early 80s AJW refs let everything go anyway so you sort of worry that Yokota might actually be choked to death. Yokota takes over with the wrist lock and these were some sensational wrist lock takedowns. Ikeshita kips up out of them every time before getting yanked back down, having the wrist twisted and bent at gross angles, it all ruled. I still need to deep dive Yokota and she was pretty great here as the scrappy technical babyface fighting the odds; those odds being long in the first place because of Yumi Ikeshita, but also because of Devil being a plague at ringside with constant interference. In the end this was a bit of a Yumi Ikeshita buffet, where we got a bit of everything from her. We got nasty underhanded Ikeshita with the choking and throat-punching, we got fully out in the open savage Ikeshita with headbutts to make the Fujiwaras weep, we got vicious grappler Ikeshita with these mean looking kneebars, then finally we got chains off psycho Ikeshita when she'd had enough of Yokota and took to stabbing her in the head with a fork. At one point a fan was vocally complaining so Ikeshita stood up on the ropes and threatened to stab him too! Yokota eventually snapping and stabbing both Ikeshita and the ref' with the fork was incredible and I figured that was our DQ ending, but no, the AJW referees are a lenient company so she lets it continue and the last couple minutes were frantic with them trying to score the win before time expires. On the one hand this was an awesome 15-minute draw, but on the other hand it's wildly disappointing because I wanted these two to wrestle for like 45 minutes and I pretty much never want to watch a wrestling match go 45 minutes. So really, my fullest marks possible. In a just world this would've led to a cage match to circumvent the Devil interference. Or there would be at least one more singles match between them because shockingly enough they're great together.
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