If you couldn't tell from looking at the names, this was established vet and rookie partner v established vet and rookie partner. It starts with the vets barrelling into each other like a couple bighorn rams. After a few collisions they both end up on the canvas, so the rookies come and drag their respective partners back to their corners to tag themselves in, but amusingly Aono can't get Eagle to budge because she's too BEEFY. It was a fun way to set up a couple minutes of Eagle v Satomura and of course the work between them was quality. It's basically Satomura throwing herself - literally - at Eagle and getting nowhere before Eagle gets bored of it all, flattens her and tags in Aono. There was a point during the 90s tape-trading heyday (which I was not a part of as I am MERELY a man in his mid-30s) where Eagle was seen as kind of rubbish. That feels at least unfair, if not downright nonsense, because if nothing else she was a fun bruiser who projected a pretty badass aura and I'm not buying the idea that someone like Kyoko Inoue could work circles around her. She throws Satomura into the ropes so hard that the top rope almost rips the girl's head off, then she squashes her like a bug. Meiko and Aono probably hit three hunner running shoulderblocks when they're in together, or at least a dozen. They don't exactly have a deep well of offence to draw from but they're intense and very spirited. The rookie v rookie stuff was also kept interesting by them both looking to tag out at various points only for their respective big dog to refuse. This was sink or swim and they were getting no life raft unless it was absolutely necessary. Chigusa takes Aono's head off with a spin kick, Eagle lariats Meiko dead in the face, all the while the rookies try valiantly to put a dent in them. At one point Meiko hits about six running dropkicks to Eagle that basically do nothing, then when Eagle whips her across the ring Satomura is so fucked she just falls face first into the ropes. I don't think it was "selling" or at all intentional which made it even better. She'd emptied the clip and had nothing left. Chigusa's "well I'll be damned" face at the end when Satomura tapped Aono was great.
Chigusa Nagayo, Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato v Devil Masami, Tomoko Kuzumi & Tomoko Miyaguchi (GAEA, 8/5/95)
Another really fun time! I actually thought this was even better than the last one, thanks in part to the inclusion of Devil. I'll level with you all; I don't know the difference between Kuzumi and Miyaguchi so I'll refer to them as the JWP girls. There was lots going on here and the young girls got to go hell for leather, but it never felt messy to me and it certainly helped that Chigusa and Devil were there to hold things together. I liked the start with Kato and one of the JWP girls, Kato accidentally running into Devil on the apron and Devil stepping in like she was going to chop her in half. Devil v Satomura was awesome for the one minute that we got, as Satomura is spunky as all get out and fearlessly runs into the brick wall and tries to scale Devil's body to apply an armbar. When she eventually grabs hold of it Devil sells with just enough concern that the crowd goes nuts, but ultimately you know she's going to pick Satomura up with one arm and powerbomb her. She then powerbombed one of her own students on top of Satomura and that was even better. The youngsters are still scrappy and mostly run through the same few moves, but any time it looked in danger of getting repetitive you had Devil or Nagayo there to freshen things up. There was always the backdrop of one of them coming at any given moment and murdering someone. Some of those veteran/rookie interactions were great, my favourite being when one of Devil's kids went for a springboard and Chigusa kicked her in the throat. Chigusa had one of them in a choke hold, then when the other ran in to break it up Chigusa just grabbed her by the neck and put her in a choke as well. Veteran shooter Chigusa with the extra weight might honestly be my favourite Chigusa and she's super fun in GAEA, which in general I prefer stylistically to the AJW of her peak. You obviously don't get the same level of sympathetic selling as you would against Dump and those cretins, really because she's wrestling with a bunch of teenagers and trainees, but she's a violent ass-kicker and that's every bit as compelling to me. Her interactions with Devil were of course excellent. The finishing stretch is actually really dramatic and much bigger than I would've expected, super heated with the JWP team trying to put away Satomura while Devil keeps her old adversary at bay. You think it's done when Devil and one of her trainees hit a sick doomsday powerbomb, but Chigusa saves it right at the last second and manages to rally her team into a comeback. Satomura has precisely one desperation sunset flip left in her and I'm not sure she even registers that it led to victory in the end.
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