Revisiting 90s Joshi #51

Meiko Satomura v Sonoko Kato (GAEA, 10/13/97)

Man, I know GAEA was a lot of fun in 1997 but where the fuck did this come from??? It's quite frankly stupid that Satomura is 17 years old here. She shouldn't already be this good at something some people need 10 whole years to get good at. Kato isn't much older (21) and this almost struck me as a joshi version of Tamura/Kakihara from the first UWFi show, where they just went out and tore it up like they were the future of the game. Everything they did here was super competitive and crazy intense, but they never really teetered into DOING STUFF~ territory. Even if it was back and forth for most of the 15 minutes they wrestled, I can't recall any transition feeling haphazard or like one of them just decided they wanted to go on offence again. There was always a struggle, sometimes in really unique ways, like when Kato was trying to pick Satomura up on her shoulders on the top rope and Satomura, after fighting it off for about 30 seconds, finally managed to hit a big knee to the side of the head. They also absolutely thumped the hell out of each other and put over the toll of it amazingly well. They'd delay their next move after a momentum shift just to sell any previous damage, really milk any strike exchanges, never letting the pace they worked at run high enough that they were having to blow stuff off. Satomura was doing all sorts of great counters and blocks to set up submissions, including one quick reversal of something (I don't even remember what it was now) into a sick armbar. Kato would reverse those submission attempts by kicking Satomura in the face and a couple of these were truly vile. Satomura even tagged her back with a high kick of her own from nowhere, just a total holy shit decapitation. The point where Kato turned around and cracked Satomura with a headbutt was insanity, then they traded those headbutts while on their knees, totally unprotected, borderline idiotic. There was just so much stuff here that I wasn't expecting but turned out awesome, and for something I watched completely on a whim it wound up being one of my favourite joshi matches of the year. And fucking hell was young Satomura a prodigy. Seventeen, fer cripes!