This was an education match for Ishii, a 23-year-old in her second year as a pro. She's a pretty good athlete who is in fantastic shape with the best abs of any active woman's wrestler, but at this point she's not very advanced as a wrestler. The basis of the match was that Chigusa would let Ishii try her offense - dropkicks and the like - and just no sell it for a short while. Then Chigusa would get bored of no-selling and put Ishii down with one big strike. They built to Chigusa giving Ishii a little, letting her show fighting spirit by just kicking out of a backdrop and look good by turning Chigusa's running three into her great huracanrana finisher. Finish saw Ishii try to roll up Chigusa's body, which worked earlier, but Chigusa did what they called a running three for the win. A one-sided mismatch, as it had to be, with Ishii showing some potential.

9:28

Rating:

Akira Hokuto & KAORU vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Makie Numao

This was a decent match, but disappointing and basically nothing special. Yamada and Numao mainly attacked Hokuto's bad knee, with Hokuto selling the injury really well doing things like rolling and having the seconds gather around her, hobbling around, etc. KAORU jumped around the ring aimlessly as usual, rolling out a bunch of high spots with no rhyme or reason. Some of the high spots to Yamada were nice, but her execution wasn't as good as normal. The highlight was Numao springboarding off the 2nd into a reverse DDT on KAORU. Finish saw KAORU go to the top for her moonsault attack, but Yamada suplexed her off and hit her reverse Gori special bomb for the win. I like Numao more each time I see her.

18:59 (7:51 aired)

Rating:

Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima & Maiko Matsumoto & Hiromi Kato vs. Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato & Toshie Uematsu & Sakura Hirota

This match badly needed Mayumi Ozaki, as it lacked direction and focus without her there to lead traffic. There were 5 quality workers in the match, but no one stepped up or showed much. Some of this can be attributed to Sonoko working on two bad knees that needed surgery and Satomura working with a bad elbow. However, people put WAY too little stock in who's calling and shaping the match and much too much stock in who is doing the best high spots. Without Ozaki or Chigusa or Akira or Yamada to lead the way, what we saw was a collection of spots. Some spots were basic, some were good, and some were sloppy, but none of them really led anywhere or amounted to much. There were some good near falls between Chikayo & Uematsu before Sato interfered, stopping Uematsu's springboard move and Chikayo did a reverse rolling clutch into a German suplex into a jackknife hold for the win. Hiromi Kato was once again very solid in her execution and she looks like she will develop into something down the road.

17:52

Rating:

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