This was Yabushita & Sakai's first shot at the tag belts. As is the case with every Jaguar match, it was better than it should have been. What made this different was that it wasn't the Yokota show. Jaguar let Kosugi carry much of the load, and the match wasn't that much better when Jaguar was in. Part of this was that Kosugi just gets better and better, but also Jaguar wasn't up to her normal high standards.
The story of this match wasn't Jaguar or Kosugi though, it was the vast improvement of Yabushita. Yabushita has adopted a Sakai style outfit (which has become the in outfit for the judo girls) and she's copied the majority of Sakai's spots, which makes sense because they both have the same background (although in judo Yabushita was the better of the two).
The judo girls started the match with simultaneous judo throws into udehishigigyakujujigatames (the whole name for the jujigatame), but the opposition blocked the udehishigigyakujujigatames because they were in perfect health. The match had a lot of nice high spots, as well as the challengers attempting their submission holds. If you want to be picky, you can find some spots by the judo girls that were a little off, but given that they have only been wrestling a little more than a year at this point, it's hard to fault their performance because it was a lot better than it should be.
Yabushita has added the rolling headbutt to her arsenal. She also did the Sakai spot where Kosugi does a springboard arm drag then goes for the pin, but as Kosugi is leaning over she gets taken over into an udehishigigyakujujigatame. Kosugi kept Yabushita from straightening her arm here because the match was built around the premise that the judo girls could win if they could lock in a finisher. Yabushita did a great takedown, and just about had the udehishigigyakujujigatame, but Kosugi made it to the ropes before Yabushita could get full extension.
Yabushita udehishigigyakujujigatame'd Jaguar off the top, but still couldn't extend the arm. Jaguar escaped to the floor, so Yabushita did an udehishigigyakujujigatame off the ring apron. She almost had the arm extended, but referee Tommy Ran broke it up because they were outside the ring. Yabushita held the opposition and Sakai tried to plancha them, but they moved so Yabushita was taken out. Jaguar then took both opponents out with a quebrada. Kosugi followed by footstomping Sakai off the apron and Yabushita off the top to the floor.
Back in the ring, Jaguar shuttle loop bustered Sakai onto Yabushita. Kosugi held Yabushita too close and Jaguar didn't have a good jump, so her moonsault attack turned into a back headbutt. Yabushita tried her nadare shiki no ipponzeoi to Kosugi, but Jaguar pulled her off the top and planted her with a devastating fisherman buster. Kosugi then invented a new move (at least it hadn't been done on a taping before) where instead of doing her diving footstomp with the opponent lying on their back, she did it with her opponent standing up. The cool new spot, still called a diving double (as far as the double goes, the best I can tell is that it's inclusion or exclusion depends on what source the results came from) footstomp, was the finish of the match, which is the way a new spot like that should be debuted.
The judo girls looked good in their first challenge. Yabushita never got her udehishigigyakujujigatame, so you are left with the thought that maybe they can win next time they challenge if they can successfully apply their finisher. The match also showed that Kosugi may be better than we give her credit for. 17:21 (8:21 aired). ***1/4
"Sakai and Yabushita have pretty good chemistry as a team, and if Yokota is smart then she'll work with them more frequently before she retires. This is about the longest they've shown Yabushita on any given show, and she looks like she can develop into a pretty good to very good worker. Women's puroresu isn't what it was 3-5 years ago, but it still is very good and it has a bright future. This match helped out the judo girls get closer to stardom much more than the other ‘elevation' matches on this show, although had Sogabe not been so bad she could have been helped by her match vs. Cooga (note: it was really bad so I didn't review it)," wrote Michael Smith.
