Mayumi Ozaki & Sugar Sato vs. Kyoko Inoue & Yoshiko Tamura (Neo Ladies team)
This was mainly work and spots. The early portion was strong and did a good job of leading to them. Some of the spots were blown though because Sugar's bad day continued. In fact, she was surprisingly the worst performer on the show other than Nurse, who just sucks.
Ozaki was the glue that held this together. Kyoko was pretty spry today, and she did a good job here. Ozaki worked well with her, so hopefully they will have a singles match at some point. Tamura isn't polished, but she did a pretty good job here. Who would have guessed she'd be better than Sugar?
Tamura focused on Sugar's knee, and Kyoko picked up where Tamura left off when she tagged in to set up future Tamura submissions. Later on, Kyoko stopped Ozaki's nadare shiki no brainbuster and dropped Ozaki off the top with pancake suplexplex. This set up Sugar doing what Ozaki had failed to do, nadare shiki no brainbustering the much larger opponent.
Kyoko tried to get the crowd to cheer, including doing her hip swivel that should have died with that fellow donut eater who wrote about as many of his songs as Kyoko did. This was a pro Oz Academy crowd though, so Ozaki just gave the thumbs down and the fans booed Kyoko. It was great! Sato & Tamura exchanged leg submissions in a good sequence. Tamura ducked Ozaki's uraken then turned her lariat into a wakigatame, which looked nice. Ozaki soon caught Tamura with an uraken for a near fall. In general, Ozaki's urakens and Kyoko's lariats weren't put over as being that deadly here, which wasn't a good thing. Ozaki used several urakens and tequila sunrises on Kyoko, but couldn't finish her off. Kyoko seems to always make quick comebacks now, which was really annoying here because Ozaki hit her with what seemed like 80 urakens and she just came back with her lariat selling nothing. I wonder if Kyoko has been studying Kobashi matches? In any case, Kyoko's once great stamina is gone, so she seems to think that conserving her energy then expending it in bursts is the way to go.
Sato was fine until she worked with Kyoko about 15 minutes into the match. She just didn't have the power to powerbomb Kyoko, although Kyoko didn't give her enough help the first time. On the second attempt, Kyoko gave Sugar enough help that she could execute the move, but the spot didn't look good.
Sato did a great thunder fire powerbomb to Tamura for a near fall, but Tamura came back with her nadare shiki no doublewrist armsault. Tamura ducked Oz's uraken so it hit Sato. Tamura then did her doublewrist armsault for a near fall. Sato did a sky high reverse neckbreaker, or at least that's what it was supposed to be. Sato turned Tamura's reverse doublewrist armsault into something of a bulldog and tried to Ligerbomb Tamura twice, but it was blown both times. Perhaps part of Sugar's problem was that she was tired from wrestling twice and lifting much heavier women. Thus, Sato used urakens, Tamura did a great job of selling the second, as a bridge to redoing the Ligerbomb for the win. Overall it was a very good match, but it was certainly hurt by Sugar's debacled spots down the stretch. ***1/2 Bonzai! Bonzai! Bonzai!