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| Mayumi Ozaki vs. Mima Shimoda | |
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"Having Shimoda and Ozaki together in the same ring should be a dream match for any joshi puroresu fan, and I'm not even talking about their looks. As expected, they delivered a great match and showed everybody how a brawl is supposed to be done. They used tons of weapons like chairs and chains, but they did it with intelligence, so the brawling part always served a purpose. It wasn't the classic 'let's walk in the crowd for half-an-hour to kill some time' garbage we see in the vast majority of brawls. They didn't spend hours setting up stupid spots that would kill the flow of the match," wrote Jerome. This match had some flaws, but was generally excellent. I wish it could have been done before a big crowd because they went for heavy drama with both blood stained combatants struggling to outlast each other in this simulated battle to the death. It all came off a little flat in this setting though. "The blood was there for a reason, and both put the blood loss over big time Oz bled just a few minutes in the match, and she had soon a scarlet mask on her face. Shimoda also hit a gusher after she was the recipient of some chain shots. By the end of the match, both were covered with each others blood (good color scheme since our favorite twisted vixens both wear red outfits). Their selling made the whole thing realistic and dramatic," wrote Jerome. Their selling, which did make the match really dramatic, especially toward the finish, justified the amount of blood lost. The amount of blood also added to the realism of the brawling since metal objects were such a key to their rough offense. I can see where people would say they took it to extremes here, but mainly if you didn't see the match. If you saw the match than it made sense. Even though they didn't want to kill each other or even dislike each other, there was a lot of pride on the line, as this was a battle for the supreme foxy, minky, heelish, bitchy, ass kicking vixen. I thought they would try to build the match somewhat slowly, but instead they came out with all guns blazing. However, they built the match around the big spots such as the uraken. It was a spotfest in a sense because they were either beating each other down with weapons or doing big moves, but the way they worked the key spots into the match, and played off what had already been done, both the seeds they planted through the teases and counters as well as revenge spots, made the moves have meaning. Shimoda avoided Oz's moves and took control with her brawling tactics. I thought Ozaki bled too soon and in the wrong location. If the blood was going to come so soon it should have been done outside the ring when Shimoda was chaining her. Instead, she dragged Ozaki back into the ring and gave her the chair shot then her kakato otoshi, but Ozaki didn't bleed. Then Shimoda chaired Ozaki again and you could see there wasn't any blood, but when Ozaki got up after falling to her back, a cut magically had appeared on her forehead. The good thing about what Shimoda did was that she had constantly attacked the forehead to bring the blood, and then continued to attack the forehead it to make Ozaki bleed heavier. There was a good spot in there where Ozaki once again tried her uraken, but Shimoda was in better condition so she avoided it and went back to the forehead then Tiger suplexed Ozaki for a near fall. "Mima hit her Tiger suplex very soon, but it made sense because she just busted Oz with chairs shots so she could expect a pin," wrote Jerome. This was actually a fairly short match, but again that's mainly if you didn't see the match. If you saw the match, they had you believing that they were going to pass out from blood loss, so nearly 15 minutes was a long time to wrestle when most of that time was spent donating blood to anything that happened to touch them. Ozaki eventually made a comeback and beat Shimoda with the chain until Tommy Ran took it away from her. Of course, Ran stopped Oz for about 15 seconds. Oz just picked the chain back up and bloodied Shimoda with it. I liked how they set up the first successful uraken. Ozaki had used one Ligerbomb for a near fall and tried another one, but Shimoda slipped out and tried to come back with a lariat. However, this time Ozaki was the one in control so she ducked it and leveled Shimoda with the uraken. Now that she had hit the regular uraken, the logical progression was for her to try the famous chain uraken. Shimoda expected it too, so she ducked it, leaving something else to build to. Ozaki put everything into that uraken, and when Shimoda ducked, Ozaki hit the ropes, lost her balance, and fell to the canvas. Shimoda wanted to try her hand with chain, so they had a tug of war that culminated with both deciding to punch each other with the chain at the same time for a double KO. I thought they should have played this spot up more. Instead, Shimoda recovered first and used her kakato otoshi for a near fall. Before that happened, I should point out the great job Ran did of trying to revive them, the problem was that Shimoda was already up by the time Ran got there. Shimoda brought a bunch of chairs to the ring, but after a long struggle, Ozaki gave her a nadare shiki no brainbuster onto a pile of chairs. Ozaki tried to Ligerbomb Shimoda on the chairs, but Shimoda slipped out again, ducked Ozaki's uraken, then (released) German suplexed Ozaki onto a a pile of chairs. Shimoda set Ozaki on a chair on the apron and ran at her in hopes of kicking her off, but Shimoda wound up running right into Ozaki's uraken! As long as the chair was sitting there idle, Ozaki couldn't resist extracting her revenge by putting Shimoda in the chair and kicking her off the apron. Ozaki continued to return the favor by chairing Shimoda a few times on the floor. Shimoda was just as bloody as Ozaki at this point, if not bloodier. "When it was time to end the match, they came back to wrestling, with a lot of teases and counters until finally hitting a big move. Actually, they also did a lot a teases and reversals with garbage spots. For instance, Mima being superplexed on chairs when she was ready to splash Oz on the said chairs, the whole thing leading to Oz's powerbomb attempt being countered by Mima, who hit a released German suplex on the pile of chairs after ducking an uraken. This very good sequence was followed by Mima trying to hit Oz, who was sitting on a chair on the apron, but Oz urakened her and finally Mima took the bump on the outside," wrote Jerome. Back in the ring, Ozaki was unable to finish Shimoda off with her Ligerbomb, urakens, and even tequila sunrise. Shimoda eventually blocked an uraken and did her kakato otoshi followed by two rolling kakato otoshis, none of which really hit their mark. I really think Shimoda needs to leave this move to Maekawa because she simply doesn't have the flexibility for it. Her subsequent chain shots were also weak, although that had nothing to do with flexibility. She was doing these light slow punches with the chain and only hitting Ozaki's hair and the canvas with them. She could have at least hit the mat hard if that was the only thing she was going to hit. Ozaki eventually picked up the chain, but Shimoda ducked her haymaker and (released) German suplexed her. Shimoda then tied the chain around her foot and did a rolling kakako otoshi for a great near fall. Apparently the chain wasn't wrapped around Shimoda's ankle very well because Ozaki wrapped it around her hand while Shimoda was arguing with Ran, then got up and did the chain uraken. From here Ozaki won by urakening Shimoda until she knocked her out. After the match, since they were allies in the SSU, they eventually recovered enough to crawl over to each other and hug. Lioness & Aja congratulated Ozaki then she got the understudies, including the newest member Kaori Nakayama, into the ring for the ritual bonzai pose. "In the post match, Mima had a great look of disappointed amusement on her face, like she felt it was a lot of fun, but she knew she could have won the match. Both women's facials were great during the whole match, and their personality really showed. They were smiling and laughing during the whole post match interview, so I guess they really had a lot of fun that night. Those wacky girls! Oz was the better worker, Shimoda was somewhat sloppy sometimes but overall it was high quality all along. On personal note, 2/28 is my birthday so I take this one as a personal gift from two of my favorite wrestlers," wrote Jerome. Special thanks to: Jerome Denis 14:48
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