The best women's singles match of the year, and Aja's best performance since her days as WWWA champion. She led Satomura through an extremely well thought out match, and I'm sure it wasn't any coincidence that we suddenly didn't see the typical goofiness from Satomura. The way Aja structured and ordered the match fit perfectly within the roles of the two performers, greatly magnifying their strengths as well as the crowds interest in the match. Satomura's weaknesses were apparent, but her role was that of the up and comer, and everything was played as such. Thus, what stood out about her was not her inadequacies, but that she has incredible heart and is improving.

Aja didn't like Satomura to begin with, but she's really grown to despise her since she "suffered the humiliation" of being pinned by her on 4/4/99. She's nasty and brutal enough when she's in a "good" mood, much less when she's got a chip on her shoulder and something to prove. Aja was determined to bully the young punk, batter her, injure her, and ultimately to defeat her. What definies Satomura is her fighting spirit. Aja may do everything she wants to do to her, but Satomura is "glad" to take it. She had not had a great deal of success, and really did not even belong in a title match, but she's the kind
of opponent everyone hates to run into because at best you are really going to have to earn your victory.

Aja is bigger, tougher, meaner, stronger, more experienced, and so on. Satomura doesn't have many advantages on her, but she also has no fear. She's going to stand up to Aja, take it to her as much as she can, and whatever will be will be. The first half was defined by two things, brutal segments of Aja domination and brief Satomura comebacks. Aja was winning the match rather easily, and on top of that she seemed immune to Satomura's offense. However, Satomura fans could hang their hats on the fact that, as is her trademark, she always came back...even if only for a moment. It seemed like everytime
she came back, within 30 seconds Aja was beginning a new segment of offense where she would dish out as much if not more punishment. No matter how much she dished out, she could not break Satomura. Due to this, the mental defeat that should have set in on Satomura from taking such a horrific beating and every offensive she mounted ending in stillbirth was shifting more and toward
Aja. She was not just going to give up and ruin the match, to just let Satomura off the hook like Alan Rickman in Closet Land.

One thing that stood out about the actual offense used in the first half was how methodical and sadistic Aja was. She always goes for impact, but today she was relishing in the fact that Satomura knew it was coming and couldn't do a damn thing about it. She could have just done the moves, but it was more fun to slowly wrench Satomura's arm, hold it against Aja's shoulder, then pull it down without much force just to give Satomura a sample. She made Satomura think about the pain she was going to feel when her arm was yanked down into Aja's shoulder before she did it.

At one point, Aja ducked Satomura's high kick and lariated her to the floor (well, that was the idea but Aja actually had to just dump Satomura over after the lariat). Aja went for her tope suicida, but Satomura scrambed back into the ring only to take a middle kick. Aja wasn't content that she still did damage to Satomura, she had to have her way with her. She wasn't just going to do the easy thing, take the opening that was there, she was going to do whatever she damn well pleased. Satomura made a brief comeback, but Aja dropped her on her head with a backdrop, dropped her over the top rope to the
floor, and took her out with the tope suicida as soon as she got up.

It was beginning to look like Satomura may as well pack it up, live to fight another day. A counter isn't worth anything if your offensive move is also avoided. She was getting nowhere. That looked to continue at the 13 minute mark because she nearly turned Aja's suplex into a wakigatame, but Aja rolled through. The match may have ended right there, but Satomura ducked Aja's uraken and hit her with the bicycle kick. This was the key moment of the match because by "nearly knocking Aja out," Satomura finally proved that she could hurt her. It told the crowd not to give up on Satomura; we were finally
about to see a competitive match.

Satomura still wasn't able to sustain an advantage, but Aja was clearly hurting and Satomura was still healthy enough to capitilize. In a new spot, she turned Aja's diving elbow drop into an udehishigigyakujujigatame. What made it great was that no one expected this to happen, probably because they didn't even know it was "possible." Suddenly, Aja went from being a fraction of a second away from hitting one of her best moves to being trapped in one of Satomura's finishers. A lot of times you have to see it to believe it; the crowd suddenly had reason to believe in Satomura. Although it was always back and forth, the feeling that Satomura really might win grew when she combined the bicycle kick with the move she'd beaten Aja with before, her Death Valley bomb.

Aja had to step up her game because Satomura was suddenly competitive. Although Satomura once again ducked Aja's uraken, Aja was working fast now and "thinking two or three moves ahead." Before Satomura could do anything, Aja kicked her in the stomach and used her suichoku rakka shiki no brainbuster for a near fall. You could see the disgust on Aja's face when Satomura kicked out. She did not want to accept that Satomura could keep taking her best blows.

There were some nice little touches in this match like Satomura getting knocked off her feet even though she blocked the uraken with her arms. Of course, it would have been better if she sold her arms before coming back. Certainly, Aja did a very good, fairly consistent job of selling her arms to put over Satomura's offense.

When push comes to shove, it's pretty obvious that Satomura doesn't have many dimensions to her offense. She has one bomb and one submission that can beat Aja, so she rides them to the end. Aja kicked out of the Death Valley bomb at 2 3/4, so she tried to go back to it, but Aja stopped it with an open hand and collapsed right after urakening Satomura. At this point, both women were about dead and anyone could win at any moment. Aja tried for her uraken, but Satomura caught her arm and took her down into an udehishigigyakujujigatame, the other move that could potentially beat Aja. This was a great spot in that with the outcome in doubt, one wrestler turned the other's finisher into one of their own. It's never going to look smooth though because Aja's momentum is taking her in circles, but Satomura's counter is stopping that spinning and taking her right down. Once Satomura had it on though, Aja did a great job of making it look like she was fighting for her life as she slid over to the rope.

The match weakened in the last minute in a half because Satomura had peaked with the udehishigigyakujujigatame and Aja chose to ride the sleeper/choke, which is not really one of her big moves. The uraken to the back of Satomura's head when Satomura escaped the first time was great for setting up Aja going right back into it. The problem is, nothing I've seen would make me think Aja in a major GAEA match is going to win with a hadakajime. They did a good job of selling it as the finish, but the lock itself was not always looking like a stranglehold. The announcer was going nuts, but the crowd, which had been pretty hot for the past 5 or 6 minutes, was only making noise when Satomura would make progress toward escaping. Satomura eventually got her foot on the ropes, but these are the spots where she proves not to be as good as everyone seems to believe she is because she has no clue how to sell a move like this. She's on her stomach for a few seconds, but then she's not looking like she's low on air and instead suddenly coming back with a bicycle kick. Granted, part of the discredit goes to Aja for getting her to get up, but the fact remains that Aja was looking in worse shape than Satomura at this point only because she understands how to sell. Aja staggered back into the corner after taking the move, but this time she was able to withstand it and charge out with an uraken for the win. Why Aja can take the move now, which had no less force than when a seemingly invincible Aja was nearly KO'd by it 8 minutes earlier, is anyone's guess. It was one of those finishes that looks really dramatic when it happens, but doesn't make much sense when you stop to think about the particulars. Aja won, but she "could just as easily have lost" and she too was looking like a wounded warrior after the match.

The strength of this match was its simplicity. The idea is not to dumb down, but in this case there was no need to go any deeper than they did. The story was one that everyone understood and followed. There was nothing gratitous because they were totally focused on playing the story out from beginning to end. Meiko didn't win, but she didn't let her fans down because she showed so much fighting spirit and did better than expected. This was not a glamorous match, but they fit everything they did into what they were doing. They did what they do best, and they were both at their best. It was not close to perfect, with Satomura's inability to consistently put over all the damage she sustained being the most glaring weakness, but it was as close as any women's match from '99 was.

Jerome's review:

Nothing is more efficient than a simple story. Aja, the veteran champion, wants to punish the young Chigusa protégé who pinned her in the tag match on 4/4. To do so, she offers her an AAAW championship match. She doesn't do this because she respects her; she does it because she wants to destroy her in a singles match, and that's basically what she does during the majority of these 22 minutes. Just like the Aja of old, it's a slow, methodical, ultra-stiff beating delivered without mercy.

Meiko deserves a lot of credit just for being willing to take such an ass-whipping. In fact, she deserves a lot of credit on a number of levels, as this match is her best single performance. It was supposed to be a big match, and Meiko stayed totally under control and didn't waste any motion like she usually does in other matches. That's one key of the greatness of the match. Of course, it's hard to not sell well when a monster like Aja is beating the shit out of you, but I found her body language extremely mature, just like her facials. A great mix of desperate energy and fighting-spirit. Her execution was also excellent most of the time. She really played her part perfectly, and that's why Aja was so successful at carrying the match; she didn't have to cover her opponents mistakes.

Aja was very patient, instilling a slow pace. The result was extremely effective build, nobody could stay indifferent to the fate of poor Meiko Satomura for long. When Aja finally allowed her to take
the upper hand, the crowd popped big time. From there, the heat was excellent for the rest of the match, which saw Meiko getting a number of credible near falls and near submissions on Aja. At this point, Aja's no-selling of the beginning turned into a great, generous and totally unselfish selling. Since Meiko injured the right arm with a jujigatame, it was the focus of the last part, and Aja never forgot to put it over, even when she was on offense, another key to the greatness of the match. Infact, she continued to sell his arm during the post match ceremony.

In these times of mindless spotfests, especially in GAEA, a good slow builder was really a breath of fresh air. It's the best single performance of the year for Aja, both in term of work and in term of psychology. Since she had a very talented opponent who knew exactly what she had to do, this match is no worse than the second best single match of 1999 behind Yoshida vs Futagami.

Special thanks to: Jerome Denis

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