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Neo Ladies Be Happy 1st Commercial
Tape 5/6/98 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (1,328/1,000) Mima Shimoda vs. Chaparrita ASARI |
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Shimoda's conditioning seems to have declined some more, but that wasn't why ASARI seemed too small to be in the ring with her. The problem was that Shimoda didn't do a thing to make ASARI seem credible. Instead, she completely dominated ASARI to the point where the match became boring because it was so damn one-sided. Neo just has no idea of how to book. The less people that you portray as being stars, the less matches that anyone will pay to see. Neo has a small roster, so people like ASARI, Genki, and Tamura have to be given something, if not a lot, when they wrestle the top three (Kyoko, Shimoda and Mita). Otherwise, why should anyone care about anyone but the top three, and how many times would anyone pay to see the top three fight? LCO really don't even wrestle each other, so that makes matches like this even more ridiculous. ASARI bled like a stuck pig almost from the outset. She eventually got in a few good moves like a moonsault attack off the stage, but otherwise it was the same couple of big moves. Shimoda really didn't put any of these moves over all that much, and ASARI's execution really should have been better (it's normally not a problem, but didn't help matters here). ASARI got to kick out of a couple of Shimoda's finishers, but so has just about everyone else that's ever wrestled her, so it's not something she hasn't done before, and even if it was it would still be only minimal progress. Shimoda eventually avoided ASARI's sky twister press and hit her with a chair before pinning her following a kakato otoshi (heel kick). This was a seriously disappointing match because, beyond ASARI not pushing at all, the work wasn't even all that great. Miko: Almost total heel domination by Shimoda for the first 10 minutes. ASARI was thrown out of the ring and had chairs piled on her in the first minute, so she gushed blood. She was bleeding so badly that, at times, it looked like her face was painted Muta style from the blood. James: The thing that annoyed me about this match was that Shimoda clearly wanted to brawl and was happy to throw chair shots and the like, but when ASARI was briefly on offense, Shimoda had no interest whatsoever in even getting touched with a chair, putting her hands up before ASARI even threw it. Michael: Excellent match that did nothing but help Asari. Not only did she withstand a serious beatdown and losing a ton of blood, she got a lot of legit, believable, near falls on Shimoda. I guess the only real fault I could find with this match is that most of the near falls Asari got on Mima were "flash" pin attempts as opposed to her really pushing Mima to get them. That being said, Mima did a great job of staying pinned until 2-9/10 on many of Asari's pin attempts. It was about time that Chaparrita finally got a proper elevation match. I have to totally disagree with this. Shimoda didn't respect ASARI. She showed that right off the bat giving her a little slap in the face instead of shaking her hand, then raising her hand for a test of strength well above ASARI's reach. Of course, this is part of Shimoda's heel persona, but the problem is it does no good for the face to just be pissed, they have to actually extract some revenge. This is one thing I have to give WWF credit for, they know their faces can take all kinds of abuse as long as they can also get revenge and the get the last laugh. In this match, ASARI tried to take it to Shimoda because she wanted respect, but Shimoda didn't let her get in close to the amount of offense where she could earn any. The fans got behind ASARI to some extent, but I don't see where she ever had even the slightest chance of winning the match. Instead of elevating her, this match established that she was at a much lower level than she should have been given where she was in AJW and how few wrestlers Neo has that are "above her." Special Thanks to: Michael Smith, James Phillips- Japanese Women's Wrestling & Miko Kubota - Michiku Pro 16:33
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