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Selected matches from AJW
Survival Shout In Korakuen Commercial Tape 8/19/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall Manami Toyota vs. Akira Hokuto |
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This match was structured well for a long match, but failed to reach greatness because the submission holds were unconvincing and eventually totally dropped without either selling the damage they did. The perpetually injured Hokuto came into the match with a bad knee, an injury suffered two months earlier in a Japan Grand Prix match when Toyota avoided her plancha and she cracked her knee on the guard rail, leading directly to a doctor stop. Toyota knew very well what Hokuto's weak point was, and she did several leg related submissions to exploit the damaged appendage. Unfortunately, too many of them weren't really knee submissions, and even more were loosely applied. Hokuto still did some of her best selling to put them over, which somewhat made up for it until they just left the knee entirely. The match got off to a lightning fast start with several big moves, and even some near falls. This was probably the strongest part of the match, actually, because the moves were set up and flowed together in such a way that it wasn't that unrealistic that they were doing German and Dragon suplexes less than a minute into the match. I thought they should have kicked out quicker, if anything, but I did like the quick recoveries. For instance, Toyota got a near fall with a Dragon suplex hold 30 seconds into the match then tried to go to the top. Normally, she would have had plenty of time, but Hokuto had only taken a few moves so she got up quickly, hit Toyota before she could jump off the top, then slammed her back into the ring. I think Hokuto wanted Toyota to knee her when she did a diving body press since it was so early in the match because she jumped right at Toyota's knees, but Manami didn't bring them up so it looked really awkward. Toyota started going after Hokuto's bad knee about 1 1/2 minutes into the match, so Hokuto got more cautious and slowed the pace down. Hokuto tried to prevent Toyota from attacking the knee, but Toyota was determined, and her persistence quickly brought rewards. Unfortunately, Toyota's first big move "to the knee" was a reverse Achilles' tendon hold. Still, Hokuto made you believe that her knee was in excruciating pain. It got better from here because Toyota put a lot more into her figure 4 leg lock, and Hokuto was jerking her head back and forth and screaming in pain. They were clearly using the submissions to pace themselves since they were going long, but when there was a reason for them being there, that wasn't a bad thing. They picked the pace back up toward the middle with Toyota missing a tope and Hokuto following with a tope con hilo off the apron. This was where Hokuto's selling got weird. She stopped selling her bad knee and got right up after getting tombstoned on the floor and piledrove Manami on the floor. This section had nice spots, but they strayed too far away from what they had been trying to do with the submissions here, and never really got that back. The pace slowed down when they reentered the ring, as Toyota had a lengthy no pressure facelock. This isn't a Toyota finisher and really had nothing to do with anything, but Hokuto really made it look like she was almost unconscious. Even though Hokuto applied her submissions a lot better, the match was definitely not as good when she was doing them because there was no story and Toyota didn't sell them 1/10 as well. Toyota finally got into here high energy dropkick offense in the last five minutes. Hokuto avoided her reverse diving body attack though then "knocked Toyota all the way to the floor" with a missile kick then gave her a plancha. After an enzui missile kick, Hokuto delivered her northern lights bomb. Apparently this was one of the first times she used it because it hadn't been given a name yet and the announcers were arguing over how to describe it. It also wasn't put over as a finisher by the wrestlers. They went back and forth with flying moves leading to near finishes in the last few minutes. Although both were tired, they managed to avoid the scares and hang on until time expired. The beginning, end, and a section in the middle were really fast-paced and exciting, but the rest was submissions. That would have been fine if they stuck with the knee storyline and Hokuto continued to put it over when they were doing the spots, but they left it in the middle, so it wound up being useless time killing instead of a strong, logical storyline. This wasn't one of Hokuto's all-time great performances because she was more like Koji Kanemoto, a great seller when the move happens, but 30 seconds later acting like the move never happened. That said, she was very precise in everything else she did and was able to keep the quality high for 30 minutes even though Toyota's execution left a lot to be desired. It wasn't that Toyota really blew any spots, but that she was on the dartboard rather than in the middle. When it came to her submissions, she had the lock, but it was rarely in right or tight. In spite of the flaws, the matched worked because the fans were once again into Toyota being portrayed as being on Hokuto's level. Even though she didn't pin Hokuto, she had a win and a draw over her in a two month span that included winning the Japan Grand Prix for the first time and getting her first shot at the WWWA Sekai Single Senshuken. She was hardly all the way there, but she had proven she was the real deal and the future was bright. The fans got into the match more as it went on even though most of
the match was slow paced mat wrestling. The thing is when there was
action, it was a total sprint, but most of the time it was on the mat.
That's where the timing of when to pick the match up becomes so important,
and here they definitely knew when to pick it up. Their 1 1/2 minute
section right off the bat bought them over 10 minutes of mainly submissions,
and then another sprint section in the middle bought them until the
5 minute non-finishing sequence. There were no chants of boring and
there was no reason to feel that way because, aside from Hokuto's selling
keeping it entertaining anyway, you knew that it would be great when
they got back to the spots and in this case good things came to those
who waited. 30:00 (26:02 shown)
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