This match got off to a slow start. It's easy to see how all these sprints hurt because when these wrestlers have to go long, none of them has anything to bridge to their high spots. Nothing really happened for the first 6+ minutes. Kato then said enough of this, and transmogrified this into an excellent match by picking up the pace dramatically.

Yamada looked sharp once again, throwing a lot of crisp kicks and working well against her regular partner, KAORU. Unfortunately, even though the work was excellent after the slow start, they still didn't put any thought into what they were doing.

Given that KAORU was involved, it should come as no surprise that the selling was weak. One particularly annoying spot was Kato kicking KAORU off the ropes to stop her swandive moonsault to Yamada. KAORU "sold" this by getting right up and turning Yamada's kick into a fisherman suplex.

Satomura & Kato did more spots than normal here. The highlight was Satomura doing the Shiryu counter for the German suplex where she lands on her feet. It wasn't quite as good as when he does it though because she had to use her hands to help herself over. Unfortunately, no one in this match got anything out of her spots. This match had no psychology and it didn't build, but it was still nearly four stars on work alone. Kato pinned Satomura when she rolled through on Satomura's huracanrana

17:16

Rating:

KAORU & Makie Numao vs. Meiko Satomura & Maiko Matsumoto Taped 6/27 Aichi Nagoya Shi Taiikukan (2,300 sellout)

They really hacked up this match in the editing room. The main point of the match was to build heat between Satomura and KAORU. Satomura got KAORU in an udehishigigyakujujigatame about the same time as Matsumoto hit her gutwrench suplex that beat Numao (Matsumoto & Numao were legal). However, Satomura refused to release the hold after the bell rang. Satomura & Matsumoto then taunted KAORU, rubbing in the fact that their team won.

16:21 (2:11 aired)

Once again, we got the typical Chigusa sprint. Work and spots for 9 minutes, as always. You'd think that Chigusa would be a lot better at telling stories in the ring than she is, but these days even when Ozaki is the opposition, she's rarely even interested in trying. Still, wrestling wise Ozaki made Chigusa look good as only she can. Everyone's execution was a little off. Sugar was, unfortunately, the worst of the 4 again. Ozaki was, of course, the best. She wrestled a smart match given the circumstances, but again there really needed to be more story here since it was Chigusa vs. Ozaki back in the days when Ozaki was still Chigusa's main rival. Satomura vs. Sugar was a big step down from Ozaki vs. Chigusa. Chigusa pinned Sugar with a Death Valley bomb. Chigusa & Satomura celebrated their win, taunting the Oz Academy by making their own bonzai pose.

8:43

Rating:

AAAW Tag Oza (crown) Jiki (next) Chosensha (challenge) Kettei (decision) Tournament Ikkaisen: Chigusa Nagayo & Sakura Hirota vs. Aja Kong & Mayumi Ozaki Taped 6/27 Aichi Nagoya Shi Taiikukan

I should wise up and just cut and paste this was the typical Chigusa sprint into the review of every Chigusa match so I wouldn't have to keep retyping it. This was worse than normal because Suckura was involved. It is normal for her to take the match down a lot though. Hirota was typically goofy here, constantly trying to use her lame uraken on Aja and Oz. At one point, she urakened Aja then Chigusa Death Valley bombed Aja, but Aja still kicked out. Hirota also wanted to use Ozaki's tequila sunrise on her, but Ozaki reversed it. Aja having to sell Hirota's lame spots was really hard to take. It just goes to show how unselfish Kong still was at this point. Chigusa dropped Ozaki bad knee first on top of Hirota to break up Aja's pin, which didn't do wonders for Oz. They did all the big spots, but it was a little sloppy. Finally, Ozaki held off Chigusa well Aja urakened Hirota for the win.

7:09

Rating:

KAORU vs. Toshiyo Yamada Taped 6/14 Nagaoka Shi Kosei Kaikan (2,800)

This actually wasn't a spotfest, which would be a good thing except it just meant that KAORU was lost early on. The match was devoid of build and psychology, and even the work was disappointing. KAORU was also off here, as even her execution was worse than normal. KAORU won this disappointing match with her Excalibur.

16:03

Rating: