Kato continued her new, more Chigusa-esque style here. That said, she let Sato do her usual style of match because that is what Sato is by far the best at. The match started out slow, but it turned into a good match with big spots and near falls back and forth. The fans were into it, especially toward the finish. Kato used Sato's urakens on her, but eventually was taken out by a series of Sato's urakens. Kato was good, and Sato was maybe decent.

Michael: Sato used way too many urakens to the point it was like her only offense besides a couple of Ligerbombs. Half of the urakens looked weak, which made her overuse of the spot worse.

Jerome: A nice match, exclusively thanks to a very good performance by Sonoko Kato. She focused her attack with a sleeper, and I actually liked this whole part of the match better than the near falls at the end because Kato was on offense more and she gave direction to the match. The whole problem with this match is that Sugar is totally mediocre. It's not that she doesn't know what to do, but that she's unable to pull it off correctly. Her Dragon screw, for instance, lacks any kind of explosion. Her urakens are hit and miss. Kato's selling was good enough that Sugar's offense looked credible, but it's the sole reason why this match was as good as it was.

17:15 (9:52 aired)

Rating:

Premium League Koshikisen: Chikayo Nagashima vs. Toshie Uematsu Taped 11/12 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukan 2

This was an exciting, all action match. Like so many other women's matches this year, the focus was on the work and high spots. Their sequences set them apart from the pack though. Some of the moves could have been done better, but Uematsu was able to hang with Chikayo work wise so it was easily a good match. Uematsu debuted (at least on TV) a new move, Kuzumi's victory star drop. Chikayo scored the victory with her fisherman buster.

Jerome: Chikayo was wonderful to watch, as always, and she led the good and underrated Uematsu to a really nice workrate match. Even though no story was told, there was a quick pace, a good flow, and nice execution from both parties. Toshie displayed her usual intensity, a nice change after the lethargic Sugar in the previous match. She kind of blew the victory star drop, but it's really not a big deal considering the extreme difficulty level of this spot (and the majority of Kuzumi's signature moves). A nice touch was the no sell tease after the first fisherman buster where Toshie first gets up, but falls to her knees after one step. Really good match.

Michael: This was easily one of the best singles matches Uematsu has ever been in, but just another strong showing from Chikayo.

13:00 (7:30 aired)

Unfortunately, this was a KAORU style match. Ishii was a bit outclassed trying to keep up with the others, so she was the worst of the four. No one really stood out on the positive end. Satomura pinned Ishii with her Death Valley bomb. After the match, KAORU & Uematsu had a pull apart, but Satomura was the one who wound up attacking KAORU first.

Jerome: Another nice match, with a rare look at Rina Ishii, one of those promising GAEA rookies that went nowhere. Not surprisingly, Satomura was the best, followed by KAORU, who got to show her grasp of psychology that makes her quite the Toshiaki Kawada of modern joshi puroresu........ Nah, I'm kidding. I thought Ishii looked good in points. She was not in the ring for long periods of time, but this was the smart thing because she was better when she only had one or two "big" spots to execute. The match had a lot of action, but it was spotty, and not in the good sense of the word. The set-up of the spots was shitty. Overall, the match was enjoyable, but nothing special.

Michael: I was glad to see Ishii get some TV time. She looked good here, but I agree she wasn't on the level of the other 3. Overall, it was a pretty good fast-paced match.

17:24 (8:42 aired)

Rating:

Toshiyo Yamada vs. Mayumi Ozaki Taped 10/29 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (1,650)

The reason someone can be called the best is that they are so well rounded and put so much into a match. Anyone who looks better when the matches are edited is either a stiff, a spot machine, just a worker, or a one-dimensional wrestler. On the other hand, you can't see only 1/3 or ½ of even 2/3 of a major match from a Misawa, Kawada, Liger, or Ozaki without losing a lot. This match was pretty well ruined by TV, as they picked it up so late that it was almost all big moves.

They both threw a lot of bombs, with the finishing sequence revolving around the same couple of big moves that are the only thing they have good enough to put the one another away. They did a really good job of using all their big moves to make it a hot match, while saving the big finishers so the focus was on these two moves, and they were strengthened while the big moves that they don't beat anyone notable with were weakened. The match was built in a manner that made it fairly obvious that either Ozaki's tequila sunrise or Yamada's reverse Gori special bomb was going to be the finisher. However, they way they built it in this manner made it made it a good thing.

Ozaki was using urakens left and right looking to at least knock Yamada silly enough that she could do the tequila sunrise, but, of course, a knockout would be accepted too. Some would wrongly take this as she's been reduced because her move set is smaller, you know, like the infamous Liger is relying heavily on palm blows that seemed to appear in the review of all his singles matches from '98. However, it's more that the weaker moves were edited off TV and this is a way of putting the opposition over. If you have big moves that are over and you have to repeatedly use them against the top opposition (because the rest will go down from 1 or 2), the fact that your opponent can take a bunch, I don't mean no sell them like Norton and hopefully they won't sell them great for two seconds and then get back to their superman routine like Koji, means they are pretty damn tough. It all depends on what the move is though. If it's a strike then it's a lot easiler and more logical to repeat it than any other move, and you can do it without losing believability if the opponent sells it right (looks like they are closer and closer to being knocked out). If it was a head drop spot or something to that effect, it would just be ridiculous and kill the move if someone could withstand as many as Yamada withstood urakens.

Ozaki put Yamada over huge here because she took uraken after uraken, she took the tequila sunrise, and eventually she came back and put Oz away with a spinning version of her reverse Gori special bomb. Yamada hasn't really been a singles player since 1995, so she badly needed some credibility against upper tier competition. This win allowed her to headline next months Korakuen Hall show against Ozaki's partner, Aja. Knowing what Ozaki is like and seeing her in similar matches before, I might be rating this a tad bit low, but I'm probably going high based solely upon the brief portion that aired.

Jerome: The few minutes that aired looked like the final of a great match. Ozaki used a ton of urakens, but it looked simply a thousand times better than when Sato does it because Oz's shots are explosive and you can actually clearly hear some of them smashing Yamada's flesh. It's interesting that they did the exact same sequence we saw in Sato vs. Kato, Yamada countering Oz's uraken with a kick, but this time the execution was great. The end of the match was build around both women's finishers, and they smoothly countered each other's a number of times, exchanging bombs (stiff kicks and urakens) to set up the eventual pinning move. Really excellent action. I wonder how good the match really was though, since Yamada is clearly not her old self, as showed in the following match.

17:15 (6:42 aired)

Rating:

Toshiyo Yamada vs. Aja Kong Taped 11/23 Tokyo Korakuen Hall

This match showed that Aja really still has it. She did a really good job of dragging Yamada along and pulled out all the stops to make this seem like a lot bigger deal than their matches together were during the last few years they were in AJW. Yamada has been really good this year in tag matches, but reality set in here since she had to try to work a long grueling singles match instead of 6-7 minutes spread across a 12-13 minute tag match. The Yamada we once knew would have pulled off a great match here, but injuries made that Yamada disappear a long time ago. It was all too apparent just how much she has slowed up, and her execution being somewhat off didn't help things either. Yamada did pull out a Hokuto style tope con hilo, but we've seen her do that before so it wasn't as shocking as Aja doing la magistral. Yamada put up a fight, but Aja, not surprisingly, won this with her uraken. I was hoping Aja would incorporate some of the things she does in ARSION, but this was just a rehash of their AJW matches.

Jerome: Very good match that saw Aja Kong literally beat the crap out of Yamada during the first ten minutes. Yamada took a lot of stiff punishment during that part, but sadly she wouldn't sell it very well during the following minutes. In fact, this match exposed how Toshiyo Yamada has faded. She's now the shadow of her former self, as her execution, selling, timing and psychology have taken a nosedive. Since she was one of the greatest at her peak, it doesn't make her a washed up stiff. Instead, it makes her a veteran that is still good, but who can't deliver a great match anymore, not on her own at least. Aja was quite the opposite, and she worked her ass off and had a strong and impressive performance this day, hiding Yamada's flaws by beating her unmercifully. It had the looks of a big time main event, and Yamada was totally credible thanks to Aja's selling and bumping. It's interesting to notice that a few weeks after this match, Aja went on to have a match as good, if not better, with an extremely green Ayako Hamada. I think that's really revealing when it comes to how much Yamada's level has dropped since her hey days in Zenjo.

19:02

Rating:

Special thanks to: Michael Smith & Jerome Denis