Tomoko Watanabe & Chikako Shiratori vs. Utako Hozumi & Leo Kitamura (LLPW) 9:36. Decent junior opener. Watanabe and Hozumi were the best with Watanabe leading and doing most of the complex stuff, and most importantly, executing well. Leo was okay and Shiratori did fine. The bulk of the match was nothing to write home about, just pretty good action. The finish was alright, Watanabe dumped Leo on her head with a screwdriver and tagged in Shiratori, who accidentally knocked Watanabe off the apron leading to Hozumi pinning her with a backdrop suplex. **

Midget Match: Little Frankie vs. Mr. Buddhaman 5:19. Who let the midgets on the show? If given the choice between them and a Bolshoi clown match, I think I’d rather the midgets. It was mostly just really bad wrestling and midget comedy. Frankie did a tope, a plancha and finished doing a version of Ozaki’s diving body press. 1/2*

AJW Junior Title Match: Chaparrita ASARI vs. Candy Okutsu (JWP) 12:17. The last 3 minutes were good, the first 9 were terrible. Candy didn’t have much focus, but she had more variety than ASARI. ASARI came undone on the faster paced stuff and wrecked it because she was lost and hesitant, so nothing flowed well and it all just looked phony - the reason they keep juniors limited is so this doesn’t happen. It was a different match in the last few minutes when she knew what to do. They sped things up, and it was a nice spotfest. ASARI crashed and burn on the Sky Twister Press, and took crash and burn to another level, literally bouncing headfirst off the mat and almost killing herself. It was academic from there, and Candy won the belt with a German Suplex. *3/4

AJW Tag Title Match: Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito vs. Miki Handa & Yasha Kurenai (LLPW) 15:28. Some good action and they worked a fast pace, though it was usually all pretty meaningless and didn’t amount to any more than that. Everyone did fine, even Yasha, who did most of the work for her team. She was the roughest of the four, but was decent here. They didn’t settle in much in the first two thirds, you’d get a few holds and then some spots, followed by a switch, so it was all a bit one paced. The ending was fine, with the big spots and a few good near falls. The finish was odd, with Handa and Yasha doing a German Suplex/Chokeslam double team to Sakie, which seemed like a logical enough finish, but the look on Handa’s face suggests Ito was meant to break up the pin. **1/2

Suzuka Minami vs. Combat Toyoda (FMW) 13:55. A very solid match that was a good bit better than expected because Minami did a good job of working a smart match. Iit would have been better had she been more competitive. She didn’t have much that could threaten Toyoda aside from the diving senton, which she couldn’t hit. The match built up well and was solid all the way through. Combat tried, and for the most part she was good enough. She had enough variety, but she’s also prone to throwing out some bad looking offense and letting things get dull. Even though the last few minutes were lopsided with Combat hitting big move after big move, seeing Minami survive as long as she did was fun and the crowd were impressed. **3/4

Bull Nakano, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs. Cuty Suzuki, Plum Mariko & Hikari Fukuoka (JWP) 20:36. JWP battling Bull was the most fun here. At the start, Cuty demanded to fight her instead of LCO, with Plum and Hikari sneaking in for a triple team. It failed as Bull decapitated them all with lariats, but they had more success later. Bull and LCO played heel with Bull being the dominant monster, while JWP were the smaller underdog babfyaces, which suited everyone best. It was really good and entertaining throughout, with lots of fun double and triple teaming. Bull was the best and Hikari stood out the most because she had the coolest spots, but everyone had their moments. LCO set the entire JWP team up for Bull to do the guillotine legdrop to all three, but everyone moved, and Bull received a train of diving footstomps in response. ***3/4

Kyoko Inoue, Takako Inoue & Yumiko Hotta vs. Harley Saito, Eagle Sawai & Rumi Kazama (LLPW) 15:38. Kyoko got by far the biggest reaction of anyone, and the match was dependant on who was in at any given time. Eagle doesn’t provide anything of interest. Hotta and Rumi tried to have an intense kick battle but it didn’t matter how well it was executed, Rumi’s too small for it to look credible and Hotta wouldn’t sell anything she did anyway. Hotta vs. Eagle was better since Hotta had to work to hit a Tiger Driver, which was particularly brutal. Interspersed was good stuff from Harley and Kyoko, with Harley on the receiving end of a long giant swing. The latter part of the match was a really good spotfest, they really just did non-stop action and near falls. Harley and Kyoko were the best here, and Takako provided some good stuff with Harley as well. Eagle was better hitting her power moves for near falls and took a few big bumps, one particularly nasty one off a release German from Kyoko. It came down to Kyoko and Harley, Kyoko survived the Tiger Suplex but Hotta turned the tide for Kyoko, allowing her to hit her diving elbow and a Niagara Driver to win. ***1/4

WWWA World Title Match: Aja Kong vs. Megumi Kudo (FMW) 22:34. Initially proposed during the Japan Grand Prix, where Weekly Pro Wrestling surveyed fans in Korakuen Hall for potential challengers for Aja Kong's title, Kudo's nomination was initially met with laughter in contrast to the big reactions for Dynamite Kansai and Shinobu Kandori. However, by the end of the match, they wouldn’t laugh again, and any doubts about Kudo's credibility were dispelled. While it’s not normally ideal for the WWWA World Singles Title match to be third from the top, it was the correct call here as they weren’t going to be able to follow the flashiness of the tag title match, nor the drama of Hokuto vs Kandori, both matches being heavily hyped rematches. It also freed them to show their best points and work a different match to what might have been expected had they been in the main event. It built like a mens match, Kudo was competitive at the start, but the early going saw Aja predictably brute force Kudo down and methodically dismantle her. When she got the chance, Kudo immediately went after Aja’s arm with a jujigatame, and relentlessly went after it. Aja sold the arm huge while fighting back with her other arm. She still tried to bully her, but wasn’t able to. One great spot saw Aja hit back with various weak strikes with her left hand and Kudo nail her with a right to knock her down. I’m not sure Kudo was ever a major threat, but Aja sure as hell made it look like she could win. Aja came back, and Kudo had to use her speed to regain her advantage. She avoided a bunch of Urakens and dumped Aja, hitting a tope. She continued to avoid the Urakens in the ring. The ref bump spot may not have been welcome, as the chorus of boos suggested, and while the bump itself was okay, referee Bob Yazawa kneeling over in the corner for a minute looked pretty stupid. The phantom pin off the rana did make it seem like Kudo could have won, and you never saw ref bumps in these days. Aja crushed Kudo with multiple urakens for a TKO, but she wanted Kudo to get back up and screamed at her. Kudo made it up at 8 and the crowd lost their minds when she countered Aja’s waterwheel drop with a sunset bomb. Kudo looked to follow up with a Tiger Driver, but Aja slipped out of it and gave her one more Uraken, no TKO this time, she just pinned for the three count. After the match, the two from the 1986 class reunited properly after five years. Their old mentor, Jaguar Yokota, who was sitting at the play-by-play table, was also crying. ****1/4

WWWA World Tag Title Match: Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki (JWP) vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota 25:34. The final match of the classic trilogy. They had great history to play off of and did so. It’s the most coherent of the three matches from bell to bell and everyone was in great form. Toyota, in particular, excelled as the match was tailored to her style, featuring a shorter runtime and a one-fall format. Whilst being the most action and spot oriented, it was filled with great sequences and never really went overboard so that you couldn’t follow it. However, being one fall cost them early drama. The match started in the same way the second one did, although Toyota saved Yamada but found herself in trouble. No one in the building bought it or even reacted, it’s a one fall match, and it wasn’t ending in the first 30 seconds. To that end, Ozaki and Kansai didn’t have much hope and everyone wanted Yamada and Toyota to take the belts back, especially since the league refused to book Ozaki and Kansai as a strong team (they had one defense in 8 months and weren’t even allowed to win that). Toyota was worked over early. She was stretched and was on the receiving end of a kicking from Kansai before coming back to spam some dropkicks, Kansai cut that off pretty quickly, but was taken out by an Ozaki cannonball, allowing for the tag to Yamada. A few minutes after that, we had the first great exchange between Kansai and Yamada. Kansai thought she was going to jump on Yamada and kicked the hell out of her, but Yamada ended up winning the battle, causing Kansai to bail out and restart. The match just had an excellent flow through the weardown, and built up really well. Yamada ended up winning another kick battle with Kansai, and set up Toyota to do a camel clutch, and instead of just one kick, Yamada kicked her repeatedly. Toyota tried to follow up, but her boots to Kansai’s head only upset Kansai. She attempted a boomerang out of the corner, got caught in a Northern Light’s Suplex but managed to come back with a moonsault afterward. Kansai wasn’t taking the stupid rolling cradle and shrugged Toyota off, but Yamada assisted her and she got it on Ozaki. It wasn’t long before Kansai was kicking Toyota around like a football again though. Kansai couldn’t hit Splash Mountain between Toyota escaping it and Yamada saving her. Kansai could hit everything else, including a brutal diving footstomp which allowed her to finally hit the Splash Moutain, but Yamada made the save by kicking her in the head. Another great spot followed with Ozaki and Kansai essentially doing a reverse doomsday device. Toyota took the diving lariat on Kansai’s shoulders, but managed to make it into a victory roll for a near fall. Kansai and Ozaki kept trying to finish Toyota. Ozaki took Yamada out, and they tried the Splash Mountain neckbreaker drop, but Toyota kicked Ozaki off the turnbuckle. Yamada made the tag, and her brain kick was avoided, but she came back with a stiff spinning one before doing her dumb backdrop suplex spamming. Kansai took a diving brain kick for a close near fall, and kept coming back, but it was 2 v 1. Another diving brain kick hit with Kansai on top of Toyota’s shoulders, but Ozaki saved the match. Ozaki did thwart their double teaming finally and tagged in, but with Kansai out and both Yamada and Toyota in good shape, she was on the receiving end immediately. She avoided a moonsault and Kansai recovered to assist with a lariat, leading to Ozaki hitting the Tequila Sunrise with Yamada saving the match. Ozaki’s diving body attack met knees, but Toyota’s Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex got turned into a Victory roll for two. Kansai wanted to do something from the top, but Toyota saw her early and kicked her off. Yamada held them on the outside for Toyota's quebrada but that didn’t quite go to plan, Toyota landed on the apron, and not only took a bad landing herself but kneed Kansai in the face on the way down. They did the dangerous backdrop to Ozaki, but Kansai made it in to break up the pin. Toyota hit the cyclone suplex, but it only got two. All of the near falls and the saves were just incredible, none of the stuff used in the first two matches had worked, so what was left to do? Something new. Yamada dragged Kansai out and Toyota missile dropkicked her, and back in, Toyota debuted a new finisher… and it was an absolute shocker. It was like a Japanese Ocean Alabama Slam, and it wasn’t even executed well. It was so bad Ozaki should have really kicked out and told her to just finish it with another Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex or anything else, a rookie bodyslam would have been a better finish than this. It was such a bad way for such great match and trilogy to finish. Aside from the 11/26/92 match being the best of the trilogy, I’m not sure which one ranks as the runner up; 4/11/93 was more memorable, has the benefit of a great beginning and finish, more drama with the three falls and had a stronger story since it was the conclusion of Ozaki and JWP’s mission to show they were just as good as the big league. So, it probably, almost certainly wins while taking those factors into account. However, if those things aren’t important to you, 12/6/93 is the superior match for pure bell to bell action. But who cares? All three of them are all time great matches and warrant the highest recommendation. ****3/4

Dangerous Queen Tokyo Trial: Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori (LLPW) 21:07. This was not the in ring classic that their first match was, but it is the captivating, emotional and dramatic payoff to Hokuto’s 1993, and her career as a whole. As a companion to their first match, it works, but it’s far better within the context of following Hokuto’s rise and fall. She began 1993 performing at her peak. She defeated Kandori in a match where she was mostly dominated, but had the determination, fighting spirit and ability to just pull it off, aided by Kandori’s own arrogance. She went through until August at her best, defeating everyone in the Japan Grand Prix, but throughout the tournament her body broke down. She had a broken back, her knee gave out against Harley Saito, all the wear and tear from eight years of injuries was also catching up with her. She fought through it against Toyota and Hotta to win the tournament, she also defeated Kazama. Her knee was so bad that it needed surgery, and after surgery came Aja; too soon for her to be competitive and too prideful not to take the match, she was picked apart and beaten, forgoing her second chance at the red belt in the process. She made the Kandori challenge and maintained insistence that she would never lose to a ‘judo wannabe’, and if she did, she’d retire. Despite her diminished physical state, Hokuto displayed enough resilience to overcome adversaries like Kazama for the second time, and Ozaki. This was the last trial, unlike in the Aja match, she was able to compete, but it was a question of if her body would hold up. It seemed like Hokuto had it all to lose, but she felt she had nothing to lose. She had to be the best, and if she couldn’t beat Kandori, then it was all for nothing anyway. Kandori had been insulted by Hokuto plenty before their first match, but the biggest insult was that she lost it and she wanted to dominate Hokuto even more thoroughly this time. The match started literally how the last one finished, with the two nailing each other in the face and knocking each other down. These were stiff shots and the first blood was drawn with Hokuto bleeding from the mouth. Hokuto went for Kandori’s leg and hit two early DQ bombs. They got into a slapping fight but Kandori just suckered her into Wakigatame, then immediately released it, wagging her finger.It was going to be a long night for Hokuto before Kandori was satisfied. Hokuto hit a piledriver, but it didn’t do a lot. Kandori started striking her with body blows, headbutts, and boots to the face, disdainful taunting her. Hokuto fired up and fought back and had some success, but Kandori got her in the same position before too long. While Hokuto was trying to make the most of her offense, Kandori was toying with her and not particularly threatened. Hokuto did some damage from the air with two missile dropkicks, and after Kandori rolled outside, she followed her and did the Northern Light’s Bomb on the floor. The games were over as far as Kandori was concerned. When she returned, Hokuto caught her with a savage spin kick. Kandori snatched a sleeper, but got jawbreakered. Hokuto went up and Kandori basically did a tiger driver from the second buckle, which got a TKO count of 9. On both occasions, Hokuto signalling for crowd support and wasting seconds allowed Kandori back in. Hokuto fought back with her own burst when Kandori took her foot off the gas, hitting a lariat and her somersault plancha. Kandori delivered a lariat in the ring, sending Hokuto crashing to the mat once again. Hokuto pressed on though, hitting a German and Backdrop suplex. She went up top for a flying body press, but Kandori rolled through her. Kandori stomped at her and Hokuto used another backdrop suplex, unable to bridge, but she did get a two count. She went up top again and Kandori and ran up, slapping her and dragging her down into a vicious kneebar. The crowd lost their minds at that, but Hokuto made the ropes quickly enough. Kandori dragged her back, but Hokuto fought her off, that’s all she could do though. She nailed Kandori with everything she had and rocked her, but Kandori had more in the tank. They slugged at each other, and it was clear Hokuto was going down, but she was going down swinging. The camera cut to Mita and Shimoda, who were bawling, with Aja, Hotta and Minami behind them - they made the finish even more than the wrestlers did. The camera caught Kandori whiffing an uppercut, which was unfortunate, but the next one struck. Kandori grabs the leg and opts to hold her down for three. Kandori’s done it, and LCO are beside themselves. Anticlimactic as the finish is, there was no other way for it to end. It’s definitive, Hokuto didn’t give up, her body did because of Kandori and all she had to do was put her out of her misery. It was about proving superiority, they had to take each others best shots to do that and they had to do it while showing the arrogance they were known for, whether that gave the opponent chances of not. Kandori got on the mic and told Hokuto if she loves pro-wrestling, to continue doing it, but Hokuto's resolve remained unyielding, driven by her stubborn heart. Initially she was to retire on 3/27/94, but that was changed to be the first of three retirement matches, starting there, going through 8/24/94 and finishing at the Tokyo Dome on 11/20/94 (though she ultimately didn’t retire there either). This didn’t top their first encounter. I don’t think it was even really supposed to, and it shouldn’t be compared directly to it. In the correct context, it’s great pro-wrestling and a great sequel. Structurally, it was odd, and there were decisions that in a regular match would have been bizarre, but within the story they were telling everything worked. It was stiff, they generally executed well (aside from that uppercut late), and it was packed with emotion and drama. The long walk was an epic and emotional scene as well, Hokuto took the walk alone, under her own power with a parade of journalists and the wrestlers in tears behind her. ****1/2

Best Joshi Puroresu Matches YouTube Playlist