Jd' #32 12/22/98 "OFF BEAT STOAM" taped 10/2 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan 2

9 woman battle royal. This was all chopped up, which was probably a good thing. It didn't seem like they knew what they wanted this match to be. You had Obacchi doing her "comedy," Jaguar and Hechisera wrestling seriously, and Fang just cheating.

Dont ask me the rules of this battle royal because they didn't make any sense to me. You had Fang eliminating Obacchi early on in the portion that aired, but Obacchi, for the most part, kept wrestling. Obacchi pinned Hechisera, but Hechisera kept wrestling, perhaps because Obacchi was no longer a legal member of the match? If that was the case, why would the ref count 3 in the first place?

Jaguar was really good, as always, and she dragged everyone else along. Still, it wasn't that good because she didn't have much to work with. Hechisera got a fluke pin on Jaguar to win the match. What happened was Jaguar tried to fisherman buster her, but Fang came in and pushed Hechisera in the back, causing Jaguar to lose her balance and Hechisera to fall on top of Jaguar for the win. After the match, Hechisera rubbed this green gunk on Jaguar's face, and Fang put a piece of paper against Jaguar's face to get an imprint. Jaguar yelled at the ref then attacked him, but it came off poorly because the ref was laughing.

TWF World Tag Tournament Semifinal: Cooga & Sumie Sakai vs. Megumi Yabushita & Hiromi Yagi (free). Yagi was great in this match. She made everyone look better, and that's really what being great is all about. Yabushita seemed to be learning from Yagi, and they seemed to work well as a team.

The match was fast-paced with a lot of judo moves if you can picture that. These women don't really do anything that looks like judo anymore in that they glitz up the judo spots so much and do them so fluidly that they are great high spots, but not really reminiscent of their old sport. This is not in any way a bad thing though. I mean, both Sakai and Yabushita have surpassed Ka Shin when it comes to incorporating cool looking submissions into a junior style match.

This seemed like a very good match, but it was really hacked up. Sakai pinned Yabushita with her nadare shiki no Frankensteiner to advance to the finals. I really wanted to see Yagi and Yabushita win, but on the other hand, I'm glad that Yagi is pretty much only concentrating on ARSION because that's the style she's most suited for and they aren't as screwed up as some of these other leagues. 12:46 (4:35 aired).

TWF World Tag Tournament Semifinal: The Bloody & Ryuna vs. Mayumi Ozaki & Sugar Sato (Oz Academy team). This was a weird match. Even with Sugar and Ryuna involved, there was little excuse for this being below average. Basically the problem was that it was a crummy screw job to cop out of getting Ozaki or Sato to do a job for their lower ranked opposition. I thought this made Bloody look weak because she had her whole gang of cronies helping her out, while Ozaki had no backup.

They mainly used a bunch of chair shots. Ozaki and Sato pretty much wrecked their opposition. Ryuna gave Ozaki one nasty chair shot to break the pin on her Liger bomb then Ozaki and Sato did nothing but use the chair. Well, Sugar did use a scissor and Ozaki used her chain, but anyway it was all gimmick spots.

The ref refused to count the pin after Ozaki hit Bloody with a chair, so Ozaki pushed him. Sato also kicked the ref, and when he got up, Ozaki kicked him. Ozaki tried to cover Ryuna with a chair on top of her (the chair was sandwhiched between Oz and Ryuna), but the ref wouldn't count again so Ozaki chaired him. The ref then just called off the match. If there was ever any DQ's in Jd' for the ref getting beaten up (I remember one when Shark accidentally fireballed the ref, but that's a little different) then this would have come off better. Instead, he took so many shots before calling it off that you felt like it was no big deal rather than that they had totally crossed the line. I'm not even sure that the DQ was for hitting the ref either, as it seemed like it could have been for excessive rulebreaking. Anway, this finish was so lame, considering all the outside interference and gimmick spots that are regularly used in Jd', that even Oz couldn't pull it off. Oz Academy wrecked Lioness' squad after the match until Lioness made the save. Lioness and Ozaki just stared at each other. 12:59 (4:37 aired).

BATTLE FOR THE NEXT Jd' QUEEN: Yuko Kosugi vs. Lioness Asuka. This was the typical Asuka match with all kinds of gimmick spots and outside interference. It wasn't as good as it could have been for a couple of reasons. The pacing was slow, and the timing seemed a little off. More importantly though, the match just wasn't that competitive.

This match did not do a good job of putting Kosugi over. She wasn't even double teamed that much, yet she still mainly sold the whole time. Jaguar had to help her out so she could gain an advantage. Jaguar did let most of the double teaming go though, and it was "only fair" that someone helped Kosugi out since her friends were all at ringside just standing around watching the other unit beat on her. If Jaguar didn't help her out, Hechisera was going to bring a table in the ring for Lioness to use on Kosugi.

Kosugi's advantage over Lioness was short lived. Lioness was able to use a table to do her deadly Liger bomb off of. Knowing the impact of this move from her own experience with it, Jaguar decided she better make the save. Kosugi wasn't able to recover in the time it took Lioness to kick Jaguar out of the ring though, so Lioness used a regular Liger bomb for the win.

The match was fine except it did nothing to make Kosugi look like a threat at a time when it was very necessary to make that the entire point of the match. You just don't set someone up to be the top face by barely giving them any offense, and having most of that bit of offense come after the current top face interferes. 16:14 (9:26). **1/2

TWF World Tag Tournament Final: Cooga & Sumie Sakai vs. The Bloody & Ryuna. This match wasn't structured that well, but it had a lot of nice spots. The most surprising thing was that Cooga once again didn't suck. Cooga vs. Ryuna actually wasn't even bad. The least surprising thing was that the segments where Sakai worked with Bloody were very good.

Early on, they just did things to pass the time. The wrestling was fine, but it wasn't going anywhere. The match improved about eight minutes in when they picked up the pace. It started getting really good half way through when they stepped the pace and spots up a couple more notches. Both teams got a lot of near falls, but they didn't get much reaction to them.

The heels used a lot of gimmicks and props, as always, but of course we didn't see any DQ. The highlight of the match was Sakai doing an Orihara moonsault. Cooga followed with a tope con hilo that was also pretty nice. Cooga pinned Bloody with an El Samurai swinging reverse DDT to win the titles that were vacated by Yuko Kosugi and the retiring Jaguar Yokota.

I was impressed by how good this match was because this is the level that Sakai and Bloody reach when they have singles matches, and you can expect no less than taking down the match from Cooga and Ryuna. 20:04. ***1/4

Jd' #33 1/14/99 taped 11/22/98 Kyoto KBS Hall

Ryuna vs. Hiroyo Muto. As you'd espect, this wasn't much of a match. Muto debuted three months earlier, and although she works harder than the guy we know with that last name, isn't really showing anything yet. Even if she was showing promise, Ryuna still isn't close to the level where she can carry someone with this little experience. Ryuna pinned Muto with a Death Valley bomb. 9:25 (3:37 aired).

Obacchi Iizuka vs. Esther Moreno. What aired actually wasn't horrible. Of course, they only aired 30% of the match, so there was plenty of time for Esther to blow a bunch of spots in the portion that was left in the editing room. Obacchi's offense is just awful, but Esther did a bunch of cool spots, culminating with a moonsault for the win. 13:58 (3:54 aired).

Keith: Obacchi vs. Moreno was silly as usual. Moreno selling the daikon hit was goofy.

Yuko Kosugi & Yuki Miyazaki vs. Lioness Asuka & The Bloody. A good match that had an unfortunate ending. Miyazaki, was fired up and did some nice flying moves like the Buff blockbuster, moonsault attack, and plancha. Her execution problems hurt the match though. I think if she stays a face, she still has a chance to reach the potential she showed before disappearing from JWP. It certainly made no sense to have her as a heel when her main asset is her athletic ability, and it's not like they were doing Lucha where you need athletic heels.

I thought the effort from the other three was somewhat disappointing, but Kosugi and Bloody have improved to the point where they'd be better today working 3/4 speed than they were a year ago going all out.

The pacing in this match was just too slow since they weren't doing much in the way of selling. The hot moves made up for the slower pacing to some extent though. The match didn't really build, although they may have had to skip some of the build because it looked like they went home early because Miyazaki was bleeding from the mouth and screaming in pain after a double chair shot. The match was 20 minutes old already, but the finish had the look of Lioness trying to cover the problem the best she could. In any case, Bloody Dragon suplex poor bloody Miyazaki for the win. It was a good match for the work and spots, but they are definitely capable of better. 20:40 (9:11 aired). ***

Keith: Asuka/Bloody vs. Miyazaki/Kosugi looked good up to the point where Asuka and the Bloody used a chair on Miyazaki. I think they must've broke a few of her teeth because her mouth was bleeding pretty severely and you could hear her crying. I hate seeing things like that. Asuka showed some fast thinking by getting a table, letting Bloody do her diving footstomp on the table covering Miyazaki. Then Bloody hit her Dragon Suplex Hold for the win, thus allowing for the match to stop earlier than probably planned.

Jaguar Yokota Intai Countdown Vol. 12: Jaguar Yokota vs. Megumi Yabushita. Jaguar did her typical great job of carrying a young wrestler. One thing that was interesting to watch was how Jaguar would call the next spot sometimes by hitting Yabushita in a body part. This was better than most of her matches against the young punks because Yabushita is getting really good.

The technique was solid, and they did a good job of varying the pace. Yabushita did all her cool, Yagi-esque judo moves on Jaguar. I thought the only fault was that Jaguar didn't really put her arm over all that much despite Yabushita using all her versions of the jujigatame. The other thing that hurt the match was that nobody believed Yabushita had a chance to win. Part of it was their own fault though since they didn't do much to make you believe. Again, it comes back to the selling because Yabushita did have Jaguar in positions that would cause people to submit in shoots. Jaguar eventually pinned Yabushita with a nadare shiki no victory roll. 13:43 (8:43 aired). ***

TWF World Tag Titles: Cooga & Sumie Sakai vs. Shark Tsuchiya (free) & Fang Suzuki. So much for the idea that the first title defense should be a good match. Instead, we got the typical load of crap from Shit. Most of the match consisted of Sakai getting hit with Shark's weapons. At least Shark didn't cut her at all. Actually, Shark's weapons seemed toned down because they weren't slicing skin or really even leaving a mark. Anyway, Sakai's selling of the gimmick shots when they happened was excellent. Unfortunately, when she came back later on, she showed no effects of them at all. This was really inexcusable because so much of the match was her getting destroyed.

When Sakai and Cooga finally made her comeback, they did some hot moves and the wrestling was passable. Shark and Fang can't take a bump or sell though. It's really hard to look even decent against those two clowns, especially since Shark insists on getting at least 75% of the offense even when she's winning and seems to enjoy making her opponent look bad. I was glad Shark was pinned, but the finish was a fluke so it didn't carry the same weight it should have. What happened is Shark and Fang were celebrating, but Cooga and Sakai recovered quicker than they expected and did a schoolboy and German suplex for the double pin. Just an awful match due to Shark and Fang being themselves. 19:30. *