Cutie Suzuki – Scotts Blog of Doom!

Joshi Spotlight: AJW/JWP “I Know You”

April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Jabroniville

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- JWP (vs) AJW- “I Know You”:
01.12.1992, Tokyo Ota-ku Taiikukan
– This YouTube video is taken from a JWP video with mostly clipped matches, two huge bouts, and some surrounding nonsense afterwards. This actually matches Dream Rush from a week ago slightly, in that it’s got the triumphant coronation of an Ace champion… but is the sub-main event to an interpromotional tag match. These interpromotional matches are SO BIG that they completely subvert the notion that the World Title matches go on last, and that’s reflected in the heat these bouts get.

Dream Rush itself was a really great card, featuring the retirement of Bison Kimura, Aja Kong finally becoming Ace of AJW by defeating Bull Nakano to end their years-long rivalry, and Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada being triumphant over JWP’s Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki in the first of their ***** trio of matches. My review here: https://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2019/09/23/joshi-spotlight-dream-rush/

Since a lot of this is clipped, I threw on a couple of long JWP tag bouts I found as well.

“TL;DR: Why Should I Care?”: The two main matches are actually really fantastic bouts, with great heat. One of the tags at the end is really good, too! And anything where JWP & AJW wrestlers fight each other always draws a tremendous reaction.

Joshi Spotlight: JWP Midnight Special

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Jabroniville

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT: JWP MIDNIGHT SPECIAL:
(17.08.1992)
* So I have no idea what the backstory is for this show, but this is one of the only extended shows I can find for AJW’s rival promotion, Joshi Women’s Pro-Wrestling Project, in 1992, so I figured I’d show what they were up to around this time. I believe the company has only recently split up at this point, continuing on after many women quit to form LLPW (including Shinobu Kandori, Harley Saito and others), so it’s a big show for a company that has to be a bit endangered at this point. And MAN is the setting weird- it’s like a High School gymnasium, with only four rows in the bleachers on the hard camera, and two rows on the floor on another side! Yeah, only two sides of the ring have an audience! I could literally count the paid attendance here- I’ve seen Nickelodeon Game Shows in front of more people.

This show appears nowhere on CageMatch, nor WrestlingData, so I couldn’t tell you anything else about it. Like why the YouTube video is a 2-hour show with an hour of dead air after it. Quebrada calls it “JWP Pre-Stage Studio Match” and mentions the setting as TV Asahi Studios.

“TL;DR- Why Should I Watch This?”: You get to see a whole ton of people work an ungodly amount of time in a single night- a truly remarkable case of stamina from all involved. And nearly every match is around ****.

Joshi Spotlight: Cutie Suzuki

March 15, 2020March 16, 2020 by Jabroniville

“They definitely made the right call- it wasn’t Ugly Suzuki.”
-someone during a livewatch.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT: CUTIE SUZUKI:
Stats:
Real Name: Yumi Suzuki (now Yumi Harashima)
Career: 1986-1999

Word of Advice: Do not translate the comments left on Cutie Suzuki videos into English. Just trust me on this.

Joshi Spotlight: JWP Super Major Queens FLASH!

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019 by Jabroniville

JWP SUPER MAJOR QUEENS- FLASH!:
(22.05.94)

-Right in the midst of the Interpromotional Era comes this show- a JWP event with almost every match featuring an AJW invader, capped off by an Ace (vs) Ace bout- Dynamite Kansasi fighting the WWWA Champion, Aja Kong! Also wrestling is Kyoko Inoue against an up & comer, the legendary Chigusa Nagayo (on her JWP run to regather her strength) against Mayumi Ozaki, and an Idol (vs) Idol match- Takako Inoue & Cutie Suzuki! This is thus JWP’s biggest show ever up until this point, with major stars all over the place and a great Main Event. Weirdly, there’s no commentary at all for this show, giving it an odd feel… provided you notice it (I was 3/4 the way through Takako/Cutie before I realized “Hey, nobody’s talking here”).

“TL;DR- Why Should I Watch This?”: Standard-issue Joshi excellence, in that four matches hit around ****, and some rare “Dream Matches” you’ll literally never see again. The stars of yesterday versus the stars of tomorrow is particularly excellent.

What the World Was Watching: WCW Monday Nitro- November 27, 1995

December 22, 2019December 23, 2019 by LScisco

–Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve McMichael are calling the action and they are live from Salem, Virginia. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the show drew a crowd of 5,000 fans, with 3,000 fans paying for entry.

What the World Was Watching: World War 3 (1995)

December 19, 2019December 20, 2019 by LScisco

–Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan are calling the matches and they are live from Norfolk, Virginia.

–Gene Okerlund interviews Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Sting. The crowd gives Hogan a mixed reaction as he talks about how he has not fully embraced the dark side and is going back to his babyface persona. He sheds his black gear, which Sting tosses into a black container that explodes. The problem is that the fire gets to be too much, so Sting has to keep going back to the container to pour water on it or keep down the smoke. WCW technicians are eventually forced to put it out. Savage tells Sting that he is cool with him again as Sting acts like a star-struck teenager. Hogan says that Savage’s arm is not actually hurt and goes into a crazy rant about a “rag sheet” that said the Giant was going to win – the rag sheet in question being a copy of Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer – and how the Internet has the “real scoops.” The Observer copy is burned as regular fans at home have no idea what Hogan is talking about.

What the World Was Watching: WCW Main Event – October 8, 1995

September 26, 2019September 27, 2019 by LScisco

–Gene Okerlund and Bobby Heenan handle the studio duties for today’s broadcast. They open the show by hyping the Giant and recapping the Dungeon of Doom shaving WCW Champion Hulk Hogan’s mustache on Monday Nitro.

–As part of the Halloween Havoc Control Center, Kurasawa and Colonel Robert Parker rant about how Road Warrior Hawk is going down. Hawk promises to do some intensive surgery on Kurasawa in Detroit.

Joshi Spotlight- Takako Inoue

September 14, 2019August 16, 2019 by Jabroniville

Behold the face of evil.

Joshi Spotlight- Thunder Queen Battle

September 14, 2019July 12, 2019 by Jabroniville

THUNDER QUEEN BATTLE:
AJA KONG, KYOKO INOUE, TAKAKO INOUE & SAKIE HASEGAWA (AJW) vs. DYNAMITE KANSAI, MAYUMI OZAKI, CUTIE SUZUKI & HIKARI FUKUOKA (JWP):
(31.07.1993)
* I remember hearing about this match, or another with the same rules, years ago, and I totally fell in love with the idea. It’s basically an “Iron Man Tag” with eight people, but with a twist: The match starts out with two people in the ring, going for five minutes. Then another two start a match. Then another two, and finally the two Team Captains wrestle for five. Any falls counted in there count towards the total. And then the remainder of the bout is a forty-minute tag team bout, all falls again counted.

It’s a really amazing idea- the four separate matches to start act as “filler” and give the audience something different to look at (a 60-minute multi-tag match would get tiring no matter how good it was- too many bodies), and the Joshi style LOVES “early pinfall flukes” in matches where it wouldn’t be a disappointment (2/3 Falls matches tend to have one fall last a very short amount of time), so there’s some real drama. And then it’s 40 minutes of balls-to-the-wall action. The Joshi tag style is all about pinning someone and dealing with their partners running in, so it gets some good psychology going (you can’t just MDK someone; you have to MDK them AND have your teammates hold off three other people). And this match features bragging rights, as it’s three top names from AJW and JWP (rival companies), with each one sporting a Good Young Rookie Future Star. This is only a few months after the legendary Dream Slams- huge interpromotional shows that saw AJW drop some pretty big losses to other companies’ stars, and forging a good working relationship with many.