Kadaveri's 1980's Joshi Set Vol 2-4
Torches are passed and rivalries heat up on the cusp of a boom
Welcome back, sickos, to another installment of my thoughts on Kadaveri’s 1980s Joshi Set! This time around, I will be talking about three different volumes in the Set because as I watched the matches and interviews, I realized it would be better to talk about the story that plays out over this period as one whole. When we last left off, Jackie Sato was at the top of AJW, and I highlighted two wrestlers who seemed primed to spearhead the promotion’s future: Jaguar Yokota and Devil Masami. I was not wrong in this assessment, but I'll also be covering Mimi Hagiwara, one more wrestler who significantly impacted AJW over the next three years.
The early 80s was a down period for the promotion; the retirements of both members of Beauty Pair left a vacuum at the top of the card that the remaining roster would try their hardest to fill. Losing Beauty Pair, compounded with AJW’s time slot being moved to late at night, caused the promotion’s rowdy, teenage girl majority crowd to shift to a crowd more homogeneous to the men’s promotions of the 80s. Despite this, Yokota, Masami, Hagiwara, and other up-and-coming rookies like Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka worked tirelessly to prove themselves as worthy successors to the lofty expectations set by the major stars of the 70s.
Mimi Hagiwara shines brightly.
Agile, technically proficient, and endlessly likable describe Mimi Hagiwara to a T. For my money, Hagiwara is AJW’s most likable babyface in the early 80s, and her performances are some of the most enjoyable in these three volumes of the Joshi Set. When stars like Jackie Sato, Jaguar Yokota, and Devil Masami perform on the same cards, that is lofty praise, and Mimi deserves all the attention she can get. Professional wrestling wasn’t Mimi’s first foray into entertainment, as she had a role in the original Kamen Rider series in 1972 and had been a singer since 1973, so by the time she first set foot in an AJW ring she was uniquely prepared to translate those performing skills to the squared circle.
It didn’t take long for Hagiwara to succeed in AJW, as a mere three years after her debut in 1978, she found herself in possession of the All-Pacific Championship, the second-highest singles prize in the promotion. She would hold this belt for the first half of 1981 until relinquishing the title to challenge for the WWWA World Tag Team Championship with her partner, Yukari Omori, and what an inspired decision this was. Mimi’s work in tag team wrestling is some of her best, and her nearly 300-day tag reign with Omori featured her both defending against domestic and international threats, such as the team of Judy Martin and Sherri Martel. After losing the tag belts, she eventually regained her All-Pacific Championship and held it until her retirement announcement in late 1983.
Hagiwara’s movements and intensity in the ring stood out to me in these matches and often had me cheering for her out loud and cursing the heels she was up against when they inevitably tried to cheat her out of her titles. Her style can only be described as exhilarating with how often she goes to the top for missile dropkicks and flying knee-drops. This only makes it so that when the heels stop her in her tracks, you hate them all the more; it's no wonder Mimi works so well as the “babyface in peril” in her tag matches. Her tag partners, most often Omori, would save her from the struggle, and in a blistering outburst, Hagiwara would rally back and land her signature electric chair drop, which, coming from her relatively diminutive stature, was always impressive. Seeing her work here once again makes me question the AJW policy to have wrestlers retire forcefully in their late twenties, as I believe Mimi had what it took to be a top star for the promotion with a WWWA Single title run, but that will have to remain the subject of “What if?” questions.
Devil Masami makes everyone’s lives a living hell.
As I mentioned previously, every good hero needs a villain, and Devil Masami is the biggest villain. If I thought that the Black Pair’s Yumi Ikeshita and Mami Kumano were terrible, I most certainly wasn’t prepared for the lengths Masami would go to to punish her victims. Having taken over the former Black Devils stable for her own and rebranding it as Devil Legion (or Devil Corps, depending on the translation), Devil Masami has organized a group of troublemakers to terrorize the locker room. And despite her rivalry with Jaguar Yokota over the WWWA Single title being heated in its own right, Masami seems to have no bigger target than Mimi Hagiwara.
Devil Masami is almost single-minded in her hatred for Mimi Hagiwara and stops at nothing to give her grief. While Hagiwara and Omori defend their tag team belts against other opponents, Masami and her lackeys hang around the ringside area and attack her whenever possible. Whenever it’s Masami’s turn to face Hagiwara, whether in tag bouts or singles, she takes distinct glee in tearing Mimi apart and liberally attacking her with weapons. As their encounters go on, Mimi grows increasingly frustrated with her circumstances, which is reflected in her wrestling as she grows ever-heated in her encounters with Masami. This comes to a head when Masami and fellow Devil Legion member Tarantula challenge Hagiwara and Omori for the WWWA World Tag Team Championship, and after a grueling match fraught with blatant rule-breaking on the Legion’s part Mimi and Yukari lose their belts to their tormentors. Hagiwara is livid at the referee’s decision, as his inability to keep Masami and Tarantula in check allowed them to get the upper hand. She throws the ref around on the ring and even over the announcer’s desk, as she has to be restrained by half the roster to keep her from doing any more damage.
Driving the often sweet and sportsmanlike Mimi to such anger is a testament to Masami’s efficacy as a heel, exemplified best by what follows her tag victory. Mimi enlists the help of various wrestlers to help her regain the tag belts, such as Jumbo Hori and even the WWWA Single Champion herself, Jaguar Yokota. However, Masami’s antics get in the way when she comes close to reclaiming the belts, and the hatred between the two grows. Her challenge alongside Yokota, in particular, ends with both Yokota and Mimi having to be restrained from continuing the fight. Regrettably, this feud doesn’t seem like it’ll get a proper blow-off in the Joshi Set, as the next I’ll see of Mimi Hagiwara appears to be her retirement, but that doesn’t mean Masami isn’t going to face her comeuppance from what I’m gleaning from the debuting wrestlers in these volumes. A low-ranking member of Devil Legion caught my eye in one of Devil Masami’s training regimens: a young Kaoru Matsumoto, who people who are more well-versed in Joshi will recognize as mega-heel Dump Matsumoto. Masami might be a Devil, but she’s currently raising a monster unlike the wrestling world has seen so far, so she'd best sleep with one eye open.
A passing of the torch: Farewell for now, Jackie Sato; Enter, Jaguar Yokota
In Volume 2 of the Joshi Set, the last remaining member of Beauty Pair faces her retirement as part of AJW’s age retirement policy, but not before one last hurrah. After her match against Monster Ripper for the WWWA World Single Championship ended in a no contest, 1980 came to a close with a tournament to determine the new champion. It is here that I’ve found my favorite match from this collection so far, in the tournament's semifinals, where we see a student vs teacher match as Jackie Sato takes on her protege, Rimi Yokota. This is the generational clash at its best, with the veteran in Jackie fighting to prove that she still belongs at the top and Rimi fighting to claim that spot for herself and surpass her teacher. Yokota falls short this time, but what a hell of a fight she brings to her mentor as she drives Jackie to inflict more devastating moves on her to keep her at bay. Jackie might have succeeded here, but Yokota is improving at a breakneck pace, and the end date of Sato’s career at AJW looms ever closer.
It turns out it doesn’t take long for Yokota to achieve her goal, as just two months later, in February of ‘81, she challenges Sato for the WWWA title in another fantastic match. Sato, more than ever, feels like someone clinging on to a rapidly vanishing crown, and Yokota is driven to be the one to take it, and take it she does. With the WWWA title in hand, Rimi Yokota is poised to take the reigns of a Beauty Pair-less AJW, and Jackie Sato, having imparted the lessons she could onto her student, approaches her sunset. Jackie Sato would retire in May of 1981, although this is not the last we will see of her. She would remain retired until 1986, when she formed a rival promotion, Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (JWP), and since the title of this collection is the Joshi Set rather than the AJW Set, I’m hopeful I see some JWP action when Kadaveri gets to it.
As Jackie leaves AJW, Rimi Yokota hits the ground running with her title reign. She rebrands to her more well-known name, Jaguar Yokota, and begins taking on all challengers. Much like Hagiwara and Omori’s tag reign, Yokota defends the belt against various threats at home, like Devil Masami, and from overseas, such as Wendi Richter and Monster Ripper. Jaguar Yokota is an absolute workhorse during this reign, and, as I surmised during my write-up of the first Volume, AJW was correct in trusting her to be the top star of the promotion. Whether in singles or tag matches, Yokota excels in any position she’s asked to fill and delivers exciting, hard-hitting bouts. Her match with Devil Masami at the end of the 3rd Volume is a standout, slowly breaking into an all-out brawl by the end. Masami’s rivalry with Mimi Hagiwara might have felt more heated, but she had enough hate to throw around if her rivalry with Yokota is any indication.
However, All good things must end, and Yokota’s reign culminates in a very bitter way. She defends her title in May of 1983, now having held the belt for a whopping 801 days, against Mexican luchadora La Galactica. To raise the stakes even higher for this match, both wrestlers are putting up something near and dear to them: Jaguar’s hair vs Galactica’s mask. These types of mask/hair vs. mask/hair matches are common in Mexican lucha libre, with the stipulation alone being enough for these matches to be the main event even over a promotion’s top title. Still, such a stipulation carries so much significance in women's wrestling. To many women, especially in the 80s, their hair was a source of pride, and having someone cut it off as a prize to be won was a severe blow. So it's understandable how, after a match fraught with cheating on Galactica’s part and interference from Monster Ripper, Yokota refused to accept the loss that Galactica inflicted upon her. Yokota was prepared to face the consequences of a potential loss here. Still, she felt Galactica had defaced the honor of the bout and refused to let her cut her hair, violently reacting as Ripper and Galactica attempted to hold her down.
After the AJW commissioner determined that despite the interference, the match's outcome would stand, and with a promise of a fair rematch for Yokota just a couple of weeks later, Jaguar finally relented and allowed her hair to be cut down. The visual of Yokota’s hair being destroyed chunk by chunk is striking, and the anger and sadness in her eyes was heartbreaking to watch. The post-match interview with a now short-haired Jaguar is even more of a gut punch, as a particularly insensitive interviewer questions whether having to cut her hair is that bad of an outcome, and I’m surprised the look that Yokota gives him didn’t kill him on the spot. Yokota’s heart is broken, and her pride is wounded. Still, while she must wait to reclaim her hair, she’s determined to right one of the wrongs committed that night and reclaim her WWWA World Single Championship, something she manages to do. However, sadly, footage of the match is unavailable.
On the cusp of a boom
While Jaguar, Masami, Mimi, and the rest fight to carry AJW into a new era, they will not cause the promotion’s staggering return to prime-time TV and renewed mainstream popularity. Even someone like me, with only cursory prior knowledge of 80s Joshi wrestling, knows about the phenomenon of the Crush Gals. While the iconic team is not yet formed, we get our first few glimpses into their greatness. It surprised me to find that not only was Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka’s first encounter with each other in the Joshi Set a singles match, but a very heated match as well, with the two of them appearing as if they were out for blood. The match was for Lioness Asuka’s AJW Title, the 3rd highest singles belt in AJW, and the two of them put on one of the best matches I’ve seen in the set so far. If this is the kind of quality match that they’re putting on this early in their career, I can’t wait till we get to their rise to the top of women’s wrestling. We also get to see a proto-Crush Gals team up against the team of Kaoru Matsumoto and Masked Yu of Devil Legion, which is a taste of the future of the promotion. Nagayo and Asuka work incredibly well in tandem, and it seems like the sky is their limit. Meanwhile, Matsumoto begins to show her mean streak in this match. While she’s still far from matching Masami’s skills, it’s easy to see how she eventually develops into one of the most hated villains in wrestling history. As we approach AJW’s second boom period, I find myself eager to experience what those crowds did back then and see with my own eyes what made the biggest rivalry in Joshi wrestling such a hot commodity.
Closing remarks
Once again, I thank Twitter user Kadaveri for putting in the work to gather and compile this footage for the easy viewing of wrestling fans worldwide who can now experience some of the most important matches and moments of one of the most influential periods of professional wrestling. Below, I’ve linked the volumes of the Joshi Set I’ve discussed. I hope my writing has inspired you to seek out these matches, especially now that they are more accessible than ever. Until next time, thanks for reading!