JWP finished off the year with a bang with their Dec. 24 Korakuen Hall show. The main event was a triple title match with Azumi Hyuga & Yoshiko Tamura. It is being hailed as a match of the year but it also illustrates what is wrong with today's joshi business. There was also a tag team title change, a battle royal, a new junior champ and a debuting wrestler. There were plenty of happenings on this show.
The opener was the debut of 17 year old Kaori Oki against JWP veteran Kayoko Haruyama. Not surprisingly, Haruyama won in 6:57. Oki will have her next match on Sunday's Junior All Star War against JD Star rookie Athtress Bisa Ohata. Next was the final of the JWP Junior Title Tournament. Yasusato Nakajima trained at A To Z but is now working full time at JWP. Her opponent was Gktn wrestler Haruhi, probably one of the worst wrestlers I've ever seen. Nakajima won in 8:02 with something called The Cutie Special. Then things got a little silly. Gktn's Miki Ishii is debuting against Nakajima on this Sunday's Junior All Star War. After the match, she came into the ring and challenged Nakajima for her JWP Junior Title. That's exactly what will happen. I've never heard of a joshi wrestler getting a title shot in her debut. Who knows what this will be like?
Next up Tsubasa Kuragaki defeated Carlos Amano with a lariat at 16:10. Amano tried to use her trademark headbutts but I guess Kuragaki has a hard head. Next was a 30 minute battle royal for the Daily Sports Cup. Participants were Commando Bolshoi, Kayoko Haruyama, ECO, Manami Toyota, Leon, GAMI, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Lily Urai & Irod Watanabe. The group strategy was to try and get rid of Toyota early. That didn't really work out and instead Toyota picked up Urai and threw her out. It came down to Toyota and Yoneyama and Yoneyama won the Daily Sports Cup and a trip to Guam.
The JWP Tag Team Title was next. The reunited WANTED of Sachie Abe & KAZUKI won the titles over Toshie Uematsu & Teru in a back and forth match in 17:31 when Abe put a power bomb on Teru. However, it looks like the ref may have missed a foot on the ropes so I guess this isn't over. The main event was adverised as a title unification match. Azumi Hyuga put up her JWP Open Weight Title against Yoshiko Tamura's NEO Singles Title & NWA Pacific Title with a 60 minute time limit. Both women are quite capable of high quality matches and they did deliver a great match, especially the last 30 minutes. Give them credit for going 60 minutes. But this is a big problem in the joshi business. No one wants to do a job anymore. If you're going to advertise a title unification match, you should actually unify the titles instead of this predictable conclusion. Otherwise, why bother in the first place? And Tamura's whole title reign has been like this. Is she ever going to do a job again? But it looks like the match was really good so I'll get off the soapbox now. JWP delivered a strong show to end the year and let's hope for more improvement in 2007.
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