Sunday, August 23, 2015

Satomura/Hojo II

Stardom 2015/07/26

World of Stardom Championship: Meiko Satomura vs. Kairi Hojo ©

By golly, what a rematch! It’s absolutely stunning they worked a match so different, and yet so similar to the first one. The layout was clearly different, but the shadow of the first encounter was still there, lurking and reminding us of what’s the story out there. You barely get that with Nakamura, Goto, Makabe and other New Japan top guys. These ladies are less formulaic and way more organic, raw and natural. What a vicious smackfest this was, shit man, they really beat bajesus out of each other, it was gnarly and highly punishing. Just a good old joshi brawl, everything was purposeful and rough. And then the selling, fuuuck me, they sold everything down to a T, I’m not going to bother you with all the details and technicalities, you need to see it, plain and simple. There were so many careful and thoughtful selling components that put Nakamura to shame. For example, Hojo does a flying elbow-drop which Satomura brilliantly counters into a fancy armlock. Now, almost everywhere else it would lead to a highly dramatic nearfall with Hojo trying to reach the ropes, but here it only served as pure counter attack for Satomura to buy some time, she couldn’t hold the champ in the hold too long because she had all the previous beatdowns to sell. That’s just pure brilliance, that’s genius, that’s what happens when your pro-graps IQ is enormous.

What a goddamn match!

****3/4

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