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Not to cause too severe of a shock to your systems, but yet another Meiko vs. Aja match was fucking great.
This one is a little different than the others though.
Usually with these two, the match is about pure force. You have your narrative arcs, of course, a match up doesn’t repeat for something like twenty years without something building between the two sides, but the matches tend to come down to firepower. Aja Kong naturally has more of it, so Meiko Satomura has to figure out how to maximize what she has or something else, and while there is a TON of room for variance within that framework, these matches tend to favor that simplicity.
That’s not to say that this isn’t also a match that fires straight with some real concussive power to its blasts as well, but there’s also a little more focus here than usual.
Meiko Satomura comes in with (I think, as it looks to be flesh colored, you will excuse me for perhaps not interpreting a 240p video perfectly) a bandage underneath her right eye, recovering from a broken orbital bone, and Aja Kong has a target in the way she rarely has before against Satomura. It’s an injury that matters from the beginning though the ending, and one that allows Kong to get into some of her best control work ever. Aja’s work on the eye early on is brutal and unique, driving the point of her elbow into the socket, standing on the right side of Meiko’s face, throwing more straight up punches than usual, all of that. The match also handles it perfectly in terms of how much work there is there, as it’s not a segment that lasts super long. Meiko never gets so abused that the match requires her to limp around half blind, but the match is so smart about how it employs the injury in small ways for the rest of the match.
It’s never quite the cause of Meiko missing things, but she does just seem off for the rest of the match in a way she often isn’t. Kong is more able to counter the big shots than usual, doing so in simpler and crueler ways like shoving Meiko off her knee in mid Scorpio Rising. At the same time, the match also goes into, I think, the mental effects of someone knowing they’re at a disadvantage, as Meiko regularly gets overzealous and seems to try to rush. Her attacks to the right arm and both legs of Kong to get out of a few jams yield real positive results, but Meiko never sticks to either like she might (and often would) regularly, giving up a clearer but longer path in an attempt to finish as quickly as possible, ultimately ensuring she doesn’t finish at all.
While deeply focused and super interesting, the match also never quite loses the straightforward approach of every other Kong vs. Satomura encounter.
Literally, the first move of the match is Aja Kong blasting the hurt eye with a Uraken.
Kong and Satomura’s violence has some more nuance to it than in many of their other matches, but it is still Kong and Satomura. The match is only seventeen or eighteen minutes tops, it is still essentially about firepower underneath everything else, and it is a match full of all the nasty nasty wonderful gross shots and bumps you watch these matches to see. Meiko still has her sensational fire ups, with more desperation to them, and Kong is still really arguably the best bully in wrestling history, shutting down Meiko in ways that are not only increasingly brutal, but also increasingly insulting.
In effect, what always works works again, the same beautiful tune, but with the slightest difference that allows it to stand out even among every other time you’ve heard it, even if I still have no idea quite what the best version is.
The match ends as it began, the snake eating its own tail, as to stifle the comeback once and for all, Kong finally blasts her with the Uraken to the injured eye to win.
Beautiful pro wrestling from these two yet again, hitting in all the ways it usually does and some new ones too. Nasty and and violent, walking that wonderful line between being direct as hell and also having something a little substantive to grab onto in between all the major hits and wonderfully vulgar displays of power.
One more hit from one of the greatest pairings in wrestling history.
***1/2
HANDWERK 