This review was commissioned by Been Thrifty over on my Ko-fi account.
Akira Hokuto spent her career talking shit and falling apart. It’s where the Dangerous Queen moniker comes from after all. This is a woman who broke her neck and held it in place to keep fighting, exploded her knee then tried to keep on fighting until officials dragged her away. And all the while, developing this brash attitude to enemies and outsiders that really comes to the fore during the interpromotional joshi wars of the early 90s.
Earlier in the year, in one of the most famous women’s matches of all time, Hokuto took a similar tact against Shinobu Kandori. She sucker punches Kandori at the bell, talks shit, then nearly gets her arm ripped off her body and gets beaten oblivion for half an hour as her blood paints the mat. A pair of big punches with her good hand win the day though, and despite looking like she’s knocking on death’s door, she still has the gall to call Kandori a “fake pro wrestler.”
Eight months later, with a year’s worth of high profile matches and the beatings those translate to under her belt, Akira Hokuto tries to get it done one more time against Shinobu Kandori, this time in Sumo Hall.
What Akira Hokuto, the character, doesn’t realize yet though is she’s no longer the hero of the series. She has spent the year calling out and insulting Kandori, beating up Kandori’s wrestlers in LLPW, and at one point even taking the scalp of LLPW’s Rumi Kazama. All the while, Kandori’s rage has been brewing as she regroups from getting knocked out in April.
When the bell rings in Sumo Hall, it becomes clear that this time Shinobu Kandori is ready for Hokuto. The Dangerous Queen kicks thing off attempting to recreate the finish of the first bout. She goes for the same series of punches that knocked out Kandori at Dream Slam, but this time Kandori dodges and returns fire. More importantly, when that double punch right to the face hits, it’s Hokuto that catches the worst of it this time while Kandori seems ready to press on.
Once again, Hoktuo bleeds here. This time it’s from that early double punch, it busts open Hokuto’s lip instead of her getting lacerated on a ringside table. It’s not as flashy a wound as the Dream Slam one, but it’s enough to give Kandori the confidence to keep pressing her advantage. It’s an incredibly petty performance from Kandori. The entire match is filled with these shitty little headkicks that might not damage Hokuto, but certainly feel like they put her in her place. Early on, Kandori even goes for the armbar that Hokuto has been famously vulnerable to at this point, but willingly lets it go, choosing instead to savor the chance to punish this loudmouth. There’s a lot more of Kandori applying these Fujiwara-esque headbutts to Hokuto, really wearing her down instead of going for those flash submission attempts she did in the first match.
Hokuto makes some attempts at a long-term gameplan here. She tries for an attack on Kandori’s leg, but that doesn’t get her too far against such a legitimate shooter. Meanwhile, Kandori retains this level calm throughout the whole match, never truly feeling in danger and just always returning to those shitty little kicks to the face every time whereas Hokuto desperately escalates the temperature of the match in an attempt to catch a lucky shot as she did in April. Kandori’s iciness shouldn’t be confused with inexpressiveness either. One can catch her at multiple points of the match reveling not only in her seething anger at the entire situation, but there are these great moments where her celebratory feelings shine through. When Hokuto’s against the ropes, spaghetti-legged and struggling, watch Kandori hold her ground and yell in pure glorious victory. It’s an incredibly babyface performance from Kandori, finally getting the chance to really show what she’s got against this shittalker who’s been plaguing her for months.
The match’s highlight is the final punch out. Hokuto, having failed to bomb Kandori into defeat, once again tries to just knock her out. As the opening of the match showed though, Kandori’s ready this time around, and she fucking gives as good as she gets. The AJW roster members at ringside, even ace bruiser Aja Kong, get reduced to literal tears as their hero gets her lights knocked the fuck out by Shinobu Kandori. It’s truly one of the most cathartic finishes to a two-match series ever, not quite a reversal of fortune but a realignment of nature. This incessant gnat pestering LLPW through the year finally gets the ass-kicking she deserves and it rocks so goddamn much.
Much like the Dream Slam match though, this isn’t perfect. I feel like Akira Hokuto’s performance comes across both literally and spiritually more bloodless than her input at Dream Slam. A lot of this is to show how unable she is to overcome Kandori this time around, but there’s less room for her to convey the grand emotions that have characterized the best aspects of this feud.
There’s also the occasional disconnect to the crowd at points here. Hokuto’s struggle may make sense from a narrative standpoint, but the inefficacy of her bombs leads to occasional repetition and a lack of the real visceral offensive power she’s able to pack in other matches. That keeps the crowd at a certain remove from some of the action here in a way that affected me as a viewer as well. There’s just an occasional spark missing from the middle portion of the match for me. Hokuto’s escalating offense tells one story, but it doesn’t always translate into the moment-to-moment urgency of her performance or even the overall pacing of the match.
For better and for worse, the match feels like it follows the same pace as Kandori’s emotional arc. It’s a patient one, weathering the storm, but still taking its time. It just happens to be book-ended with two of the most satisfying moments in wrestling. Who doesn’t love a big final gunfight, after all?
If not an all-timer, certainly an emphatic end to one of joshi’s great years.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? There are some interesting parallels here. I feel like they both take a dip in the middle portion of the match, for example, and both end with a cool-headed victor driving their opponent into the dust. That said, I think the sheer physicality of the King’s Road bombs may actually score them some points here. Call it stylistic preference, but the greater escalation in King’s Road all the way up to the gruesome Tiger Driver ’91 makes it feel like a smoother overall experience than what Hokuto and Kandori deliver here. King’s Road takes the win here.
Rating: ****1/2
