Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Ibuki's road to Korakuen Hall continues


Ibuki's Mar. 23 Shin-kiba 1st Ring show continues the pattern of shows leading up to their annual Korakuen Hall show on May 25. The big news was the return of the masked wrestler Ray after being out with an injury since last summer. Yumi Ohka came over from Pro Wrestling WAVE to wrestle her. There was a re-debut of a wrestler you're probably not familiar with but I know a bit about her. It's always good to have guest veterans come to Ibuki but not this time.





The opener was Tomoka Nakagawa vs Ayako Sato. It was mostly a rookie
style sprint ending in a 15 minute draw. Next was Cherry vs Hanako
Kobayashi from Ito Dojo. Very similar to the first match except
Cherry has been around longer than Kobayashi and won with a knee drop
to the back of the head at 9:06. Next was "The Boss" Mariko Yoshida
teaming with Ibuki newcomer Yoko Yamada vs Tojuki Leon & Arisa
Nakajima from JWP. As you can see by the pic, Yamada is a very tiny
girl. She tried to break into joshi a few years ago but was turned
away as too small. She's maybe 5 feet tall and maybe 100 pounds. Baby-
M is about the only wrestler that I can recall being that small. So
Yamada became an arm wrestling champ. She's also 4-1 in MMA though
her last match in Aug. 2006 went badly. She has turned up in joshi
occasionally and I saw on Yoshida's blog recently that Yamada is
training at Ibuki so I'm not surprised to see her. Yoshida said on
her website that Yamada has good basic grappling skills but needs to
be more aggressive in the ring. The JWP team controlled the match and
Leon used the Mad Splash on Yamada for the win at 17:07.





Next Ray made her return against Yumi Ohka. It was Ohka's first Ibuki
appearance since blowing out her knee at a Sept. 2005 show. Ohka has
been improving slowly since her return last summer and won with a
neck hanging bomb at 16:13. The main event was Kyoko Kimura & Atsuko
Emoto (Revolution Amandora) vs Hiroyo Matsumoto & Misaki Ohata (3S).
Ohata took most of the punishment. But the youngsters almost pulled
an upset when Kimura accidently nailed Emoto with the Big Boots. But
then Ohata missed a cross body from the top rope and Emoto finished
her with the Bay Crash at 20:25. Afterwards, Matsumoto yelled at
Emoto about the upcoming Korakuen show and it's clear that Matsumoto
is headed for a push. Ibuki has a show in Osaka Mar. 30 and the
Korakuen Hall show will be on May 25.

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