Chigusa Nagayo vs Lioness Asuka (AJW - 4/7/1985)

Truly spectacular match especially within the context of its time. The workrate crew of 80s AJW (these two, JBA, Jaguar) was famous among hardcore English speaking internet fans for being way ahead of its time in terms of pacing & move set. In a sense this is a very minimalist match. It is a 30 minute draw, the large bulk of which is based around trading submissions and super stiff kicks. Lioness does a top rope splash & a missile dropkick late in the match, but even those are pretty low-key. Even Irish whips are kept to a minimum until the end and the payoff for those is usually a stiff kick to the gut or a hard forearm strike. However within this submission and strike based layout, they work the entire 30 minutes at a breakneck pace in front of a typically insane 80s AJW Chigusa crowd who is living & dying with every submission. I would describe this as a Maeda vs Super Tiger match from 1985 paced like a Manami Toyota match from 1995. It is so crazy that they were able to work matches like this in front of the audience they had.