Chigusa Nagayo vs Mayumi Ozaki (GAEA 2/23/97)

Awesome match. This is a street fight and that is Ozaki’s kinda match so she takes her shot right away stabbing Chigusa in the face repeatedly and bloodying her. They brawl outside the ring but Ozaki is in control biting and working the cut early on. Chigusa eventually makes her comeback using wrestling moves like a spin kick & a sleeper. But then she’s like, fuck it, and gets in on the brawling. She throws chairs at Ozaki and just generally beats her ass. Ozaki is fucking awesome selling and having to figure out a way to comeback using her fire and guile. Ozaki is great selling, but does totally blow it all off when she finally transitions back to offense…but you know…it’s the 90s and its Joshi so you kinda expect it. But that’s the only really egregious blow off of selling. Otherwise both women are great. This has some great brawling but also a lot of really good wrestling. Nice counters and big bombs, but not as wild as you might expect from an Ozaki street fight. Anyway, this is excellent and I think overall a tremendous performance from both women. Ozaki’s charisma and acting really shines through in this one. Her fans would dig the hell out of this. I think this is even better than their 1994 match that was nominated. Oh, I almost forgot, this had a great crowd. It wasn’t really big but it was loud and invested which was something that didn’t happen a lot in 1996 Joshi.