NEO Ladies: First Kiss Debut Show 1/9/1998

NEO Ladies: First Kiss Debut Show 1/9/1998

I found this one in my tape box today and figured I'd give NEO another chance. This is NEO's first show and they have 9 total wrestlers on their roster at this point. NEO formed when All Japan Women's was starting to go bankrupt and was starting to not pay their wrestlers. This event was packed and definitely sold out.

Triangle Match: Yuka Shiina vs. Saya Endo vs. Tanny Mouse

Triangle matches in japan are done gauntlet style with a wrestler having to score wins in two individual matches to take it home.

Leg 1 - Yuka Shiina vs. Saya Endo
Saya is with LCO now. Only problem is she isn't good looking and doesn't quite have the offense/brawling that LCO has. Those two things make LCO interesting. Maybe if Shiina was in LCO instead it would have worked better. LCO also doesn't have her out with them when they talk, which doesn't help the believability of it. This was 8:53 too long and wasn't interesting. Rating: *

Leg 2 - Yuka Shiina vs. Tanny Mouse
Tanny is actually wearing a tail here. This wasn't very good either.  Typical Tanny Mouse stuff. Atleast Shiina won this so we didn't have to sit through any more. Rating: *

Saya does an interview and she has some really bad teeth. Not only does she have the yaeba thing going on but her top row of teeth is half a centimeter to the right. It still doesn't compare to the one girl I saw in Japan who legitimately had BLUE teeth.

Chaparrita ASARI vs. Yoshiko Tamura

ASARI did more acrobatic stuff than I've ever seen her do Tamura looks completely unrecognizable from her appearances in the 1999 tapes  I reviewed. It's amazing what one year of NEO did to her. This really should have been the opener on the show but there is a case to be made I suppose of getting the crap finished ASAP. This was a little long at 14:56 but it heated up towards the end. ASARI hits a skytwister on Tamura's legs for the win after taking a top rope Northern Lights. Rating: **3/4

Kyoko Inoue vs. Misae Genki

They played some dubbed music for Genki that sounded like a Macarena remix. Someone had fun with autoplay on one of those cheap keyboards. Genki wore an outfit similar to the ones SENDAI Girls wear. Kyoko hadn't gained all of her weight yet at this point so she still had some energy left in her. Inoue took alot of bumps for Genki and Genki looked really good because of it. Genki's chokeslams in particular were really good in this match and really, anything she did to Kyoko looked pretty impressive. Kyoko won this with the sitout powerbomb but I think Genki should have been given the win here to kickstart the new promotion. Genki looked great in this and it's a shame she never reached her full potential. Rating: ***1/4

Genki gets the easiest night out of everyone as she only has to do one match.

Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita vs. Kyoko Inoue & Tanny Mouse

 LCO bring out the Statue of Liberty style costumes for this. Who thought those were good ideas? Kyoko's back and I hope she got atleast 20-30 minutes in an intermission before this. She changed outfits atleast. They switched the cameras at one point with one following each member of LCO. That something you don't see often in Japan. Mima did LCO's railing spot off of the wall at Korakuen onto Kyoko/Tanny on bleachers. Kyoko also fell off the elevated bleacher stand which I can tell you from experience is not fun. I didn't quite fall off it but I ended up getting my leg lodged betwen the elevated stage and the bleachers. One thing I didn't like here is that Tanny was about to go through a table and they suddenly switched shots to Kyoko. Hey NEO is recruiting AAA cameramen. The whole brawl outside was alot of fun and differed from the usual Korakuen brawl. LCO tried the surfboard on Kyoko together but couldn't get her up. Funny stuff. Tanny went on a headbutt sprint on Mita and busted herself open hardway. The match slowed down for a little after this, but it had to. Kyoko took an electric chair off the top and you have to give her credit for going all out bump wise. At one point, Mita cracked Kyoko so many times with her metal chair that the seat came off. Mima busted out a moonsault which I don't recall ever seeing from her and that was it. This was a great match. If it had cut out about 10 minutes, I think we would have been looking a high **** star match here. It might have been even higher without Tanny. Rating: *** 3/4.

Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita & Saya Endo vs. Kyoko & ASARI & Tamura

Saya messes up once in this and actually pushes the ropes towards Kyoko when she is trying to get to them. Oops. One great spot in this had Mita having trouble putting Kyoko in the DVB. So, ASARI jumps on Kyoko's back and prevents it from happening. LCO took this one in another pretty good match. Not as good as the last but my rating is ***.

The girls all looked pretty burned during the interviews, especially Mita who is toasted. I'm sure they must have had fun shilling merchandise after this.

Overall thoughts: This was a good show overall, but I feel I've seen all I really need to see with this show. Even when the matches are good, you need some different people in there to spice it up. Kyoko and Mima were easily the highlights of this tape and were good in everything they did.