8/9 Tokyo Korakuen Hall Japan Grand Prix '98 Semifinal: ZAP-I vs. Miho Wakizawa. AJW totally missed the point here. It was a big surprise that Wakizawa won the Junior League to get into the semifinals with the three best from the Top League. Instead of doing a feature on Wakizawa and building this up as the biggest match of the kid's career, which is was by far, they wasted a half hour on embarrassing modeling moments and The Pirates (two attractive young tv personalities/models who tend to show off their chest right before it's time for a commercial break). I can't even remember one offensive move that Wakizawa did, or if she even did any, in the 2:28 of 13:36 that aired. ATHENA is almost as much a variety show as it is a wrestling show, and that is a bad thing when you have a league of young wrestlers that badly need TV time to get over.
Japan Grand Prix '98 Semifinal: Manami Toyota vs. Yumiko Hotta. The finish of this match was excellent with Toyota debuting a move to beat the "shooters" with. Hotta tried to turn Toyota's Japanese ocean cyclone suplex from the corner into an udehishigigyakujujigatame, but Toyota twisted then bridged forward, which was called a henkei jackknife, for the win. 20:31 (1:30 aired).
Japan Grand Prix '98 Final:
Toyota vs. ZAP-I (Ito). This wasn't much of a final. The ZAP gimmick
sucks because it reduces a top five female worker to a Dump level worker, but
doesn't come close to elevating her to being 1/10 as great a heel.
I was the one who carried the match, which was good, but Toyota was letting her do too much. In all the great matches where Toyota is carried, she supplies great work and high spots. Here she was too hesitant. It was like she was, for once, making an effort to put over the previous damage and not make a quick comeback, but she wasn't really sure how to do it and still mount an offensive.
I didn't use objects in the context of putting the on best possible match; she just overly relied on them. In a sense, it wasn't so much that the gimmicks were bad, but that they didn't get any heat. The match never came close to having the aura of a final, even though, at points, Toyota really tried to get the crowd into it.
Although Toyota and Ito weren't in top form and didn't come close to approaching last year's Japan Grand Prix match, the work was still strong. I's execution is really underrated. It's damn near perfect match in and match out, but that seems to go unnoticed. Toyota didn't blow anything, but her spots were off to varying degrees. She was barely on offense because she was going over, but in the storyline it was because ZAP-T (Watanabe) was constantly interfering. To some extent they tried to make Wakizawa a star at the live show, as aside from being in the semifinals, she was the one who interfered on Toyota's behalf.
"I like that everyone gets involved in the ZAP matches, but it happens too often. The wrestling and match quality suffer due to all the outside interference. I was disappointed in this match because there was virtually no wrestling and Manami didn't win cleanly," wrote Michael.
The finish saw T accidentally hit I with her rod then Toyota used her "new" Japanese Ocean Drop finisher for the win. This was the third time in the 14-year history of the annual JGP that Toyota won the tournament, 1990 & 1995 being the other two. The whole match just came off really flat though. In the past, I would think the match must have been pretty bad for AJW to have cut more than half out of such an important match. This certainly didn't look like it was anything special, but these days it's anyone's guess. 23:47 (9:06 aired). ** range