This was the first of the three major shows of 1994. Akira Hokuto had announced her retirement after the loss to Shinobu Kandori on 12/6/93, and would only participate in three events in 1994. The “Dangerous Queen Final Countdown” began with this show in Yokohama Arena, then 8/24 in Nippon Budokan, and finally with her retirement show at the Tokyo Dome on 11/20. While the women’s wrestling boom was fading fast, these were big interpromotional shows like 1993, and Hokuto was the reason for the boom in the first place, so these shows were basically exempt from the trend. While they didn’t have the same level of buzz as the original DREAM SLAM, it was (supposedly) three final chances to see Hokuto. Attendance was disputed, with the real number being believed to be close to 15,000, but with ticket prices being more expensive than DREAM SLAM, they certainly made more money at the gate.

AJW Junior Title Match: Candy Okutsu vs. Rie Tamada 9:04. Should have been a pretty good juniors match, but an injury to Candy ensured that wouldn’t be the case. They started out hot, but Candy injured her arm doing a plancha within the first 30 seconds. She continued to work through it, but it hindered her a lot, and Tamada didn’t have a lot to compensate with. The stretching was alright, but Candy couldn’t pull her spots well. She struggled to do the rolling German’s, which she was supposed to finish with, with two good arms, let alone one, so she had to break it and just do normal German’s, which made for a pretty lousy finish. The highlight of the match was actually Tamada’s dropkicks (seriously, she threw the best dropkicks on the scene at this point). *3/4

Midget Match: Little Abdullah The Butcher (Mr. Buddhaman) vs. Little Great Muta (Little Frankie) 7:17. Buddhaman was painted completely black, I’m sure that would go down well 30 years later. Other than the cosplay, this was your standard midget comedy, and a waste of 7 minutes. Buddha did a little giant swing. The ring girl handed Frankie a mist packet, which he used on Buddhaman, put him on a stretcher, and finished it by diving backwards off the top rope. They tried, and I’ve seen worse, but it was still garbage. 3/4*

All Japan Tag Title Match: Miki Handa & Yasha Kurenai vs. Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe 19:29. This was a train wreck to start with. Yasha was screwing up, and both Ito and Watanabe were being uncooperative. They seemed to have no interest in working with them at all, which made it baffling when a good match broke out for about 10 minutes. They all did well in that portion, even if Watanabe was having a bad day with her sloppiness. They just kept the finishing sequence going on and on though because Watanabe wanted to make comebacks so she’d look strong. There were good near falls from Watanabe and Yasha, but it just went on forever and got egregious. Two chokeslams from the top rope and a chokeslam/German suplex combo couldn’t beat Watanabe, but a lousy exploder did (which Yasha had to pull her to the centre of the ring from in order to pin her). It was just the wrong move to finish with, was way past the peak, and the crowd didn’t even pop. **1/2

Space Flying Gymnastic: Chaparrita ASARI vs. Hikari Fukuoka 14:31. ASARI had nothing to offer but a couple of spots, and without someone to lead her well has a tendency to get lost, which often happened here. Hikari was better, but she wasn't one to carry a match. They sat around in crabs, chinlocks and armbars to kill time and kill the crowd. That's not what anyone wanted from a match billed as a "Space Flying Gymnastic". If you were going to put these two in a singles match, it probably should have just been a lightning fast pre-planned spotfest for 4 minutes instead of 14. They never really got the crowd back either. Even if you just fast forwarded until they got to the spots, you’d be disappointed because they didn't work well together. Some of them were fine. Hikari was okay aside from some lousy suplexes. ASARI did a nice plancha but that was about it, Other than that, she was lost and looked unsure of herself, which made her spots look bad. She screwed up the bigger ones anyway. She made Hikari look like an idiot dodging her moonsault because she got on her feet before Hikari was even in the air, and screwed up the Sky Twister Press. Hikari avoided it, but ASARI overshot it and landed on her head again. At least Hikari ended it with a good moonsault. *1/4

Professional Wrestling Bible: Chikako Shiratori & Suzuka Minami vs. Megumi Kudo & Nurse Nakamura 16:35. Took some time to get going, but this had enough to keep it interesting enough throughout, and while it wasn’t as exciting, it built a lot better than the earlier All Japan Tag Title match. Nakamura and Shiratori did pretty well here, and despite being limited, even had some pretty decent contributions. Kudo was the star of the show. She worked well with Minami, and got more out of Shiratori than most others do. They worked well together, and she let go with her before putting her in her place. Minami was typically good with brutalizing Nakamura. The finish was a bit odd, with Kudo getting a Stretch Plum on Shiratori, and the ref called for the submission just as Minami kicked Kudo the break it up, which left the fans confused. **3/4

IWA World Title Match: Manami Toyota vs. Plum Mariko 20:34. This was just the Toyota show with an opponent who could keep up with her, and while far from her best match, for what it is, it’s one of her best performances. You always take the good with the bad with Toyota. Both were on display here, but her moments of brilliance outweighed her dumb moments. The worst aspect of the match is Plum wasn’t given a lot, and it could have been a much better match if Toyota wasn’t so selfish. As a Toyota exhibition of her go-go style match, it was high quality. She used a ton of great offense throughout, and looked brilliant even if some spots didn’t quite go to plan. Plum could have been anyone who could go, and didn’t get much of a chance to shine until late in the match. She had offense here and there, and did a little knee work, but it was always brief, and just so Toyota could make a comeback and keep her show going. Toyota gave her some submissions, but would thrash her way out of them very quickly, or counter, which would have been fine, it’s not like Toyota sold submissions well anyway, but Plum should have been allowed to do the same with Toyota. Instead, Toyota would just sit in her own lousy submissions doing nothing, which didn’t show much regard for the ‘submission queen’ gimmick. Plum was as good as she was allowed to be, but had a lot more to offer. There’s enough bumping, dives, good moves, and intensity. The match was always moving along, so it was always exciting, but it was it was never as competitive as it could, or should have been, particularly in the first half. In the second half of the match, Plum was more competitive, and she got her run of offense in toward the end. She managed to apply a kneebar, and Toyota thrashed around and gouged at her urgently before making the ropes to get the break. The match had an incredible and memorable finish. Following Plum’s submission attempts, she attempted a top rope rana and Toyota hit a great powerbomb from the tope for a near fall. Toyota then unleashed a barrage of dives on the outside; a plancha, a no hands springboard plancha, and a missile dropkick to the outside, before sealing the victory with a Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex in the ring. This turned out to be excellent match by virtue of Toyota making it so, but if you want to see the best of Plum, you won’t find it here. 5/25/90 vs. Itsuki Yamazaki, the 11/18/93 tag or 2/11/94 vs Chigusa Nagayo would be my three top recommendations for Plum matches. ****

Takako Inoue & Yumiko Hotta vs. Eagle Sawai & Reggie Bennett 13:06. Hotta walking out to Takako’s ‘she’s a knockout’ song was pretty funny, but this match wasn’t funny or entertaining. It didn’t even have train wreck value, it was just bad. Reggie was uncoordinated and worked in slow motion. Eagle was her usual self. Takako got worked over most of the time, with Hotta helping her out to set up some offense, but neither Reggie or Eagle had a clue how to make Takako look threatening, so she never looked like she was gaining anything on them no matter what she did. Takako couldn’t do much with Reggie other than go for wakigatame’s because Reggie wasn’t going for, or couldn’t figure out that she wanted to do an armdrag. Hotta just came in to do some punting, which at least Reggie could understand, but she couldn’t fight back convincingly with Hotta. Takako and Hotta both hit a few good spots towards the end, and they were more on the same page then, not enough to redeem the match, but it was something, and it did get better, but the Reggie and Eagle team were too much for Hotta and Takako to get anything passable out of. *1/2

JWP Tag Title Match: Cutie Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda 20:37. This wasn’t actually much better than the FMW vs. Zenjo tag from earlier despite having far superior teams, and was disappointing because you’d expect an excellent match here. Cuty was the lesser of the four, but she was generally a pretty good tag team wrestler. Action wise, this was good aside from a few timing issues, there were no execution problems, they did all their big moves, the match moved along at a good pace, which showed the teams could work well together if they wanted to. The problem was the lack of any selling and the layout. It was about as dumb as any rookie tag team opener. They just took turns and didn’t really work any story into it at all. You’d expect a lot more out of Ozaki than that, but she seemed to be going through the motions and no one seemed to actually be leading the match. There were likely some attitude problems between the teams, given the general attitude from the Zenjo girls was that they’re superior to all of the other leagues, and I doubt Ozaki and Cuty had much regard for LCO given they were a low ranked team who had only just started receiving a push. Despite an awkward start with Cuty and Shimoda, the match got off a really good start with both teams trying to outheel each other. LCO started it with Cuty, and the JWP team took their revenge later. There was a bizarre outside brawl in between though which started when Ozaki took Shimoda outside. Shimoda took a brainbuster in the isle and just sat up and took a drink looking unphased, then Mita gave Ozaki a piledriver on the outside, which she immediately got up from and went back on offense like it didn’t happen at all, then they just did a total restart in the ring and the JWP resumed working over Shimoda. This was also a sign of things to come. They just took turns on the heat segments and ramped things up in the second half. Again, a lot of the action was good, but it was just spot trading between the two teams with almost every near fall being followed up by a counter and no one being able to string a sequence of moves together to ever build any momentum. The whole thing just came off as half-assed and lacked drama, even if they were good enough to get crowd into the match. The one great moment was the finish, which saw Cuty dive onto Mita’s shoulders and get Death Valley Bombed for it. I’m not sure that finish was worth the first 20 minutes, but it was a great finish anyway. LCO won the JWP tag belts, and then disrespected JWP’s ‘pure heart crap’ and the president after the match, which was good stuff. ***

Dynamite Kansai vs. Sakie Hasegawa 16:33. This followed on from Sakie’s match with Yamada a few weeks prior, a more violent stiff match, but this was a more interesting and smarter match than that one. It didn’t quite reach the same level of drama due to being a mismatch, but they did a great job of making it as dramatic as they could, and Sakie really took it to Kansai. Kansai led it and allowed Sakie to shine. Kansai unleashed her brutal kicks when she wanted to, but was generally content to work Sakie over with her usual weardowns. It was on Sakie to make the match and take it to her, and she did just that; she had the urgency, she took her beatings, she continually fought her way out of Kansai’s holds and threw some nasty kicks of her own. Her own matwork was better than Kansai’s here as well. She smartly won a test of strength by rolling backwards out of it, and she strung together her offense well. When she had an advantage, she was relentless attempting to keep it, and rather than just taking it and following along, Kansai always fought back and had really good cut off spots, whether it was just brute forcing her way out or catching her arm and putting her in a wakigatame. Had Sakie defeated Yamada with one of her sleepers in their 3/3 match, it might have been a more dramatic spot here, though the crowd still popped when she locked it in here. Sakie remained competitive to the end, slipping out of the Splash Mountain and backdrop suplexes and trying everything but kept getting caught with kicks. Kansai had to unleash a nasty beating to put her away. She kicked her way out of a sleeper and delivered a brutal punt to the head, which just about knocked Sakie out, then just teed off afterwards with more, but couldn’t put her away. Sakie slipped out of Splash Mountain and the went to the sleeper again, but that was all, she was done. Kansai simply drove her into the mat and finished her with a backdrop suplex and a Splash Mountain. ****

All Pacific Title Match: Toshiyo Yamada vs. Kyoko Inoue 16:19. This match was only half a step above the LCO match on the brainlessness scale. The first 10 minutes was a lot of stretching with some big moves thrown in. Kyoko had started doing her long run lariat on the outside, and ran the length of the ramp, and then did a Giant Swing on the floor. Yamada would fight back later with her kicks. The match didn’t develop into anything until the 10 minute mark, and was really good afterward. It kicked off when Yamada backdrop suplexed Kyoko out on the floor and Kyoko just laid there dead. She laid there until the count of 16 when Yamada decided she wanted to win ‘the right way’ and carried her back to the ring. She did another backdrop suplex in the ring and Kyoko sold huge, until she fired up and then Yamada hit a series of them. This was a great portion of the match. Kyoko worked herself back into the match and they countered each others finishers before Kyoko finally hit a Niagara Driver. She slow covered her to make Yamada’s kick out seem reasonable, but it really should have been the finish because Kyoko’s weak looking STF facelock is one of the worst finishes I’ve seen on a Zenjo card. It looked weaker than any of her filler submissions, and Yamada tapped out almost immediately, which was bad enough, but after Kyoko survived her onslaught, it only made Yamada look worse. Kyoko winning the white belt was the right move, but they didn’t need to kill Yamada’s credibility as a singles wrestler in the process. ***

Dangerous Queen Final Countdown: Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano 35:14. Hokuto's final countdown saw her teaming up with the rival who had previously defeated her and dashed her hopes of winning the coveted red belt once and for all. Their opponents were two monsters whom had defeated her in the past. There didn’t appear to be much hope of Kandori and Hokuto getting along, they couldn’t even stand to be near each other in the pre-match interview, and both said they were happy to 3 v 1. This was very much a story driven match, and there’s a lot going on. Kandori and Bull were in the midst of building their rivalry, setting the stage for an eventual chain match, while Aja and Hokuto had unfinished business as their singles encounter at Wrestle Marinpiad '93 solved nothing. There were a lot more little stories at play here, with Kandori always wanting to prove she was superior to the top woman on the women’s scene (Aja), and Bull trying to cling onto her fading monster status. The overwhelming story was always between Kandori and Hokuto, if they couldn’t work as a team they had no chance, it’s plain from the very beginning, with her argument with Kandori, a backdrop from Aja and a lariat from Bull. Hokuto got the better of Bull in the first segment of the match, and tagged in Kandori by slapping her in the face. Kandori didn’t have as much success, getting stiffed but she caught a flash submission on Bull, and then returned the slap to Hokuto, but Hokuto wasn’t having it, and they got into a scuffle which led to both of getting mauled outside; Kandori did get the better of Bull out there, but Hokuto just annihilated by Aja, which included a piledriver out there. Hokuto and Kandori were both formidable even though they weren’t working as a team, they could outmaneuver Bull, but not Aja, and they certainly couldn’t win that way. Hokuto did get the best of Aja at the 15 minute mark with some powerful slaps, and immediately dragged her outside to give her a piledriver on a table as a revenge spot from earlier. Bull and Aja fought their way to the entrance way, and when the camera cut back to Aja, had taken over on Hokuto and given her another piledriver, this time on the ramp. Action wise, it was very methodical, slowly building and hammering home the story. They were building things with extended heat segments and the occasional stiff strike and burst transition, they didn’t do a lot in the first half of the match, and escalated things from there. It was always compelling though. At the 25 minute mark, Kandori had Aja in a jujigatame, Bull looked to cut it off with a guillotine legdrop and Hokuto stood on the apron, making no attempt to stop her. Kandori sat up to avoid the move and Hokuto immediately rushed in to put a manjigatame on Bull. Moments later, Hokuto was legal and the same thing happened, except Hokuto was unable to avoid Bull’s guillotine legdrop, and she simply returned to being worked over afterward. After Kandori takes a double team mauling from Aja and Bull, and Aja goes for her avalanche waterwheel, Hokuto finally sucks up her pride and helps her partner for the first time in the match, saving her from that defeat. Kandori leapt onto Aja’s back with a sleeper, but Bull prevented that. Hokuto then took three urakens from Aja, and Kandori tried to pull her back to the corner, but only ate an Uraken for it. Kandori and Bull fought outside, and Aja hit her avalanche waterwheel on Hokuto, but Kandori frantically made it back to break up the pin from outside the ring. They’d finally united, and Bull found out when she tried to take both out with a lariat herself as she got put in a double wakigatame until Aja came in to bust it up. The hot moves were saved for the end. Hokuto took out Bull with her somersault plancha. Kandori told Hokuto to finish off Aja, and she hit a Northern Light’s Bomb, but Bull managed to break up the win. Kandori took care of Bull and Hokuto, but Aja kicked out of it herself. Aja fought back with a German Suplex and tried to take out Kandori with a Uraken, but it hit Bull, and the third Northern Light’s Bomb was the charm, with Hokuto getting the pinfall over Aja. This match may be a little slow in places for some, but it was masterfully built, and turned into a phenomenal match with great action in the second half. All of the stories established and paid them off. In the post match, Kandori and Hokuto finally respected each other, and Kandori slapped her hand before leaving the ring to her. ****1/2

Best Joshi Puroresu Matches YouTube Playlist