And now, the decline. AJW had a great run, getting more and more popular from its inception through the mid-’90s. In 1997, the company went bankrupt due to a slew of bad business decisions. The lack of cash flow led to a massive talent exodus. Yokota and Nagayo had started JDStar and GAEA, respectively, just a bit earlier, Aja Kong bailed to form Arsion, and Inoue did the same to create NEO. So now a ton of talent had left and their babies were coming for AJW’s head. The subsequent chaotic wrestling scene they created ended poorly for all of those companies, as none survive to this day, but they all had babies as well. I’ll talk more about that later, but for now let’s see what’s going on with the title.
March 21, 1998 – Tokyo, Japan
Shinobu Kandori def. Yumiko Hotta {WWWA World Championship vs. LLPW Championship Match}
From an LLPW show. AJW’s answer to all the new competition was to co-promote with some of their old competition. In this case, the shoot-style baby of the original JWP. Kandori was in the middle of what would be a two-year long reign with the LLPW title. This gets gross pretty quickly as Hotta busts herself open with headbutts. She fired back with kicks so nasty it made Low Ki look like Jeff Hardy. She clearly wanted to get blood out of Kandori, but it just never happened. Kandori’s only defense, an effective one, was looking for armbars. Eventually, Hotta hit a brutal tiger driver and went for a pin. Apparently this was knock out of submission rules only, and Kandori caught her with a triangle choke for the win at 12:02. I could have used ten more minutes of this easy. ***½
March 10, 1999 – Tokyo, Japan
Yumiko Hotta def. Shinobu Kandori {WWWA World Championship Knock Out Match}
From an AJW/LLPW co-promoted show. It’s Last Man Standing rules. I thought this was going to be a wild strike-fest thanks to Kandori’s initial blitz, but it quickly turned into a puzzling submission-based match. I’m not sure who leg submissions were meant to lead to a knock out. Or maybe like the last match this could also be won by submission. I don’t know, I don’t speak Japanese. A big chunk was clipped from this. The finish saw Hotta kick Kandori’s face off while knocking her to the floor. Kandori was unable to get back in the ring and to her feet before the referee counted her down at 5:14 (shown of) 18:03. Kyoko Inoue beat Hotta for the title four months later, showing that joshi companies, and puro companies in general, are much more likely to bury a hatchet than American ones. Inoue bailed on AJW to form NEO two years earlier while still a main eventer. N/A
October 22, 1999 – Fukuoka, Fukuoka
Yumiko Hotta def. Kyoko Inoue {WWWA World Championship Match}
From NEO Ladies Live In HAKATA. I like that Hotta and Inoue each lost on their own home turf. Hotta does this thing I love that I’ve never seen anyone else do, which is that she basically do-se-dos her opponent to hook her arm when her opponent is running as a way of transitioning into a tiger driver attempt. Someone needs to steal that. A brawl through the building embarrassingly displays the glut of empty chairs on the floor. The reported attendance of over 1,200 seems unlikely. Between the copious floor “fighting” and how sloppy things got in the middle, this was a disappointing effort. This was not the blitz that their match from two years earlier was. It was missing all of that baller, experimental energy. I wonder if the death match they had against each other in Diana 15 years after this had that ‘97 magic. Hotta hit a lariat for the win at 18:07. **½
January 4, 2000 – Tokyo, Japan
Manami Toyota def. Yumiko Hotta {WWWA World Championship Match}
During the last few minutes of this match I kept hearing myself say out loud, “Wow, that was great.” Toyota sped into Hotta like a crash test car into a wall. Sometimes the wall hit back, and Toyota sold like a crash test dummy. There was a moment where I started to feel as though it wasn’t believable that Hotta would allow Toyota to keep suplexing her, but when it became clear that she was impervious and was trying to shake Toyota’s confidence, I came back on board. Toyota baited Hotta to the top, scrambled around her with incredible speed, and hit the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex with a very tight roll up for the win at 21:01. ****
September 17, 2000 – Tokyo Japan
Kaoru Ito def. Manami Toyota {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Zenjo Stroke. Toyota is so good at bringing out the best in her opponents, it’s almost insane. The first half of the match had me a bit puzzled as to why Ito was about to be crowned a two-time champion. Her selling was unconvincing and her lumbering style had me feeling like she was a lesser Hotta. I also got nothing out of the brawl on the floor or the dive off of whatever that thing was that Toyota dove off of. But with that behind them, Toyota helped guide Ito through the story of a confident champion losing her grasp of a match while the determined challenger found something that worked and doggedly stuck to it. Ito survived the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex and hit about half a dozen diving double stomps for the win at 24:02. ***½
February 24, 2002 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Manami Toyota def. Kaoru Ito {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Zenjo Turbulence. This was the perfect follow up to their previous match, with Toyota more aware of Ito’s strengths and more adept at getting around them. It forwent a lot of the nonsense on the floor that I don’t like and kept the story in the ring for the most part. This match was long, but the finish still caught me off-guard, as Toyota blocked a powerbomb, hit a suplex, and then finished Ito with the Queen Bee Bomb at 27:02. ***¾
June 7, 2002 – Tokyo, Japan
Kaoru Ito def. Manami Toyota {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Japan Grand Prix: The Queendom of WWWA. They were really set on wrapping up this trilogy. The pile of streamers at ringside at the end of the introductions is so massive it’s impossible not to laugh. I was hoping this would add something new and declarative to the rivalry, but it just added more and longer Boston crabs from Ito. The run up to the finish was kind of exciting, as Toyota now seemed impervious to the diving double stomp. Ito proved that not to be the case by hitting a reverse Michinoku Driver and a stomp for the win at 29:06. I was kind of hoping she’d have to break out something new, but what can ya do? ***¼
October 20, 2002 – Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Momoe Nakanishi def. Kaoru Ito {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Tag League the Best: Real All-Womanism Dream Explosion. By this point, the crowds are starting to get pretty thin as there are a lot of open seats on the floor. A full version of this match is easy to find online, but I assumed it wouldn’t be so I watched a clipped version on a comp first. The short version was a blast and had me dying to see the full thing. So I did, and it exceeded my expectations. Nakanishi couldn’t get anything in on Ito at all, and watching her survive the onslaught of powerbombs was fantastic. She got the win in the end with the flukiest of reverse hurricanranas at 17:46 (shown of 22:56). Yes, the “full” version is still clipped, but the spirit of the match is clearly intact. A few hours after this match, Rey Mysterio & Edge fought Chris Benoit & Kurt Angle at No Mercy. I think it’s fun when incredible matches happen in different places on the same day. ****¼
May 11, 2003 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Akayo Hamada def. Momoe Nakanishi {WWWA World Championship Match}
From 35th Anniversary: The Future. Hamada debuted for Arsion a couple years earlier and immediately was pushed to the top. This big win was part of a continued ascension to the apex of joshi. Right off the bat, they demonstrate that these two are on an even playing field, setting this as far apart as possible from Nakanishi’s title win. This didn’t grab me as much as I hoped it would. I like both wrestlers a lot but it never climbed to the heights I know they were capable of. I did like the finish though, which saw Hamada catch Nakanishi off guard with roundhouse kicks from different angles, and then hit the AP Cross for the win at 21:47. A strong effort, but missing an epic spark. Hamada held the title for eight months before losing it to Amazing Kong. She won it back four months after that. ***½
December 12, 2004 – Kawasaki, Kanegawa
Nanae Takahashi def. Ayako Hamada {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Rising Generation Special in Kawasaki. Here’s a familiar face. Takahashi had been rising in the ranks of AJW since ‘96, and it finally paid off here. There is no way that there are over 1,600 people in this crowd. The place looks damn empty and the fans are not generating that much noise. That didn’t stop these two from going balls out. Ovaries out? I’m not a biologist! The match was longer than I’d have liked and has more futzing around on the floor than I needed, but when they were in the ring there was no wasted movement. Takahashi picked up the win with the Nana☆Racka 100 at 33:30. I’m surprised Samoa Joe didn’t steal that move for his bigger matches. ***¾
A few weeks later, Takahashi got injured and put out of action for almost a year. A new champion was crowned in a match between Kumiko Maekawa and Hamada, which Maekawa won. AJW finally folded a month later, but Maekawa held the title for ten months. She worked primarily in AtoZ, a new name for the desperate Arsion, until that company died as well. One week after the end of Arsion, Maekawa retired, but not before defending her title one last time against a former champion.
March 26, 2006 – Tokyo, Japan
Nanae Takahashi def. Kumiko Maekawa {WWWA World Championship Match}
From Maekawa’s retirement show. I didn’t expect much from this. Typically at the end of someone’s career and at the end of a title lineage, everyone is just sort of over it. That was not the case here. Maekawa came to play. I knew nothing about her before seeing this final match of hers (not really final, she had one comeback match 15 years later), and I gotta say she certainly still had gas in the tank. She frustrated Takahashi for most of the match with wild kicks from every angle. Takahashi fired back with her usual, but with a fire that was terrific to behold. She finished off Maekawa with the Nana☆Racka at 25:04. After the match, Takahashi handed the belt to Takashi Matsunaga, putting it to rest once and for all. ****
The title was 69 years old at the time it was retired, and was at that point the longest active marquis title in the world. That accolade passed on to the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, and in Japan to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The death of AJW and its daughters brought about the birth of a new wave of joshi promotions. AJW’s grandaughters included Diana, which came out of NEO, Sendai Girls and Oz Academy, which came out of Gaia, and Stardom, WAVE, and SEAdLINNNG, which came out of JDStar. Ice Ribbon, and then later Gatoh Move, Tokyo Joshi Pro, Pure-J and YMZ all followed, though they were outgrowths of FMW and JWP, respectively. It’s kind of like when a star dies and gives birth to a bunch of new stars. None of these companies compares in popularity to their grandmother, but they all put out quality wrestling for women in Japan.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
