Click here to see the Top 100 Tag Teams of All Time list so far.
Next up on the list should have been the tag team of Michael Knight & Pierre Le Presteem called One Knight in Paris, who teamed from 2008-2012 in Germany. Like many German tag teams on this list, they’ve been largely forgotten. They have only one match in their Matchguide on Cagematch, and a cursory search of the internet brought up nothing. So I’ll just move on to the next team on the list, which is the Jumping Bomb Angels.
The 107-ranked Noriyo Tateno & Itsuki Yamazaki come in at number 92. They made their name as a team in AJW, but fans my age have very young childhood memories of their stint in the WWF. Their matchguide is largely made up of their rivalry with the Glamour Girls, so I’ll review some of those matches in chronological order rather than list order before getting to some more interesting (in my opinion) stuff from Japan.
November 24, 1987 – Manhattan, New York
Judy Martin & Leilani Kai def. Itsuki Yamazaki & Noriyo Tateno {WWF World Women’s Tag Team Championship Match}
From WWF on MSG. This was during the Glamour Girls’ reign. The second half of 1987 was a tour of this particular matchup, leading up to their match at the Royal Rumble. It’s funny to see the Angels wearing American flag (and alternate universe American flag) gear. They got over with the crowd immediately by working a faster pace than anyone else on the roster at the time. Honestly, it looks like they time traveled from the early aughts American indie scene (of course, this kind of wrestling would become the norm in Japan and Mexico much earlier than it did in the States). Martin & Kai were athletic enough to keep up, though they didn’t contribute anything breathtaking to the match. A miscommunication from the Glamour Girls led to Yamazaki running wild for a while. But the constant Glamour Girls cheating gave them the edge. Martin hit Yamazaki with a powerbomb and Kai got the pin for the win at 13:59. The Angels tried to attack Glamour Girls manager Jimmy Hart after the match, but he escaped. ***
January 24, 1988 – Hamilton, Ontario
Itsuki Yamazaki & Noriyo Tateno def. Judy Martin & Leilani Kai {WWF World Women’s Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
From the inaugural WWF Royal Rumble. Jesse Ventura telling VInce McMahon on commentary that he knows nothing about weightlifting had to be a rib. Neither commentator bothered to learn the names of the Angels; McMahon’s excuse being that he doesn’t speak Japanese very well. Good lord. Today I learned that the Angels innovated (or at least debuted in the WWE) the Figure 8 Leglock. Today I also learned that Martin innovated (or at least debuted in the WWE) the Gallon Throw. She hits it to win the first fall. By the time the second fall starts, McMahon has been given the names of the Angels. He mispronounces them, but at least he’s trying. Yamazaki catches Kai with an ugly sunset flip to win the very short second fall. After a rather hard-fought third fall, the Angels hit a double missile dropkick on Martin for the win and the titles at 15:40. This was dope, though it didn’t quite capture the Canadian crowd’s attention the way the Angels did in New York City. A replay shows that Martin’s shoulder was not down for the entire count. ***½
June 8, 1988 – Omiya, Saitama
Judy Martin & Leilani Kai def. Itsuki Yamazaki & Noriyo Tateno {WWF World Women’s Tag Team Championship Match}
From an AJW TV, we get the final match for these title belts. The Angels spent their title reign defending only against Martin & Kai. This one was a lot more clumsy and chaotic than their matches in North America. It broke down into brawling quite a bit, and not a kind of brawling that was easy to sync up with. At one point, a masked gang I’m not familiar with helped the Glamour Girls attack the JBA. Everyone brawled on the floor until the bell rang at 10:29 (shown of 19:04). It turned out that Kai had gotten back into the ring in time and won the titles back by count out. A lame finish on the worst match in the series (that I’ve seen). The Glamour Girls never defended the titles, and the belts quietly became defunct a few months later. **¼
December 10, 1984 – Yamato, Kanagawa
Devil Masami & Jaguar Yokota defeat Itsuki Yamazaki & Noriyo Tateno
From AJW TV. This is one of the earliest JBA matches I could find, but it also came heavily recommended by Reddit. Take that for what it’s worth to you. The amount that these four women fit into under ten minutes of wrestling was insane. I was ten months old when this match happened, and I wouldn’t see anything like it in wrestling until after I’d graduated high school. Masami’s press slams were crazy impressive, as was the tenacity and speed the Angels showed throughout. At the end of the match, Masami & Yokota beat the Angels at their own game, using tandem offense to disorient the youngsters and pin them with stereo German suplexes at 8:57. ***¾
January 9, 1986 – Nagoya, Aichi
Itsuki Yamazaki & Noriyo Tateno def. Bull Nakano & Dump Matsumoto {WWWA Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
From AJW Classics 10. The Jumping Bomb Angels had just won the vacant tag titles a few days earlier. This isn’t the match that Cagematch has listed as the JBA’s best match, but it’s the same four ladies and while that match seems to have been wiped off the internet entirely, this was pretty easy to find. In August of ‘85, the Villainous Alliance beat the Angels in a 2/3 falls match (that was supposedly awesome), so the odds were stacked against the champs. After two minutes, the baddies lose the first fall by disqualification for blatantly using foreign objects to bloody the Angels. Two minutes later, Matsumoto won the second fall with a tiger driver on Yamazaki. Yamazaki’s leg somehow got injured during the scuffles, and now she appears to be dead in the water. The rest of the match is like watching a little horror movie. Tateno tries and fails to make a comeback, so a furious Yamazaki does it instead. But just as she starts gaining the advantage over Nakano, Matsumoto and the rest of the Villainous Alliance swarm the ring and attack with plunder. Nakano tries to hit the Angels with nunchucks, but the Angels get a hold of them. The tide has turned by now, and Yamazaki manages a German suplex on Nakano for the win at 12:38. This told a hell of a story, even if it wasn’t the best showcase of the Angel’s athletic ability. ***½
Yamazaki retired in 1991, while Tateno went on to work for LLPW. Tateno never reached the same heights as a singles wrestler as she did alongside Yamazaki. We’ll be seeing more of them later in the series as they had a much loved rivalry against the Crush Gals.