Joseph and Colette Discuss Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka
PLUS: It's October, so BIG EGG is doing horror stuff. Blood, skeletons, and Leatherfaces!
This week, Joseph and I called an audible, hot-swapping a Triple H/Undertaker Hell in a Cell match that would have been okay at best (I'm being generous here, as I either haven't seen or flat out forgot every aspect of it and mostly picked it so I could riff on how the End of an Era match was a celebration of two of said era's least consequential main eventers with a guest appearance from a dude for whom those years are a hazy and overcomplicated couple of months followed by hundreds of blank pages) with the molten hot heat of Crush Gal on Crush Gal violence — a decided upgrade, even if my mood, personally, was soured somewhat by the finish.
Was the same true for Joseph? Not quite! So while we gave this one the same star rating and were pretty close to each other on where this fell on the BIG EGG MASTERLIST for the first time in forever, our approaches to it were, as per usual, pretty different. I also ask Joseph what he means by "problem/solution grappling" and find out to my dismay that it's a term he coined on this blog eons ago. A fun wrap on Rematch Month!
Colette Arrand
Up Next: October, baby! Everyone does horror content this month because of Halloween, and as we're no better than "everyone," we're doing our own spin on horror month, featuring a bloodbath, a spooky skeleton, a WCW Halloween Havoc classic, and Terry Funk battling Leatherface in a steel by god cage. We're kicking it off with our first visit to Puerto Rico for the infamous fire match between Carlos Colon and Hercules Ayala. BLOOD! FIRE! HALLOWEEN!
Joseph Montecillo
This match between the famous Crush Gals is such a fascinating one, because in it's probably their most famous match together. It's also their match together that's most indicative of the style these two women worked at their peak in the mid to late 80s: heavily influenced by the budding shoot style at the time. But at the same time, there's still a rawness of youth here that they had yet to work out. For many, this is probably the definitive Crush Gals match together. How do you feel this adds to their overall legacies or at least your understanding of them as workers?
Joseph Montecillo
Colette Arrand
For me, it's the rawness that stands out, particularly on Chigusa's part, though some of that is likely informed by the (incredible, in my opinion) Netflix series Queen of Villains as opposed to anything that's actually there in the ring. Rawness is one of the things that draws me to joshi, I guess, though I mean "rawness of emotion," and in in that sense this is the two of them at a frenzied peak. They don't hate each other, but their friendship has fallen to the wayside due to the nature of competitive athletics, and were it not for rules and time limits you get the sense that they would fight forever, if they could, or die trying. I can see why this is the peak encounter for a lot of folks, as there's an in-built romance to that narrative, and it's a great match. Ignoring the finish, I can't think of many tag teams whose conclusion was half as poignant.
Colette Arrand