The Crush Gals Meet the Moment. AJW Does Not

Oh my God, they both come out to “Rolling Sabot.” 

I have spent more time than I care to admit thinking about the form and function of the “wrestling entrance,” the blitz of sight and sound preceding the match, the action that is the closest wrestling comes to actual choreography. There aren’t many like this, in which both of the Crush Gals — Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka — enter the ring to fight each other and do so not only to the same song, but to the same overwhelming outpouring of love from the audience they have become idols to. Chanting “CHIG-US-A!” and “AS-U-KA!” perfectly in synch with the movement of their official Crush Gals flashlights. Kawasaki, Japan — the whole of Japan — love these women in a way few wrestlers have ever been loved, but neither of them can feel it. 

Chigusa Nagayo looks like she’s going to throw up. Lioness Asuka never looks up as she makes her way to the ring. Showered in the streamers, both women look like they’re dissociating, their solemnity jarring against the backdrop of the crowd’s adulation for them. “The Crush Gals phenomenon in Japan was similar to Hulkamania in the United States” has become easy shorthand for people whose sense of women’s wrestling history extends beyond the last 10 years of WWE’s presentation of it, like “there was an all-women’s show that ran the Tokyo Dome,” but I’m gonna tell you this right now: the Crush Gals phenomenon was not “like” Hulkamania or anything else — nothing sounds or feels like the opening moments of this match, and I imagine there aren’t many matches whose consideration of the bonds of sisterhood are as complex, shy of others featuring this pair.

Sisterhood is what the fans of All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling are responding to, the bond between Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo that links them, forever, in the history of the great sport of professional wrestling. Away from the public, however, the bonds of sisterhood are an entirely different matter. Training, travelling, wrestling, singing, and growing together and apart as people over the course of their time together, the life these two women have shared is, if not exactly ending, changing forever tonight. Neither of them gives the other an inch. There isn’t a person in the arena whose heart isn’t ablaze. If a tag team doesn’t end like this, in a match where it feels as if nothing less than the souls of both partners are on the line, did that tag team really matter?

In too many matches between tag team partners, the idea is that the two of them know each other move for move, hold for hold, resulting in a kind of impotent exchange of counters and near misses. There is also usually a common theme: jealousy, which means the resulting match is usually accompanied by a heel turn: think of Shawn kicking Marty through the barbershop window, or, in the post-Rocker’s US understanding of tag team wrestling, the team’s Marty desperately trying to prove that they were actually the Shawn all along. It’s bad, predictable stuff, the kind of story you get when tag team wrestling’s main function is building singles stars. By the end of their run together, both Crush Gals were stars, though Lioness Asuka was positioned as the star — if Chigusa Nagayo wasn’t exactly in her shadow, she was decidedly chasing her partner, catching up to her in terms of skill and poise.

That’s the story they tell here. There’s nothing petty about their dissolution, no jealous backstabbing in the offing. It’s two women determined to win, two women who, if they’re going to lose, will go down knowing the other earned it. They fall into their roles, Asuka the more talented of the two, Nagayo wrestling from underneath, both of them working a gritty, hard-nosed style, all stiff strikes and gnarly submissions, nothing mean, everything earned. The way both women work to lock in submissions, grinding forearms against cheekbones, wrenching on joints, limiting airflow by covering a mouth or nose with a stretched-out limb, is excellent, as is the way Asuka is always a half-step ahead of Nagayo — in the lead, but in danger. When she has it, she presses the advantage as hard as she can — it’s too early in the match to tease towards a conclusion, but there’s real drama in the sequence where she hits Chig with a shinbreaker, holds the leg, reels Nagayo back in, and locks her in a knee bar. When Nagayo reaches the ropes, Asuka goes for her giant swing, but Nagayo only goes a quarter of a rotation before she clutches the next rope — she does this because she knows her partner, sure, but less than knowing this is one of her patented moves, she knows when Asuka is locked in and needs to do anything she can to stop it, even if it isn’t brave or flashy. 

Everything about this match is a fucking struggle — watch Asuka throw everything she has into not turning over for a sharpshooter or finding herself in a full nelson, how quickly both transition from slams and suplexes and pins, how Asuka bridges out while Nagayo resorts to more traditional kickouts, how Asuka locks in the sharpshooter and forces Nagayo into the ropes again. It’s physical storytelling at its finest, the rare match that rises to the clear, historic importance it was meant to have without feeling like a concerted effort to have the greatest wrestling match of all time. Like, it’s a big deal when Asuka eventually has to kick out of a tombstone without bridging out, as if Nagayo suddenly is surging past her, reaffirmed when she hits a spinning wheel kick off the top rope. Reminded of her former partner’s kicking power, Asuka immediately seizes back control with a figure four leg lock, which Nagayo fights to block before grabbing the rope again. Whipped into the ropes a minute later, Nagayo tries to avoid a back body drop with a leap frog, lands on her leg, and falls. Asuka, for her part, kicks her in the fucking head. THIS IS WRESTLING. 

If I have any qualms about this match, it’s that it should have ended in a draw, that the story here was that two women refused to die, and in so doing Nagayo proved that she was Asuka’s equal while Asuka maybe had a seed of doubt planted as to her standing as the heir apparent to the Red Belt. You can go a lot of places with that, especially with the bell ringing as Asuka found herself trapped in a small package, but instead we get an overtime period, there must be a winner. Rather than a Rocky story, we’re working with a similar framework as the Hart/Michaels iron man match from WrestleMania XII, a wrestling that is afraid of living with the unknown. The bombs are less devastating, the misses not as consequential, the exchange of near-falls far less heated.

Then the overtime period ends before the referee can count to three or Nagayo can kick out of the suplex she’s stacked up in. Once again, officials deliberate as to what to do despite there being 100 years of clear, sacrosanct rules. This is a draw. That couldn’t be more clear if the sky parted and God declared so himself. But God doesn’t book AJW, men do, and men are cowards, so they just award the match to Asuka. The molten heat that’s existed for 40 minutes dissipates quickly, everyone goes home a little less than satisfied, and wrestling, as it does too often, shows itself once again as a coward’s medium. The Crush Gals were at their best here. They deserved better than what they got.

Rating: **** & 1/4