![]() Sakie’s in her usual singlet style, this one being tie-dyed. Ito continues her “Hideous Gear” reputation with a one-shouldered baggy toga thing. * ROOKIEMANIA CONTINUES!!! Okay, so AJW’s team are the “These are the girls who are going to be pushed in the future” pair, and both have put up solid showings against mid-level competition. SAKIE HASEGAWA & KAORU ITO (AJW) vs YASHA KURENAI & MIKI HANDA (LLPW): WrestlingData more or less confirms that, with a single bout in August 1995 being the end of her run: Yasha Kurenai & Mizuki Endo beat Michiko Nagashima & Miki.īutterfly Suplex, Plancha, Flying Back Elbowdrop, German Suplex (seems to be a borderline finisher/spammed move), all her other stuff is kind of “Standard Joshi Offense” Most sites I can find indicate her career ended in 2005, but given how all her matches seem to dry up around 1995, I think that’s when she was done. ![]() She still is in that “win some/lose some” area. That and a squash loss to Aja Kong are honest to god the only singles matches by Handa I can even find on YouTube! If that’s not the indication that she’s a minor-level star that isn’t focused on, I don’t know what is. In 1994, she starts beating some minor LLPW stars (Midori, Omukai, Utako Hozumi, Mizuki Endo), and even wrestles Mima Shimoda in a pretty great match (***1/2) for the AJW Title, which she loses despite some German Suplex-based hope spots. Near as I can tell, they only defended the belts once, against Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe. They would hold the belts nearly a year (295 days), dropping them to Carol Midori & Michiko Omukai, also LLPW wrestlers, in Sept. In mid-1993, she won her only belt ever- the Japanese Tag Team Titles of rival AJW, teaming with Yasha Kurenai to defeat Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito. That September, Handa & Harley team up to lose to Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada in a pretty one-sided match. They win this match, but lose on next week’s show to Terri Powers & Bat Yoshinaga. I remember little of her in the bout, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as all I remember of Kazama here was her repeatedly botching moves because she was so much shorter than her 5’8″ opponents. She is part of a LLPW team that loses to AJW’s Las Cachorras Orientales in the early part of the Interpromotional Era, too.Īt the Dream Slam show, she wrestles in one of her best matches ever, teaming with Rumi Kazama against Etsuko Mita & Suzuka Minami- a “filler” entrant into a **** tag team match. The only time she wins a solo match according to CageMatch is against Mima Shimoda. For example, 1993 has her losing to Shinobu Kandori, Harley Saito & Eagle Sawai of LLPW, and Aja Kong of AJW. I find that she’s often in “filler” matches- either as part of a tag team match with random opponents, or as the LLPW equivalent of a Jobber To The Stars. Handa debuted for the original Joshi Women’s Pro Wrestling in 1987, splitting off with LLPW circa 1992. Which makes me wonder what on Earth was holding Miki back from becoming a bigger name! Which is kind of shocking, as I realize from some pictures that she looks almost exactly like Cutie Suzuki, who was a major star and an Idol Wrestler. Handa was mostly part of LLPW, but was a midcard star there, often getting trotted out as a “filler” wrestler on most shows I’ve seen. The whole time Miki Endo, still inside the town hall, stayed at her post telling the towns people to get to higher ground, telling them they must go higher.Her move application was very solid, her selling was fine, and she had no issue going up for anyone’s moves- effectively the perfect wrestler to be carried, even if her own offense was pretty plain (her one big move seems to be a German Suplex, one of the most universal parts of Joshi offense). The roof was still not tall enough, and most lost their lives, the survivors said they held on to exposed pylons for dear life. ![]() Workers in the building rushed to the roof when they realized the tsunami was taller than the top floor. The 3 story steel I-beam framed town hall is nothing but a skeleton now. I had a link to the original NHK report but apparently it’s been removed from the internet. Here’s a Spanish language news report that has the haunting NHK video. ![]() One woman said if it wasn’t for Miki’s announcements she would not have realized the severity of the situation, and would have returned home instead of seeking higher ground. Miki Endo told residents to get to higher ground, over and over, with an intensity that caused some residents to think twice about going back home. In video from NHK you can hear the woman’s voice echoing through the city (it’s truly haunting when you realize what is going on) even as the tsunami sweeps over all the buildings, including the 3 story town hall. In one north eastern Honshu coastal town, a city employee manned the emergency loudspeaker system, right up to the very end. ![]()
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