Classic Match: Glamour Girls vs. Jumping Bomb Angels, Royal Rumble 1988
RondaRousey.com’s Classic Match series takes a closer look at significant and super cool matches from wrestling history.
The Royal Rumble match has been a major part of WWE’s identity for more than 30 years, but for much of that time, women’s wrestling hasn’t been a part of it. While a massive amount of progress has been made in recent years—culminating in 2018’s first-ever women’s Royal Rumble match—the majority of past Rumble events featured no women on the card at all.
Yet while women’s wrestling hasn’t been a consistent presence at the Royal Rumble, it was there right at the beginning. The inaugural Royal Rumble event in 1988—which took place on January 24 at the Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario—featured a two-out-of-three falls match for the WWF Women’s Tag Team Championship, between villainous champions The Glamour Girls (Judy Martin and Leilani Kai, accompanied by legendary manager Jimmy Hart) and spirited challengers Jumping Bomb Angels (Noriyo Tateno &
The match was very ahead of its time, from the confidence in giving the performers more than 15 minutes to shine, to the Jumping Bomb Angels living up to their name with a variety of high-flying moves; in a time and place where such a thing was a rarity, regardless of gender. (And yep, it was for the Women’s Tag Team Championship—while a new iteration will debut next month at Elimination Chamber, these titles existed between 1983 to 1989.)
The Jumping Bomb Angels—who impressed two months earlier in a 10-women tag team elimination match at Survivor Series 1987—started things off characteristically explosively with a synchronized double dropkick to their two opponents. The two teams traded advantages in the early going, with Martin notching a body slam, and Yamazaki scoring with a unique suplex from piledriver position. The Jumping Bomb Angels continued to show off their signature coordinated offense, including simultaneous figure-four leg locks, and Yamazaki hitting a leg drop (twice!) onto Kai’s shins. But The Glamour Girls proved to be cagey champs and outlasted the Jumping Bomb Angels, with Martin hitting a reverse powerbomb to win—the first fall, at least.
It should be noted that while the in-ring performance in this match was ahead of its time, the presentation wasn’t—neither of the commentators, Vince McMahon or Jesse Ventura, were able to name either of the Jumping Bomb Angels for the first part of the match, and only referred to them by the dominant color of their respective tights. By the second fall, they thankfully started calling them by their names.
The Glamour Girls sought to keep rolling into the second fall by initially dominating their opponents—before Tateno reversed the momentum with a dropkick, jumping clothesline, and a flying clothesline from off the middle rope. The Angels continued with a double-team suplex, and ended the second fall quickly with Yamazaki reversing Martin’s finisher (the one she just used to win the first fall; hubris proving to be her downfall) into a pinfall, tying the match at 1-1.
The Jumping Bomb Angels entered into the deciding fall with more double-team moves, starting with two-for-one shoulder tackles and clotheslines. Yamazaki pulled off a textbook enziguri; a commonplace move these days, but one the announce team didn’t yet have the vocabulary for. The Glamour Girls soon took back over with comparatively brutal moves like a slingshot into the corner from Martin, and an underhook suplex by Kai. The champs maintained their vicious streak with some good
Their teamwork proved to be too much, including a combination body slam from Yamazaki/top rope knee drop by Tateno, who soon after showed off her technical side with an excellently executed underhook suplex with a bridge. Ultimately, while Kai was misguidedly arguing with the referee, both Jumping Bomb Angels scaled the top rope and hit flying dropkicks on Martin—technically illegal—for the victory, and the Tag Team Championship. Ventura wasn’t happy about it (“that was an illegal double team!”), but the crowd was.
While the WWF Women’s Tag Team Championship dissolved just about a year later, and both teams similarly faded from the WWF landscape, the two out of three falls match at Royal Rumble 1988 stands as an important part of wrestling history, showing that women have been capable of outshining the dudes for decades. And the legacy remains, with new women’s tag team champions on the way, and three major women’s matches at this year’s Royal Rumble.
You can go back and revisit this match (and the entirety of the Royal Rumble 1988) on the WWE Network.