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ARSION HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING
TOURNAMENT ARS '98 Commercial Tape 5/5/98 Kanagawa Kawasaki Shi Taiikukan (2,850/1,900) |
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ARSION is easily my favorite promotion right now. With the exception of this one, every commercial tape they have put out that wasn't clip city is very good and certainly worth getting, with the exception of this one. That's not to say this is a bad tape because it was a pretty good tape that was better than any US PPV or edition of RAW, Heat, Nitro, or Thunder from 1998. However, just about every match on this tape was disappointing. The two main problems were that they experimented too much and that the show was too great a departure from the style they had established in the first three months. Having to work more than one singles match in a night also didn't help, and there was also some bad luck involving Yumi Fukawa and to a lesser extent Rie Tamada. In any case, on paper this looked like it would be the best ARSION show up to this point in time, but it really fell flat. The important thing about this tournament is it proved that, unlike the other women's promotions, ARSION was committed to creating new stars. How many promotions do you know of that have two of the top three natives lose in the first round and the remaining one lose in the second round? The new star the tournament created was Candy Okutsu, who had never been taken seriously as a world title contender because she was "too small." They knew what they were doing having Candy win this tournament rather than ZION because it gave them nearly four extra months to push her as a top flight star. Candy winning this tournament also showed the unpredictable nature of ARSION. Even on the smallest shows, there always seems to be at least one interesting result. |
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