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Hikari Fukuoka Intai Jiai: Hikari Fukuoka & Candy Okutsu (ARSION) & Hiromi Yagi (Free) vs. Azumi Hyuga & Carlos Amano & Command Bolshoi From Battle Station JWP 4/14/99 Taped 3/28 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (2,000) |
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The match was pretty much what you would expect it to be. The focus was on Hikari since she was retiring, and it had good work and spots, but little direction or focus. It wasn't intense because it was supposed to be fun with the Hiichans reuniting. Well, either that or whatever lame excuse this promotion must always have for not having any hatred or semblance of stories. Anyway, they didn't clown around, but it was lighthearted at times. I can live with the comedy, but it's kind of unprofessional when the wrestlers themselves are laughing. The Hiichans worked well as a unit, including a triple diving headbutt and some consecutive flying moves. Hikari was in the mood to do some submissions, so she worked well with Amano. Of course, with Hikari, Azumi, and Candy involved, the match had a lot of flying. They gave Hikari a hard time the whole day. At one point even her teammates kind of turned on her, as they were whipped into the corner that she was in so they decided to crash into her with an offensive maneuver. Tsubasa Kuragaki actually came in to make the save after this because it wasn't fair for Hikari to get pinned in her final match due to her own teammates helping gang up on her. The match just kind of went along without any purpose other than trying to be "entertaining" for 30 minutes. Well, it was entertaining, but it's annoying when every match has the same problems and even bringing Candy & Yagi in can't get the work back up to the level where they can have very good matches even though they are mindless. Anyway, there wasn't much of any crowd response to the end, and at that point they had probably figured out they were going the distance so that didn't help any. After the match, Hikari extended her hand to Kansai, but Kansai lariated her rather than shake. This gave everyone carte blanch to take their last shot at Hikari. Devil used her Ligerbomb on Hikari. Yu-Yu gave Hikari her airplane spin into blockbuster, and Kana followed with her senton. Yagi used her ipponzeoi on Hikari. Finally, Devil and Kansai tried a double diving footstomp, but Hikari had enough sense to avoid all that weight coming down on her. Devil & Dynamite pulled Hikari up, and Devil patted Hikari on the head, so Hikari smiled. Now that everyone was done beating on poor Hikari, the Hiichans made their final pose. No retired wrestlers or wrestlers from other leagues that didn't wrestle on this show were shown giving Hikari a flower, so either nobody showed up for her or they weren't shown on TV. Hikari got revenge on Devil by giving her a lariat when she came into the ring to give Hikari her going away flower, but it wasn't the same because Devil told her to do it. They closed things out by dropping Hikari during the ceremonial group toss. I thought ARSION did a much better job of making Hikari's final match special because they were more creative and it seemed more emotional and sincere. This came off more as them just doing things because it was a retirement match and they didn't have any other ideas. 30:00
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