ARSION HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING CARNIVAL ARSION '99 12/11/99 Puroresu Pro-Wrestling Match Review

ARSION HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING CARNIVAL ARSION '99
Commercial Tape 12/11/99 Kanagawa Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan (3,600)

ARSION Premium Single VIRGIN '99:
Candy Okutsu vs. Yumi Fukawa

This was the opening match because they opened the first ever ARSION show. It might have been a good match live, but they hacked it down to nothing. I really didn't like the editing on this tape because they'd waste tape with the introductions and the first 30 seconds of the match where nothing happens then try to fit all the good stuff into a couple of minutes.

Fukawa did her moonsault for probably the first time in a year and a half, but Candy avoided it. The finish where Candy tried her Tiger suplex, but Fukawa turned it into a hizajujigatame was great. Not only was it so smooth and beautifully done, but it put over the danger of Yumi's submissions and Candy wasn't hurt by losing in this manner because she was "about to win" before she caught an unlucky break.

11:09 (2:25 shown)

Everyone other than Rie has potential, but at this point they were all rough around the edges. They did nice spots, but the setup was pretty weak and the work wasn't clean or smooth. It was cool that Tamada was the first one eliminated, getting pinned in Mari's la magistral. This gave the floor to the people that have a chance to get over. The problem was that it was pretty much one pin after another, with the pin of Rie coming at 10:03 of a 12:00 match. Starr scored a pin on Mari with a sloppy ultra huracanrana. This would have been surprising if not for the fact that ARSION never has a team to lose without taking somebody with them. Fujita proceeded to win the match with her cool firebird splash. Mari & Linda have improved by leaps and bounds in 2000, but at this point their Lucha matches were still mediocre at best. In spite of their improvement, the only wrestler in this match that got "big" matches in 2000 was Rie.

12:00 (3:15 shown)

SKY HIGH OF ARSION TITLE MATCH:
Chaparrita ASARI vs. Hiromi Yagi

Yagi was in top form here, and her top form is hard to top. As you'd expect with ASARI involved, it was a fast-paced all action match. The difference was Yagi makes the spots look great. Everything was so smooth. The sequences, counters, transitions, and bumps were all top notch. They did all their big moves back and forth, but what was cool is that Yagi did flying since that is ASARI's strength and ASARI did submissions since that is Yagi's strength. Overall, it was a lot more toward ASARI's style, but it was like Yagi was showing her how to do this kind of match right. The setup of the spots were so much better than you see in the rest of ASARI's matches.

My favorite spot was Yagi countering ASARI's londart kick by catching her ankle in midair and going into an urakiresukengatame (reverse Achilles' tendon hold unless you ask WWF announcers, who think it's an ankle lock). Some other highlights were Yagi doing a moonsault attack off the second, which I've never seen her do before, and Yagi rolling through and going into a hizajujigatame after ASARI gave her a nadare shiki no Frankensteiner.

The finish was good because ASARI was finally ready for another one of Yagi's jumping takedowns. She caught Yagi in her Michinoku driver II and followed with her skytwister press and another Michinoku driver II for the win.

This was a damn good match. The only bad thing I have to say is the fuckers only showed 1/3 of the match. ARGH! I'm sick of them taking the meat cleaver to all this cool stuff for no good reason. Buy some T-160's already...

This was disgraceful Unentertaining Non-sport crap where they stooped to teases of sexual abuse and molestation. There was eventually some good wrestling, but after the stalling, posing, and all the nonsense involving private parts, who could take it seriously? It's too depressing to go on about this match. Someone else can get into what Fuji might be doing with his head in between an attractive woman's legs if they want...

Gabe: I usually don't mind comedy matches, but this was pretty embarrassing. It took forever for the match to get started, and even then it wasn't too great. This is the kind of thing that one would expect from America's "sports entertainment," but not from these four.