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ARSION HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING
CARNIVAL ARSION '98 Commercial Tape 12/18/98 Kanagawa Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan (1,650) |
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This was ARSION's biggest show to date. They tried to do something different here, using legitimate matches to draw. Unfortunately, this show once again drew miserably, as the building appeared to be about 1/4 full. The idea of drawing with the shoot matches wasn't a total failure because the crowd was more a Yoshida martial arts crowd than a pro wrestling crowd. The problem is that this show was designed to get those people to come in addition to the pro wrestling fans, not instead of the pro wrestling fans. Beyond that, the pro wrestling matches failed to accentuate the submission style the group implemented in their earliest shows, so it was kind of like they alienated the pro wrestling crowd by having shoot matches and bored the martial arts crowed with AJW style worked pro wrestling matches. To me, the show needed to done so the works would bring the pro wrestling crowd and martial arts crowd together. That's what they style they were doing initially was trying to do, as it wasn't a worked shoot, but there was enough of the shooting aspect for the casual martial arts fan to still enjoy it. For whatever reason, the show when they had their best opportunity to make progress in this regard was the show where it was noticeable how much they were going away from it. This was a mistake because they didn't give the new martial arts audience any reason to attend the shows that didn't have shoots, which is basically every show since this one. Instead, in the aftermath they basically dropped the martial arts stuff all together, allowing even the shoot style work that differentiated them to be scrapped in favor of pro style work and spots matches that made them the same as everyone else. Eventually they separated the more Lucha oriented spot wrestlers into a SKY division, but aside from Yoshida and Fukawa, no one continued to adhere that strongly to the submission oriented style. The introduction of Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita broke down the separate divisions based on technical style and lead to the tired old heel, face, tweener gang structure that if they aren't still doing it now, seemingly every wrestling league has done before. There's a time to make quick changes, but it's generally not when you are trying to get something new and different to catch on. It's not that ARSION hasn't had good ideas, it's that they either didn't realize they were good ideas and find a way to see them through or that they weren't fully committed to them so they wound up hedging along the way and then pulling the plug the at the first sign of trouble. We don't know if Candy could have drawn because she got one shot, failed, and then they quickly took away all she gained from the only big push of her career. We don't know if Yoshida could have drawn because the title didn't have credibility due to their only credible wrestler, Aja Kong, really having no interest in it until it was too late. Aja didn't need to be the champ, but she needed to control her ego long enough to put Yoshida over on the way to Yoshida getting the title, for instance the final of ZION '98 could have worked if she wasn't going to take Candy's place on this show, or in Yoshida's first or second defense. Instead, they had Yoshida wrestling one wrestler after another that had never got a shot at any top title and that hadn't received the big wins they needed before the title shot to get over that. Then they were wondering why their belt didn't mean anything at the gate and why Yoshida wasn't seen as being on the same level as the other women's champions (except Hikari and Azumi because they also had no credibility). As much as it's a become guarantee that what they do won't work toward getting people to attend the shows, it's also a guarantee that they'll have the best shows in women's wrestling when it comes to match quality. The pro wrestling matches on this show were very good to excellent, highlighted by the main event being the best ARSION match up to this point in time. They didn't have much heat because pro wrestling wasn't what these fans came to see, making it the worst possible time to go away from the submission oriented matches, but it was the most diverse quality they had been able to show. The main event wasn't just a Yoshida match, it brought together the higher energy more acrobatic style of Candy with the good worked RINGS style of Yoshida. The Lucha match actually seemed good for the first time, providing an early high spot fix. The tag title match was a classic AJW work and spots match that Rie wasn't able to screw up, but wasn't totally one dimensional because Yagi & Fukawa did some choice submissions wrestling. Aside from a killer kickboxing match, the shoot matches were lackluster, and that may have been the reason they also didn't have much heat. I assume it would be pretty hard for anything to seem heated when the building was this vacant, but with the quality of most of the shoots, it's hard to imagine they would have got a lot of reaction even if the house was actually full. |
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