Bionic J vs. Kaori Yoneyama 8:12
Tiger Honey vs. Kayoko Haruyama 9:51
Harley Saito vs. GAMI 13:19
Takako Inoue & Rie Tamada vs. Lioness Asuka & Reina Takase 12:55
Michiko Omukai & Mariko Yoshida vs. AKINO & Ai Fujita 21:30
Atsuko Emoto Debutsen: Atsuko Emoto vs. Bionic J. 4:41
Hiromi Yagi vs. Rena Takase. 3:16 of 11:20
Chaparrita ASARI vs. baby A. 2:30 of 9:49
ARSION Serious Fighting: Mariko Yoshida vs. Megumi Yabushita. 10:23 of 15:00
TWINSTAR OF ARSION Title Match: Rie Tamada & Takako Inoue vs. AKINO & Ai Fujita. 15:42
Michiko Omukai & GAMI vs. Lioness Asuka & Mima Shimoda. 23:37
Rie Tamada vs. Atsuko Emoto
Zen Nihon Junior Title Match: Rena Takase vs. Yumi Oka
Chaparrita ASARI & baby A vs. GAMI & Bionic J
Mariko Yoshida & Ai Fujita & AKINO vs. Lioness Asuka & Mima Shimoda & Takako Inoue
Rena Takase & Atsuko Emoto vs. Akino & Yukari Kitao 11:35
Karura vs. Baby A 3:55 of 8:47
7 Way Scramble For The Title: Mariko Yoshida vs. Rie Tamada vs. Mima Shimoda vs. Bionic J vs. Takako Inoue vs. Lioness Aska vs. GAMI 9:48
WWWA Super Lightweight Title Match: Ai Fujita vs. Chaparrita ASARI 17:13
Queen of ARSION Title Match: Mariko Yoshida vs. Rie Tamada 18:07
Yukari Kitao vs. Atsuko Emoto 10:54
3 Way Dance: Kaori Yoneyama vs. Rena Takase vs. GAMI 14:40
Azumi Hyuga & Command Bolshoi vs. Rie Tamada & Baby*A 14:37
SKY HIGH OF ARSION Title Match: AKINO vs. Ai Fujita 20:18
THE ARTIST ONE FINARY 5min 3R: Mariko Yoshida vs. Megumi Fujii 3R 3:30. What made ARSION an excellent and groundbreaking promotion in their first 2 years is Mariko Yoshida got most of the wrestlers to adapt to the changes in combat sports & modernize pro wrestling into something more MMA oriented. They all trained with Pancrase fighters & assorted martial artists, picked up the basics & some things beyond, but outside of judoka Hiromi Yagi, who Yoshida had her best match with, none of Yoshida's opponents came from a legitimate combat sports background. Long before 2003, ARSION had completely homogenized into something largely indiscernable from any other joshi league, shedding the identity that originally made them unique in favor of trying to please everyone by doing every style decently, but rarely any of them all that well. Yoshida had lost influence, & was about as likely to find herself involved in some match where Lioness Asuka was using a table as she was to have the opportunity to deliver what had what had become known as a Yoshida match. Here, on the league's penultimate TV show, we finally got to see what Yoshida could do with a real mixed martial artist, and it's otherworldly, the best women's grappling oriented match we've ever seen. Yoshida carried her student AKINO to one of the best debuts ever on 7/21/98, but Yoshida was not at all the story in this match, and although she facilites the pro wrestling aspects, which frankly are the least useful and successful aspects of the contest, dragging Fujii through a few locks or throws with no real world application, the match is more about her trying to keep up with this then "unknown" lightning fast grappler. Maybe it should be obvious that Fujii is the story given what an unreal competitor she was in judo, sambo, BJJ, ADCC, MMA, anything and everything she tried. Fujii had excellent but not off the charts results in judo, which her father began teaching her at 3, finishing in the top 8 in the All Japan Student Championships at 52kg 3 years in a row during high school, but seemingly it wasn't until she started sambo at 23 after graduating college that everything really began to click, winning the All Japan Championship every year from 1998-2005, with 4 silver medals in the Worlds. At the same time, she also won the All Japan Championships in BJJ in 2002 & 2003, and the Pan American Championships in 2004 & 2006 after starting her MMA career in 2004, where she won 22 consecutive fights, generally against larger women, before her first "loss" came at the age of 36 when Bellator screwed her out of a decision against Zoila Frausto Gurgel on 10/28/10. While Fujii would be the female MMA goat when she retired from the sport, and even arguably more credentialled modern ground fighters such as Mackenzie Dern have not been able to show the same grappling wizardry in MMA as the "Queen of the Seconds Kill", at this point she wasn't known outside of the amateur ranks in sports that don't get a lot of press, while Yoshida was peerless in this MMA oriented style match. Anyone assuming this would be a master vs. a debuting student who hasn't put the usual amount of time into pro wrestling training because it was just a fun side project was in for quite the shock, as Yoshida had so much respect for the skills of Fujii that she actually let her lead the majority of the match. Yoshida had befriended Fujii at the AACC dojo, & eventually got her to give pro wrestling a try. This wound up not only being the greatest pro wrestling debut ever, but the best fight of the female grappling genre, and having recently gone through all the male shootfight stuff from 1991-93, this is better than anything even the all time greats of the genre Kiyoshi Tamura and Volk Han were doing in that era, with really only the best Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda matches feeling like competition, due to sharing the all out attacking nature. Puroresu organizations getting known, credentialed athletes from other combat sports to moonlight jobbing for their far lesser credentialed stars has been a huge part of validating the superiority of pro wrestling, but the matches themselves were almost never any good whether it was Antonio Inoki, who obviously couldn't be carried if he was the only one who actually knew what he was doing or Shinya Hashimoto, whose matches always seemed way more credible & dramatic when he fought a faker who understood how to tell the story rather than a real fighter who didn't understand how to fake it. Sure, there were exceptions such as Antonio Inoki vs. Willy Williams since Williams was such an extraordinary athlete in his heyday, or Akira Maeda vs. Don Nakaya Nielsen, but they were few & far between the plethora of punch pulling groanfests where the real fighter generally looked worse than the wrestler even at their own strengths because they just didn't know how to work beyond easing up so much it was laughable. This match is in strict contrast to the historic pro wrestler vs real fighter match had been historically, not only for being a classic, but also because it was more a showcase for the outsider. It definitely made a difference over the typical wrestler vs kickboxer debacle that grappling is a lot easier to do credibly than striking since it's less noticable when someone isn't cranking and torquing optimally than when they are hitting air, but the difference here was that Yoshida didn't make this about her getting over, instead challenging herself to go with Fujii's great grappling. In the realistic style match that they did, Fujii already knew most of what she needed to know. Sure, she had to learn to take some bumps here & work out escapes to some unusual positions, but mostly she did things she'd learned long ago elsewhere. What's so astonishing is she was able to do all her chain grappling with such speed & confidence despite Yoshida's reactions being different than the usual opponent who wasn't cooperating. Her ability to go all out showed a great deal of trust in Yoshida's ability, and respect for her skill. And she did it flawlessly, with the few issues coming when Yoshida couldn't quite keep up with the pace they desired. In the end, this was like nothing you've ever seen, before or really even since, even involving the men, though Hideo Tokoro would be the closest equivalent, except Fujii was able to win real fights doing Volk Han things that Tokoro was usually only able to succeed in entertaining with. The pace of this match was fantastic. They just went all out, almost nonstop (Fujii escaped to the floor late in the 2nd) like an MMA match, doing 5 more cool things in the time other wrestlers would have spent posing, laying around, or aimlessly walking in circles. Fujii's quickness, athleticism, and explosiveness was much more striking here than it probably ever was in an MMA match, and she really just hit it out of the park in all aspects to the point the only possible argument against her as rookie of the year is she didn't continue wrestling. Fujii really outshined Yoshida in this match in literally every way, and if pro wrestling wasn't merely a brief hobby she dabbled into during her quest to master all the real grappling arts, I'm confident she would have been the GOAT in that too. Her movement, entries, traps, and crazy athletic attacks were just a thing of beauty. Fujii never stopped launching attacks or diversions on the mat, sometimes seeming to be setting up two techniques at once, and just taking the one that seemed most available. Yoshida really upped her game here, doing a great job working a lot faster than she ever had before to keep up with Fujii. She has always lead, and never had to react so quickly in response, adjust to so many different attacks and threats. Sometimes Yoshida was able to use her size advantage to throw Fujii around or rough her up, but usually Fujii was just so quick, she had another takedown or submission attempt before Yoshida could set it up. Another thing that really impressed me is the match wasn't the least bit repetitive. This may seem a weird comment, but given they took most of the traditional pro wrestling highspots out & one of the competitors was a novice, you'd think they might just have had some basic material that they altered slightly, but no, this match was really diverse in all the positions, sweeps, & submissions they were able to show over the course of 13 & 1/2 minutes. They did keep going back to Yoshida's air raid crash & spider twist because they were telling the story that Yoshida needed some pro wrestling offense to surprise Fujii since she wasn't winning the battles in the areas that Fujii was familiar with, but they didn't make it easy on Fujii in the sense that Fujii had to keep having different answers for them. My favorite counter was a sort of modified flying crucifix takedown, where Fujii got the leg over the head while Yoshida was standing, and was able to go into the armbar once she got Yoshida onto her back. Fujii had Yoshida on the defensive from the get go, using the Imanari roll, a jumping leg lock, some crazy jumping guard pull sweep into an armbar, & a flying armbar that Yoshida was saved from by the bell. The weakness of the match is Fujii was so obviously superior to Yoshida on the mat that there wasn't a lot of space for Yoshida to try to compete with her there, so she was almost pushed into using her pro wrestling oriented offense, similar to how Yoshida's opponents other than Yagi would always try to beat her in standup because the ground was a losing battle. Yoshida kind of had success with pro wrestling techniques because Fujii was out of her element & didn't have as many counters & escapes for things no one ever actually tries in a real situation. For instance, Yoshida got a pedigree in after being ready for Fujii's second double leg takedown & stuffing it. Yoshida has never been so owned on the mat, and she took some of the frustration out stomping Fujii even after she got to the ropes. In general, these portions didn't help the quality of the match though, particularly Yoshida's phony punch combo in the corner, and sometimes felt out of place. Fujii seemed like she was going to be totally by the grappling book, but then near the end of the 2nd round, she snuck in an impressive Frankensteiner into a 1/2 crab. The action managed to kick up a couple more gears late in the 2nd, and Fujii was saved by the bell from Yoshida's spider twist. The third round was just nuts, working at overdrive, doing one speedy submission or air raid crash counter after another. I'm probably making it sound like the match is a lot less competitive than it was, the whole thing was back & forth a light speed one way or another, and though Fujii seemed to be dominant, it was more that she's just a lot more dynamic and such a next level athlete. Yoshida might answer her move for move, but you've never seen someone in a pro wrestling ring that's going so hard & fast on the ground as Fujii. The third round in particular was just answers, answers, answers from both, with Yoshida really pushing herself to the absolute maximum of her capabilities to keep up with the ease and fluidity of Fujii's counters, attacks, and adjustments. Fujii may be new to this style of fighting, but nonetheless virtually everything she did was done with the speed and confidence of someone who does it in her sleep. Fujii eventually made the mistake of getting sucked into striking, and Yoshida wound up winning with a backslide, which wasn't the most convincing, but was something Fujii wouldn't expect or be used to. Fujii unfortunately didn't return often because she was off conquering the world, but Yoshida, who was by far the most successful trainer of the past 3 decades in terms of turning athletes into quality workers, did send her students to roll with Fujii, who was still instrumental during the Ibuki era. This is a truly unique match. If the question is how can pro wrestling exist in an MMA world, the answer is Yoshida vs. Fujii! *****
Young ARSION Triangle Battle: Rena Takase vs. Atsuko Emoto vs. Yukari Kitao
ARSION & K-Dojo Cooperation: GAMI & Apple Miyuki vs. Ofune & baby*A
ARSION vs Z-SPIRITS: Rie Tamada vs. Sachie Abe
ARSION vs Z-SPIRITS: Yumiko Hotta & Mika Nishio vs. AKINO & Ai Fujita
QUEEN OF ARSION Title Match: Mariko Yoshida vs. Mima Shimoda