Joshi Spotlight: Joshi in 1998

JOSHI IN 1998- THE MULTI-PROMOTION ERA:

And we’re here! The end of 1998! From here, I move onto 1999, but I’ll sum up the year first!

* Wonder of wonders- the already split, frayed joshi scene in Japan gets EVEN WORSE, as now we have two additional companies alongside AJW (Zenjo- Zen Nihon Joshi Puroresu, but I don’t feel like explaining that every review, lol), GAEA, JD’, LLPW & JWP. As several of these companies have similar identities, it’s a bit annoying to see the entire scene split up so. But now we have Neo Ladies (a Zenjo-esque promotion with Kyoko Inoue as the top wrestler and Las Cachorras Orientales as the top tag team, still being vicious heels most of the time) and ARSION (a grappling-focused promotion set up by Aja Kong & Rossy Ogawa). So now it’s AJW, JWP, LLPW, GAEA, JD’, ARSION & Neo Ladies. To say this is ruinous is an understatement, as some of these companies are just fading so badly that they might as well barely exist- JWP & LLPW, the vestiges of the 1980s “JWP” promotion, are losing money- LLPW loses TV entirely in 1998 and won’t get it back for like 5-7 years.

One wonders if 1-2 Superpromotions out of all this varied talent would have done better, but that it’s the puroresu way- it’s better to make promotions out of 1-2 stars and a lot of unready bullshit wrestlers clogging up the midcard!

HEELS RUN JAPAN:
* Of particular interest is nearly every promotion in Japan suddenly runs to the old joshi default: The Heel Army. In particular, three promotions combine their heels into one super-stable, as Lioness Asuka brings two goons from JD’, Shark Tsuchiya brings a couple from FMW, and Eagle Sawaii adds hers from LLPW. And this leads to a LOT of dramatic cheating, as nobody can wrestle a match against one member without sometimes 1-3 people running in constantly! This effectively turns everything into a handicap match since the heels can cheat and run in with impunity, and no DQs really exist in the scene. This makes things feel very “same-y” when EVERY MAJOR BOUT feels that way, but also helps build heat and puts over the heels. The heel army ends up nuking much of LLPW and Neo Ladies, even invading GAEA and JWP (where LLPW wrestlers rarely appeared, because the promotions had an acrimonious split in 1992).

Meanwhile, the nearly bankrupt, debt-ridden and struggling AJW is beset by the ZAPs- Tomoko Watanabe & Kaoru Ito, who’d just spent 1997 being built up as the “next generation”, now acting as brutal, vicious masked heels. They terrorize Zenjo and bring a defiant Yumiko Hotta to tears as she cuts a promo on them for betraying the company they’d all worked so hard to save. Mayumi Ozaki’s OZ Academy are still a force in GAEA Japan, but appear to mostly be a trio until forming an alliance with Aja Kong, then finally adding Lioness Asuka at year’s end to form a NEW stable: Super Star Unit.

INTERPROMOTIONAL RIVALRIES:
* Since the scene is so gutted, nobody can really run proper shows with just the talent they have… so of course the result of everyone splitting up into tiny promotions is to run COMBINED SHOWS with tons of guest stars, making the whole thing pointless anyways. The biggest example would be LLPW’s Shinobu Kandori walking into AJW and defeating Yumiko Hotta for their top belt, being World Champion for an entire year! And then you have JWP’s Champion Hikari Fukuoka coming to Neo Ladies to trade wins with Kyoko Inoue, Lioness Asuka & Kyoko trading JD’s top belt, Manami Toyota fighting everyone’s rookies and smashing them like bugs while laughing, Aja Kong being one of ARSION’s top wrestlers but also coming to GAEA as a tag champion and dominating cards, etc. It’s really really weird and if I hadn’t been watching from the beginning of it, there’s no way I’d keep it straight.

GAEA JAPAN:
-With AJW going bankrupt in 1997, now is the time- GAEA officially outstrips them as the top joshi promotion in the world, and I don’t believe this ever changes. So finally, at last, I start the Year-End Spotlight with GAEA. Which… has really started to bore me, lol.

GAEA PROBLEM #1- The GAEA No-Sell:
-One issue that develops over the year is no-selling or “2.9 wrestling”- in particular, all the finishers the rookies spent 1997 building up? They all get kickouts in big-ish matches now. So Meiko’s DVD gets a 2.9 count and a big pop, then again, then again… then the pop gets milder and milder as that finisher obviously isn’t that credible since it’s the “it takes two, now” finish. Similar things happen with others. NO-SELLING is a bigger issue, as it becomes a regular spot (after starting up occasionally in 1996-97- I remember dreading seeing it) that someone would eat a huge move, then immediately burst to life and snap on a submission hold that gets its own nearfall. This has ramped up frequently in 1998, with one Chigusa/KAORU match featuring them doing it for EVERY MOVE. It got pops, of course, so wrestlers keep doing it, and it’s surely gonna end up with reduced reactions soon.

GAEA PROBLEM #2- The GAEA Sprint:
-That pales before the “GAEA Sprint”, especially as I know that one becomes emblematic of their style as time goes on. Instead of long 13-20 minute matches, even in mains, matches start peaking at 10 minutes more and more, even with Main Eventers in them- Chigusa, Ozaki & Aja are frequently in “throw out all the moves you know” spamfests. They’re not HORRIBLE- the spots are in fact incredibly intricate at times and can be quite impressive. And the kickouts of big moves is easier to justify 4 minutes in than it is 18 minutes in, because people aren’t “worn down” yet. But I keep seeing the “RAW Sell” (people lying around in pain and exhaustion a couple minutes into the match) and matches that completely drop all the early-match stuff and go right to big hits. And I mean, the early stuff never drew big reactions or anything… but they kind of set the stage for the match, and if the whole match is 60mph, then none of it STAYS with you, you know? You can’t start fast, keep fast, and end fast and have people remember any of the stuff in the first 7 minutes.

And as someone wisely said about music- “it’s not the notes you play, it’s the spaces BETWEEN the notes”. And this has zero spaces at all between any of the notes. So these matches tend to have a *** ceiling with me, which, as the promotion leans on that style more and more, is not good or that fun.

GAEA’s Wrestlers:
* Chigusa Nagayo finally defeats Devil Masami to win the AAAW World Title in August 1998. I feel like she wasn’t the inaugural champion just to give her something to fight towards, or so that people didn’t think she was just gonna award herself the title and always win. Sadly, the match with Devil was a big disappointment- the two big, injured stars had lost so many steps by this point and couldn’t adapt to the lumbering match, making it a disappointment. Never mind the terrible match she had with Manami Toyota, which seemed to be going okay and to ***-territory before Chigusa just dropped Manami out of a powerbomb and they started messing up a bunch of stuff and had a piss-poor finish from an octopus stretch. These two legends having a match that’s barely ** is a real eye-opener for how joshi is going. Chigusa also wrestled a match as the make-up wearing heel “Zero”, probably because she had sketched this character when she was 17 and always wanted to work heel, I dunno. But Zero’s few appearances have all been completely awful, taking place with a crazy blue lighting that makes the match impossible to follow.

* Mayumi Ozaki has switched from JWP to GAEA (well she’s freelance, but almost always in GAEA), which gives them ANOTHER veteran in the top of the card. However, she’s started to inhabit only “GAEA Sprint” matches or the brawls that made her distinctive in 1995 but now just make her look lazy. She hasn’t had a really good match in a WHILE. Ozaki forms a tag team with ARSION’s Aja Kong, combining her OZ Academy (with Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima) to that, and in year’s end Lioness Asuka arrives to form “Super Star Unit”.

* Meiko Satomura is by this point easily the #1 “Class of 1995” GAEA kid, and their biggest trainee. But if anything, her overacting has gotten EVEN WORSE, as she’s now hamming it up during every single appearance whether it needs a “screaming teenager” moment or not, and it’s making her act a bit tiresome. The fact that her onetime finishers are now easy to kick out of isn’t helping her at all, as now she’s just SPAMMING them.

* Toshiyo Yamada is still kicking around the upper-midcard. She was easily defeated by Chigusa, pretty much establishing she’s nowhere near the top, and did okay in a long match against Devil Masami and beats Ozaki at year’s end, but for the most part she’s just “there”- equaling her role in Zenjo. Slightly more necessary in GAEA, with its small roster.

* Akira Hokuto is still in GAEA, but has been hurt most of the year so it’s easy to forget she’s even there. What was once a great “get” has failed to have any real impact just yet.

* Sonoko Kato has become kind of forgettable to me. She was once arguably the best and most well-rounded of the class, and now I barely remember she’s there. Just not enough big matches, and her 30-minute draw with Meiko was a bore.

* Sugar Sato had improved greatly in 1997 after struggling to find an identity, and is more of the same here, but isn’t getting that many big chances. She’s added an uraken (backfist) to her moveset and is spamming it a lot, and is hilariously better at it than her boss, the much more experienced Ozaki. Her partner Chikayo Nagashima is doing okay, but has also plateaued and is mostly in forgettable matches.

* Toshie Uematsu has been a great disappointment. She had a good 1997, modifying her style even as injuries hampered her (mostly her knees, robbing her of the acrobatics that helped her stand out despite being so small). But now she’s just kind of clunky and bad, getting in the way and losing her sense of timing. The only thing she’s really done in 1998 is start using the “GOO PUNCH”- a weird term for just slugging someone in the face with a balled-up fist.

* Maiko Matsumoto & Sakura Hirota are developing from the 1996 Class, but Sakura is half-comedy wrestler and half-“let’s put her in matches that suck because they’re way too long and her technique is terrible” matches that make some GAEA shows a chore to sit through, and Maiko retires at the end of 1998, costing us another potentially decent wrestler.

* The other rookies: Makie Numao is between the 1st and 2nd Class I think, but isn’t on TV much and I mostly recognize her as “the one in kickpads”. Rina Ishii (wearing an orange two-piece) is just getting some focus, and is a short skinny girl with good technique. Hiromi Kato (in black) looks pretty normal, but is billed as a powerhouse given she’s regularly using a TORTURE RACK of all things.

but hey! The last show of 1998 featured an AWESOME angle where Lioness Asuka showed up, Chigusa held out her hand to her greatest friend… who strode on past to hang out with the new heel super-group, shattering Chigusa’s heart and setting off a huge brawl between everyone in GAEA! So the future is actually bright!

ALL JAPAN WOMEN’S PRO WRESTLING (Zenjo):
AJW Roster: Yumiko Hotta, Manami Toyota, Kaoru Ito, Takako Inoue, Tomoko Watanabe, Kumiko Maekawa, Momoe Nakanishi, Nanae Takahashi, Kayo Noumi, Rookies: Miho Wakizawa, Miyuki Fujii, Nana Nakahara, Noriko Toyoda

* Zenjo loses TV in 1998 for months, which is a crushing blow. It also means there’s very little content from them in 1998, so it’s basically a lot of tours until they make a deal with Athena TV in late ’98 and do a 30th Anniversary Show. Which is disastrous.

* So when Zenjo went bankrupt, Yumiko Hotta, their longest-standing wrestler (she’d been there even longer than Aja Kong) was FINALLY put over as the new Ace, defeating outgoing Kyoko Inoue in a pretty decent match. As the most credible person left, and an ultra-loyalist, it was probably for the best, though Hotta wasn’t really anyone’s favorite. And then in March she jobs to the invading LLPW wrestler Shinobu Kandori, who holds the championship the entire rest of the year. Manami Toyota goes for the belt but fails, having one of the best joshi matches of 1998 (but Toyota’s only good one).

* Kaoru Ito was put over as a main eventer on the rise in 1997, and Tomoko Watanabe was right behind her. But suddenly 1998 sees them as evil, masked heels- the ZAPs, ZAP I (Ito) and ZAP T (Tomoko). They’re treated as traitors to the very promotion everyone had tried so hard to save, and became the Tag Team champs almost immediately, holding them the entire rest of the year. Tomoko also trades the All Pacific Title with Takako Inoue until Kumiko Maekawa FINALLY gets the next-level push they’d been building towards since early 1997- she beats Tomoko/ZAP T for the “White Belt” and holds it until November before dropping it to LLPW’s Yasha Kurenai.

* Manami Toyota‘s 1998 is… not great. Nearly every match features her being totally disinterested and doing her “LOL I no-sell for you!” heelish act against rookies, more or less burying them. This was amusing the first few times I saw it, but it’s clear she’s not even selling being “pressed” by the kids or like they could even win at all or even stun her with something. So it’s just her amusing herself. She DOES have a ****1/4 match with Kandori, failing to take the Red Belt off of her, and it’s treated like a big deal, but the rest of the year is a wash.

* Their rookie scene has largely been gutted by the bankruptcy, but Momoe Nakanishi quickly becomes one of the best wrestlers in the promotion, working her ass off. She & Nanae Takahashi impress and become recurring Japanese Tag Champions, trading the belts with young rookies Miho Wakizawa & Kayo Noumi, among others.

* In November, Zenjo does their 30th Anniversary Show, which is one of their first things after 8 months of having no TV. And it sells VERY poorly (almost the entire arena is blacked out) and the wrestlers appear to completely half-ass the entire thing. There are way-too-long ** matches up and down the card, even from established veterans, 6 former WWWA Champions (Aja/Dynamite Kansai/Yumiko Hotta vs. Jaguar Yokota/Devil Masami/Lioness Asuka) have a tag that goes THIRTY MINUTES requiring everyone to slowly pace the entire thing (and Kansai gets a nasty concussion)

JWP IN 1998:
JWP Roster: Hikari Fukuoka (Ace), Dynamite Kansai (injured vet), Devil Masami (aging vet), Mayumi Ozaki (until she quits mid-year), Cutie Suzuki, Command Bolshoi, The Next Generation: Tomoko Kuzumi, Tomoko Miyaguchi, Rieko Amano, Kanako Motoya.

* So in 1998 JWP loses their TV and basically never matters again. They had a recurring spot on Samurai TV’s regular show at times, but this was gone. They were always more or less an indie that was able to have its stars fight Zenjo’s without looking too bad, but that’s largely done, too. And now they’re losing one of their biggest stars, while their actual top two (Kansai & Devil) are on their way down. And what I have seen shows the usual “JWP Problem”: a tiny roster means the show has to spread out the matches, meaning every single match goes 16 minutes regardless of the talent levels, which leads to all sorts of time-killing, sitting on butts in submissions, etc.

* Hikari Fukuoka continues her run as the promotion’s Ace, as she maintains the JWP Openweight Title for the entire year, and is the Tag Champion thrice over, her team with Devil Masami finally losing, but she teams up with Tomoko Kuzumi to win it twice more, ending the year vacating the belts. She actually gets to defeat Kyoko Inoue in a Neo Ladies match, which is a huge “get” for her credibility, but she repays the job in the summer, hitting THREE of her signature Moonsault Stomps before Kyoko powers up and puts her away definitively. Just beating Kyoko AT ALL is a big deal, so that’s good, but it’s pretty clear who’s “the better”.

* This is also shockingly the END of Mayumi Ozaki in JWP. She’s been there from the beginning, and was one of their biggest stars, but she stops wrestling regularly in March and does only scattered matches until the end of the year. She does one match for them in 1999, but she is effectively a full-time GAEA Japan wrestler.

* Dynamite Kansai, unfortunately, had seen better days- a “collagen disorder” (involving the joints) left her in agony a lot of the time, and this would quickly ruin her match quality. She’d have to do shorter matches from here on out.

* The next “project” is clearly Tomoko Kuzumi– she started off a good rookie in 1995 with her looks and high-flying, and has developed to be able to have ***1/2-**** matches with rivals like Tomoko Miyaguchi. Kuzumi’s push is enhanced in 1998 as she actually forms a tag team with Hikari, and gets a big main event title match against her, which she loses emphatically.

* Tomoko Miyaguchi is a clear rival to Kuzumi, having some very good solo matches with her in 1997- in 1998, she even PINS DYNAMITE KANSAI, albeit in a tag match where Devil Masami does the damage and Miyaguchi just hops on. She becomes “Ran Yu-Yu” at some point, and a bigger star.

* JWP’s other wrestlers are: Cutie Suzuki, who is actively ready to retire- she’s still active on many shows but has stopped giving a crap ages ago. Command Bolshoi, a tiny girl who should be having better matches than she has been by this point in her career- I’ve heard she gets better later but she’s lucky to crack *** at this point. Kanoko Motoya seems pretty decent but is an interchangeable midcarder at this point. Rieko Amano was Ozaki’s heel goon for most of 1996-98 but developed some solid technical stuff- she fights Ozaki for 16 minutes in the latter’s farewell match, and gets so emotional that she can barely get any words out during the post-match ceremony.

LLPW IN 1997:
LLPW Roster: Shinobu Kandori, Eagle Sawai, Harley Saito, Rumi Kazama, Noriyo Tateno, Michiko Nagashima (retires), Sayori Okino, Keiko Aono, Miho Watabe (there’s probably more I forget)

-LLPW allied with FMW & JD’ in late 1997 to form a “super stable” of sorts, with Eagle Sawai‘s Guren-Tai teaming up with Lioness Asuka & Shark Tsuchiya and terrorizing the other promotions. This culminates with a HUGE bloodbath Street Fight in February, with a Shinobu Kandori/Rumi Kazama/Yasha Kurenai team defeating Eagle and two of her goons despite the help of all the other heels. This breaks up that stable and Eagle now allies with LLPW loyalists against them.

But, uh, it doesn’t really make for big business. LLPW in particular is the most easily-ignored of the companies save for two of their wrestlers holding Zenjo’s top two belts. They lose TV in mid-1998, probably being unable to pay Samurai TV for their slot on the anthology wrestling program (the source for most JWP & LLPW content in the 1990s). Cagematch has only 19 cards in 1998 and only FIVE in 1999, disappearing the next year before reappearing with shows every few months thereafter. They DO have far more cards than this that Cagematch simply misses, though- it just looks like they’re dead.

* A big story is Eagle’s Guren-Tai stable, of course- Michiko Nagashima & Sayuri Okino are much lower in the pecking order, but do pretty well- Okino is good for a younger star and Nagashima really pulls it out in some matches (she’s the most impressive in the Street Fight, going all-out and working the whole first half to save Eagle for later spots). So of course she retires in mid-1998.

* Yasha Kurenai impresses in the Street Fight, getting cut wide open and shredded, selling amazingly as she flops around and gets desperate, screaming in pain and fighting defiantly. And on a disastrous AJW show, she has best match of the night by going ***-ish with Kumiko Maekawa… DEFEATING HER for the All Pacific Title! This is probably the most credible and pushed Yasha ever gets, so enjoy it.

* LLPW loses Mikiko Futagami & Michiko Omukai to ARSION, but they never really pushed them so not much is lost (despite Gami getting good and Omukai getting a “rising star” push). Carol Midori is in the midcard as a “maybe rising star” but has no elevation in her future, despite some good work. Noriyo Tateno is as entertainingly low-effort as ever, playing up the “wily veteran who don’t work too hard” thing. Miho Watabe seems okay in a match I saw against GAEA’s Maiko Matsumoto. Mizuki Endo is another generic midcarder. Harley Saito, once one of my favorites, is barely on any of their stuff, and often as a “hot tag” person. Rumi Kazama is in only one match I saw, and struggled with an incompetent rookie Keiko Aono, who practically murdered their match.

NEO LADIES IN 1998:
Neo Ladies Roster: Kyoko Inoue, Las Cachorras Orientales, Chaparrita ASARI, Yoshiko Tamura, Tanny Mouse, Yuka Shiina, Misae Genki, Saya Endo

-So Neo Ladies is formed by Kyoko Inoue, who personally took a stake in a new promotion to take up some of the rookies a bankrupt Zenjo could no longer afford. This was all done on the up & up and fully in public (vs. clandestinely going to other stars and forming a coalition in secret, like how ARSION allegedly began). Neo is formed by Kyoko herself as the signature star, plus Las Cachorras Orientales, who’d made themselves into Main Eventers over the past year at AJW- their heelish shenanigans were the guaranteed best match on almost every card, so things seemed bright. However, Kyoko apparently made a bad deal going into it, owing a LOT of money- she alleges now that she’s STILL paying off her debt from this venture!

Neo does some extremely bad business- as Kyoko was a fading draw even in Zenjo, making a tiny company out of just her & LCO (the next biggest star was midcarder Chaparrita ASARI!) was not for the best, especially with 5-6 competitors active at once in the same regions. Worse still, their #2 draw (LCO) quits at year’s end and goes Freelance, making scads of money and only showing up occasionally in Neo thereafter.

* An early exchange sees Kyoko willingly drop a match to JWP’s champion Hikari Fukuoka in an early Neo show, as Hikari ekes out a win with her Moonsault Stomp. As Kyoko is a much bigger star than Hikari, that’s a pretty good rub… but in the rematch in the summer, Kyoko kicks out of THREE Moonsault Stomps and wins emphatically. Thus she wins out in the end. She also trades JD’s TWF Title with Lioness Asuka, having some of joshi’s best matches of 1998, so there’s that.

* Las Cachorras Orientales go through a big slump in 1998, sadly- Saya Endo becomes their “Young Girl” and joins them for a lot of tag team matches… which is disastrous, as she sucks and brings down their “Broomstick Match” from ***1/2 to like **1/2- she can’t sell, doesn’t bump well, and has terrible offense, so she mucks up their match quality big-time, as she’s expected to take the “Shimoda Role” of someone who eats a beating for minutes at a time so the powerhouses can clean up. LCO ends up in some pretty dreary matches in the midcard as a result of this, and Neo doesn’t push them separately.

In one notable show in August, Shimoda loses a match to Chaparrita ASARI- the mandatory “Rising Kid Levels Up and Beats a Veteran” match (Shimoda won her first in 1992, defeating Miori Kamiya). The match is a bit long and features a weird peak (they hit their finishers in the middle of the match), and Shimoda appears to shrug off the loss. It’s a big deal for ASARI, as hopefully they can push her a bit more. Mita still kicks around, but loses in three minutes to Nicole Bass (yes, that one), who sells nothing.

Buuuuuuuuuut there are greener pastures ahead- LCO bails to go Freelance in 1999 and immediately begin terrorizing the entire Joshi scene going from promotion to promotion and making big money. They might be the only women’s wrestlers making any coin in Japan for the next couple years.

* The trilogy of August 14th-16th shows don’t go well- there’s a too-long LCO vs. Asuka & her goons macth, and a lot of quickie matches in short tournaments. Most notably is NICOLE BASS coming over from ECW with almost zero training and having a trio of matches, selling absolutely nothing against Mita, squashing her in 3 minutes in a match the fans don’t take to. ASARI gets more but jobs in only 2 minutes. Kyoko gets Bass to sell and does okay, but Bass pins her in 5 minutes with two bad Chokeslams. It’s AWFUL, as she crushes the three top stars in the promotion in minutes each, sells almost nothing… and then we never see her again. Seems like crazed kneejerk booking. Bass apparently didn’t like her payday and so didn’t work for them again, rendering all that destruction of Neo a total waste.

* Chaparrita ASARI once had the most crowd-pleasing spot in joshi, but now that the Sky Twister Press has been used for years, they’re over it like Bart’s “I didn’t do it!” catchphrase and all she’s left with is “Woozle Wuzzle”. She’s gotten a bit more well-rounded as a wrestler, and has finally beaten a veteran (Shimoda does the honors), but then Nicole Bass squashes her and she’s just kinda “around” as Neo’s 4th-tier wrestler.

* Misae Genki gets the “rising kid” push, as her 5’8″ stature and filling-out physique gives her physical credibility, and Kyoko works hard in the Neo debut to showcase her “powering” Kyoko over with stuff. She’s not as gawky as she used to be, and might be good. Apparently there’s a very good Kyoko match I’m missing.

* Yoshiko Tamura, the best of AJW’s rookies back in the day, is a good “get” for a healthy promotion, but doesn’t show much on the shows I have.

* The less said about Tanny Mouse, the better. She’s just a silly comedy wrestler, doing her goofy falling headbutts repeatedly, and a “face-washing rodent” taunt. The fans seem to like it, though, but watching her “challenge” the other rookies in matches below ** is pretty bad.

* Yuka Shiina… exists. I honestly barely remember her.

ARSION- THE GRAPPLING COMPANY IN 1998:
ARSION Roster: Aja Kong, Mariko Yoshida, Rie Tamada, Yumi Fukawa, Michiko Omukai, Reggie Bennett, Jessie Bennett, Hiromi Yagi, Mikiko Futagami, Candy Okutsu, Esther Moreno, Mary Apache, Rookies: Fabi Apache, Mika Akino, Ayako Hamada

* Hyper Visual Fighting ARSION makes its official debut in early 1998, and immediately goes for a new style, with the prospective Ace Mariko Yoshida training with shoot-style guys to form a more grappling-based offense. Young AJW wrestler Yumi Fukawa joins her in copying the same style, forming the new basis for the company… except a big chunk of the wrestlers don’t use it. Two are still using the AJW/JWP style, Aja Kong still wrestles like herself, there’s some luchadoras, and the Bennetts use American-style power wrestling, so it’s kind of a big mish-mash. BUT the promotion for the time being has some differences to it, and it rapidly becomes my favorite- the tired joshi scene was boring me after a point with the same-old stuff, so to say this was a breath of fresh air was an understatement. People in the know keep warning me of doom & gloom ahead, haha- but for now, it’s the most fun one to watch! With lots of surprisingly great matches!

But yeah- by the end of the year a lot of the effort seems to be driven out of people as they realize that fans didn’t come no matter how hard they worked, and so it’s a lot of **-ish matches with the occasional great one every few months.

The scrubs of other companies are scraped off to form its mid and undercards, all given new pushes to fill certain niches (Shooter; Strong JTTS; Kicker; Underdog). Its founder is Rossy Ogawa, a Zenjo office dweeb who has a thing for pushing pretty girls. We haven’t seen the last of him… however bad ARSION turns out. Aja Kong is also the founder and face of the company, doing her best to elevate every wrestler- many of the first shows feature her doing the “Aja Carry-Job” to make former scrubs look like stars.

* Aja Kong is the biggest star of the promotion, but notably puts a lot of effort into putting over people who were scrubs most previously. Michiko Omukai & Mikiko Futagami were NOT credible, but Aja made it look like they made her struggle, selling like nuts for their shots as “catching her” and having to go all out to defeat Gami. Aja even did a 2-minute job to Reggie to put her over. Aja’s not what she was in 1992-96, in-ring or credibility-wise, but who is? She doesn’t have the same tier of opponents here, but does her best with what she has. Though her attempts at the “ARSION House Style” are iffy, and she pretty quickly gives up and wrestles her standard style, carrying opponents that way. The biggest issue with her is a subtle one- going out of her way to put scrubs over has diminished HER, I feel. Like, if Aja Kong is struggling to beat MICHIKO OMUKAI, is she really even “Aja Kong” anymore? She honestly has more success in GAEA Japan, where her & Mayumi Ozaki form a heel superteam and win the AAAW Tag Titles by year’s end. And then they form Super Star Unit with Lioness Asuka!

* Mariko Yoshida is the dominant wrestler of the “ARSION House Style” and quickly impresses by constantly making submissions not look like “match-filler bullshit” but actually important stuff that can end it at any moment, and like she’s constantly fishing for stuff or repositioning. It makes that style look incredible, and she elevates nearly everyone she wrestles in that style. She wins the Queen of ARSION Title at year’s end, becoming the inaugural Champion of the promotion and the “ARSION True Heart”. She is probably one of the Most Improved Wrestlers, along with Fukawa & Candy below.

* Reggie Bennett returns! Zenjo stopped booking her ages ago and she disappeared, but suddenly returns to form the backbone of ARSION’s upper-midcard. She isn’t as adept in Grapplefuckery as the others, but does her best using size, strength and weight to control on the mat and counter things. Her power moves are put over big-time as she defeats Rie & Yoshida, then chokes out Aja of all people. She’s putting in some of her best work here, actually.

* Yumi Fukawa quickly becomes one of my favorite wrestling types- the Rookie With a Fire Under Their Ass. Reminds me of Sakie Hasegawa of old, or Booker T in 1997-98 WCW- the sheer brass-ring-grabbingness of it all. She’s tiny and isn’t getting a big push, but is trying SO DAMN HARD and it’s hard not to appreciate that, especially as she has a ***3/4 match with CANDY OKUTSU of all people and is the second-best at Grapplefuckery next to Yoshida.

* Mikiko Futagami is a low-rent LLPW wrestler who suddenly gets pushed as ARSION’s “Yumiko Hotta”- the “Dangerous Kicky Shoot-Style Worker”. Her toughness is put over by Aja, she has her hair all short, she defeats the low-ranked people, and her push is immediate. It’s a pretty artificial way to do it (especially so rapidly- she was a SCRUB before this) but it’s a solid idea to fill a niche in the company. She’s doing pretty good at the striking and submissions, but has a recurring issue with just doing a blank ._. face in every single match, even while selling or trying to act pissed off. She works a ****+ match with…

* Candy Okutsu is back! Yes, she retired in Summer 1997 from JWP, but Ogawa was big on her (hence… her wearing what looks like lingerie OVER her wrestling gear). She wrestles the same old style she always did, maybe even MORE reliant on her trademark “run right up to the top rope” moves, but she can still have a good match. ARSIONS’s first great match featured her as a tolerable opponent to Fukawa, and then she wrestles a **** match against Mikiko Futagami of all people! This one was weird because in 2022 I reviewed it and gave it this weak **1/4 thing, and then went **** recently- first time I’ve ever raised it so much. Candy also has good matches against Yumi Fukawa and Mariko Yoshida, too- she appears in THREE of the year’s ten best matches! So Candy is another person with a fire lit under her and she’s going all-out to justify her push. She’s given a mask and pushed as “Tiger Dream” in August, the first-ever FEMALE incarnation of the “Tiger Mask” gimmick! Of course it’s pink, and that’s amazing. Except the one match I saw with that gimmick was pretty weak, as she was struggling to handle the “Tiger” moves.

* Jessie Bennett is American wrestler Jessie Soto played up as a relative of Reggie’s. She’s… okay-ish. A pretty green wrestler with some power moves, mostly as a JTTS.

* Rie Tamada was a mid-range AJW wrestler who’d plateaud in both skill and position- her lack of ability and overness means she was never getting a big push in Zenjo, never mind that the veterans were no longer planning on retiring young to make room for her. She bails to ARSION, but ends up in the same spot- she’s beaten by Reggie and others to put them over and establish “tiers” and actually degrades in skill over time. It’s probably just super clear to her she’s never getting pushed.

* Michiko Omukai is one to watch, mostly because I know she becomes one of the top stars (eventually). A tall, lanky, good-looking girl, she’s popular with Ogawa and we’re made to think she’s a great kicker, as Aja of all people fights to put her over. With a lot of flaily offense since she’s so tall and thin, she is one of the more unique wrestlers in joshi, I’ll give her that. Against great opponents she’s a *** worker and without them she’s barely ** if she’s lucky- let’s put it that way.

* Mika Akino debuts in the Summer and immediately impresses even in her first match. She’s on her back in most of it, but she wrestles like a 2nd or 3rd year already, and looks nothing like a green kid. She’s able to do the submissions AND fly better than trained luchadores- it’s crazy. More is expected of her for sure.

* “Super Rookie” Ayako Hamada debuts in August and immediately turns heads for being one of the bombshells on the scene, and she’s of course given a MASSIVE push… but hasn’t earned it yet. And famously never really will. It’s just assumed she’ll be a big star so she’s given matches full of Asai moonsaults, hurricanranas and all sorts of other stuff, as she’s very agile, but she’s still too green and is full of that rookie hesitation and “now how was this move supposed to be applied again?”. And since wrestling is collaborative, agility doesn’t mean that much when you don’t know how to mesh it with other people, and so she’s a botch machine at first, too. Her team with Akino starts up by the end of the year, and they’ll be paired off for a WHILE.

* Fabi Apache is one of the worst wrestlers in any company right now. Under 20 years old, she has no chemistry with people trained outside of Mexico, and is maybe 2/10 with people who were. Metalika, Mary Apache & Esther Moreno all show up at various points and count as “recurring wrestlers”, usually having lucha matches on the undercard. The reason? Rossy Ogawa apparently LOVES lucha and wants to include it.

FMW’s WOMEN’S DIVISION IN 1998:
-My only realization that this is even a thing is Shark Tsuchiya forming part of the heel super-stable with Lioness Asuka & Eagle Sawai, and Bad Nurse Nakamura getting a tour or so in GAEA Japan as a heel cheater. Shark is as bad as ever in the ring, but her shitass behavior and leading heel goons is at least amusing.

JD’ IN 1998:
-JD’ has their weird run continue. Lioness Asuka, sometimes a freelancer, is the dominant heel, leading a stable of goons who cheat at every opportunity (like she learned from getting merked by Dump Mastumoto’s goons for years). As in 1997, she’s one of the best workers around, and my pick for best joshi worker of 1997-98 so far, having great performances with all comers and

* I have by far the least of JD’s stuff of any promotion in 1998- it’s presence on YouTube or even Archive.org is pretty abysmal. As it’s largely a promotion with two good workers and a lot of filler at the moment, I’m not excatly crying over that one. Things get worse when Jaguar Yokota, their second-best worker, stops wrestling in the summer and has a retirement match in December, doing the job to Devil Masami. She doesn’t appear in Cagematch for another 4-5 years, this retirement sticking for a while.

* Of the year’s stuff, Lioness Asuka/Kyoko Inoue have some very good matches, including maybe the year’s best (****1/4). Kyoko ends up holding that belt for the back half of 1998, though. Asuka also has a tremendous match with Jaguar earlier in the year that I don’t think I’ve seen. The Bloody also apparently comes into her own as a very solid young worker around this time.

* This card at least seems pretty good: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=47020. Though it ends with Kyoko Inoue & LCO (Neo wrestlers) against Manami Toyota, Yumiko Hotta & Takako Inoue (AJW wrestlers). What’s up with that? It was nearly ****, though!

JOSHI IN WCW:
* Never mind- WCW nukes the division in late 1997 and the whole thing only exists as a belt for GAEA Japan, and only then until early 1998. The last instance of a WCW Women’s Belt showing up is Sugar Sato defending successfully against Sonoko Kato in March.

Best Matches:
(kinda/sorta in the order of how I liked them… the ***** matches are anyone’s ballgame, though)

****1/4:
Kyoko Inoue vs. Lioness Asuka (Neo Ladies- May)
Shinobu Kandori vs. Manami Toyota (WWWA World Title- August)
Candy Okutsu vs. Mikiko Futagami (ARSION- March)

****:
Yumiko Hotta vs. Shinobu Kandori (WWWA vs. LLPW Title Unification Match- Feb.)
Shinobu Kandori, Rumi Kazama & Yasha Kurenai vs. Eagle Sawai, Michiko Nagashima & Sayori Okino (LLPW- Street Fight)

***3/4:
Candy Okutsu vs. Yumi Fukawa (ARSION Debut Show)
Yumiko Hotta, Manami Toyota & Takako Inoue vs. Kyoko Inoue & Las Cachorras Orientales (JD’ Together Women’s All-Star)
Aja Kong vs. Mariko Yoshida (ARSION, July 21st)
Aja Kong, Michiko Omukai & Yumi Fukawa vs. Mikiko Futagami, Candy Okutsu & Rie Tamada (ARSION Debut Show)
Manami Toyota & Kaoru Ito vs. Hikaru Fukuoka & Tomoko Kuzumi (Feb. 11th- JWP Tag Titles)
Mariko Yoshida vs. Candy Okutsu (ARSION Carnival- December)

-OOOF. This is just depressing. Only ten matches of the year at ***3/4 or above. I’m surely missing some good Jaguar Yokota matches in JD’, at least (Asuka/Jag is apparently one of the year’s best- I’ve heard good things about Kyoko vs. Genki from year’s end, too). So on one hand, this is pretty disastrous for joshi to barely have ten matches at ***3/4 for an entire year, but of all people CANDY OKUTSU is now appearing in a bunch of the year’s best matches. Just insanity.

THE BELTS:

GAEA JAPAN’S TITLES:
AAAW WORLD TITLE: Devil Masami (Sept. ’97), Chigusa Nagayo (Aug. ’98)
AAAW WORLD JR. TAG TITLES: Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato (Nov. ’96), Chikayo Nagashima & Sugar Sato (March ’98), Aja Kong & Mayumi Ozaki (Aug.)

AJW’S TITLES:
WWWA WORLD TITLE: Yumiko Hotta (Aug. ’97), Shinobu Kandori (March ’98)
ALL PACIFIC TITLE: Tomoko Watanabe (Aug. ’97), Takako Inoue (Jan. ’98), ZAP T (April), Kumiko Maekawa (May), Yasha Kurenai (Nov.)
AJW TITLE: Momoe Nakanishi (Dec. ’97), Emi Motokawa (Jan. ’98), Momoe Nakanishi (April)
WWWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: Las Cachorras Orientales (July ’97), VACANT (Jan. ’98), The ZAPs (April)
JAPANESE TAG TEAM TITLES: Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi (Nov. ’97), Kayo Noumi & Miho Wakizawa (March ’98), Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi (Aug.), Sumie Sakai & Yoko Kosugi (Nov.), Kayou Noumi & Miho Wakizawa (Nov.)

JWP’S TITLES:
JWP OPENWEIGHT TITLE: Hikari Fukuoka (April ’97)
JWP JUNIOR TITLE: Tomoko Miyaguchi (Aug. ’97), VACANT (March)
JWP TAG TEAM TITLES: Devil Masami & Hikari Fukuoka (Nov. ’96), Kaoru Ito & Manami Toyota (Jan. ’98), Hikari Fukuoka & Tomoko Kuzumi (Feb.), Cutie Suzuki & Devil Masami (June), Hikari Fukuoka & Tomoko Kuzumi (July), VACANT (Dec.)

LLPW’S TITLES:
LLPW TITLE: Shinobu Kandori (Oct. ’97)
SIX-WOMAN TITLES: Noriyo Tateno, Rumi Kazama & Yasha Kurenai (Dec. ’97), Eagle Sawai, Lioness Asuka & Shark Tsuchiya (Sept. ’98)

JD’S TITLES:
TWF TITLE: Jaguar Yokota (Oct. ’97), Lioness Asuka (Jan. ’98), Kyoko Inoue (April), Lioness Asuka (May), Kyoko Inoue (Aug.)
TWF TAG TITLES: Jaguar Yokota & Yoko Kosugi (Dec. ’97), VACANT (Sept. ’98), Cooga & Sumie Sakai (Oct.)
JD’ JUNIOR TITLE: VACANT (late ’97), The Bloody (Jan. ’98), Sumie Sakai (Aug.)

ARSION’S TITLES:
QUEEN OF ARSION TITLE: Mariko Yoshida (Dec. ’98)
TWIN STARS OF ARSION TITLES: Hiromi Yagi & Rie Tamada (Dec. ’98)

IWA JAPAN’S TITLES:
AWF WORLD WOMEN’S TITLE: Emi Motokawa (Aug. ’97)

WCW’S TITLES:
WCW WORLD WOMEN’S TITLE: Devil Masami (Dec. ’97), VACANT (WCW/GAEA abandons the title- Jan. ’98)
WCW WORLD WOMEN’S CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE: Sugar Sato (Sept. ’97), VACANT (WCW/GAEA abandons the title- Jan. ’98)