Joshi Spotlight: ARSION in Winter 2001

ASSORTED HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING ARSION:
* Hey look! Because no one demanded it but I found some random shit on YouTube, there’s ANOTHER set of ARSION matches before the end of 2001! Most of these are scattered between September and December, and were on the very tail end of my list of videos saved from that Chinese channel that’s the source of most post-2000 Zenjo content. Why’s it all mixed up? Because that channel DOESN’T DATE THEIR SHIT, nor are the names legible via translation most of the time, making the whole thing a chore to sort through. But I managed to find six matches I haven’t covered. Including the Asuka/Yoshida vs. Omukai/Hamada Twin Star of ARSION Tag Title match, two LCO matches, and the full version of the Queen of ARSION Title match between Ayako Hamada and Lioness Asuka!

OCT. 21st:

TWIN STAR OF ARSION TITLES:
LIONESS ASUKA & MARIKO YOSHIDA vs. AYAKO HAMADA & MICHIKO OMUKAI:
* A relatively “big” match, as the Tag Champs take on the people who were supposed to be the foundation of the new ARSION- failing star Hamada and would-be main star Omukai. Hamada was particularly annoyed by Lioness Asuka coming in as the booker and new big star, so their rivalry continues here, and the team is mostly because they’re seen as the two big stars and thus “rivals” to the “Executives” (as Asuka & Yoshida are seen), even if they don’t like each other. Asuka’s in black, Yoshida’s in silver, Hamada’s in pink & Omukai’s in black feathery gear.

The challengers fight over who gets to start, Omukai/Yoshida grappling to no result. No pop for Asuka/Hamada, which isn’t a good sign as it’s the company’s top angle. They circle for a minute and a half, Lioness slapping out of a rope-break. Ayako pays back the slap and hits her with a Lionsault press but leaps off to avoid a counterattack. They collide and resist selling a shoulderblock but Lionses lariats her down and swats her with a kick. Ayako is like “…” and Omukai tags in, the champ slinking off. Omukai does a bit better, but Yoshida traps her in the Rings of Saturn after a slugfest, then traps her in more nasty stuff to stretch her out. Omukai escapes the Modified Sleeper finisher but can’t get anything going until she nails the Sobat kick. Ayako tries and mostly fails until she uses her speed again, hitting a spinning DDT out of the corner & missile kick. Ayako swings into her lucha submission, they mess up a powerbomb counter, and Lioness runs in to set up a pedigree for two. Ayako gets a big head kick but is taken down in a heel hook and the boxing combo drops her- she’s defiant but Lioness eventually fights her into the Giant Swing, but Ayako no-sells and enzuigiris her for two. A headbutt/head kick fight ends up going Asuka’s way, and she slide-kicks her table “into” Ayako (didn’t quite get all of it, Brain) and Ligerbombs her for two. haha Sakie on commentary like “these seemingly inconspicuous hits can be dangerous, especially as the corner of the table hit her”. WE SAW IT HIT HER HAND, SAKIE. DON’T LIE TO THE PEOPLE. Ayako rolls Asuka up out of another Ligerbomb attempt, then gets her own, but Asuka flings her off on the Super Hama-Chan Cutter (that looked terrible, too).

Ayako recovers with a Spinning Ligerbomb for two, but misses a spinkick and is smoked in the head, tagging out- Omukai pounces on Lioness and gets a NIAGARA Driver of all things for two. Omukai keeps countering, but eventually a rolling kick gets her- Ayako stops the Towerhacker Bomb (inverted fireman’s to spinning ligerbomb) but Lioness lariats both of them, but climbs and eats a DOUBLE SHOTEI into the Ayaconoclasm into Omukai’s Ax Kick- two! The fans ONLY popping for Omukai’s stuff is increasingly rude, lol- like they’re using EFFORT to not react to any Ayako stuff, it feels like. Lioness dumps her in desperation but only dives onto Yoshida, then AYAKO misses her dive, completely sailing over Omukai and faceplanting. Yikes. Everyone rushes to Ayako and the champs wisely do a beating on the floor (Yoshida just holding a headlock on Ayako to stave off death) and Lioness hits a Flying Stomp Suicida to Omukai on a table! A bad Towerhacker Bomb gets two- Omukai landed sideways. Hamada returns and they attempt a DOUBLE Super Hama-Chan Cutter through Lioness’s table, but she instead flings both of them through it and beats on them with the pieces. Omukai blades big-time from several shots with the jagged EDGE of it, but ally Ai Fujita tries to hold Asuka back. But in a weird twist, Yoshida rushes in to save Omukai, like this beating is going way too far, and stops Asuka from bouncing Omukai’s face into the Korakuen walls. This turns into a fistfight between the champions, Asuka brains Omukai with a table piece in the ring, then Yoshida grabs it away, allowing Hamada to score a spinkick, and then OMUKAI charges in with a Shining Wizard- FOR THREE at (20:44), Asuka kicking out at 3.0001 and looking like the flukiest fluke that ever fluked. So thus ends the Twinstar run of Asuka/Yoshida, and all it took was them openly fighting and a banana peel finish that made Omukai look way braver and tougher than shitty Hamada. Man, no wonder Ayako fucked off out of the promotion.

The first half was all champs, as they easily tee off on Ayako in particular, who them seem to be burying with the way they cut off all her stuff, no-sell her move attempts and hit her with tons of offense, and then as if to put a fine point on it, sell plenty for Omukai. You can really tell the ARSION faithful are not into Ayako at all, though, as they don’t respond to ANYTHING she does- once again, it’s almost ruder than if they’d just turned on her, haha. Like their annoyance with the Ayako Push, just being DONE with her, is so apparent. And Ayako is left wrestling in this total vacuum, the building eerily silent for everything she’s involved with. Then you have her obviously whiffed headbutts or Asuka kicking the table and it only hitting Ayako’s hands, which still causes her to thrash about on the mat in agony. The match gets hotter when Omukai is in it (especially since the fans only cheer for her), and then the match revs up with signature spots… and the whole crux of the match turns into trying to get OMUKAI over instead of the Champion, effectively writing off Ayako’s chances (because no one sold or took her shit) while Omukai gets nearfalls with ax kicks or whatever, and scores the winning pin after looking like a brave badass doing a big bladejob and eating a ton of table shots to the face while Hamada just does “whatever”. And what a win for the new Champions- Asuka/Yoshida split up, openly fight, then get banana peeled, making it clear they only won because of Yoshida’s mercy. Not only did the Champs have to openly split up and fight one another, Yoshida stopping Asuka from kicking too much ass, but Asuka had to be double-teamed AND kicked out at 3.0001. Hamada & Omukai immediately give up the Twin Star belts after the match, having accomplished their goal of hurting the “Executives”. The match was… fine but not GREAT, with some good stuff and exciting bits (especially in the final brawl), but botchy in other parts.

Rating: *** (pretty good for how clumsy parts of it were and how long it was)

NOV. 13th:

LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda) vs. AZUMI HYUGA & TSUBASA KURAGAKI (JWP):
* Oddly enough, ARSION is the scene of a freelance tag team fighting two JWP wrestlers. Mita’s in yellow, Shimoda pink, Hyuga blue/silver & Kuragaki in a green/black outfit a bit like Dynamite Kansai.

Shimoda dominates Hyuga to start, Mita adding a Blazing Chop & hair tosses. Bitch Pose, piledriver & hairpulling keep it up, and she stuffs a comeback with a stunner. This appears to have busted Hyuga’s lip open, Shimoda “kneeing” it to act like that was deliberate and not a botch. Hyuga quickly escapes Shimoda with her corner knee & DDT, and Kuragaki ignores Shimoda’s offense to hit jobber dropkick spam, but Mita manages to hit the piledriver & chop on her as commentary mostly chats about Kuragaki going from Junior to Heavyweight and openly mimicking Kansai. Shimoda double-clotheslines Team JWP, but Kuragaki lands a clunky cartwheel elbow & German, but Mita stunners her from the apron. Kuragaki grabs the ropes so they miss double-dropkicks and Hyuga missile kicks them both- Kuragaki planchas LCO, but Hyuga accidentally cannonballs her and LCO assault JWP in the crowd. Kuragaki avoids a Tiger Suplex in the ring and TORTURE RACKS Shimoda, but gets smoked by Mita’s chair. Shimoda wacks away with it too, but it’s taken away and Hyuga sets up a Scorpion deathlock from the rookie. Kuragaki torture racks Shimoda again and flying splashes the back for two, then Hyuga adds a butterfly backbreaker, rapid missile kick & Rolling Germans, then a Butterfly superduperplex for two.

Hyuga hits a running knee but Shimoda immediately Tiger Suplexes her, failing the bridge. Hyuga avoids Mita’s powerbomb but lands in one trying a rana, but Byers bridges her out of the electric chair drop for two. A SLINGSHOT version of that gets two, but a Flying Knee misses and Mita powerbombs her for two. Hyuga keeps landing Germans on Mita, then finally lands her Flying Enzuiknee for two. Mita half-heartedly sells Kuragaki offense, but swings into a backdrop driver, then gets two more as counters- a jawjacker stuns Mita, setting up another Enzuiknee and Kuragaki’s Moonsault for our first real nearfall. Kuragaki just batters Mita down with a headbutt, but charges into a blazing chop, but Mita’s stunner is countered to a backslide for two. LCO beats Kuragaki up and make Hyuga missile kick her, but Mita’s rolled up out of the DVD for two, but Shimoda throws an ax kick and that stuns Kuragaki enough for the DVD to hit for three (17:50). haha, that’s it? No big heat sequence or kickout fest?

A very disjointed, casual, somewhat predictable match- Shimoda takes and takes offense, while Mita gives and gives, and it’s mostly a showcase for Kuragaki’s stuff, clunky as it is. She has the strength to hoist up the larger Shimoda in a torture rack but isn’t quite experienced and there’s some stopping and starting going on. And nothing every really gets INTERESTING- it’s almost perfunctory in how LCO would go “our time for some stuff”, then Team JWP would get some stuff, then LCO would stop selling and hit their own stuff again. 10+ minutes in and they’re still just doing regular kickouts and nobody’s closer to trying legit pins and everyone’s still busy trying to interrupt each other’s shit to hit their own. This came off very casual and low-effort throughout, Shimoda gave up trying to get ANYTHING going and Mita was left throwing all the offense and then taking Kuragaki’s, doing a pretty good job “getting caught” with a big series of moves. Kuragaki was obviously getting a lot of focus and got to control most of the late-match offense… of course because she’s eating the fall. Funnily enough they had barely DONE anything to her but she still got beat- and by a single move! Hyuga’s brief flashes of offense were the highlight of the bout, even though she rarely shows charisma and the ARSION crowd doesn’t react to much but Kuragaki’s nearfalls.

Rating: **1/4 (felt very low-effort throughout, with very little chemistry)

NOV. 25th:
* This is the same show that featured Manami Toyota vs. Mariko Yoshida and the World Title match, available in full so I can give it a “proper” rating.

AZUMI HYUGA (JWP) vs. AI FUJITA (ARSION):
* So around this time Lioness Asuka got to beat Fujita and let her kick out of a bunch of stuff, and with JWP’s Hyuga still around, might as well make HER do the same sort of thing, too. Commentary keeps calling her Ganguro (“tanned”, representing her going for the contemporary fashion trend to going EXTREMELY dark with a tan) saying she’s gone from a Flying Ganguro Wrestler to a Fighting Ganguro Wrestler. She’s wearing fingerless MMA gloves, having “trained in boxing” which… yeah this is another ARSION “Just pretend she’s leveled up, okay?” bit, isn’t it? That’s a very distinctive ARSION thing, actually. Te “Fake Leveling Up” ike they show some clips of them training and now we expect they got a new skill tree or something. “ACCEPT THEM NOW! “We don’t want to have them steadily move up the card because that kind of booking is DIFFICULT! Fujita is now a Serious Boxer!”.

“ACCEPT HER, PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!”

Things start out looking a bit like Early ARSION with Fujita trying to grapple, but Hyuga is better and drills her with a knee to the chest. After a slapfest, Hyuga gets her backbreakers and a crab, and Fujita can’t get anything going until she uses cartwheel handspring elbows, but Hyuga even grabs her out of THAT, using sheer brute strength, but Fujita levels her with a big right hand (GREAT timing on the “pop” sound so it sounds like the fast punch hit- slo-mo reveals it whiffed but the crowd responded like it was a shot) and follows to the floor with an Orihara Moonsault when Hyuga bails. Fujita follows with a missile kick for two, but Hyuga gets a DDT, drilling knee to the head, and her own missile kicks (3) for two, then Locomotion German Suplexes. Fujita dodges the Flying Knee but Hyuga immediately rights herself with a running enzuiknee, but Fujita Germans her out of a Michinoku Driver attempt and LIGHTS HER UP with boxing. Hyuga sells the shit out of that, lying down like she’s donezo, for so long she nearly gets counted down at “10” (she’s basically on one knee by then), then they slug it out and Fujita gets a REALLY great bridge on a Straightjacket Suplex for two. Fujita’s pissed by the kickout and goes up- 450 Splash misses! Hyuga’s too beat up to capitalize and gets caught up top, but manages the Victory Star Drop (tossing Fujita backwards with her feet hooking under her shoulders) for two, but Fujita rolls her up out of the Michinoku, then La Majistral gets 2.9. Hyuga finally pops her with a knee to the nose to stop the offense, a German gets two, and the Flying Enzuiknee finishes a stunned Fujita at (9:16), Hyuga winning a close one.

A really good carry-job match from Azumi Hyuga, who is one of the genre’s most reliable “carry someone to **+” wrestlers. She’s got the perfect blend of “small enough to beat up”, speed, skill, selling, suddenness, and with a deep enough moveset to keep people guessing while giving them stuff to kick out of that looks cool. Fujita barely DOES anything in this match but it’s still kinda good because Hyuga’s always in control, giving her bits and pieces. Though it’s funny that Hyuga mostly noped out of acting like Fujita had good MMA skillz and mostly sold the high flying since that was Fujita’s original style. The punch sell was a good “shorthand” to the fans to start taking Fujita more seriously, though. And then Hyuga sells and sells, fighting the whole back part of the match on the backfoot like Fujita is “pressing her” and nearly scoring wins with punches or sudden rollups so the crowd is REACTING TO AN AI FUJITA MATCH (this is an extreme rarity). Hyuga being the best wrestler in ARSION while being a guest is funny.

Rating: **3/4 (this is like ***** by Fujita standards- be impressed)

SAKIE HASEGAWA vs. MICHIKO OMUKAI:
* SAKIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! It’s been so long! I’m missed her terribly since she retired- while she hadn’t formed into a great worker yet, there’s something about a spectacular athlete with a fire under their ass, going all-out effort in every match. In 2001 “Peak Sakie” would have been ungodly amazing. Injuries wiped her out young, though, and both her classmates (Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe) eclipsed her as more complete workers. But she’s an ARSION trainer, staff member and sometimes commentator, and this is a one-off “Return Match” against Omukai, who’d been “gifted” most of her signature offense (the Sobat spinkick and Uranage judo throw). She comes down, already in tears and trying to fight through it, but sadly appears to already be limping. She’s in her white two-piece top and shorts with the long boots & kneepads, while Omukai’s in black. Omukai gives the Bow of Ultimate Respect before the match, but gets right in Sakie’s face defiantly in the intros. Sakie is License #99 of ARSION, and has been out for 5 years and 8 months… and has Debbie Malenko (her old tag team partner, who snapped her leg catching Manami Toyota in 1993 and hasn’t wrestled since) as her second!

After 5 years gone, she’s back for a one-shot!

Immediately you can tell Sakie’s not the same because she doesn’t spazz out at the bell and hit 900 things in a row in a dramatic frenzy. Instead they circle each other and Sakie clunkily works the arm a bit with spinning holds. Omukai stiffly kicks her in the chest and dodges a Sobat that gets no airtime and Sakie drops. Omukai tries a whip and Sakie actually collapses/stumbles back like her legs are gone already, having lost her balance. She also stumbles avoiding Omukai’s boot in the corner, but keeps slowing it down to grapple again. She takes a weak bump off a double-knucklelock and “pops up” for mutual Sobats to stop one another, fires off some strikes and a facecrusher, then slaps Omukai’s chest a bunch (licking her hand first to make it sting), misses a dropkick but gets a falling clothesline and LOCOMOTION DOUBLE-ARM SUPLEXES~~… which Omukai immediately no-sells and boots Sakie in the back while she celebrates, ruining the moment. Omukai confidently does the “taunt & smack” thing, throwing kicks, and stuffs Sakie’s counter Uranage, but runs… right into a Sobat! Well sorta- Sakie had one foot on the ground the whole time. Omukai bails after stuffing another Uranage but Sakie hits a suicide dive off the top! Goddamn nearly right into the corner of a railing. Debbie checks out Sakie and then they do their old Steiner Brothers taunt in the ring! I feel all this would be getting way more over if more people remembered Sakie or ARSION had drawn much of a crowd.

Not exactly an ideal landing for someone who retired due to a BAD neck injury.

Omukai is amused, and heads into the ring… and immediately eats three Uranages in a row, stumbling around trying to no-sell but failing. lol so much for building that up. A fourth one gets two, and Omukai dodges a Sobat and hits a spinning heel kick for two. Sakie tries to power out and charges right into OMUKAI’s Uranage, and oh nooooooooooo lands right on the side of her head at a vertical angle because she didn’t get enough air and sandbagged her in mid-leap. To be fair, Omukai was lifting Sakie into her OWN body, meaning she couldn’t leap over. Sakie sells death as the audience gets that “oh no” hush, but recovers and takes the next Uranage well. The next one hits two, and Omukai goes for the B3 Bomb, but Sakie hits a “headscissors”, falling back and having to scrunch Omukai up for a pin attempt. But that’s all Sakie has, as she flops over. Shining Wizard ends it for Omukai at (9:06). But then, to be nice, Omukai slaps Sakie away and gets Irish whipped off the ropes, where Sakie hits another Sobat and “pins” her seconds later, Omukai doing the “hug from beneath” thing common in retirement matches.

This was UGLY. Sakie was obviously way out of practice and out of shape for this kind of a thing, but it seems like they wanted to do it, doing her “Greatest Hits” (even getting DEBBIE out to help her) even as she was slow and stumbling around doing stuff. It’s impressive it wasn’t more of a disaster, but Omukai was fairly measured and never tried to do too much. But it was like Sting in his last years in AEW- very obviously being “babied” and let to do stuff with timing… except for the time Omukai lifted her funny and Sakie couldn’t leap high enough to do an Uranage bump properly. Then you get some odd match construction- Sakie goes for the Uranage twice and Omukai desperately hell nopes out of it, stuffing it… but then Sakie hits a plancha, Omukai is amused, then walks into the ring and Sakie just hits three in a row like it wasn’t so hard after all. But then Omukai has enough to just no-sell all her shit and keep hitting her own moves, eventually picking up the win. And sadly even the “Greatest Hits” aren’t that over- Sakie didn’t have the big push or memorable spots to REALLY get that much of a reaction- this is effectively a midcarder coming out of retirement to hit their midcard stuff, really.

Rating: 3/4* (really weak and soft, with Sakie out of it and Omukai never really being the best carry-artist anyways)

UWA WOMEN’S TAG TITLE TOURNAMENT:
FINAL MATCH:
LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda) vs. RE*DRAG (GAMI & Rie Tamada, w/ PIKO, POKO & PIKA):
* Weirdly, the defunct UWA Tag Titles, a Mexico/Japan set of belts that were mostly a trophy for LCO in their “up & comer” days, have been rendered no longer defunct, and are fought for in a tournament. It’s ended up with LCO taking on Re*DRAG. Always iffy to see what version of GAMI you’re going to get- but “Crappy GAMI” has been the rule of late. LCO’s guardrail is already stuck up in the corner.

LCO immediately pounce and annihliate Re*DRAG, whipping GAMI into a guardrail and blasting her with chairshots, then doing the Guardrail Drop already. Re*DRAG takes a walk, GAMI bleeding from the mouth (probably when a chair got dropped on her face for the drop), then tries to take over on Mita, doing a LONG slow-motion ropewalk until Rie’s whipped into the other side and the slack gets GAMI crotched. Re*DRAG tries their 5-person assisted abdominal stretch spot but Shimoda just dives onto the pile, and Mita counters to a Blazing Chop. They’re just interrupting the shit out of each other out there. Speaking of, Mita stunners out of a sleeper but GAMI stunners her in return. The clowns pull off the turnbuckle pad… SORTA… causing Mita to hurt her arm against it (it’s barely been moved so it looks weak), but she quickly hits a chairshot then hoists GAMI onto her shoulders and drops her face-first over the exposed turnbuckle. Drop-toehold into the chair whiffs BADLY so they just chairshot her again so she can blade and set up a heat spot. GAMI bleeds a ton while Mita hits a piledriver & Avalanche Electric Chair Drop for two. They torture GAMI a while, biting the cut and posing on her while Rie has apparently fall off the face of the earth because I haven’t seen her in like seven minutes. A really bad set-up leads to GAMI’s pumphandle ligerbomb and the fans barely react to that, and she fucks around a while- TAG OUT YOU DUMBASS. Sure enough LCO quickly overwhelm her again with double-teams until she finally avoids a double-team and Stereo Dragon Suplexes get two.

Rie (finally doing shit after 9 minutes) tornado DDTs Mita on the floor while Shimoda, who hasn’t had ANYTHING done to her in the match really, is somehow dead enough to take a Super Frankensteiner onto a table… except it’s the worst possible table because A) Shimoda just bounces off the table so it looks bad, then GAMI tries to piledrive her through it as it folds… and gives way RIGHT whens he bends Shimoda down so THAT looks bad! Shimoda has to take a board shot to the head and Adios Amiga (inverted grip fisherman’s buster)- Mita saves. LCO comes back, GAMI comes back, etc., and GAMI hits a pumphandle slam that nearly turns Shimoda vertical for two. Oh, her little clacker thingie has barbed wire around it and she uses it to choke Shimoda and then she FINALLY TAGS OUT after 13 minutes of this shit. Shimoda starts to no-sell but the Death Lake Driver is turned into a tornado DDT and Rie missile kicks a chair into her. A bridge on a German fails and Shimoda ax kicks her for two. Mita’s in but double rolling elbows stun her- she counters a dragon suplex to a DVD which is countered to a flash pin, but she sits on Rie for two. Rie’s dragon suplex gets one, then a sunset flip powerbomb gets two. A chair & Adios Amiga gets two, then Shimoda saves after another. Mita suddenly shoves her into an ax kick and the DVD gets two. Another one and GAMI uses the clacker to break then wipes out everyone with it… accidentally hitting the ref. A shot to his boob somehow KO’s him, and Rie uses red mist and Germans Mita… GAMI trying to count “3”, but the ref recovers and Mita quickly Blazing Chops Rie for the pin (18:49). LCO are the UWA Tag Champions again, and GAMI challenges them to a 3 million yen (like $300,000) unification match with the Twin Star Belts at some point.

FUCK THIS MATCH OH MY GOD. What a weird goddamn match- GAMI bleeds buckets and does a dramatic bunch of selling and is in the ring for THIRTEEN MINUTES with no tag-out, but it doesn’t get even the slightest bit over because she’s not good at babyface selling, is an established goof-off (AND HEEL) and she just hits random comebacks anyways. And then random bullshit like “lol I used a clacker and hit Mita in the butt” mid-match. Like, what is their endgame here? Another “brief run at the Title” for GAMI? Also Rie disappearing for the first ten minutes. Another weird LCO match as they just sorta lazily go about their day. Hitting the guardrail drop in seconds then spending ages working over GAMI while everyone seems to be interrupting one another and hitting their own stuff- it’s odd. Then the match goes on with more comedy spots, a ref bump, a visual pin, then LCO wins via a quick transition move instead of anything sneaky- like when was the last time the BLAZING CHOP beat anybody?

Rating: DUD (just a spectacular, stupid mess of a match- GAMI being a comedy heel but also a brave bleeding babyface, mixed with Rie having no character and just doing her generic stuff, plus LCO in sleepwalker mode. For TWENTY MINUTES)

I have the full match now!

QUEEN OF ARSION TITLE:
AYAKO HAMADA vs. LIONESS ASUKA:
* This is it! Asuka joined the company four months prior and was made head booker (behind the scenes) and “Executive” (on-camera), making this showdown perhaps inevitable on two fronts. This is only clipped, unfortunately. Asuka’s in black, Hamada’s in blue & white.

A dramatic knucklelock has Hamada doing a back-arch, but she counters with an Octopus hold. Asuka dumps her and smashes the arm, works it in the ring, and gets backdrop suplexed. They mess up a thing (Ayako shoots over her with a “hold” that loses its grip) and Ayako gets an enzuigiri & German, but misses a moonsault and collapses when Lioness blocks her lariat on the injured arm. Lioness uses Ayako’s own Ayakonoclasm for two, then they mess up a powerbomb counter (Ayako flips too much and just takes the bump and they stare at each other like “…”), but Ayako catches her with a shotei/Ayakonoclasm. Some more ugly stuff (they’re just randomly charging into one another) and Asuka lariats her into the upright table. Ayako does another lucha submission but gets powerbombed into the table and Lioness hits the Flying Stomp to it! Ligerbomb gets two. They mess up more stuff and Asuka suplexes her to the floor (TERRIFYING bump by Asuka, as she does a forward roll almost head-first onto the floor), but misses a dive and crushes noki-A instead. Hamada fights her into the stands, throwing a solid chair and smashing her into a table, then hits a Moonsault to the floor. Asuka tries to backdrop her out there, but Hamada counters and hits a huge SPINNING Ligerbomb on the floor! That SPLAT. Yikes. But Asuka uses FLASH PAPER and fireballs Hamada in the face, then casually throws her around ringside to set up the Flying Stomp Through a Table on the floor. Back in- TOWERHACKER BOMB for two. Lioness gets a MONSTER Ligerbomb off the draped table on the second rope- the BOUNCE on that! Hamada still manages to kick out, then counters the Inside-Grip Michinoku Driver (LSD) with a huge spinkick to the head, but Lioness kicks out at one- Hamada hits three more in a row to nearly pin her, but Lioness blocks another, hits the Rolling Kick, then lands LSD for the pin (4:41 of 18:51 shown)- NEW QUEEN OF ARSION! Lioness beats a teary-eyed Hamada, who quickly quits the company.

This looked quite a bit worse in full than it did with highlights, which keeps out all the botching and hides the fact that the fans were sitting on their asses for most of it. Lioness generously lets Ayako kick out of a ton of “this should DEFINITELY end it” stuff, which is nice, but largely dominates the entire thing, and the crowd isn’t into Ayako, who is clearly being written out of things.

Rating: **1/4 (a pretty dull, lifeless match despite lots of big moves)

DEC. 23rd:

AYAKO HAMADA & LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda) vs. MARIKO YOSHIDA & CYBERJACKS (Michiko Omukai & Ai Fujita):
* Looks like Omukai & Fujita are a tag team in matching gear.

Mita has trouble with Omukai’s kicks to start, but slugs her after getting her Blazing Chop countered with one. A full LCO pose with Ayako humiliates Omukai, but she hauls both of LCO down and Fujita missile kicks in. Mita hits a stunner but ends up in a heel hook by MMA Fujita, but Shimoda helps set up a Doomsday Device Dropkick. Omukai interferes to set up a Fujita rana, but a flying nothing hits feet & Shimoda missile kicks in, and then Ayako missile kicks the Cyberjacks, but Fujita eats two corner attacks but dodges the third and throws her cartwheel elbows at Shimoda. A Blazing chop & Ax Kick take her down, but she dodges a flying ax kick and La Majistrals Shimoda for two, then Yoshida & Shimoda trade strikes until the Cyberjacks set up Yoshida’s Air Raid Crash for two. Shimoda Tiger Suplexes out of another, then Ayako hits a lariat and stunner but keeps getting kicked down. Everyone’s dumped and Fujita Orihara Moonsaults her own partners, and Hamada Super Quebradas them. Shimoda tosses her a chair and she blasts Omukai to set up the Spinning Ligerbomb for two. Hamada declares it’s OVER but misses her spinkick and eats a punch combo from all three opponents for two. Everyone scrambles and many kick their own partners by mistake, but then Omukai leaps in with a surprise Shining Wizard on Ayako at (10:32). lol Hamada nails her own partner with a spinkick and immediately gets pinned? They say this is the last time Hamada will be seen on Battle Station (the show this is airing on), so I guess this is her last ARSION match on the channel- she gets on the mic after… pauses for a huge amount of time, then says “Thank you very much” and leaves the company. In another couple weeks (she has two tag matches and that’s it).

Kind of just a lot of STUFF happening, as nobody sells consistently and then tags out so someone else can do stuff. Like the kind of match you create when nobody has a plan and they’re only told the finish, so there’s no flow or story. Just stuff. Shockingly unover with the fans, too- nobody was reacting to squat. I mean like I said there’s no flow but you figure they’d be into SOMETHING.

Rating: *3/4 (a big nothingburger of a match despite the length- not actively BAD just no flow to it at all)

So as ARSION finishes 2001, its former top star is ready to fuck off outta the company, an old veteran holds the top belt, the tag titles are held up, and Michiko Omukai seems to be getting a big megapush.