Joshi Spotlight — page 4

Just your everyday turning a younger wrestler into a sandwich board.

GAEA JAPAN IN JUNE 2000:
* It’s time for more GAEA Japan! I nearly did more ARSION but it’s been too long since I grabbed this one. GAEA recently had their Fifth Anniversary Show- their biggest show in history, with Chigusa & Lioness reforming the CRUSH GALS and defeating the heel stable in the main event. As a result, they formed the GAEA Third Generation Army underneath them, even convincing Chikayo Nagashima & Sugar Sato to leave Mayumi Ozaki and rejoin their original mentor! However, this action incensed many of GAEA’s veteran wrestlers, who now formed a super-stable under Ozaki and her crew. This set of matches features some pretty big stuff, as we get Sakura Hirota doing Swan Lake, DYNAMITE KANSAI joining GAEA Japan, and some pretty dramatic Rising Stars vs. Veterans performances as Sugar & Chikayo take on their ex-mentor in tag matches.

JUNE 11th:

https://archive.org/details/arsion-2000-04-20-05-07

Come watch it on Archive.org! Which was a HUGE pain in the ass that kept skipping on me and freezing, so I had to download the 2-hour thing and watch it on a video player, which had issues skipping back & forth in time to re-watch points of the matches!

ARSION- HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING TOURNAMENT:
* Yes, it’s an ARSION Tournament! You can tell Rossy’s booking when… I wonder if this one will be full of inexplicable flukes!

There’s no sound to start (probably copywrite), but it shows the VIP stable walk around in designer clothes, which might be their signature. Tragically, Mita isn’t in a designer dress like Omukai but a ’90s mom sleeveless turtleneck. Also Bionic J kind of doesn’t fit the overall motif. You can tell Omukai’s getting the push because she’s wearing a full-on gown- everyone else is wearing what COULD pass for “everyday people clothes”.

APRIL 20th:

GRAN APACHE & LINDA STARR vs. MARI & FABI APACHE:
* OH GOODY MORE INTERGENDER STUFF. With Apache wrestling both his daughters, lol. Well I guess that means we won’t be getting hentai spots. oh please don’t prove me wrong…

AJW IN JUNE 2000:
* It’s time for more Joshi, as we finally hit the mid-point of 2000! And it’s the rise of BLACK JOKER! This is the heel stable comprised of Takako Inoue (Freelance) with LLPW’s Rumi Kazama & Eagle Sawai. Takako is then a Freelancer mostly working for Zenjo still, but the other two are from LLPW and now getting into the “Dominant Heel Stable” schtick, albeit with more of a Team Uniform and focus.

This set features Black Joker teaming up against some hapless Zenjo kids, and ends with Takako Inoue taking on the WWWA Champion, Manami Toyota, in a match that’s a prelude to Toyota’s later title defense against Eagle Sawai. We also see more JWP interactions, as there’s both a rookie fight and ace Azumi Hyuga teaming with Command Bolshoi against the heel ZAPs.

MIHO WAKIZAWA & KAYO NOUMI vs. BLACK JOKER (Takako Inoue & Rumi Kazama)
* This is just clipped to nothing, but it’s the first time BLACK JOKER appears in my watchalong! They’re of course wearing all black and brutalize the Zenjo rookie squad. Wacky bleeds! Takako hits a big powerbomb (that is such odd offense from her) but Kayo slides out, annoying her. She hits a backfist that has Kayo barrel-rolling forward, pulls her up before three, then hits another two that leaves her a pile of limbs on the sell-job- that’s it at (1:28 shown)- Black Joker of course winning decisively. I actually have no idea when this match took place (it’s not on Cagematch, I think), but here’s as good as any.

June 11th:
* All of these are from the same show.

GAEA JAPAN- THE FIRST FIVE YEARS:
* So with GAEA’s Fifth Anniversary Show just being posted, I realized I’d done exactly five years of their content, so I figured I’d do the column I’d been thinking about for a while- a summation of their first five years of existence! As the promotion only lasted about ten, it’s fitting to strike at the halfway point.

The story of GAEA Japan is more or less how Chigusa Nagayo, the biggest women’s star of all time, came out of retirement and after a year or so of working with JWP on occasion (she had a fairly adversarial relationship with the Matsunagas, the heads of her old home at All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling, owing to a variety of things), formed a new promotion with her own trainees and a few wrestlers from elsewhere. Within a couple years, the promotion was a pretty big hit, and soon was able to stop working interpromotional matches all over the card as her first class of trainees, a miraculous group all things considered, slowly improved and mostly became good workers. By 1999-2000, GAEA was easily the #1-2 joshi promotion in the world, usually fairly even with Zenjo (AJW), which ran way more shows but probably drew less money to the average show.

I’ve read that a huge part of GAEA’s early appeal was “Doing It Ourselves”, with a women-led company (only the money guy was a dude), countering all the other promotions run by men. That Chigusa, the biggest star ever, was there only helped, as she brought in all the ’80s girls now that they were in their 20s and 30s. GAEA audiences tend to be the most woman-heavy, with lots of amused moms in the crowd.

THE INAUGURAL CLASS:
Chigusa Nagayo: The biggest star in joshi history, a megastar of the 1980s. She retired in 1989, coming back at the 1993 Dream Slam show and working periodically for JWP before training GAEA’s first class and getting a backer for a promotion. She was the head trainer AND booker, while someone provided the money and another did the business.

KAORU: The next most experienced wrestler- she had debuted for Zenjo 1986, but left the company for a couple years before returning in an iffy role. KAORU had some of the laziest performances by a veteran I’d ever seen in some of the early ’90s shows, oftentimes doing the job or getting a midcard match where she has to go 20 minutes with a nobody. But then in 1994 wrestles the match of her life against Mariko Yoshida (a 30:00 draw that turns into an overtime that KAORU quickly wins). She leaves Zenjo a second time and founds GAEA. In GAEA she’s the obvious #2 native, and in the early era is usually paired with another promotion’s wrestler in a “Sub Main Event” type of match. And she wrestles like she absolutely knows she needs to succeed to make GAEA work, and puts on some of the best performances of her career.

Bomber Hikaru: A weak-ass wrestler of dubious experience who is hired out of nowhere by Chigusa, acting as a “mid-tier” veteran below Chigusa & KAORU, but above the green rookies. Her role seems clear- to act as a barrier to them as they rise up the ranks.

THE ROOKIES:
* All of them are given Arena swimsuits in a single block of color- a brilliant move to immediately differentiate all of them. This becomes a GAEA trademark- I see it all the way up to 1999 debuts. To say this class is a big miracle is a huge understatement- you will likely never see this much raw talent in the early years of their careers before or since. Of the class of six, all five were at least “pretty good” within a year- pure insanity. These girls were clearly meant to be the backbone of the company, so they wouldn’t have to rely on “Dream Matches” to fill out the cards, and they wrestle like it- each one fighting to show that they deserved to be there and wanted a shot. Alas, GAEA never succeeds to anywhere near this level ever again.

GAEA JAPAN- 5TH ANNIVERSARY DAY:
(May 14th 2000)
* GAEA Japan is officially 5 years old! Their big anniversary show takes place in a good-sized arena (the Tokyo Ariake Coliseum) and features a lot of big matches for the company- The CRUSH GALS REUNITE as Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka take on Devil Masami & Akira Hokuto! The two biggest stars of the ’80s take on one of their top rivals AND one of the top stars of the ’90s! Aja Kong defends the AAAW World Title against Meiko Satomura once more, in a rematch of GAEA’s best-ever match! A giant weapons brawl between Mayumi Ozaki & KAORU where one of them invents the One Winged Angel! Toshiyo Yamada getting fed to Neo’s Kyoko Inoue! Rookie Saika Takeuchi being faced by heel cheater RIE! We start off with the introductions, each group showing up separately.

GAEA Roster: Chigusa Nagayo, Devil Masami (sorta), Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Toshiyo Yamada, KAORU, (First Class) Meiko Satomura, Sonoko Kato, Sugar Sato, Chikayo Nagashima, Toshie Uematsu, (Second Class) Sakura Hirota
Himiko Roster: Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Devil Masami, Sugar Sato, Chikayo Nagashima, RIE, Kaori Nakayama
DorA Roster: Aja Kong, Lioness Asuka, KAORU, Sonoko Kato

AJW IN SPRING 2000:
* It’s time for more Zenjo! With a bunch of random tag matches from March and May! We start off with a bit part of the AJW/JWP feud that’s been going on, with Manami Toyota leading a team of AJW wrestlers against JWP in a Gauntlet Match! And things culminate with a WWWA World Title defense as Manami Toyota defends against Ran YuYu! Meanwhile, Tag Champions Tomoko Watanabe & Kumiko Maekawa continue their year-long feud against Lac Cachorras Orientales in a title defense!

Imagine about 197 spots like this, mixed with male-on-female assaults, and you’ve got this show.

https://archive.org/details/arsion-battlarts-king-queen-tournament-03-12-2000

ARSION/BATTLARTS- KING & QUEEN TOURNAMENT:
(March 12th 2000)
* I found a random ARSION thing on Archive.org! And it’s… a dual show with BattlARTS? Or Battlarts. Which is one of those “Fake Shoot” companies. It’s a mix of ARSION stuff, BattlARTS stuff, and men vs. women matches which are sure to be comedic and not at all repulsive!

SO uh, if you spend any amount of time in Japan, you might find their late nite TV very… distinctive. When I did a school exchange there in 1998 or so, my friend and I marveled at how their late nite comedy was basically all perversion, with topless women and the gag being that guys would ogle them. This was clearly seen as the height of comedy, as immensely chauvinistic as it was. Naturally being like seventeen we thought it was the greatest thing ever. If you look at Shonen Manga (manga targeted at young boys to preteens) you get a lot of the same sort of thing- usually one prominent “pervert” character constantly feeling up enraged women, and that’s like… the entire gag. “LOL he’s a pervert and non-consensually grabs women, and sometimes takes a beating for it!”. This nowadays creates some disconnect when the works are published here because now 2025 Western society is all “OMG” about it (with… exceptions). BUT LIKE… this is sort of the culture in which this 2000 show is dropping. REMEMBER THAT.

KING AND QUEENS TOURNAMENT (Elimination Style/Battle Royal)- SEMI FINALS:
CANDY OKUTSU, AI FUJITA & YUKI ISHIKAWA vs. ETSUKO MITA, KAW*KAW & TAKESHI ONO:
* So it’s a tournament made up of what looks like randomized teams, though one has two women and the other just one. Yuki is a Plain Undies Puro Guy, teaming with the CAZAI members Candy and Ai. KAW*KAW (there’s a star between KAWs) is some dude in a black bodysuit & mask. Ono is a longtime BattlArts wrestler who moved to some indie I’ve never heard of (Fu-Ten?), and is some young dude with Arrogant Blond Hair, a scrawny body and black pants. He really has that Adam Cole look- the scrawny body with the big head.

AJW IN MARCH 2000:
* It’s time for more Zenjo! This is primarily from a March 4th show, but I found a single JWP match from the same month, and a March 11th one from a Rikidozan Memorial Show. The wildest one is probably an AJW/JWP mish-match with Manami Toyota & Kaoru Ito teaming up with Dynamite Kansai of JWP against Yumiko Hotta, Takako Inoue & Command Bolshoi! But the BEST one, though, is a big Steel Cage Deathmatch between Las Cachorras Orientales and Tomoko Watanabe & Kumiko Maekawa! The last time LCO was in one of these, they were in a generational ***** match- can they match that success swapping Kaoru Ito for Maekawa? Read on!

NANAE TAKAHASHI & MIYUKI FUJII (AJW) vs. LIONESS ASUKA & MORIMATSU (JD’):
* JD’ comes to down with Asuka taking one of her goons against the low-end Zenjo squad, including their barebones rookie Fujii. Morimatsu’s the JD’ goon with black & blue Ultimate Warrior facepaint and Dudley Boyz gear otherwise. Asuka’s in black, Fujii’s in yellow/blue/black, and Nanae’s in this spectacularly ugly red singlet covered in orange tassels and pink streaks.

GAEA JAPAN IN APRIL 2000:
(April 8th 2000)
* So having finally caught up to the other joshi promotions in 2000, it’s time to head back to GAEA Japan! Which still has three stables vying for control in wacky matches. This week is like… okay there’s ONE really good match! Four KAORU matches as she gets a new toy (hoo boy, watch for that table piece she’s got) and a new move and wants EVERYONE to see it.

GAEA Roster: Chigusa Nagayo, Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Toshiyo Yamada, KAORU, (First Class) Meiko Satomura, Toshie Uematsu, (Second Class) Sakura Hirota
Himiko Roster: Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Devil Masami, Sugar Sato, Chikayo Nagashima, RIE, Kaori Nakayama
DorA Roster: Aja Kong, Lioness Asuka, KAORU, Sonoko Kato

D OR A (Lioness Asuka & Sonoko Kato) vs. MEIKO SATOMURA & SAKURA HIROTA:
(April 8th)
* Kato & Satomura have an ongoing issue thanks to being ex-partners.

Meiko & Kato trade kicks before Meiko gets a vicious hiptoss counter, and Sakura’s in and WANTS ASUKA. Asuka is caught laughing a bit out of character at this, and Sakura puts on some knuckle-wraps and throws on a mouthguard- Asuka easily fends her off and Sakura shouts “JACKIE CHAN!” and starts making goofy Bruce Lee noises, her elite new martial arts skillz also failing. She tricks Lioness into checking an injury and eyepokes her, but stalls and gets wiped out. She grabs Asuka’s table to avoid taking bumps on it, but runs it at her and gets kicked down. They punch each other in the crotches (it’s not very effective…) and Asuka gets the Giant Swing, and is so dizzy she tags out to Kato. She finally clobbers Asuka and hits her double-arm submission, then gets the boomerang uraken and Meiko runs wild. Lioness & Meiko trade shots until Asuka gets a release Blue Thunder Bomb. Kato & Meiko start throwing bombs at each other, Kato gets a German & enzuigiri, Meiko reverses Kowloon’s Gate but eats a rolling kick, and they counter each other a while until Kato catches a Meiko kick and tries an anklelock, only to be countered into an armbar and tapping at (10:26). Somewhat unexpected! One of those weird “50% comedy, 50% actual match” things where Sakura’s doing goofy spots and amusing the crowd while the others are working at half-speed to play up a rivalry and the Sakura stuff is honestly getting louder responses, haha. The Meiko/Kato stuff felt like the “meat” of the match and was largely fine but scrappy and not all that interesting, with a finish kinda out of nowhere.

Every once in a while someone in joshi shows they’re still all crazy, even with business down. A goddamn German Superduperplex.

https://archive.org/details/jd-2000.01.10

JD TAG EXPLOSION:
(Jan. 10th 2000)
* So I reviewed the last JD’ show of 1999 a couple weeks ago to prepare for their 2000 stuff- I can only find two videos but that’s almost prefered since I won’t have to watch TONS of stuff. This show features a BIG interpromotional match- JD’s top star Lioness Asuka vs. the former Ace of JWP- Dynamite Kansai! In 1995 this is a guaranteed ****+ match! Unfortunately it’s 2000 so don’t get your hopes up! Also we get the “good rising stars who debuted in 1995” with Yoshiko Tamura vs. The Bloody! Then some other invader matches as AJW sends Nanae Takahashi & Miho Wakizawa to take on JD’s youngster team. Plus Cooga gets her retirement ceremony!

COOGA’S RETIREMENT CEREMONY:
* Cooga’s a funny one with me. I was only vaguely familiar with her until I started my “start from 1992 and move forwards” Spotlight run (when I first did the column I just kinda found shows “wherever” and watched them at random)- she was the one Zenjo wrestler I didn’t recognize, because it turned out she retired by year’s end! She was Miori Kamiya, a thoroughly mediocre wrestler from the Class of 1986 (the one that produced Aja Kong, Megumi Kudo, Combat Toyoda, Bison Kimura and KAORU), and was clearly on her “veteran who now jobs to up & comers to establish them at the next tier” tour of duty- she ends the year jobbing out to Mima Shimoda and gives it up. When JD’ is formed by Jaguar Yokota and some others, she turns up as the masked “Cooga” (which is supposed to be “Cougar”, from all evidence I’ve found) with a fire under her ass, having like… okay **1/2-*** matches but it was pretty decent. But she had fallen apart a bit judging by later stuff I saw, and wrestled her last match in 1999.

hahahaaha. Rossy Ogawa, future creator of Stardom then Marigold. Looking like the guy all the strippers warn each other about.

https://archive.org/details/arsion-millenium-premium-starlet-03-15-04-07-2000

ARSION MILLENNIUM STARLET:
(March 15th & April 7th 2000)
* It’s time for more ARSION! This is a mix of stuff, with Jessie Bennett returning under a new identity, the various lucha-style wrestlers taking on bigger stars, and more. This is a massively clipped show, but NOT as bad as past ARSION affairs- instead of cutting many matches to 1-2 minutes and leaving 2 full ones, it’s essentially a ton of matches cut by half, leaving more of the meat intact. Still not quite getting the full shows, though. Of note here is STABLEMANIA RUNNING WILD as Las Cachorras Orientales’ “VIP” goes up against GAMI’s “Re*Drag”, Jessie Bennett returns as “Bionic J” to join VIP, Re*Drag trying to win back their tag belts from Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida, and a Father/Daughter tag match as Gran Hamada & Ayako take on Apache & Fabi Apache! And the dads actually FIGHT the girls in this one!

STARLET 2000:

AI FUJITA vs. RENA TAKASE:
* Fujita now has a REALLY dark tan and what looks to be a huge amount of lip filler- early 2000 is a tad early for Ganjuro fashion, innit? Rena is ARSION’s brand-new rookie. Fujita’s in pastel blue & white and Rena’s in red. This looks to be a full match.

They do a pretty basic rookie match to a quiet audience, Rena showing little fire as Fujita leads her through a lot of legholds and bodyscissors for several minutes before finally starting up with character stuff and running dropkicks. Hilariously Takase’s forearms already look better than Fujita’s, and she takes the senior down with a SPEAR of all things before Ai just lets her try dropkicks that are sold half-heartedly (I can’t tell if Fujita is TRYING to no-sell or legit just sucks at it). Fujita avoids a jujigatame and hits her sloppy cartwheel handspring (elbows? body attacks? She’s not sticking a limb out or anything) and finishes with a Boston crab at (6:07).

FEB. 11th SHOW:
* This is all from the same show, taking place Feb. 11th at Korakuen Hall. Featuring several weird mish-mash matches (Hotta & rookie Fujii vs. Takako Inoue and COMMAND BOLSHOI? Manami Toyota & Kaoru Ito teaming with Dynamite Kansai of JWP against two Class of ’95 JWP girls and AJW’s Wakizawa?), culminating in an All Pacific Title match between Kumiko Maekawa and JWP’s top wrestler, Azumi Hyuga! Also it has Las Cahorras Orientales against Tomoko Watanabe & Nanae Takahashi!

YUMIKO HOTTA & MIYUKI FUJII vs. TAKAKO INOUE & COMMAND BOLSHOI:
* This is a weird one- Hotta is one of Zenjo’s top stars, and she’s teaming with it’s lowest-end rookie against the freelancer Takako and… JWP’s clown wrestler Command Bolshoi? A weird pair the spares match. Takako cost Yumiko the belt last year, and lost to her in a title match, so there’s some history. Also they were a great tag team in the early ’90s. The match is pre-faced by the JWP President and AJW President coming out to greet the fans- haha Matsunaga looks likea Japanese version of my grandpa. That plaid shirt with the giant pockets over grey slacks. Takako’s in black & Bolshoi’s in red & gold, looking like a Power Ranger (er. Sentai, since this is Japan). Hotta’s in black & Fujii’s in yellow & blue. With a more slender look and black leather on, Takako looks basically exactly the same as she does now. Like, still wrestling 25 years later.

AJW in JANUARY 2000:
* Here’s some stuff from a pair of Zenjo shows in January 3rd & 4th from Korakuen Hall! A double-whammy sees the Tag Champions defend their belts against a Veteran/Kid squad of Manami Toyota & Miho Wakizawa, then the Wacky showcase continues as she fights Kumiko Maekawa for the All Pacific Championship the next night! And then a big WWWA World Title defense as champion Yumiko Hotta defends against the only one in the company who could beat her- Toyota!

WWWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES:
BEST 2 of 3 FALLS:
TOMOKO WATANABE & KUMIKO MAEKAWA vs. MANAMI TOYOTA & MIHO WAKIZAWA:
(Jan. 3rd 2000)
* A bizarre tag title match, the Tag Champs end up fighting a Main Eventer and the World Title contender on a show the very next night… and newbie Wakizawa. I can’t imagine anyone thought Wacky’s team had a chance here (she’s way too green to have a hope against either champ), making this an odd “filler” bout. The champs are in blue tasseled gear, Toyota’s in red & gold, and Wacky’s got like… a red, white & yellow top with a belly cut-out and a white skirt attached. A weird combination of “ugly 1980s singlet” gear with modern stuff. It clashes.

GAEA JAPAN:
(March 2000)
* Okay, so horror of horrors- I coudn’t find hardly ANYTHING for joshi in 2000 at all save for GAEA’s always-full channel. 80+ matches in the GAEA style… *shudder*. I mean LAST SHOW had two excellent matches on it but there’s so much crap at the same point, lol. The only Zenjo stuff I could find was in the fall. I might try for a “just the highlights” style of reviewing for some of this as I’d probably get bored of this promotion in an extended go, but we’ll see. THANKFULLY I managed to find a lot of ARSION & JD’ on Archive.org, as annoying as that site is to watch stuff on (the “skip” function is quite poor and the viewing window is no fun).

But wait! This show actually has some stuff! A new member joins the big heel stable HIMIKO! We further the angle between the former Crush Gals uniting against evil heels! And a match over *** happens again!

GAEA Roster: Chigusa Nagayo, Toshiyo Yamada, Meiko Satomura, Sonoko Kato, Toshie Uematsu, Sakura Hirota, Saika Takeuchi
HIMIKO Roster: Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Sugar Sato, Chikayo Nagashima, RIE, Kaori Nakayama
DorA Roster: Aja Kong, Lioness Asuka, KAORU, Sonoko Kato

TOSHIYO YAMADA vs. TOSHIE UEMATSU:
* An interesting combination, as Yamada is repackaged as a Flinststones character and Uematsu is the least credible of GAEA’s Original Five.

https://archive.org/details/1999-12-28-stv-jd-1-547965748-456239358

Another show found on the Archive!

JD’- GET MIRACLE:
(Dec. 28th 1999)
* Okay, time for something different! Archive.org stuff wasn’t working for me for the longest time, but I was clued in to a handful of JD’ shows from 2000, and because I’m desperate to not JUST review GAEA Japan for the year, I’ll check some of it out! This one is from late 1999, which might clue me in to the nature of the promotion going into the year 2000. This one features the final match ever of Miori “Cooga” Kamiya- a JD’ Title match against Lioness Asuka!

So JD’ (said out loud as “Jay Dee Star”… eventually? Not yet? I guess that comes later. The dash is silent now I think!) is a promotion that actually has TV and had Jaguar Yokota doing the training, and currently has Lioness Asuka (seen a lot in GAEA) as the top star and booker. I’m only vaguely familiar with most of the wrestlers and definitely don’t know any of the angles, so I’m going in pretty blind. Cooga is Miori Kamiya, a Zenjo-trained wrestler who retired and came back under a mask in JD’. Yuko Kosugi & Sumie Sakai have been around for a couple of years (they won AJW’s Japan Tag Titles as a rookie duo). Megumi Yabushita is similar, and is actually an MMA star, too! A total scrub (19-23 stats), but still. KAZUKI is from the same era as the other kids, and Morimatsu is from FMW in the early ’90s. I’m pretty sure Morimatsu’s in black & white and is bigger, while KAZUKI is smaller and in green. Lioness Asuka is the Ace of JD’ and a true legend.

We’re shown clips of a tag match from the month before, Asuka teaming with Shark Tsuchiya against JWP’s Dynamite Kansai and someone- Asuka accidentally sprays mist into Shark’s face and gets her pinned with a Kansai lariat.

COOGA, YUKA KOSUGI & SUMIE SAKAI vs. LIONESS ASUKA, MORIMATSU & KAZUKI:
(Dec. 7th)
* Asuka’s squad attacks before the bell, but Cooga soon makes a comeback with a variety of strikes (mostly rolling kicks)- a flying knee hits Morimatsu and Asuka chairs Cooga to stop the pin. This brings everyone into the ring, and Cooga uses that to hit a rolling pin on Morimatsu for the pin (1:31 shown).

MEGUMI YABUSHITA vs. YUKO KOSUGI:
* Kosugi, in pink frilly gear, is a pretty skinny idol-looking type. Yabushita is dressed like a short purple Etsuko Mita- very similar gear.

https://archive.org/details/arsion-2nd-anniversary-stardom-2000-01-30-02-18-2000

This one’s available on Archive.org.

HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING ARSION- SECOND ANNIVERSARY STARDOM:
(Jan. 30th & Feb. 18th 2000)
* Thank God I found something for 2000 that wasn’t just more GAEA. It’s a pair of winter shows for Hyper Visual Fighting ARSION- this is ARSION’s second anniversary show, leading to a pair of HamaKINO Title defenses against Futagami/Tamada (who have no chance) and Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida (who definitely do). We also get Aja defending her belt against Candy Okutsu, and a whole bunch of stables forming as Rossy Ogawa gets a new idea- FACTIONMANIA RUNNING WILD! By the end of the tape, ARSION, a company with like 20 active wrestlers, will have three factions in it.

JAN. 30th:

FABI APACHE vs. AI FUJITA:
* Newbie Fujita takes on one of the luchadoras they sometimes feature. Clipped to less than 2 minutes, with Fujita hitting a moonsault to the floor and another dive in the ring, then misses a moonsault. She kicks out of La Majistral but is pinned by a Sit-Out Pedigree at (1:27 of 6:20 shown).

MARIKO YOSHIDA vs. LINDA STARR:
* The former top star takes on one of the lower-ranked lucha ladies (the blonde one in neon pink). They start with a spinning armbar routine, then we get clips of Starr hitting high-flying moves. Looks mostly like Yoshida is going all-in to put her over, getting caught with stuff and nearly losing to flash-pins. She then just hits a kick to the face, powerbomb, and Modified Sleeper for the tap-out at (2:14 of 9:07 shown).

GAEA JAPAN:
(Feb. 13th 2000)
* This is all from the same show at Korakuen Hall, save for one match from the 27th. Most importantly, this is a Dual Belt show- the AAAW Tag Titles and the AAAW World Title are both beind defended! Himiko’s Sugar Sator & Chikayo Nagashima defend their belts against DorA’s Lioness Asuka & Sonoko Kato! Then World Champion Aja Kong defends her title against KAORU in a pretty infamous bloody brawl!

MAYUMI OZAKI vs. TOSHIYO YAMADA:
* I actually reviewed this one ages ago for a Yamada bio! I actually liked it then, but at that point the GAEA “spend the whole match in the stands” thing was new to me.

Ozaki’s carrying a freakin’ bo staff straight away for some reason, but Yamada deflects it with a kick and goes to a cross-armbreaker before Ozaki starts choking her with it, then does an LCO-style pose in the ropes to the booing fans. They scrap for a bit, leading to Yamada booting Ozaki in the face and a backdrop suplex, but Ozaki turns it around outside, throwing chairs and such. But then Yamada fights back and smashes Ozaki’s forehead into the ringpost like seven times, leading to her bleeding and taking an even BIGGER ass-kicking out there! She grinds an elbow into the cut while Ozaki embraces the official for help, then goes into a football stance and runs the length of the stands for a huge screaming lariat- hah! Back in after four minutes, Yamada plays to the crowd that’s cheering for Ozaki now, but her Flying Turn Kick is blocked and a Kneeling Powerbomb gets two for Ozaki. She actually does a Buckle Bomb into that long corner pad, but another Powerbomb only gets a one-count.

Saya Endo, between her two senpais in Neo Ladies- Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda.

JOSHI SPOTLIGHT- SAYA ENDO:
Real Name: Nobue Endo
Billed Height & Weight: 5’5″, 150 lbs.
Career Length: 1994-2001

-One of the “Forgotten Joshi Wrestlers” of the ’90s is Saya Endo, who had the misfortune to debut just as the Boom Period was ending, hit her “standard wrestler phase” just as her home company nearly died and jettisoned most of its talent, then ended up as “Card Filler” in a dying indie (Neo Ladies). Making matters worse, she never even got remotely good!

Saya is so unluckily bad she also wrecked OTHER wrestlers’ matches! She was paired up with Las Cachorras Orientales when they were Neo wrestlers, and their usual tag match template was extended into a “Trios Match” template, with Saya shoring them up. The problem was… that LCO formula was predicated on Mima Shimoda eating offense and selling, and Etsuko Mita coming in to mop up. Both were also A+ sellers who were good at putting over others’ offense without drawing any audience sympathy because they were so whiny and screechy about it. Endo, however, had never quite put all of that together, so what we ended up with were eternal segments where she’d be selling for 7-8 minutes, but almost never vocalize, not really act in any way to get people into the match, etc. She also had boring, weak offense that never quite developed.

Saya’s movements and execution seemed okay, though. She just… couldn’t put anything together into good matches. She felt like a pretty barebones “Generic McWrestler” archetype with nothing interesting developing, but not actively awful until you really saw how it was affecting matches to have someone with no personality tied up with the heels. When LCO quit Neo, she was left orphaned… and languished, as she was worse than pretty much everyone else in the company. One of the more surprising things is her never having won a single belt in her entire career- this is almost unheard of for someone who lasted seven years in this era, and is the true sign of a scrub. Zenjo had a million belts kicking around for nearly every tier of development as a wrestler, so not even winning the rookie belt is pretty damning. Granted Neo/NEO didn’t have belts for the longest time but still.

GAEA JAPAN IN JANUARY 2000:
* It’s a whole new year for GAEA! With a ton of random matches! And look! A new stable! Yes, there’s a new one. I don’t know when they showed up- I mean there were literally 106 videos in GAEA’s channel for 1999 and I watched ALL of them so I don’t know why this stable’s debut is missed. BUT it’s called “D OR A” (Dead or Alive), and features Lioness Asuka, Sonoko Kato, KAORU & Aja Kong. And they’re kinda working heel and not with GAEA Japan but also hate Nostradamus. I was super confused watching the first match here but my notes from a couple years ago (when I asked someone who knew) indeed listed them among the stables so I can pretend to know what’s going on. … and then Nostradamus eventually changes their name to “Himiko”. WHY?! IT’S STILL THE SAME GROUP! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?!

CHIGUSA NAGAYO vs. KAORU:
(Jan. 16th)
* So uhhhhhhhhhhh looks like KAORU did a heel turn! She’s in some stable called “D or A” with Aja Kong acting as a second. And she’s wearing a VERY unique, elaborate outfit consisting of a singlet-style bit, a black skirt on the front, various cut-outs, blue fire, etc. Okay it’s pretty ass-ugly from the front. And she jumps Chigusa before the bell, interrupting her super-peppy strange theme music to deliver a beatdown on the floor.

JOSHI IN 1999:
* It’s time for the yearly summation! And thankfully, 1999 isn’t QUITE as bad for the “doom & gloom” as 1998 was! In that most of the promotions are dying on the vine, but All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (Zenjo) is getting slightly more popular again! GAEA is also doing pretty well! And so aging, increasingly-injured veterans will always have a place to work for the next 5-10 years!

uhhhhh there’s still an ass-ton of promotions, though. All of which are far diminished from the 1980s or 1990s peak periods, with some being borderline “micro-promotions”. Things are so bad that nearly every wrestler works for every promotion to fill cards with “Interpromotional Matches” because otherwise you can’t fill all the cards! We’ve also entered “The Era of the Freelancer” as a couple of people made big money as free agents working for whomever would pay them (Lioness Asuka, Las Cachorras Orientales) and so a lot of people followed them to do their own stuff. Many people who typically work in only one spot are also technically “Freelance” but it’s hard to keep track of (Mayumi Ozaki, for example, worked in GAEA Japan almost exclusively but was “Freelance” the whole time). So you get a lot of things like belt-holders being Free, Aja Kong of ARSION being both the ARSION and GAEA Singles Champions, etc. Never mind LCO going on a legendary tear through every promotion they could, making good money as they terrorized their way up the card until becoming the top tag team in GAEA, ARSION, Zenjo, etc., then doing a prominent job to put some other team over.

The General Stories:
* Freelancers running amok, as many people see $$$ in going solo and being their own boss, wrestling for whomever will shell out the money for them. And when it’s not Freelancers, it’s people doing stuff for multiple promotions (most notably Aja Kong, who becomes double-champion of ARSION & GAEA). Aja, Lioness Asuka, LCO, ASARI and more are technically “freelancers”, but most focus in one promotion or so.

* SHOTEIMANIA runs wild, as wrestlers discover that the “Shotei” (a palm thrust to the jaw area) is an over finisher, and so you see it spammed out all over the place. Multiple big matches end with sudden SHOTEIS, the other person selling them huge. Its omnipresence at points is annoying. This affected men’s wrestling, too (Jushin Liger controversially used it a lot). As sometimes it just looks like a piefacing, it can be pretty weak to my eyes.

* Business is improving! For uhhhhh Zenjo, but not most of the others. AJW & GAEA are kinda neck & neck by business standards, both doing the occasional big, well-attended show. So things aren’t nearly as depressing as the dead-zone of 1998.

LAS CACHORRAS ORIENTALES- THE FREELANCER QUEENS:
-So a weird thing develops in 1999- LCO (Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda), who had left AJW to join Kyoko Inoue’s Neo Ladies, quit the floundering promotion and go Freelance. And it’s the way to BIG money- they apparently did very, very well for themselves at this point, as it turns out “Heel Shit-Disturbers Who Harass Everyone and Challenge the Top Wrestlers” works in every single promotion in the country I guess. So the exact same angle seems to happen in every one of them- LCO enters, raises hell, scores a bunch of wins, and then does one big job and messes around until they leave the promotion. And they do all this shit SIMULTANEOUSLY, just about!