Joshi Spotlight — page 5

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!

GAEA JAPAN IN DECEMBER 1999:
* oh thank christ- only nine more GAEA Japan videos to get through and I’m done for the year! DON’T SUCK, GAEA! OR IF YOU DO, AT LEAST CLIP THE MATCHES TO A FEW MINUTES!

TOSHIYO YAMADA, MEIKO SATOMURA & TOSHIE UEMATSU vs. NOSTRADAMUS (Mayumi Ozaki, Sugar Sato & Kaori Nakayama):
(Dec. 5th)
* Well that’s a unique assortment, at least- new MAD MAX FLINTSTONES Yamada with two of the Class of 1995 against Ozaki and a mid-tier goon and her lowest-tier goon.

Ozaki backfists Yamada, but all three GAEA loyalists hit their signature strikes on her for two. Of course after all these head-shots she’s fine and using an umbrella and her red bo staff on Yamada, knocking her around. They trade headstrikes in an annoying manner (these are supposed to be big moves and they’re easily recovering). Ozaki wins that but Sugar soon gets beaten up with a backdrop driver- Meiko ends up getting dragon screwed but dodges Kaori being powerbombed onto her, but Sugar blocks the Pele kick and flying elbows her. Rocket Launcher gets two. Yamada Flying Enzuigiris Meiko by accident and a Ligerbomb gets two- Toshie saves. Sugar gets delayed trying again and eats the Pele Kick/DVD combo… for two! She tries again and Sugar h its her with a RUNNING Ligerbomb, but on the kickout she snags her in a deadly armbar and wins by submission at (6:14 shown)!

Rating: **1/4 (Looks like your everyday “everyone does stuff” GAEA trios match, but Sugar looks really good with her very solid, semi-ordinary offense)

AJW AT YOYOGI NATIONAL GYMNASIUM:
* It’s time for the last big Zenjo show of the year! Featuring Yumiko Hotta defending the Red Belt against dirty rotten cheater Takako Inoue, AND Las Cachorras Orientales defending the WWWA Tag Titles against Tomoko Watanabe & Kumiko Maekawa! Every bout those teams have is over ****! And we end things with the ’90s Best Bout, as Manami Toyota & Kyoko Inoue have the last big match of their eternal rivalry, going 20+ minutes and pulling out all the stops!

And it’s in a big building! This arena is shockingly well-lit, and clearly full of fans- the stated attendance is 3,800! OMG, Zenjo is popular again! Compare this to the darkened hellhole that was their end of year Anniversary Show just a year prior.

AYAKO SEKI vs. MIYUKI FUJI:
* ROOKIE MAYHEM! Fujii is a skinny, buzzcutted rookie in ugly gear, while Seki is a heavyset girl in an amateur-wrestling singlet over a grey t-shirt. I’ve never seen her before! She had just debuted in November!

Seki immediately charges in and just belly-bashes Fujii into the corner, then whips her around the by hair and arrogantly flexes when the scrawny kid tries dropkicks. Clipped to Fujii with an armscissors, but Seki does the BACKLUND LIFT and just chucks her down. Fujii manages a sunset flip, but gets belly-bashed again and a second-rope splash flattens her at (1:27 of 4:23 shown). Almost a total squash by the giant-sized rookie. Holy crap! This kid has so much potential! Already knows how to throw her weight around and crushes Fujii easily and I can’t wait to see… oh, this is her second-last match. She has her last one in four more days, and only ever wrestled on TV once XD. The only thing I can find is that “bullying” might have been responsible, and she was “taken home by her parents” (this wasn’t at all unusual for trainees, but usually they hadn’t debuted on TV yet).

Rating: N/A (but it was squashtastic from the looks of things!)

The main event! LCO vs. HamaKino for the tag titles!

ARSION CARNIVAL 1999:
* It’s time for more ARSION! In that pretty stained-glass building this time! The first match is from Dec. 11th and sees Chaparrita ASARI defend her 3WA Super Lightweight Belt against the small, scrappy Hiromi Yagi of ARSION, and the other matches are themed around the Twin Star of ARSION Tag League finale on Dec. 19th. And it’s capped off with maybe the best ARSION match of all time and one of the best joshi matches of the year, as Las Cachorras Orientales’ hellraising run through the promotion is capped off with a legendary assault of the “Super Rookie” tag team of Ayako Hamada & Mika AKINO- a couple of undersized 2nd-years going up against the evil heel goliaths of joshi puro!

LCO’s run through the industry at this point is pretty legendary, and for good reason- they come in, raise hell, then cap it off with some epic bloody matches.

YUMI FUKAWA vs. CANDY OKUTSU:
* This is a rematch from the inaugural ARSION show. Candy still has Diesel pants but a much better top (gold & black). Candy impresses with some rapid-fire Tiger Mask spots (the tiger feint and spinning toehold takedown), but Fukawa counters with mat wrestling like a jujigatame & crossface, but misses a moonsault. Candy hits Rolling Germans, but her Tiger Suplex is countered to an anklelock… and she TAPS at (2:23 shown of 11:04)! Yumi beat Candy! Impressive!

LUCHA LIBRE RULES:
RIE TAMADA & LINDA STARR vs. AI FUJITA & MARI APACHE:
* The lower-ranked wrestlers do a “lucha match”. We start with Mari nailing her partner, who does a very lazy selljob and they both eat Linda’s flying plancha. Now it’s clipped to JUST the highspots- Fujita’s cartwheel handspring, Mari’s missile kick & tope con hilo (ow- her back), Fujita’s moonsault plancha, then Mari’s impressive “flip them up from a rana to a Ligerbomb” on Rie. Rie hits a sunset bomb on Mari, but takes Linda’s missile kick by mistake and La Majistral pins her. Linda manages a flying rana on Mari for three. Fujita hits her 450 Splash on Linda to win at (3:21 of 12:08 shown).

NEO LADIES (Oct. 22d 1999):
* So it’s time to finish up Neo Ladies for the year! This features a pair of “Neo Japan Cup” matches between their lesser wrestlers, a Takako Inoue vs. Yoshiko Tamura midcard match, then Chaparrita ASARI challenges for the WWWA Super Lightweight Title against Zenjo’s Momoe Nakanishi, and Yumiko Hotta tries to regain her WWWA World Title against Kyoko Inoue to get even for the cheating in the match where Kyoko won it! This is from Hakata Starlanes with a listed crowd of over 1,200… which is one of the most bullshit statements ever. This looks like a depressingly tiny, dark hall, and you can see a SEA of empty chairs- there is maybe 600 people here, tops. Man, an interpromotional match for Zenjo’s top belt can’t draw more than that?

NEO JAPAN CUP ’99:
TANNY MOUSE vs. YUKA NAKAMURA:
* …. who? Okay, Yuka debuted the year before in Neo so I shouldn’t actually know her yet. She wrestles until 2006! Not bad! She looks like a nervous kid in a red outfit with a skirt on it, and is a Kyoko/Neo trainee from 1998, and is up against Tanny, who has filled out a lot and is in a less comedic outfit (black with yellow tassels).

I’m posting the start of the Gauntlet here because… I don’t want the first match’s thumbnail showing up as the header.

GAEA JAPAN’s GAUNTLET MATCH:
* It’s time for more GAEA Japan! This time, we have a huge match- Nostradamus vs. GAEA Japan in a GAUNTLET match! 6 vs. 6! The losers are handcuffed to their respective corners so they can’t interfere as easily! This means that Nostradamus (which now adds RIE to the roster of Aja Kong, Mayumi Ozaki, Akira Hokuto, Chikayo Nagashima, Sugar Sato & Kaori Nakayama, though RIE isn’t in this match) takes on GAEA’s loyalists (Chigusa Nagayo, KAORU, Toshiyo Yamada, Meiko Satomura, Toshie Uematsu & Sakura Hirota) in a series of “600-second” matches- these are prone to flukes, sudden rollups, flash-submissions and other quick finishes, meaning there’s a lot of drama and potential for unexpected things. This is also the infamous moment we get a complete change in Toshiyo Yamada, who possesses a new look going forward. The legendary “Flintstones Mad Max” Yamada era begins here!

“All my friends have children, but… even though I haven’t any of my own… these girls have become my children”
-Chigusa Nagayo

“We are liberty! We are violent! We are freak-out! We arrrrrrrrrrrre GAEA Japan!”
-The announcer, hyping the show.

GAEA GIRLS:
Directors/Writers: Kim Longinotto & Jano Williams
Release Date: 2000 (filmed in 1999)

* Yes, it’s time we come to GAEA Girls. Released in 2000, it nonetheless is centered around 1999 and the debut of Saika Takeuchi. Directed and written by Kim Longinotto & Jano Williams and produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by Vixen Films, it comes up quite a bit when discussing women’s pro wrestling, and is of course somewhat notable for Meiko Satomura, about to retire in 2024, viciously striking a prospective wrestler during training.

The brutality witnessed here is not for the faint of heart, and yet one must keep in mind the old adage “that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed”… which is actually a science-themed observation, but I found one for the social sciences- the Hawthorne Effect! That is, people who are being observed and are made aware of it will inevitably change their behavior. Putting on a show, so to speak.

Chigusa herself, when discussing this documentary, has stated that her intention was to show that “Wrestling is hard”. ie. if it wasn’t tough ALREADY, she was going to make damn sure it looked extra-tough. Uncharitably, you could claim that wrestlers, always a bit side-eyed because they’re doing obvious pretend-fighting, like to go out of their way to act like “No no, we are REALLY tough”, hence all the tall tales of how tough and strong various wrestlers were in real life, how they could clear bars full of people, rouging up Matt Capotelli on Tough Enough on-camera, etc. And one has to wonder how much of that is here- “I don’t want anyone to think we’re just weak pretend-fighters, so beef up the violence for the cameras!”. But pretty much anyone who went through the Zenjo gym (ie. the one Chigusa went through) in prior eras will tell you how tough and nasty that training was. The ones who have, of course, will say “You can’t argue with the results”: if it produced Chigusa Nagayo, Bull Nakano, Devil Masami, Manami Toyota, Akira Hokuto, LCO, and others, who’s to say it doesn’t work?