Arsion in recent years

[Daishikaze]

I have read alot of people putting over Arsion from 98-2000, whats happened to make people not like their recent stuff? Did the match quality go down or what? I'm looking forward to getting some Arsion tapes in the future, and I want to know if I should bother with the recent stuff or not

[kkeller]

It really depends on what you like. The early Arsion shows feature a lot of ground-based submission style action they even worked with Battlearts some in 2000. In 2001 they switched to more story driven matches mixed with comedy also they lost a lot of their early roster such as Aja Kong, Yumi Fukawa, Candy Okutsu, and Ayako Hamada. Personally for recent Arsion tapes I either check out Punq's website for his match ratings or just look to see who Yoshida and Akino are wrestling they can carry most anyone to a good match and if they wrestle each other buy the tape for sure.

[Daishikaze]

So on average, the recent matches aren't that great? Are Akino and Yoshida the only two left who give good matches or what?

[delfinkid]

ARSION used to have Candy Okutsu, Ayako Hamada and Yumi Fukawa. Since they've left ARSION, the promotion has never been the same.

Ai Fujita is a pretty good worker. But, the overall match quality of ARSION matches in 2003 is definitely not nearly as good as the overall match quality of ARSION matches in 1998-2000.

At one time, ARSION was my favorite joshi promotion. But now they're not even close.

Well, at least ARSION is better than JWP.

[kkeller]

Pretty much they're it. Highspots is selling a two volume tape set of Arsion's greatest matches. Akino and Yoshida are involved in 14 of 19 matches. Part of it is Arsion has a bad habit of clipping the undercard matches down to 1-3 minutes. It's tough to shine in such a short time. Here is some stuff from the last year or two you might like.

Carnival 2001 ppv, It has a good Hyuga-Fujita match on the undercard also one of the better mixed tag matches you will see. The last 3 matches are all good Shimoda/Mita vs Gami/Tamada for the tag titles, Toyota vs Yoshida, and the Lioness wins the title from Hamada in the main event.

Samurai TV 5-12-02, Momoe Nakanishi and Akino wrestle a great All Pacific Titlematch one of the best Arsion TV matches ever. Lots of AJW and JWP on the undercard.

Samurai TV 12-26-02, Momoe/Akino vs Fujita/Noumi and Yoshida vs Omukai are both pretty good matches.

Samurai TV 7-17-01(I may have the date wrong I lost the label), Hamada vs Omukai for the title is good and Yoshida vs Asuka is very good.

Samurai TV 5-7-02, Weird tape has a good Akino vs Yoshida match and 7 other pretty average matches nothing bad at all but nothing spectacular either still a good tape overall.

If you want to start with their early stuff try Sky, Starlet, ARS, and Carnival all from 1999. My favorite is Sky.

[PUNQ]

ARSION have on occation a good match, but there are also many lifeless matches these days. The good workers as noted are Mariko Yoshida & Akino and also Ai Fujita can be classified as one. Michiko Omukai left ARSION earlier this year at ARSION's 5th anniversary show on February 11th and is now a freelancer and seems to have joined New Japan's supposed joshi project.

"Well, at least ARSION is better than JWP."

IMO, that is not correct, but that's a matter of personal taste anyway. Even if JWP is the smallest promotion around and almost dead, they did a fantastic job last year of improving their in-ring skills and gave probable the second best wrestling on the joshi scene after GAEA. The Azumi Hyuga vs Ran Yu Yu feud the first part of the year was and them teaming the second half of 2002 was done great. It was a simple booked feud and it worked and was my favorite feud of the year. Sadly JWP has lost Ran Yu Yu since then to GAEA and is probable not as good this year as a result of it (have only seen a couple of JWP shows from this year), but ARSION is also not delivering much these days.


--PUNQ--

[delfinkid]

>>"Well, at least ARSION is better than JWP."

>IMO, that is not correct, but that's a matter of personal taste anyway.

Actually, you're right. It isn't correct. I forgot Michiko Omukai left ARSION earlier this year. And I forgot how much I like Azumi Hiuga's work. IMO, Hiuga is keeping JWP alive.

[frankp316]

In December, JWP was supposed to disappear but they never really did. About a month ago, they announced they were going to reinvent themselves and model themselves after JD with "athtresses". Hyuga not only works for JWP, she's worked recently for NEO, AJW, in ARSION wearing a mask as Tiger Honey and she even showed up in Nightmare wearing a mask. If AJW had any sense, they'd hire her full time and start putting her in main events. But they don't have any sense.