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[1998-02-18-ARSION-Grand Opening] Yumi Fukawa vs Candy Okutsu


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

First Arsion match ever and first time seeing these Fukuawa in action. Just discovered this is Candy's comeback match. Candy really pounces on the leg at the first hint of dominance. Some of the submissions were really tricked out and looked painful. I have a great appreciation of them keeping the pace and tone of most joshi matches we are familiar with in the 1990's while retaining more mat work and limb control. Fukawa tries multiple things but cant get anything substantial going whether she targets an arm, heel, or leg. We leave the mat at the 10 minute mark with a missile dropkick from Candy. Just as I thought Fukawa might fare better here, Candy hits a forearm smash and german for a nearfall. In an act of desperation, Fukawa looks for a cross armbreaker. A semi-botched lionsault has Fukawa's knee hitting Candy right in the face. Candy regains the advantage and takes back to the air mixing in power moves. The top rope running superplex was impressive. Fukawa hits another moonsault that hits the knees right on her face and again goes for that armbreaker. She takes to the air but gets powerbombed coming down. Candy's arm is injured even more as a result though and Fukawa pounces and finally gets the armbreaker clenched but the time limit expires. This was a really good match that set the table for what to expect from the promotion as a whole. (***1/2)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Given that this show was entitled Virgin: The Grand Opening, some fans might not have gotten what they were hoping for. It was an impressive start for Arsion however, and this was the opening contest.

 

Ex-JWP wrestler Candy had retired the previous year, and completed that process by making her comeback. It was quite a coup to convince her to return with a new promotion. She looked sharp from the outset and hadn't missed a beat. Fukawa was a revelation with her mat skills. It was on a different level to her work in AJW. With the new style she had found her niche. Solid work during the build and got hot near the finish. Plus it was a total cutefest, which doesn't hurt! The draw was a logical outcome with Fukawa being lower ranked and Okutsu returning from a layoff.

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I thought this was awesome - my #2 match at this point in 1998 behind only Tamura-Ilioukhine. This was really hard fought and was a great way to establish ARSION at something different from everything else at the time. They did a great job getting the cross armbreaker over as a killer move, not that the move wasn't already established in most of the Japanese feds. I thought they also did a nice job taking advantage of Candy's senior standing, but using that as a way to get over Fukawa - she's really competitive with her throughout this match, and as Zenjo mentioned, she's taking on a totally different style than she did in AJW and looks way better for it. Looking forward to seeing more of this company!

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  • 1 year later...

Some good stuff here blending some disparate styles. The work was intense throughout but the pace wasn't blistering--I don't know much about ARSION but I'm cautiously optimistic that it can take up the mantle of early-'90s JWP in utilizing a more deliberate pace and a more mat-based focus as a point of difference from AJW. This was more of an appetizer match so I don't really expect it to be on a MOTY list, but it's definitely the best match of February for whatever that's worth.

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  • 1 month later...

Believe this was the first match on the first show for Arsion. This was incredible. Everything was crisp. The shoot style spots beat every faux-shoot stuff thus far this year besides the Tamura match. It makes Goldberg's leg locks look like the most amateur stuff on an amateur show and also made the BattleArts match look bad in comparison.

 

Probably my MOTY thus far, if not it is pretty damn close. I want to dig up the full version of Ohtani/Liger from earlier in the month first.

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  • 6 months later...

The first ARSION match. It is a very appropriate debut match. They mix the traditional joshi with lucharesu and tricked out submission work, and the whole thing has the flair of two overzealous young workers going all out to show the world especially with the bomb throwing at the end and Fukawa hitting those face-shattering moonsaults that nearly KO'd Candy. I give them a ton of credit because they really delivered a good match that sets the tone. They kept going back to the submissions and really had a hard fought battle to the very end that the crowd got into. Can't remember the last time I watched a „young workers showing the world“ match on this level. Side note, a Cagematch user mentioned that he went to a few ARSION shows and he felt that many guys there went for the pretty workers and the „product“ (apparently Arsion had lots of quality mags, posters etc. for sell) and not the wrestling, so Arsion matches had not as much heat as GAEA. It's not hard to see why especially with Okutsu wearing a ridiculous outfit that made her butt look gigantic but to their credit the wrestling was top notch and on the level of the presentation.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1998-02-18-ARSION-Grand Opening] Yumi Fukawa vs Candy Okutsu
  • 2 months later...

The first ARSION match ever was certainly an interesting one. One thing that was very clear is that this is a testing which styles blend together best, trying to figure out a style that the company can go with by using a mix of different styles like tradition joshi as well as shoot style. Candy Okutsu does a great job with making everything look impactful, using her size to hit some nasty suplexes and laying in some big bombs to control the match. Yumi Fukawa being on step behind for a lot of the match, tries to attack the leg early on the match before transitioning into attacking the arm later on in the match. Fukawa’s submissions looked very tight and gnarly, including one particular leg lock in the middle part of the match. Eventually Fukawa’s persistence pays off as she injured Okustsu’s arm and looks to be getting the win before the bell rings for the time limit. Whilst the match wasn’t an all time classic, this was definitely a very good match and did a great job at blending the styles creating a well paced, brutal match with some well executed submissions. Great start for the promotion. ***¾  

 

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