This is no unearthed gem. For those more well-studied than myself that have long appreciated the (painfully limited) footage we have from ARSION, this match is a canonical classic. The kind of thing that’s so obviously great that it’s easy to assume that word of it has reached far and wide. There is a greatness here that inspires such awe that one of the immediate impulses is to share it. It’s a thrill so exhilarating that the only way to temper it is to pass it on.
I stumbled on it by happenstance. Much of my last few months has been spent doing a deep dive on Aja Kong, one of the co-founders of the ARSION promotion. Her Queen of ARSION Title match against Mariko Yoshida from the December 11, 1999 Carnival ARSION event was obvious appointment viewing. It’s a good match, but the clipped version that exists on tape means that we don’t get the full picture of a bout that’s likely a little lesser than the first title match the two had earlier in the year. It was only while scrubbing through the video file to find where Aja/Yoshida was that I stumbled on an image of a bloodied Ayako Hamada, her white gear with black trim stained dirty with crimson.
It’s not an image one ignores.
So, why not? I’d been picking away at the Aja playlist diligently. Why not a little detour to see what 18-year-old Ayako Hamada was up to that got her in such a brutal place?
It’s a classic dynamic that these four play with here. Hamada & AKINO are the resident wunderkinds of the ARSION promotion. Both are just a little over a year into their careers, already positioned as centerpieces to the budding promotion, here they walk in carrying the Twin Stars of ARSION Titles. They both embody that prodigious joshi spirit, two wrestlers that get started early put on the fast track to greatness and success. In their path are well-established villains in Las Cachorras Orientales, Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita. It’s been a decade of wreaking havoc for LCO all through the joshi landscape, mostly in their home promotion of AJW, but now finding their way to ARSION. Having the overwhelming experience advantage, it’s no wonder that the already spiteful LCO team wrestle this match with the kind of black-hearted viciousness that one reserves for particularly pesky nuisances.
Every single thing LCO does in this bout is done with the maximum amount of disrespect. From a structural standpoint, there’s the broad strokes choice of using crowd brawling and a healthy amount of weapons usage to always sway the advantage their way. But even before the nastier tactics come into play, there’s just a meanness to their demeanor and how they interact with the reigning champions. Note the early moment where Shimoda’s able to mount AKINO on the mat and gestures towards punching her in the mug, only to opt for choking her instead. If it’s not a choke, it’s thumbs dug right into eye sockets. If it’s not eye gouging, it’s steel chairs flying. Nothing about LCO’s act can read as sympathetic or likeable in anyway, without ever once sacrificing the energy and blazing urgency of the disdain they feel for the home team.
The assault is relentless.
The footage perfectly captures this too by going for a split screen whenever the action diverges in the crowd. The viewer is forced to divide their attention or choose a side, never having a second of respite. It’s a production choice that feels just as smothering as LCO’s attack on our heroes, capturing the general feeling that there’s no escape for our heroes.
And then the blood.
Oh good lord. There’s a dozen different chairshots LCO throw that could have busted open both champions here, but the sheer grotesque volume of it doesn’t become clear until Mita puts Hamada through a ringside table. The champions are fucking gushing in this match. Aja Kong adds to the proceedings here as well, showing such concern for her proteges at ringside, and being taunted by LCO as well, with Shimoda famously wiping off a bloody handprint onto Aja’s white shirt. Aja’s presence here and her general reactions to the fight add to the sense of scale here, the sense that LCO are transgressing in especially cruel ways such that it affects those beyond the people they’re actually fighting. Don’t discredit AKINO here either, she cuts deep too and her blood flow does not stop all through and as the smaller member of her team, there’s a baseline level of sympathy she can’t help but elicit from the viewer.
But as soon as the blood starts flowing, the star of the show is Ayako Hamada.
Hamada turns in a transcendent performer that wrestlers decades into their careers could only dream off. Here, Hamada does it some 16 months into her career. It is absolutely the kind of performance that transforms something from being “simply” a great match, to one that sits at the highest levels of the artform. Not only does Ayako Hamada spill so much goddamn blood in this match, but she makes sure that we feel every single drop drain from her body. This is one of the finest performances of blood loss selling I’ve ever seen, with Hamada basically stumbling over herself for the rest of the bout, barely able to keep her balance even when she’s making her comebacks.
At no point after the blood starts flowing does it feel like Hamada is unaffected. Her balance threatens to leave her body at every point. Routine Irish whips send her crumbling to the mat, and every single piece of offense she makes on her attempted comebacks sees her forcibly push through the pain and it is in her struggle that she wins our hearts. We roar when she roars, we cheer when she gets her vengeance. As with any hero too, she doesn’t fold, she rises to the occasion. If LCO want to play with chairs, Hamada will stab back with scissors if she has too.
It’s a performance so good that I can’t help but think that the last joshi bloodletting anywhere near as great might have been LCO’s own Akira Hokuto at Dream Slam I. And if I’m being honest with myself, I think Hamada may have accomplished even more here with the blood than Hokuto ever did.
As with many of the great joshi tags of this era, it’s never quite as simple as tagging out either. Opportunities for hot tags are still prone to cut offs from the heels, and the brief hope spots and tags we get read much more as incremental but oh so precious progress being made by our heroes. It’s to LCO’s credit as well that they’ve laid on the beating so brutally on our heroes that it makes total sense that a hot tag might not work just like that. When AKINO is the fresher woman and also leaking from her face like tomorrow’s business, there’s no real advantage as to which of the babyfaces should be at any given time.
The comebacks are hard fought and the cut offs soul crushing. Every single attempt one starts to think, “This one’s it!” When AKINO tags in, this one’s it! When Hamada channels her father’s soul and starts throwing the family’s signature headbutts, this one’s it too! But the blood keeps pouring and LCO are some of the most cunning and evil workers around, and they’ll throw in a chair to break up a pin or dodge a moonsault to get back on control. In their heart of hearts, like all great bullies, LCO approach this with the cockiness of thinking there’s no way they can lose.
But it takes just one good shot.
Hamada catches Shimoda on the top rope with a palm strike from heaven and hits a top rope ace crusher for the three and the victory. If I’m being honest, I think they could have done just the slightest bit more with the finish. Even just a slightly extended final comeback to really amp up the anticipation for the big win. What we have still works and doesn’t take too much from the bout, making sense as a one desperate shot getting it done and catching the villains off guard. But even just a little more time to sit in the comeback, feel the shift in gears as the power transfers from the cowards to the valiant, could have shot this straight into the stratosphere. It’s the difference between being maybe one of the greatest tag matches ever, and maybe being one of the greatest matches ever period.
Even then, coming to this match as something of an unplanned detour, watching it on a whim just by catching a glimpse of a bloodied face, that’s a special thing. My first instinct was to invoke the cliche of feeling like I’ve discovered fire. But even that doesn’t quite get to the heart of it. This isn’t just banging two sticks together and sparking up some lumber. This is stumbling headfirst into a roaring inferno that feels like it’s been burning for an eternity. I didn’t catch the pillars of smoke, the heat in the air. I feel dumb to have only gotten here now.
How could I have missed it when it’s been burning this bright the whole time?
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Art is subjective and everyone has their own opinion, and many have lovingly extolled the King’s Road classic in ways that feel fair, valid, and somewhat earned. But man, I can’t imagine putting these two matches together and not being completely swept away by the urgency, the immediate emotional stakes, the sheer vibrant energy of this joshi tag. It just feels so alive in every moment of it, like real life and death stakes at points. The kind of match that colors the legacy of every wrestler involved beyond its confines for the better. This match fucking rules, it’s about as close to perfect as you can get without actually nailing it.
Rating: ****3/4
