Maybe the definitive Mariko Yoshida masterpiece. Hiromi Yagi was awesome here too, fair play to our girl, but I had Yoshida as the 10th greatest wrestler ever on the recent GWE vote and part of me wondered if it was too high and then I watched this and no, it was not too high even a wee bit. This show comes a year to the day since the very first ARSION show and in that time Mariko Yoshida has been a demon, largely unbeatable on the mat for a year straight. Aja could knock her head off and Futagami could catch her in a flash submission, but by and large Yoshida's run has been dominant. She's the Queen of ARSION title-holder for a reason. Maybe that sort of dominance can lead to complacency, or if not complacency then at least a false sense of security. She may have thought she wouldn't even need to stretch out after the opening because she planted Yagi with the Air Raid Crash and nearly got three, Yagi barely kicking out and immediately rolling to the floor while Yoshida flexed in the ring. She even flexed during the pin, one knee across Yagi's shoulders, almost a show of disrespect from a woman who wasn't typically prone to it. When Yagi came back in she was undeterred, though. She hit a German suplex and went straight to work, sure in her own skills. The first half of this was about as close to joshi RINGS as I've ever seen, maybe not necessarily in terms of flash but certainly in terms of struggle and quickness. Kana and Satomura have worked Ikeda v Ishikawa, but this is the first time I've truly thought of Tamura v Kohsaka. Yagi was a pit bull in the opening 10 minutes, even if you sensed that Yoshida was still queen. She was by no means arrogant and never took Yagi lightly, so if you expected that from the pin attempt at the start it was maybe you who underestimated Yoshida. She went at Yagi as forcefully as she'd gone at every other opponent before now, Yagi just gave her the most trouble, even if the champ didn't necessarily show it. If this was indeed RINGS then Yoshida would've been winning on points, Yagi having used up a few rope breaks while Yoshida hadn't used any, though she came close a couple times. It was almost dead on 10 minutes when Yoshida did choose to go for the ropes, but even then it was more because Yagi rolled her over into them just as she grabbed the cross armbreaker. Yoshida looked concerned for the first time though, and two minutes later there was no mistaking she had to scramble for the ropes to break another armbar. Her selling of the arm in the back half was incredible and she looked in real danger. If she was in a proper fight against Yagi with TWO good arms how would she go about it with one? Yagi only grew in confidence as well and this was by a distance the furthest Yoshida had been pushed to this point. Yoshida with her back against the wall is a fucking animal of the highest order and some of what she did in the back half was phenomenal. The way she bridged out of another armbar to apply the most ridiculous guillotine choke - very deliberately with the good arm - had my jaw on the floor. Yagi just kept going for armbars and kimuras and the more she did the more relentless Yoshida had to be. It feels like I repeat myself every time I write anything about a Yoshida match, but there's never been anyone better at milking a near-submission than Yoshida and that place fully bit on her tapping to the cross armbreaker. It helped that Yagi was equally determined to take that arm apart, at one point bridging out of Yoshida's attempt at side control and rolling into a sort of majistral cradle, used in turn to set up yet another armbar. Yoshida was forced to reverse an Irish whip while shielding the bad arm and even Aja never had her operating with quite this much vulnerability. The final minute is as good as it gets for selling a submission hold and building drama. Yagi desperately tries to buck and squirm out of Yoshida's choke, but Yoshida is ferocious and when the python has you, good luck not passing out. What a fucking tremendous match. The very peak of Yoshida and the crown jewel in a year as good as any a wrestler has had. Maybe having her as the 10th best ever was too low.
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