It was a very sad day for joshi fans worldwide when cute little ARSION wrestler Yumi Fukawa retired in March 2002 due to recurring concussion problems. Yumi became extremely popular because of her combination of ring skills, charisma & sex appeal. Upon her retirement ARSION released a tribute video called Sayonara. My pals at Wrestlegirlz sent me the first two volumes.
The video starts with Yumi Fukawa's training in All Japan Women in 1993. She eventually debuted in AJW but her matches were very ordinary. Yumi left AJW in 1998 to join the fledgling company ARSION along with Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida and others. Yoshida was head trainer and to differentiate ARSION from the other joshi companies, it was decided that the ARSION style would be more mat based with an emphasis on submission holds. Of course it helped that Yoshida is a walking encyclopedia of submission holds. Though they would also do some of the trademark joshi high flying, the ARSION submission style was born.
Other than Ayako Hamada & Jessica Soto (Bionic J), all the 1998 ARSION wrestlers had varying degrees of joshi ring experience. Some had already established a ring style so Yoshida concentrated on teaching the ARSION concept to younger wrestlers such as Yumi Fukawa & Michiko Ohmukai. Both had ring experience but hadn't established a distinctive personality. They even put the two together as a tag team. Yumi Fukawa seemed to adapt particularly well to Yoshida's instruction.
Yumi Fukawa is a very small girl. She is maybe 5'2" and maybe 115lbs. I could be a little high on both estimates. Of course this always makes her the underdog which is very appealing to fans. Momoe Nakanishi had the same appeal. Add to that Yumi's charisma, sex appeal and her determination in the ring and you have quite a potent little package. Yumi also showed tremendous emotion in her facial expressions and that ability would get her over even more. A lot of wrestlers never learn how to do facial expressions properly but it was one of Yumi's strong points.
The second part of Sayonara features some of Yumi Fukawa's best matches. This includes her match on the first ARSION show vs Candy Okutsu. She formed a tag team early on with Michiko Ohmukai. The two also had a famous match against each other that was taped by a hand held camera. When I look at them, I'm thinking that they're two beautiful & sexy girls. But their match emphasizes the quality of their ring work and their toughness. One would think that Yumi's match vs Aja Kong would be a squash. But Aja let Yumi have a lot of offense and made her look credible. Aja won though. There was also Yumi's tag team with Rie Tamada. They were used mostly as fodder for Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita's invasion of ARSION. It also includes Yumi Fukawa's biggest victory of her career over her mentor and queen of submission wrestling Mariko Yoshida in October 1999. Yumi's reaction after the match is priceless.
The final part of Sayonara is a digest of clips from every Yumi Fukawa ARSION match that was ever videotaped. It is fast paced fun. When most fans think of joshi puroresu, they think of the trademark high flying of someone like Manami Toyota. The success of Yumi Fukawa in ARSION proves that there's more to joshi than flying. She didn't do much flying and of course at her size she really couldn't really do power moves either. She could do it occasionally but Yumi Fukawa was very good at two things. She could take a beating as good as anyone. She would react to a power bomb like she had been killed. Of course that ability may have cost her with all the concussions. After taking that beating, she had the ability to turn it into a Fujiwara armbar or a cross arm breaker and make her opponent tap out. Add her natural charisma, facial expressions and sex appeal and like I said before, Yumi Fukawa was quite a potent little package. Too bad she was forced to retire at such a young age.
The Yumi Fukawa Sayonara DVDs are recommended to any joshi fan even if you're not familiar with Yumi's work. She was very entertaining in the ring and that comes through very clearly. The best place to get Sayonara is from my Aussie pals Amy Action & Bliss at http://www.wrestlegirlz.com/ They're only $10US each and Wrestlegirlz packages all their DVDs in deluxe full colour packaging. I don't know of anyone else who sells joshi that way. The girls ship worldwide and accept Paypal. So get over there and get some top quality joshi puroresu DVDs from two girls who love joshi as much as any fan.
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