Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Sunday, December 30, 2012

NOAH 1/24, 1/26/03

1. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshinari Ogawa/Mitsuharu Misawa:

This was during Ogawa's slimy greasy shitball punk phase, which was one of my favorite wrestler characters ever. Kikuchi looks roughed up before the match even starts, with a back brace, scratches, bandages on his wrist and arm, and grisly bruising on his neck. He looks like a rape victim extra on CSI. The match itself was a formula NOAH tag, which I took for granted at the time, but 10 years on seems so much better than most things we get now. Everybody here matches up nicely, and the Misawa/Kobashi sequences are really eye-opening. We've spent so many years watching shrimps in kickpads do these same sequences and falling badly on their faces, that when you see them done by the real deal, pre-crippled, powerful stars, it's pretty awesome. Just watching simple exchanges between the two is like two great guitarists taking turns every 8 bars, or like Jordan and Pippen running circles around people, or like how Mother Teresa must have been in her 30s. Ogawa was full on snivelly punk, trying to take Kobashi down with ineffective punches (which got no sold) and then always falling back on eye pokes, but then busting out a bunch of cool knee work (including a ring post figure 4 that bent Kobashi's knees at all sorts of horrible angles). This whole thing was just a real fun way to waste 20 minutes of your day, even if every single minute went exactly as you expected it would.


2. KENTA/Kenta Kobashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji/Mitsuharu Misawa:

This was not as good as that. Marufuji threw all sorts of thigh slap offense that didn't hit (including a couple kicks to the back of KENTA's head, but since they made zero contact KENTA didn't realize he was supposed to be selling) and KENTA took forever and a day to set up all sorts of convoluted offense that occasionally looked good. Misawa looked great in the match, and was doing all sorts of subtle heel things to try and lift up the match, and Kobashi chopping Marufuji over a rail was awesome, but overall Marufuji was just too lousy for this match to recover.

3. Jushin Liger/Koji Kanemoto vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru:

Liger is wearing his all red outfit and it looks totally badass. Kikuchi looks like he just got jumped into (or out of) a gang, then had to jog to the arena for his title match. This match is pretty darn terrific, and has the rep of being maybe the best NOAH juniors tag ever. I'll have to watch the others before I go that high, but this was a damn good time, and one of the greatest Kikuchi performances ever (them Liger and Kanemoto fellas ain't bad either). Kikuchi starts this thing off as fiery asskicker, but this match pretty quickly went right where you and I and everybody else knew it would go, and wanted it to go: Kanemoto and Liger taking all of the frustrations and anger out on Kikuchi's poor, poor scarred and battered body. Kikuchi makes the greatest "Fuck my life" facials in the biz, and Kanemoto just throws all sorts of brutal kicks at him. Kikuchi's little comebacks were all awesome, really coming off like a pro-style Yuki Ishikawa a lot of the time. He'd take a bunch of kicks, occasionally catch a leg, and then attempt to cave in Liger or Kanemoto's skull with a headbutt. Fans were way behind his fighting spirit and it really was impossible not to get behind him in this. Just a classic performance from a great wrestler. Liger looked insanely great throughout as well, busting out a nasty piledriver and an endless supply of great palm strikes. Kanemoto looked hungry and vicious, too. All three guys looked like top 20 in the world guys. This had the build, it had big moves, it had great nearfalls, just a super fun match. Yoshinobu Kanemaru also participated.

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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Yes It's Time for You to Pay, Better Watch out for Daisuke Ikeda he's a Member of the F.V.K.

Daisuke Ikeda v. Takanari Tateno PWFG 6/18/95-FUN

TKG: This is another mixed match with Tateno in a gi wearing boxing gloves. Ikeda just bulldozes through Tateno taking him down and beating him from the mount. Nothing Tateno does looks that good but mostly he gets to move his hands fast like hes throwing flurries in defense. Doesn't really matter as this is just a one sided beating. Post match Ikeda calls out Ishikawa.

PAS: Yeah this was a slaughter, Ikeda does come off like a bad motherfucker, and where is the Ikeda v. Ishikawa PWFG match this pull apart is setting up? 


Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono v. Yuki Ishikawa/Alexander Otsuka BattlArts 10/30/96-EPIC

Sweet sweat of Christ what a match. This is everything I love about this style of wrestling. These are the four best BattlArts guys, young and hungry and going all out. Ikeda and Ono are such a great smarmy asshole heel team, like the most violent Tully and Gino ever. Ono is shit talking and getting in Ishikawa and Otsuka's grill before the bell rings. When it does ring it is wall to wall action. Everyone in this was great, we get big doses of Ishikawa v. Ikeda violence, lots of great scrambles with the guy on top raining sick punches and headbutts. Ono is a dervish throwing kicks and punches with abandon and scrambling for chokes and I just loved Otsuka in this. He always brings a different vibe to these matches, he isn't throwing hands and feet like the other guys, but what he will do is grab you and toss you on your neck. He is great at coming in with these desperate lightening fast shots where he leaps into position and unloads with a suplex. These tags always have great finish runs, but this was like a 20 minute finish run from bell to bell. Just loved it, if you haven't seen it, go watch it, if you have seen it, watch it again.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

You Can't Hurt Daisuke Ikeda, Cause He's Banned in DC

Daisuke Ikeda/Tamon Honda v. Shiro Koshinaka/Yoshinari Ogawa NOAH 1/22/06-FUN

This isn't the hidden Ikeda NOAH gem I will be searching for. Pretty much a comedy match with some amusing spots, but very little of that Ikeda violence, probably the loosest worked Ikeda match I can remember seeing. They do some nifty stuff built around the hardness of Honda's giant waterbaby head, and Ogawa's eyepoke and roll up stuff is usually entertaining. Ikeda didn't do much, his big spot was tying up Shiro in a ball and punching him in the taint. Fine use of 12 minutes, but I am going to keep looking. 


Daisuke Ikeda/Katsumi Usuda/Super Tiger II v. Yuki Ishikawa/Alexander Otsuka/Munenori Sawa  BattlArts 7/26/08-EPIC

This isn’t just the best match of 2008, it is right up there with the best things ever done in this style. This is an elimination match which goes 40+ minutes and was even more brutal and awesome then it looked on paper. Everyone in this was on their games, Ikeda’s team was working heel, and they spent the early part of the match abusing and cheap shotting the faces, especially Sawa who was really great in the role of spunky young guy eating an asswhooping and showing stones. Because this was a tag, you had a lot of submissions being put on and saves being made, and man the saves were just horrific, stomps directly to the head, kicks square in the face, I mean you start cringing as soon as anyone comes into the ring. I hadn’t seen much Super Tiger II before, but he ruled here, really capturing the kind of awkward recklessness of Sayama’s UWF kicks. Your BattlArts big four were as great as they have ever been, Otsuka just brutalizing people with suplexes, and ripping out awesome mat counters, Usuda both taking and dishing out ungodly stiff shots, and Ishikawa and Ikeda being Ishikawa and Ikeda. Their interactions with each other are all you could possibly hope for, and there are parts near the end that almost feel like the last rounds of the Rumble in the Jungle with two guys punishing each other past the point of human tolerance. I don’t want to talk about any of the eliminations specifically, this is a match I don’t want to spoil, but when you have such brutality dished out during a match, you can fall into the trap of everything looking like a finish, and when everything looks like a finish, nothing looks like a finish. Here every elimination felt like exactly the point at which the guy should have been eliminated. This is a match I can’t imagine anyone who likes wrestling not loving, get your hands on it ASAP.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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Complete and Accurate Daisuke Ikeda



Daisuke Ikeda has one of the stranger careers in current wrestling history, he has these matches on the margins, brutally violent wars done as a hobby. His long storied series with Yuki Ishikawa is a mesmerizing duet a couple times a year they mangle each other, and if we get to see it, it is a true treat. I am also interested in revisiting Ikeda's time in NOAH too see if there are any hidden gems there. As always the matches will be broken down by EPIC, GREAT, FUN and SKIPPABLE.


1994

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Bart Vale PWFG 6/4/94-FUN
Daisuke Ikeda vs. Yuki Ishikawa  MPRO 12/15/94 - EPIC

1995


Daisuke Ikeda/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Ricky Fuji/Hitsukatus Ooya FMW 5/5/95 - FUN 
Daisuke Ikeda vs. Takanari Tateno PWFG 6/18/95 - FUN
Daisuke Ikeda vs. Yuki Ishikawa PWFG 8/12/95 - EPIC
Daisuke Ikeda/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Horace Boulder/Hisakatsu Oya FMW 12/12/95 - FUN
Daisuke Ikeda vs. Masahito Kakihara Inoki Festival 12/30/95 - GREAT

1996




1998

Daisuke Ikeda/Carl Greco vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Alexander Otsuka BattlArts 4/19/98- EPIC
Daisuke Ikeda/Katsumi Usuda vs. Alexander Otsuka/Mohammed Yone BattlArts 4/24/98 - GREAT
Daisuke Ikeda/Gran Naniwa/Mohammed Yone vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Carl Greco/Ikuto Hidaka BattArts 5/10/98 - EPIC

1999

Daisuke Ikeda/Ikuto Hidaka vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Mohammed Yone BattlArts 6/20/99 - GREAT
2001

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Tamon Honda NOAH 9/1/01 - EPIC
Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Shinya Hashimoto vs. Daisuke Ikeda/Takashu Sugiara Zero-One 9/15/01 - FUN


2005 

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Yuki Ishikawa FUTEN 4/24/05 - EPIC
Daisuke Ikeda vs. Katsumi Usuda BML 9/11/05 - FUN

2006


Daisuke Ikeda/Tamon Honda vs. Shiro Koshinaka/Yoshinari Ogawa NOAH 1/22/06 - FUN


2007


Daisuke Ikeda/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Kengo Mashimo/Makoto Hashi FUTEN 1/30/11-EPIC

2012


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