Daisuke Ikeda is Getting Restless, And Once Again a Nation

Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono v. Hikari Sato/Kengo Mashimo FUTEN 1/22/12-EPIC

PAS: FUTEN tags may be my single favorite form of entertainment, I get really excited when The Mountain Goats drop a new single, or there is a new Breaking Bad or George Pelecanos Novel, but nothing like how jazzed I get to see a brand new Ikeda and Ono kick the fuck out of some dudes event.

This is right up there with the classics of this genre. Sato hasn't done much for me outside of FUTEN and Mashimo is similarly hit and miss, but they are right there ready to roll in this setting. The opening sections of this are really good, with Ono breaking out some very cool mat reversals and Ikeda wandering in and cracking people,. Most of the FUTEN tags build to one longish almost singles match finish run, here we get two of them. First Sato and Ikeda deliver a B+ version of the brain injury headbutt exchange from the Hashi tag. Then we get an amazing Ono v. Mashimo section with Ono cementing himself as the best guy in the world who wrestles three times a year. There is a headscissors, knee to the back of the head, uppercut combo which is jump out of your seat amazing. Mashimo is throwing bombs and unloading with some great suplexes. Right up there with the best matches in the world in 2012.

ER: WHEN will guys in FUTEN main event tags stop trying to put each other in submission holds!? How many times do guys need to be kicked behind their ear or have their shoulder blade kicked by somebody's boot toe to convince them that it's just not worth it? Truthfully, I don't care, because as long as it keeps happening then 1-2 times a year Phil and I get to sync up and squeal and laugh at the misfortune and overall badassery of these guys. Phil's first sentence is dead-on as FUTEN main event tags are one of life's great joys. It's a perfect formula done by men who are perfect within the formula. Ikeda somehow hasn't changed a bit in 15+ years, Mashimo is a guy who looks really great when he's on (and he is certainly on in this one) and Ono is just scary good. The fact that there are probably less than 50 Ono matches since 2000 is a shame, like Tom Waits scaling back his live gigs. What's happened more since 2000: Waits gigs or Ono matches? 15 years from now Ono is going to be working matches against Katsumi Usuda in front of 40 people in an abandoned dance studio, and on the same night Tom Waits will be performing a one-off show in a Vienna museum. Also, by then humans will have heat vision.