Ikeda Gonna Swim Across the Atlantic Cause That's the Only Place He Can Go

Daisuke Ikeda v. Yuki Ishikawa, BattlArts 9/1/97 - EPIC

PAS: This is a match I don't remember seeing before and if I had it had to have been around 97.  This is one of my 2 or 3 favorite in ring feuds in wrestling history and this is exactly the kind of uncomfortable to watch, transcendently violent spectacle the marquee promises. One of my favorite nifty new things in this match was Ishikawa's knee lifts, I don't remember him breaking out the worlds most violent Mr. Wrestling II knee lifts before and they were molar loosening. The mat work was pretty great, Ikeda had an especially nice reversal from the bottom, and every choke and armbar was tight and nasty. The great thing about these matches is the start out so violent you don't think they can go up, but the crescendo always delivers. That clothesline Ikeda nails Ishikawa with has got to be as nasty as anything Hansen ever threw and Ishikawa's glassy eye selling was perfect (or he was really KO'd, you can never tell). A little shorter then many of their other classics but this was a tight brutal masterpiece.

ER: Man these guys are just brutal. It's nice being able to watch this knowing that they're at least functioning human beings 16 years on. It's not too hard to imagine a scenario where watching an old match these two is followed by an Amityville Horror type postlude graphic of "They never remembered what they ate for breakfast that morning again". I'm grown so accustomed to Ishikawa as a defensive wrestler, taking furious beatings and looking for any signs of light to take his shot, that I mostly forgot about his turns as a vicious mauler. There have been a lot of Ikeda/Ishikawa matches, and my memories of most of them have Ikeda taking 2/3 of the offense. But a lot of this is the Ishikawa show with flashes of the nasty Ikeda beatings you'd expect. Instead of the Ishikawa throwing a shot while he's retreating, you get Ishikawa the aggressor, which is fucking killer. Here he chases after Ikeda and throws nasty punches at his eye, all while tearing limbs apart. Ikeda has no problem fighting back, with leg kicks and dropkicks to the knee cap that would have left a lesser man bed-ridden for a week (and very well could have for all I know) and one of the most horrific clotheslines you've ever seen. Ishikawa sees it coming and tries to turn out of the way, but that means he gets a rangy violently swinging arm to the side of his neck, face and ear. His selling afterwards made me think of Sterling Archer after an explosion goes off around him. It goes without saying that this match is great, just a super war with many possible finishes coming at any time.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE IKEDA