2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

48. Yuki Ishikawa v. Sansyu -BattleArts Academy 11/14

PAS: This is our first look at Yuki Ishikawa since he moved to Canada to teach at Santino's wrestling school. This is clearly one of his students, and he is pretty giving. Ishikawa is one of the great sellers in wrestling history and he does a bang up job putting over this kids kicks, which won't remind anyone of Ikeda anytime soon. The highlights of the match are definitely when Ishikawa starts really working Sanysu over, dropping knees on his temple and elbows on his throat. The finishing scramble on the mat was a thing of beauty as well. Rest of this match was Ishikawa eating a lot of questionable stuff, which kept it from being high end, still so happy to see Yuki show up again, now someone needs to book him against the Gulak/Thatcher/Busick/Sabre Jr. group.

ER: Well this was a pleasant little surprise. Luckily Phil obsessively searches for Yuki Ishikawa stuff on youtube a few times a week so we get to see it ridiculously soon after it happens. The couple Ishikawa matches that show up every year are always awesome, but I think here is the best he's looked in years. Who knows, maybe Canadian living has healed him up a bit? Have some delicious ketchup chips and a Coffee Crisp, not get head butted into incontinence. He seemed spry, more in shape than I've seen him in ages, showed more speed than he's shown in ages, all his sprawls and everything looked so quick and agile. Being broken has kind of been a part of his character in FUTEN and other stuff and he made broken crafty vet work better than all but maybe Fujiwara. But here he was lithe and aggressive. Sansyu was fine, I didn't think he was bad, although yes his kicks were not up to normal Batt/FUTEN standards, but they still looked fine and Ishikawa always makes that stuff look great anyway, bouncing back into the ropes and crumbling at the right times. Ishikawa made them look good and Sansyu also brought a nice twisty legbar to the match. But damn Ishikawa was just great. At one point he hits this great three elbow combination that I've never seen him use before. He drops Sansyu with a brutal 12 to 6, plants a nasty quick elbowdrop, and then gets back up and drops a Bret Hart style double elbow on him. All his arm stuff looks really great, yanking that arm and knowing right where Sansyu is gonna twist to escape, Ishikawa one step ahead of him. The keylock he locks on before the end is just too good. I enjoy Yuki Ishikawa wrestling.


2014 MASTER LIST