2009 Match of the Year

Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono vs. Manabu Suruga/Takahiro Oba FUTEN 4/26/09

PAS: The kind of harrowingly violent shootstyle tag war which FUTEN mastered. Oba is kind of a lanky goofy guy who has some big impressive throws, kind of like Otsuka stretched out on a rack, Surugu is the former Manabu Hara, who was never the most electric BattlArts guy, but perfectly willing to engage in a war, and Ikeda and Ono are Ikeda and Ono, two of the best to ever do it. Lots of great tag work early by Ikeda and Ono as they work over Suruga and Oba's legs like hyper violent Anderson's. These matches usually build to long one on one violent war of attrition sections. We get two of them here, the first is a great Ono vs. Oba battle with Ono fighting off his back, locking in submissions while dodging Oba's stomps and leaps, it ends with a big fight over a grounded octopus, while Manabu is fighting desperately against Ikeda to make the save. We then get a violent Ikeda vs. Suruga section with both guys landing hellacious shots and both end up glassy eyed and spent. FUTEN maybe my favorite wrestling promotion ever, and this was the best thing going in 2009 for sure.

ER: This was a match with a lot of little stories going on throughout it, with some cool shifts in control, and all four guys getting great moments in the spotlight. I've seen this tag several times, but not for a few years now. For some reason this time I got really invested in Oba's arc. Oba is pretty easily the weakest contributor in the match, but I think that's more a testament to how strong the match is, that his performance here is the weak link. He starts the match as a bumbling goof, erases that image with a great hot tag that makes him look like a real badass, then by the time he's doing comedy stuff again he's practically a folk hero, the comedy coming from a place of confidence now instead of incompetence. It was a cool mid match transition and really added to things, but the others got those moments too. Ikeda was confident veteran who got a couple of awesome late match fighting babyface moments, the first after Suruga savagely drops him with a Tiger Driver '91. It looked like something that someone shouldn't get up from, but Ikeda barely does and his new vulnerability makes him more of a hero. Ono is the great lost BattlArts guy who basically started working only quarterly after Batt, and always looked as good as ever. Here he gets to show off his great speed and precise striking, and contributes huge to the drama with an awesome save for Ikeda. Suruga came in at the end of the Batt run and is much younger than Ikeda/Ono, but here he gets to show that he can hang with the vets, and peaks with the stretch run where he looks like he can destroy Ikeda singlehandedly, dropping him mightily with two German suplexes and that crushing Tiger Driver. All men work cool submission moments, like Ikeda muscling his way out of a headlock by moving his neck behind Oba's back, or Ikeda getting his arm stomped on, or Suruga getting his knee yanked around; but we got cool pro wrestling moments too, none more pro wrestling than Ikeda and Ono pulling off a Doomsday Device in a shootstyle match, and Ikeda dropping one of the nastier post-Hashimoto brainbusters, or Suruga dragging his body to finally tag out after taking some ruthless shots, and then collapsing on the ring apron to recover. And of course every moment in between these moments is peppered with hard leg kicks, clonking Ikeda headbutts, fast Ono rabbit punches, and full body Suruga strikes. A match where everyone came out of this looking powerful, a unique and awesome tag match deserving of being the 2009 champ.


ALL TIME MOTY LIST