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It’s one of the best sub-five minute matches ever.
Being a Yuki Ishikawa match, and being a Yuki Ishikawa match against a former (and future) BattlARTS/FUTEN guy, you don’t need me to tell you it’s real mean and physical, or at least not to expound upon it to some great extent. Every shot is loud as hell and looks perfect. It’s all tight and sensible and, to some extent at least, feels like genuine combat, or at least a genuine struggle. You know all of that.
What works here is the other stuff, the bigger picture business, and the narrative that makes this both so satisfying and so interesting.
Many years before this back in 2001, Ryuji Hijikata, a promising BattlARTS trainee, left God’s very own company for the confines of Mutoh-era All Japan at a time when BattlARTS had started to slow down for a few years. Many years later, following a series of scraps in tag team matches the year prior, Yuki Ishikawa finally return to All Japan, intent on fighting this traitorous little asshole finally after all this time.
Like anybody who knows what’s coming, and who probably has it coming, Hijikata tries to get ahead of it, and jumps a glaring Ishikawa stepping inside.
As a result, Ryuji Hijikata loses a three minute match four minutes before the finish.
Hijikata follows, tries to fight like a real boy, and never really recovers. Ishikawa drags him uncharacteristically into the stands at Korakuen, hurls him around and repeatedly punches him in the face while grabbing a facelock, before also cracking the kid with an enzuiguri trying to climb back in moments later. Hijikata hits what feels like a pretty accidental (if not, again, nobody ever tell me, I love when the illusion works) gusher around his left eyebrow, and never really gets into the match. The boy throws a few slaps, mean and hard and also the totally meaningless lashing out of an obstinate little goblin, but Ishikawa always meets him with something even better. Another punch right to the cut, a backdrop suplex, another kick, punches from a mount, all of it. It’s simple but given the remarkable visual quality of the cut that won’t close, it’s all it has to be before a referee finally stops it.
The violence lies in the image, everything after that is just icing.
Yeah, maybe you want more.
I get it, I want it too, you’re not wrong.
However, when you don’t get it, this match offers more to settle for than so many other yeah, buts in its time. What you lose in terms of a classically great match is made up for in memorability and brutality, and with two other matches between them to follow, it’s not only probably fine, but works to their benefit.
The way everything goes down is also basically perfect, achieving something for every side involved. Hijikata doesn’t win the match, but for as much of a beating as he takes, he’s never beaten. He bleeds a lot and looks tough, and never gives up the fight. If you’re a Ryuji Hijikata fan here, your boy looks pretty great coming out of this. If you live in the light, Yuki Ishikawa not only looks great as the guy who beat so much ass in three minutes that the referee had to intervene to save the poor boy opposite him, but gets the sort of petty revenge that always feels great. Hijikata left, BattlARTS is largely in stasis at this point, but the small victories sometimes feel the biggest, and showing up in a big promotion to whip the ass of one of the people who jumped ship feels as great as any theoretical title or tournament victory ever could.
One of the greatest and most interesting and, no matter what All Japan did with them afterwards to put over Hijikata at the end of a long series, also most morally correct beatings in wrestling history.
HANDWERK 