Yuki Ishikawa vs. Ryuji Hijikata, AJPW Only My Royal Road (7/22/2004)

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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.

***

Takeshi Ono vs. Ryuji Hijikata, FUTEN Bati-Bati 40 (10/24/2010)

The main event of this show — Daisuke Ikeda & Takahiro Oba vs. Makoto Hashi & Kengo Mashimo — is quite the celebrated one among circles of fans watching old FUTEN or who were watching at the time, and while that status is more than earned, the result of that is that this one has, at least to my memory, always slid in somewhat under the radar.

It is time for everyone to look a little deeper.

Now, I understand some of the hesitation.

Ryuji Hijikata is not the most impressive wrestler. That’s not to say he’s bad or really anything close to it, but the ceiling is somewhere between fine and pretty good. I don’t believe he stood out too much on early BattlARTS shows, and in his run in the All Japan juniors division in the 2000s — where I first came across him — “this guy’s pretty good”  was the strongest impression I ever remember having.

However, Takeshi Ono is also in this match, so none of that matters.

A month removed from one of the best matches of the decade, and a Hoot of the Century contender, Ono doesn’t exactly equal that (what can?), but does something that’s still real impressive, and has the best Hijikata match that I can ever remember seeing.

Takeshi Ono, in his way, is capable of miracles. Yeah, Hijikata is not super interesting and would otherwise blend into the scenery against many other wrestlers, likely delivering a good to great match anyways, but one that I would forget within half an hour, but he is not just facing any other wrestler. When those boxing glove punches of Takeshi Ono land as loud as they do, with the clear visual force that they do, and when every other strike both looks and sounds like absolute death, you tend to forget a lot. Just on a purely lizard brained level, Takeshi Ono has a higher floor than most other wrestlers, because every minute or so, the man will throw out at least one strike — be it a punch, kick, or knee — that would make most people shout in terror or shriek in delight. There’s a lot that a match can get away with, little things anyways, when it constantly offers up these moments of violent joy.

Fortunately, this is not a match requiring miracles.

It genuinely rocks, and then also offers up all of those thrills on top.

Beneath all the incredibly loud pops and smacks, there’s a classic sort of pro vs. shoot style thing going on.

Hijikata might have root here, but he’s spent much of his time wrestling very different matches in recent years, and only really succeeds when he an begin bringing some of that offense into the match. When he pushes past the punches and kicks, throws some of his own for distance and begins countering armbars into Sidewalk Slams or using a Brainbuster, it seems possible for the guy. Doubly so when he’s briefly able to hurt the arm of Takeshi Ono or uncork one of the year/decade’s grosser headbutts.

The thing is that while upsets are more than possible, especially in this world, Hijikata is not properly equipped to achieve one.

For all he can do to Our Hero, he has no great hold to slap on once he’s taken all this damage, nor does he quite have the firepower strong enough to keep Ono down for the count. He never panics, it’s not as if he fumbles the match away, but the best he can ever really do is put some fear into Takeshi Ono, and once that happens, he has no idea what to do with an even more desperate striking machine.

Ono comes back, beats the shit out of Hijikata again, before putting on this super gross Octopus Hold on Hijikara on his side on the mat, not only holding him in a rough position but putting more into the leg against the neck than almost anyone ever does, until Hijikata submits.

Hijikata and Ono deliver a lovely little pocket epic. A match that, like all the best ones, succeeds on a few different levels — narrative, mechanical, and just whipping a ton of ass — and that does so with genuinely zero waste on the thing. If it happened today, it might be one of the best matches of the entire year, but as it is here, it’s neither the best of the show, nor the best match Ono had in a thirty day span. It’s easy to look past it, given that next match on the show and given that Ono already had a meaner and more efficient match a month ago, but if any of this sounds good to you, try and still your gaze for a moment, and look it right in the eyes.

A gem, hidden relatively in plain sight.

***1/4