HARASHIMA vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT King of DDT 2018 3rd Round (8/25/2018)

This was a quarter final match in the 2018 King of DDT tournament.

Once again, one of DDT’s greatest ever pairings (it is not quite HARASHIMA/KUDO or HARASHIMA/Higuchi, but I struggle otherwise to name one with their numbers and their overall quality) succeeds in having the best match on both the show they’re on and in the tournament that they’re in.

HARASHIMA and Yukio Sakaguchi not only have really maybe their best ever match together, and also secretly, one of the better matches of the year period.

This is not a new kind of a match between them.

Yukio and HARASHIMA throw kicks and slaps, riff around on the mat for an extended period of time, all of that. Nothing they do will surprise you all that much if you’ve seen any match that they’ve ever had before. The strengths, mechanically speaking, are the same. Real nasty strikes, beautiful matwork where every twist and turn feels sensible and like a genuine reaction, great pacing, everything you come to expect from these two together. In the hands of lesser wrestlers, such a thrown-out-there retread might be a problem, but for HARASHIMA and Sakaguchi, it is not a stumbling block in the slightest. If they are running, a stumbling block is not even on the track. The trick, as always, is not how they wrestle or the sort of match they have, but what they do with all of these familiar tools.

On this occasion, they opt not just to play some hits, but also to create a fun little classic pro wrestling story about Yukio trying to solve his usual issues against HARASHIMA.

Typically, the problem with Yukio against HARASHIMA is that he has trouble making him panic on the ground like most other wrestlers in DDT. HARASHIMA will work with him until he gets an opening, and then explode. He’ll also keep his distance when they get into trading, and in general, provides a nightmare match up for Yukio Sakaguchi’s exact skill set.

Such is not the case here, with Sakaguchi wrestling his smartest match against HARASHIMA in some time.

Yukio’s big change at the start is to leap right at HARASHIMA and try and scare him out of an immediate stand up game, and try and get him on the ground for longer once he gets back in the ring. It’s both a new way to go about the match on an engineering level, but also makes a ton of sense, putting a little fear out there immediately, to explain HARASHIMA being more hesitant to flip the switch off of the ground in the way he might against another wrestler. When he eventually does, Yukio does a much better job than before of staying close with HARASHIMA and rarely letting him do what he wants. He switches between the big shots and big holds to grind him down like he hasn’t really done successfully before, and avoiding like eighty percent of the big spots HARASHIMA tends to set his bombs up with, while also constantly raining down all of his.

A more aggressive Sakaguchi finally has HARASHIMA on the ropes standing up, even with his usual way of hitting his big bicycle knee blocked, except the thing that always happens here happens once again, even without the benefit of the set up and comeback like before.

When pushed back against the wall and put into a situation that feels unwinnable, HARASHIMA simply find a new way to succeed.

Yukio charges in for the killing blow, except HARASHIMA breaks out a real quick low kick to the shin to drop him in a new counters, reels off a short range Somato, and bolts up and to the corner for the original recipe Somato to win again.

It’s another classic chunk of main event style pro wrestling ass pro wrestling from one of the best to ever do it, and one of the best dance partners he ever had. A match softly playing on the way their matches always tend to go, offering new thrills and expanding on the old ones, and pushing Our Hero to the brink with a slightly modified approach before reminding us just exactly why he was and still is Our Hero in the first place.

Spiritually and morally correct professional wrestling.

HARASHIMA will not win this tournament. It and other such devices are sadly not for him anymore, in a true indictment of the decision making process in DDT since 2017 or so. However, when you squint just right, block out the other stuff, and watch a match this great with a classic main event story told this perfectly and with this level of precision, you can trick yourself pretty easily into thinking DDT is still in its prime.

Go Ace.

***1/3

Mike Bailey vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Yokohama (1/11/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

It is beautiful professional wrestling.

Two of the world’s greatest kickers meet up for ten minutes to trade shots. Yukio tries to drag Young Karate down on the ground and back into his element when Bailey proves too fast for him standing up, but Bailey proves just slippery enough to avoid it. Given Sakaguchi’s success dragging larger men to the ground and defeating them through his own slippery nature, it also serves as this stellar chunk of tournament booking as well, being outdone at his own game.

While Sakaguchi devotes his time to trying to get Bailey on the ground after all the live rounds thrown out, all Bailey is concerned with is not getting caught on the mat though, and eventually finds his opening.

Speedball finds his way out of a choke, lands a standing Ultima Weapon, and kicks Yukio as hard as possible in the temple for the win.

Stylistically, maybe the best AMBITION match of 2018.

***

Shuji Ishikawa vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Nerima (1/10/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

A beautifully simple one.

Yukio once again tries to slip around, run at, and chop down a tree, much as he did to Kazusada Higuchi five days earlier.

The difference is that while our young hero, Kazusada Higuchi, is something still of a puppy with big paws, Shuji Ishikawa — through the power of his own nickname and his actual status in Japanese wrestling in the last three years — is the Big Dog.

What worked for Sakaguchi then does not work now. Shuji Ishikawa shrugs him off at every turn. Sometimes he brutally cuts him off with an especially nasty elbow or knee or Lariat, and other times, he actually just literally shrugs him off of his body, as if he is late 1980s WWF heel force of nature Andre. Eventually, the pure might and power of Ishikawa once again just cannot be overcome by anybody in the block. All the slipperiness in the world does not matter, as Yukio Sakaguchi just runs out of road.

It’s classic tournament wrestling, one strategy’s success early on making it’s failure in a later match carry a little more weight, build ups and payoffs, things of that nature. It’s yet another example of why, even in a year with yet another stellar G1 and another D-Oh later in the year (they hadn’t yet nailed down that they wanted it to be at the end of the year, we’re gonna give them a pass), this first 2018 D-Oh really may be the tournament of the year.

Mechanically, it is also a delight. Everything they do looks great, and everything Sakaguchi does sounds great too. Ishikawa is not at his absolute best here, but given that as he is kind of hitting the end of his physical prime and having worked a very hard schedule for the last week and a half considering that, it is not the end of the world. They even stumble onto something that inadvertently benefits the match as a result of that, where Ishikawa’s elbows in the last third of this hit with less force and audible pop than those in the first two-thirds, creating a very real feeling of Yukio Sakaguchi having worn out and tired out this gigantic tank, only for him to succeed through other means.

Shuji wins with the Splash Mountain in the end, Sakaguchi simply not possessing the firepower to handle Ishikawa in a late match situation.

Another fun match about hitting.

***

Yukio Sakaguchi vs. Kazusada Higuchi, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Shinjuku (1/5/2018)

This was a B Block match in the D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 tournament.

Being the first match officially on the show (sex pervert four way tag technically before this, but we can just ignore that), Higuchi and Sakaguchi — The Two Gooches — only have eight minutes rounding up to work with.

Is it the best they can do?

No.

Of course not, not with wrestlers this great.

They both suffer from not having enough time to really get into it, as matches over the next half-decade or so would show they could, but also from being so low on the card and obeying the sort of show formatting that tends to benefit DDT as a promotion far far far more often than it hurts them. The first match on a DDT show, especially on a show full of other singles matches, is not going to aim all that high, being perfectly comfortable with two guys simply bouncing off of each other for a while.

It just so happens that in this case, the two wrestlers bouncing off of each other are probably the promotion’s second and third best wrestlers at this point, and so even just that rules a whole lot.

Few other match ups in DDT are better suited to make a ton out of such a short amount of time, and Higuchi and Sakaguchi do just that. Every second and every inch of this thing is made up of something that rocks, in one way or another. Most of the time, that is Higuchi chopping the dust off of Yukio Sakaguchi’s chest as hard as possible, or Sakaguchi kicking the shit out of him in response. Sometimes though, it is sick mat stuff from Sakaguchi. Other times, as with the opening moments, it’s a little display of something a little more genuine, as Higuchi keeps getting evaded by the far more slippery Sakuguchi, before opting to simply hit him as hard as possible.

That slipperiness finally works to Yuk’s advantage in the end, when he repeatedly slithers his way into Cobra Clutches, draining Higuchi enough for the God’s Right Knee for the victory.

A fun match about hitting.

HARASHIMA/Naomichi Marufuji vs. Yukio Sakaguchi/Masahiro Takanashi, DDT Shin-Kiba, I Came Back! (11/2/2017)

This was for HARASHIMA and Marufuji’s KO-D Tag Team Titles.

Like the match in which they won the titles, the quality largely depends on which member of the championship superteam is in the ring.

When HARASHIMA is in the ring, we get another installment of two match ups that are maybe not up there with the absolute best DDT or HARASHIMA match ups (little difference, but idk, respect to like Akiyama/Higuchi or whatever) like KUDO, Higuchi, or Irie, but reliable as hell in Takanashi and especially HARASHIMA vs. Sakaguchi.

They don’t get to get into their bombs — the strike battle spot being eaten up by Marufuji, of course — but they get to do a little bit of neat mat stuff early on, and it’s always a delight to see DDT’s two best grapplers toss some of that out there. Likewise, HARASHIMA gets to bully Takanashi some, and it’s a delight. For a generationally likeable and steady babyface, HARASHIMA is again maybe just as good when leaning the other way, throwing out these real nasty shots to the back instead of the stomach for once, and standing on Masa’s chest and stomach for a cover instead of ever dropping out of the double stomp in a great little shitty thing.

Of course, Naomichi Marufuji is also in this match.

To their credit, this match asks a little less of him than the Higuchi/Irie one in August, largely just asking him to throw chops (the thing he does best, I guess) and hit his set spots. That’s not to say Marufuji doesn’t do a little more and makes himself look bad with some of the goofiest god damned shit you’ve ever seen, but it is to say that this match asks less of him, so even while these segments are a drop off from the rest of the match — even the Yukio vs. Marufuji strike exchange is not as good as a Yukio vs. HARASHIMA one would have been and previously has been — they’re not this tremendous obstruction that totally ruins the match. If not the best match ever, a solid show on how to get a lot out of a guy like this, even if it means you have to sacrifice certain parts of the match that a glory hound like Marufuji is going to sniff out.

Marufuji beats Takanashi with the Shiranui to win.

You knew this one wasn’t going to be the end of the reign — a B show in Shin-Kiba rather than Korakuen, or more realistically, one of the bigger venue DDT shows — but it’s again more about the ride than anything else, and at least three wrestlers in this match made it as fun as possible. The result is a match slightly better than the last few HARASHIMA/Marufuji defenses, but still suffering in all of the ways that matches in this reign are always going to suffer.

A superhuman effort by HARASHIMA, simply getting it across the finish line in the condition it was in, with no small amount of help from the challengers.

***

HARASHIMA vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT King of DDT 2017 2nd Round (6/4/2017)

This was a 2nd Round match in the 2017 King of DDT tournament.

One of DDT’s most reliable pairings does it again.

Beyond just being again, it is a kind of perfect display of what I’d hold up as the standard for small show wrestling, and also an example of why I admire HARASHIMA, Yukio Sakaguchi, and Peak DDT so much.

This is in quiet and small ass Shinjuku FACE, and a lot of people do not do their best work here, even if they are also great and oftentimes very consistent wrestlers. Beyond just that it’s not a venue where you get a lot of big or lively crowds, it’s also one that doesn’t host a lot of important wrestling matches. It is certainly not the environment in which to deliver a big and outrageous epic, and so a lot of times, wrestlers don’t often see a middle ground between “do the bare minimum” and “have the best match you possibly can”.

HARASHIMA, Yukio Sakaguchi, and DDT often do.

Instead of some grandiose main event or a big epic title style match — the likes of which they’ve had twice before, both to great results — they have something more grounded and tangible and real. It’s not all grappling, although they have it in them, but there’s more of that here, and in general, it feels much more like a match HARASHIMA and Sakaguchi had because it’s the sort of wrestling that they like, rather than because it’s the sort of wrestling expected for a place on the card or when competing for a certain prize at a certain place. It simply exists, and feels like it unfolds in a very naturalistic way.  It’s not exactly restrained or withholding, but it’s a more thoughtful style of wrestling carried about by two of DDT’s more thoughtfully great wrestlers.

The initial grappling is extended out to cover the first half of the match, and it’s as great as always. HARASHIMA has a way of grappling that always feels very logical in a sort of Bret Hart way, not so much in what he does, but in how everything seems to make sense from one moment to the next, where you can watch and genuinely understand why a wrestler is doing every single thing he’s doing. Against Sakaguchi, and others with real skill rather than just going along with (this will include HARASHIMA’s later work against Shinya Aoki), he gets to really engage with that and this match is one of my favorite examples, along with their 2018 match. Sakaguchi always keeps him at bay in a way almost nobody else ever can, and the opposite holds true as well. The result of this particular clash is that both men keep the other entirely at bay — Sakaguchi unable to get any hold that he really wants and HARASHIMA unable to find his transition into a sudden attack on the stomach — and both HARASHIMA and Sakaguchi are increasingly visibly annoyed at this development in a way that is so endearing.

Usually, you get one strategy succeeding and maybe one failing, but this match presents a scenario in which both men know each other so well that there is absolutely no strategy that can succeed at all.

From that point, the match is another classic riff session between really probably DDT’s all-time greatest riff pairing. HARASHIMA has these bigger and more dramatic meetings with Higuchi and KUDO and Takeshita and Irie, but no other pairing succeeds more in smaller little matches than this one, and this match is another perfect show of it. There’s nothing complex to it. They trade shots, try and hit their big moves, and again find themselves impeded by how well they know each other. The big things are as great as always. The little things are even better, from the small ways they set everything up to the positioning for each bit, to even something like the way the strike exchange is handled, with each man gradually deciding to sell each kick less as they get more annoyed with each other. It’s all just so good. A display of expertise that’s clearly practiced and professional, while still always feeling like an actual contest.

When unable to hit anything they want to hit — even colliding mid-air when each tries their big knee attack and hurting each other’s legs — Sakaguchi goes back to the ground where he at least knows he can end it, and HARASHIMA virtually never does. Sakaguchi gets a whole lot out of a sleeper, but HARASHIMA manages to get out and snaps on his own. He’s got a trick Sakaguchi isn’t expecting, and when he brings his arm over to also lock in Sakaguchi’s arm as well, Sakaguchi is in a bad place far too late to do anything about it, and passes out.

Naturally, in a match all about two old rivals knowing each other too well to do too much of anything, it’s the man who breaks out a newer trick that gets it done. Not the flashiest outing in the world, but it’s just way too hard for me not to appreciate a match like this. It’s too sensible, too tight, and too casually great to ignore.

A lovely sort of match that explains why I love watching both HARASHIMA and Sakaguchi so much, and also whose quality despite its approach shows why even smaller DDT shows like this are always worth watching.

***1/4

Masakatsu Funaki/Yukio Sakaguchi vs. HARASHIMA/Akito, DDT Dramatic Nerima The Fighter 2017 (2/12/2017)

This was for Funaki and Yukio’s KO-D Tag Team Titles.

Obviously, this is great.

HARASHIMA vs. Sakaguchi is one of DDT’s greatest ever pairings (if not on the HARASHIMA/KUDO or HARASHIMA/Irie level, I find it hard to imagine there are ten regular DDT pairings regularly better), and it delivers again. Akito and Funaki are not quite on their level, but make for real valuable additions to a match that feels like an extension of a HARASHIMA vs. Sakaguchi match. Akito and Sakaguchi are natural partners down on the ground, making for a thrilling final run together that’s primarily just shifting around and fighting and moving in and out of different holds. Likewise, the thrill of HARASHIMA vs. Funaki on the mat isn’t fully explored, nor is the thrill of them engaging each other on their feet, but there’s enough of both to live up to that promise.

Most impressive is that, once again, it is the sort of match that very easily could have not been great if not for the talent involved.

It’s another match in which you have some knee work that a match probably doesn’t need, given that the subject in question (Yukio Sakaguchi) is inclined to use those mighty haunches a whole lot. It’s not my favorite thing a match can be. HARASHIMA and Akito’s knee work is as nasty as you’d expect, and then some. HARASHIMA doesn’t get as brutal and extensive with it as he did to Mike Bailey five weeks earlier, but Akito adds a new and tricky sort of element to it. Akito also takes it a step further than HARASHIMA’s more dignified approach ever will, and takes off Sakaguchi’s shin protectors, kickpads, and kneepads to work on the bare leg and foot. Of course, this is reliant on how a segment like this is met on the other end, but it is an absolute mother fucker of an attack on a limb that the Smile Squash guys put up.

To make it work on said other end though, Yukio delivers the best performance in a match like this all year to date.

He’s not only doing all the things someone’s supposed to, but going above and beyond. At all times when Yuke gets back in there, he’s holding his leg straight out any time he’s not using it, and trying like hell to never actually bend it. He still uses it here and there, but it’s always followed by an immediate consequence and moments of him going in the other direction, like it’s a thing he either forgets on occasion and goes with on pure muscle memory in crunch time or like he’s saving it up for the real important bits. It’s one of the better versions of this kind of a selling performance I can recall in recent memory, still managing to get in and hit his stuff and make it dramatic, but walking the tightrope perfectly to avoid it ever seeming silly or false for even a moment.

Sakaguchi and Akito roll around on the ground in the match’s final minutes, in these wonderful bits. Akito tries for the leg, and Yukio scrambles like hell to avoid ever getting stuck. He’s able to transition into a few things in a row, but unlike a Zack Sabre Jr. style bit, each hold has the time to breathe, and the transition feels like it’s cutting off a counter, rather than being all for show. Yukio gets a rear naked choke, and to stop Akito from locking his hands around his exposed right leg, Sakaguchi goes into a Cobra Clutch with the body scissors. Funaki does the bare minimum to cut off HARASHIMA, and having no access to his other limbs and no way out, Akito surrenders.

So much better than I remembered it being, and one of my favorites of the year to date.

Maybe not the ideal version of this match (fifteen minutes of back and forth grappling and hard striking, not asking anyone to focus on anything heavier than maybe some gut work from HARASHIMA), but an undeniable success anyways. Yet another stellar DDT house show main event.

***1/4

Konosuke Takeshita/Mike Bailey vs. Masakatsu Funaki/Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT Road To Super Arena In Oyodo (1/9/2017)

This was for Soup and Seed’s KO-D Tag Team Titles.

It is almost the exact match I would want it to be. Under fifteen minutes, mean, focused, adherent to the central tenants of the match it unexpectedly has instead of just the basics, and with Funaki totally wrecking Mike Bailey’s entire shit at the end to do something real interesting with the tag titles, even in just a very short term sense. Maybe this also describes the exact match you would also want this match to be, but I am increasingly less concerned with what you want. It’s what I want, and that makes it good.

More impressive than simply knowing generally how it should be and only slightly modifying it is that, for the second time in a week and now on the other end of the thing, Mike Bailey directly has and/or is involved in the sort of match that I could very easily not like — one in which Sakaguchi’s right leg is attacked as a way to fill time and space in a control segment, although not mattering much in the end — only for the match to still deliver.

It’s an impressive thing because it is 100% down to the performances. Funaki doesn’t have much to do with it, but both Takeshita and Bailey are very good here. It’s not a hard thing to root against a wunderkind super-athlete like Soup, but the real nastiness comes out of Speedball here. It’s not the first time he’s been like this, but it is the first time in DDT, and it’s a very cool thing in this environment. The kicks specifically to the leg, the knee drops to the ankle and knee, it’s all remarkably nasty stuff coming from a guy that most people seeing this probably didn’t expect it from. Mostly though, it works because of Sakaguchi. All the great work on one side of a match like this doesn’t mean shit if the other guy isn’t willing to play along, and Sakaguchi so is. He’s always limping, taking bigger steps to cut down on how much he has to use the leg, all of that. The tag team structure of the thing also helps him a whole lot, allowing him to vanish for a few minutes and come back just kind of limping on the bad leg. It’s not perfect, you know he’s still kicking and all of that, but given the length of the match and given who Sakaguchi is as a wrestler and especially given the smaller setting (i.e. all the reasons he could have not tried as hard), it’s a very impressive performance.

Mechanically, it is wonderful. The sonic delights you crave in a match like this, with an energy and spite that makes it all so easy to consume. Funaki makes the kids pay for being a little mean to his friend, and has a few real wonderful exchanges with both. Yukio’s run against Takeshita right before the end is also especially spectacular, and feels very much like the match I wish they’d had in the 2015 King of DDT finals instead of neither being ready for each other at the time. The match comes together wonderfully, a combination of commitment to the match they had and the match everyone expected.

Funaki takes the belts away from the dream team after nuking poor Young Karate with the Hammerlock Tombstone.

A hell of a little chunk of wrestling, and maybe more importantly, the second house show in three days from DDT featuring one of the best and most likeable matches of the year so far.

***

Yoshihiro Takayama/Kazusada Higuchi vs. Yukio Sakaguchi/Kota Umeda, DDT Dramatic General Election 2016 ~ First Ask Special (9/3/2016)

Hell yeah dude.

This is the sort of a thing you look at on paper and sort of know what to expect, and I say that in the most positive way. The sort of match I would see on a card, were it announced in the present moment, and go “oh yeah, that’s probably sick”, watch, and be a hundred percent right about. At ten or eleven minutes here, they’re also in a little bit of a sweet spot. While not long enough or substantial enough (third from the top on a smaller card) to be year-end list level GREAT, it’s exactly long enough for a trusty meat-and-potatoes style match like this to succeed, in the exact ways it ought to.

It’s not a single layered match, of course. If you’re the sort of person who needs a little more depth than “four really good strikers tee off for eleven minutes”, this match has a little bit to offer up in between the Takayama vs. Sakaguchi grudge that erupts seemingly out of nothing here (although not really, given Sakaguchi’s prior wars against Minoru Suzuki), and your classic young guy story with Umeda trying to step up and repeatedly being owned unless Yukio was there to help him out.

Mostly though, it’s a match about hitting each other really god damned hard, and if that’s not enough, I would advise not being a baby and finding a way to enjoy a classic style Fun Match About Hitting.

three boy

HARASHIMA/Konosuke Takeshita/Yukio Sakaguchi vs. Shuji Ishikawa/Kazusada Higuchi/Keisuke Ishii, DDT Beer Garden 2016 Final ~ DDT DAY (8/13/2016)

Great for every incredibly obvious reason one might imagine.

DDT at this point cannot miss with a match like this. The roster is deep enough that you can throw a six man combo like this out for fifteen minutes on a smaller show, and you can’t even really fairly say “well, it’s the six best guys in the company, what’d you expect?” because you’re leaving out a KUDO or a Shigehiro Irie or the recently arrived Mike Bailey. Still, six of the best wrestlers alive (yes, you can say that about Konosuke Takeshita in like 2016-2017) throw some stuff out at each other for fifteen minutes.

Some of that’s Peter Pan build up, to be fair. It’s good enough. The main story of the match is Takeshita once again trying, coming closer than ever, but still not quite being able to handle Shuji Ishikawa. It’s quality build-up tag stuff, advancing an interesting story in an interesting way that offers up a quality hook for the big event.

Mostly though, this is about the riffs, and they are tremendous.

HARASHIMA against both Higuchi and the Big Dog again. Keisuke Ishii getting to a little wild. Yukio against other heavy hitters for the first time in a while. All different mix-em-ups, some new, some among the best match ups in DDT history, all of them great. A match like this works as much on the strength of the big story as it does on the consistent overall quality, and this is a match in which the quality never really falls off. Peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows, but always at a very very high level and never dipping below a phenomenally high baseline.

If the success of a thing like this is the marker of a great promotion (and it is), then in 2016, DDT really might be the best wrestling promotion in the world.

***