YES, B

June 1998

Jeff Hardy (!) . . . makes his BattlArts debut and makes me glad that I’ll never have to see him in this setting again.

Yutaka Fujita . . . along with Ikuto Hidaka look primed and ready to pick up the heel juniors mantle, with Kaientai being wasted over in the WWF.

Yuki Ishikawa . . . suplexes the Michinoku Pro caveman into oblivion!

This is a slight change of pace from the usual BattlArts fare (at least from what I’ve seen) instead of focusing on a single show, this is a TV show that showcases the highlights of a two-show series from 6/14 and 6/15.

DAISUKE IKEDA vs. KATSUSHI TAKEMURA

Takemura was as green as a jealous frog in a clover field at this point, and it shows in pretty much everything he does. His matwork is as basic as it gets, including being noticeably slow, and he can’t even go along with a vertical suplex and nearly winds up landing on his feet. To his credit, Ikeda does what he can to at least make him look competent. He unloads slaps and kicks, and Takemura shows his toughness by getting back up and not curling up and dying, and Ikeda takes a couple of big bumps from a German suplex and later a backdrop suplex. The disparity between them is fully on display in the opening moments when Takemura has to fight to get on basic holds, and Ikeda easily traps him in a juji-gatame. The finish comes a bit out of left field as Ikeda jumps up after a backdrop suplex to lariat Takemura down and then submits him with a cross kneelock. There surely had to have been a better way for Ikeda to end the match than by blowing off the suplex, but Takemura wasn’t exactly putting on a stellar performance here and it’s no surprise that Takemura found his calling as a quasi-rudo junior rather than a shootstyle practitioner.

IKUTO HIDAKA © vs. WILLOW THE WHISP (UWA World Middleweight Title)

Yes, in between his various stints of doing jobs on WWF B-shows, Jeff Hardy actually wrestled in BattlArts! And the result is really… not good. It’s more of a junior spotfest than a BattlArts style match and even then, Hidaka literally works circles around him. Early on, Hidaka works over Jeff’s leg, and it culminates in a pro-style figure four that drums up some nice crowd heat, but as soon as he escapes Jeff does a quick reversal on a corner whip and does a handspring elbow and a Jon Woo dropkick, to show how much the leg work mattered. That’s this match in a nutshell; Hidaka does a lot of nice things and Jeff doesn’t know how to work with him, so he just chooses to not work with him at all. They get together well enough toward the end for a couple of nice moments, like Jeff catching Hidaka when he was trying for his flying spin kick and planting him, and Hidaka’s sell job on Jeff’s DDT and Tornado DDT is pretty good, but the Whisper in the Wind finish looks terrible. Jeff doesn’t even make half decent contact for a headbutt, let alone a senton. This would be considered a dream match, and it’s a classic example of why these sorts of matches almost always fail to deliver. And unless someone can arrange the Hardys against Hidaka and Fujita, this will probably go down as being the only match between these two.

YUKI ISHIKAWA/NAOHIRO HOSHIKAWA vs. MOHAMMED YONE/YONE GENJIN

This winds up being a fun match, but it almost feels like a handicap match. Hoshikawa is absent for the bulk of this; he only shows up for a quick segment with Yone, to make a single save, and to keep Genjin occupied while Ishikawa and Yone worked the finish. It really doesn’t matter that much though, because the big message that this match sends is Ishikawa’s undeniable superiority over everyone else. No matter what Yone throws at him, Ishikawa is able to overcome it. Whenever it seems like Yone is going to get one over on him, Ishikawa always has the counter or escape ready. Yone seems to roll himself out of an armbar, but winds up putting himself into perfect position for Ishikawa to crank on a Fujiwara armbar that requires Genjin to bail him out. It’s a stark contrast to Ishikawa, who even gets trapped in a dual legbar by both opponents and just casually grabs the ropes to force the break, rather than needing to rely on his partner.

That’s not to say that Ishikawa squashes his opponents. They wear him down a bit with a lot of kicks and slaps, and they manage to secure quite a few holds on him. But, neither Yone nor Genjin seems to get him in any legitimate peril. Aside from a single hold from Genjin that requires Hoshikawa to break it up. Yone throws what he has at Ishikawa, but after he escapes the chickenwing and starts pasting Yone with slaps and hits the enzuigiri, it’s a matter of when, not if, that he’s going to end the match, and after Hoshikawa sends Genjin to the floor and dives onto him, Ishikawa gets around to doing it.

IKUTO HIDAKA/YUTAKA FUJITA vs. MASAO ORIHARA/TAKESHI ONO

Holy Christmas, this is awesome! Both teams want to be jerk heels, so they just take turns double teaming to see which team can be the biggest dicks. Orihara and Ono technically win the match, but the real winners are the live crowd and anyone else who’s ever been lucky enough to watch this. This is easily the best that I’ve seen Ono look, and it’s not-so-coincidentally the first time I’ve really seen him show some personality. Orihara and Ono work over Fujita and it rules. Then Hidaka and Fujita start working over Ono’s leg, and it rules even harder. The best moment is probably Hidaka’s legbar, complete with Fujita using his own leg to pull the bottom rope further away and literally standing between Ono and the ropes. There’s a big brawl on the floor complete with a pair of insane dives from Hidaka and Fujita. The only real weak moments are Ono blowing off the leg work by hitting Hidaka with a grounded spin kick in order to make it over to Orihara and tag out, and toward the end Hidaka and Fujita get crossed up when trying to double team Orihara, and Hidaka slips off the top rope when he wants a springboard dropkick. The finish alone is able to make up for those couple of issues, let alone the awesomeness of the rest of the match. Orihara throws Hidaka into the crowd, taking out several rows of chairs in the process. Ono traps Fujita in the Octopus and Hidaka has to get past Orihara in order to save his partner, which he does. But Ono throws Hidaka to the floor and Orihara uses a chair to keep him down, so Ono can lock Fujita in a grounded Octopus hold and submit him. It’s a damn shame that there weren’t any Indy groups with a junior tag title at this point (New Japan hadn’t even created the IWGP Jr. Tag Titles yet), because Hidaka and Fujita definitely deserved some sort of title run for being able to have matches like this. ***1/2

DAISUKE IKEDA/MOHAMMED YONE vs. CARL GRECO/NAOHIRO HOSHIKAWA

This is pretty good when it’s Ikeda vs. Greco; the strikes look good, the matwork is appropriately tight, and Greco sells the punishment very well. Yone isn’t awful or anything, but it’s easy why he spent so many years as Ikeda’s second banana. Hoshikawa is pretty much terrible throughout. His first big moment of the match is grabbing a headlock on Ikeda and getting spiked with a backdrop, which he no-sells, then Hoshikawa ducks a lariat and misses a dropkick. And somehow the missed dropkick is given more of a sell job than the big suplex that he took. Hoshikawa doesn’t get much better from there, doing a slap and chop exchange with Yone that looks like a precursor to Kobashi and Sasaki. There is one nice moment from Hoshikawa, when he escapes from Ikeda’s bow and arrow hold and immediately locks in a keylock. Other than that, Hoshikawa’s better moments involve Ikeda roughing him up.

Although Hoshikawa officially wins the match, by virtue of hitting the final strike that causes Yone to be unable to answer the count, he gets plenty of help from Greco and Ikeda. It starts with a miscue when Ikeda catches Yone with the Dai Chan Bomber, and Hoshikawa hits a pair of head kicks and then tries to submit Yone with a juji-gatame. Ikeda makes the save and Greco intervenes and sends Ikeda to the floor and then locks in a sleeper to keep him out. Greco holds Yone for a superkick into a German suplex and then one more head kick finally takes Yone out for good. For as long as Michinoku Pro and BattlArts had been working together, one would think that Hoshikawa would have picked up enough to have been able to add more to the match. He wasn’t as clueless as Kazushi Miyamoto in his 12/03 U-STYLE match, but he looked like an out-of-place pro wrestler. It’s hard to imagine that any number of other wrestlers on the roster (Tanaka, Hijikata, and Usuda all spring to mind) couldn’t have added far more to this.

YUKI ISHIKAWA vs. YONE GENJIN

This actually comes together pretty nicely, considering it looks like a clash of styles of Albright vs. Kimala proportions. When this is a straight up wrestling match, Yone never has a chance. He outwrestles Ishikawa exactly one time; Yone escapes a headlock and traps Ishikawa in a Benoit-style crossface, and as soon as he tries to switch things up and go to a Fujiwara armbar Ishikawa easily escapes. Any other time, Yone has to either bail to the ropes when Ishikawa gives him an opening to do so or use a more unconventional method like biting or throwing slaps to get himself free. Like the tag match from the day before, Genjin shows that he’s able to hurt and control Ishikawa. He slaps his way out of a legbar and uses a pro-style figure four and then switches things up by breaking out a Nagata Lock to keep the pressure on, and he’s perfectly serviceable at working over the leg, even if nobody believes that he’ll be able to win that way.

The only real weak points to the match are the headbutt exchange, which isn’t overdone to the extent of Danielson and McGuiness, but it was still unnecessary, even more so with the nastiest headbutt of the whole bunch being the very first one that Genjin threw. The comeback spot for Ishikawa was also entirely predictable, Yone connects a jumping hip attack and Ishikawa manages to stay on his feet and when Yone charges for a second one, it’s obvious that Ishikawa is going to counter it in some way. The series of backdrops before the finish was another thing that could have been done without. The first one is fine; Ishikawa takes advantage of Yone being stunned from the German and goes to his more dangerous suplex finisher, but the two or three after that were just overkill, and the fact that they only lead to Ishikawa putting on a chickenwing facelock to tap out Yone just makes them seem that much more wasted. It’d be just as easy for Ishikawa to do a single backdrop and let the ref count Yone out, and Ishikawa can wait for Yone to get to his feet and then slap on the submission. The suplex still happens and despite not being the direct finish, it’s responsible for the bulk of the damage and allows Ishikawa to finish him off. Despite its issues, this still comes off as a fun match, and it’s even more remarkable considering how out of place Hoshikawa looked in both of his tag matches.

Conclusion: The Hidaka/Fujita tag is the big reason to check this out. There’s a couple of rough parts, namely the Jeff Hardy match and Hoshikawa dragging down the 6/15 tag match. But there’s enough fun stuff to make it worthwhile.