[1993-10-29-PWFG] Yuki Ishikawa vs Joe Malenko

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Phil Schneider]

I thought it was worked less like a lucha techinico v. technico match, then a face v. face technical U.S. match, where you were waiting for the tempers to flare. You almost needed Bobby Heenan calling this and rooting for one guy to punch the other in the mouth. It did kind of end before it really broke down, which almost gave the match kind of a cock teasing feel. You wanted them to break down, and they never fully did. Man was alot of the stuff spectacular though, Malenko will have at least three spectacular things per match that I have never seen before.

[Loss]

Once again, the match is a little long for my tastes in this style, but the exchanges are awesome and this is pretty hard fought. Joe Malenko has quite the bag of tricks and is exceptional on the mat, which I guess everyone already knows.

[garretta]

Nice submission win for Malenko. This had slightly more energy than the last bout, but it still dragged too much for my tastes. Plus, I don't think the scoring was right, as I heard the ref call "Escape!" several times without the score being shown on the screen.

 

I've gotten into quite a few of the shoot-style bouts on these Yearbooks, but these last two aren't among them.

[soup23]

I like both of these guys a ton but it never came together and I couldn't get a definitive feel for the storyline they were trying to develop throughout the match. In fact, for a ***1/4 star match, this may be one of the poorest Ishikawa performances I can remember because even in matches that are technically worse, he usually feels more spirited than he did here. I was hoping for a classic but RINGS won the war of October shoot style vs PWFG. ***1/ 4