Violence Master: A Jun Izumida Primer

[Ma Stump Puller]

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Introduction

Always neglected when it comes to retrospectives, Izumida has always been a curious undercard performer to me since I started watching a bulk of the AJPW TV segments overall. Behind the goofy appearance and uninspiring look was a tremendously aggressive act that could seriously go when prompted, from huge suicide dives to some truly insane spots for a guy his size. Through he never had any truly big pushes, he was always great whenever given the big stage to show off his stuff, but despite this a lot of the reception (especially on Cagematch and the like) has him positioned shockingly low on the totem pole, where he currently stands in the top 250 worst rated wrestlers on the site...for some reason. (seriously, he's worse than Nailz, of all people) 

Here, I'll be going through a few of the matches that are the most easily accessible for someone new to check out, as well as some personal favourites. There's more than this out there but this is just the ones that I feel like are most worthy of a primer set: if we were just going through good matches in general, this would be a lot longer, needless to say. What's best to know is that Izumida is basically a really stiff lad, so be prepared for some hard shots that would make even Shibata wince. 

 

Vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW 22.03.1998) 

Probably the most infamous Izumida match out there. Him and Kawada basically have a pretty good sub-5 minute match as he essentially realises that Dangerous K is WAY out of his league, so he chooses to take the fight early by going balls to the wall at the very start and hoping to God that things work out. This involves a lot of diving headbutts, some big spots and Kawada being, well, Kawada. You don't need me to tell you who wins this but it's still a ton of fun and one of Izumida's first big moments, which he takes full advantage of here. Seriously, just go watch this when you can, it's a fun ride. 

 

W/ Akira Taue vs. Gary Albright & Yoshihiro Takayama (AJPW 24.07.1998)

While a lot of Izumida's showings have him as more or less the bully of the bunch, here he's essentially a lower card act having to swim with some real sharks in the form of two beefy guys who certainly don't give him any leeway. Takayama in particular smacks him here with some truly vicious shots after Izumida shows him up early on by blocking a lot of his offence and Izumida essentially has to ride out the experience long enough and try to get his own work in, hoping Taue can do the rest. This is mostly the Izumida show, however, as he powers through the pair's offence and really gets the crowd going by the end of this when he's holding on to the last straw just to survive. It's a very well done underdog match that has some real nail-biting moments throughout. I've seen this match format a lot in AJPW (namely the rookie teaming up with guys far above his paygrade and having to struggle to survive: it's a trend that's practically always been around in some format) but Izumida is most definitely one of the best when it comes to getting this over in general. I've seen far worse, so maybe I'm just more favourable to this than I should be. 

 

W/ Giant Kimala Vs. Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki (AJPW 16.01.1999)

No one really knew this was going to be a great match from the get-go, but this somehow mutates into perhaps one of the top tag MOTY contenders for the year in general, not just AJPW. This starts off fairly good as Kimala and Izumida thrive as two big tanks that just hurl around the lighter guys with ease, mixing in some heel work at points to get the crowd more invested in the eventual comebacks of the duo. There's a certain moment in this match where things go from decent to utterly incredible: if you've watched the match, you know exactly what I mean: I'm not going to spoil it here for new viewers, just check the whole thing out but try not to eat beforehand. Izumida and co take complete advantage of the situation and turn it from a potential confusing mess in the hands of less experienced workers to a masterclass in heel brutality. There's a rematch that happened a month later but it's mostly just bleh; a weak attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice. A great heel showing for Izumida that puts him over big time as a horrifically dangerous opponent. This arguably was the match where "Violence Master" became not just a nickname, but raw reality. 

 

W/ Giant Kimala vs. NO FEAR (Yoshihiro Takayama & Takao Omori) (AJPW 20.02.2000)

Not going to lie: most of Izumida's match material with Kimala is either alright or just downright bad at points. They don't tend to have good matches usually but when they NEED to step up like here, they absolutely do so. Izumida takes a beating but unlike the Taue match, he shows that he can dish it out with some big headbutts, lariats, and outright stiff slaps. He can hang with the duo but just misses the mark due to NO FEAR's superior experience in brawls. Izumida shows that he can sell incredibly well as his injured mid-section is absolutely honed in by the NO FEAR pair throughout as a clutch to keep him in control, of which he builds very nicely to a Kimala hot tag, of all things. Unlike the last match where he was with someone who needed to carry him out of pure raw strength (in kayfabe, naturally) here him and Kimala are positioned as a true balanced duo, landing lots of goofy and at times sensational double team moves, helping each other out of very sticky situations. Izumida more than proves that he could more than have a competent match out of probably one of the best tag teams of this year (seriously, 2000 is a banner year for Takayama/Omori in general) but this is a great showing for things to come and a solid introduction to Izumida's modern style going forward. 

 

Vs. Takeshi Rikio (NOAH 25.01.2001)

Izumida takes Rikio, whom at this point is a competent but pretty middling rookie singles act who seems to be only good in well coordinated tags to one of his best singles matches as of date, which is remarkable given Rikio's only real "good" match beforehand was with Misawa: a very high bar. Brutal, nasty, downright overkill at times. It's just two very meaty ex-sumo lads basically just hurling around in various ways and really just beating the crap out of the other. It's hard to use so many words for "stiff" but THIS is stiff, and it used in such a manner to enhance what would be a run of the mill match to something far more. Izumida lives up to his moniker and gives Rikio a ton of space to rail on him at points with some truly devastating stuff. By the end of this the crowd is popping for everything like this is Kobashi/Misawa or something crazy over like that, getting incredibly invested for every near fall this gives. This is clipped but still feels like a full-length match by the balls to the wall pacing and effective usage of big bombs. 

 

Vs. Takeshi Morishima (NOAH 13.03.2004)

This is for Morishima's WLM belt (a American promotion that NOAH regularly worked alongside and trained people) and is actually the main event of the entire event, which was a cool gesture. Anyway, this goes how you'd expect it to go, but this shows how effective Izumida is at control segments and cut-offs, able to recover after a early beating by a insane diving headbutt from the ropes to the outside before focusing on Morishima's taped up leg for the duration of this match. He combines stiff slaps, chops, headbutts, alongside some surprisingly innovative technical work and agile spots to keep control his throughout. He shows that he can dictate a match (as seen above with Rikio) almost completely by himself, managing to get some good crowd reactions throughout this bout and building to a really fun comeback sequence and finishing stretch where it's just a mad scramble. Morishima's selling is bad when it comes to extended selling (like he'll scream and cry throughout the holds and working segments, but he'll almost switch that mode off as soon as he's free to work and he'll NEVER change his usual work to accommodate) but he's a good bomb thrower who is quite over with the crowd at this point, so this mistake is forgiven in their eyes. Izumida gets about as much as you can get from Morishima at this point and time and then some. 

 

Conclusion

As stated above, this is just a helpful primer to Izumida's style of work, as well as a wide range of different matches where you can see how he can play both a confident underdog or a brutal heel with little regard for his own and his opponent's wellbeing. There's a lot more out there if you search around and some really fun matches that I left out of here to keep this simple and concise as all of these can be just easily picked up and watched without any additional context or pre-match watching. Hopefully you enjoy and appreciate one of the lesser heralded stars of early NOAH.