[1993-09-24-NJPW] Tokimitsu Ishizawa vs Yuki Ishikawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

Recorded via fancam of the event as Young Lion matches were almost universally not filmed outside of some here and there. This in particular is a great showing as it involves two guys who will go on to have strong careers: Ishizawa as the devious Kendo Kashin and Ishikawa as a straight laced ace shooter. Even this early in his career (not even a year) he's pretty great on the mat, and Ishizawa pre Kashin can't coast off his reputation and goofy antics as per standard so he has to do the same. The result is a pretty heated match that starts off with both men hurling out slaps and other strikes in a game of one-upmanship between them while occasionally losing their cool. 

This also makes the match a bit more interesting beyond it just being two guys aggressively rolling about on the mat, which is still solid, don't get me wrong, but versatility helps a lot here. The match itself is as you can imagine fairly heatless as the crowd only really pick up for the striking portions as they don't really care about these two much at all, so there's a lot of very silent grappling, but this in itself is pretty awesome as the two move at a brisk pace and are as smooth as butter moving from hold to hold. Ishizawa pulls for his signature cross armbreaker at one point from back mount but this is for a majority just them going for takedowns, passing guard and sitting in holds: the pace is what especially is great here as both don't hang around for long in any position, only pulling for submissions when they are 100% sure it could work: Ishikawa uses maybe three actual submissions here and all of them are close calls with the last one being the finish, so they feel threatening. It's really refreshing to see submissions used as tangible match-ending moves than just things to sit around in, with even the hint of a double wrist lock being immediately escaped from. There's some good heat bits as well given Ishikawa acts like a shit with random slaps and even punches in places: Ishizawa responds in kind with his own petty stuff. The middle half has a good bit where Ishizawa manages to force his opponent to break to the ropes due to countering a Achilles Tendon hold: his pettiness makes him immediately jump back to the same leg to work it over again only for Ishikawa to knock him down and use the tease of a toe-hold to snap on a kneebar instead which got the crowd super loud. 

Ishizawa second submission (a Grovit/front face lock) causes his opponent almost at once to sprint to the ropes to escape, but he doesn't break the hold afterwards and tries to choke him out; hits the ropes again. He tries for it a third time and succeeds, but Ishikawa is more than ready for it this time by catching him in a painful toe hold for the surprise submission win. This is probably my bias talking but this was a really good, short technical wrestling match that felt legit while not completely boring at the same time. Kashin shows off a lot of that technical wrestling excellence that's overshadowed by his trolly persona and Ishikawa is already extremely competent on the mat, balancing good takedowns with some surprising submissions at points. If this is your thing, it's absolutely worth checking out despite the trappings of Young Lion formats given the two push it as far as possible in terms of technical work, because for what could've been just a regular 7-minute rookie match, it was LEAGUES above the standard for these sort of things.