[2024-10-24-NOAH Limit Break 4] Kazuyuki Fujita vs Shuji Ishikawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

Having seen these two do some reckless shit a month or so back for one of Saito's retirement matches I was super happy to see these two get some dedicated time to themselves to really do some fun stuff by again doing reckless shit for a whole 20 minutes this time. Ishikawa's been on somewhat of a career renaissance since leaving AJPW, basically going to every major promotion purely so he could beat the piss out of anyone they threw in front of him and having a grand old time dishing out the gift of CTE. Fujita's been very hit and miss; I was one of the few people to actually enjoy his Jake Lee match but other showings have had him noticeably on the backburner and acting more as a elder statesman than an active wrestler, I can't really deny that he's lost a step or two since his more acclaimed work in the 2020's. This match did show some of their limitations (especially in regards to pacing since these two aren't exactly on the younger side of things) but all in all it was pretty damn fun, especially when the two just started throwing hands and hitting really high-impact suplexes and slams.

There's some limb work that doesn't really go anywhere with Fujita sitting in a couple of leg holds to presumably weaken Ishikawa's knee strikes but they don't really play around with the concept much so I'm not going to attempt to similarly make it make sense here since it's just blatantly there for the pair to rest for a bit. What matters is that these two are masters of relying purely on their physicality to make crowds care about them and this is exactly the appeal here. It doesn't really matter that it's sloppy because they aren't trying to be clean. It's a pure honest to god hoss brawl with all of the imperfections included, no diet anything here, just the two using slaps, elbows and headbutts until the other guy stopped moving. I did like how there wasn't many actual big bombs here and the ones that were included were made to count especially in how the two treated them as world-ending stuff that would completely flip the momentum of the match. The biggest spot here was a weird botched Emerald Flowsion, for the record, and that did legitimately look like it could've ended some stuff other than the match lol.

This does end predictively in a non-finish via the pair reaching a draw which does drag it down for me even if it does play into these two being so bonkers that they spent more time trying to hurt each other than win the actual match. All in all a really awesome affair that felt like it could've gotten even more crazy with a third act; what we do get is Fujita and Ishikawa just doing what they do best, but if anything I felt like they could have done even better with a extra 10 minutes thrown in and a proper finish. This otherwise flew by, helped by some great performances by the two to really make you invested in this clash all the way to the final tease of a proper finish, with every big strike or head-drop suplex feeling like they could've ended this entire match by themselves. As a match, this sets out to do only a few things and does those things tremendously well: it's a great lesson in minimalism from arguably some of the best to ever do this kind of meathead style justice without any pretentious flair added on.