Heads Up Battle 2005- SUWA v. KENTA vs. Ishikawa v. Ikeda

[Phil Schneider]

This week KENTA v. SUWA will challenge for the 2005 title against reigning champ Ishikawa v. Ikeda. Watch the matches, pimp your favorite and we will reveal the winner on Friday!!

 

 

[Go2Sleep]

It's been a while since I watched Kenta/Suwa. This definitely was the performance of a lifetime from Suwa. His heeling for the first 10 minutes or so was absolutely brilliant. Perfect character work during that stretch where Suwa knows he can't keep up, and all his offense is based off cheating. The interactions with Higuchi and Kikuchi at ringside were top notch as well. Unfortunately, they didn't keep this pace up for the full 25 minutes. It eventually devolved into a standard juniors match, which doesn't play to Suwa's strengths. Worse yet, they went to the standard juniors style without giving Kenta a satisfying payoff to the 80s territory style segment. Suwa had no credibility against Kenta in a clean match, which they go well out of their way to establish in the first half here, so all his nearfalls are flat. Plus he stops cheating for the most part, so they completely lose that organic crowd interaction that made the first half so special. Kenta doesn't even get a really exceptional finishing run that would be becoming of the sort of effort Suwa put in. If only Kenta knew then what he knows now after working in front of WWE audiences for a couple years. Tough break, because the first half is so great, but there's no way I can justify a vote for it based on the pedestrian second half. I feel like they teased us with MOTDC, then just gave us every Korakuen juniors single match instead.

Ikeda/Ishikawa was interesting throughout because what they established early (ridiculously stiff strikes and stretchy subs) stayed a constant theme throughout the match. It also has the benefit of not being too long for its own good. I'll side with them in this heads up vote, but there's at least 5 matches I'd take over either of them without a second thought.

[The Natural]

My vote goes to the capitals match but I agree with Go2Sleep, there's more matches I rate above both by some way.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

The 80s Territory thing confuses me. SUWA is very clearly a Rudo. He's not from Memphis. Dude got learned in Mexico. Old Toryumon is basically a Lucha promotion. There's a long lineage of rudos just cheating because they're assholes and not necessarily because they can't get an edge some other way. SUWA wants to ruin everything, but he's still a perfectly capable wrestler, he's just an ornery fucker who hates what you like. If they would have done this match like actually 80s American style I think that complaint holds merit, but that's not the wrestler SUWA is.

anyways I said my piece about this in the other thread, it's my favorite match

[Phil Schneider]

Ikeda v. Ishikawa edges out SUWA v. Kenta to keep the belt, but Eric waxes poetic about his love for SUWA

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2016/09/all-time-moty-list-head-to-head-2005.html

[Curt McGirt]

Damn Eric, that was great. Fantastic writeup boys