Michinoku Pro: 15th December 1994

This Champs Forum episode opens with the earliest Ikeda-Ishikawa match I've seen. It's not of epic length or anything, but it's a really great eight minute match. It's violent at times, with some particularly nasty knee strikes and headkicks, and Ishikawa punching Ikeda in the kidneys. There's also some really neat mat transitions going on. Most importantly, it excels as a well-told, self-contained story. I watched it a few times to pull out all the things going on, because it goes at a relentless pace. It starts with Ishikawa trying for the armbar early, but Ikeda manages to avoid it. Ikeda starts off on the mat too, then turns to the headkicks after one gets a near standing ten-count. Ishikawa avoids more kicks and turns them into leg bars, but Ikeda manages to land another, then continue with the head attacks and shifts to the german suplex. A second one is blocked by Ishikawa going deadweight and rolling through, but his armbar attempt is again blocked. Ishikawa holds on, takes Ikeda down again, and this time he can't block the submission hold.

The main event is Great Sasuke vs. TAKA. Coincidentally, it's also the earliest version I've seen of a now familiar match-up. I liked this a good deal. There's a clear distinction between the 1994 NJ junior style and what was coming out of big singles matches in M-Pro at this time, which were faster and had very little in the way of long early matwork sections.Throw in the FMW garbage matches and you really can make a case for the Sasuke's impressive versatility even this early in his career. I liked the pacing of the big spots, and the sense of escalation in them - to take one example, TAKA one-ups Sasuke's quebrada with a top rope version. As you might guess, it's an ace vs. young upstart type of a match, but TAKA looks really strong throughout, like he might pull off the win. I actually bought into one of the near falls off a cross-arm powerbomb. Aside for all the impressive spots, it's Sasuke's reaction to his near-defeat that is crucial to the match, the way he's stunned and slapping his own face the shake himself out of it. His victory comes across as opportunistic and fortunate, like it was a solitary lapse in TAKA's concentration being the deciding factor. There's some slightly intermittent clutching of an injured arm that keeps trying to distract me from enjoying the whole match, but that's the only obvious flaw.