The Quest for Seichi Ikemoto matches

 Seichi Ikemoto feels like a guy who is nowhere near talked about enough as far as 2022 pro wrestlers go. Really good slick shootstylist with cool Honda-esque submissions who is not afraid to eat and dish out punishment. He's also not afraid to throw down in odd spaces, as we are about to see.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Atsushi Suzuki, 5/28/2022

We have no achieved an almost perfect synthesis of shootstyle, garbage, and weird office space wrestling. This takes place in a room that I assume would normally have business powerpoint presentation but they lay out some mats and they do shootstyle. For some reason there is a ton of trash strewn about the mat. And they do shootstyle. Ikemoto looks great as usual outclassing Suzuki early on, love the crazy rolling omoplata. Then Suzuki sleazes it up by nailing Ikemoto with a water bottle. Ikemoto takes some nasty bumps including a shoddy piledriver on the mat, and a god damn suplex to the bare floor. Suzuki is a bit clunky but Ikemoto is so stiff and exciting it doesn‘t matter. Nice finish. It all adds up to a memorable fun match.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Tetsuya Izuchi, GLEAT 8/20/2022

Total Ikemoto show. Izuchi barely brings anything but Ikemoto brings so much neat stuff that the match is still worth watching. Cool mat transitions, cool holds, cool reversals, Ikemotos always doing something interesting. The one cool thing Izuchi did was bust out a nifty Gogoplata. He really needed that. Even his winning KO was lame. You‘ve really got nothing better than a weak slap, Izuchi?

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Soma Watanabe, GLEAT 3/13/2022

This was really good. The match had serious fight and scrappiness, with lots of punishing striking and uncooperative matwork. With a hot U-Style crowd this would have been quite great. Watanabe is about on the level of, say, UWFi era Kenichi Yamamoto. Nothing special but he had fire and could look competitive going at it with Ikemoto, and he wasn‘t afraid to get palm striked in his mush. He also dealt Ikemoto a really nasty face kick while Ikemoto was on his knees, and that was enough to get me behind Watanabe. Ikemoto did a really nice layered performance balancing his flashy moves with how he was punishing Watanabe. Check out how he sold a random Watanabe armbar, really putting over how even random hold can be a possible injury. Finish was great as Watanabe was outclassed but made a big rally trying to put Ikemoto away and I ate it up. Most importantly, the match didn‘t feel like by the numbers shootstyle which is impressive in 2022.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Yu Iizuka, GLEAT 9/6/2022

This had the kind of flashy moves and matwork you hope for from an ex-U-Style guy and a Volk Han obsessed kid like Iizuka going at it. The match was a good mix of flashy matwork and Ikemoto punishing a rookie. Though I wonder why Iizuka is still this low on the pecking order. He dealt a pretty big blow to Ikemoto spiking him with a Dragon Suplex and then hitting a big jumping kick, but then Ikemoto just won. It felt like they had to rush the ending. It was still an enjoyable match, though.

2022 MOTY Project Update #1

 Hitamaru Sasaki & Kodai Nozaki vs. Minoru Tanaka & Soma Watanabe, Kyushu Pro 4/23/2022

Once again, Kyushu Pro produces a really fun shootstyle match. This was all about my boy Kodai Nozaki who has the thickest legs in the world and is a machine here with his vader hammers and big throws. He really forces the GLEAT boys to get competitive, and he can grapple too. I love that his scarf hold is a credible nearfall simply because Nozaki is so massive. Sasaki did some slick grappling in the first half. This is all about the last 4 minutes or so, though. Watanabe showed good instinct going for Nozakis leg, but Nozai caught him and then proceeded to absolutely nuke him like it was a BattlARTS match. Awesome stuff. Tanaka is the blandest wrestler of all time doing the same stuff for the last 25 years, but he was okay here and got out of the way when Sasaki and Watanabe did a hot finish. Good shit and my man Nozaki deserves more.

Masahiro Takanashi vs. Chon Shiryu, Choco Pro 1/22/2022

I'll start by talking about the problems with this match. It was a bit silly, a bit too long, and there was some sloppiness mostly caused by them wrestling on this pillow mat where you probably don't have good footing. Aside from all that, it was a really good match and another case for Takanashi being the one good big match worker in Japan. Starts with some nice grappling, but they soon move to the meat of the match. Takanashis vicious matwork vs. Shiryus awesome Jackie Chan moves. Shiryu really knew how to bounce around that little room and those windows. The back roll handspring through the window was just awesome and so were all the diving kicks and stomps, and the bounce of the ceiling into a reckless headbutt has to be among the most insane things I've seen in a while. Takanashis style is a mix of sadistic Fuchi leg stretches and innovative stuff that works like using the stool on the leg. As I said there is some sloppiness and the match goes a bit long, but they both sold their butts off, built really well to some big spots and kept me enthralled in the match the whole way, there was never a moment where I said "fuck this" which is quite rare for 2022 wrestling.

 

2022 MOTY List