Ono & Ikeda vs. Ishikawa & Hoshikawa, BattlARTS 3/14/1997

Man, are BattlARTS tags the greatest thing in wrestling or what? This was just amazing, I can't praise this match enough. Ono & Ikeda look like the greatest rudo team in the world here (but they always do), just swarming all over their opponents. They even had Sho Funaki at ringside to assist in the beatdown. First half was basically built around Ono & Ikeda kicking their opponents to a pulp. Ishikawa vs. Ikeda is always the main attraction when it comes to violence, but don't underestimate Ono mixing in slick grappling exchanges in between kicking people in the face. The 2nd half had some great retaliation as Ikeda came in with a bandaged abdomen and Ishikawa and Hoshikawa just destroy him. Ikeda really looks like the toughest son of a bitch alive selling that shit like he's getting eviscerated and coming back with big desperation suplexes and lifts. Hoshikawa/Ono section was great as Hoshikawa was seemingly wrecking Ono with neck spiking suplexes and brainbuster type moves (while Ono nails him with some vicious strikes, including a sick jumping knee that sent Hoshikawa over the rope) until he got too cute by going to the top rope and ended up eating a sick double team move in an epic spot. I've had some problems with Hoshikawa in BattlARTS before and while he did look a bit green here he looked perfectly good doing some grappling and getting kicked in really painful looking ways. Ikeda also tries crushing his face with a lariat at one point and that rules. This whole match was just them going all out for 16 minutes, nothing held back and everybody looks great. It really made me think Japanese wrestling peaked with this stuff.