[2015-09-26-AJPW Royal Road Tournament] Akebono vs Shuji Ishikawa

A really good example of pure sloppy BEEF kino. Akebono struggles with intensity that Ishikawa brings in spades and Ake brings a remarkably rare example of Ishikawa not being able to do his usual dominant giant routine as he's not the biggest man in the room as per usual, so we really get a nice little sprint that mixes things up ever so slightly between the two. If you weren't a fan of Ake control sequences then this won't be up your alley but I personally got into fairly easily thanks to the above reasons since this had a dynamic going for it that you aren't really going to see much anywhere else. Ishikawa just in the middle goes right into the crazy stiff knees and forearms to the head alongside an truly terrifying piledriver that Ake then responds with some big strikes and a goofy lariat. He then tries for his own botched Yokozuna Impact piledriver where he just falls over mid-move and Ishikawa also then jumps too early for, creating this weird delayed effect where the move basically happened, reset, then happened even worse lol.

The actual finish was legitimately great as Ake got slapped uber hard alongside some scary stiff headbutts that he then responds with by doing his own huge sumo slap and a even worse Yokozuna Impact where he doesn't even get a quarter up without falling over mid-move, felt like something you'd see from the very peak of head-drop mania 90's AJPW when every big spot had to be modified to be even more risky than it already was. Ake gets all gassed up after this immense effort and leans on his opponent on the ground before finally nailing the move the third time for the finish after a brief pause. This was really sloppy but uber enjoyable at the same time BECAUSE of that sloppiness, especially with two huge heavyweights like these two where anything could realistically finish the match. Akebono is at that point in his career where he's starting to have legitimate issues getting around; this match doesn't really attempt to disguise that in any subtle manner; at the same time though you could tell he was really giving it his all despite said issues, landing a bunch of surprisingly solid strikes and meshing with Ishikawa well. He knew the memo from the first stiff headbutt and he damn well keeps that dangerous feeling all the way to the ending. I'm kinda glad we're past the mid-2010's smarky era of "well Akebono sucked because he had a bad match with big show once" because it means matches like these can get their actual flowers.