Summer Of BattlARTS

Yuki Ishikawa/Super Tiger II vs Munenori Sawa/Hideki Suzuki, 5/22

Solid match to set up the Ishikawa vs Sawa singles match, though pretty much all the quality was coming from Ish. Wether it was making Suzuki's matwork interesting or smacking the taste out of Sawa, everytime Ishikawa was in this was good. Sawa and Suzuki did an OK job baiting him and no one was afraid to get in some cheapshots. ST2 was pretty awful, doing lots of fancy gymnatics which looked out of place in a shoot-style setting. Highlight was probably Ishikawa catching Sawa's stupid wind-up punch combo into an armbar, and the finish set-up the singles match appropriately.

Manobu Suruga vs Takeshi Takeshima, 6/19

Shoot-style competitive squash, and not a very exciting one. Only went less about 6 minutes but most of it was long holds with no urgency to them. Takeshima did get cracked open, and he had a pretty great comeback/nearfall sequence, but that was it.

Daisuke Ikeda/Katsumi Usuda vs Hideki Suzuki/Tiger Shark, 6/19

Welcome the Daisuke Ikeda show..again. Similar to the 5/22 tag this was a one man show from Ikeda. Great selling of the youngster's submissions, and wasn't afraid to bite or claw his way out of a hold. What is it with the Tiger dudes doing flips and highspots in BattlARTS? I liked that the youngsters had to resort to devious tactics to gain the advantage over the vets, but it was lacking in the intensity/violence to take it to the next step.

Yuki Ishikawa vs Munenori Sawa, 6/19

Man this was good stuff here. Hot start with a handshake fake-out from Sawa, and plenty of blows being traded. The matwork had an almost viceral feel to it, with moments like Sawa pinning down Ish's hand and punching it. Ish busted out like a dosen swank counters (my favourite being the ankle lock out of the abdominal stretch) and was generally pretty outstanding. He let Sawa get plenty in on him and sold his ass off to make him look like an equal. There were moments where he looked like a tired old guy struggling to keep up with his younger rival. After struggling to make it up for the 10 count Ish said "fuck this" and resorted to dropping bombs on Sawa. Once again I loved Sawa trying to get cute with a stupid Mutoh spot and getting punished for it with an armbar, and Sawa desperately grabbing the ref during the finish was a very cool touch.