BattlArts: 14th February 2009

My abject disappointment that the world snooker final ended early is replaced by the realisation that I had downloaded matches from BattlArts February show. BattlArts - like snooker, except they punch for real.

First up, Otsuka vs. Yamamoto. Otsuka is my favourite guy in the promotion, and Yamamoto is an undercard guy who seems to be ignored in favour of Yoshikawa in some parts (although not at Wrestling KO, which is why I'm excited about this). The match, though only ten minutes long, is fantastic, and is currently my puro match of the year. The first five minute are all mat exchanges. I knew already that Otsuka is great in complex, intricate matwork and he is here, with loads of slick escapes that moves credibly into the next hold or struggle over the next submission. What I wasn't expecting was for this to be nearly matched by Yamamoto, who has his own line of counters into leg submissions and really contorted, leveraged holds.

Otsuka surprises Yamamoto by abandoning the mat section first, dropping him with a piledriver. The most legitimate, wrong piledriver in the world. The story is then Yamamoto's head versus Otsuka's leg. They do a lovely section where Otsuka goes for his giant swing, which Yamamoto fights into a front headlock, which Otsuka turns into brainbuster. The ending stretch is great - Otsuka goes for a number of head-drop suplexes between headbutts and kicks to the face, while Yamamoto fights for his leg bar, before finally taking one head drop too many. Everything is done with such focus here that the ten minutes it's given is used as well as can be. Great matwork, fantastic selling and a dramatic final struggle all make for an early contender for match of the year, and place both guys comfortably into the top 20 workers of the year.

Usuda (with hair) vs. Yoshikawa next. This got really good. Opening eight minutes or so were fine - nice strikes (especially the opening, with Yoshikawa surprising Usuda and knocking him ridiculous for a second) and good matwork exchanges. They establish some themes early on - Usuda's arm bar is quickly escaped, and Yoshikawa begins the leg work. The turning point is the long leg submission on Usuda, quickly followed by a couple more. Usuda is really great selling in the hold, and although there were a couple of points early on where he kicked with it, at the point where the leg really became the story, this ended. Yoshikawa is pretty relentless here, meaning that the veteran Usuda needs something desperate to turn the tide. This takes the form of the punt - the one he did against Yano last year was nasty, but this one split Yoshikawa open. From there, a series of wrenching arm submissions is enough for a hard-fought victory. The match had the feel of a sporting encounter where youthful energy and intensity dominates, but veteran instincts manage to claw a win out of a desperate situation. Excellent work.

The main event tag was less impressive. It was certainly less driven by any underlying story, and I didn't think the actual work was as interesting. You can normally rely on Super Tiger for some wild kicks, but they were noticeably weaker here, and at one stage he seems unsure what to do - Ishikawa and Yano are in the middle, and Sawa comes in with a kick to help his partner. Super Tiger, in the mean time, stands in his opponent's corner not doing anything. The Yano and Sawa team are fine - they can work around the mat competently, and Sawa is all youthful exuberance, running around and kicking everything that moves and is called Super Tiger or Yuki Ishikawa. Ishikawa is his usual great self - he work almost entirely with strikes and matwork, but makes everything interesting. Take his exchange with Sawa in the middle. They fight over an ankle lock, and Ishikawa combines this with a boot right in Sawa's face. His matwork sections are a highlight - the control and the use of leverage or a stray limb to gain an advantage make for great looking sequences, but there isn't enough of him in this match to make it particularly noteworthy.

Overall, this show continues from 2008 in establishing BattlArts matches as a definite fixture in my end-of-year ballot. The two singles, in particular, are a bit special.