[1999-06-25-BattlARTS] Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono vs Masao Orihara & Mohammed Yone

[Jetlag]

This is an awesome match; it's not very BattlARTS-alike as it's more pro-styled with no real matwork and not a lot of impact moves, but instead everyone in the match straight up dishes out the punishment left and right. Battle of shitheads pretty much sums it up as neither team is playing nice, Ikeda tries to claw Yone's face off a few times, while Orihara and Ono are at their sleazy best. You wouldn't think Orihara fits well into BattlARTS but he adjusts nicely, including an awesome one inch punch to Ono's face and a truely Usuda-styled breakup of a pinfall. I recall thinking Yone kind of sucked back then, but he was impressive as a tank just taking it to Ikeda, and his goofy leg drop was deadly looking. Ono was a little different then, less of a boxer more of a wrestler, but he was punching and kicking people in their faces as good as 11 years later, and his flying around and ballsily eating of an Orihara dropkick was cool. Ikeda was the Ikeda we all know and love. You will want to watch this.

[KB8]

Yeah, if Battlarts is a hybrid then this was a hybrid of the hybrid (or just the original hybrid that leaned more towards the pro wrestling side of the scale than the shoot style side). Not much matwork to speak of, more shtick than usual, but everything reaching at least an 8 on the stiffness scale, thus reinforcing that we are indeed still watching the Battlarts. Ikeda and Ono were winging shots the way you expect them to and I liked how Ono incorporated punching someone clean in the face into some quasi-comedy spots. His senton looked awesome as well. Orihara has a new look nearly every match of his I watch. Someone should document that. He mostly kicked and punched people in the balls but he wasn't shy about taking full force lariats and kicks to the body from Ikeda.