[2000-10-01-BattlARTS] Naoki Sano & Naoyuki Taira vs Katsumi Usuda & Urban Ken

[soup23]

A very good Bat Bat ground based tag match with a ton of mat work and twisting in different positions. Ken was the underdog throughout and both Sano and Taira took turns cranking out painful looking stuff on him and trying to attack him with strikes. Ken put up a strong effort underneath and made his flurries count. I also dug Usuda here helping his buddy out as it was some of the strongest stuff Usuda has done this year. Taira continues to impress and I also enjoy seeing a long Sano match. ***1/2 (7.1)

[superkix]

This had some fun moments, and I especially thought Sano's performance here was great. Really dug the opening exchange between he and Usuda. Ken is a pretty good scrappy underdog, although unrefined and some of his exchanges with Taira were clutzy. But I liked whenever Taira was playing the dick and goading him on. Sano showed off a bunch during this match, with some big bombs and swanky submission holds on Ken, including a cool double arm hold and the Romero Special into the dragon sleeper. Usuda/Taira didn't have great chemistry but Usuda in general looked good here. Ken firing up after he hits the spear on Sano was good stuff and then Sano destroys him with that powerbomb and really wants to submit him with the crab hold, trying three times before finally succeeding.

[ohtani's jacket]

Excellent long-form BattlARTS tag. Just what the doctor ordered in terms of what I want to see from BattlARTS as it was predominantly mat-based aside from a few Sano spots (and they were cool spots.) Sano was outstanding here. It was easily the best he's looked in BattlARTS and to be perfectly honest I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it was one of his better career performances. He looked fantastic working with Usuda and also with Ken. The commentators were marking out for him and I can't say I blame him as his timing was exquisite in this match. As they mentioned, the throws that he did looked incredibly powerful. And I found myself digging his throwback juniors spots as well, which is something I don't always appreciate about Sano in the shoot style feds. Even though this match was veteran and junior vs. veteran and junior, I thought Taira and Ken did a good job of working against each other. When you have two juniors scrapping like that the match becomes far more dynamic than simply waiting for the seniors to square off. Really good work by all four men. BattlARTS has picked up the past couple of months, which I'm pleased about.

[AstroBoy]

Man this was great. A beautiful example of a long tag match with twists in momentum and control without it getting stale or repetitive. This has the normal fine matwork to start things off but things really settle in with Taira just torturing Ken, and then Sano getting in on it too. The first hot tag is really well built to but Usuda was cut off almost immediately. Taira had a lot of neat escapes and rolls to get out of Ken offense. Sano totally obliterates Ken with a spinning kick to ramp things up. We shift as Ken and Usuda fire up and use some striking to gain a nice run of offense but Sano introduces a new wrinkle into the match with a gutbuster to Ken. A double stomp off the top and eventually a big missile dropkick lead to a boston crab for the win. This had a nice sense of one-sidedness that made Ken's struggle to survive come across really well. And enough small changes in attack or strategy to keep the match from getting stale at all. I loved it.

 

****1/4