I Felt Like Watching BattlArts

So, Rachel is on the phone with her mother, I have bourbon in my hand, can't watch Veep until Rachel is off the phone. I felt like watching BattlArts.


Alexander Otsuka vs. Katsumi Usuda, 8/3/96 (?)

Otsuka is young and slender here, like a young Yul Brynner. Otsuka is one of my all time favorite mat guys as he's always super squirmy and he always winds up in weird positions and angles from which to yank limbs and slap face. This is filmed in a weird little TV studio with a backdrop that kind of looks like a sunset. They also did pre-match pre-filmed interviews with both guys wearing tweed sport coats. Cameras film too high up so we cannot confirm elbow patches. Usuda's conservative jacket makes him look like Alex P. Keaton going on a date. So in other words everything about this is flawless from the word go. We're just a few minutes in and both guys have hyperextended each others' elbow joints and Otsuka has thrown 3 of the gnarliest deadlift belly to belly suplexes you've seen and a killer Dead End german. Usuda throws furious knees to the stomach and gets a cool roll through choke for the win. Otsuka bows in defeat. This was like 7 minutes and the most pants shittingly great Worldwide match ever. The white shirted fanny pack wearing crowd would be in stunned silence by the violence brought forth here.

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Shoichi Funaki, 8/26/96 (?)

Ikeda comes out to Fight for Your Right (to Party) so, well…this is on. Ikeda, to the shock of many, throws a kick at Funaki's face to start, but Funaki has watched tape and knows that Ikeda kicks face. So he ducks it and takes him down with a super cool single leg roll through. Ikeda's leg ended up on Funaki's shoulder, and Funaki rolls through it with a weird Rolling Olympic Hell, but as a leg takedown. Funaki takes a mean german but is crafty and holds Ikeda's arm on the way up and over so Ikeda can't capitalize. Rachel just got off the phone and walked into the room and said "why are these guys fighting in the Memphis TV studio…with a sunset in the background? It looks like a yearbook background." I love her. Funaki can go on the mat but damn is Ikeda such a bully with him, with the kicks and the forearms grinding the face. Rachel thinks Ikeda looks like an Asian Paul Koslo. Holy god Rachel needs to write for Segunda Caida. Funaki is really good in this (truthfully Funaki is the Kaientai member I am least familiar with, pre WWE run) with a kind of "barely hanging on" body chemistry, where he tries to shoot for any tiny advantage he can find whether by just tying Ikeda up so he can rest, or scrambling for any limb he can grab on the mat. Eventually though Ikeda levels Funaki with one of many from his fount of kicks, dropping Funaki to his knees. There Ikeda throws one straight to the temple for the KO and rides off into the sunset (background) to the strains of young NY twenty-somethings sleeping in, not wanting to go to high school, and high end pornography periodicals being maliciously thrown into the garbage by mothers.