Takeshi Ono & Masao Orihara vs. Ikuto Hidaka & Minoru Tanaka,
BattlARTS 10/19/1997 - GREAT
It‘s the first time Ono and Orihara team up! And, what the hell – this was really good! It wasn‘t really a BattlARTS match and more of an indy tag with the stiffness upgraded to BattlARTS level stiffness and more fierce submissions – so what, that‘s a really good kind of match! And everyone here was super fired up. Tanaka was unusually stiff and trying to take down Orihara, and Hidaka fawas really good in his usual spunky young guy role. It was nice to see Hidaka had graduated from getting squashed by Ono in under 5 minutes to actually being a threat and even upsetting Orihara a few times. All the Hidaka/Ono sections were really fun, and of course Orihara is a sleaze good in this. Doing dickish kip ups, spitting on people, kicking them in the face, hitting gnarly powerbombs. It builds to a bigger finishing run than you‘d expect from a midcard(?) match, too. Really good shit and exactly what you want.
Takeshi Ono &
Masao Orihara vs. Katsumi Usuda & Tatsuo Nakano, BattlARTS
11/25/1997 - GREAT
What a matchup. This was also pretty great. Two stoic shooters vs. A pair of absolute fuckers. The Tonpachi Machine Gun assault tactics were in full bloom here. The just swarmed all over Usuda and Nakano. Nakano looked damn great here as a tough old bastard teaching these punks a lesson, and Usuda had his share of gnarly moments too. There are just moments in these matches – like Usuda reversing a leglock and throwing some hard elbows to the back of Onos head – that you only really get in BattlARTS, and that is why BattlARTS rules. I also really enjoyed Nakano blowing off the attempt at a 2 on 1 and just beating Oriharas ass on the floor. Orihara was spectacular as usual, spitting on Nakano, running in to kick dudes in the face and then in the balls. Ono hadn‘t fully embraced his ratboy ways here, but he had some quality stiff exchanges against Nakano and Usuda. There was a constant feel that the Guns were outskilled and had to use their cheating in order to stay in the match, which made the whole thing really damn entertaining. Ono also had one of the hardest Russian Leg Sweeps in history on Usuda. Great finish where Orihara runs in like he had done so many times before only to catch some serious hands from Nakano while Usuda sinks in the choke on Ono.
Takeshi Ono &
Masao Orihara vs. Minoru Tanaka & Alexander Otsuka, BattlARTS
11/29/1997 - GREAT
Another very good match, although it was much less heavy on cheating tactics from Ono and Orihara. There was still some serious fuckery going on, especially from Orihara, but most of this was straight wrestling. Orihara/Tanaka is always a quality match up, and we get some nice slick grappling sections between Otsuka and Ono. The match up turns up a notch when Otsuka drops Ono with an absolutely sick brainbuster – lord knows, Otsuka really tried to kill Ono all the time – and it moves into a pretty great brief ending run with Otsuka launching Ono across the ring with suplexes and Ono desperately trying to not get his neck broken.
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