George King vs. Nobuyuki Kurashima, BattlARTS 11/13/2002
To be honest with you, I was kind of expecting George King to be an awkward stiff, but he looked pretty good here. Obviously a bit green-ish here and there, but he wasn‘t lost on the mat, he opened with a nice big dropkick popping the crowd, he was willing to hit and get hit, and his suplexes were insane. Kurashima is a really fun bulky shooter and the match was some good big boy shootstyle action. Kurashima looked good trying to contain King with fast takedowns, he also had a crafty legbar reversal, some cool headbutts to the eye and a nice german suplex of his own. Elbow in the face was obviously the highlight and Kurashima also had a really nice german spiking King. This gets the full approval point.
George King & TAKA Michinoku vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Nobuyuki Kurashima, BattlARTS 4/13/2003
This was a BattlARTS tag alright. Give George King a ton of credit here, he knew you have to hit hard and bring it in this kind of match. TAKA was really fun and scrappy, and Ishikawa looked like such a master tearing him apart on the mat. The King/Ishikawa exchanges were a ton of fun as King can do some more complex stuff than you expect, there was this spot where Ishikawa went for a front choke, King lifted him into a powerbomb attempt only for Ishikawa to reverse into a rana, which was seriously dope. Kings WCW US Power offense, with his big dropkick, spinebuster and huge Germans is also really cool and a breath of fresh air in this environment. Once again I will say I don‘t understand why Kurashima did never amount to much in his career, the boy could go on the mat, throw some big damn suplexes and did I mention he was built like an absolute unit? The finish was TAKA vs. Yuki and while it was brief it was really good, with TAKA whipping out his cool head kicks and knee strikes and taking crazy bumps for Ishikawas suplexes. BattlARTS is just so great a random main event like this can be really good and different. So George if you are reading this and happen to have more of this stuff lying around it is much appreciated.
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