Yujiro Yamamoto vs Kazuki Teramae
Teramae is another Seichi Ikemoto guy. That is a bit shocking, because he looked pretty much incapable of putting up a fight against Yamamoto here. His kicks looked good, but other than that he looked about as talented as any other indy nobody as he just wanted to go to his spots instead of actually shootgrappling with Yamamoto like god intended. Yamamoto is pretty fun here, as he cuts off pretty much everything Teramae tries and smacks him really hard for his troubles. But mostly this was about Teramae learning the lesson that he will actually need to fight.
Hiromasa Koyama & Maori Kawashima vs Sho Mizuno & Tetsuya Goto
Pretty much the sleazy crossover of a BattlARTs match and your typical scuzzy divebar indy tag. Koyama and Mizuno scrapping at the beginning was pretty fun, they understood the assignment. Kawashima kind of sucks as he is like a crappier version of Onryo, and Goto didn’t really show how anything outstanding, so the match degraded to bog standard trained monkey show indy levels when they were involved. Koyama looked like the best guy in the match, simply because he was beating the shit out of everyone the most. He was putting some real piss and vinegar into everything he threw, even into stuff like his european uppercuts, and he had a crazy judo throw that spiked Mizuno on his head. Mizuno, the other shooter in the match, looked good early on but unfortunately didn’t do much more in the second half. This veered between having some fun moments and being forgettable. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Koyama going sicko mode on people like this, though.
Yujiro Yamamoto vs Tsuyoshi Michibata
This was better. Just two guys kicking the living hell out of each other in a bar, as god intended. Michibata seemed to not quite take the match seriously early, so Yamamoto started stomping the crap out of him in the ropes. Michibata got more serious after that. He started to work over Yamamotos arm with some really painful kicks to the shoulder. Lots of both guys kicking each other full force in this. The one downside was Yamamoto insisting on forcing some irish whips and his rope-assisted octopus hold into the match. I dunno why he always does that. Also, the match needed BattlARTS rules. Other than that, this delivered on straight punishment and gritty bar shootstyle action. Cool to see Michibata in this kind of match and I loved his finishing submission.
