The Kazunari Murakami Battlarts Tour (part 1 of several, maybe?)

Kazunari Murakami & Alexander Otsuka v Yuki Ishikawa & Naoki Sano (Battlarts, 3/25/00)

Sitting down and watching a 30-minunte draw is not typically something I'll set aside time to do at this stage of the game. However, this is Battlarts and this is Ishikawa v Murakami and this is Naoki Sano treating us to yet another version of his take on shoot style. 30 minutes with those four wrestlers is not the same as 30 minutes with most wrestlers. It was 30 minutes that pretty much flew by. Ishikawa/Murakami was the central pairing here and it's as great as it always is. Murakami has the perfect sort of reckless attitude towards hitting someone in the face that a masochist like Ishikawa will thrive off and every exchange was stellar, Murakami just blasting him with kicks and punches, Ishikawa rising to his feet grinning like a psychopath. When he's not obliterating people with crowbars Murakami has some of the wildest judo throws ever, just whipping guys over like he's trying to separate their torso form their legs, planting them as hard as possible before transitioning straight into keylocks or kimuras. There were one or two moments where he looked like he maybe wasn't quite sure whether to follow up on something, whether to give or to take, but the moments where he took were violent enough that you don't really care. Sano and Otsuka feel like a match made in heaven in their own right, two guys who'll sprinkle pro style moves into a shoot style setting better than anyone ever. Battlarts is really the ideal place for that as well, given that it's always been the beautiful ugly bastard stepchild of both styles. They did a mid-match rope running bit where Otsuka missed a springboard in the ring that eventually culminated with Sano wiping him out with a tope. In the end it comes down to Sano and Murakami, a deviation from the expected Ishikawa v Murakami, and Sano hooking Murakami in a preposterous rolling double-arm chickenwing was amazing. What's even more amazing was the way he grabbed a Murakami kick and just blasted him in the willy. Whether it was intentional or not I don't know, but when you think about it there's really no better way to stop a madman than that.