[1999-11-09-BattlARTS] Yuki Ishikawa & Mohammed Yone vs Kazunari Murakami & Daisuke Ikeda

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

BattlARTS has been the king of tag matches this year! I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever seen Murakami work and wow is he a great mat wrestler. Yone looked really good here too. I liked him playing to the crowd. The Ishikawa-Ikeda stuff is also always reliable. Another great match in a long list of them for the year, with Murakami kinda wowing me and looking like a future star.

[Tim Cooke]

Murakami vs. Ishikawa from 11/26/00 in Battlarts is a fantastic match, though it doesn't have much mat work

[Tim Evans]

Like Loss, I don't think i've seen Murakami before but he was the most impressive guy in this match. I liked him just kicking the hell out of poor Yone. Plus he looked like a legit MMA fighter. Strange that this was on the same card as Masatunga/Otsuka.

[Zenjo]

The average Murakami match was never up to much, but every now and then he'd be involved in something a bit special. His 2002 bout against Nagata is one I have particularly fond memories of. He brought plenty of personality in this one and acquitted himself very well within the BAT style. A keen rivalry was present between the two teams and the action was hard hitting. The tag format works better in BattlARTS than any other shoot style promotion. Good quality in general with a strong climax taking it up a notch. There were a couple of awesome delayed suplexes from Ishikawa and Yone that I don't know the name of.

[tim]

Murakami vs. Ishikawa from 11/26/00 in Battlarts is a fantastic match, though it doesn't have much mat work

Murakami also rules in the 1/4/2000 Hashimoto tag and in a 2002 title match vs. Nagata.

This match is great and everyone is awesome in it. Yone really unleashes some vicious kicks on Murakami when they're in together. Murakami and Ishikawa match up really well, of course. I watched this last night before going to bed so it's no so fresh in my mind as to really pick out my favorite moments but this is a really great match. This Battlearts card was something.

[PeteF3]

Whether it's recency bias or not, this might be my favorite BattlArts match of the year. Murakami was a revelation, already showing flashes of his vicious personality but unleashing some killer strikes and suplexes, and bumps. This is pretty much a straight southern/puroresu tag with the only real shoot elements being the submissions and KO attempts, and it's as glorious as it sounds.