[1996-04-06-BattlARTS] Katsumi Usuda vs Alexander Otsuka

[Jetlag]

The ring here is terribly squeaky. It appears to be in a TV studio in front of a psychedelic background. It's Post-Modernist Shootstyle Wrestling Daddy!!! You may want to watch this for gorgeous Otsuka suplexes. A little uneventful undercard match otherwise. The BattlARTS matwork was pretty rough in 1996, and they didn't quite succeed here in making it compelling. I do appreciate the the uncooperativeness, though. Usuda looked legit as hell.

[KB8]

Any wrestling taking place in a studio with a purple colour scheme going on will remind me of those early 80s matches from the DVDVR Memphis set and so this had the vibe of something they'd run after an angle where Bill Dundee gets clobbered in the brain with a Moondog dinosaur bone. It was a neat enough few minutes; had some big Otsuka suplexes, some sharp strike flurries by Usuda and some alright matwork even if it was nowhere close to high end Battlarts matwork. I'm always fascinated by shoot style promotions in their formative periods and this had glimpses of what Battlarts would become without being all the way there yet.