[2000-06-29-BattlARTS] Ayako Hamada & Gran Hamada vs Yumi Fukawa & Minoru Tanaka

[soup23]

Good final to the intergender tournament. The ladies really mixed it up on the mat at first and I thought Hamada in particular implemented himself well into the match vs Fukawa. The finish was a bit anticlimactic but I do appreciate a match that ends on what really feels like the first big high impact move of the match with Hamada’s cutter from the top rope. This was enjoyable and made me appreciate intergender wrestling more on the whole. ***1/4 (6.5)

[Jetlag]

This was pretty underwhelming. Which is weird because all the previous matches in this tournament where a ton of fun. Fukawa and Tanaka added almost nothing to this match. Tanaka just ran through his stuff. Did I ever mention I hate that guy? There was one cool moment when Hamada decides to get all lucha on the mat with Fukawa and Fukawa is like „fine“ and they go all IWRG. Sadly that only lasted about 30 seconds. There were also a few blown spots. Fukawa tries countering the Hama-chan cutter and both she and Ayako end up falling on their heads. Eventually Tanaka remembered he's a BattlARTS guy and lands some nasty spinkicks on the older Hamada, and the finish was a feel good moment but the rest of this was just not good.

[superkix]

This was alright. I mean, it's always neat seeing Hamada get in there and add a little salsa to the competition, but Minoru was on auto-pilot for much of the match. These intergender tags have been my first exposure to Fukawa, who I thought has some pretty cranky submission holds, and it was fun seeing her mix it up with Hamada. Overall though, it dragged and some of the exchanges looked clumsy.