[2000-09-07-BattlARTS] Alexander Otsuka vs Mohammed Yone

[soup23]

Otsuka is weary of the kicks of Yone and tries to neutralize those. Yone comes back with some kick to gain the advantage but is mostly outclassed elsewhere. It is a pretty simple story but one that works. Add in some of that Otsuka charm like two unorthodox tombstones and a choke for a nearfall and you have a really good effort overall. I do feels like Yone doesn’t get the impact on some of his strikes that in theory it is presented as. Otsuka also does a half and half suplex to regain the advantage. A huge dragon suplex earns Otsuka the knockout victory. Yone is still probably the worst big name in BattlARTS but this was a pretty damn great Otsuka performance. ***1/4 (6.6)

[superkix]

Yone sucks on the mat but he does manage a nasty high kick and I like his pumphandle bomb>single leg crab combo. But man, Otsuka is on another level entirely, suplexing Yone whenever he gets a chance, hitting his own variation on the Steiner Screwdriver at one point into a rear naked choke. He takes Yone's Muscle Buster but it isn't enough to keep him down before he KOs Yone with the dragon suplex. What a stud.

[ohtani's jacket]

Otsuka deserves a ton of credit for this match. It's not an easy task to make Mohammed Yone seem interesting and especially not for a good 10-12 minutes, but Otsuka managed to do it through a combination of active matwork, tremendous selling, and terrific counters. Yone was Yone throughout but Otsuka was compelling the entire way. I think you can make an argument for this being the best night of his career to this point. Great performance from him.

[AstroBoy]

I really liked Yone's leg drop and lariat to the side of the neck. I thought he looked fine here. Otsuka really takes a nice beating and sells a near knockout well. The screwdriver was nasty and this started into trading too much at the end but good match.

 

***1/2