[2009-01-10-Battlarts] Keita Yano vs Alexander Otsuka

[Edwin]

I thought this was fantastic. This is the final of the B-Rule tournament. I believe the rules of this tournament are straight up matches with a minimum of 5 rope breaks per match with a 10 minute time limit. The person who uses the most rope breaks, is down on the scorecard and thus if the match goes to a time limit draw, then that person loses. Not sure what Yano's background is aside from having been trained by Yuki Ishikawa and having attended a Tom Pritchard training camp in the US, but he is a master manipulator of the rules in this match and he knows he won't be able to submit Otsuka outright and he has to avoid any of Otsuka's big throws, so his strategy is to get Otsuka to use more rope breaks than him and try to outlast him which is somewhat of a jiu-jitsu approach. He is a younger and lower ranked wrestler than Otsuka, so he blitz Otsuka and quickly jumps and pulls guard which reminds of Takeshi Ono usually using a similar strategy except Ono would blitz with flurries of strikes and Yano is pulling guard and going for quick submissions. Yano uses quick submissions and constant transitions to catch Otsuka in submissions where he would rely on rope breaks while also tiring him. Dug all of the grappling exchanges as they were very tight and neither guy was leaving any space or just randomly allowing any transitions to occur. Otsuka using his knees to grind Yano's ankles and shins to get lose of some submission attempts instead of solely relying on rope breaks was great. Loved the finish of this as well with Otsuka catching Yano in what seemed like an odd submission you would see Volk Han catch folks in and Yano's plan proving to be effective as Otsuka uses up 3 rope breaks and he eventually begins to gas while Yano rides out the time limit.