[2007-05-13-Battlarts] Carlos Amano vs Kyoko Kimura

[Ma Stump Puller]

Battlarts 2.0 did have some questionable elements about it, but including talents like these certainly wasn't one of them; this was pretty incredible for a undercard match. This started off with some grappling and then they pushed up the pace rather early with a pair of dropkicks before settling back down to more mat-work. As I've said about Kimura before she's not exactly one to really be the person pushing for holds here; she's more around just to essentially carry the pacing behind someone more competent like Amano rather than doing her own thing, so this meant that she was basically just jousting around rather than making any actual aim to working any real mechanisms of shoot-style. The real appeal comes from these two hitting each other ridiculously hard (especially early on with those stiff forearms that were making loud "THUD" noises with every shot) and that's what they did as Amano went for her gross headbutts while Kimura goes for her equally strong boots, both getting some good damage on the other in the process. Amano does a crazy Fatu-lite spinning bump for the first big boot which was especially awesome. There's some focus on the legs by Amano, this is swiftly dropped purely so the two could stiff each other up more.

Later on we get some nice scrambles by Kimura as she reverses bombs into arm-work (including a lovely reversal of a German suplex attempt with a Sakuraba transition double wrist lock) and Amano milks the hold with some screams and prolonged wiggling for the ropes as the crowd gets into this more. Really simple stuff to the finish as Kimura goes for her typical mean big bombs and really cranks up a single-leg Boston Crab as a potential world-ender here. Amano certainly sold like it, anyway. She ended up winning with her signature cross armbreaker transitions and we got a sweet finish where Kimura tried powerbombing out of the triangle choke, did it, then got her arm exposed for a armbar instead and ended up losing. I'd say this is REALLY great; it's mostly just the appeal of seeing two legit hard strikers (some of the stiffest of this specific generation of talent, anyway) hitting each other legit hard. There's not much depth to it outside of that (and some weird bits like Kimura not really selling the limb-work and even throwing on her own in response from said bad limb without much of a base to really suggest it mattered a whole lot) it really didn't need to be much else through. Scrappy Bati-Bati is a great cure for insomnia, I'd say: it's kinda impossible to not pay attention to every earth-shattering shot thrown here. I suppose there could've been room for a potentially more complex match (especially since Kimura around this time was a REALLY good talent who was having great matches with nearly everyone) but for what it is? I'm more than fine with it.