[2010-03-14-Battlarts] Keita Yano vs Yoshinori Narita

[Ma Stump Puller]

Sound quality of this was burning hot ass as per Battlarts 2.0. standards but was regardless pretty good as a match. Narita is a full on MMA guy with martial arts credentials so he knew how to sprawl and move around with authority, making for a fairly engaging series of opening exchanges as the two did some seriously nifty grappling of the time. They also threw in some great aggression with a lot of nasty shots to the head (Narita's got gloves on so he can legally throw full on punches, something he attempts to do here a fair bunch) while Keita pulled off a ton of his usual tricky Catch wrestling tricks, in particular throwing down a rough Cravat to pull his opponent down to the mat and throwing knees to the back of the head when his opponent tried escaping. 

Generally this had a good balance of Keita doing his nerdy grappling while Narita attempted to compete at points with some really tricked out shit (he does like a headscissors double wrist lock combo at one point, was hype) while focusing more on strikes to transition and score knockdowns, firmly staying ahead for most of the match. Middle half has Narita focus on the armbreaker with a couple of smooth standing transitions, forcing Keita to pull guard by going to the floor. Narita does this awesome Sakuraba roll while having hooked one of Keita's feet, letting him move into a standing ankle lock before landing a fairly safe German suplex when his opponent tried standing up to escape. Last third was conventional; the two sold the fatigue of the last work strongly, Keita especially having to really grind from underneath by abusing rope escapes and doing bonkers pro-wrestling nonsense to try to stay in the game.

He catches Narita out with knees to the head + big dropkick, going for a side Robertson-style headscissors as bait so he can snap on a really fucking tight LeBell Lock to get the shock tapout victory. There's a solid roughness to this that I really appreciate in that the two actually feel like they're duking out and thinking about their next move. There's some pauses, some little spaces between strikes or holds which really sells the experience so much more than two guys effortlessly bouncing around the place with a thousand counters a minute which for the record is always a rather weak experience for myself. This was rough-and-tumble Bati-Bati as it should generally look like thankfully. Quite a shame Narita never did a whole lot given he was quite the talent and probably would've been at least a RINGS mainstay if he'd been around 15 years ago, guy had the striking and fairly unique grappling to show off. Keita despite being hit and miss during this time looked pretty impressive here.