Yuki Ishikawa & Carl Malenko vs. Kazunari Murakami & Naoyuki Taira (BattlARTS, 9/7/00)

The HATE between Yuki Ishikawa and Kazunari Murakami permeates throughout the whole match, whereas Carl Malenko and Naoyuki Taira are, more or less, left to their own devices, even into the finish, where Malenko has Taira in a crossface hold and Murakami's more concerned with staring down Ishikawa then breaking up the submission. Rewind, Murakami promptly jumps Ishikawa at the start of the match and Ishikawa catches him, deadlifting him into a German suplex like "what bitch?!" The work on the mat between them is aggressive, with Ishikawa clawing Murakami's face when he tries to block the headbutts. Meanwhile, last time we saw Taira, who was "way too oily" in RINGS and now he's coming into BattlARTS with spin kicks and shitty little smirks. The stuff between he and Malenko was a lot of fun, with Malenko showing off with takedowns and transitions, and Taira blasting him with knees and kicks for knockdowns. One thing I really like about Malenko is the way he sinks into submission holds. But then we're back to Murakami/Ishikawa, with Murakami kicking him out of the ring, scraping around the crowd, kicking chairs and shit, throwing his mouthguard at Ishikawa. Lovely stuff. They continue thrashing each other on the mat until Ishikawa catches him with an armbreaker on the ropes, which plays into their eventual awesome singles match later int he year. In the end, they're too busy mean mugging each other to care about Malenko's sweet submission finish. Lots to love on here.