While Everyone's Lost, The Battle Is Won

Yuki Ishikawa VS Carl Greco - BattleARTS 6/1/2008

JJZ: Let's talk shoot fighting! This was a grappling match to the fullest! Great transitions and unexpected switches. And they maximized the rope breaks in this one! I was so I'm the mood for a match like this. The matches Ishikawa had with Jacobs were great but this really gets into the shit I'm talking about with this style of wrestling. I don't recall seeing Greco before because my Battlearts viewing is sadly so limited but I'm gonna keep him on my radar for damn sure. So this is the fourth Ishikawa match we've shared now and it's crazy to think we've covered three different decades. We really are showcasing a great snapshot into his long career.

CJD: You are so in my wheelhouse with this one I'm going to have to start calling you Johnny Cartwheelhouse!! Carl Greco aka Carl Malenko is the adopted brother of Dean and Joe and is one of the unsung pioneers of shoot style. He has a rivalry with Ishikawa going back to the early 90s. One of our favorite Instagram accounts master_of_senton coincidentally just made a post highlighting another match of his days after you sent me this. He made the point that Greco was the first person to ever go the distance against a young Wanderlei Silva, and while his MMA record won't turn any heads, that's certainly proof that he's a legitimate bad ass. I watched this match back around when it happened but haven't seen it since, and it plays even better now than I remembered. This did happen in an absolute resurgence of BattlARTS where they were having banger after banger so it got lost in the shuffle a bit for me. Looking back now, this is one of the finest examples of grappling I've ever seen. Seriously elite level shit. One review I read mentioned no strikes are thrown and while I didn't notice that it does sound right. I have to imagine I've seen the big twist before the finishing stretch in another match previously but I can't remember for certain and it gave me literal goosebumps. These are two masters of their craft and like you said we highlighted what an all-time great Yuki Ishikawa is over the course of four very different matches that don't even scratch the surface of his greatest hits. Although this match certainly deserves to be in the conversation.