(This event recap was published on Facebook on August 27, 2017.)
Amidst the heavy rains falling all around Manila, fans of the league would still come to fill up B-Side, Makati despite the odds in order to watch this heavily stacked event which thankfully lived up to the hype. It was a very good move by the FlipTop staff to cut off the selling of tickets once B-Side’s maximum capacity was reached, I can still remember how chaotic Bwelta Balentong 2 was because of the sheer number of people (to the point where I almost fainted due to the lack of oxygen inside the venue), and it wasn’t even raining that time. With this more manageable number of attendees, everyone was still able to have a good time despite the weather, although most of us were still miserably rain-soaked in the center area.
When I come watch battles with my college friends, I tend to be less nitpicky with my standards for bars and jokes, but I’m also less attentive to small and specific details, such as the number of votes from the judges and specific lines. That may affect the quality of my recap in some ways, but here goes:
Jonas vs Invictus
If you follow these two underrated emcees, you’d know how much potential this match has on paper. And sure enough, they started their first rounds with guns a’blazing. This was brewing up to be an incredible battle until halfway through the second round, where…. Jonas’ voice started cracking, and the crowd would burst into laughter every time it did. It seemed to be getting to him, because he changed his delivery while trying to recover, but unfortunately it was also hilarious, until he just gave up and ended his rounds abruptly. It seems Jonas wasn’t in very good shape for this battle, which is a real shame because his material had started to get better at that point and I felt he could have made this very close had this not happened. This was, in his own words, “worse than a choke”. Invictus was his usual impressive and consistent self, with a good mix of aggressiveness, humor, and rapping ability. Definitely deserves to have his big break soon.
Personal Judgement – Invictus 2-1 (maybe 2-0 if you count the first round as a tie)
WINNER – Invictus
Romano/JKing vs Maxford/Snob
Out of all the 3GS tandems for this year’s Dos Por Dos tournament, Romano/JKing has to be my favourite simply because of how their individual styles compliment each other to make their duo very balanced and wholesome (like the 3GS version of Tipsy D/Sinio). On the other side, I was hopeful to see something good from Maxford again as an old fan, especially after all those bad years. Sure enough, this was his best showing in years, embracing his absurd style of humor and combining it with Snob’s aggressiveness in order to put up a formidable fight. Unfortunately, this ended up as lopsided as everyone thought it would be. Romano and JKing’s barrages of punchlines and insults were just too much to handle. Their opponents were simply outclassed in every aspect.
Personal Judgement – Romano/JKing 3-0
WINNER – Romano/JKing
Plazma vs Lil John
First battle after the short break. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get back in time to watch the whole battle, so instead of analysing how the battle went, I’ll just comment on what I liked for the parts that I did get to see. Plazma has been slowly gaining ground in the Filipino Conference in his last battles, and in this one, you can see just how much he’s finally won over the FlipTop crowd and how much grasp he has on using his assets to make the crowd react and gain momentum for himself. His punches are becoming better-received without being watered down, his humor is becoming integral to his battle style; he’s basically become Gru – the lovable bad guy. Lil John held his own more so than I would have expected. He has this naturally spontaneous feel to his performance (even more so than Dello back in his prime) that makes it seem like everything you say to him will just bounce off and you’ll still be the butt of the joke in the end. His transitions from freestyle to writtens are so smooth that it’s almost impossible to know which one he’s spitting until he starts going into more intricate schemes. They were very back and forth in Round 3, the crowd loving Lil John a bit more, but if the judges voted 5-0 for Plazma, then it’s either Plaz was slightly superior in the first two rounds, or they based this off of quantity of punchlines or something.
Personal Judgement – Not enough data.
WINNER – Plazma
Asser vs Fukuda
I’ve never seen Fukuda battle before, so I may be a little biased here towards an emcee fresh to my ears, versus an emcee who I’ve been watching for years and whose old style I generally liked better. Now Asser always brings a solid performance and a full clip of original, creative punchlines, that’s not something we can deny, but the way he delivers them just kind of diffuses the impact that it should have; rather than gain momentum, his rounds just become kind of flat and formulaic as the battle drags on, and that includes his signature transition to a double time verse at the end of his rounds. Fukuda’s style was effective and entertaining, I don’t know if it’s always been like that, but his showing now definitely deserved a win. He was equal with Asser in terms of lyrical creativity, maybe Asser had more punchlines, but Fukuda’s angles and performance just made him the better emcee in this battle stylistically. That’s how I judged it by preference, I’m pretty sure many people will have differing opinions once the video drops, but nonetheless, I hope we’ll keep seeing more good showings from these two in the future.
Personal Judgement – Fukuda 2-1
WINNER – Fukuda
Damsa/Flict G vs Dilim/Sibil
In their last battle, Dilim/Sibil barely won by a very small margin (I honestly thought Jonas/Lhipkram would have won that if they hadn’t gone waaaay beyond the time limit), so I expected that they would have to improve by a great deal if they wanted to win against a tandem as fearsome as Damsa and Flict G. They were able to keep it neck and neck for the first round, but Dilim/Sibil weren’t able to keep that momentum going for the next two rounds and the battle had quickly tipped into Damsa and Flict G’s favor. They showed their dominance onstage even before and after the expected double time sequence, heavily clowning on their opponents and throwing some impactful punchlines here and there. When they finally got onto their double time sequence…. pure dominance in rapping ability. I’m certain it can still be polished some more for rappers of their caliber, and if they do end up polishing it to perfection, their next opponents are in big trouble.
Personal Judgement – Damsa/Flict G 3-0
WINNER – Damsa/Flict G
Apekz vs Mhot
The co-main event of the night, this was the most debatable battle on paper and I’m sure a lot of people did debate about this intensely online, whether Mhot would be able to do as impressively as he had against someone of Apekz’s caliber, or if Apekz would, through his versatility and experience, show Mhot that he still has a lot to learn. Unfortunately for Apekz, it was the former. Since his close battle with Spade, I had thought that Mhot’s style of wordplay would start to become stale soon, but he was able to reinvent himself and improve the quality of his punchlines greatly. It was still his signature 4-bar setup, but this time all of them were landing, and his improved choice of angles helped a great deal in that. Apekz also had an incredible showing, arguably as good as he had vs Badang and Shernan, but since his opponent was not as clownable as the two mentioned (which is the core behind Apekz’s dominance in battles), his victory would depend solely on the impact of his lines and his angles. His lines were straightforward yet scathing, but it fell short to Mhot’s haymakers. His most potent angle was a carefully crafted one that would determine who would dominate the next half of the battle, and it worked really well, but Mhot was able to rebuke it so beautifully that it seemed like he even had Apekz beat at his own game – freestyles and rebuttals. It was an intense, back and forth battle, and if nothing surpasses this on the coming events, we have our Battle of the Year right here. I’ll say this now, a lot of people are gonna be putting Mhot in the current Top 10 once they see this battle (those that haven’t already).
Personal Judgement – Mhot 3-0
WINNER – Mhot
Tipsy D/Sinio vs Price Tagg/Kris Delano
the long-awaited main event, especially for people who have been wanting to see Price Tagg’s winning streak in FlipTop come to an end. In their previous battles, we saw that both tandems had a lot of room for improvement with their team chemistry (especially TipSinio, whose styles blended quite awkwardly last time because their writing styles are vastly different), and sure enough, they’ve become much better teams in this battle. Kris Delano and Price Tagg gave a much more formidable fight than people will give them credit for, but the thing is, while PK have quite the arsenal of punchlines at their disposal (some good, some just okay), STD also has that on an equal or arguably higher level via Tipsy D’s writing, and in addition to that, they have Sinio’s highly effective angles and insults plus their combined senses of humor that greatly shut down PK’s aggressiveness (in case people have forgotten, Tipsy D was also quite the effective joker back in the day before he adapted his current style). Sinio and Price Tagg were rather equal when it comes to showmanship and stage presence. While it was clear that STD were equal to PK in their greatest assets and had more to bring to the table besides that, the one factor that had truly put the nail in the coffin was team chemistry. For some portions of the battle, Kris Delano would stand at the far end of the stage while Price Tagg was left to spazz out on STD on his own, so the chance to double the effectivity of their performance was wasted on those bits. PK managed to regain some footing in the third round and showed the maximum potential of their tandem, but the battle had already snowballed too far into STD’s favor at this point.
Personal Judgement – Tipsy D/Sinio 2-1, possibly 3-0
WINNER – Tipsy D/Sinio
Event Highlights
Battle of the Night – Apekz vs Mhot
Performance of the Night – Mhot
Other Highlights from the Event:
- The unbelievable dedication from the fans to still come to the event despite the bad weather and the endurance to stand in the soaking rain in order to watch their favourite battlers (are there no plans to fix that open roof issue on B-Side, ever?)
- The roaring chants of “FUCK YOU” by the crowd to the late emcees, and “TIME” to the ones who always bring a freaking family tree’s worth of lengthy shout outs. It shows that you shouldn’t waste the time of people who’ve paid a big price and stuck their heads out through the rain just to watch you.
- The crowd’s new chant for Mhot – “Motmot”. Rather hilarious for FlipTop’s new breakout star.
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