Best of BATB: Honorable Mention

It's so hard to create a High Five for all of the BATB games, so I had no choice but to create a list of battles worthy of Honorable Mention.

For starters, here are just some of my favorite moments from all the battles:
-Chris Roberts vs. Steve Berra in BATB1: Mikey and Eric as the siamese refs with some priceless opening theatrics
-Peter Ramondetta vs. Cory Kennedy in BATB2: Peter nailing two of Cory's absurd tricks to stay alive
-Cory Kennedy vs. Torey Pudwill in BATB2 for 3rd place: Cory easily had the most cutting edge group of 5 circus tricks to sweep Torey (fs nollie late flip, nollie heel spinout, switch backside double flip, triple flip, nollie big flip 360), but Torey came ridiculously close to them all and even landed the other super hard ones in between
-Felipe Gustavo vs. Jimmy Carlin in BATB4: Felipe's insane steeze will always be remembered
-Dennis Busenitz vs. Eric Koston in BATB4: Dennis's reaction to fakie inward heel is great, then proceeds to do it like it's nothing
-Torey Pudwill vs. Luan Oliveira in BATB4: without a doubt the most POPular game ever. Geoff says it at the start, "...must pop his trick. I don't think these guys are gonna have that problem."
-Davis Torgerson's surprise come up in BATB 4 against Sewa, Shane, and Ronnie won't be forgotten anytime soon.
-Jimmy Carlin's T-to-nothing comeback against Sebo Walker in BATB5, fakie big heels in both directions included, was pretty epic.

Now for just some lengthy, solid overall games of skate, with some haymaker tricks as well:
-Ishod Wair vs. Shane O'Neill in BATB4: seeing Shane nail the switch frontside bigger spin, the switch big heel, and the laser flip (and half cab heel) to stay alive were terrific.
-Tom Asta vs. Alex Mizurov in BATB4: the switch laser match was awesome.
-Morgan Smith vs. Alex Mizurov in BATB: Morgan staying alive (before winning the whole thing) on that backside double flip and nollie back heel 360 after two tries each was pretty awesome
-PJ Ladd vs. Trent McClung  in BATB 5: super long game with Trent somehow staying alive on the nollie bigger flip
-Chris Cole vs. Billy Marks in BATB 5: the triple flip, half heelflip late back foot kickflip, and the 360 underflip were all matched between these two
-Chris Cole vs. Dennis Busenitz in BATB2: Dennis landing the cab big flip, the blizzard flip (with Reda's priceless reaction), and nollie bs flip 360 were sweet, not to mention Cole's nice comeback as well.

And while the Rematch between Koston and Donovan Strain along with the very original pre-BATB game between Koston and Mike Mo are both unsanctioned, they're both legendary games at this point.

Just about every single game from a BATB Finals night has the crowd's bustling energy and some crazy tricks to make it fun to watch, but there are just too many to list. However, I need to give a special recognition to the BATB 2 Finals, Chris Cole vs. Paul Rodriguez. The moment when Chris Cole has his second try on the fakie inward heel and then proceeds to comeback with 3 straight tricks to win just helps to depict his relentlessness and legendary status. And P-Rod's smile after barely missing the back 360 kickflip is a perfect representation of his pure excitement of almost landing a hard trick and his gracious acceptance of defeat in a well-skated championship.

Next Week: Recent No Complys

After a while of silence, I'm happy to say that the time has come to add a new High Five to the blog! I've noticed a lot of videos lately included different variations of the no comply. Now it's definitely one of those fun tricks to have and throw in a line, and honestly it's not really the most uncommon. Even the Video of Last Week had some rad no complies thrown out there. But a few eye-catching instances have popped up (pun intended) in videos released within the last 4 weeks, sticking in my head as a strong trend. These no comply variations are worth mentioning now as a group before they're forgotten. Besides the gnarly-as-usual skating that's gone down, May 2014 should be remembered as the month of the no comply.

Now there are some individuals that do not comply on a regular and outstanding basis, whom I will eventually dedicate a High Five to down the line, but right now is meant for just that: those working their magic with the trick right now. With that said, I'll give some early shoutouts to Cory Kennedy for a couple fun and impressive variations (at 1:09 and 2:20) in his Rat Poison part and to Victor Garibay for a really sick switch one at 0:39 in his Mag Minute. Stay tuned throughout the week for 5 of the most recent memorable no comply variations!

Video of the Week: Shep Dawgs Vol. 4

The Video of the Week, and probably the homie video of the year, without a doubt goes to Shep Dawgs Vol. 4. With the perfect soundtrack to keep the good vibes and gnarly sessions going, the loads of footage gathered in this true full length video starts off strong and never lets up. It's crazy because quite a few parts could have been the ender, but AJ Zavala (part featured above) puts his name on the radar with some nutty handrail variations and all around ripping. Definitely worth getting the DVD, the Shep Dawgs prove that there's nothing quite like feeding off the energy of each other and skating with the homies.

Cory Kennedy and Bert Wootton had their parts in Rat Poison released by The Skateboard Mag and boy are they awesome! Cory never ceases to amaze in whatever he's trying, be it some dork around trick, some crazy handrail, or a super tech ledge trick (or even making a line out of two varial flips), and Bert strings together some of the trickiest lines (the one at 2:00 is too good) while making everything look like it's nothing.
X Games Real Street is bound to make your day better. Even with some arguably strange competitiveness forced by the X Games overlords, these 16 mini parts from your favorite skaters are always worth it.
Tom Karangelov's Out of Sync part for Thunder Trucks has a couple of minutes of fast and gnarly skating, never slowing down since his Cold War part.
There's lots of rad London shredding in Innocence & Experience from Hold Tight London
Andrew Cannon's latest part for Theeve Trucks is super clean and full of good vibes.
Vince Duran has a Surprise Spring Cleaning, which is definitely not as throwaway as it sounds. His fakie ollie  and variations with it is for sure one of the best in the game right now.
Jon Holland's part for The Cinematographer Project with the Sk8mafia squad was re-released through Transworld this past week and worth a few views if you haven't seen it on the full DVD already.