Remember October? Neither do we. Here’s our (late) take on the best battles to watch.

RONE VS REAL DEAL

This battle was our personal favourite from the WD4 event. The footage… less so. The audio isn’t great, but it is representative of how the battle went down in the venue. It happened around the time the crowd was at its worst, and it speaks to the quality of the performances and content that both battlers were able to reignite the energy in the venue.

Here’s our interview with Rone, talking about the battle and the event. It’s a two-parter, recorded after Day 1:

and Day 3:

EEK VS MARLO

Don’t Flop has been quietly putting out solid UK vs UK battles all month, including strong showings from Cee Major/Ogmios and Shuffle T/some dude who used to be on Big Brother UK.

This battle, between Don’t Flop whipping boy Eek and posh team poster boy Marlo is cringeworthy character assassination at its finest. Marlo breaks Eek apart so effectively that he melts down in the third, especially once the crowd starts talking (probably about that awkward flip…).

AYE VERB VS DIZASTER

We are in the minority when we say that Dizaster won this battle. It was the opposite when we spoke to people at the venue, but from what we’ve seen on RMBVA, OTBVA, and the Unbias Review FB group, most people are giving this battle to Verb, “no debate.” The thing is, most are calling it 2-1 for Verb with no consistency on which round they’re giving Diz … which means there’s a lot of room for debate. We haven’t really seen anyone quoting Verb’s bars and the praise seems limited to his overall structure and third round angle. It’s like Verb is winning mostly by default.

The thing is, Verb had a bunch of lame content that rarely got the crowd riled up. In the first round, his “a pond, a lake”, “bitches, Hi!”, “spelling radar backwards” and “KO-TD” closer were all either stale or terrible filler.

We’ve also seen people everywhere tearing apart Diz (as we’d predicted), slagging his “four-year-old mother” and “Golden Oscar” lines as nonsense. Admittedly, they were, but he also had just as many fire freestyle rebuttals.

This is also a good time to point out that energy, conviction and performance are important in battle rap, but are rarely captured by the camera. When a crowd is going crazy for one rapper and not the other in a battle, it doesn’t necessary mean the crowd is biased; there’s a good chance one rapper is having a great performance and stealing the momentum. In our opinion, this needs to be factored in when calling a winner.

Diz dominated the energy in the venue and Diz won the battle.

DAYLYT VS CITYY TOWERS

Towers has been one of our favourite lesser-known battlers for a long time. After this matchup with Daylyt, the right people are calling for him to get a URL Proving Ground battle. His third round breakdown of Day’s style is on point and both of them put on impressive performances.

We asked Lexx Luthor (in the red plaid in the front row) if he’d figured out what Day was talking about in his opening lines. Lexx said he thought Day had just forgotten some bars and targeted him to kill some time. Lexx also said Daylyt was scratching his chest the way you’d pet a cat and that it was the most confused he’d ever been.

The fight at the end did big numbers on Worldstar, but from what we can tell, it was an accident that got out of hand when Daylyt went to address Suspense over his battle with Aktive. After things finally settle down, Daylyt spits the deepest bars in the battle.

KINAZE VS ILLITE MC

This battle, which was the best from World Domination’s Day 3 event, is filled with quotables from both sides. The dead crowd definitely impacts the performances, but Kinaze’s comedy and Illite MC’s charisma are enough for this to warrant a look. Kinaze’s Life of Pi rebuttal was also one of the weekend’s best.

Also of note in this video is a rare on-camera speaking appearance from KOTD co-founder Avi Rex and Avocado’s camera co-worker, Nelson. The post-battle interviews with Deffinition and Sandeep are pretty good too.

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Want more battles? Check out our battles from September.