The best battles are often the ones that could’ve been but never happened. They always live up to their potential in our imaginations, never getting bogged down by the disappointments that sometimes come with reality.

Pass vs Osa, which was scheduled to go down at KOTD’s World Domination 4 event, is one of those battles.

It was among the most anticipated battles for many forum posters, and for us too, since we’d been calling for this matchup for ages.

Amidst the craziness of WD4, we interviewed Pass and Osa over the phone about the cancellation and Lush One (who booked the battle) at the event. We were so busy with other content that this piece fell to the wayside, but with Pass addressing some of the behind-the-scenes static with KOTD in his DNA battle we figured it was a good time to open up the TOBB vault.

LUSH ONE

TOBB: So why didn’t the battle go down?

Lush: Pass had some personal things that he didn’t really want to talk about and he decided not to do it.

He said he wanted to battle [Osa] and said “let’s go” and he had confirmed it - green light. Apparently, he said he had tried to contact me to tell me he’d changed his mind. There was a period of time where my phone was off so I don’t know if I didn’t receive his call or something. There was no formal withdrawal from the battle until 9 or 10 days before.

But Pass is my homeboy and a brother to me and he has big battles coming up in King of the Dot soon. And probably other shit too, you feel me? He’s killing it.

PASS

TOBB: I guess the first question is … Is everything all right with you?

Pass: Oh yeah, everything’s gravy. Everything’s cool.

If you want to get down to the reason why the battle isn’t happening … I want to say this delicately … basically, there was never a solid confirmation that this was happening, on my end at least.

I definitely expressed interest in it when I was first approached about it. I was interested and sat on it for a little while, slept on it and … I tried to reach out to Osa directly as well but I never really heard back from him.

Reach out to say what?

To say that I wasn’t gonna do it. To say: “This is not in the cards for me.” And for me there was still no confirmation, I didn’t see any plane ticket or contract or deposit, you know? So I was reaching out to say it’s done. I’m done.

I did express interest in it but after a while, I really lost interest in it. Osa is cool and everything and I definitely want to give him some problems but I’m working on something else, I don’t want to put it out there officially…

Is that the DNA battle?

It could be, but I’m really not sure if that’s gonna happen. I really want it though.

Do you see any kind of rematch or postponement for a battle with Osa?

I don’t know. If I’m gonna fly all the way out there I wanna do it for the right reasons. I know people were looking forward to this and people wanted to see it but I wanna give them something really big, really epic.

I’d be interested to see what he does next. If he does another battle I’d be down to see it. But at this point, it’s not even on the backburner. I’m sort of done with it.

So was it the opponent?

Not any shade towards Osa, but I need someone that’ll really push me to destroy this dude because I hate his guts. I don’t feel that way about Osa. I think he’s pretty dope. When I battle somebody, I need to hate that person at a certain level.

Your last battle against RemyD, was there that animosity there?

Sort of, not really. For RemyD it was moreso that it was somebody so good that it was pushing me and it was a real challenge. I didn’t get that sort of feeling with Osa.

I really do think it was a miscommunication and I could’ve maybe done better myself about communicating with folks.

We’ve been pushing for this battle to happen for a while and it seemed like a lot of the fans thought it was the matchup with the most potential on the card.

I can dig it. I don’t know … yeah.

Has there been any kind of talk of a penalty or any kind of repercussions?

No, not at all. I can see how if there was a contract signed and I backed out but it wasn’t even that. I talked to Travis about it directly and he was cool. The miscommunication was a big part of it. We’re all good. King of the Dot and me are solid. I’ll be working with them in the future and very possibly in the near future.

OSA

TOBB: How sure were you that the battle was going to happen when they brought it to you?

Osa: From the moment I confirmed it, I thought it was happening. That was at the end of June. Then on Monday, I found out that Pass backed out. That’s about as confirmed as it could’ve been.

Where did you hear it from?

Organik. I spoke with him on the phone.

I hadn’t checked my direct messages on Twitter in a couple days and I looked at it and there’d been a message from Pass from a few days before saying that he had been out of the battle for a while and that there was a lack of communication. I have no idea what to make of that. I don’t know who he told or what happened, but at the end of the day, I got four days notice that it wasn’t going down.

Was there any talk of rescheduling it? Battle of the Bay 6 maybe?

They mentioned Battle of the Bay but that’s Thanksgiving weekend and one of my best friend’s weddings. Definitely not gonna miss those things for a rap battle.

I have no idea with Pass. Maybe something’s going on with the family and he just couldn’t get his bars together. I just would’ve appreciated more notice than what I got. That’s what it comes down to.

I don’t blame anyone. It’s not Organik’s fault or any of those guys. They have a lot of shit on their plate this weekend anyways. When I talked to Organik I told him I hoped the event was a big success.

It’s nothing personal. I just don’t appreciate having my time wasted. I do this for fun. I don’t do this because everyone wants to hear a brown rapping lawyer battle. I do it because it’s fun for me.

These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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