Recap: A battle 10-plus years in the works, Cortez vs. Tsu Surf finally happens on the URL’s Civil War 2 card and for the most part it’s a goodie as both battlers made it competitive and came to fight. A turned up Tez (esp. during a killer 2nd round) would come packed with shitload of gritty punches to go along with some witty barbs, spicy Surf lingo flips and fiery personals. While an aggressive Surf dished a gang of stifling wordplay, hard-hitting personals (esp. during the deciding round 3) and multifaceted punches that for the most part landed hard. As for the elephant in the room that started with Aye Verb accusing Surf of ‘stealing bars’ during his opening round? Simply put, a non-starter as Surf not only has it been proven online that he didn’t plagiarize (tho he did, for a minute, have a similar cadence and rhyme pattern to that Quilly freestyle) anything, but the idea that flipping a handful of bars you’ve heard somewhere else is suddenly a flagrant foul that gets you tossed out the game would disqualify quite a few of your favorite battle rappers, including some top tiers. That said, a few things that hurt Cor a bit during this bout: choosing to go first (only because the feeling here is that with Cor having a better rebuttal game than Surf, he could’ve scored more), one too many indirect bars and the usage of that same raucous, but at times longwinded boilerplate rhyme pattern he’s been utilizing since his Grind Time days. Still, an easy decision on this one with the more haymaker-lit Surf taking rounds 1 and 3 for the win, while Cor returned the favor in round 2 to avoid the shuout.
Verdict: Tsu Surf (W) 2-1
Favorite line: Tsu Surf – “They said this could go either way, listen Jon B, if you aint trying to be where Jon be, don’t listen to what people say!”
