Recap: Having more haymakers doesn’t always win battles and doing too much can make you lose battles. Case in point here with Jerry Wess versus a returning-to-the-Smack-stage Tech-9 in what overall was a pretty entertaining and close battle that was pretty much decided in the 3rd. 1st round went to Tech, who overcame a solid and (“…all he gonna see is the Tommy with the dagger, look like I’m calling for the Dragonzord!”) hot at times, but also a little convoluted/porous turn by Wess, with a standing tutorial on proper battle rap ethos that was assisted by witty (“You should’ve been a gardener, your flowers would’ve been the best one’s out!”) barbs, stinging performance bars and stretched-out punches that made their mark. 2nd round saw a performance-heavy Jerry Wess get more linear with his flow, thus sparking an at times boastful, but mostly spitfire barrage of (“Mr. Bean with gonorrhea…I’m dumb fire!”; “They mad I got to the URL hella fast…I got FIOS nigga!”) punches that altogether managed to edge Tech-9’s solid, but less-potent turn. An entertaining 3rd round from both battlers sees Wess get busy with a personal-heavy turn that was both (“He battled O-Solo and guess who loss that one?…Jersey!”) witty and set-up crazy. However, while Jerry’s round was more finessed to tailor his opponent’s past (albeit with a crowd-surfing move that would come back and bite him), a slightly more versatile, rebuttal/freestyle-dropping, (“Face shot, now he sound like Big T sleeping!”) braggadocio and still performance-drenched Tech-9 edges the round by a nose to get the win.
Verdict: Tech-9 (W) 2-1
Favorite line: Tech-9 – “Y’all thought I was dead, but your boy is back, back in the building, I was never dead, y’all should’ve checked my coffin, it had scratches on the ceiling!”
