B-Boy Championships 2005

Another year another weekend spent at Brixton for the battles.
This year was it's 10th anniversary and they'd really pulled out the stops, ensuring every battle featured the highest calibre of dancers.

Saturday was the solos day and featured popping, beatbox and b-boy battles.

The popping was won by Mike from France who beat "son of the legenday Popping Pete" Shon Boog in a very close final. Shon had been the best consistently but Mike really pulled out the stops in the final couple of rounds. However I don't think either of them were as entertaining as Salaah who blew everyone away last year with his mixture of popping and miming, even though he failed to win. It was also odd that last year's winner Sally Sly was present but in a judging capacity only.

This year marked the first time a beatbox battle had been held; in the past Kela and Rahzel had put on shows but this time was the first we saw 2 people battling properly. We had what appeared to be a complete mismatch here with a huge black guy from the states called DOA vs a skinny British white kid called Faith SFX (to be honest I'd heard of neither). It was Faith who won this one, in fact he was so dominant that DOA acknowledged his superiority in the second round, very humbling indeed. I believe it had also been the first time that DOA had been beaten so squarely and it was great to see him hand the torch over at the end.

The B-Boy battle this year ended up with 2-time winner Physix from Korea against Roxrite from the US Rocksteady Crew. The final had been a bit disappointing and it came down to who made the most mistakes, not who did the best moves. I think the Korean was just having a bad day, he didn't even manage to pull off his signature elbow spin and fell on that one. So it was the US guy who won it and I can't recall anything that stood out particularly.

Day 2 and we had pair locking, dj and team battles to keep us entertained.

First there was the locking that was won by Japan with Hilty and Bosch beating Originality Lockers from Korea. The Japanese duo were very slick with some great looking martial arts worked into their routines. The Korean duo were very good too but a little bit too camp with some of their moves for the judges liking I suspect.

The DJ battle was a bit of a mess, I think they were let down by at least 2 of the decks breaking. It was the pairing of Renegade and Shortee Blitz that beat ex-Scratch pervert Mr Thing and Harry Love but to be honest I don't think anybody really cared.

Then it was the big one, with 8 of the biggest crews brought together for what had to be one of the best overall championships I'd ever seen (and as I've been to all 10, it's quite a few). In the end it came down to Pokemon from France, who had beaten a very unsportsmanlike Rock Steady Crew vs 2-time winners Project Seoul from Korea. The favourites were very good, extremely slick in their executions but Pokemon seemed to had come on great lengths since the last time I had seen them. Lelou, their main dancer was insane this year (you've never seen anyone kick themselves in the head like this kid). The French were definitely winning over the crowd with their routines but the Koreans were just consistently good. In the end Korea won it but it must have been very close to call.

All in all a great weekend, and here's to 10 more years.