DDSS vs. poRICH

Who: DDSS (Vancouver, B.C., Canada) vs. poRICH (Whitby, Ont., Canada)

Where: GZ Battles' First Defense event in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

When: July 26, 2014

Why you should watch it: It's the first title defense of the GZ Battles championship. DDSS first won it at King of the Dot's Blackout 4 event in January after running through the West Coast bracket of the tournament. The challenger is KOTD original poRICH, who has been on a roll since returning from a hiatus.

We interviewed North Vancouver's Pigsty, who battled Fresh Coast veteran Ayem at the same event, to get his thoughts on the title match.

"DDSS took it. Po did a thing where his second round ended with some beginning bars from his third. I could kinda tell too … As a battle rapper you can see the shift in someone’s facial expression, when it’s like: ‘Oh shit.’

So Po, near the end of his second, starts getting that weird look but he’s still spitting good bars so I figured he’d gotten it back on track. But then at the start of his third he was using the same ones again. I remember after he went back to his corner at the end of his second, Sketch was telling him that he’d done awesome but Po was saying that he’d fucked up. I guess he just misplaced his bars.

I know for a fact that Dan [DDSS] had been up writing two days before the event. I was actually at his house and he was falling asleep sitting up over his notepad and I was waking him up like: ‘Yo, you gotta wake up and finish this stuff.’ I was kind of worried about him because I knew how late he’d left it but he actually had a pretty flawless performance."

Check out the full event recap interview.