Soul vs. Bender: What To Expect

The last time a Don't Flop champion battled in Canada, it was Tony D — and he ground to a spluttering halt against Real Deal. Now the current reigning champ, Soul, travels to Canada for the umpteenth time to face a former KOTD title-holder: Bender.

Having dispatched of Bender's cohort Loe Pesci with relative ease at Don't Flop's "Set the Standard X" in December 2013, Soul being back in his second home (or third technically, since he has to travel to England from Scotland to battle at Don't Flop) is worth writing home about for any opponent. A choke for this champion does not really seem in the cards — he has too much momentum on the biggest KOTD stages and his material is typically so fluent and incisive, and so punchline driven, that the motion of his writing always seems to carry him through what used to be the weaker side of his arsenal - his performance.

Even as little as two years ago, Soul would've been walking into a pretty one-sided encounter with Bender, lacking the necessary projection and punchline structure needed to overpower him. Now, he's not even considered the underdog. Soul is virtually unassailable and given the literary heft of a great deal of Bender's material you can pretty much guarantee that he will be cranking up the obscurity in order to come off with the intellectual upper hand.

Bender has become a sporadic performer, and he always shows up with stellar writing but doesn't always have it perfectly memorized. His showings against The Saurus this year and Big T last year show that he hasn't lost it (minus the choke against Saurus). He's no stranger to U.K. opponents and has battled against Eurgh and Cruger (in a doubles clash that fed the SuckMyDick-gate KOTD/DF beef in 2013-14) and now has a chance to go in on the current champion in his first clash against a Brit since then.

Though currently less active in battle rap, he is one half of Flight Distance — one of the better underground hip hop acts in Canada, and an act Soul has raved about online numerous times. His appearance at WD5 suggests that despite this scarcity of performance he is still esteemed as a jewel in the Canadian battle crown and he will be punching and referencing left and right in order to uphold that status.

But anyone betting against Soul right now is miscalculating something. He hasn't clearly lost for years, and his transatlantic track record is absurd. You can guarantee he'll draw out a new wave of energy from Bender and a strong mutual respect will be present in the showdown. That being said, Soul has too much momentum right now and, strangely, more experience than Bender too. Bender is really going to have to be at his best.

Complacency is not in Bender's vocabulary though, and if both battlers pull through we could have a Soul/Sketch or Soul/Cee Major situation: a battle that will live long beyond the event itself and one that will stand up under the scrutiny of the YouTube audience moving forward.

Pay-per-view details coming soon. Buy your tickets for the event here.

Who do you have taking it? Is Soul the most successful U.K. battler to step on the KOTD stage? Let us know in the comments section below.