Recap: Real Deal has been around the game long enough to know his lane. So whether it’s piercing punchlines, empathetic bars that sometimes pander to the crowd, stringent personals, a fly rebuttal/freestyle game or a combination of all of the above, there’s plenty of good reason as to why the Pittsburgh battle rapper/gym teacher has survived for so long, had a pretty solid battle career and won a couple of KOTD belts along the way. And it’s also probably why Real got to keep his belt here versus Charron as like it or not, he’s become an expert on making you feel his bars, which leaves you at your own peril when a battle against Real Deal is left in the hands of judges. That said, while a consistently spicy Charron did spit a pair of (“How you the Real Deal, you ain’t even the real champ!”) personal-heavy, storytelling-rich and punch-lit rounds to open things up (had the 1st debatable, thanks in part to a nice rebuttal by Real Deal, while the more potent Charron took round 2), a more steadily spiffy 3rd might’ve cost him here as Deal’s more winsome polemics and righteous personals gave him the edge in the final round here to make this one a draw.
Verdict: Debatable
Favorite line: Real Deal – “My father just died and he plugged it in a bar like an illuminated light!”
