This was for CIMA and Dragon Kid’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.
At one point, I thought this was the best Dragon Gate match of 2016.
Such is not quite the case now, I have seen the light, but I say that to say that this has always been one of the year’s more underrated matches.
Unlike Dragon Gate’s actual greatest match of the year (click on that hyperlink, friends), it’s not some end of an era classic nor the culmination of years and years worth of story. It is simply a match in which four incredibly talented wrestlers get over twenty minutes in which to display their wares, and some of that old Dragon Gate Magic dusts itself off and applies itself. Everything that can go right here just so happens to go right. Everyone has a lot of chemistry, everyone seems to put as much out there as possible, and Dragon Gate booking seems to decide to give them a break and just let the four of them cook something up entirely on their own
This is the sort of match that works simply because it does.
Shingo and T-Hawk, despite not teaming a whole lot on a two on two basis either before or after this, are a phenomenal bully unit. It is a blast to see Dragon Kid get victimized. CIMA is the least essential part of this, but in his little spurts against two guys he knows real well, he adds a whole lot. CIMA even winds up bleeding from the head a little bit, and while too late and too little to really take the match up a level into that Something Special (idea not Bouncing Souls song) territory, it’s a nice little bonus on the end of everything else that this has to offer up. It essentially becomes a fireworks show at the end after adhering to enough basic formula to give it form and shape, and these four knock it out of the park and then a thousand miles into the sea.
The match’s only real flaw is that, instead of running with the new bully heel superteam, CIMA instead beats Hawk with the Meteora following a Dragon Kid ‘rana off the top. Of course, CIMA winning at the end of everything cool is just one of those things, buy the ticket and take the ride, because nothing sums it up as well as that. Still a tremendous match in spite of every booking complaint, which if nothing else, you can’t say about every CK-1 defense that there is.
An underdiscussed gem out of 2016 Dragon Gate, and one I think that a lot of you would get a whole lot out of.
HANDWERK 