Akira Tozawa/Speed Muscle vs. Shingo Takagi/YAMATO/BxB Hulk, DG Gate of Destiny 2016 (11/3/2016)

Akira Tozawa says his farewell.

Not to relitigate things for the thousandth time, it feels like to some extent, we’ve been talking about Akira Tozawa’s misuse by the company ever since he came back in 2011 after the greatest excursion of the modern era, but Dragon Gate never totally seemed to know what they had, and they eventually lost him. It’s one of the more heartbreaking departures of the era, in no small part because unlike many others, it’s not like he left to really do much of anything. Unlike others who left to go where he did, neither a prominent position on the card nor a chance to continue working at something near a high level awaited Akira Tozawa in America, and it simply seemed like a matter of pure cold math. If you’re going nowhere, why not get paid more to go nowhere, while getting to also hang out with your best friends and live in a much warmer climate? It’s beyond depressing, but Dragon Gate had the last half decade to do something, anything, with one of the most likeable and exciting wrestlers of his generation, and simply opted not to. The older I get, the more sympathetic I am towards the idea of “selling out”, and perhaps in no case is that stronger than with Akira Tozawa.

As a farewell present, Tozawa’s final Dragon Gate match winds up reuniting two of my three favorite units/teams in Dragon System history (Monster Express #1 in my heart and yours forever) in both Speed Muscle and, in what feels like a gift to me personally, New Hazard as well

To those uninitiated or at least less familiar with this era of the company (2010ish through this exact match), I don’t imagine you can love this in the same way that I do. The warning I put on the front of the 10/12/2016 elimination match holds true here, if not quite as strictly. I think you can probably enjoy this still, but if you haven’t been around, if you haven’t done your reading, if you don’t have those ten thousand hours so to speak, I don’t know that you can get the absolute most out of this.

(You certainly would not find yourself, at the end of this match, just shaking your head and laughing at Dragon Gate having YAMATO score the last win over Tozawa, once again referring to that writing on the wall of the office that directs them, before every booking decision, to ask how this benefits YAMATO.)

Mechanically speaking, this is sensational.

It’s the most effort I’ve seen put into a Dragon Gate six man in what feels like close to a decade, largely as a result of the circumstance of the thing. There’s no one big story, or really any one to speak of, having more in common with those Ring of Honor six mans than any Dragon System classics. It is just a collection of a handful of the best wrestlers in the company (and also BxB Hulk) trying as hard as possible for twenty eight minutes, given the main event slot of a pay-per-view, and all of the clearance that comes with that. It is beyond physically impressive, and a marvel of construction as many of the best matches like this are. Every combination is run through, and while certain ones have a way of really standing out (Shingo vs. Tozawa, Shingo vs. Yoshino, YAMATO vs. Yoshino, Doi vs. YAMATO), not a one of them is really lacking. Even the lesser ones get burned through fairly quickly. It’s one of the better examples ever of what this style can offer up at its best, a monument to the best of this company.

This match is not about the mechanical though.

Simply put, it is a match marking a clear end of an era for the company, and if you are not a fan of that era specifically, I don’t know that you can enjoy this match to the extent that many of the rest of us do.

The match is equal parts All Star Game and series finale.

Everything that happens is spectacular, and I feel it all so much. There’s a very special feeling to the entire thing, that one simply does not get all that often. The last time I felt it when watching and writing about a wrestling match was in Kenta Kobashi’s retirement match three and a half years prior, in which it felt as though everyone was trying to stretch it out as long as possible. Not out of any sense of grandeur or lofty ambitions for the quality of the match, but simply because once the match ended, something special would be over. This match is a celebration of a time and of a place that, as soon as the match ended, would no longer exist.

I miss it already.

The end of Dragon Gate’s Big Six era, and to their credit, they went out with a bang.

A fitting retirement match for, arguably, Dragon Gate’s heart and soul.

***1/2

 

Monster Express (Akira Tozawa (c)/Masato Yoshino/Big R Shimizu/Shachihoko BOY) vs. VerserK (Shingo Takagi (c)/Naruki Doi/T-Hawk/Cyber Kong/YASSHI), DG Gate of Victory 2016 Day Seven (10/12/2016)

This was a handicap Captain’s Fall revival-style elimination Unit Dismissal match.

Usually, when I really love a match, I want to drop a link or sort of hint at where an enterprising young reader could find the match I’m writing about. Part of this is that I want you to see and like better wrestling. There’s so much good to great wrestling out there throughout history, there’s no excuse to spend your time watching bad, or worse, mediocre wrestling. I want to help you, even if you go into something without the best context and love for everything.

That is not the case here.

I do not want you to seek this out or watch this if you do not have reverence for Akira Tozawa or for the Monster Express unit, or the stories told with this unit and these men over the last three years. I am 100% gatekeeping you. Do your homework, do the reading, and then come back when you can get the absolute most out of this, because outside of retirements and departures and Takagi’s heel turn in 2015, it is perhaps the most emotionally draining match in Dragon Gate history.

With Akira Tozawa’s upcoming departure to WWE set in stone and T-Hawk’s recent betrayal of Monster Express to join VerserK, the result of this already seems obvious. Shingo leaving was one thing, but removing two members of the original three-man core means, even if they survive here, it would be a fundamentally different unit, one that maybe ought to be renamed anyways, for all the resemblance it has to such a beloved unit. The Monster Express that goes into this match is not the fearsome all-time great unit that they fielded for much of the last three years. Those odds only seem compounded by Peter Kaasa’s injury before the show (not the career ending one) meaning that Monster Express couldn’t even go into this with a full five man team. That’s not the killer it might be in a revival-style elimination match, where an elimination one side causes one eliminated man from the other team to re-enter, but it’s not great. It’s just a whole lot.

All that’s left to do is put pen to paper on the thing, you know?

The beauty of the thing though, and the beauty of both Dragon Gate and pro wrestling done right in a larger sense, is that you never really know.

Specifically, the beauty of this match is that it balances these two ideas. You always kind of know how this is going to end. In a pragmatic and realistic sense, how it maybe should end. It’s a matter of waiting for that sword of Damocles to finally fall, knowing that something bad is going to happen to this thing we all love, but also constantly teetering on the edge. When you tease time and time again that it’s going to happen, only for Our Heroes to keep pushing it back, you sort of get that feeling without even trying to.

Yes, something terrible — this specific horrible final fate — is almost definitely going to happen.

But maybe not. 

That’s the most impressive and beautiful and altogether stunning thing about this, that it pushes “but maybe not” as far as possible, and winds up turning what was a foregone conclusion at the start into one of the more emotionally devastating moments of the entire decade.

Not to recap every single elimination and comeback and thing that happens in the match, but the entire match rides on the momentum of that feeling. It does it in so many fun different ways too, and does so many different things with the format of the match. A near immediate dismissal and then redemption story for Shachihoko BOY, going back to the first cracks between Takagi and the other MX members years back. Kotoka returning for revenge on his former stablemates in VerserK. Takagi constantly almost gets cornered by his former stablemates. Yoshino the spark plug constantly bailing MX out when it’s tight, and the match largely being a battle to neutralize him at the end, taking both Doi and T-Hawk to really do it. Big R failing to stand up to Cyber Kong, but later being able to do it. And of course, the way that at the end, it just comes down to the two captains in an extended run.

We never got the Shingo vs. Tozawa title match, but we get something like three to five minutes at the end of this that’s just them, and it feels just as big. It could be argued they’re able to get reactions here, both in this setting and in Korakuen Hall instead of Kobe World, that they maybe couldn’t have had in that theoretical match. It feels as big as anything else to happen in Dragon Gate all year, the most dramatic nearfalls the company’s put out all year, and the most real heart put into something either.

This is already a great match, and then the last run of this takes it completely over the top, as Our Hero is slowly and heartbreaking gunned down by the odds against him outside and the power of Takagi inside.

In a purely structural and mechanical sense, removed from all those Dragon Gate Stories, this match is pretty marvelous too. Everyone in this you’d expect to be great in this is stellar. Yoshino, Shingo, and Tozawa once again make it incredibly clear that they are the three best wrestlers in the company, but this match doesn’t just work because they’re great. You’ve got your all world absolute killers in the line up, but this is a match that could have been diminished and/or made outright not-great as a result of the lesser talents in the match. What the match does with them is either barely allowing them to get involved at all (YASSHI), or really only letting them hit the absolute highlights and putting them ONLY in situations to succeed both as heel brick wall (Kong) or as a bowling burl hurled at it to remove it (Big R), while also limiting them compared to the others. The layout of the match is also pretty special, with a pure back and forth kind of a structure turned into the best ever version of the revival rules elimination match I’ve ever seen, swinging from different situations (3v3, 4v2, 5v1) in increasingly dramatic ways. There’s one especially great run where MX gets it to 4 on 2 in their favor, only for it to swing to 4-2 in VerserK’s favor through pure cheating, before Tozawa has to stare down and fight back from a 5-1 deficit. Ending up with Tozawa vs. Shingo anyways, Tozawa weakened from that fight earlier, it’s all just really astoundingly well done on almost every level.

This is a match that’s thought up and assembled with precision, executed as well as possible. In general, it is nearly perfect.

With one exception, and it’s 100% down to booking.

Something about the timing and the direction of the entire thing just doesn’t feel right. Not just that it feels terrible, that’s a given. Monster Express breaking up is the right move, generally, because Monster Express was Yoshino, Tozawa, and Shingo. But I mean in a more general sense, this feels like a match that is on the wrong date. This is a match where Shingo crushes the group once and for all, VerserK’s ultimate victory. It’s what you do right before the big evil force is finally stopped, which is what happened on the biggest show of the year. Ideally, with Tozawa getting revenge and dethroning Takagi in that main event, but alas.

It feels like a match that happened before Kobe World, and only airs now for some reason.

As it is here, it’s a thing that puts all that heat back on Takagi, only for Dragon Gate to not really ever do much of anything with Takagi again. As a result, one thinks about other things, like how Tozawa and Monster Express at large never ever got any revenge on Shingo for his betrayal (although Yoshino did years in the future, once he had begun to decline, it’s easy to forget their 2018 Kobe World main), the self-fulfilling prophecy the entire Tozawa thing wound up being with this now only SUPER CONVENIENTLY happening once there’s a pragmatic argument that Tozawa and MX has to lose, and how even beyond that and just thinking of how despicable it makes Shingo and how little is done with that, it’s ultimately just kind of a waste of something that works as unbelievably well as this does. There is just something about it, as a complete package, that has always felt just a little off for me.

There’s a version of this where Tozawa wins at the end, and it is with very little doubt in my mind, the 2016 Match of the Year and maybe the best match in company history. The result of a match is rarely enough to ruin something this great, but it is enough to diminish it just a little little bit.

Still, beyond that, a near masterpiece.

If it has to go like this, at least it matters. Heels win things all the time in other places, but it’s like Big Japan’s incrimental to a fault development, when something this out of the ordinary happens, you notice and remember it. It’s one of the only times in Dragon Gate history where the bad guys win this definitively, and because of that and because of who it happened to and what it meant, it is up there with the most devastating gut punches in company history.

You can’t say they didn’t make it count.

A significant significant match, both in that it ends Dragon Gate’s all-time greatest faction, but also for me as a viewer.

Personally, it’s also the middle part of a trifecta of things along with YAMATO/Shingo and Tozawa’s departure that essentially ended my time as a real hardcore fan of the company. One represented, with some real finality both in the moment and in retrospect, that Dragon Gate booking would never be 100% for me. The latter of the three firmly ending this era of the company and removing at least one of the wrestlers that one could reasonably call the heart and soul of the company. That’s not to say I ever stopped watching, but it is to say that I’ve never really cared as much since.

I have yet to ever enjoy Dragon Gate/Dragongate to the extent that I did when Monster Express was around. That’s not to say I am entirely detached from it, but it is to say that it hasn’t ever totally reached these levels, and nothing has ever hit quite the same button that Monster Express did. It was maybe the coolest stable I’ve ever seen. Especially in their original incarnation, they were this perfect unit of all the most likeable and awesome wrestlers in the promotion to the extent that if they played in another sport, we’d have something called the Monster Express Third. It’s not just that they’re gone, of course. It’s this smaller symptom of a larger problem, the era of the Big Six officially coming to a close, between Tozawa’s departure, Takagi’s more drawn out diminished role until his 2018 departure, and Yoshino never being quite the same after 2016. It’s about Dragon Gate booking largely falling off a cliff for a few years late in the decade. It’s also about this just being an overwhelmingly talented crop of guys that happened to line up with one of the company’s best prolonged runs of booking (2013-2016) ever, and the rarity of situations like that.

The end of Peak Dragon Gate is all of those things, but more than either other match that it’s connected with in my mind, I think this perfectly sort of sums it up. It’s the exact perfect representation of all that Dragon Gate can be and has to offer as a company and a style, but also the perfect avatar of just how weird and frustrating being a fan of this company was, could, and probably still can be (it will be Kzy Time some day). The company effectively summed up in one match.

If not the ten thousand megaton emotional juggernaut heavyweight champion of 2016, that’s solely because of the match in a few weeks that it leads into. It’s still a god damner, a classical style Dragon Gate epic, but one that aims straight for the heart with an unmatched force and accuracy.

Watch it when you’re ready for it, and get rendered into dust.

***1/2

Akira Tozawa vs. Gran Metalik, WWE Cruiserweight Classic (8/31/2016)

This was a Quarterfinal in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

It’s another one of those times when there is no good explanation for why something works. It is a match about doing a bunch of huge, gigantic, wildly impressive and impactful offense in a row. There is no thing I can point to and feel proud for recognizing and try and communicate to you. “Ah, [thing x] is an ode to something from 4,000 years in the past and/or earlier in the match”. None of that.

Tozawa and Metalik (aka Mascara Dorada) are two of the world’s most exciting wrestlers, to the point that you or someone else could call them #1 and #2 and I wouldn’t see fit to argue your stance, and this match allows them to do all of their most wildly exciting offense. This is the round in which the WWE thing and the “tournament booking” thing kind of go by the wayside and everyone just goes nuts for these last handful of episodes. Double dives, all the biggest nearfalls, the hardest shots they have in them, all of that.

Really, the only things about this that make it feel like a WWE match are the logos everywhere and Mauro trying to fit in every possible reference to the hip hop hits of 2016 (such as asking Bryan what the major keys are) and otherwise, it simply feels like one would imagine an Akira Tozawa vs. Mascara Dorada match might feel had it happened in the home territory of either man (or in a Liga Elite match, God, imagine).

Frantic and wild and so beautiful.

A certified God Damner.

***1/4

Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/Akira Tozawa/T-Hawk) vs. Over Generation (CIMA/Dragon Kid/Peter Kaasa) vs. Tribe Vanguard (BxB Hulk/Flamita/Kzy), DG Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival 2016 (7/24/2016)

This was for MX’s Open the Triangle Gate Titles.

Not every match like this is always going to deliver. You get matches like this that don’t have great line ups. Lesser guys on a Dragon Gate roster, be them younger and less experienced wrestlers who just aren’t great yet or be it guys who simply are not that good. A lot of matches like these have focused on guys like a Cyber Kong in the past or an underachieving Shimizu in the future. A lot of them spend too long on one section or another, meaning some things either get too long to develop without having the stuff to develop or they have to rush through things at the end.

In this match, none of those issues were present, and so this is Dragon Gate’s best multi-trio in some time. Certainly its best that didn’t have the time and allowances of a main event slot in a real long time.

Mostly, that’s for the most plain and obvious reasons.

Firstly, the construction is perfect.

The elimination of the first team comes at what feels like a point around the middle, or at least in between the middle and final thirds, so that each section gets the chance to totally breathe. The frantic sort of mostly-action fireworks show allows that first team out (Tribe Vanguard) to show off, and then there’s a more narrative driven back section, where everyone has just enough time to have The Fear put into them with a series of CIMA nearfalls against eternal booking enemy Akira Tozawa, before everyone gets to unload. It all escalates pretty perfectly, and in ways you might not always expect, with some different combinations we don’t always get a whole lot of.

Another strength of this match is the way it makes use of the best things everyone can do. You go to work with the tools you have, and for once, I mean that in a way that is highly complimentary of everything in a match’s work bag.

Virtually every match has a weak link when you go by the pure definition of the term (one aspect of the thing will always be the worst aspect, this is sort of the deal with ranking things, “worst” doesn’t always mean bad, words are fun), but those weaker links are either not asked to do much of anything (BxB Hulk) or only asked to do a series of hyperathletic and ultra-impressive power and/or flying spots (Kaasa), in effect not allowing anyone to ever know that weaknesses exist in this particular crop of talent. Everyone else is given free reign to do all the best stuff that they do, and they all get it as right as ever, from inciting brief fear that they would go over all the younger and more likeable talents (CIMA) to inspiring the hope that they can fight back despite being murdered for minutes in a row (Kzy) to doing all of the coolest offense in the world and being the decade’s greatest babyface act (Monster Express). It’s all here.

This is a match that offers up every reason to watch Dragon Gate, impossibly cool, fun, and frantic wrestling, with the benefit of also being the sort of thing you always hope for but don’t always get out of the company too, which is all or most of the most interesting and endearing wrestlers getting to succeed. It’s especially fantastical given the very end, in which Tozawa gets Dragon Kid with the Package German to win, after fighting through CIMA trying to help his little buddy out.

It’s hardly the title match victory Akira Tozawa should have had on this show, but it’s also maybe the last moment of real triumph he’ll ever get to have in this company (can’t imagine why this is the end of Dragon Gate’s peak???), and it’s still something that just feels really good.

The exact sort of fireworks show you turn on a Dragon Gate show in the hopes of seeing. You get maybe one of these perfect DG samplers a year, and this is 2016’s.

***1/4

Akira Tozawa vs. Eita, DG King of Gate 2016 Day Two (5/11/2016)

This was a B Block match in the 2016 King of Gate tournament.

I don’t really ever know how you, The Readers, consume these.

Maybe if you have Friday afternoons off or something and live in America, you follow along in real time. Maybe you live elsewhere, and these drop on a Friday night for you over in Europe. Other time zones, you know, I don’t really know. I have some online friends who read them in a big chunk days after the fact. As long as you read them, I guess there’s no right way (there are many different wrong ways, but that is another topic for a different review one day when I will find myself taking a different ADHD ass long route to the point I’m making).

Assuming you read this in order and you aren’t some sort of a psychopath, you have previously read the review of an Akira Tozawa vs. CIMA match on the first day of the tournament. A fun fireworks show despite that old Dragon Gate Brain Sickness revealing itself with CIMA working over Tozawa’s knee for a minute or two at the start. They cannot help themselves, despite the prodigious gifts in both men that reveal themselves in the other 80-90% of the match.

This is that match, basically.

Eita does early time-filling arm work instead of knee work (slightly more forgivable as he uses an arm hold as his finish), but Tozawa doesn’t care at all about selling in transition. They then do a million cool things in a row, before a 20:00 time limit draw. A slight change or two, a better match in that Eita and Tozawa have a little more chemistry together, but really basically the same thing.

As that match was great, so is this.

I’m sorry, I know you want me to either be (a) mean or (b) super in-depth and expanding on something until we hit quadruple digits, but sometimes neither option is in the cards. The easiest route from one point to another is a straight line, and aside from that first 10%, that’s what this is. Two great wrestlers do all their moves in front of a hot crowd, and it’s pretty god damned fun.

***

CIMA vs. Akira Tozawa, DG King of Gate 2016 Day One (5/8/2016)

This was a B Block match in the 2016 King of Gate tournament.

I’m not going to lie to you.

This is not a perfect match.

Dragon Gate Brain Sickness is on full display early on as CIMA fills a few minutes with some pretty solid work on Tozawa’s knee, only for him to immediately ignore it once he gets on offense, without so much as a nod in the direction of that part of the match or a mere shake of the leg. It’s frustrating, even when one considers reports of tensions there. The booking’s also suspect, as CIMA once again goes over Tozawa long past a point where that’s necessary. At large, this entire tournament is kind of infuriating, between boredom brought on by YAMATO’s turn at Dead or Alive making the whole thing a foregone conclusion and also, once again, the infuriating nature of the gigantic missed opportunity with such a lay-up of a Takagi/Tozawa title match forever left unfulfilled.

However, there’s also a lot of cool stuff, and an exchange of all that cool stuff takes up the back 70-80% of the match, and so I’m not all that offended.

I mean, I am. Constantly. I am constantly aggrieved that Dragon Gate blew something that should have been this easy, obvious, and automatic. I am livid that they blew it, and after years of blowing it, Akira Tozawa’s prime ended prematurely when he eventually decided to leave. I really think it sucks that a wrestler this great for the previous five or six years never got the chance he so obviously deserved, and instead made a fair decision that if he was going to spin his wheels forever, he might as well go spin them with some of his best friends and probably for more money, with more time off, and with far less of a physical toll taken. That all sucks shit, as a viewer.

As for this match individually though, you know, whatever.

These are two guys with remarkable offensive arsenals and who shine in matches like this. Even if they build a crummy foundation for themselves and impede the match’s ability to be more than just this, it is real entertaining to see them unload those arsenals upon each other.

Sometimes it is just fun to watch the bright lights.

***

VerserK (Shingo Takagi/YAMADoi/Kotoka) vs. Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/T-Hawk/Akira Tozawa/Big R Shimizu), DG Glorious Gate 2016 Day Nine (3/28/2016)

More of that easy Dragon Gate magic.

Not the biggest version of this, nor the fastest, which means it definitely isn’t the best. Still, there’s an undeniable charm to it, as simply too much goes right.

Again, these matches succeed based on pairings, and this is one of the versions of the big Dragon System multi-man that puts a lot of emphasis on trying to run through as many combinations as possible rather than focusing on any one thing. We get a lot of Shingo vs. Yoshino, which again is really maybe Dragon Gate’s best pairing, a lot of T-Hawk vs. YAMATO and Doi, and then the others fill in here and there. It’s great. It’s easy and fun and crisp as hell.

The weak links of Kotoka and Big R are still present, but again, they’re so great at handling them that the chain doesn’t break. Big R is again only really allowed to do a few power spots, and is pushed by Shingo pasting the hell out of him into throwing better shots than usual. Kotoka, similarly, isn’t a killer like the others, but he’s so great as the irritant. There’s a great little character bit with that too, like Shingo abandoned Monster Express because he thought they were weak and Kotoka is weak as hell, but because he’s this tool that mean ass YAMATO and Doi throw at people, he’s this mascot Shingo can live with way more than Shachihoko BOY or whoever. It’s an interesting little window into a great character, on top of just how fun Kotoka is as an irritant. Equal parts Yoshinari Ogawa and Zaza Pachulia.

At the end, it’s that same old wonderful fireworks show. YAMATO turns on Takagi at the end, pausing before the red box miscue, before doing it on purpose to the leader of the group.

It’s a shame.

Once again, this group had so much more to offer. The trio of Takagi, Doi, and YAMATO is a heel supergroup on par with the famous CIMA/Doi/Yoshino Blood Generation core a decade earlier, among the ranks of the best heel trios in Dragon Gate history. YAMATO and Doi were, again, so great as a tag team and as every year passes, it feels especially shameful how little they got to do as a pure tag team. It also doesn’t feel right that it’s YAMATO to get to be the one to be the big Shingo opponent, given that a.) he’s the one turning on Takagi here, b.) how naturally unlikeable he is/how perfect he is in this role, & c.) how obviously this should have all led to Takagi vs. Akira Tozawa, given how the Shingo turn happened in the first place.

Still, the matches go on ruling. There’s a point where that falters eventually and, as it ages, talent stops being able to overcome everything. Until that point though, no company in the world turn lemons into lemonade like Dragon Gate does, even if they themselves are the ones who insist on buying lemons.

***

Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/Akira Tozawa/T-Hawk) vs. VerserK (YAMADoi/Kotoka), DG Memorial Gate in Wakayama (3/21/2016)

This was for MX’s Open the Triangle Gate titles.

Full disclaimer, I’ve never found or seen the full version of this show. The version that exists online is a TV edit version that is only an hour and forty minutes long. Most of that time is devoted to this match and the main event, although even this is clipped to some extent. Eighteen minutes cut down to thirteen or fourteen, and it’s done in a more obvious way than when DG used to clip footage when they aired those Infinity episodes way back when, chopping off a big chunk in between the first and middle thirds of the match. So, being entirely fair, there is nearly a third of this missing, and if someone’s seen the full version and feels differently, you know, that’s totally fair. We may have seen different matches entirely.

The match that I saw whipped a galaxy’s worth of ass though.

It is classic Dragon Gate.

A formula tag elevated by many of the best wrestlers alive being involved in it, and doing a thousand different cool things. It’s the sort of match that’s hard to REALLY write about extensively because there’s very little that goes into it besides proper organization and execution of the fireworks show, but that I feel sort of obliged to cover in some fashion because I really really did love it.

Everything you’d expect to deliver does, and given my faith in DG as a whole bell-to-bell at this point, and in five out of the six of these guys, that covers basically everything. It’s a match with high expectations, and that lives up to them at virtually every possible moment. Sometimes that’s old hits like Yoshino vs. YAMATO, sometimes it’s Kotoka stepping up and being an incredibly fun heel irritant, sometimes it’s old hits in new environments, like a Tozawa vs. YAMATO or T-Hawk vs. Doi match up that we haven’t seen a ton of, but that rules in all the ways one always imagined it could rule.

It just all works like it’s supposed to. A machine running as smoothly and as powerfully as ever.

Another example of just how great it was when Dragon Gate, at something close to its peak, powered the device all the way up past eleven, and ran the motherfucker at full strength. Untouchable.

***1/4

VerserK (Shingo Takagi/YAMADoi/Kotoka) vs. Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/Akira Tozawa/T-Hawk/Shachihoko BOY) vs. Dia.HEARTS (Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid/Kzy/Big R Shimizu), DG Truth Gate 2016 Day Two (2/4/2016)

This was a unit dismissal elimination match.

It’s nothing new for Dragon Gate, once again turning the dial up to become a match about individual eliminations and not simply one-per-team for a match with stakes like this. For whatever other problems exist within the company at any given time, past or future, a match like this almost always delivers, and this is no exception.

There are maybe better matches of this sort throughout the company’s history.

You have your weak spots in here, of course. Big R and Kotoka are not GREAT, the match sometimes rushes and while Kzy has begun to come out of his shell, he’s not quite capable of hanging in big elbow exchanges just yet. At close to thirty minutes, it’s also somehow a match that I wish was longer, as they have to do a lot and some match ups and people naturally get short-changed. There’s not a focus here that absolutely tears the match asunder, the things they focus on in the end are all spectacular and enthralling, but I leave this match wanting more, as opposed to the absolute best versions of this, in which I’m exhausted and wholly satisfied and maybe need to use the inhaler. It’s also not a match with a remarkably strong narrative focus on any one wrestler or story specifically. As compared to something like one only five months and change prior, this one is not especially DRAMATIC as a result, at least not on the level that matches like this in this company can achieve.

What it is though is an absolute marvel of speed and a monument to precision, one of the best Dragon Gate fireworks shows in some time.

A thousand things happen in a row, virtually none of them are repetitive, and it finds a way to keep them all at a relatively high and stunning level for close to half an hour. Everyone, save early comedy elimination Kotoka, gets a chance to really shine in the back half (one could argue this is the sort of shining Kotoka is most capable of at this point, and fair enough, as it is very funny). The highlights come from the usual sources. Shingo going on his little rampages, Tozawa and Yoshino being Dragon Gate’s all-time best babyfaces at the peaks of their powers, Kzy bursts, and especially, a great underdog run from Shachihoko BOY where he finally finds some revenge for 2015 and scores an upset elimination over Takagi. Every great pairing here gets a little chance to take a little bit of the stage, and not a one of them comes up short.

The part that’s especially great is the final segment, where it comes down to YAMATO and Naruki Doi against Kzy against Masato Yoshino. As a result of the clear logic of the thing, either Kzy or Yoshino losing dooms their unit forever, but puts Dragon Gate’s two all-time greatest underdog figures in the ideal situation, having to get past both Doi and YAMATO.

It’s the ideal fireworks show.

The Yoshino match ups here are proven, and they succeed once again. Yoshino vs. YAMATO, secretly one of the great Dream Gate pairings of all time, results in maybe the most outstanding and dramatic stuff in the match. It’s the YAMATO vs. Kzy stuff that the match closes with though, and it’s one of the first occasions in which Kzy’s future as Dragon Gate’s greatest post-Big Six babyface shows its potential. His mechanics aren’t as great as they’ll become. Hell, his babyface basics aren’t as great as they’ll become just yet. He’ll get better at bumping and selling and eliciting sympathy through those routes, and he’ll become an even more energetic wrestler in the future. Here and now though, it’s already here, that unteachable likeability that makes all the best stuff like this work, just unrefined. Every kickout feels like a Godsend, and every bit of offense he throws out in the end feels like something even greater, even if it can’t last.

YAMATO and Doi gang up on Kzy, and at this point in his development, it’s too much. He survives one Galleria, but when Doi adds in a Bakatare Sliding Kick to help set up the second Galleria, that’s that. Kzy is eliminated, Monster Express survives (thank GOD), and Dia.HEARTS is finally done with (again, thank God).

I wish there was more, just like the entire match, but especially of this last run. Not just the YAMADoi vs. Kzy vs. Yoshino run they were on, but of Kzy’s final burst in particular. He’s not quite there yet, both in terms of mechanics or booking, but given that he’ll get there, that’s not the end of the world.

All things in (Kzy) time.

This isn’t the absolute best version of the match, given the obvious nature of the decision, but what it is is maybe something even more valuable to anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it, or perhaps to anyone at the time who was dipping their toes in with the increased ease of availability of footage that certain real heroes in our community provided at the time.

What we have here is, I think, the perfect Dragon Gate starter match.

***1/4

Akira Tozawa vs. Eita, DG Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2015 (7/20/2015)

This was for Tozawa’s Open the Brave Gate Title.

It’s a lovely little match between two of Dragon Gate’s most likeable wrestlers.

Neither man is especially immune to DG Brain Sickness — which is to say a predilection for filling matches with meaningless limb work which is either totally ignored and/or has no bearing on the rest of the match — but miraculously, neither shows a sign of that here. It’s less of a sickness with Eita since his finish, El Numero Uno, is a double arm hold, but even then, Tozawa’s real likely to botch the landing there if it gets too complex. Thankfully, Eita keeps it very minimal and Tozawa does a great job with the more minor responsibilities of something like that, and they’re free to go wild. A poor foundation can absolutely kill a match like this, but on a simple foundation like the one laid in the first half of this match, it’s a much easier thing to love.

Beyond just being very likeable, Tozawa and Eita each have some really spectacular pieces of offense, and happen to fit together perfectly. Eita tries to avoid being caught and Tozawa tries to catch him and throw him on his head. Eita comes close a few times, but lacks the impact arsenal that the Stamina Monster does. Tozawa blocks El Numero Uno and rolls over into a GORGEOUS Everest German Suplex, before following up with the Package German Suplex hold to hang onto his title yet again.

I’d call it the rare Dragon Gate title match with crossover appeal, but virtually every great Akira Tozawa match is bursting with that. One of many, and it’s why this winds up being Tozawa’s second to last Kobe World ever.

Not the best of its kind and involving wrestlers who can do much more than this, but an ideal undercard Dragon Gate match.

***