WORLD-1 (Masato Yoshino/PAC/BxB Hulk) vs. CIMA/Dragon Kid/Masaaki Mochizuki, DGUK Yokosuka vs. Shingo 2 (9/10/2010)

There are a few standout singles matches and the best match Dragon Gate produced this decade may well be a straight two on two tag team match, but the specialty of the company will always be these six man tag team matches, and those beyond that. It‘s not only the thing that they do best, the thing they arguably do better than anyone in the world (at their peak, inarguably), but most importantly, when everything else misfires or falls victim to any number of stumbling block in the company, it’s matches like these that rarely fail to deliver.

Case in point.

On an otherwise disappointing UK show (the show’s namesake match being some realut  house show effort stuff, combined with Doi and YAMATO nearly offering up a complete repeat of their DG Brained title match earlier in the year, not that the British have ever minded performative limbwork or foreign stars mailing it in), this is the sole match on the show that really delivers on a level matching its potential, and absolutely whips ass.

The match is much more of a 2006-8 ROH WrestleMania weekend kind of showcase in front of a foreign crowd kind of Dragon Gate six man than it is something more complex and layered like the best of what you might find on a home show, but that’s fine by me. You don’t judge an apple harshly because it isn’t an orange, this match wants to be one sort of specific thing, and it does that incredibly well.

Everyone in the match gets to do the things they’re best at and nothing else, even in some cases like Yoshino or Mochizuki where they were capable of more on offense than this match really allowed them to get into, and mostly, it’s better for it. Unlike other matches on the show, nobody is bogged down by any silly ideas of how to fill space, or even the idea that space has to be taken up before the Good Parts. Every part of this is one of the good parts, as yet again, the ability to constantly rotate the people and pairings in and out and around benefits them so much. Nothing gets tired because, save for a control segment on BxB Hulk in the middle of the match, nothing lasts long enough to become tiresome.

Additionally, there are, I think, two very interesting/impressive things to me here, on top of how well the formula works.

The first is not by design.

On this ring, presumably English rented/borrowed, the ropes are just a little loose. Not so much that anyone is in danger running off the ropes, but that after a few springboard moves see guys come down at lower angles than usual, it becomes noticeable. At that point, it becomes a little scarier every time, especially when BxB Hulk takes a truly nasty header off of a top rope rana from Dragon Kid (had this been filmed better, you’d see a GIF here). Again, by total accident, it winds up helping the match, not only because of a gross landing, but also because PAC nearly slips at the end, only to adjust himself, get a wider base, and manage an imploding 450 Splash on Kid to win anyways. It might feel like a lesser finish otherwise, like the fourth coolest thing PAC can do off the top rope at this point, but the accidental struggle becomes its own story, with a surprisingly great payoff.

Most impressive to me, this time on purpose, is how the match achieves a clear and obvious aim, but without it ever becoming overpowering.

Being a show in England, PAC is obviously the most popular guy on the show and the star of the match at the end, but the match manages an impressive balancing act. It is about PAC, in so much that he gets a huge win at the end, but the match never makes it entirely about him. It feels like a little bit of a gamble, given the hugely positive reaction to him at the start and one of the sole negative reaction for the visiting stars all night when CIMA is briefly rude to him, but it feels like the complete correct one. PAC’s greatest utility at this point is an unbelievable athlete who can do some truly remarkable things on offense, and by keeping the match almost entirely focused on pure offense, the match feels like the best possible version of itself.

Not one quite on the level of the famous WrestleMania weekend 2006 touring all-offense six man or maybe even the 2008 one that I’m maybe the big high man on historically, but compared to a lot of later attempts at it — particularly the DGUSA ones that never quite seemed to click right — one that I enjoyed far more than I expected to.

The fireworks show the way it ought to be, and among the most underrated one of the decade due to where it happened.

***1/4

Typhoon (CIMA/Dragon Kid/Susumu Yokosuka/Ryo Saito/BxB Hulk/Anthony W. Mori/Matt Sydal) vs Muscle Outlawz (Speed Muscle/Gamma/Magnitude Kishiwada/Genki Horiguchi/Cyber Kong/Jack Evans), Dragon Gate Glorious Gate 2007 Day Eight (4/17/2007)

Commissions continue, this time from an anonymous contributor (if you don’t leave a name on the ko-fi, I will put you under this umbrella, or you can always just ask, if you want, I suppose). You can be like them and pay me to write about anything that you want. Usually, people just want wrestling matches, but you ought to not let that limit you if you have a mind for something more ambitious, as this post suggests. You can purchase these things by going over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon, where reviews currently go for $5 per match (or $5 per half hour started, if you want a movie or TV episode or something, so like an 80 minute movie is $15). If you have a want for something that cannot just be solved by multiplying a number by five, drop into the DMs, and we can talk.

This was a Naniwa style Elimination Match.

For me, having just gotten into Dragon Gate around the start of 2007, the Typhoon vs. MO’z feud is something of a blur. At the time, it was seen as a real down period for the company. Not just from when the Typhoon stable formed in January on, as they would stay in existence until the end of 2008, but the preceding six to nine months centered around a CIMA face turn against heels Yoshino and Doi (bad casting), and CIMA vs. Gamma as the top feud in the company. The problem was less the idea of the company primarily splitting into two gigantic groups, as I adore the Junction III vs. Blood WARRIORS feud a few years later, but more so that this involves many of the least interesting wrestlers possible, without a great central babyface, and with many of the better wrestlers hamstrung by the house DG heel style.

That down period ends with this match, less so because of the match itself and more because of what follows it (more later), but it’s still a pretty great match that stands out as pretty easily among the better ones of this little holding period.

It also has some usual problems.

Some are out of the control of anyone in the ring or laying the match out.

As is often the case before they began airing full shows around the first few years of the next decade, this is clipped for television to air on the Infinity program. No matches were greater victims of this than the longer elimination matches — as discussed previously — and this is no exception. While not quite as extreme as losing half the match as in the match linked above, this is still a thirty minute match that television editing cuts down to some twenty-three minutes, and it’s not great. On top of a few real haphazard edits, it’s a bummer to clearly just be missing part of a match.

There are other things here though that they can control, but simply don’t put a lot of effort towards.

Like usual with the majority of these staggered entry elimination matches in Dragon Gate, the first half is almost entirely filler. You have you flashes here and there with the runs that are effectively hot tag bits when someone comes in, like Yoshino or Saito’s attempts at it, or the Sydal vs. Evans stuff when both get in, but primarily, the first half is a lot of guys simply trying to fill up space. When the switch suddenly flips and the match shifts towards a stunning amount of activity, it’s pretty jarring, as yet again, Dragon Gate opts to do something in a very weird and annoying way.

Of course, once all the fireworks get flying, a lot of that just doesn’t matter all that much to me.

Many of the fastest and smoothest wrestlers in the world throw their stuff out there for the last ten to fifteen minutes of this, and it whips ass. Some is down to pure performance. Matt Sydal is the best junior heavyweight wrestler in the world at this point, at the peak of his athletic powers (you can argue 2004-7 or 2014-15 for overall peak, each has its merits) and the match lets him show off. The same goes for Masato Yoshino here, and in a different way, the match also gives Typhoon’s big likeable babyface Ryo Saito a bunch to do too. So much more of it comes down to design though, as again, the Gate is so skilled at throwing more mercurial guys like Susumu, CIMA, Doi, Kishiwada, BxB, etc. into matches like this and only letting them do the stuff they do incredibly well on offense. The layout is pristine, building different guys up to throw them at each other, like establishing Sydal as the match’s best flier, only for Kishiwada to truck him, which then makes it more impressive when he can be taken down. It all leads to an especially great run at the end, putting Speed Muscle against Yokosuka and Kid, in which all of these different bombs get set off all in a row, creating that Dragon Gate Magic once again, if on a smaller scale than they would in the past or in the future.

Everyone gets involved again at the end, and after a crutch shot from Anthony W. Mori, Doi backs up into the springboard Ultra Huricanrana from Kid, and Typhoon wins.

The greatest drama here comes not in the match itself though, but in the teased payoff that comes only once the match is over. Going into the match, each stable promised someone on the other side would stab their team in the back, and once Typhoon had won, BxB Hulk and Cyber Kong both turned on their teams. Rather than a mere effective trade though, they shook hands, announcing that soon-to-be-returning Shingo Takagi and YAMATO were with them, forming New Hazard.

It’s here that, for me at the time, the company became roughly a hundred times more interesting, not only putting an end to a fairly stale two-sided war, but introducing a stable that still, sixteen plus years later, is probably my second or third favorite in company history.

(Monster Express forever. Too easy.)

Great match too, I suppose.

***

Tribe Vanguard (YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Flamita) vs. MaxiMuM (Speed Muscle/Ben-K) vs. ANTIAS (T-Hawk/Eita/El Lindaman), DG Kotoka Road to Final Day Five (2/7/2018)

Old reliable.

The magic is maybe not what it was and there are elements to this that do not entirely work up to the level that they are capable of (BxB, younger guys in Ben-K and Lindaman who have not yet figured it out, Eita adherering to a Dragon Gate Heel format that does not accentuate his better qualities), but the format is simply too strong.

Even at a boiler plate level, in a match that aims less for main event level than semi-main event level, it is too hard to get in the way of one of wrestling’s best formats, especially with all-world wrestlers like Speed Muscle, T-Hawk, YAMATO, and Flamita at the helm.

Hard to go too wrong here.

***

BxB Hulk Vs. MAD BLANKEY (Naruki Doi/Cyber Kong/Kzy/Mondai Ryu), DG Scandal Gate 2014 (8/5/2014)

This was a commissioned review from Kale. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was for Hulk’s Open the Dream Gate Title.

Unlike many other unreviewed matches from 2014 and 2015, where there is (or was, certain accounts on certain sites are being Very Kind), this was never a hard match to get a hold of. The reason I had never written about it up until this point — and why in the present moment, it took nearly a day of looking at the review page and putting it off again, only to be trapped inside for days at a time by a blizzard to finally get to work here — is because it was simply not a match I ever wanted to write about.

Not to say it is bad.

The match is totally okay.

Doi is the only real great wrestler in this match, as Kzy hasn’t totally come into himself yet (that’ll come within the next year and a half), it’s not overly long or anything, but it is just a sort of very ordinary thing. You know when a DG main event turns it on, and from the first five or so minutes with the classic kind of meandering version of the K-Hall Brawl, with nothing of any real note and very little intensity or energy on display, that this is not going to be a match of much interest. It’s pure booking, and the problem is that the booking isn’t exactly all that inspiring either, as a heroic babyface fights the odds until he can’t anymore. Like the match itself, there’s nothing all that wrong with it, it’s just that it has little to offer besides being average and average is not all that impressive in a company like 2010-2016 Dragon Gate with a ceiling as high as the one they look up at.

The major problem mostly is that it is done in the service of BxB Hulk as the match’s  beleaguered babyface hero.

In this role, he does not have it.

BxB Hulk was Dream Gate Champion for ten or eleven months, and it is the least interested I was in Dragon Gate in the years in between like 2006 and 2017. Given what he’s gone on to do since and given the way everyone else I’ve ever talked about this promotion with also talks about it, I don’t think is is one of my spicier DG takes either. He was a dud as champion, simply not having the stuff to deliver in the ways I want my title matches to deliver, on top of having the Dragon Gate Brain Sickness as bad as anyone ever. Not a likeable babyface at this point really (good underdog in the mid to late 2000s when positioned more to his strengths though!), bad at striking, worse at selling, not really offering up anything in the way of cool moves or innovation or a sensational snap on his offense, and really offering up very little despite being the champion of a promotion with maybe more enjoyable acts per capita than any other in the country, if not all of wrestling, at this point.

I used to be a pretty big BxB Hulk fan way back when (will die to protect New Hazard), but whatever magic there was is gone, and matches based around making him sympathetic, wanting to see him overcome things, etc., are flawed in their very conception.

These things are not usually possible, and this is not a cast capable of pulling off a miracle.

Abstract of the talent involved though, I respect the idea of the thing a whole lot.

New champion against insurmountable odds, succeeding just enough for it to be impressive but without the booking entering unbelievable superman babyface territory, losing to bullshit but given a second chance on a bigger show in a one on one title match, leading to a match that I liked a lot more than this, as it is the best part of this match (runs in which Doi can lead BxB by the hand), expanded out to a full match.

It’s good, fine enough, and every thought I have about it instinctively ends with ”enough”, which is to say, it is less good or interesting on its own than it is directly NOT these things, or else my initial reaction would simply be to call it interesting or remarkable or good (or great), or some other phrase of actual praise. It’s a little basic and routine, a slight difference in that it is 1 on 4, but largely the same thing once the bell rings from a company capable of more than a thing like this, even during its lesser moments, and I don’t hate it. It’s just that ”I don’t hate it” isn’t the sort of feeling that sticks around for more than a minute after the match ends.

A decent piece of bullshit on paper, albeit from one of my least favorite times in Dragon Gate in the 2010s. There are many stellar examples of Dragon Gate Magic, but this isn’t one of them, and maybe shows off the exact limits of that magic to begin with.

Tribe Vanguad (YAMATO/Kzy/BxB Hulk) vs. MaxiMuM (Speed Muscle/Jason Lee), DG Final Gate 2017 (12/23/2017)

This was for Tribe Vanguard’s Open the Triangle Gate Titles.

It is an absolute blast.

Narratively speaking, there is not a whole lot here. There is history, four of the Big Six are in this match, you can pull at threads if you’d like to, if you need to have some kind of depth and meaning to enjoy a match. For the most part though, that does not matter all that much. This is not a match about that. There are big Dragon Gate epics that require months and often years of context to fully appreciate, but then there are also matches like these, in which I think you can know nothing and have zero memories of these six and/or this promotion and not only still enjoy it, but maybe enjoy it even more than a longtime fan might.

Four of Dragon Gate’s finest, along with BxB Hulk and Jason Lee, put on an absolute mother fucker of a fireworks show to end the year.

It’s not all that complex.

The impressive part is the construction and the execution of the thing, especially in a match between two different fan favorite groups like this. With nothing to really lean on besides the match ups here in the moment, they still create a really spectacular piece of business, riffing around and bouncing off of each other at remarkably high speed for seventeen or eighteen minutes.

While not ever match up is the absolute greatest, and not every wrestler in this match is the absolute best in the world, it is plotted out so well. There is no prolonged run from either weak link (BxB Hulk, Jason Lee), and they rarely ever face each other. The bulk of this comes down to Yoshino and Doi against YAMATO and Kzy, and those match ups are either proven enough that they’re arguably home to one of the best Dream Gate matches of the decade, a can’t miss fight between former partners, or a newer match up in Yoshino vs. Kzy that feels like the most exciting thing Dragon Gate’s put out into the world in months. The latter of the three options is especially exciting and, personally, is the highlight of the match, seeing the recent past and recently crowned best babyface wrestlers in the company having these runs that are not only crisp and impossibly fast, but so unbelievably interesting as well.

When the first half of this match fades into the second, or the middle third transitions into the last one, there’s a clear switch that’s flipped, but to their credit, it feels like a very gradual thing, rather than what is often the case here and elsewhere, where it’s a “okay, time to try hard!” kind of a feeling. There’s a very palpable shift to this match, but rather than that feeling, it’s much more of a mounting tension, leading to a constant five minute explosion at the end.

A thousand great nearfalls and incredibly cool and exciting things happen. It’s enough to make a more seasoned viewer of the promotion and fan of the style in me lose it just a little bit late at night at home nearly half a decade later, a machine that, while it might be a little older and not as cutting edge as it once was, still can run with the precision, speed, and force that made it so special to begin with. It’s not only thrilling in a kind of lizard brained way, but a real reaffirming thing in and of itself.

Yoshino completes his comeback in a real hard year by getting BxB down and into the Sol Naciente for the win.

Dragon Gate at its best, or at least close enough to count.

***1/4

 

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 (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

Natural Vibes (Kzy/BIGBOSS Shimizu/Jacky Funky Kamei) vs. HIGH-END (Ben-K/Dragon Kid/Keisuke Okuda) vs. R.E.D. (Eita/BxB Hulk/Kaito Ishida), DG Final Gate 2021 (12/26/2021)

Dragon Gate hasn’t really been working for me in 2021 the way I hoped it would after the last few months of 2021.

(Really it hasn’t been working for me the way it used to since like 2017, but that’s another story to tell entirely.)

Chalk it up to the Shun reign not being handled super well, a lot of these guys still developing, or maybe most realistically, DG still being in front of clap-crowds and running much shorter shows full of much shorter matches than usual in response to COVID. An admirable thing to do, but one that doesn’t lend itself to the best wrestling shows when matches are now too short a lot of the times to really develop.

However, this works.

More importantly is that it works in the way Dragon Gate used to, through the proper application of the Dragon Gate Classic, the 3v3v3.

The talent here isn’t all perfect, and the match is slightly flawed in what it chooses to focus on, opting to highlight things like Shimizu’s routine at the end instead of that of either teammate, or allowing too much of BxB Hulk. Each team has at least one weak spot, if not more than that. Shimizu and BxB Hulk are the obvious ones, but Ben-K hasn’t really turned out to be anything more than solid and the Bad DG Heel Act impedes what everyone on R.E.D. is capable of at that. Jacky Kamei is one of Dragon Gate’s most promising youngsters of the whole lot to come out in recent years (wait until I get to write about Ryu Fuda and the Iihashis when covering early 2022), but is still very young.

Kzy is really the only wrestler in this match who I’d call great, truly, with Okuda, Kamei, and Dragon Kid somewhere on the outskirts.

It doesn’t matter.

The formula works as well as it always has, and shows that it’s still the way. Virtually everyone is plugged in to only do what they’re good at (the exception being Shimizu who does power spots, but isn’t especially good at those either), they run in and out, only play the hits, and that’s that. Ishida and Okuda don’t get bogged down with limbwork like they do in one on one settings, it’s just frantic striking. BxB Hulk only does a few set spots, and otherwise cedes the floor to his teammates. Even the Dragon Gate Heel Routine is largely kept to a minimum, with the action moving too fast and not allowing a break for much in the way of stomp-and-pose work that you usually get from R.E.D. members (or VerserK before them or MAD BLANKEY before them or etc. etc.) in matches like these.

What’s left over is a bunch of very talented people being put in the best possible positions to succeed. This match doesn’t belong to him, sadly, but Kzy lights up every frame of the thing he’s in. Ishida and Okuda are can’t-miss in small doses, Kamei again follows much in Kzy’s footsteps and shines in all the same ways, and even Eita gets to return to form in the closing moments just a little bit. The match is full of fun great little bits and miniature payoffs, all leading to a surprisingly positive ending for Dragon Gate, as Our Heroes win out via a Shimizu splash off the top rope to Ishida.

Everything doesn’t run as smoothly as it should, but it’s still just such a delight to see that the old machine still runs as well as it does.

A fun slice of classic-style Dragon Gate madness, even if it’s far from the best application of the talents involved or the formula used.

The classics are classics for a reason.

***

 

Shingo Takagi/Masato Tanaka vs. Dia.HEARTS (BxB Hulk/Big R Shimizu), DG Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2015 (7/20/2015)

Shingo Takagi and BxB Hulk have once again run afoul of each other.

With Tozawa and Yoshino busy defending Dragon Gate’s two major singles titles though, Shingo Takagi has zero faith in anyone else in Monster Express at this point, namely Shachihoko BOY. Instead, Takagi has opted for an outside guest in Tanaka, following their meeting earlier in the year, seeing him as someone actually on his level (the unspoken thing: unlike Shachihoko BOY).

It’s another delightful Dragon Gate undercard tag.

Shingo and Tanaka obviously bring a certain stylistic difference to the usual proceedings. Big R has always been kind of a fraud at this kind of style, only ever having the size but rarely the intensity and force to his strikes unless pushed, but the match smartly puts him on the backburner. Given the bad title reign of BxB Hulk and less than stellar run leading his own stable in 2014-2015, one might consider this a mistake if one only recently began watching, but the real trick is that BxB Hulk’s calling has ALWAYS been as a babyface tag team worker, especially in matches featuring Shingo Takagi.

Although the optimum pairing is them together, this still hits all the same buttons, and one of Dragon Gate’s all time great pairings does it again. It’s Kobe World, these two once had one of the great matches in the history of the show and the promotion half a decade prior, and they manage to pretty much turn back the clock entirely in this match.

That isn’t to entirely discredit the other two. Big R can occasionally be pressured into living up to his name, and Tanaka does great as a guest star. All of his stuff looks and sounds wonderful, he still has just enough in him to come in and hit his marks and look fantastic. The table splash spot is beyond shoehorned in at this point, but at the same time, it’s a cool splash through a table and in a match based around a lot of cool stuff, it’s a fine mid match spot. So, it’s not as if the other people in this match don’t contribute.

It’s the Shingo vs. BxB show though, and it’s a god damned BLAST. BxB looks more motivated than he’s been since turning face again over a year ago, and Shingo continues to lean further and further into a more aggressive side that he’s started to show since the spring. In this iteration, they’re perfect for each other, and after years of trying to do it with the roles flipped (the ideal version is both men working face as in their 2010 apuestas), it’s just awesome to see it work again.

The key part of it working again, of course, is that Shingo runs through BxB Hulk, and there is nothing he can do about it. No force of nature and no act of God stands in the way of the same thing happening again, especially when Shingo has a much much better partner. Big R is a puppy with medium paws, he’s no match for Tanaka, and Shingo is free to gun down BxB. Pretty boy never gets going with the bombs like he has to, and Shingo is especially insistent on making a show of it like he used to, leading to the umpteenth Pumping Bomber taking Hulk’s head off for the win.

Another ideal DG undercard match here, delivering a lovable bombfest and at the same time, furthering some real interesting character stuff. All while shutting up and playing the hits with as much verve and speed as always.

A real hoot.

***1/4

Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa) vs. Dia.HEARTS (BxB Hulk/Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid), DG Summer Adventure Tag League 2014 Day Four (9/9/2014)

To try and make the BxB Hulk top guy push work, they’ve given him his own stable now, filled with better wrestlers than him. Immediately, it’s clear that this won’t work, as he feels like the least important guy in the match, title or not.

All the same, this absolutely rocks.

It’s a classical sort of Dragon Gate six man sprint

Nothing all too serious, just some of the fastest and most fun to watch guys in the world going out and executing the formula to near perfection. I’d love to do a “BxB Hulk is also in this match” thing, it really is one of my favorite bits as a writer, this perfect shorthand for expressing that someone added nothing to the match. Honestly though, he’s fine in this. At this point, while he’s not a top ten guy in the company and it sucks that he has this fucking ten or eleven month long reign instead of Tozawa or whoever else, but he can contribute. When he’s just another piece in the match, a warm body to fill a role and not the spoke upon which the match turns, he’s fine. Some kicks, a big move or two, and then all the classic BxB vs. Shingo spots where he takes these big beautiful flip bumps. That’s all this asks of him, and everything is better off for it.

Everything else in the match is tremendous. Shingo vs. Dragon Kid is secretly one of the better match ups of the entire era, and Tozawa and Mochizuki bring out the best in each other and none of the worst. Masato Yoshino isn’t in this as much as the others, but every time he’s in there with Hulk or Dragon Kid, it’s this nice little reminder that yeah, oh shit, this is what an actual underdog main eventer looks like and wrestles like.

Unfortunately, the point here is to try and get the new stable over, so the most overpowered unit in Dragon Gate history has to lose. It doesn’t feel legitimate, but this isn’t exactly a style or promotion with an emphasis on pure realism. They also go about in the best way possible, as it comes down to Mochizuki and Tozawa, with that god damner of a high kick pinning Tozawa, with Takagi just fingertips away from being able to break the pin up. If nothing else, Mochizuki still feels like a guy who can win any match he’s in at this point, and Tozawa losing feels a lot more believable than Shingo or Yoshino doing it. The entire thing is sort of like that, this weird goal carried off by these seasoned pros who know exactly how to make it come off as good as possible. A masterclass in how to do a match like this, and what the best version of the house style can look like, even with an imperfect line up.

Dragon Gate’s been a little off all year, but if you had only watched this show, you would have absolutely no idea.

***1/4