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.

***

Over Generation (CK-1/Eita) vs. VerserK (Shingo Takagi/T-Hawk/El Lindaman) vs. MaxiMuM (Speed Muscle/Kotoka), DG Scandal Gate 2017 Day Nineteen (9/5/2017)

This was an elimination match.

I feel like, a whole lot of times on this blog, I’ve written at length about matches like this. Not just the 3v3v3 like this match, but the rare 3v3v3v3. At their best, there is nothing in the world like matches like these. There’s a lot that goes into them, and you are free to look through the archives and read about that, but for anyone new or less familiar, these matches are a very delicate balancing act. You can’t waste too much time, you need some stories even if they’re real basic, and above all, there’s a really delicate balance in the back halves of matches like these, breaking down in a way that feels chaotic and frantic but without ever feeling too much like a choreographed performance.

This one is JUST a little different, as a result of being part of the Unit Survival Chase, a monthlong tournament where the stable that lost the most matches would be forced to disband. So while it is an elimination match, and shares most of its DNA with matches like this in the past, there big difference is that in the early sections, rather than a team/stable trying to survive until the end, they are actively trying to win.

All the same, this is one that absolutely nails it.

Despite being half an hour in length, this is a match that never feels like it is wasting time. The initial brawl, the control segments in the middle, the long end run when it comes down to MaxiMuM and VerserK, it’s all timed and executed just exactly right.

On the other hand and in a larger sense, the stories that it has to offer up, as low key as they are, are phenomenal. Primarily, it revolves around El Lindaman trying to man up and eating shit, and Kotoka trying the same as a babyface underdog and succeeding, leading to the ultimate showdown between the two in which Our Man Kotoka rises to the challenge with help from Yoshino and Doi and in which Lindaman is, accidentally or not, left out to try by Shingo and T-Hawk, to give the crowd favorites the win. You get some fun little bits in between there, Eita’s continued growth when he shocks Masato Yoshino with a totally clean cradle following the Torbellino to get Over Generation out of there first with a win, Shingo and T-Hawk’s inability to ever totally get it together as a team, and things of that nature.

Mostly though, it works because of the unbelievable execution.

There is nobody in this match who fails to deliver. So often, you’ll have a Cyber Kong or a Yasushi Kanda or whomever who, despite their gifts, is not up to it in a match like this, and that is not the case here. Everybody, from the old men like CIMA, to those simply who are no longer 100% of what they were like a post-injury Yoshino or Dragon Kid or Doi, to those first starting to get it like Lindaman and Kotoka, to those entirely in their prime, they all do as well as they possibly can in a match that is constructed in an absolute perfect way to allow every one of them to shine. If not in long segments, than in brief moments, but a shine all the same, resulting in one of the year’s most impressive and most beautifully assembled fireworks displays.

I’ll never say that this was the last really great version of this match. Toryumon came from nothing twenty plus years ago, and with the way DG talent develops, it is totally possible there are more of these to come in the future on this level. However, in this time, and with regards to matches like this being on a best-of-the-year level, this is the last of its kind for some time, and a monument to both how easy and how great this can feel when the machine works like it’s supposed to.

***1/2

CK-1 vs. Naruki Doi/Kzy, DG Truth Gate 2017 Day Ten (2/19/2017)

Clean and simple great wrestling.

Far from Dragon Gate’s best match of the month in one as prolific on the higher end as February 2017 has been for them, but still the sort of reliable tag match that made up so much of what I’d refer to as the peak of the company (2011-2016). Four incredibly talented wrestlers filling up time in fun ways, throwing stuff out there, and having the sort of beautiful match that avoids anything too major, but still displays such a gift for construction and escalation.

With three of these wrestlers, the quality is to be expected. CIMA, Naruki Doi, and Dragon Kid have been having great matches together for at least twelve years, and all three were in one of the more highly acclaimed matches of the previous decade nearly eleven full years earlier in 2006 Ring of Honor, which I saw personally with my own two eyes. It is no secret that when thrown together, they produce something tremendous. It is maybe a surprise that Dragon Kid sells early knee work as well as he does in transition, but everything else makes sense. Remarkably athletic and precise wrestlers have a remarkably precise and athletic match together. The world is floored, surely.

In particular though, Kzy again stands out here, as despite not fully coming into his peak just yet (that’ll come within the next few years, as since 2018 or 2019, he has clearly been the best wrestler in the promotion and it hasn’t been especially close), he’s the least proven wrestler in the match, and also maybe the best one. It’s not to say this is some breakout match and it’s not to say this is like the first sign of Kzy becoming as great as he did, but it is to say he’s in a match with three upper level guys in the company and really arguably blows them all away for the first time that I can recall.

He’s a stellar face in peril when the match calls for it, an even better hot tag, and when the match asks him to be largely the focal point of the finishing quarter or so, he is ten thousand percent up to the task. One of wrestling’s great underdogs turns in an understatedly great underdog performance, right down to the entirely out of nowhere Tornado Clutch on Kid that nets him the win.

A tremendous chunk of house show tag work, as four of Dragon Gate’s best riff it out to great results.

***

CK-1 vs. Shingo Takagi/T-Hawk, DG Final Gate 2016 (12/25/2016)

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.

***1/4

CIMA/Dragon Kid/Masaaki Mochizuki/Gamma/Don Fujii vs. Ben K/Shun Skywalker/Hyo Watanabe/Yuki Yoshioka/Katsumi Takashima, DG Fantastic Gate 2016 Day One (12/1/2016)

The Dragon Gate Class of 2016 steps up, and it is time to Meet Your Rookies.

Our young heroes take the stage against Dragon Gate’s five most tenured wrestlers and get their asses kicked.

That’s it, that’s the entire match.

And it’s perfect.

It’s one of those situations in which a well-read fan could look at this from afar and kind of figure out what it is — a little shine for the kids at the start and off a hot tag, especially with ten guys in there and not four or six, but mostly them being destroyed — but not the extent. Certainly, one could not pinpoint beforehand just how much raw energy, fire, lunacy, and outright contempt seemed to explode out of this thing from the very start.

There are loose attempts to have a match. Yoshioka gets beaten up inside the ring for a long stretch. CIMA’s arm is almost worked over by a few of the kids.

Mostly though, this is a fight.

Just a nasty sprawling god damned thing. Chairs are thrown at people, people are thrown at chairs, tables get turned over and picked up and thrown through. Everyone in this match is the worst and/or meanest spirited version of themselves possible, beyond just Mochi and Fujii being as surly and petulant in the face of youth as always. CIMA is punting people in the face like he hasn’t in years, Gamma reverts back to Muscle Outlaw’z form, hell, even fucking DRAGON KID is kind of a prick here (and for him, “kind of a prick” is like if another wrestler lit someone’s mom on fire). The great part of it all is that, for both sides, it makes sense. The old guys are pissed off at the kids genuinely really trying despite barely just getting here, the kids are mad at the old men for getting so worked up about it all. It’s a perfect circle of violence, and depending on how old you are, you can spin that bad boy in either direction.

For me, it’s an even greater delight than it was the last time I saw this, being even older myself. The future HYO tries to step up to Mochizuki, and it goes about as well as it would even six plus years into the future, only far more succinct and effective. Mochizuki simply slaps the life out of the kid, knocking the words right out of his mouth, before knocking him out clean with a Rolling Sole Butt for the win.

Not just another great Dragon Gate tag in a year full of them, but full stop one of the nastiest and most different Dragon Gate tags in some time too.

One of the most fun matches of the year and decade both.

***1/3

CIMA/Dragon Kid/Masaaki Mochizuki/Flamita vs. Masato Yoshino/T-Hawk/Big R Shimizu/Peter Kaasa, DG Dangerous Gate 2016 (9/22/2016)

Your classic mix-em-up.

Sure, there’s some classic Dragon Gate stable stuff here. CIMA and Dragon Kid are in Over Generation, and most of the other team is a classic Monster Express line up with superman Kaasa added in. Yes, you can track a few yearslong stories in this, from Mochizuki and T-Hawk continuing to disrespect each other whenever possible to the slower simmering Mochi/Big R issue, you can even go back to much longer term issues between Yoshino and both CIMA and Dragon Kid.

If you need to believe every great match is a wellspring of storytelling and character work, I suppose this match allows you to convince yourself that is the case.

For the rest of us though, this is just a perfect sort of ten thousand miles an hour Dragon Gate match.

As usual with any match like this, it’s as much about construction as it is execution. Spending time early on setting things up, relationships between people involved, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Gotta set the table before you drop a thousand tons on it from outer space, you know? In an execution sense, everyone in this match delivers in some way. There are moments of jaw dropping flying, the exact right mix of moments and sequences that have such a high degree of difficulty but never go on long enough to make one wake up and think this shit is all phony, and your moments of real brutality and higher impact offense. It’s exactly as long as it should be, beautifully put together, and performed with grace and precision and violence all in equal measure. A real hoot.

Beyond it just being the sort of thing you watch the promotion for, it feels like a perfect advertisement for the company itself, and all the styles, stylistic variations, and ideas that it has to offer.

In a year full of spectacular Dragon Gate fireworks shows, this was one of the best.

***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

CIMA/Gamma/Dragon Kid vs. Speed Muscle/Rich Swann, DG Gate of Maximum 2013 Day Five (6/2/2013)

Fun Dragon Gate bullshit. Not a great match, but CIMA and Gamma trying to outdance Rich Swann and leaving the man in stitches is a blast. The rare match I can describe with “there was a repeated theme of dancing” and not mean it as a total insult towards. This could have obviously been a little better, but it being a midcard match AND a Gamma match already limited it, so whatever.

CIMA/Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid vs. MAD BLANKEY (Akira Tozawa/BxB Hulk/Uhaa Nation), DG Gate of Maximum 2013 Day Four (6/1/2013)

I wrote about the Shingo Takagi & YAMATO vs. RyoSuka tag earlier in the night that it was close to being the platonic ideal for a smaller show Dragon Gate midcard tag. Forget the word “close” or the phrase “close to” here. This is the platonic ideal for a Dragon Gate six man main event on a less important show.

Is this match a big deal? No.

Does this have any importance whatsoever? No. It’s not really even a build up tag at all. It simply is.

It’s just a blast. Tight and fun and perfect for what it is. The heels are mean and basic in the control segment, but without ever leaning on bullshit or blatantly filling space like so many DG heel teams in recent years have felt like they’re doing. There’s always something around the corner to liven it up or keep interest steady. A tag in that’s cut off, a hope spot that’s cut off, some big move, etc. They’re hardly the perfect DG heel unit (Blood Generation or if you’re a fucking nerd, the Millennials), but it all works out real real well. Final half is then a fireworks show.

They don’t unload the arsenal here in front of only Sapporo Teisen Hall, but once again, there’s enough that this is always very exciting. Mochizuki vs. Tozawa is a near perfect match up when it’s just the hits. Uhaa Nation once again looks incredible because they’re so smart about how he’s used. BxB Hulk is nobody sane’s favorite heel but he’s great in the little pieces here (especially against Dragon Kid), while Tozawa shoulds most of the load. They got the crowd hotter than any other match so far, especially for the Dragon Kid section against BxB and then Tozawa at the end, and while that doesn’t make or break the match, it’s a nice little boost and an impressive thing on its own. The cycle ends up with Dragon Kid stuck alone with Tozawa, and Our Hero is on a roll. Dragon Kid gets beaten with the Package German Suplex.

Much like anything on a mid tour show like this, it’s hardly essential, but it’s just an absolute fucking blast. At its best, Dragon Gate is some of the most fun professional wrestling that anyone can ever watch.

***