Johnny Gargano vs. Ricochet, DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2014 (4/4/2014)

This was for John Boy’s Open the Freedom Gate Title.

I like these guys at this point, generally, but this sucked. SUUUUUUUCKED. Just goddamned terrible, and while I can’t say that they hold zero blame themselves, most of it has to fall to booking itself, beyond simply that Gargano is nowhere near as good in the ring as a heel as he is as a babyface.

There’s a big story to it, with Ricochet earning a title shot a year ago on the same weekend where Gargano turned heel in a far better match than this. Gargano ducked him for a year and used all these different dirty tricks to keep the title until this point. The mistake, it seems, is drawing it out so long because at this point, it’s exceedingly obvious that Ricochet is going to win the title, but the match is flawed for more reasons than that aspect alone.

It’s the sort of match that makes me regret painting Kyle O’Reilly vs. Gargano from the week prior in PWG as “proto NXT bullshit”, because this is the uncut version of that.  The same issues with it being overly long and having some real eye-rolling attempts at going for the epic, but also with that storytelling thrown in. And I don’t mean like normal good pro wrestling storytelling, I mean the sort of match that feels like it’s constantly shouting “LOOK! WE’RE TELLING A STORY!” like that’s the only thing a match is ever supposed to do, like it’s a shield for everything else a match does wrong. It does that, but in the way that those awful Cole/Gargano matches in 2019 did, where it would just be a thousand moves in a row en lieu of any normal structure or anything halfway interesting that two talented wrestlers are capable of doing but then jamming stuff in at the end and trying to have their cake and eating it too. After a bunch of dickless back and forth for like ten to fifteen minutes once a switch flips, they remember John Boy is a heel and he does a few tricks that fail. Ricochet hits the Benadryller for the win everyone knew he would get a long time ago.

If it happened in 2021, we’d all be able to just call it an NXT audition tape, but this is something worse, because matches like this and the attempt to add WWE Theatrics to them eventually created the very idea of an NXT audition tape. A match that’s both bad in a critical sense, but probably also harmful in a historical context as well.

A fitting end for DGUSA on the final show they ever ran, closing out with a match that’s just as much an belabored, overambitious, and bloated mess as the company itself was for most of its existence.

Chris Hero vs. Masato Tanaka, DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2014 (4/4/2014)

It’s fun.

It’s also objectively kind of disappointing.

It’s both fun and disappointing.

There’s a lot of reasons for that. There’s not a lot of energy in this crummy venue, Tanaka doesn’t put his best foot forward, and Hero is smart enough not to hurl out everything he has when he’s losing. The main thing here, and it’s a problem with a lot of matches like these when other Japanese legends go on tour to Western independents, is that it’s impossible to ever believe Hero can win.  It means that a match exists and it can be a lot of fun, but with the belief that either side can win taken away, it’s reduced to pure exhibition. That can change or at least the match can be elevated in spite of that with a great performance, as seen with Eddie Kingston’s against Daisuke Sekimoto when they met in ICW late in the decade, but Hero isn’t exactly Kingston here.

It’s not the blowaway great kind of a match against a foreign opponent that Hero will go on to have in 2016, but it’s a good solid match. Fun groundwork, decent bomb throwing, the works. It’s a dream match that never entirely comes together as more than two great wrestlers throwing their stuff out there at each other, but it’s very hard for me to call it bad when just about everything they did had some level of quality to it. It’s a match about doing stuff, but these two have great stuff to do, and are really good at doing stuff.

It’s disappointing, for sure, but great matches can be disappointing too.

***

AR Fox vs. Chris Hero, DGUSA Way of the Ronin (2/23/2014)

This was for Fox’s EVOLVE Title.

Not that you would be able to tell that, or tell anything, given that this show seemingly took place entirely in the dark. Big shout out to Gabe for ruining everybody’s eyes with this Battle of Winterfell ass lighting. It actually rules to barely be able to see things.

All that said, it’s a slam dunk application of formula. Hero subtly becomes more and more of a bully as the match goes on. New York is big into Hero still and won’t boo, and they’re smart enough to never cross a line with Hero’s bullying to deny the fans the ability to do what they want. At the same time, he’s domineering enough in all these clean ways that it gets the crowd more into AR Fox as the match goes on. Outside of that, you know EXACTLY what this is. It’s what you want out of this match. Hero beats the shit out of AR Fox, and he tries to find ways into stuff and to pull off his big and flashy spots. It’s not all perfect, some stuff could have been placed a little better, Hero abuses his offense a little too much, and Hero’s also guilty of an all-time bad catch spot of a 450 Splash into a cravat, but for the most part, it’s exactly right.

Defying and/or subverting expectations can be real cool sometimes, but with a thing like this, sometimes it’s cool to get exactly the thing that you thought you were going to get.

Hero wins the EVOLVE Title with a god damner of a Stretch Plum following the second Death Blow of the contest.

It’s a hard thing to earnestly recommend this to anyone given that it’s hard to see a lot of the time, but if you can get over that and if the mouth waters reading “Chris Hero vs. AR Fox”, this one’s not going to let you down.

***1/4

 

Johnny Gargano vs. Chris Hero, DGUSA Freedom Fight (11/17/2013)

This was for Gargano’s Open the Freedom Gate title.

More importantly, it’s the return of arguably the greatest independent wrestler (as a concept) ever, Chris Hero, to his environment after nearly two years in captivity.

Unfortunately, with the sheen of “CHRIS HERO IS BACK, HELL YEAH” having been worn off by another three years and change on the indies, a second less-than-ideal run through NXT and what seems like a pending return to wrestling outside the mainstream system, this match is left entirely on its own. The result is not quite so kind. Something about it all feels weirdly off. Gargano is no great heel once the bell rings, which hurts it, but it just never entirely comes together on the whole. Gargano briefly works the arm but lets it go. Hero unloads a lot of stuff. It aims for epic, and the performance is there from Hero, but the environment is all wrong. Save for a Pedigree kickout (ugh, i know), the crowd’s not great. Mostly, it’s that Gargano doesn’t have a lot to offer in this role outside of promo work and is not very good in longer matches when working from above. He has his gifts, and this role asks him to use very few of them.

Hero passes out in the Gargano Escape, as he was always going to. The scene’s changed enough that Chris Hero is a legend upon his return, and independent wrestling is more often than not more focused on the newest and shiniest and brightest objects. The shame is less in what happened and more in how little the match worked outside of a few major moments, but that’s gonna happen when it largely just exists to try and get eyes on the tepid Gargano heel act, and when you utilize a guy in said heel act in a way that plays to almost none of his strengths.

They’ve got a much much better one in them.

The redeeming part of this is being taken back to a time when an independent wrestling crowd instinctively knew to cheer when someone kicked out of a Pedigree at one. Always uplifting to see people know what’s right and what isn’t on a gut level. Beyond that, it’s incredibly fascinating to see both EVOLVE and its fans embrace that, given how willingly they would all crawl under the thumb two or three years later and stay there until the bubble popped.

Johnny Gargano vs. Shingo Takagi, DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate (4/6/2013)

This was for John Boy’s DGUSA Open the Freedom Gate Title.

Somehow, this works.

I mean like really works.

It’s big and stupid and a classical indie or DG style bombfest, but it just WORKS. It’s not pristine exactly, Johnny Gargano never quite turns into a guy with a great working elbow despite always being a guy who loves to throw an elbow, and you could definitely stand to cut a FEW minutes near the end before they get to the point, but enough goes right that it doesn’t matter all that much.

Heartbreakingly, it’s not all Shingo.

Johnny Gargano is genuinely really good here. It’s a less emotive performance than I expected, and that’s great for John Boy. In a rarity in his career, he’s able to communicate a simple story and a transformation without it ever feeling like he or the company is shouting at you to look at the story. Lenny Leonard deserves so much praise for the way he handles this too, never once drawing attention to the small little things Gargano does until he goes all the way with it at the end. You’re not an idiot, you can pay attention. Johnny’s thrown off by the crowd not loving him in comparison to the ultra cool and commanding Shingo Takagi, and thrown off even more by how nothing really seems to work. Shingo’s tougher and stronger then him, but still quick enough for Johnny’s athleticism not to have the effect it has against other guys like Takagi in the past. Johnny slowly gets more and more desperate, before the big turn happens. The way that’s handled is also terrific, with one accidental ref bump giving Gargano just enough time to survive the Last Falconry, so he then purposely sets up a second one to give him the opening to kick Our Hero in the tube and choke him out with tape, hidden in the Gargano Escape for the win.

Mechanically, Johnny’s also better than ever. He spent 2012 kind of slowly moving towards no longer being bad, but this is the first time he’s ever looked like a great wrestler. The weaknesses are almost entirely gone in a match like this, and he has a snap and smoothness to the majority of the things he tries that makes it all work better than any other match he’s had up to this point and most of the matches he’ll have after this point.

Shingo Takagi is totally in his element in a match like this though, and it shows. For all Gargano does right in a match that’s about him, it’s still very much a Shingo Takagi match. It’s the sort of constant action escalating pace kind of a match he’s had with a bunch of other people with similar skillsets to Gargano before and after. Gargano’s maybe mechanically better than BxB Hulk in the 2010 de apuestas match, even if he lacks the same spirit. Gargano’s maybe mechanically worse than Will Ospreay in the 2019 BOSJ finals, but relative to that, he displays a stunning control over his worse habits and puts forth a much more believable and tangible sort of performance. But Shingo is one of the best ever at matches like these, and it’s among his best. He has the energy, all his stuff looks and sounds perfect, but he’s also so smart at pacing these matches. No point in this ever feels wasted, it never feels early on like they’re just filling space, and up until a briefly repetitive final few moments, there’s always another thing coming. Takagi and Gargano build things up and pay them off later on and the most important thing they slowly reveal over the course of the match is that for once, Gargano has absolutely no path to defeat this guy who might actually be the best in the world.

Up against that wall, the coward within comes to the forefront. It’s the entire point of the match and it comes off perfectly. It’s a testament to how far John Boy’s come that it works as well as it does. It’s a testament to Shingo Takagi that even having said that, I’m convinced this is a real eye roller if they try to do it with Gargano against anybody else.

If it doesn’t go down as the best singles match of Johnny Gargano’s career, and there’s a few matches over the next five years or so that make that a strong “maybe”, I cannot imagine it falling out of the top five.

***1/2

Ricochet vs. Akira Tozawa, DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate (4/6/2013)

A perfect Mania weekend dumb spotfest.

The sort of match you watch around the time it happens and get blown away by because it’s this delightful fireworks show, then watch back nearly eight years later and don’t really love the same way anymore, but still really like.

It’s a style that doesn’t always hold up as being THAT great, but when done with the honesty and total lack of pretense as this was, that still has a certain charm to it. Ricochet is an unbelievable athlete. He can do the meaner and ruder show-off stuff and it’s what he’s better at, but at this point in time in his athletic prime, there’s really nothing like when he decides a match is with 1000% of his effort and he just goes off. One of the best athletes ever in wrestling, which reveals itself not only in one totally nutty dive but also in some of the obscene bumps he decides to take. On the other side of the match, Akira Tozawa is Akira Tozawa. A total ball of energy, an incredible striker, just good at everything that this specific style of match asks him to do. It’s a weirder fit, but when both men bust ass like they do here for a Mania Weekend crowd, there’s enough for it all to still really work. Not everything has to be some deeply well thought of marvel, so long as it doesn’t pretend to be.

After a hundred cool things, Ricochet wins with the 630. Like always, a match entirely about big dumb shit should end with the biggest and dumbest possible thing.

***

Johnny Gargano vs. Jon Davis, DGUSA Revolt! (1/26/2013)

This was a no ropes match for the Open the Freedom Gate Title.

Much like the big “I Quit” match of the previous summer against Big Dust, this is a match with enough shortcuts and nonsense needed to give John Boy a big win in a great match. The no ropes thing doesn’t come into this a whole lot, sadly, but what they do with it is decent enough. A platform to dive off of and a creative way to escape holds. They’re more interested in gross spots with ladders and chairs and hey, fair enough. Johnny gets Davis inside a ladder to help the Gargano Escape and he passes out. Doesn’t feel like the sort of hold or situation where he passes out and also Davis is the heel and not turning face or really doing anything after this, so it’s all a little weird. But a Johnny Gargano blowoff having a finish that doesn’t totally fit into everything else they were doing is hardly a novelty throughout his career.

It’s not incredible or anything. John Boy still makes his faces and isn’t an especially sympathetic babyface yet, despite his clear mechanical improvements by this point that make him, frustratingly, no longer a rotten wrestler and merely one with a less-than-stellar brain directing his actions. Jon Davis is really really fucking great in this though, and Gargano does literally the exact amount necessary to keep up.

***

El Generico vs. Sami Callihan, DGUSA Uprising (11/3/2012)

This is best of three falls match. Before the match, El Generico finds one of the Los Angelitos far from home –

The match itself is tremendous. They take a novel approach to the three fall structure and while it’s too tall a mountain to climb to say that much of anything from DGUSA or EVOLVE in 2012 is capital m Memorable exactly, this is really interesting and the most lower case m memorable thing a Gabe fed has produced in 2012 that didn’t involve Fit Finlay.

Sami baits Generico into rushing him to start, and then he blocks the Brainbuster into a cradle to go up 1-0. From there, he goes after El Generico’s knee much earlier than he did in May. Sami made the mistake of treating El Generico then like any other high flier or light heavyweight where he can zero in on a leg at the end to set up the Stretch Muffler, but he got caught with a Brainbuster out of nowhere to win, when El Generico was more resourceful and much tougher than other wrestlers Sami had tried that on. Here, he actually changes something that he did. Sami Callihan does a lot of things right, but outside of the Finlay series, he’s rarely ever showed progress or attention to long term storytelling like he does.

Smartly, the payoff isn’t immediate.

El Generico is still El Generico.

He’s just as tough and resourceful as he was when they fought half a year ago, and now he has the added advantage of both knowing Sami Callihan and knowing that he can beat Sami Callihan. He rallies again, as he does, and sells the leg even better now. Sami stuffs the Brainbuster out of nowhere because Generico’s leg is more damaged now than it was in that first match. But it doesn’t matter, because El Generico has it in him to hit it anyways.

This is how you vanity sell.

The lift on one leg is impressive enough, beyond simply the idea of it.

Most impressive is the way Generico almost loses him once he has him up, registering the weight he has to carry on one leg, before snapping down and hitting it in a grosser way than usual. It’s perfect stuff, really really incredible, and it gives Generico the second fall to even it out.

The leg’s still hurt though, and it’s now that Sami’s work pays off. I love that. I love that it took a while. Sami wasn’t able to do what he wanted in May, he wasn’t able to do all he wanted in the first two falls, but he played a long game when El Generico didn’t. Generico pretty much did all he was ever going to do on one leg simply to stay in the match, so it’s as much Callihan’s smart first fall tactic that gets the job done here as the knee work that actually wins him the third. Generico tries, but Sami Callihan doggedly sticks with the Stretch Muffler like never before. He sits down with it while holding El Generico at a side angle, and Generico finally has to give up.

One of the very few triumphs of booking in these first few years of Gabe running his own shop. Using El Generico solely for dream matches was whatever, but he managed to rehab him with the Samuray Del Sol series and the tag team matches he worked, on top of the win over Callihan in May. The result is that a thing like this can happen and it doesn’t feel like an eye roller or a put on. El Generico’s reputation, now actually established in the company itself, can be used both to elevate Sami Callihan with a win that he had to actually change something about himself to earn, and to tell the story of Callihan becoming more focused in pursuit of a title.

Now, why it took him until late 2012 to get behind Sami Callihan to this extent is another question entirely, but nobody ever accused Gabe of being quick on the draw.

***1/2

 

Super Smash Bros. vs. Inner City Machine Guns, DGUSA Uprising (11/3/2012)

These are two of the best independent tag teams of the first half of the decade and almost definitely could have had an even better match than this. That being said, this is awesome anyways.

They very clearly hold back in the first half, but do so in a way that doesn’t bother me quite so much as someone might think. Ricochet is super cocky about this and doesn’t take them seriously at all. AT ALL. He’s fucking around, breaking out some taunts, and keeping it all very simple. Rich Swann does what he can, but follows his lead as the less experienced guy.

Then a switch flips and they start doing some very very cool shit.

In particular, the smaller ring and Ricochet’s freak athleticism make a few more ordinary things even cooler looking.

The final thirty seconds or so are also really really great. Cool ideas, perfectly executed, and it manages to give a definitive win to the SSB while still largely coming out of nowhere.

As regular as they team, Ricochet and Swann still feel like a superteam, and this is about how a superteam should lose to a more regular and established pair of tag team specialists. It’s especially how a Ricochet superteam should lose at this point. He finishes like he started, getting overconfident, not totally getting the situation he’s in, and eating shit.

Far from perfect, but a tremendous affair in the end.

***1/4

Akira Tozawa vs. Samuray Del Sol, DGUSA Uprising (11/3/2012)

Another banger.

Nobody is killing themselves in DGUSA, especially in front of the Voorhees Skate Zone crowd that has the energy and life of a crypt, but two great wrestlers do a really good job regardless and manage to briefly raise thhe dead. Easy story as Del Sol wants to fly and Tozawa doesn’t want him to. Tozawa hurls him around and tries to strike him out of the crowd.

Cool moves, gross stuff on the apron, a few big dives, etc. They don’t all have to be mat classics, you know? Hit each other really hard, do a dive, drop each other on your brains a few times. As long as there’s no pretense that this is anything else beyond a display of cool shit, fucking have at it. Go wild. Tozawa is pushed far enough by the kid, but is still the better wrestler and the star of the two, so he wins with the Package German Suplex. Perfect undercard junior heavyweight move fest, like Gargano/Eita the night before, a fun as hell TV style showcase in its own way.

This is hardly my favorite kind of wrestling, but when it’s as fast, efficient, and fun as these two make it, it’s the sort of thing that I think only a joyless scold could actually have a problem with.

***