Virus vs. Flamita, Lucha Memes Chairo Kingdom (3/31/2019)

God yes.

It is not, like, the fifteen to twenty minute title match style classic that they maybe could have had in a better world half a decade earlier. It is not even fifteen minutes in the year in which it happens. It’s a ten minute relative sprint in the middle of a Lucha Memes show, which is not exactly the number one priority of either Virus or Flamita at this specific moment in time.

Having said all of that, whatever, it’s still a blast.

Virus predictably gels super well with a fluid high flier who has a lot of neat offense to break out, Flamita predictably gels super well with one of the best bases there is who can also adapt to his more action-oriented style, and the effort is there too. Nine or ten minutes in the hands of lesser wrestlers is an excuse, and in the hands of Virus and Flamita, it is not. They pack the match not only with a ton of really cool things, but also assemble a real tight thing on its own. Teases and payoffs, proper escalation, the idea of Virus trying and failing to contain Flamita and having to throw out some rarer and more impactful offense to keep up, it’s spectacular and sensible all at once.

The boys, unsurprisingly, pull it together and deliver a match worthy of the anticipation.

Virus wins with a real sick Kudo Driver.

If your eyes light up at seeing “Virus vs. Flamita” up there in the lights (in this case, the lights mean the title of this post on whatever service you use to initially view the drops), then no matter what this isn’t, it’s still probably going to do at least something for you. Not the greatest in the world or the ideal version of the thing, but what it is is too good and too fun and too nice to see out there in the actual world to deny.

Some of the easiest math around results in a predictably great match.

***

Bandido vs. Flamita, FCP Project Mayhem VII Night One (9/28/2018)

(photo credit to Oli Sandler)

A significantly better match than their 2018 Battle of Los Angeles tournament match.

How much had to do with the unbelievably good and charming (a rare quality for a crowd in this country) chant for Bandido to the tune of “Maneater” by Hall & Oates, “WHOA OH HERE HE COMES, HE‘S A BANDIDO!” and then also the same for Flamita, because that rhymes too?

Listen, I am never going to lie to you.

That is part of it.

I am going to respect a good bit when it is put in front of me.

More than that though, I think there‘s just an energy to this match that was missing there. Chalk it up to a hot crowd moreso than just the chant, or chalk it up to Bandido and Flamita simply having two better nights here than they did then, or many other times when they face each other. You could also, and this is probably a not so insignificant part of it too, chalk it up to them not doing any song and dance era PWG bullshit at the start and instead getting right to it, so that by the time they got to the really really cool stuff, my patience had not been exhausted and I could enjoy it so much more. 

Whatever it is, it works here more than it usually does.

Removed from all of the reasons these two sometimes have struggled in singles matches in their indie runs, what we have here is a pure and unabashed fireworks display. It is not the most airtight or perfectly executed one, of course. I will always prefer them as a tag team to them ever wrestling each other. However, this is the one of the bunch that leaves me very little to complain about and that is able to access the rarer part of my brain that is entirely fine with a million spots in a row and zero thought beyond that.

The trick is to cut out everything but the coolest shit possible, and finally, these two got that right.

Of all of them, the one to watch.

***

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.

***

Flamita/Bandido vs. The Rascalz, DG Open the New Years Gate 2018 Day Three (1/16/2018)

This rocked.

I am not the biggest fan in the world of any of these four wrestlers (one in particular…), but this is some great bullshit. Peak era WCW Monday Nitro level cruiserweight bullshit, simply giving some talented guys like ten minutes, and getting entirely out of the way. That doesn’t make it perfect, not by any means. There are a few bits where someone gets caught waiting for a thing or where something isn’t timed or executed to absolute perfection.

Would I have liked this a whole lot less on an average U.S. indie?

Almost definitely!

There are so many things that could have impeded this. Bad commentary, more than one camera shot to really rub it in if things didn’t go exactly one hundred percent perfectly, more annoying fans doing more than simply cheering and going nuts, and probably other issues with American fans that I haven’t even thought of. It could have been so much worse than it was, in almost any other setting.

Did I like it in the format in which it was presented, a single camera shot of a Korakuen Hall crowd losing its shit for a bunch of incredibly cool stuff in quick succession?

Yes.

Absolutely, I did. It fucking rocked, watching a delightful little chunk of bullshit, executed and presented as well as possible.

That’s what matters the most, more than anything else. Wrestling is wild. I can one hundred percent see myself hating another version of this, but here and now, I loved this one. As it was, it totally and completely worked, even if it won’t always.

A truly stellar fireworks display.

***1/7

Mark Andrews vs. Flamita, PROGRESS Super Strong Style 16 2017 Night One (5/27/2017)

[EDIT: everyone worked very hard and did their best. :)]

***

Flamita vs. AR Fox, THE CRASH (1/21/2017)

This was for Flamita’s The Crash Cruiserweight Title.

Honestly, it is just unbelievably god damned cool that this happened. Two of the decade’s more consistently great fliers, total maniacs, and who’ve run in largely different circles but sort of briefly the same universe, between Flamita’s mid 2010s Dragon Gate run, and AR Fox’s DGUSA work. It is not the sort of thing one would maybe dream up immediately, but it is the sort of thing one comes across and goes “oh, hell yeah” to.

“Dream match” is maybe the most overused term in pro wrestling. It’s applied to every match that anyone could have conceivably thought “hey, that’d be cool” about between two guys who are known commodities. It’s not even a recent thing, it’s been like this for as long as I’ve been a fan. Like, unless we’re talking about something like a Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher, Kenta Kobashi vs. Kensuke Sasaki, or a John Cena vs. AJ Styles, it’s not really, you know? You didn’t dream about it. Come on now. Be honest with your language, or at the very least, don’t be quite so lazy with those descriptions.

There are a million matches like this though, a Would This Be Sick? Match.

If the goal of matches like this is to answer that question in any number of ways with any number of qualifiers or explanations as to why the answer was no or some caveat placed outside of a positive affirmation, the classic Yeah But, then this match responds with one of the best possible answers.

Plainly and simply, yes.

It would be and is fairly sick.

There’s nothing to this that one would not have expected or imagined, even down to not going ten thousand percent lampshade on head insane on account of it only being The Crash. There are some cool dives, sweet move, and a few great nearfalls. AR Fox is really fun as a kind of stooging foreign heel who is here to deliver a good match and then eat shit on the way down. Everything they do is crisp and the match wastes very little movement. It is a thing that knows entirely what it is about and what just about everyone expects of it, and it delivers that and only that, which is a quality that I’ve grown a lot of respect for over the years.

A delightful little thing, so long as you approach it reasonably.

three boy

 

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

Dragon Lee vs. Flamita, LLE on Lucha Azteca 7 (8/21/2016)

You know what this was.

I’m not going to lie to you. I never am.

Fortunately, both Dragon Lee and Flamita also totally understood what this was. Through no attempts to lie about it, no attempts to stretch the thing out to some artificial length and keeping around a tight ten to fifteen, nor the ways a three fall structure can undermine matches like this by adding premature pauses to the action, they wound up having a real fun match.

Pure fireworks and empty calories, but it’s the summer, and this is the time for those things.

tres niño

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

Flamita vs. Dragon Kid, DG Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival 2014 (7/20/2014)

This was for Flamita’s Open the Brave Gate Title

It’s a great match. Dragon Kid is restrained enough to not fall into any usual traps such as limb work or too many elbow exchanges. He’s no longer cutting edge like he was a decade prior, but Flamita is now and there’s a satisfying and easily great fireworks show element to this. It’s what always could have been in the best possible situation, and they were lucky enough to be allowed to have the most obvious sort of a match.

The only real issue with this was that I watched this during the 2021 NBA playoffs and with the Clippers going down 2-0 to the Mavs after previously tanking out of the Lakers’ side of the bracket, I was left thinking about what a loser franchise it is and how fun Lob City was.

If you are industrious enough, you can find this match.

However, this is a shorter and more entertaining video:

Flamita won with the Flam Fly.

Great match.

***