Naruki Doi vs. Takehiro Yamamura, DG King of Gate 2017 Night Thirteen (6/1/2017)

This was a C Block match in the 2017 King of Gate tournament.

If you have been reading, a match like this is no surprise.

Takehiro Yamamura takes it to one of the pillars of Dragon Gate, and has an exceptional match in the middle of a show. You’ve seen it earlier in the tournament with CIMA and earlier in the year against Masaaki Mochizuki and T-Hawk. As far as a match formula and/or explanation goes, “Yamamura goes after Dragon Gate main eventer” is maybe the single surest bet anywhere in professional wrestling in 2017.

Naruki Doi plugged into the formula is no exception.

If you haven’t been paying attention before, unless you wound up on this specific review by accident (I am sure these things occasionally happen, I don’t want to rule it out), I don’t imagine that this being great too is (a) much of a surprise at all & (b) hell, I also don’t think you’re reading this in the first place. The real hardcores clicked on this one, and I thank them for it. They’re the ones who either already know how great 2017 Takehiro Yamamura was, or they’re the ones who read everything. Either way, they’re also the ones who might not be THAT surprised when Yamamura finds himself either in or around the top ten Wrestlers of the Year when the 2017 YEAR IN LISTS is all said/written and done.

Doi doesn’t get as mad as the other wrestlers in this sort of a match, but he’s a great Yamamura opponent anyways.

This is something closer to a normal Dragon Gate match, rather than a full on sprint. Not so much in the sense that there is pointless limb work and that it goes on too long or anything, but that Doi doesn’t really have and has never had real next-level hostility in his heart and instead, it is just a good ass regular match. The joy of the thing doesn’t come in the desperation and violent spirit throughout, but more in the classic execution of perfect formula.

Yamamura’s late match runs of offense are immense, and as great as anything in the world. The strength of the match is less in what happens and moreso in the feeling created by both what has happened in Yamamura matches before and the way in which things happen here. It’s not to say the other great Yamamura singles matches haven’t had these great, believable, and dramatic nearfalls, but it is to say that in a match without quite as much hostility and contempt permeating every second of the thing, I am even more impressed with just how believable it is that Yamamura can take this thing off of some real mid-level shit. I bought a nearfall off of a simple head kick and moments later, on a sunset flip reversal, for example

It’s not quite a miracle what happens here, it works because of the last four or five months of booking, but it is a truly exceptional thing all the same, that would have seemed like a nonsense fantasy even six months earlier. It’s a testament to Dragon Gate booking, absolutely, but maybe even moreso to Yamamura for being so great in this role, and also Doi, for being so great in a role that is much quieter, but maybe just as important to the success of a match like this.

Doi wins with the Bakatare Sliding Kick, but that’s not the point.

Once again, this is a match that is way more about not only the fight that Our Hero, young Yamamura showed, but in how far he pushed one of the pillars of this company. The journey over the destination, and once again, no other young wrestler in the world in 2017 creates more exciting and vibrant journeys than Takehiro Yamamura.

***

CIMA vs. Takehiro Yamamura, DG King of Gate 2017 Day One (5/9/2017)

This was a C Block match in the 2017 King of Gate tournament.

Yamamura does it again.

Once more in 2017 — the previous efforts in this genre resulting in two (2) of the best matches of the year so far — Takehiro Yamamura gets into a midcard sprint with one of Dragon Gate’s best and brightest, and delivers something real memorable.

This time it’s not so much because of the overwhelming quality of the match. This is a great match, but it is not the Mochizuki match and it sure as shit is not the T-Hawk match. It is a great match, but it’s not memorable because it’s great, you know? There are a lot of great matches that happen all the time. This is a memorable match because of the specific way in which it is great.

It is a Dragon Gate limb work match that actually rules.

CIMA comes in with a heavy brace on his right knee, and while it’s not an immediate active injury, it’s something he aggravates or re-aggravates early on when he double stomps Yamamura, as soon as he gets back on offense (you know that boy jumped a veteran AGAIN to start one of these matches, God bless him). Yamamura goes after it, and while it’s not exactly this maestro performance working a limb, it is every single thing it needs to be. Tentative at the start, both because it’s an unexpected break but also because CIMA is the leader of the stable that Yamamura’s in. Yamamura is mean, he’s desperate, and most importantly, he’s almost always after the thing.

The selling itself is generally pretty good. CIMA offers up nothing all that dramatic or showy like collapsing when running or bridging on one leg, thankfully, but the match also doesn’t really allow him the chance to mess it up with any sort of Dragon Gate Brain Sickness, because this match is only six minutes long. It’s not an “in addition to” here, because I’m pretty sure that the length of the thing is what allows it to be this focused, it’s certainly what allows this the brutal efficiency that it possesses, but beyond all of these virtues, it is also shockingly bold for a 2017 Dragon Gate match.

In response to the focused attack, CIMA is nowhere near urgent enough for how much Yamamura knows, how fast he is, and maybe most importantly, being just inexperienced and talented enough to have absolutely zero fear. He goes for fancy counters and llave holds when he ought to be targeting something else or hurling his own bombs out there to swarm the kid. It’s a big mistake, and one that CIMA pays for before he even knows he’s made it.

Yamamura rolls through one of CIMA’s many complex holds as a counter, and goes into an all-legs kind of Calf Killer, and CIMA actually gives it up.

A huge shocker, both in the sense that it’s a Dragon Gate limb work match that matters and treats that focal point like something of real consequence (because it is), but also because even beyond a Kagetora or whoever in a tag team match, this is a scalp for young Takehiro Yamamura that, independent of the how and what and when of the result itself, really does matter.

You can write it off as a weird injury-driven upset early on in a tournament. That’s fair, I won’t argue it too much. At the same time though, Yamamura’s still just a boy, and at this point, any win over a guy like CIMA feels like a monumental upset, and that’s the genius of it. CIMA can never lose anything by this point, especially in a loss like this, and Yamamura stood to gain so much. He’s not a made man, it’s not exactly 6/8/1990 over here, but it’s exactly enough to stand out in a big way.

The real surprise is that Dragon Gate had both the guts and the brains to go through with something like this, the total inverse of every single problem I’ve ever had with them as a promotion.

***

Shingo Takagi vs. Kzy, DG King of Gate 2016 Day Ten (5/28/2016)

This was an A Block match in the 2016 King of Gate tournament.

Kzy is not at the absolute peak of his powers that he’ll hit around the start of 2018, but he’s close enough to it that this matters. It’s not that this is their only ever singles match, or even their only one on tape. It is, however, their only (a) match on tape over 10:00 & (b) their only match on tape while both men could be considered great wrestlers.

Is this all it can be?

No.

This is a mid-tour match in a smaller venue, and not even the main event. It means that, while two wrestlers this talented and with a story this natural are generally going to produce a good to great match, they don’t go as far as they could. It’s not as big as it could be, nor as dramatic in the back third. There is a lot left on the table, and unfortunately, Dragon Gate wouldn’t go back to this in a singles environment before Takagi left the company two years and change later.

Is is still great?

God, yes.

Of course, you god damned maroon.

Shingo ain’t exactly Roddy, but he’s still ONE OF wrestling’s greatest bullies, and this is one of his great shows. Being that it’s a smaller show, what we lose in scope and drama and huge offense is made up for with a wonderful bully routine. Nasty cut offs, unbelievably mean-spirited taunts and offense, and before Kzy really developed a great ‘bow, Shingo also hits that classic veteran note of refusing to sell for bad strikes. Kzy matches him on the other end with a tremendously sympathetic performance. One of the best underdogs in Dragon System history doesn’t quite have a career performance, but it’s the sort of performance I mean when I say things like “every Kzy match is worth giving a shot to”. Good selling, horrific bumping, and an energy on the comeback that nobody else in this company really has, outside of the real elite babyfaces in company history.

In the end, Takagi cannot help but play with his food. Not so much that he has Kzy beaten only to let him up, that old trope doesn’t rear its head this time, but there’s not any real urgency to him, whereas Kzy is all urgency. It’s not quite that old idea of one side caring about this individual match more than anything else in the tournament, but it is a classic case of a tournament match in which one side clearly cares far more about the outcome than the other, resulting in the sort of thing that always makes that such an interesting story to watch. Shingo fails to break out his biggest stuff fast enough, and Our Hero immediately goes for what constitute as his nukes at this point. The Kzydian Destroyer sets Shingo up and Kzy pulls the rabbit out of the hat with the old Tornado Clutch. Much rejoicing.

A classic upset, if not an upset in a classic match.

They didn’t quite make it out of chicken shit so much as they did out of raw ingredients, but two all-time masters at making the best of Dragon Gate scraps put together a lovely little chicken salad sandwich here.

***

Shingo Takagi vs. Don Fujii, DG King of Gate 2016 Day Seven (5/22/2016)

This was an A Block match in the 2016 King of Gate tournament.

Shingo and The Big Don previously had a scorcher in October 2015 that slipped through the cracks for whatever reason (probably because it came before a more widely celebrated and far worse Shingo title match). It had the problems Dream Gate matches have where it wound up going on too long, because only long matches are great main events, but still rocked. I wrote at the time I last watched it that while that match was near half an hour and still a lot of fun, a fifteen minute version of this may well be one of the best matches of the year.

Sadly this is only twenty minutes exactly for a time limit draw, so we’ll never know.

However, we still get twenty minutes of these two with less bullshit and less wasted space, and it kicks ass.

It’s another classic style psuedo heavyweight match out of Dragon Gate.

Tons of hittiing, some cool power moves, great escalation, all of that. It’s not without waste, as Fujii and Takagi cannot help themselves and waste just a few minutes on Shingo’s arm. Even then, it’s Shingo Takagi, and he makes the most of that for the second time in the tournament with another really good transition selling performance. Little shakes of the arm minutes after Fujii’s forgot, stretching of the arm later on. Again, it’s nothing complex or showy, but enough to show that it mattered. Even if it wasn’t vital to anything all that important later on, it’s a nice show of respect for our time.

Like other matches like this, there’s also an easy story to tell, and one that they hammer home time and time again. Fujii is old but tricky, Shingo is the best in the company but hot-headed as hell. Fujii keeps frustrating him, but gets his ass kicked worse every time he does it. At the end though, because it’s a tournament and they only have twenty to play with in the King of Gate, it turns out Fujii’s been playing the long game all along. With time limited, Shingo throws the book at the old man, but just runs out of time.

Fujii hangs on, pulls off the most frustrating result of all for a guy like Takagi (neither destroying Fujii a second time, nor being outright beaten, so not even being met fairly by another strong wrestler), and that’s that.

It’s not a win, but in a setting like this, I think it might feel even better.

Don Fujii never had any real chance in this tournament, but Shingo did, and Fujii helps take some of that away from him. Too young to explore the world, too old to explore the stars, but still having just enough left to destroy the work of the former and the dreams of the latter. God bless him, man.

Not as large in scale or impressive in quality as their 2015 title match, but a great match for all the same reasons.

***

Shingo Takagi vs. YAMATO, DG King of Gate 2016 Day Two (5/11/2016)

This was an A Block match in the 2016 King of Gate.

Once again, this is one of those matches in Dragon Gate that rarely ever misses. They have one big standout hit to my memory, and it’s the one this match (and tournament) sets up, but I’ve rarely ever been let down by his pairing.

To get it out of the way, obviously, this didn’t need to happen.

YAMATO winning King of Gate 2016 is one of the most obvious tournament picks of the entire decade across all of professional wrestling, set up by a face turn against the heel champion, with a tournament determining who challenges said champion at the biggest show of the year for the company. Running the match two months before said biggest show of the year, either to try and add something to it (maybe works, but not REALLY) or more likely in an attempt to try and put the tournament more in doubt (absolutely fails), is an unforced error. For those reasons, but also for the extremely obvious one that with a gigantic match coming up, they’re obviously not going to put their best work on an early-tournament Korakuen Hall match!

That being said?

Still rocks.

A three-quarters or two-thirds strength version of this match still delivers the sort of quality heavyweight(ish) ass kicking that you watch these sorts of matches for.

YAMATO and Shingo have a whole lot of chemistry in every possible combination. Great strikes, cool holds, tremendous reactions in every possible way. YAMATO displays signs of the old Sickness but there is no better wrestler in Dragon Gate to do that on, because Shingo will make it matter, no matter what the context is. Shingo gets the thing almost everyone else here doesn’t, which is that he has to not only keep selling the limb in appropriate ways, but when still using it, show that doesn’t really have another option. This isn’t exactly Shingo/Tozawa from 2011 in that respect, but Shingo still does the work nobody else is either able or willing to do, even in a match like this when it doesn’t matter all that much.

(Given that it doesn’t matter all that much, it’s all the more impressive.)

As expected, a lot is left on the table. They avoid a lot of the big stuff, opting for something more akin to a great TV version of something instead. VerserK interferes, stops YAMATO’s half-assed boring new unit from doing the same, and Shingo guns the weakling down with the Pumping Bomber.

It’s a match with objectives that won’t work, and that will be wildly eclipsed by a later effort, but that doesn’t mean this one isn’t also pretty great. An easy one to have missed at the time, Lord knows that I did.

***

 

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. T-Hawk, DG King of Gate 2016 Day Two (5/11/2016)

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

It’s great again, as you can expect with these two at this point.

More importantly, it’s here that I begin to truly wonder if it was a legal obligation for every match in this tournament to begin with someone being attacked on the apron during their entrance. It is the third match in this tournament in a row that I’ve watched in which that happens. Thankfully, this match breaks the bad habit of the previous two as stunningly (for a Mochizuki match that is, he’s as big an example of DG Brain Sickness as anyone else), and there is not so much of a hint of attacks to a limb to be found in this match.

Instead of wasting time on such frivolity or becoming a more light-minded pure fireworks show like CIMA/Tozawa or Eita/Tozawa before it, this is something just a little bit better, as the greatness of what the King of Gate can be rears its head.

Mochizuki and T-Hawk spend ten or twelve minutes here simply beating the shit out of each other.

For once in Dragon Gate, there is no pretense to the thing.

Instead, two old enemies tee off on each other in all sorts of different ways for the entire match. It’s hateful, rude, mean-spirited, as openly disrespectful as possible within this style and company, and an absolute blast. Not all of it is absolutely perfect, as you get a few shitty no-sells (the worst of which being Mochizuki just totally shrugging off T-Hawk’s finisher) and some sequences that aren’t the best. Mostly though, it’s just SUCH a refreshing change of pace for this company. As much fun as the fireworks shows and intricate displays of athleticism can be, it’s always a treat to get a real and proper show of contempt like this.

Dragon Gate being Dragon Gate, there is a sort of cosmic price for getting something this good and simple, of course. Everybody pays the fiddler, and that price is that after totally no-selling T-Hawk’s Night Ride finish, Mochizuki then soundly wins this big dick measuring contest by kicking his head in a few different ways and ending the match with his triangle Gamenguri for a clean, definitive, and once more incredibly frustrating finish.

However, that is Dragon Gate. It has never been for me, and I have been educated time and and time again that while I will often get things I enjoy like this, there will always be some price at the end. Asking for things from this company is wishcasting using the monkey paw, and often times, I am not specific enough. One of the greatest units of all time in the original Monster Express can be had, but only if they’re never quite used as they could be. Shingo Takagi can finally have his long reign, but it’s neither going to go nor end in ways I’d enjoy the most. And for a match like this, they can finally have one free of all the bullshit, but this is how it’s gotta end.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

As long as they can be as fun as this was for 99% of the runtime, I will keep forking over that cash (spiritually, i’m not some kind of a fucking mark here) and getting in line.

Not the absolute best-case scenario here, but at least something close to it for Dragon Gate, as while once again refusing to stop eating their young, it is at least a short match that kicks a ton of ass.

***+

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

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

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

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

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

This is that match, basically.

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

As that match was great, so is this.

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

***

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

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

I’m not going to lie to you.

This is not a perfect match.

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes it is just fun to watch the bright lights.

***

Kzy vs. Kota Minoura, DG King of Gate 2021 Final (6/3/2021)

This was the 2021 King of Gate final.

I haven’t written a lot about Dragon Gate in 2021.

It’s still a promotion I like a lot. A certain pair of Dream Gate calls in July and early August sort of stamped down that burgeoning fandom I had built up again since late 2020, as YAMATO title wins always do,  I care about a good chunk of the characters, I watch probably at least two-thirds of the shows, and I like a whole lot of what still goes on. Unfortunately, so much of it exists in a “good, not great” zone, or like so much of their 2021 output, great in a way that I simply don’t have much to say beyond a statement of fact.

This is sort of on the borderline of that zone and the one where I feel more inclined to write about something, but fuck it.

It’s a really good and pretty fun match, in spite of the main factor against it, which is that nobody in Korakuen Hall is legally allowed to make noise beyond clapping.

Once more, Kzy is tremendous. He’s been the best wrestler in Dragon Gate for at least two or three years at this point (probably some time in 2018, as Shingo Takagi began to be phased down and T-Hawk left, with Masato Yoshino never quite being the same after his 2017? injury), and a match like this illustrates why. The perfect combination of energy and crispness that makes for the best wrestlers in this style, but without falling into the traps nearly as much.

Kota Minoura is far from a finished product. He clearly has something, an easy sort of a wrestler to watch (at least in a match like this, where he doesn’t make too many DG House Style mistakes), but there’s a lot still unrefined. His work in control is generally acceptable, and he has decent enough late match offense. Mostly though, it’s me here, so I mean that he needs to throw better elbows if he’s going to throw so many damn elbows. However, in this match, he only needs to be so good, because Kzy will do the rest.

Beyond just Kzy’s own mechanical skill, there’s a history that does a lot of lifting here, as a well-watched viewer will have ZERO problem imagining Kzy once again being passed over for one of the new golden boys. As a result, every little thing that goes wrong for Kzy feels like a million things are going wrong. Every minor slip or counter by Minoura has to be it, because there is always god damned something. There’s a history of failure to everything, as with all lovable loser franchises in sports, and so every time we (I imagine we are unified here. I don’t know why you would cheer for Kota Minoura in this scenario. Rooting against Kzy winning things is like rooting for the house at a casino.) aren’t left heartbroken, the tension increases that much more.

At the end, the Kzy Driller falls short once again, allowing just this little sliver of doubt, before Our Hero puts on a modified Koji Clutch — the Kzy Clutch, if you wheel — for the win. Something finally goes right around here in a high stakes match. For once, Dragon Gate’s old habit of eating their young feel good as hell.

There’ll be more to write about the topic later, but the shining grace of this match is that for a moment at the end and immediately after, I was able to believe just a little bit that maybe, just maybe, Kzy Time might finally translate into Kzy’s time.

three boy