YAMATO vs. Kzy, DG King of Gate 2018 Day One (5/8/2018)

This was an A Block match in the 2018 King of Gate tournament.

On paper, an outstanding match up.

Kzy is the best underdog babyface in all of wrestling at this point, a few months removed from one of the best Dream Gate matches of the decade and the clear highlight of Dragon Gate’s mediocre year, and delivers once again. Throw him against the ideal version of YAMATO — that 2013-2016 villain at the peak of his powers — and it could be something special. That’s not where we’re at now, unfortunately. YAMATO is not in his best form, not only just because he is a deeply boring and unlikeable protagonist who continues to occupy that role despite the last two years of being unflappably average in it, but also because he has recently received quite the dramatic haircut, and a YAMATO without long hair is a genuinely bizarre thing. On top of being in a role that’s wrong for him, it feels like something like eighty or ninety percent of his natural charisma and swagger has been taken away from him.

So, accounting for these things, instead of special, once again, we will have to settle for merely borderline great.

Turns out that they are pretty good at being borderline great.

(If I had to sum up YAMATO in one sentence, this one is probably in the running?)

YAMATO may be lacking in the accoutrements, but the mechanical stuff all works out real well. He hits hard, does all the little things well he always did, and it helps a lot that he’s in there with Dragon Gate’s best babyface and doesn’t try too hard to fight it, meaning that even if he isn’t smirking up a storm and sauntering around the ring, he is not cast as the hero of this story. Said hero of this story spends most of the match showing exactly why at least one-half of this match is cast in the perfect role. His shots are even harder and tighter, he bumps like a wild man, all of his offense is not only only cool but lands in that area on a venn diagram in between exciting and genuinely likeable, and he’s so sympathetic. It is not some top ten Kzy babyface performance, but in a more casual way, the sort of performance in a fairly standard match that illustrates why I have such a high opinion of the man.

Outside of a moment where Kzy loses his head and tries knee work (one swiftly moved on from before too much damage can be done), it’s also yet another example of King of Gate bringing the best out of a lot of DG singles pairings. These two could easily have a half-hour Dream Gate match that does nothing for me, but (mostly) stripped of the time available to waste, it’s just an incredibly simple kind of a match. A veteran heavyweight bombs out a smaller newcomer to the upper reaches of the card, puts him to the test, and the match delivers the artillery in relatively short and efficient order.

This being Dragon Gate though, Kzy simply cannot be allowed to prosper, and loses to YAMATO’s Ragnarok.

Certainly a version of this that feels more like a trial run than the finished product, something clearly in need of an obvious tweak or maybe a less obvious shift, but all the same — to keep hammering the same thing home when something in 2018 Dragon Gate (aside from the clear highlight linked earlier in this piece) tends to work out — sometimes, it’s just a little too hard to overcome talent.

Yet again, an example out of this company of just what can kind of casually happen when nobody’s fighting upstream.

***

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Kzy, DG Kotoka Road to Final Day Five (2/7/2018)

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

A few months ago, some time in November or December 2022 (writing this on 2/17/2023), I stumbled upon the movie GO (1999). For whatever reason, be it a good time watching it half drunk, the cast including a bunch of people I like a lot (Olyphant, Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, William Fichtner), it is a movie I have seen like four times in the last three or four months. I say all of that to say that hyperfixations are weird.

Most of the time, we do not choose the things we love.

For whatever reason, some time around 2015 or 2016, Kzy just grabbed onto me as one of my absolute favorite wrestlers in the world, and years later, it was incredibly cool to see him finally challenge for the Dream Gate. Even half a decade removed from this, now sort of armed with the knowledge that Kzy has become the next Akira Tozawa, really maybe the best wrestler in the entire company, but doomed to be a sort of People’s Champion who never wins the big one, I don’t care.

Kzy is my favorite wrestler in the promotion, and it is cool as hell to see him finally get a chance like this.

It is especially cool to see it go as well as this did, and by that, I mean that it is one of the very finest Dragon Gate singles matches — only topped by a few of this with far more history at their disposal than this, and one other aberration — of the entire decade.

The match is maybe not the number one best version of what it could be, this pure underdog title challenge, but I don’t care. Kzy’s control segment coming after Mochizuki’s feels just a little backwards. In fact, you could cut Kzy’s control segment entirely out of this and lose nothing, as it’s still a pure underdog kind of a match. Even when he’s briefly in control though, he never really feels in control. I am a Detroit Pistons fan (cannot imagine why I am drawn to the grittier underdog, such as the Bad Boy Natural Vibes), and so I know what it looks like when a less talented and/or less experienced side of a contest briefly takes control of the thing before the all-times wake up, and I guess that’s why I don’t care all that much in the end.

At its core, the meat of this thing is just too great.

Kzy is too likeable, Mochizuki is just a little too mean and domineering, and they build something together that is simply just too sturdy, too effective, and too satisfying to properly be denied.

Mochizuki does his best impression of a far better wrestler and Ace, and spends the match instead going after Kzy’s body. It is mean and nasty, less holds than stunningly brutal kicks and shots to the body, and arguably, that is even more effective. The bullying route rather than the stately prestige champion one. If the match’s goal is to legitimize Kzy — and half a decade later, it sure feels like it is — then this feels like the easiest way to do so. Not only give him a load of sympathy, but have him fight through it and beat ass anyways.

The match develops in the best way a big Dragon Gate epic ever can.

Kzy briefly targets the neck, and perfectly matches Mochizuki’s approach of attacking just the right part of the body to give this match a little depth and not feel like anyone is wasting time before they really flip the switch. When they do flip it in the back half, it’s out of this world great. A million really good nearfalls, and a few great ones. If they never quite get to that point of allowing me to believe in that oh so powerful well, maybe in regards to Kzy’s chances, they at least allow him the next best thing, which is not only to really push a pillar of the promotion/system in Mochizuki by surviving all of his biggest offense, but also by really pushing him to a point beyond that while delivering all of the offensive hits himself.

Mochizuki does not win by knockout or through any true impactful pinfall, but instead, Dragon Gate does the right thing for once and elevates Kzy through defeat in the way they haven’t done for anyone in a Dream Gate match maybe all decade. Kzy survives it all, counters it all, and fights evenly, right up until Mochizuki just barely rolls through the Tornado Clutch into a crucifix pin to win.

It’s the ideal, more or less. A Dream Gate match that is under twenty five minutes, without anything that feels like clear and obvious filler, that tells a clear and concise story, and that on top of that, genuinely accomplishes something. It is imperfect, I do not believe it is the best Dream Gate match of the decade, I don’t think it quite touches either the YAMATO/Yoshino or Yoshino/T-Hawk matches from late 2013, but it is a mother fucker nonetheless. It feels rude to one of my favorite wrestlers to say it has some great task before it, it does not feel like a real challenge to say the match’s goal is to ’make’ Kzy, he is such a naturally likeable wrestler that it feels like is is hardly any goal at all, like it is my goal as a bartender to sell (1) beer (people are going to want it regardless of anything I personally do), but they do such a stellar job of making the obvious that much more so.

Near perfect for what it is.

On top of being Mochizuki’s career match (and probably also Kzy’s, but this is about delivering the hot take, Kzy isn’t half of an alarmingly overrated Dream Gate match), it’s the last Dream Gate title match on this level for years and years (and counting). It sounds like an insult, but truly, I probably only need one hand to count the number of Dream Gate matches as great as this, and I might just have a few spare ones anyways.

***1/2

Masaaki Mochizuki/Susumu Yokosuka vs. YAMATO/Kzy, DG Open the New Years Gate 2018 Day Three (1/16/2018)

Textbook pro wrestling, and also so much more.

It’s not particularly fancy or novel, but there are few better ways to build up and/or set up a nice little title match (read: one that isn’t some monumental struggle months/years in the making), or even a nice big title match, than a simple tag team match. It works especially well like this when you’re just kind of springing something out of nowhere, but there are a million different ways it can work.

Case in point.

The goal of this match on paper is to get to a Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Kzy title match in February, but the real joy is in the way they get there.

Mochizuki vs. Kzy, as a title match, is easy enough to get to on paper, and they check off every box you want to get to (Kzy looks great, Kzy hangs with certified long term Dragon System top guys, Kzy gets the big win, etc.), and that you realistically need to check to make this work, given that Kzy hasn’t really spent much time on that level of the card as a singles wrestler before. The real exciting stuff comes in the variation on the theme though, how they do all of that, but do it kind of quietly, and allow the match to feel like something other than what it actually is. The picture comes into focus after the fact, and it’s both a more exciting and surprising outcome as a result.

The trick is that, for a big chunk of this match, this does not feel like a match that’s building up to a Kzy title challenge.

It’s not to say he is getting his ass kicked all the time, doing a YAMATO’s Little Buddy routine, but there isn’t a real clear focus. No bright lights on display effectively saying ’THIS IS KZY’S MATCH’ the entire time. It is sort of just a match, with YAMATO getting a little more focus. He’s the one performing the match’s big hot tag, he’s the one treated like a star, all of that. Had you just parachuted in (and didn’t know Mochizuki/YAMATO for the title happened not four months prior and also didn’t know that DG rarely runs match ups that close together), it would be real to simply view this as a match setting up another Mochizuki/YAMATO match.

That is, until suddenly in like the last fifth or sixth of the match, the match shifts completely into being this Kzy vs. Mochizuki showdown, and it is ELECTRIC. They clearly have immediate chemistry with each other. On the quasi-character level of a match, narratives being expressed through specific moves and ideas, Mochizuki’s natural grumpiness and pettiness contrasts perfectly with Kzy being really maybe the best babyface wrestler in the entire world at this point, and in terms of the mechanics of the matter, they both have real similar hitting-based styles that also blend together perfectly. It is, immediately, one of the best match ups in the company, even just seeing this little burst of it.

Kzy surprises the old man with the Kzydian Destroyer, and knocks just enough air out of him on a Hail Mary diving European Uppercut to score what feels like, in the moment, the biggest win of his career. There’s the Brave Gate victory and defenses, there are other big wins to be found, it’s not as if Kzy showed up in Dragon Gate a week before this match, but it feels like a first step onto a much higher level.

It would be a stretch to really call this a return to the Dragon Gate Magic of years past, but it is some picture perfect pro wrestling ass pro wrestling. An outstanding modern how-to guide on one of pro wrestling’s most basic and delightful concepts.

***+

 

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

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

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

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

Not to say it is bad.

The match is totally okay.

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

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

In this role, he does not have it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is an absolute blast.

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

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

It’s not all that complex.

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

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

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

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

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

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

***1/4

 

Spiked Mohicans vs. YAMATO/Kzy, DG Gate of Evolution 2017 Night Three (11/8/2017)

Before leaving for the WWE, Ricochet ditches the confines of his deeply boring New Japan run to return home for a little run, ending here with a reunion with his dad CIMA against two perfect opponents.

Spiked Mohicans along with that entire first few years of Ricochet in Dragon Gate at CIMA’s side, to me, represents the artistic peak of Ricochet’s career (give or take the El Generico series in PWG), and a show of just what he could have been. Largely held by the hand and plugged into a system rather than asked to lead himself, Ricochet was not only allowed to lean entirely upon his unreal athleticism, but cast in a position he’s rarely been cast in anywhere else. He is not an especially likeable presence, and his turn as an arrogant athletic marvel from 2010 through 2012 or so is the only real time he’s worked as a character too, and that his matches haven’t insisted on carrying an extra burden with them.

This match isn’t exactly a return to those ideas. The Ricochet who shows up here is still bald and bearded and ripped 2017 Ricochet. He throws out some power moves, strikes more, and in smaller doses, is as frustrating as he’s been for a while now. It’s a farewell stop that he didn’t have to make on his way to a big money contract, it’s not the sort of thing that’s really outright maddening, but it is what it is. 2011 Ricochet isn’t walking through that door.

However, it also isn’t not a return to those ideas.

Just by virtue of so often being against Kzy, and of teaming with CIMA against a wrestler like Kzy. Having become Dragon Gate’s best babyface in the year since Akira Tozawa left and with Masato Yoshino slowing down, Kzy is the sort of wrestler who sort of naturally brings it out of people, or at least naturally casts them as antagonists, turning every match in which he gets to really cook something up into being his story. When Kzy gets worked over for the middle of the match, even if Ricochet isn’t taunting him constantly or doing overtly showy spots (in an antagonistic way anyways), he’s still working from above against one of wrestling’s most compelling underdogs, and so thinks sort of work themselves out.

Mostly though, it’s just a great fireworks show.

Four wrestlers with a ton of real sick offense put on a stellar display in front of a typically receptive Korakuen Hall crowd. The Ricochet vs. Kzy run at the end is especially great and in general, Ricochet looks better than he has in a real long time here, cut down in large part to the most sensational pieces of offense in the finishing run, and plugged into a few key spots.

The only real disappointment is the end result, with Kzy losing to the Meteora followed by Ricochet’s Shooting Star Press, but again, that is the game we are playing. With extra eyes on the proceedings and in a big spot that matters, CIMA was never going to allow himself to lose, or more importantly, to be on the losing team, and so we get what we got. Usually, it happens in matches that aren’t nearly as much fun as this was.

A lovely departure from Dragon Gate for Ricochet, showing one last time that even if he can’t be fixed entirely anymore, there is just something about this environment that brings out the most acceptable version of him that exists at any point in time.

***

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.

***

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

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.

***

VerserK (Shingo Takagi/YAMADoi/Kotoka) vs. Monster Express (Masato Yoshino/Akira Tozawa/T-Hawk/Shachihoko BOY) vs. Dia.HEARTS (Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid/Kzy/Big R Shimizu), DG Truth Gate 2016 Day Two (2/4/2016)

This was a unit dismissal elimination match.

It’s nothing new for Dragon Gate, once again turning the dial up to become a match about individual eliminations and not simply one-per-team for a match with stakes like this. For whatever other problems exist within the company at any given time, past or future, a match like this almost always delivers, and this is no exception.

There are maybe better matches of this sort throughout the company’s history.

You have your weak spots in here, of course. Big R and Kotoka are not GREAT, the match sometimes rushes and while Kzy has begun to come out of his shell, he’s not quite capable of hanging in big elbow exchanges just yet. At close to thirty minutes, it’s also somehow a match that I wish was longer, as they have to do a lot and some match ups and people naturally get short-changed. There’s not a focus here that absolutely tears the match asunder, the things they focus on in the end are all spectacular and enthralling, but I leave this match wanting more, as opposed to the absolute best versions of this, in which I’m exhausted and wholly satisfied and maybe need to use the inhaler. It’s also not a match with a remarkably strong narrative focus on any one wrestler or story specifically. As compared to something like one only five months and change prior, this one is not especially DRAMATIC as a result, at least not on the level that matches like this in this company can achieve.

What it is though is an absolute marvel of speed and a monument to precision, one of the best Dragon Gate fireworks shows in some time.

A thousand things happen in a row, virtually none of them are repetitive, and it finds a way to keep them all at a relatively high and stunning level for close to half an hour. Everyone, save early comedy elimination Kotoka, gets a chance to really shine in the back half (one could argue this is the sort of shining Kotoka is most capable of at this point, and fair enough, as it is very funny). The highlights come from the usual sources. Shingo going on his little rampages, Tozawa and Yoshino being Dragon Gate’s all-time best babyfaces at the peaks of their powers, Kzy bursts, and especially, a great underdog run from Shachihoko BOY where he finally finds some revenge for 2015 and scores an upset elimination over Takagi. Every great pairing here gets a little chance to take a little bit of the stage, and not a one of them comes up short.

The part that’s especially great is the final segment, where it comes down to YAMATO and Naruki Doi against Kzy against Masato Yoshino. As a result of the clear logic of the thing, either Kzy or Yoshino losing dooms their unit forever, but puts Dragon Gate’s two all-time greatest underdog figures in the ideal situation, having to get past both Doi and YAMATO.

It’s the ideal fireworks show.

The Yoshino match ups here are proven, and they succeed once again. Yoshino vs. YAMATO, secretly one of the great Dream Gate pairings of all time, results in maybe the most outstanding and dramatic stuff in the match. It’s the YAMATO vs. Kzy stuff that the match closes with though, and it’s one of the first occasions in which Kzy’s future as Dragon Gate’s greatest post-Big Six babyface shows its potential. His mechanics aren’t as great as they’ll become. Hell, his babyface basics aren’t as great as they’ll become just yet. He’ll get better at bumping and selling and eliciting sympathy through those routes, and he’ll become an even more energetic wrestler in the future. Here and now though, it’s already here, that unteachable likeability that makes all the best stuff like this work, just unrefined. Every kickout feels like a Godsend, and every bit of offense he throws out in the end feels like something even greater, even if it can’t last.

YAMATO and Doi gang up on Kzy, and at this point in his development, it’s too much. He survives one Galleria, but when Doi adds in a Bakatare Sliding Kick to help set up the second Galleria, that’s that. Kzy is eliminated, Monster Express survives (thank GOD), and Dia.HEARTS is finally done with (again, thank God).

I wish there was more, just like the entire match, but especially of this last run. Not just the YAMADoi vs. Kzy vs. Yoshino run they were on, but of Kzy’s final burst in particular. He’s not quite there yet, both in terms of mechanics or booking, but given that he’ll get there, that’s not the end of the world.

All things in (Kzy) time.

This isn’t the absolute best version of the match, given the obvious nature of the decision, but what it is is maybe something even more valuable to anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it, or perhaps to anyone at the time who was dipping their toes in with the increased ease of availability of footage that certain real heroes in our community provided at the time.

What we have here is, I think, the perfect Dragon Gate starter match.

***1/4