Masaaki Mochizuki/Don Fujii/Jimmy Kagetora vs. Over Generation (Eita/Gamma/Takehiro Yamamura), DG Gate of Passion 2017 Day Twelve (4/23/2017)

The easy thing to say here is that Takehiro Yamamura, one of wrestling’s two greatest young wrestlers alongside Takuya Nomura, does it again, and that Dragon Gate at this point is a machine mostly running on the efforts of its wunderkind.

In actuality, that is not the case!

There are six good wrestlers here, four great ones (Eita, Yamamura, Kagetora, and Don Fujii of course), and it is very easy for a match like this — your classic Dragon Gate undercard mix-em-up for ten or fifteen minutes — to fall short. They simply do not have any outright bad wrestlers there to drag everyone down, nor do they make the sorts of mistakes (trying to do limb work) that can occasionally doom matches like this despite all of the talent on hand. It is a regular strength great little match which doesn’t succeed entirely because of Yamaura’s efforts, although it’s the kid who once again brings it home at the end to certainly end the match with some real emphasis.

Virtually everything that happens in this match is good, and with a great ending run of Yamamura vs. Kagetora, it is simply a match that very casually succeeds.

Mochizuki vs. Yamamura is a delight again, of course. Eita vs. Kagetora is a really fun little much. Fujii and Gamma don’t get in too much on the serious stuff (although Fujii hurling Yamamura up and then down into the Earth with his chokeslam is a delight and a half), but they make with a few fun little bits that manage to lighten the mood here and there but without ever becoming this long-term focal point or allowing the match to become entirely about the jokes. It’s a small part of this, but a match like this really serves as a case study on how to have a few cute little bits (Gamma’s spit stuff, Gamma yelling out move names only to get cut off easily, Mochi accidentally kicking Fujii and the old partners having a brief sumo slap fight before both stopping and hitting Gamma running at them to try and take advantage, as if it was always a ruse) while still presenting a mostly serious wrestling match, as it is a tried and true thing with Dragon Gate undercard matches like this one.

As you’d expect, the back half is when things really pop off and this becomes a full on great match. Primarily, that’s because of the Yamamura run at the end, first against his old pal Mochizuki again, and then in a more extended run against Kagetora. They’re great opponents for each other, in particular because Dragon Gate always underutilizing Kagetora (save for the match that is arguably the best in company history) means nearfalls are believable in both directions, on top of the thing with every Yamamura match, where he’s still so young that non-finisher nearfalls even seem believable for him. There’s a lot of drama to the pairing as a result and it makes an already mechanically satisfying end run into something a little better than you’d usually get from a mid-tour opening match.

Yamamura gets the relatively big upset on Kagetora with the Stardust Press.

The time is over when pure formula alone is going to do the trick for the Dragon Gate roster, but all the same, this is a stellar show of just how fun, light, and easy that formula can be when the right people get plugged in at the right times, and it all comes together like this.

***

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

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

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

That’s it, that’s the entire match.

And it’s perfect.

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

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

Mostly though, this is a fight.

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

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

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

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

***1/3

Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Don Fujii, DG Dead or Alive 2014 (5/5/2014)

This was for Takagi and Tozawa’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

Dragon Gate rarely offers a sort of straightforward dudes rock style of match like this. Even when they throw the heavy hitters like this against each other, it’s usually spoiled like the overrated Takagi/Mochizuki title match by attaching meaningless limbwork onto it to spoil the broth. It just isn’t in the nature of a more narrative based promotion like Dragon Gate to offer up a style match that’s largely just simplistic and thrilling in a purely violent and physical sort of a way.

They did here though!

Mostly. Dragon Gate can never totally leave well enough alone, but the story elements here are less someone blatantly killing time or adding melodrama. It’s just that each team is composed of a more traditional badass and then a weirdo partner, and then there’s all this Tozawa and Mochizuki history, of Mochi always being this stumbling block for Tozawa in matches that have mattered. However, unlike a lot of other Dragon Gate matches, that’s just sort of subtext. You don’t need to know it, it isn’t spelled out, and I doubt there’s some 2,000 word writeup on this match on some website talking about how emotional a lariat was just because it made some goon feel smart. It’s simple, mean, and physical wrestling that just happens to have some minor background. I like it better that way in a match like this, because they don’t need any of that.

What develops is clear bell to bell storytelling. Tozawa is a ball of energy that they try to contain, but can’t in the way the veterans can handle the more traditional and predictable Takagi. At the same time, the Monster Express superteam is so dynamic itself that they keep catching the old guys in different ways, and forcing Fujii to dig deep and break out things like a chokeslam off the top, is a whole lot of fun too. They go back to the big thing at the end though, and it’s Tozawa and Mochizuki. It’s good. It’s snappy and light and more of a traditional DG match up than any other one on one pairing in this match, but it’s still all really good. Tozawa does what he had trouble with before, and manages to keep a hold of Mochizuki after he starts to pour it on. The dream team keeps the titles following the Package German from Tozawa to Mochizuki.

While it isn’t some top ten or top twenty five Dragon Gate match ever, it winds up standing out as one of the easiest-to-watch Dragon Gate matches ever, probably only next to the Tenryu/Magnum TOKYO stuff from 2006.

***1/4

Shingo Takagi/YAMATO vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Don Fujii, DG Gate of Maximum 2013 Day Five (6/2/2013)

This was for Takagi and YAMATO’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

It’s one of the more can’t-miss tag team pairings in Dragon Gate history, having delivered big in 2012 and having been, to my memory, the best Dragon Gate match of 2009 as well. This isn’t quite as great as those, it’s in front of a smaller room with aims other than simply “go kill it”, but it’s still a great match consisting entirely of really great individual match ups.

Mochizuki vs. Shingo is the best among them, which gets plenty of time. On the other side of that, there’s an incredibly fun and different segment where Fujii and YAMATO fight outside of the venue and down the sidewalk a bit before returning. Otherwise, it’s straightforward formula meathead stuff. The old(er) men work over the slightly softer and slightly less powerful Shingo, leading to another fantastic hot tag. YAMATO and Shingo are then still not on the same page as a team, which gives the old guys enough of a window to constantly double team and separate them from each other. Very similar to Prince Devitt in the match in April before he turned on Ryusuke Taguchi, YAMATO often comes across like a guy who WANTS to lose the titles, so he can get away from this and do the turn, but he isn’t quite fed up with Shingo enough yet to do anything about it or REALLY tank it like Devitt could have been accused of doing.

And yet, Shingo keeps them in it in spite of YAMATO ignoring cues and not really bothering trying to block the saves at all. Shingo eventually gets his own man again with a Pumping Bomber on accident ad gets taken out by Fujii with the Nodowa Otoshi on the apron. It’s a perfect set up to do the switch and then get the YAMATO turn over with, but instead, he’s a hero? He manages the two on one totally cleanly, and pulls off the miracle with a Hurricanrana counters out of a second Nodowa from Don Fujii and cradles the legs to grab the win out of nowhere.

It’s a confusing finish given everything coming with the story, but Dragon Gate hasn’t really ever let anything like that get in the way of YAMATO looking like God before, so there’s certainly no reason to stop now. Match ruled once again though.

***