CK-1 vs. Shingo Takagi/T-Hawk, DG Final Gate 2016 (12/25/2016)

This was for CIMA and Dragon Kid’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

At one point, I thought this was the best Dragon Gate match of 2016.

Such is not quite the case now, I have seen the light, but I say that to say that this has always been one of the year’s more underrated matches.

Unlike Dragon Gate’s actual greatest match of the year (click on that hyperlink, friends), it’s not some end of an era classic nor the culmination of years and years worth of story. It is simply a match in which four incredibly talented wrestlers get over twenty minutes in which to display their wares, and some of that old Dragon Gate Magic dusts itself off and applies itself. Everything that can go right here just so happens to go right. Everyone has a lot of chemistry, everyone seems to put as much out there as possible, and Dragon Gate booking seems to decide to give them a break and just let the four of them cook something up entirely on their own

This is the sort of match that works simply because it does.

Shingo and T-Hawk, despite not teaming a whole lot on a two on two basis either before or after this, are a phenomenal bully unit. It is a blast to see Dragon Kid get victimized. CIMA is the least essential part of this, but in his little spurts against two guys he knows real well, he adds a whole lot. CIMA even winds up bleeding from the head a little bit, and while too late and too little to really take the match up a level into that Something Special (idea not Bouncing Souls song) territory, it’s a nice little bonus on the end of everything else that this has to offer up. It essentially becomes a fireworks show at the end after adhering to enough basic formula to give it form and shape, and these four knock it out of the park and then a thousand miles into the sea.

The match’s only real flaw is that, instead of running with the new bully heel superteam, CIMA instead beats Hawk with the Meteora following a Dragon Kid ‘rana off the top. Of course, CIMA winning at the end of everything cool is just one of those things, buy the ticket and take the ride, because nothing sums it up as well as that. Still a tremendous match in spite of every booking complaint, which if nothing else, you can’t say about every CK-1 defense that there is.

An underdiscussed gem out of 2016 Dragon Gate, and one I think that a lot of you would get a whole lot out of.

***1/4

Jimmy Susumu/Jimmy Kagetora vs. Shingo Takagi/Naruki Doi, DG Dangerous Gate 2016 (9/22/2016)

This was for the Jimmyz’ Open the Twin Gate Titles.

On paper, this looks incredible. Potentially best-of-the-year level stuff, another DG classic out of this unflappable OG Jimmyz tandem.

Lower those expectations just a little bit though, because it’s not quite that.

Firstly and maybe most obviously, Shingo and Doi are a pretty unnatural team. Both are great wrestlers and both have had great tag teams (even both with the same man in YAMATO) in the past, but sometimes it’s about chemistry, and they do not have it. Beyond that, the biggest problem this match has, simply, is that it’s on one of the big venue Dragon Gate shows and not at K-Hall or Sambo or Star Lanes, where it likely would have been an absolute scorcher. There’s a few different ways setting hurts them, and the most obvious is that the crowd just isn’t close and/or fervent enough. They’re not dead, but it’s different. The result is that they just never quite attain that feeling, despite the mostly good work that this match has to offer. Of course, the other thing is what it seems like Dragon Gate tags so often run into in matches like these, which is a totally aimless, spiritually bloodless, time killing Arena Brawl. Nothing happens, goes on forever, and it’s this real momentum killer in a match like this, something seemingly wedged inside of a match that already existed, detracting from it significantly. As it does, every single time.

However, as much as you lowered those expectations originally, I need you to look at those four names again.

For all the problems it has, this is still great.

That’s mostly another one of these lovely force of talent situations, but with as much talent as there is in this match (and also Susumu), there is enough force to still do a whole lot. Doi and Shingo are not a natural team by any measure, but both are so exceptional that mechanically, everything works out. Most of all, it’s another match with a great Underdog Kagetora story to tell, and the back half of the match REALLY excels when telling that story. First when the nearfalls pick up a lot, as one can imagine Shingo steamrolling him to put a title on Shingo again since he’s still the best guy in the company (hilarious, no, he’ll never do anything all that interesting long-term again). Secondly, when Doi gets in and he tries to bomb out Kagetora before anything, like he knows better, only to still be caught anyways.

Poor Naruki tries three (3) Doi Fives to set up the kick this time, knowing what Kagetora often does in this spot, only for Kagetora to grab him out of nowhere with the Kagetora Clutch to just barely hold on anyways.

A great match on its own merits, if not the absolute greatest match one easily imagines these guys may or may not be capable of. Talent overcomes more minor problems, and without any real major match-killing level mistakes (not an insignificant accomplishment when Susumu is in the match, this could easily have become an arm work match), that pure level of talent can overcome all the more minor things wrong with this match.

If the magic isn’t totally here, it’s a good thing four wrestlers this good just happened to be there in its stead.

***

T-Hawk/Big E Shimizu vs. Dragon Kid/Eita, DG Dead or Alive 2016 (5/5/2016)

This was for Hawk and Big R’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

Would this be better if we scrambled partners, T-Hawk and Eita were still a babyface team, and the Millennials never split apart?

Of course.

Everything would be better that way.

As it is, it’s another hit from one of wrestling’s preeminent Great Match Factories. Big R is again your weak link here, but pretty much every combination works in some way. Eita and Dragon Kid bump huge for the lump, and then both T-Hawk pairings are really great. There is magic to be had in T-Hawk vs. Eita as the back half or so of this match shows. The former teammates have as much chemistry against each other as they did together, if not moreso. Sadly, Dragon Kid gets more of a late match shine on that team, so we don’t get to see that taken to the fullest possible conclusion, but it’s sort of a perfect isn’t the enemy of great situation. It doesn’t give me everything I want, Dragon Gate rarely ever does, but what exists there is real awesome.

They manage a few genuinely very great nearfalls off of upper mid-level Dragon Kid offense on both champions before yet another one of these B-level Monster Express Twin Gate matches from 2016 opts to end with Big R instead of the all-world level wrestler he’s teaming with. It doesn’t last long, and Eita gets a lot out of the guy, but it’s still a frustration on some level that the obvious least of the four in the match is the central booking focus at the end. Doubly so when he beats poor Eita with the Shot Put Slam to put a ribbon on the thing.

All the same, one more great example of the ways Dragon Gate both baffles and thrills, often at the same time, the latter just enough more than the former for it to all be worth it in the end.

It’s a little long to be a hoot, but right about at that level. A good time was had by all.

***

YAMADoi vs. T-Hawk/Big R Shimizu, DG Champion Gate in Osaka 2016 Day Two (3/6/2016)

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

Obviously, this is not on par with the previous time T-Hawk attempted to wrest the Twin Gate off of the superteam. Trading in Masato Yoshino for Big R Shimizu is gonna do that, no matter what else goes right. It’s a trade down, taking the match from — before anything else — a match with four of the best in the company to one with three of the best in this company and then this other guy.

Still, it’s great!

It’s great in all the ways that Dragon Gate tags tend to be, so long as there are no real major talent issues and the match itself never makes any major mistakes.

That’s basically the case here. YAMATO and Doi, once again, are really maybe the best tag team in the world during this run. The material isn’t totally there, that’s been discussed to death on this blog (Dragon Gate, please respect your footage more, people will give you even more money for it), but they are so great. A natural chemistry in the ring, but such a great fit a characters as well. T-Hawk is perfect against both of them. A perfect stylistic fit against both Doi and YAMATO, this offensive dynamo who also has this absolute chest-melter of a chop on him to fill up a lot of space with. The match escalates so well, they build things up and lay them out in interesting ways, and it’s just this classic display of a formula that never really falls short with guys like these. Nobody is trying anything all that inventive or trying to make something new, but it just WORKS. Force of talent.

Despite the obvious issue with Big R Shimizu being CLEARLY a level or two beneath the other three all-world level talents that make up the match, it doesn’t hold the match back. This match is, mostly, really good at utilizing him in ways that help a lot. There’s only so much you can really help Big R, one of those guys with size that never totally feels comfortable using it in ways that I get a lot out of, but as a hot tag wrecking ball and also a somewhat sympathetic guy to pummel to set an even better T-Hawk hot tag, he’s put to better use here than he is in a lot of other matches in these early years.

Unfortunately, the match’s real flaw is that the match makes the error of giving the big moment a.) away at all, b.) away to this no-chemistry T-Hawk/Big R team, & c.) with the big big moment at the end going to Big R himself, when he beats YAMATO with the Shotput Slam.

Obviously, nothing lasts forever, but at a time where Dragon Gate footage is just starting to get a lot easier to find again, it’s such a shame that this reign ends as early as it does. It’s a shame that they go the direction that they do with these people in the coming months, but really, it just sucks that all this great work in the planning stages and in the execution of all these YAMADoi tag team matches is a set up to this, to trying to give fucking Big R this moment, a total overreach and a complete waste, once again Dragon Gate finding a way to give something one of the least satisfying finished possible. Not that it would have been great either if T-Hawk won the fall in the end, this is not a team on the level of the champions and it is a waste of what turned itself into a decent rub, but less of a waste anyways.

Of course, YAMATO and Doi are the latest victim in what’s happened in wrestling for years and what will likely continue to happen forever, which is a great tag team act being broken up too soon. On the same show in which Takagi regains his title from Jimmy Susumu, someone somewhere seemed to look at a plan for Takagi’s reign and realized that it didn’t benefit YAMATO, and so being as that violates Dragon Gate’s #1 rule of booking, things began to shift so that YAMATO could be the beneficiary of Shingo’s monster title reign(s) in the end, and that is a story for a longer review and talk about the end of Dragon Gate’s peak in general. A long story short, YAMATO is nowhere near as good a hero as he was as a villain, and so the end of this team is a fairly tragic thing in more ways than simply suffering the loss of something this great.

As this match shows, YAMATO’s true calling and most natural role is as one-half of a heel-leaning superteam. For one of the last times, it was so great to see him excel in that role.

***

YAMADoi vs. Masato Yoshino/T-Hawk, DG Gate of Destiny 2015 (11/1/2015)

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

Dragon Gate tags usually come in one of two flavors.

First, occasionally you get a big Dragon Gate tag that hits some kind of emotional sweet spot. This is usually a major elimination match, but it can also just sometimes be a tag that hits on something perfectly and is exactly great enough to not undercut it in any mechanical sense. Amigo Gate vs. Original Jimmyz, the unit dismissal tags, some of the Osaka06 vs. Millennials stuff from late 2014, and things of that nature. The other option is something that’s just stylistically perfect, and more what the company is known for. A perfect fireworks show, several people with cool offense firing it all off in a perfectly escalating manner and composed in a way that keeps raising the pace of the match and magnitude of the offense until a perfect finish. The very best versions of the match have some overlap between the two, but are typically either categorized into one category or the other. Emotional juggernaut or airtight fireworks show.

This is more the latter than the former (a frustrating prospect to write about, as nobody wants a recap of every single move that happens in a match), and not quite ALL that a match between four of the company’s best can be, but great is great is great.

It’s all pure formula, but the formula rules. A little Doi and YAMATO control work on the less experienced team to give it a little form, before they get to it. The YAMATO vs. T-Hawk pairing unfortunately gets a little too much focus (although it’s CERTAINLY better in this format than when the roles are reversed in 2017), but Yoshino against YAMATO and Doi is perfect. YAMATO vs. Yoshino is secretly one of the better possible Dragon Gate pairings and the match benefits from largely ceding the last quarter or so of the match over to them. YAMATO is a perfect heel, Yoshino is very likely Dragon Gate’s all time best babyface, and it’s magic again.

The champions wind up separating the new Monster Express team at the end, and despite his output early on, T-Hawk basically disappears in the last three or four moments of the match. With powder to the eyes and both Doi and YAMATO raining down offense on Yoshino, it’s a matter of time. Neither gives him in an inch after a half decade of Yoshino getting the best of them in major singles meetings, and no save ever comes. Yoshino kicks out of one Galleria in a surprise, but YAMATO’s finally learned, and goes immediately into the second to hang onto the titles.

Nothing complicated to be found here, but just good, solid, and easy application of the classic Dragon Gate formula. If not among the best of the year or the era, it’s the exact sort of a match that belongs in a dictionary or an encyclopedia to explain the specific kind of house style. Watch this match (and a handful of others), and you could understand Dragon Gate real quickly.

Had this taken place on a Kobe World show or something without a main event that grabbed all of the attention, this might have received the acclaim it deserved at the time. Had this happened in another calendar year, and not the one with the greatest Twin Gate match of all time, it might have received  As it is, that never quite happened, and it’s simply yet another great and underrated Twin Gate match.

If nothing else, a shred of historical evidence somehow left over from 2015 suggesting that, yes, YAMATO and Naruki Doi were as great of a tag team as everyone always said.

***1/4

YAMADoi vs. Ricochet/Matt Sydal, DG Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2015 (7/20/2015)

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

The rough part of Dragon Gate having so little footage available from 2015 especially is that there’s so little left of the YAMATO and Naruki Doi team, especially of their long title reign. People whose opinions are generally pretty good have always praised them effusively to me, but there is only so much out there. It’s a lot like the situation with Shingo Takagi and YAMATO in 2012, where of what was left, they looked like they could have been the Tag Team of the Year, but without enough footage to really be sure. Thankfully, this is one of the major matches of their time together and it being Kobe World, it’s not all that hard to find.

It’s the last of the three major Ricochet tags at Kobe World, and lives up to all of that.

Nothing complex, but all exceedingly fun.

YAMATO and Doi look to be every bit the tag team their reputation always claimed. They’re not quite Speed Muscle or Shingo/YAMATO, but a real smooth team, and easily one of the better pure heel teams that Dragon Gate’s ever had. Matt Sydal once again looks like one of the five to ten best wrestlers in the world in 2015, and while none of the other three are quite on that level, there’s a not a lot of weakness here. The other three have all displayed Dragon Gate Brain Sickness in the past, but this thankfully sticks to what works. Simple escalation, cooler and cooler stuff, and then a manic final run. There’s always just enough struggle in everything they do to give it a little extra juice. The only flaw is the decision to based the last quarter or so around Ricochet again, but he’s again on his best behavior in front of a big crowd. If his partner wasn’t the best flier in the world, it might not be a flaw at all. YAMATO and Doi plug him into some great and easy stuff before the Galleria ends it again.

One last beautiful fireworks show from two of Dragon Gate’s greatest imports.

***1/4

Amigo Tag (Masato Yoshino/Shachihoko BOY) vs. Jimmy Susumu/Jimmy Kagetora, DG Gate of Passion Day Four (4/9/2015)

This was for Amigo Tag’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

Even relative to the few years before it, Dragon Gate footage from 2015 is incredibly hard to come by. As someone who sort of faded out of watching it (again) during the long BxB Hulk title reign that began in 2014, and didn’t totally come back until 2016, I hate it. I hate it more than the other absences because I at least know what’s missing and how I felt about it at the time. There’s none of that in 2015. It’s this thing I didn’t experience and can’t find anywhere, either legally (outside of the three or four shows from 2015 on DG’s official service) or otherwise (step it up IVP and streaming pirates), save for a few things that have remained online, either due to the star power of the names (Shingo vs. CIMA) or an exceedingly high reputation (Shingo vs. Mochi).

This is one of those matches from 2015 that has remained pretty widely available, and with really good reason.

It’s the best Twin Gate match ever.

Granted, that’s not an exceptionally high bar to clear. Twin Gate matches can get weighed down pretty easily by the same things that weigh down Dream Gate matches a lot of the times. Outside of this, the best of them are virtually all these great little dudes rock style slugfests, usually with Shingo, YAMATO, T-Hawk, Mochi, etc. involved. There are a handful of those matches that I really love all the same, but it’s not the same as calling it the best match in company history, or the bar it would have to clear if I called something the best IWGP Heavyweight Title or the best AJPW Unified World Tag Team Title match ever.

All the same, it is comfortably the best Twin Gate match ever.

It achieves that status largely through a combination of miracles, existing as God’s own Twin Gate match.

Firstly, it’s a both a big and a great Dragon Gate match in which very little context is needed.

The big story here is that Shachihoko BOY is the big underdog. It might help you to know his history. His years of working undercard tags, his failure to ever break through, even his place as the clear obvious and only weak link in Monster Express. Really though, you don’t need to know anything, because a big strength of this match is how clear they make everything from beginning to end. Shachi is undersized compared to everyone else, doesn’t get as much offense, and lacks both the aggression of his opponents and the confidence of his partner. He also comes in with tape on his lower back, marking him as injured in a way that nobody else in the match is. It’s clear very quickly into the match where everybody stands. Knowing the moves helps, but it only helps so much. The match is already great, and then a little context gives it a little push. It’s the kind of match someone can drop in on ten or twenty years later with a few sentences explaining things, and still totally get.

People very deeply into Dragon Gate on a level I can never truly understand (the real psychos) will praise the storytelling of this match as some great victory, like it wasn’t the easiest and best story to tell no matter what. Like most praise for deep Dragon Gate storytelling though, it’s kind of a load of shit. More often than not, that always just feels like a cover. There are a few long running stories that enhance certain matches and occasionally a big deal in one of the multi-mans with high stakes, but it’s not as hard of a promotion to parachute into as you might think. Things are generally pretty self evident, they’re all pretty expressive wrestlers, it’s not like how you need to start at 6/5/89 to totally appreciate 6/3/94. Context matters, only a fool would argue otherwise, but this really isn’t all that deep.

The real great matches don’t require supplemental homework to get them, and this is a really great match.

This is also a miracle because it’s a double limbwork match in Dragon Gate in which both sides of that are respected for the rest of the match and not just immediately blown off when the segment is over. Even more than that, it’s a genuinely respectful arm selling performance from SUSUMU YOKOSUKA of all people, one of the biggest offenders in Dragon System history of having matches in which none of that shit ever ever ever matters. I can count on one hand the other Susumu matches I’ve seen in which he paid this much attention to selling his arm throughout the entire matches, and I’d probably have a finger or two left over. Sometimes, we hyperbolize and stretch the meaning of words, but no, this is a genuine miracle. An act of God, with his hand on the bad shoulder of Yokosuka, if only to remind him of that fact.

Masato Yoshino has to be the one to go out and get that advantage. Shachihoko BOY simply can’t do it on his own. He can’t get much of anything on his own, and before too long, Kagetora bails out his partner before too much damage can be done. This is a particularly good way to go about it, as it means Susumu doesn’t really have to go wild with the selling, and it’s his choice to give a shit anyways even in little small ways twenty minutes later that does so much for the match. It’s also immediately a great contrast to the imbalance of the championship team. Kagetora clearly isn’t the star that Susumu is, but Susumu can trust him to go out and do it on his own. The work on Shachi’s back is genuinely mean as hell, and another aspect of this that absolves the match of needing much in the way of previous knowledge. It’s mean and dismissive and really brutal, it’s one of the better focused segments in recent Dragon Gate history. Shachi himself isn’t an incredible seller, he’s not even as good as Susumu is, but he’s functional and always seems very hurt, and it’s exactly enough. The onus is really more on Yokosuka in that department, and he does the best work of his career on that level. Shachi’s job is just to not let the match down, and he more than comes through.

Naturally, the finishing run is wild and awesome and hyperdramatic.

Yoshino’s hot tag is one of his best ever. There’s an urgency to it that stands out. Yoshino is always unbelievably fast in a way that you can only imagine someone becoming through a Faustian bargain, but he rarely feels desperate and frantic like he does here, having to do a lot of this on his own. Susumu’s arm selling continuing through this last third is where it becomes really impressive, and the Kagetora vs. Shachi nearfall runs are tremendous, but this is primarily Yoshino’s part of the match, and he kills it. Beyond all the big drama, most impressive of all from Our Hero is that in a match full of great Susumu Yokosuka lariats, Masato Yoshino is the one who delivers the single best and most fist pumpingly emphatic lariat of the match.

It comes down to Yokosuka and Shachcihoko BOY, and surprisingly, the two lesser wrestlers in the match absolutely kill it. Susumu strikes a rare perfect balance between selling the arm and still just hammering Shachi with the lariats, especially the Jumbo no Kaichis at the very end. Shachihoko BOY again doesn’t have to do a ton besides bump and die and look incredibly sympathetic, but he does it. Korakuen is with him. The world is with him. The kickouts, one of the regular Jumbo and the second of the leg trap followthrough cover, feel genuinely shocking and significant in a way that most nearfalls simply don’t.

It’s a role player or just a non-superstar having the game of his life in the most important game he can possibly play. It doesn’t always make a lot of sense and nobody can ever predict it, but sometimes this stuff can just break loose out of the universe into real life, and nobody ever wants it to end. It’s the stuff of legend. Steve Kerr snuffing out the Utah Jazz at the buzzer in ’97 and playing his part in denying a pedophile a ring.

Big Shot Shachihoko.

Fate of the universe on the line, Martians have the death beam, I want Shachihoko BOY.

All of that.

The match delivers one last miracle at the end, beyond just Shachihoko BOY surviving so much. Instead of the typical Dragon Gate thing of giving him his own big nearfall run and having some big dramatic piece of impact offense to have His Moment, they instead opt for something more surprising and more fitting with the story. Susumu just tries another, but Shachi twists around into a takedown, before diving into a cradle to just barely win.

Fittingly, a match full of small miracles ends with a finish and a result that feels like a gigantic one.

One of the best matches of the year, and in recent company history. A lot of the times, great matches can get lost, but a match like this has survived for a reason. If a mystical force in the universe ever smiled upon a Dragon Gate match, it did so in this match (and also for every Florida Brothers match).

****

T-Hawk/Eita vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid, DG Dangerous Gate 2014 (8/17/2014)

This was for the Millennials’ Open the Twin Gate Titles.

It’s not this blowaway great match, and if a spreadsheet is to be believed, they had a better match than this on a smaller show in June that’s lost to the internet for the time being. Still, tons to like here. Removed from the “pressures” and “trappings” of a twenty minute singles match (by pressures and trappings, I primarily mean that Dragon Gate makes wrestlers stupider, T-Hawk is still young, and Mochizuki is a far far dumber wrestler than he ever gets credit for being), they can just have a nice twenty minute tag.

It’s not especially deep — although the return to the Mochizuki/T-Hawk issue at the end, now with something real on the line, was a nice little booking choice — but it’s just good fun. Four talented wrestlers riffing it out for a while. Imperfect striking, nothing that jumps off the page, but one of those Dragon Gate tags. Overwhelmingly good while they slowly bring the pace up, and then a big dramatic explosion of nearfalls and big moves and counters in the last third.

This time, there’s no bell to bail out Mochizuki or T-Hawk, and they’re forced to a finish It’s not the same as a singles, sure, and Eita helps turn the tide in a crucial moment with a double team, but T-Hawk’s still largely in there by himself. They manage to make FAR better use out of a Night Ride kickout by Mochizuki here than when Shingo Takagi kicked out of it at Kobe World. That’s partially because this crowd, while still big, is crammed in tighter and there’s far less open air in the building. It’s also partially because it’s more surprising when Mochizuki pulls that off at this point, whereas Shingo’s in his prime and you sort of expect it. T-Hawk’s second is also much better, as he comes from a much higher angle with it in kind of a Joker Driver/Rubiks Cube variant, and it’s finally enough to get him his elusive win over Mochizuki.

Dragon Gate in 2014 hasn’t gotten a TON right — BxB Hulk main events this show in a long singles match in the first defense of a title reign that lasts another ten months, for example — but they really got this T-Hawk and Mochizuki thing right.

***

Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa vs. T-Hawk/Eita, DG Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival 2014 (7/20/2014)

This was for Monster Express’ Open the Twin Gate Titles.

It whips a ton of ass.

I don’t exactly think it’s a top 100 match of the decade or anything, but I do love this a lot. It’s a just a big dumb large venue bombfest that, for the most part, knows and celebrates exactly what it is. The problem once again is that Kobe World is this big and very open venue and that this just never has the energy that it might at another venue. The obvious answer is to have this as a Korakuen Hall main event, but Kobe Sambo Hall or Hakata Star Lanes would have greeted this match with a wall of sound as well. The lack of that doesn’t exactly ruin the match, but it does hold it back some. There’s a lower ceiling on this match than might have been there otherwise, had they held it at almost any other event throughout their calendar year.

At the same time, it feels very silly to blame Dragon Gate for holding this match in the biggest possible place, as it feels like a huge deal. In a company that was more competent about pushing young stars before its back was put against the wall in 2019 and 2020 (and beyond), this is a monumental sort of a match, as the Millennials Top Team overcomes one of the most overpowered two man units in company history. This is Dragon Gate though, and a refusal to move beyond the Big Six means that this is less of a turning point and more of just a great wrestling match.

Still, it is a really great wrestling match!

They nail pretty much everything about this. The clear mirror image of the two teams, leading to power vs. power and speed vs. speed pairings, very occasionally switching it up with the T-Hawk vs. Tozawa and Shingo vs. Eita combinations. There’s a Big Ramp spot that’s as good as a transition between the first and second thirds as there can be. Then, when it counts, everyone does as well as possible. Almost. Shingo is once again the MVP, selling his arm for the rest of the match following Eita’s El Numero Uno hold for a nearfall, but the others all do a wonderful job of keeping up with him. The only honest complaint I have is T-Hawk needlessly prostituting his Night Ride finish for a nearfall when Shingo kicks out, only to immediately hit it again for the win. It’s not the worst idea in a vacuum, but he’s the one still on the rise and it needlessly harms his finish for something they barely make use out of. Had they gone another few minutes and he also got to kick out of Shingo’s shit after that, hey whatever. But the way this happens, it’s just a meaningless sort of a thing that puts a slight damper on an otherwise real satisfying bombfest.

Hardly one of the best matches of the decade from the company or this thing that I think anyone simply has to see, but for newer fans who might be blown away on-paper by this match featuring guys from WWE, New Japan, Dragon Gate, and the Japanese independents respectively, it’s a really fun time all in all.

***

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