Tribe Vanguard (YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Flamita) vs. MaxiMuM (Speed Muscle/Ben-K) vs. ANTIAS (T-Hawk/Eita/El Lindaman), DG Kotoka Road to Final Day Five (2/7/2018)

Old reliable.

The magic is maybe not what it was and there are elements to this that do not entirely work up to the level that they are capable of (BxB, younger guys in Ben-K and Lindaman who have not yet figured it out, Eita adherering to a Dragon Gate Heel format that does not accentuate his better qualities), but the format is simply too strong.

Even at a boiler plate level, in a match that aims less for main event level than semi-main event level, it is too hard to get in the way of one of wrestling’s best formats, especially with all-world wrestlers like Speed Muscle, T-Hawk, YAMATO, and Flamita at the helm.

Hard to go too wrong here.

***

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.

***+

 

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.

***

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