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.
HANDWERK 