Puroresu Show Reviews

Golden Great League Semi Final: Magnitude Kishiwada VS KAGETORA
- I was surprised how one sided this match was with Kishiwada almost squashing KAGETORA here, save for a few hope spots. Kishiwada even pinned him arrogantly by standing over him with his hands on his chest for the win after a Last Ride. They were building up Kishiwada as a true monster as he got passed his block undefeated, even if he did cheat to beat Owashi, but seeing him give him a Last Ride was impressive.
Match Rating: *1/2

Golden Great League Semi Final: Touru Owashi VS Shuji Kondo
- Both of them have a score to settle with Kishiwada, and they went at it as almost equals, save for Owashi's size advantage. Kondo almost managed to pick up Owashi for The Original, but did manage to Jackhammer the big man for a near fall. Kondo survived a pair or running chokeslams and kicked out after two diving body presses, and finally put down the big man after a barrage of King Kong Lariats. The match was OK, but Kondo's lariats at the end didn't look like they had much impact.
Match Rating: **1/2

Ladder Match
- I don't know most of the people in this match, so I'm not even going to try to name them. This was one of the most bizzare matches I've ever seen. Right at the beginning of the match, one of the guys pulled down whatever it was they were supposed to be aiming for that was hanging above the ring, but the match continued anyway since everyone hadn't entered yet. Danshoku Dino comes out later and announces they are going to put whatever that is back up on the cable and the match and all it's whackiness continues until everyone was in and one of the Brahmans retrieve whatever it was on the cable. This match was very much like what you'd see in DDT with all the weird gimmicks and comedy spots.
Match Rating: **

Aagan Iisou VS Tokyo Gurentai: "brother" YASSHI, Sugawara & Shogo "Jet" Takagi VS NOSAWA Rongai, MAZADA & TAKEMURA
- Your standard Dragon Gate style six-man tag with a lot going on all at once. Jet makes his big return only to be pinned by a quick school-boy roll-up after hitting his trade mark Jet Punches. Why fans care so much for this guy is beyond me.
Match Rating: *

Golden Great League Finals: Magnitude Kishiwada VS Shuji Kondo
- I really hated that they had to make Kishiwada so dominant over Kondo, even with all the cheating he did. Kondo took a heck of a beating, being put through a table, sprayed with mist in the eyes, kicked out of a Last Ride, but was able to win with a pair of King Kong Lariats after Kishiwada accidentally gets black mist sprayed in his eyes by the one of the Brahmans. Really could have been a lot better.
Match Rating: **1/2

Labels: AJPW, DDT, Dragon Gate, El Dorado

I would like to point out that I am dropping Dragon Gate from my Japanese puroresu watching as I’m rather getting fed up with the repeated overkill of the big matches. After this, I only have the annual Kobe World show to watch and I’ll be done.

Anthony W. Mori, PAC & Syachihoko Machine VS Cyber Kong, Akira Tozawa & Super Shenlong- Fast paced match with everyone getting to show their stuff. Cyber Kong seems to be putting on some weight, and not in a good way, but it’s still tough to beat his power game, which made for some comedic spots with Syachihoko Machine.
Match Rating: *

Hollywood Stalker Ichikawa Busou 10-Match Series – Match 3: Stalker Ichikawa VS Shinobu Kandori- Stalker matches are only funny when he can get some offense in, not when they are instant squash matches where the only move done wins the match.
Match Rating: DUD

Hardcore Match: Naoki Tanisaki VS Shingo Takagi- Short match, but fun since you don’t see many matches in Dragon Gate that involve barb-wire boards and bats! Short match, but they pulled out some fun spots like Shingo slamming Naoki off the apron through a table! Shingo wins dropping Naoki on his head on a pile of chairs with the Made In Japan.
Match Rating: ***

Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fujii & El Blazer VS Gamma, Genki Horiguchi & NOSAWA Rongai
- Your standard face team versus heel team six-man tag. NOSAWA seemed barely a factor here and could easily have been replaced by any of the other Muscle Outlawz members.
Match Rating: *

Special Singles Match: Naruki Doi VS KENTA- KENTA gave a lot to put over Doi in the beginning, and they had a rather OK match here. I kind of surprised they didn’t do the usual “hit-a-hundred finishers” finish to end the match here, as KENTA hit the Go 2 Sleep rather out of nowhere to win the match to a rather flat response. Could have been better, but I don’t think KENTA really cared all that much for this one.
Match Rating: **1/2

Open the Twin Gate Unified Tag Team Titles: Taku Iwase & Kenichiro Arai [C] VS Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka- Saito & Yokosuka win the tag titles, but what I HATED about the match is how Yokosuka started the match barely able to walk with his heavily bandaged leg, but by the end of the match he’s throwing lariats like nobody’s business! Which was how he won the match! Having a straight forward competitive match without the bad leg wouldn’t have hurt, and it makes Iwase & Arai look bad for losing to an injured guy.
Match Rating: **1/2

Mask VS Hair Six-Way Escape Cage Match: BxB Hulk VS YAMATO VS Yasushi Kanda VS Masato Yoshino VS Dragon Kid VS CIMA
- If there is one thing I HATE about Dragon Gate above the overkill in their big matches, it’s CIMA’s overkill of being the underdog when he really isn’t. How many times already have we seen CIMA go into a match with an “injury”, and feigns certain death throughout the whole match only to make a super-human recovery at the end the likes of Hulk Hogan to win the match? Same case here! When CIMA was the last babyface in the ring against THREE Muscle Outlawz members, I just knew he would defy the odds and his “bad” arm to win the match. Three on one and the heels still couldn’t pull it off? Sure they played up the Outlawz turning on Yoshino which gave CIMA a breather/excuse to win the match, but you also had CIMA playing up how bad his arm was that he couldn’t even lift it or get any grip on the cage with it! Suddenly his Typhoon buddies hand him a pair of gloves to help with his grip, no big deal right? NO! CIMA not only climbs the corner of the cage, but he jumps up to grab a conveniently placed corner bar with BOTH his hands, and has the strength to skin the cat and pull his whole body weight up! He could have just climbed up the cage directly, but NO again! Had to be flashy, which totally spoiled the match for me! Having CIMA escape with the final 2 being Kanda and Yoshino for the drama of Outlawz kicking out Yoshino would have been more dramatic rather than CIMA being a glory-hog yet again.
The way the match was built up was that the focal point was YAMATO for pissing off 4 of the other 5 competitors in the match, which would logically make him be the man everyone sees gets his head shaved, but instead he was the first of the Outlawz to escape. Yoshino gets by as they built up the rest of the group turning on him, with only Doi backing him up and helping him to escape with his hair, which left Kanda as the sacrificial lamb to get his head shaved.
The match overall was OK up to ‘till CIMA was the last man left with the Outlawz as you just knew what was coming from that point on, which spoiled it for me and can’t look past it to give this match a better rating.
Match Rating: **

Overall: I’m rather glad I only have one Dragon Gate show left to watch before I completely wipe my hands clean of this promotion. Unless Genki wins the Dream Gate, I don’t expect to continue watching any time soon.

Labels: Dragon Gate

Starts off with an interview with Ultimo Dragon, who’s wearing an interesting half-dragon, half-tiger mask, and is referred to as Tiger Dragon as he does commentary for the show. They run down the card before going to the intro talking about the history of T2P and the six-sided ring and how it’s being brought back for one night tonight.
Give them extra points for using the SpineShank song “Smothered” as the opening theme.
We than get an old school in ring introduction of the original T2P workers as they come out to the ring to thank the fans, which leads to the retirement ceremonies of Philip J. Fukumasa of the Royal Brothers and Gallardo of Los Carros Exoticos, who even unmasks to thank the fans before a 10-bell count is sounded to end their careers.
A quick rundown of the card again, and we’re on to our first match of the evening.

Lucha Preliminar En Clasica: Milanito Collection a.t. VS Jorge Rivera
Interesting rules for this match also, as you get penalized for using rope breaks, with a disqualification given if you use a maximum of five, kinda like Pancrase rules. There was even a yellow card-red card penalty rule in effect.
The match was billed as veteran vs. youngster, and Jorge totally schooled Milanito here as he carried him every step of the match! You could even catch him giving instructions here and there. It was interesting watching an aged veteran like Jorge move and flip around like he hasn’t lost a step, and the man was able to transition into some really interesting submission hold, forcing four rope breaks from Milanito!
I never really liked Milanito or any of the Toryumon minis as the gimmicks just screamed lack of originality. Like a cover band in the music business, it doesn’t matter how much you sound like the original, ‘cause you’re still just an imitation. Milanito really didn’t do anything outstanding, and it didn’t help for him to think he could finish off Jorge every time he was able to successfully counter a move without working over him some more. The guy never even thought to try and force Jorge to into a rope break with a submission or two. Milanito loss in the end when Jorge pinned him with a nice high-angle cradle.
I like this match just to see Jorge’s impressive submission hold and chain wrestling arsenal.
Match Rating: *1/2

Paradise for Maximo: Maximo & Mototsugu Shimizu VS Gamma & Kagetora
Maximo is a luchador from CMLL and uses a homosexual gimmick much like Dansyoku Dino of DDT. The guy also has a surprising big fan base in Dragondoor. It’s just too bad we didn’t get to see him do much in the ring other than some comedy spots. Most of the work for his team was done by Mototsugu Shimizu who took a lot of punishment from the heel team and didn’t get to show much offense of his own other than a good looking fisherman’s knee buster and countering a brainbuster from Kagetora into a sweet DDT.
Gamma was good at playing along to Maximo’s comedy spots, and works well with the powerhouse Kagetora, who won the match with a sick looking Emerald Frosion out of a fireman’s carry on Shimizu.
Match Rating: *

Keep on Grope: Syachihoko Machines III & IV VS Taiji Ishimori & Little Dragon
The Syachihoko Machines diss Ishimori and his musical exploits with the Sailor Boys earlier in his career, and proceed to stomp on a pair of CD singles before Ishimori jumps them. The Machines quickly unmask to reveal themselves as Ishimori’s ex-Sailor Boy partners, Kei Sato and Shu Sato!
The Sato brothers may have changed up their style to a more heelish, brawling style, but they still have some really good double team combination moves, with their target being Ishimori for most of the bout. Little Dragon looks like a blue colored Dragon Kid wearing a K-ness mask, and does a lot of the quick high-flying offense.
Other than the opening brawl into the audience, the crowd was really dead for this one. The Satos tandem offense kept things interesting for me, but there wasn’t much else, and it took interference from Kagetora hitting his Emerald Frosion move on Ishimori behind the referee’s back to bring this one to an end. Thankfully.
Match Rating: *

Another in ring segment with Livedoor blog representative thanking the fans for their support, and this leads to the dramatic return of Kinya Oyanegai (hope I spelled the name right?), who comes out in a tattered and torn suit as he’s fallen on hard times since leaving the business, but is now set on making a comeback to get back in the green financially. All I can say is I’ve only seen him work one match in the old Toryumon days, and it was an amazing display from him the way he balanced his mat prowness with reading a book in the ring! Can’t wait to see what he can do in there again.

Touru Owashi VS Toshiaki Kawada
I really liked the build up video for this one, as we’ve always seen Owashi dominate everyone smaller than him, but now he’s standing toe-to-toe with someone just as tough as he is, and he likes the challenge of it! Kawada himself is no stranger to Owashi after facing him in a tag match from a previous show, and adapted well to the style when he surprised everyone with a big plancha on Owashi then! They really built this up as something special, which is what it should be.
This was a really physical match! Both men laid it into each other without holding back and if they traded anymore chops their chests would have ended up like the Kobashi/Sasaki match at the Tokyo Dome in 2005! I also liked that they managed to keep the physicality up without resorting to make a big move spot fest like what we’d see in the bigger promotions.
Owashi had a plan going in, attacking Kawada’s eternal bad leg which helped the ex-sumo student get out of a jam every now and then, but it was still weird seeing Owashi get dominated like he did after seeing him being the dominant one after so many years. Come to think of it, I don’t think there was a clear moment in the match where Kawada looked like he was in any real danger as he was able to escape most of Owashi’s big moves, and managed to kick out of Owashi’s chokeslam. To Owashi’s credit, he managed to kick out Kawada’s trademark brainbuster before a stiff PK to the head put him out.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Former WWE superstar TAJIRI comes out and takes a seat at ringside for the main event.

They than show an interesting video on what happened to the top guys of T2P, with Shuji Kondo & “brother” YASSHI making it big in AJPW, and Milano making a name for himself in America working the independents like Ring of Honor.

Lucha Libre Clasica Best&Next: Milano Collection AT, Berlinetta Boxer & Iifushino (Ifushi Kota) VS Shuji Kondo, “brother” YASSHI & Takuya Sugawara
A reunion of Aagan Iisou and the Italian Connection, with Kota stepping for YOSHINO. The Italian Connection even did an old school group dance intro with the Milano girls and Milanito joined in as well. Good times.
Surprisingly this one didn’t start out with a wild brawl considering the history between the two sides. The Aagan team actually warranted 2 yellow cards (for YASSHI ripping off Boxer’s mask and Sugawara hitting Milano with the Black Box) and 3 rope breaks, meaning another infraction would have caused the match to be ruled a TKO in the ItaCon’s favor. The match eventually spilled out into a multi-man spotfest, with tons of counters and big moves all over the place, and Milano eventually getting the win over YASSHI with the IRII.
Personally, I didn’t think much of this one and Shogo “Jet” Takagi still sucks.
Match Rating: ***

The show ends with a really long in ring segment that I guess means Kenzo Suzuki and TAJIRI will be on the next show or something.

Overall: Definitely worth watching just for the Owashi/Kawada match.

Labels: Dragon Gate, Dragondoor, El Dorado

Starts off with a look back at the Brave Gate League matches from the 3/17 Korakuen Hall show. First with Tozawa pulling off the huge upset of pinning Naruki Doi thanks to a bag full of protein powder, then Dragon Kid stealing the win from Masato Yoshino with a quick crucifix pin. We then see highlights from the main event of that show where Yasushi Kanda lead the Original M2K to victory over Blood Generation. That’s followed by Susumu and CIMA challenging each other to a number contenders match for Ryo Saito’s Dream Gate title.

Open the Brave Gate League: Super Shisa VS Masato Yoshino (3/18/2006)
This was clipped down a bit, and from what they showed of Shisa on offense, it looked like Yoshino couldn’t be bothered to sell much for the guy! They actually did a ref bump leading to Shisa hitting the Yoshi Tonic but with no one to count, and we than had one of the weirdest finishes ever where they traded cradles back and forth and ended up with the referee counting BOTH their shoulders down and the match is declared a draw! They each get a point and Yoshino leads the two since he has one point more than Shisa.
Match Rating: *

We get a really quick look at Naoki Tanizaki beating Akira Tozawa with a running knee strike to the head he calls the Casanova, to tie Yoshino with 6pts leading the League. That means if Dragon Kid wins his match with Doi, there will be a 3-way tie and a 3-way dance for the finals!

Open the Brave Gate League: Dragon Kid VS Naruki Doi (3/18/2006)
This was a quick back and forth battle, with Doi using the usual cheating tactics to try and steal the win from Kid. Doi managed to kick out of the Ultra Hurricanrana, and Kid managed to kick out of a top rope powerbomb! Don’t know why, but the Ultra Hurricanrana is supposed to be Kid’s finisher, but I’ve seen a lot of people kick out of it recently. It wouldn’t hurt to have Kid kick out of the Doi555 which he avoided like death during the match? Kid did manage to kick out of the Bakarate Sliding Kick though, and he also did this fun suplex counter where he flipped out into a stunner! The finish came when Yoshino tried to help Doi cheat, but Tanizaki took care of him by hitting him with a garbage can! He also hit Doi with the can, giving Kid the chance to hit a DDT followed by the Dragonrana for the win.
We now have a 3-way dance for the finals!
Match Rating: *1/2

Open the Brave Gate League Finals: Masato Yoshino VS Naoki Tanizaki VS Dragon Kid (3/19/2006)
Where to begin with this? How about the fact that Tanizaki walked out of the match TWICE! First when his fellow Do-Fixer team mate and in-match opponent Dragon Kid accidentally hit him twice thanks to some nifty countering from Yoshino, but he came back after a bit with his thrash can to use as a weapon. The second time was when Ryo Saito accidentally hit him after helping to fend off interference from Blood Generation, which lead to a brawl between the two at ringside before Tanizaki walked out of the TITLE MATCH! There should never be a reason to walk out of a title match in my opinion after all the hard work he went through to get there.
The Ultra-Hurricanrana again loses credibility as Yoshino is able to kick out of it, after a top-rope Diamond Cutter no less! At least Kid kicked out of the Lightning Spiral and Another Space before a second Lightning Spiral softened him up enough for Yoshino to lock on the Sol Naciente for the submission win.
Another thing I didn’t like was the lighting of the venue, as whenever they used the ringside cameramen, the spotlights would shine right into the lens making the picture way too bright. Ever had the sun reflect off the windscreen of the car in front of you into your eyes? That’s what it felt like watching this match at times, and it was hard to catch that Kid actually gave up at the end because of it. An OK match, but just really hard to watch for me.
Match Rating: **

Kenichiro Arai VS Akira Tozawa (4/12/2006)
The beginning of Tozawa-Juku! He instantly got over with the crowd, so of course Araken had to squash him just like when Tozawa’s dancing gimmick was getting him over. Tozawa didn’t have a lot of offense in, but he did a cool looking stunner out of a full-nelson. He also took a lot of punishment from Araken, but he ASKED for it mostly to show how much of a man’s man he is! He even did the old “Thank you, Sir, May I have another, Sir?!?” bit when Araken kept laying running face kicks to him! Tozawa also had this fun diving headbutt move where he did a very long pose to get to it, so of course he missed. Araken even let him hit the move a second time, but no sold it. So like I said, mostly a short squash with Araken winning with his Henshin Tiger Suplex-hold.
Match Rating: *

Loser Changes Character Handicap Match: Stalker Ichikawa VS the Florida Brothers (4/12/2006)
So with his gimmick on the line, Stalker goes from being the super job-boy who gets KO’d from punches and kicks to being able to kick out of a Doomsday Device as well as Michael and Daniels’ finishers? And still have enough to pull of a BEAUTIFUL German suplex-hold I might add. Sure they threw logic out the door as far as the characters were concerned, but what the heck, it was fun to watch.
Tozawa came out after the match and draped Michael in his white jacket before walking off. K-ness informs Stalker that by winning the match, he gets a shot at a special opponent at the next pay per view on 4/23, and that opponent will be none other than Yutaka Yoshie!
Bye Bye Floridas.
Match Rating: *

Another quick look back at the feel good win of Yasushi Kanda and Original M2K defeating Blood Generation with Kanda hitting the Gegokujoh Elbow drop on Don Fujii for the win, followed by Susumu and CIMA’s declarations for challenging Ryo Saito for the Dream Gate title. They also show the problems starting up between CIMA and Gamma.

Open the Dream Gate No.1 Contenders Match: CIMA VS Susumu Yokosuka (3/19/2006)
I hear a lot of complaints about the no-selling of big moves in NOAH, but Dragon Gate does it a lot worse than them when it comes to the big matches. Take this match for example where Susumu hits the Jumbo no Kachi only for CIMA to pop up and hit the Schwein and Susumu pops up again to hit another Jumbo no Kachi, and this was after Susumu was hit with another Schwein previously! This bit of no-selling wouldn’t be a big deal if it was a sequence in the middle of the match with both guys collapsing after doing it, like NOAH would, but instead they like doing it near the end of the match, so both guys are taking big move after big move and just popping up for more without any real rest period in between! Sure it makes the match exciting, but it does nothing for the credibility of their finishers now does it?
I don’t think the finish did much for Susumu either since it took a miss-timed powder attack from Gamma to blind CIMA giving Susumu the chance to hit the Jumbo no Kachi-gatame for the win.
The match was clipped a lot and again suffered from the very bad lighting positions which is a real pain to the eyes.
Match Rating: **

Highlights of the friction between CIMA and Gamma in Blood Generation, and how Naoki Tanizaki became the newest member when he blindsided Gamma. Don Fujii wanted to evaluate Tanizaki, and accepted him in to Blood Gen when Tanizaki pinned him in a tag match with the Casanova at Korakuen Hall on 4/12.

Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi & Anthony W. Mori VS CIMA, Naruki Doi & Gamma (4/12/2006)
This was clipped down mostly just to show the problems within Blood Gen with CIMA and Gamma. But the good guys did get to show some fun offense, like Genki doing a half-nelson suplex! Dragon Kid also did this awesome super frankensteiner to Doi who was sitting on Mori’s shoulders on the TOP ROPE! And Mori hit the Elegant-ton (Swanton) for a near fall. But like I said, this match was mostly about Blood Gen, and it reached it’s peak when Gamma attacked everyone with a chair than cut Mori’s hair! Don’t know why, but CIMA actually defended Mori, leading to Doi turning on him and joining Gamma in beating him down. Yoshino also joined in and so did Tanizaki, and they beat down CIMA and Fujii. I guess they didn’t beat them down enough though, cause they still had it in them to argue over the microphone about who should get the Blood Gen name! CIMA really needs to decide if he’s selling those injured ribs or not.
Match Rating: *

A look at Magnum TOKYO’s Ryuukon 10-Match Series, and how he was able to beat Tenryu on 2/05 with the AV Star Press.

Ryuukon 10 Match Trial Series #5: Magnum TOKYO VS Genichiro Tenryu (3/25/2006)
This was rather surprising as Magnum had a lot more offense in than expected, and they played up a pretty good heavyweight match even if most of it was exchanging chops, strikes and kicks cause there’s only so much Tenryu can do at his age. The finish was rather surprising as Magnum won a strike exchange by chopping out Tenryu’s legs with low kicks, followed by a low dropkick to take him off his feet and a La Majistral cradle to score his second win in the series!
Match Rating: *1/2

Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka VS Magnum TOKYO & Masaaki Mochizuki (4/12/2006)
A lot of emphasis on Susumu and Mochizuki in this one. Mochi had his leg worked over, and Susumu had his arm worked over. Magnum and Mochi showed some good team work, and Magnum demonstrated some of the moves he’s been learning from Tenryu, like the WAR Special, and the Ryuukon Lariat. Ryo gave Magnum a fisherman’s buster on a pile of chairs out on the floor, and Susumu hit a big Jumbo no Kachi-gatame on Mochi after Ryo gave him a dragon suplex to pick up the win.
Probably would have preferred if the match wasn’t clipped down so much. Next stop: Korakuen Hall!
Match Rating: **

Labels: Dragon Gate

Starts off with a look back of the feud between Don Fujii and Yasushi Kanda, culminating at the 2/24/2006 Korakuen Hall PPV where Kanda had enough of Fujii’s abuse and finally fought back, only to be given a spike piledriver on a chair by Fujii and CIMA. But Kanda would have the last laugh that evening as he made a triumphant return in his M2K gear to smash a blue box over the head of a shocked Fujii! Kanda than issued the challenge to Fujii and Blood Generation to face him and fellow original M2K members Masaaki Mochizuki and Susumu Yokosuka, which will finally settle the score at tonight’s PPV!

Kenichiro Arai & King Shisa VS Anthony W. Mori & Turbo
What the Hell? Anthony gives Araken a missile dropkick to the head, and he hurts his legs instead while Araken doesn’t budge or feel anything? I think it was supposed to be comical, but I think that’s just ridiculous. Araken looks like he’s 45 instead of 33 for crying out loud, and he even blew a few spots cause he couldn’t keep up with Turbo!
King Shisa and Turbo at least keep the match interesting, with Turbo’s flip-floppy offense and Shisa still impresses me the way he moves around for his size. The tandem tombstone piledriver by Araken & Shisa was a cool spot though, before Araken hit a high diving headbutt off Shisa’s shoulders off the top rope for the win.
Match Rating: *

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Naoki Tanisaki (2pts) VS Super Shisa (4pts)
The more aggressive Tanisaki controlled most of the match, which is a good thing cause the kid was long due for a push. He added some ground ‘n’ pound to his mat game, and was able to counter the Yoshi Tonic into a face-plant. He hit a great looking DDT off the top rope also, and after a few near falls from Shisa, was able to hit the Implant reverse piledriver followed by the Casanova running knee for the quick win.
Shisa should NOT have kicked out of the Implant since Tanisaki pinned him right after hitting it. Too bad Tanisaki ended up quitting after finally getting a push some time later.
Match Rating: *1/2

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Tozawa (0pts) VS Naruki Doi (5pts)
Good to see Tozawa finally coming into his own. He attacked Doi off the bat sending him to the outside and hitting a big suicide dive throught the ropes. Doi came back breaking a chair over his head and dominated some more in the ring. I don’t know why, but the referee totally let Shingo Takagi come in ring and pummel Tozawa for a bit and double team him with Doi. Araken evens the odds for a bit spitting alcohol in Doi’s eyes, leading to a near fall for Tozawa with a hurricanrana. Shingo tries to interfere again with a powder attack, but accidentally hits Doi instead leading to another near fall with a roll-up. The referee gets distracted as Tozawa grabs the bag of powder and throws several hands full of it into Doi’s face before placing the entire bag over his head and rolling him up with a small-package to score the HUGE upset!
Araken offers Tozawa a spot in M2K, but Tozawa turns down the offer. Probably cause of all the abuse Araken has been laying on him and not letting him have any fun?
Match Rating: **

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Dragon Kid (2pts) VS Masato Yoshino (5pts)
Man, how bad is the ringside crew at doing their jobs tonight? Every match so far had one spot where the wrestlers flew into the audience (there’s no guardrail) and the crew couldn’t get the fans out of the way in time.
The ending of this one really came out of nowhere, as after some quick counters, Kid scored the flash win with a crucifix-hold. I thought the match sort of lacked structure, as after working on Kid’s legs for a bit, they just started going for big moves out of nowhere. Kid even hit the Ultra Hurricanrana out of nowhere for a near fall, totally wasting that finisher.
Match Rating: *1/2

Intermission time and they show clips of M2K VS CRAZY MAX from August 2000, though the footage looks like it’s from 1995. Some good team work between Kanda & Susumu, including a double team Exploder on Fujii. Sucks that the match ended on a double count-out. We than get the November 2001 match where CIMA debuted the Schwein against Chocoflake K-Ichi, which was also the last match K-Ichi had in Toryumon before disappearing off the wrestling map.
Next up is a quick retrospective of Kanda’s wrestling career in Toryumon, including his retirement match against Stalker Ichikawa, which was mostly an exhibition in double team moves with Susumu on poor Stalker before he hit his diving elbow finisher.

After the intermission we get an in ring segment with K-ness, Stalker Ichikawa and the Florida Brothers. I skipped the whole thing since I had no idea what they were talking about.

Ryo Saito & Genki Horiguchi VS BxB Hulk & Magnum TOKYO
Even teaming with the Dream Gate champion, Genki can’t get a break. It pains me that they give Genki an awesome finisher like the Beach Break, but never let him pin anyone with it. Sucks even more that he has to job to Hulk here after his E.V.O finisher. Didn’t help any that this match went way longer than necessary.
Match Rating: *1/2

Original M2K (Yasushi Kanda, Masaaki Mochizuki & Susumu Mochizuki) VS Blood Generation (Don Fujii, CIMA & Shingo Takagi)
Kanda leads out the crew, and they are flanked by original M2K members Chocoflake K-Ichi and Darkness Dragon (so much cooler looking than K-ness!)! Easily the best match of the show with a ton of crowd heat for everything.
Kanda had his neck work over a lot by Blood Gen, but he showed he could still go in the ring and can still pull off his great double-team moves with Susumu, like the double-Exploder, the double modified-suplex and their tandem finisher where Susumu does a rolling Samoan drop and Kanda comes off the top with a big diving elbow drop, which they used to put away Fujii with for the win. Good to see Kanda get his rightful revenge, and also a fun bonus that Darkness Dragon and Chokoflake got involved, and K-Ichi got a small measure of revenge on CIMA when he escaped the Schwein and put on the iron claw!
Great match overall.
Match Rating: ***1/2

I didn’t get the ending though. Blood Generation were supposed to be these bad ass heels, and the whole night when they lost they still punked out their opponents, but after this one they actually bowed their hats to M2K and give Kanda his props. Both faction stood in the ring and didn’t lift a finger at each other and chatted over the mic like nothings been happening these past few months.
Susumu than declared his challenge for the Dream Gate against Ryo for the next PPV, but it sort of came off as an afterthought here.

Overall: Even though he eventually made a full time return to in-ring action, I guess it’s good they only did the Original M2K reunion for just one night and didn’t drag it out like DX is in WWE now. An OK show overall, next to the main event, seeing Naoki’s new mean streak and Tozawa’s big upset win were the best parts of the show.

Labels: Dragon Gate

Starts off with Blood Gen coming out to discuss the big night they have ahead of them, with Doi and Yoshino facing off against each other in the Brave Gate league match, CIMA & Fuji facing Mochi & Susumu, and the big Dream Gate title defense by Magnitude against Do-FIXER leader Ryo Saito in the main.

Magnum TOKYO, Kenichiro Arai & Jack Evans VS Genki Horiguchi, Anthony W. Mori & BxB Hulk
Genki is GOD. And one of the main reasons that I follow Dragon Gate. For some reason from the first time I saw him 2 years ago until today, he still remains one of the most entertaining workers in the squared circle, be it Japan or anywhere. Just too bad the bookers of Dragon Gate couldn’t do a better job of handling him and give him the push he so rightly deserved.
With that out of the way, this was the usual entertaining Dragon Gate 6-man tag, with some fun comedy bits between Magnum & Genki. There’s a lot of hate for Jack Evans from DG purists, but the live Japanese crowds respond to him well with his flippy-floppy high flying offense, which also helps make his selling of his opponents offense look a whole lot more brutal.
There wasn’t really a whole lot of Mori or Araken in the match, though I seriously would have preferred if Evans pinned Mori instead of Genki with that 630’ senton of his.
Match Rating: *1/2

Shingo Takagi VS Katsuo
Pointless squash match, even if Katsuo did manage to drop Shingo on his head with a dangerous backdrop as the only bit of offense he got in the match. But Shingo more or less didn’t sell it and hit a pair of Pumping Bombers for the win.
Match Rating: 1/2*

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Super Shisa VS Tozawa
You got to know that if Tozawa was put up against anyone else, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in all the offense he did here. The match was a quick fast paced sprint, and ended after a long sequence of pin-exchanges which Shisa won out of in the end.
Match Rating: *

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Naoki Tanisaki VS Dragon Kid
This was a fun brawl thanks to Tanisaki’s new found mean streak, bringing a garbage can with him to the ring to use as a weapon and not afraid to take a cheap shot or two. Tanisaki did take a rather sick looking DDT out of a head-scissors from DK though, but was able to pull out the win by count-out after brawling out into the crowd and giving DK the U-Tube onto a pile of chairs. Tanisaki, another missed opportunity of Dragon Gate.
Match Rating: *1/2

Open the Brave Gate Tourney: Naruki Doi VS Masato Yoshino
Now this was rather surprising. The match ended in a 20-minute draw, but the ride they took us on was a lot of fun as they didn’t slow the pace down for a minute with non-stop fast paced action. It more or less put over the fact that the duo were more or less even, and knew each other inside out since they were both in the same faction. They did seem to run out of gas a bit near the end as they didn’t seem to be able to kick out in time on 2 occasions but the referee called it a 2 anyway. It probably also didn’t make sense for Yoshino to take such a long pause to taunt after hitting the Lightning Spiral only to go for the Sol Nociente submission when he knew there was only seconds left on the clock.
It was still fun from bell to bell though.
Match Rating: **1/2

Intermission time and we are shown the tough guy Don Fujii’s abuse of referee Yasushi Kanda from the past few months, leading to the boiling point of Kanda having enough and actually fighting back. We know where this is heading…
After that is the build up of the Dream Gate title match between champion Magnitude Kishiwada and Ryo Saito.

CIMA & Don Fujii VS Masaaki Mochizuki & Susumu Yokosuka
Fujii again gets on Kanda’s case before the match begins and Kanda again fights back, leading to Fujii & CIMA spike piledriving Kanda on several chairs, leading to Mochi & Susumu running in to make the save and starting the match with Yagi as the referee.
The match became really fun once things picked up, ending in a hot sprint with Fujii surprisingly getting a clean pin on Mochi with a pair of Nice Germans. But the main story of the match is what happened AFTER the match, when Blood Gen continued to beat down on Mochi & Susumu, leading to Yasushi Kanda running out to make the save in full M2K gear, mohawk and blue-box included! This sets up Blood Gen VS Original M2K for the next PPV, which I’m really looking forward to watching.
Match Rating: **

Open the Dream Gate: Magnitude Kishiwada (C) VS Ryo Saito
Much like his title defense against Anthony W. Mori in January, a major flaw in this match is Magnitude’s inability (or downright refusal) to sell his bad shoulder. Seriously, that was the only thing that really bugged me about this match. After getting his arm worked over, being put in a jujigatame and a triangle, as well as multiple arm-breakers, Magnitude still throws lariats with wreckless abandon and show ZERO effects of any pain. And this is supposed to be the injury that he’s taking time off to heal! I’m all for pushing him as a monster, but there’s a difference between that and just plain not selling.
Ryo on the other hand is forced to do a million dollar sell job for all of Magnitude’s offense, so much so that I just had to shut off my brain when he once again put on a superhuman comeback from offense that would have put average guys away a lot sooner. Like the Mori defense, I found this to be a big booking mess as far as the ring-work went, and it was really hard for me to get into it. The final sprint and subsequent pinfall just seemed to come out of nowhere, with the Premium Bridge looking more like a flash-pinfall move instead of a last resort finisher.
Match Rating: **

Overall: Hate to say I was looking forward to the Dream Gate match but ended up being really disappointed. The show wasn’t all bad though, just be ready to shut off your brain for the Dream Gate match.

Labels: Dragon Gate

Show starts off with a quick look back at the major events of the 1/27/06 Battle Junction PPV, followed by a quick look at Jack Evans who’s making waves in Dragon Gate thanks to his acrobatic abilities and his 630’ finisher.

Truth Gate 2/11/2006
Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Yokosuka & Kenichiro Arai VS CIMA, Shingo Takagi & Jack Evans
A lot of American Dragon Gate fans are complaining about Evans touring in Dragon Gate, but it really doesn’t matter what they think since they obviously aren’t paying attention to the Japanese fans who love his flip-floppy style and they are the ones actually paying to see the shows live. I think he’s a good addition to the variety of the roster, though I do question putting him in a stable with CIMA & Don Fujii later. At least they still haven’t put him over guys like Mochi and Susumu. He didn’t really play a big factor in the match other than a few flipping high spots and stealing the win on Araken when no one was looking.
Anyways, the whole match was a fast paced sprint with lots of great action and just a bit of clipping here and there, but still solid and fun overall.
Match Rating: **1/2

A quick look at Don Fujii making referee Yasushi Kanda’s life a living hell by beating him up member every time he lost a match. Like I said before, seems like the only way Fujii can get any heat is by beating up rookies and referees.

Magnum TOKYO & BxB Hulk VS Don Fujii & Masato Yoshino
Another high sprint match. Both sides didn’t really bust out everything, but it was still entertaining to a degree. The main story was of course Fujii getting on referee Kanda’s case again when he got pinned by Hulk via a la majistral cradle. I say continue to elevate Shingo, Doi & Yoshino, and have Fujii be the job boy of the team.
Match Rating: *

A look at Dragon Kid winning the Brave Gate title off Naruki Doi last year, followed by how Masato Yoshino has been beating Kid several times in tag matches recently with his deadly new Lightning Spiral finisher, leading up to their title match.

Truth Gate 2/05/2006
Open the Brave Gate Title: Dragon Kid VS Masato Yoshino
Clipped down from 20 minutes to about 13 minutes, but looked really good for what was shown. Blood Generation got involved early in the match so the commissioner had all factions banned from ringside for the remainder of the match. Yoshino attacked Kid’s back while Kid attacked his back in a see-saw match, with Kid being very wary of Yoshino’s Lightning Spiral which has beaten him at least twice already in recent weeks. The finish once again saw Blood Generation get involved, but Naoki Tanisaki came in to make the save and helped Kid score the win to retain the title.
Unfortunately, this all went down right in front of the commissioner and he decided to rule the match a no contest and hold up the title, which would lead to the Brave Gate League. Blood Generation are fine with the no contest decision, but DK is angry at Tanisaki for trying to help him. Why not just restart the match?!? The whole ending segment more or less ruined the vibe of the match considering it’s been done so many times in the past already in Dragon Gate.
Match Rating: **

A look back at the rise of Ryo Saito and Susumu Yokosuka and how they battled it out at the King of Gate finals back in December, and how they seem to be ready to over take their mentors, Magnum TOKYO and Masaaki Mochizuki. But up next, they are going to team with their mentors against each other!

Magnum TOKYO & Ryo Saito VS Masaaki Mochizuki & Susumu Yokosuka
Now THIS is why I love Dragon Gate! You got four of the best in the company going at it and they more than delivered here with tons of great action and near falls toward the end! I wasn’t a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see Magnum hit his new finisher, but that is more than forgiven considering all the great action we got here, including a great spot where Mochi hit the Twister on Saito, and picked him up again and passed him to Susumu in mid air to hit the Yokosuka Cutter for a near fall! Susumu with his always killer Jumbo no Kachi lariats as well as his awesome looking Exploder suplexes.
And of course we had Ryo giving an awesome performance here and taking another step up the ladder when he actually PINNED Mochizuki with the Premium Bridge! The match was clipped down a bit, but still one of the best matches I’ve seen from Dragon Gate in a while, and I’d probably have rated it higher if it was shown in full.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Right after the match, Magnum decides to take the opportunity to call out Genichiro Tenryu at ringside for match #4 of the Ryuukon Trial Series!

Before the match starts we get a quick look back at the three previous bouts where Tenryu beat Magnum first with the 53Yrs Old brainbuster, the second with a short lariat, and the third with a modified Texas-clover hold. Will Magnum finally score his first win in this 10-match series?

Ryuukon Trial Series #4: Magnum TOKYO VS Genichiro Tenryu
The answer to my question earlier: YES! This was the match where Magnum scored the huge win over Tenryu with the AV Star Press which he hasn’t used in ages! The veteran dominated most of the match, beating Magnum in and out of the ring, but the final moments saw Magnum hit Tenryu with a sobat kick and a middle kick that had a big effect on the aged veteran, and it was enough to keep him down long enough for Magnum to go up top and hit his move for the win. Not a mat classic by any means and a little short in length, but definitely memorable thanks to finish. I also kind of surprised they would have this big upset take place in front of a small crowd like this. Definitely a good bonus bout for the live fans in attendance.
Match Rating: **

A look back at the history between Anthony W. Mori and Dream Gate champion Magnitude Kishiwada. First with Mori scoring the huge upset on Magnitude during the King of Gate when he pinned him with the Elegant Magic cradle, and this pissed off Kishiwada to the point that he cost Mori the second round match against Naruki Doi and almost broke his neck with a chair shot and Last Ride before Doi hit the Bakarate Sliding Kick into a chair on Mori’s face. Mori was out for sometime, but came back in a big way when he pinned Don Fujii in a tag match again with Elegant Magic. That would of course bring us to the January Battle Junction PPV where Mori scored the decisive win over Kishiwada in the Captain’s Fall match with the triangle choke, showing that he could indeed score a win and not just rely on a flash pin to beat the champion.

Truth Gate 2/11/2006
Open the Dream Gate Title: Magnitude Kishiwada VS Anthony W. Mori
Mori should have had the advantage in this match since Kishiwada went into it with a bad shoulder, and Mori worked over it every chance he had, but for some reason Magnitude just refused to sell any of it! Mori was still put in the position of underdog and Kishiwada tossed him around like a rag doll for most of the match. Even after Mori had his bad arm locked in a triangle-lock for several minutes, Magnitude was up throwing lariats with his bad arm like nothing had happened! I know he was supposed to be the monster champion, but I felt it really took away from the match by not having Kishiwada show any sign of punishment his supposed bad shoulder was taking. Even though Mori did get a good amount of offense in and a teased that he could have beaten MK for the title (there were even a few phantom 3 counts that the fans were going “EH?!?” over), this really did nothing to elevate Mori since Kishiwada never really showed any sign of weakness to the offense Mori got in. Just a waste of effort after a rather good build to this feud.
Match Rating: **1/2

Post match Blood Generation play Mori for a sucker as MK extends a hand of respect to Mori, who accepts only to get beat up by Blood Gen. Do-Fixer run in to make the save and we end up with a bonus 6-man tag!

Ryo Saito, Dragon Kid & Genki Horiguchi VS CIMA, Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino
Now this was a great fast paced match and a great bonus for the fans. Everyone got their spots in here, and it was fun seeing Do-Fixer reverse and use one of Blood Gens own triple team moves against Yoshino! The ending was also a bit of a surprise as Genki hit the Beach Break on CIMA followed by a dragon suplex-hold by Ryo on the Blood Gen leader to score the win! It was short, but still a lot of fun.
Match Rating: ***

Post match, Ryo calls out Magnitude and officially makes his challenge for the Dream Gate title at the February Battle Junction PPV to close out this episode.

Labels: Dragon Gate

We kick off the PPV with Do-Fixer coming out to welcome the crowd and wishing everyone a happy new year. They get done, but Blood Generation come out and both sides start yapping it up about “captains”, and the main event is decided as a “Captain’s Fall” match. Magnitude says a few words which brings out a serious Anthony W. Mori to the ring and asking for a shot at Kishiwada, and they decided it to be a 10-man tag, but then Ryo says it’ll only be 8-man, with Mori replacing Genki! Naoki isn’t happy about this but Genki tells him to listen to Ryo, who is the group leader. Magnitude is then named the team captain for the Blood Generation team, and Mori the captain of the Do-Fixer team in the main event tonight.

Super Shisa & King Shisa VS Susumu Yokosuka & Kenichiro Arai
Solid opener with a good mix of comedy and fast speed action. I like the opening bit where they did a bunch of comedy spots around Susumu & Araken slapping Shisa on the back hard. REALLY hard. And it still surprises me how quick on his feet King Shisa is for his size. Araken & Susumu showed some good team work, and it was fun watching Susumu do some comedy like he did here, but I can’t wait to watch him get serious again later down the line and chase Ryo and the Dream Gate title.
Match Rating: *1/2

The Florida Brothers come out for their match and they wonder who their opponent will be since Anthony is now in the main event spot and was originally supposed to face them in a handicap match. Well, it’s non other than the man Anthony is replacing in the match, Genki Horiguchi!

Handicap Match: Florida Brothers VS Genki Horiguchi
I haven’t seen a Florida Brothers match in a long while, and the last time I saw Genki VS the Floridas, it was a screaming match. This time the best way I could describe it was that they were having a HERNIA match as all 3 of them took low blows and continued the match while having difficulty moving thanks to the pain in their lower extremities! This was also one of those rare times where the Floridas won by pinfall instead of DQ, as they pinned Genki with a rather innovative roll-up.
Fun match, only it was a little short.
Match Rating: *
Entertainment Rating: ***

BxB Hulk & Katsuo VS Vengallys & Tozawa
Tozawa comes out in his Vengallys gear and his personality and entertainment value immediately jump up a few points! He did Vengallys’ gigolo dance intro, but had a little trouble getting his pants off, but it was fun to watch and the crowd loved it too. I think the only thing wrong was Tozawa was wearing his black tights instead of matching white tights with Vengallys, which Katsuo was wearing.
And when match kicked off, Tozawa was rather entertaining with his imitation of Vengallys’ mannerisms, which the crowd again loved, and he gave a solid showing for himself in the ring against both Katsuo and Hulk. I thought Vengallys himself was rather ok, but he did seem out of place and had a few odd spots when it looked like he wasn’t selling his opponent’s offense.
Katsuo was ok looking himself, and it was fun watching him play up his confusion on Tozawa’s gimmick. Hulk had a good showing too and it was interesting to see him get out cheered by Tozawa!
Fun match overall, but I didn’t like what happened after when Araken came out and ridiculed Tozawa for his choice of a mentor and gimmick. What? The old fart would rather he become a boring run of the mill rookie instead of someone with a PERSONALITY?!?
Match Rating: *

Magnum TOKYO & Masaaki Mochizuki VS Shingo Takagi & Don Fuji
Now this one was really good as you the ace team of Magnum & Mochi against the BG team of veteran Fuji and rookie monster Shingo. Shingo hasn’t been given the rookie treatment in a long time, so it was interesting to see him get slapped around by Mochi & Magnum during the opening moments of the match. But the veterans did a good job of making him look like the rookie monster he was at they had a heck of a time just trying to get him off his feet and he was able to counter almost every suplex or slam attempt on him. He even muscled up Mochi and gave him a Twister! I also liked seeing Fuji in a position where he couldn’t no sell his opponents offense and had his fair share of trouble with the ace team throughout the match.
Magnum seems to be slacking a bit during his dance intro, but it’s still one of the best entrances in the business today. He worked a solid match and started off with a great slap exchange with Fuji, and the rest of it was solid as well even if he didn’t break out his full arsenal. The same could be said for Mochi who’s arsenal was mostly down to his stiff kicking ability.
I also noticed how this match had more heat than any of the previous ones, probably cause they were given more time to work, but I have noticed that Mochi & Magnum still get bigger pops than most of the young studs on the roster.
Match Rating: **1/2

Post match Don Fuji isn’t happy about losing the match and takes his frustrations out on referee Yasushi Kanda. This of course begins sowing the seeds of the original M2K reunion later. Ever notice the only way Fuji can get any heat is by abusing rookies and referees? If he didn’t stick with CIMA all the time, he’d probably be the biggest jobber in the company.

Captain’s Fall Elimination Match: Ryo Saito, Anthony W. Mori (C), Dragon Kid & Naoki Tanisaki VS CIMA, Magnitude Kishiwada (C), Masato Yoshino & Naruki Doi
Now this was a great fast paced main event with more than a few surprises. First they teased Naoki walking out on Do-Fixer after Ryo accidentally hit him, only for Naoki to run in out of nowhere and eliminate Doi with the Backslide from Heaven! Tanisaki himself put on a strong showing against CIMA before CIMA spiked him with the Schwein twice to eliminate him. They continued to build the feud between Yoshino & Dragon Kid when Yoshino eliminated Kid with his cool Lightning Spiral finisher, showing once again that Kid couldn’t kick out of the move and Yoshino seemingly has the Brave Gate champion’s number for the eventual showdown. And the big surprise of course being Anthony W. Mori beating Magnitude Kishiwada with a triangle-choke to beat the team captain and win the match. The strong finish by Mori more than makes up for the fact that Magnitude was beating him left and right all over the place throughout the match, but showed that Mori could indeed withstand a beating and had a legitimate move that could beat the Dream Gate champion.
A great match overall and good way to close out the PPV after a mostly lackluster show.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Overall: The beginning matches were ok, and the opening segment did go kind of long, but the payoff at the end of the show was worth it to see them build up Mori into someone that did indeed have a slim chance instead of no chance of beating the champion.

Labels: Dragon Gate

Tozawa & Katsuo VS Katsuhiko Nakajima & BxB Hulk
Funny bit at the beginning when Hulk invited Nakajima to dance with him, and Nakajima was game to try, but quickly bowed out when he couldn’t keep up with Hulk and the dancers.
The match itself was a change to see Hulk not getting his ass handed to him and Nakajima playing the grumpy heavy hitting senior. Nakajima’s over confidence almost got the better of him when Tozawa was able to score two near falls on him though. But most of the match was basically the rookies getting worked over with small bursts of offence here and there.
Tozawa & Katsuo definitely don’t look like the average Dragon Gate worker, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with for them when their time comes. I’m guessing they’ll more likely be more technical styled or maybe even brawlers.
Match Rating: *

King of Gate Semi-Final: Shingo Takagi VS Ryo Saito
Ryo got his nose busted open right at the start of the match, and for the most part it was Shingo overpowering Saito. Shingo dropped Ryo twice, once with a dangerous backdrop, and another where he basically just picked him up and slammed him on his head like what Shuji Kondo did to Dragon Kid in 2004. But Ryo was able to tough it out and even withstood a barrage of hard lariats from Shingo and hit two dragon suplexes to put him away. I thought the ending was a bit anti-climatic since Ryo was playing the underdog role to Shingo throughout the match and I would have liked to have seen more offense from Ryo.
Match Rating: **

King of Gate Semi-Final: Susumu Yokosuka VS CIMA
Susumu hit ONE lariat to start this match and from there it was CIMA in control working his arm for the next 5 minutes or so. I thought it sort of drag things down a bit as it was again a match where the heel was working on an injured body part with small bursts of offense from the face. Luckily they gave Susumu more than that as he battled back big time pulling off two really cool spots, first when he countered the Schwein into the Yokosuka Cutter, then he and CIMA pulled off one of the best sequences ever when Susumu popped up from the Schwein to hit the Jumbo no Kachi, only for CIMA to pop up and hit a second Schwein only for Susumu to pop up again and hit another Jumbo no Kachi!
The one thing I don’t get about this match was CIMA suddenly going all over confident as he dared Susumu to lariat him and mocked him when Susumu didn’t have the strength to hit it. This was CIMA’s downfall as Susumu hit him with leg lariat instead (ala K-ness), followed by a Schwein of his own and finally the Jumbo no Kachi for the win!
The match started off slow, but in the end worked out really well with some good heated moments which the crowd (and myself) ate up. Solid stuff, and hopefully the finals will deliver big time as the two semis have been rather underwhelming thus far.
Match Rating: ***

International 3-Way Dance: Vangellys & King Shisa (Mexico) VS Roderick Strong & Jack Evans (USA) VS Masato Yoshino & Naruki Doi (Japan)
Am I the only one who thinks Yoshino looks like a 12yr old kid now?!?
I think it’s pretty obvious why Dragon Gate invited Jack Evans back to tour with them and not Roderick Strong, and it’s something I’ve noticed in his TNA appearances too. Mr. Messiah of the Backbreaker has NO PERSONALITY. Sure Strong is good at working the mat, but he doesn’t play to the crowd to get them into it like Evans does. He’s just all business, which is not a bad thing, but he could a lot better. Evans on the other hand is just a treat to watch. He has exciting offense and it genuinely hurts to see him take punishment due to his flexibility. But together with Strong they have some really good tandem moves, like the powerbomb/flipping footstomp combo, and this incredible move where Strong had Yoshino in a torture-rack, and Evans came off the top with a foot stomp on Yoshino before twisting into a moonsault on Doi! They did have one minor slip up though when Evans was way off mark with a corkscrew flipping senton, but Strong was smart enough to follow up with something so that it didn’t look that bad.
I am really impressed with King Shisa as well, as the man moves really well for his size and I really wonder who is under the mask, if he’s really Mexican or not and what name he uses in Mexico? Vagellys is built like a house, but still seems a bit green at times. I’d definitely like to see more of him though.
I hate to say it, but Doi & Yoshino were more or less carried in this match as they seriously looked like the weaker team compared to the others. Sure they had a good share of offense, but they weren’t in there as much as the others and didn’t really bring anything new to the table.
Overall, this was a really fun match with a lot of great work from all involved, including some good comedy bits. I’m really interested to see more of Evans in Dragon Gate and hope that he gets a shot at the Brave Gate one day.
Match Rating: ****

Survival Gate Battle Royal
No.1 – Don Fujii
No.2 – Masaaki Mochizuki
Fujii attacks Mochi as he gets in the ring and they trade hard chops before Mochi tees away at Fujii with big kicks. Fujii assumes the sumo stance and asks for more, and Mochi lays it in to him. Fuji pounds Mochi in the corner as the next two entrants come out.
No. 3 – Michael Iwase
No. 4 – Daniel Michima
The Floridas immediately give Mochi a hand and Daniel gets slammed hard by Fujii. Fearing a similar beating, Michael whips Mochi into a slam by Fujii! Michael then whips Daniel into Fujii, but before Fujii can slam him down, Michael shoves down Fujii and Mochi & the Floridas pile on top of him to pin and eliminate him as the next two men enter!
No. 5 – Magnum TOKYO
No. 6 – Naoki Tanisaki
I have NO IDEA why, but Tanisaki wheels out Magnum who’s sitting in a garbage can and carrying a broom! Tanisaki gets beat up by everyone as he gets in the ring, and Magnum needs the ring seconds to help him out and get in the ring. Everyone turns their attention to TOKYO, but Magnum beats on Tanisaki for sticking him in that garbage can! Everyone puts the boots to Tanisaki, but turns their attention to the entrance curtains as the 10-second countdown begins.
No. 7 – Stalker Ichikawa
No. 8 – Syachihoko Machine
Everyone stands back as the bizarre duo enters the ring before beating them down. Stalker gets his ears and antenna ripped off Magnum & Naoki and slammed down hard as the next duo comes out.
No. 9 – DG President Takashi Okamura (!)
No. 10 – Magnitude Kishiwada
Everyone steps back as Syacho steps on the apron, but Magnitude stomps his way to the ring and the two immediately face off as they get in the ring. Okamura gives Kishiwada a big kick and tries for a Last Ride! He quickly switches to a backslide and gets a near fall as the announce team is going nuts and everyone else is just standing there watching! Kishiwada puts the boots to Okamura than flattens him in the corner with a splash as the next duo come out.
No. 11 – Genki Horiguchi
No. 12 – Dragon Kid
Kishiwada tries for the Last Ride, but STALKER makes the save by giving Dream Gate champion a diving double finger butt poke! Kishiwada slams Stalker as Genki enters the ring and gets tossed to the other side by the Floridas. The ring is filling up now. Everyone is grabbing Genki by his hair and tossing him around! He almost flies over the top on one of them, but everyone pulls him back in! Everyone turns their attention to Magnitude as the next entrants come out. It’s the Florida Brothers theme that plays, but Michael & Daniel are already in the ring looking at each other and wondering what’s up. Why it’s non other than…
No. 13 – Johnson Florida
No. 14 – Jackson Florida
Johnson stashes several loaves of bread under the ring. Hard to keep up now that the ring is full of wrestlers. Daniel chokes Stalker in the corner as Syachihoko stomps on him and Okamura tries to take off Dragon Kid’s mask, but everyone’s attention once again turns to Magnitude. Everyone is actually scared of the Dream Gate champion as the next duo comes out.
No. 15 – Super Shisa
No. 16 – Anthony W. Mori
Syachihoko gets shoved into Magnitude who kicks him aside, Stalker follows and is also brushed off. Genki & Shisa double whip Kishiwada into the ropes and Magnitude ducks a double clothesline, but as he rebounds off the ropes, Anthony pulls down the ropes and Kishiwada goes over and is eliminated! Kishiwada runs off Mori as the next man comes out.
No. 17 – Karaoke Machine!
Machine appears in the audience and sings his trademark ballad (despite needing a lyric sheet), and everyone in the ring stops what they are doing and claps along to his performance! Probably one of the funniest things you’ll ever see is all the DG boys swaying in unison! Everyone yells at Karaoke to extend the song, but than just forget about it and the action starts up again in the ring. Karaoke Machine finally finishes his song as Magnum tries to rip off Kid’s mask and almost gets it done. Instead of getting in the ring, Karaoke Machine joins the timekeeper at ring side! Everyone is beating on Stalker again, and Okamura gives him one HARD punch as Magnum pins him and gets a near fall. Stalker has an antenna sticking out of his ear. Okamura gives Stalker another punch and Magnum pins him for another near fall. Genki is hanging to the ringpost outside the ring! Okamura tries to suplex Stalker, but Stalker reverses it into a small package and everyone joins in to hold down Okamura for the pinfall to eliminate him!
Syachihoko gets launched into the corner and he does the Syachihoko pose on the corner! Stalker grabs Daniel and does the rope walk all the way over to where Syachihoko is. Michael goes over to help hold Syachihoko in place and Stalker steps over him to cross the corner. Everyone applauds the move, including Daniel who cause Stalker to lose his balance and crotch himself on the ropes before falling out of the ring, taking Syachihoko with him and eliminating them both!
Dragon Kid locks Michael in a Monte Cristo submission lock. Daniel puts a headlock on Kid, Genki puts a sleeper on Daniel, Magnum puts a headlock on Genki’s hair, and everyone joins in chain of head/sleeper holds, except Johnson who breaks it up with a whack from a loaf of bread! Everyone turns on Johnson and charges him in the corner, but Jackson has a bad leg and veers off and crashes out of the ring. Fearing a further beat down, Johnson jumps out of the ring, eliminating himself as he’s whipped into the corner.
Dragon Kid & Jackson tee off on each other, and Jackson slams Kid, goes up the top rope and in a really cool spot, the lights go out and a lone spotlight shines on Jackson as he signals for splash! Unfortunately he missed his splash and landed on his bad knees, resulting in a referee stop and Jackson is eliminated!
Super Shisa is whipped into the corner and he does a corner head stand. Genki & Naoki try to make him lose his balance by shaking the ropes. Shisa tries to head scissors Genki, but Genki tosses him to Naoki who tosses Shisa out of the ring to eliminate him.
Mochi tries to suplex Kid, but it ends up in a 7-man suplex as Mochi and the Floridas get suplexed by Magnum, Genki, Naoki & Kid. Mochi & the Floridas team together and put up an invisible barrier! Kid gets launched over the barrier but is triple teamed. Magnum removes the barrier and together with Genki & Naoki beat down on Kid! Mochi tries the triple jump kick to Kid, but gets pushed over by Michael. Mochi is able to hang on and avoid Daniel, eliminating him from the match.
Mochi & Kid team up to try and eliminate Michael next, but just when it looks like Michael is gone, the other three Floridas prevent him from hitting the floor by setting up a chair for him to land on! Mochi goes after Michael, but almost gets eliminated himself! Mochi & Michael duke it out on the apron, and Kid tries to eliminate them both with a dropkick. Michael hits the floor and is eliminated, but Mochi lands on the Florida Chair, avoiding elimination and getting back on the apron! The replay shows Mochi actually went through the chair and his feet did touch the ground, but the ref missed it so he’s still in.
Johnson tries to attack Mochi with a loaf of bread, but Mochi blocks it and hits him with it instead, but Michael whacks him with another loaf and Kid hits the Ultra-Hurricanrana on Mochi to eliminate him! Genki quickly hits Kid with a sliding dropkick and Mochi flips through the hurricanrana and everyone holds down Kid for the pin to eliminate him.
Genki backslides Magnum and pins him with help from Naoki! Two men left! Or is it? Kid points out that Karaoke Machine is still at ringside!
Karaoke disrobes and gets in the ring, and it’s pretty obvious who’s under the mask. Genki & Naoki double team Karaoke, but Magnitude shows up and grabs Naoki as Karaoke hits Genki with a big lariat followed by a nadoa-elbow to eliminate him! Magnitude holds Naoki for Karaoke, but Naoki ducks and Kishiwada is knocked off the apron. Naoki quickly rolls up Karaoke to win the Survival Gate!
That was A LOT OF FUN!!!!
Match Rating: ***
Entertainment Rating: *****

King of Gate Finals: Ryo Saito VS Susumu Yokosuka
The match started off as Ryo working on Susumu’s bad arm, but ended up as Susumu doing everything he could to try and put down Ryo, who became a no selling, super human monster by the end of it!
Susumu is definitely one of the best big match workers in Dragon Gate, and this right here is another prime example of that as he worked a great match with Ryo, truly a main event caliber performance here as he sold his arm, but still played the grumpy senior role as well doing all he can hitting multiple lariats and other big moves to try and put Ryo down. He even took some punishment other than the arm, including a really sick looking DDT on the apron which Ryo countered out of a suplex which slammed Susumu’s face right on the mat.
Ryo put in the performance of a life time here as well. I wasn’t too big on him not selling at end when any normal person should have been put away by the amount of punishment Susumu inflicted. But when Ryo sold, his facial expressions were just priceless. I love the way he stares blankly into space to sell a hard hit, and he took plenty of them here. The Premium Bridge is also a pretty cool Dragon Suplex variation where he locks his opponent’s hands by holding on to their wrists as he does the move. It’ll be interesting to see how Ryo performs in future main event matches. I just hope it doesn’t end up with him no selling all kinds of insane punishment only to hit several dragon suplexes to score the win out of the blue. But he’s young, and can definitely still pick up a trick or two to add to his repotoire. I also hope he invests some of the 5 million yen prize money to straighten out his teeth.
Match Rating: ****

Overall: A great ending to a fun tournament and the establishment of two future aces of the company. This was a very good show from start to finish and definitely recommended viewing.

Labels: Dragon Gate

I liked the highlights of the Round 1 and Round 2 matches of the tournament they showed at the beginning of the show.

Super Shisa, King Shisa, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Magnum TOKYO VS Masato Yoshino, Naruki Doi, Don Fuji & Magnitude Kishiwada
You know how all the Blood Generation members come out with the work-out tools which represent their personality? Why does Kishiwada have INFLATABLE dumbbells instead of real ones?!?
The match itself was a good fast paced opener with a good blend of speedy offense, aerial assaults and comedy mixed together, even if it did feel a little bit short. I felt like you just didn’t see enough of everyone that was involved in the match, even if they did do some fun stuff like the Blood Generation quadriple team on Shisa.
I’m kind of interested in King Shisa as he seems to be playing the role of an old, bigger Shisa, but can still match speed and agility with the likes of everyone else. He had a good exchange with Magnitude and a singles match between the 2 of them would make for an interesting contest.
Match Rating: **

Florida Brothers (Michael Iwase & Daniel Mishima) VS Vangellys
I expected Vangellys to be another of those masked luchadors, but this guy actually has more of a Latin Lover ladies man gimmick going for him, complete with a lap dance and strip routine as his ring entrance, and this kid is jacked too.
Vangellys actually looked really out of place in this match, but they did actually wrestle more as a way to show off Vangellys’ aerial skills, and he does move well for his size. I also think this is the first time the Florida Brothers won a match by DQ where they guy actually got himself DQ’d on purpose.
Match Rating: 1/2*

Do-FIXER (Genki Horiguchi & Naoki Tanisaki) VS Generation Next (Jack Evans & Roderick Strong)
I’ve got several ROH shows, but I’ve never really watched them thoroughly, so I was really surprised by Jack Evans here as he probably stole the match with his high-flying acrobatics. A major promotion like WWE could easily build their entire cruiserweight division around him if they had the brains to as he impressed me in this one match more than Rey Mysterio has in the past few months.
This was a fun and entertaining match from start to finish, with a great showing from all four men involved. I liked Genki in the arrogant, cocky senior role as he beat down Evans and mocked him by snatching and wearing his do-rag, and he looked good in it too!
Roderick Strong had a great showing here as well as he wowed the crowd with his arsenal of back-breakers and gut-busters. And the Generation Next team did this really painful looking spot where they perched Genki between the turnbuckles, then Evans did a flip out of a powerbomb by Strong into a spinning foot stomp on Genki’s back! These guys definitely know how to innovate their offense and I loved that these four worked together so well. I just feel for Genki here as he had to drop the fall instead of Tanisaki.
Match Rating: **

King of Gate Tournament: Kenichiro Arai VS CIMA
Kenichiro Arai got this far in the tournament due to some serious luck. He received a by in the first round, and he won by forfeit in the second round because Anthony “W” Mori got injured. So when we get to the actual match here, we get treated to one of the oldest in ring stories in pro-wrestling: The arrogant heel beating down the injured baby-face. And as you all probably know, this is one of the angles I hate to see the most.
So in the match you get CIMA wailing away on Arai’s bad leg, with Arai only managing to get in those small bursts of offense, but not being able to get the win because of his injury, like not being able to hold the pin when he hit the Hanshin Tiger-suplex cause his knee couldn’t hold the weight.
The only thing of note in this match was the top rope facebuster on a chair by Arai to CIMA, CIMA giving Arai a dragon screw with a steel chair, and CIMA’s new Schwein-gatame submission finisher, where CIMA lifts his opponent in the Schwein position, than kneels down and pulls down on his opponent’s legs in a figure four position. While I like a good story in a wrestling match, the longer this one went the more I wished it would end already.
Match Rating: 1/2*

King of Gate Tournament: BxB Hulk VS Shingo Takagi
The battle of Dragon Gate’s next generation stars, only Takagi has a few months of seniority over Hulk, and was playing the big man VS little man game since he outsized and out-powered Hulk. Hulk definitely has a future with Dragon Gate as he’s got that pretty boy look the girls love and definitely has some skills to back up his looks. It’ll be interesting to see how he does when the heels finally start selling his offense and his finishers actually start working, and of course if he can stay healthy since he bumps his ass off all the time.
Now Takagi on the other hand is a favorite of mine. He’s got a good bad ass look, and some skills to go with it too, including two killer finishers in the Last Falcony (wrist-clutch spinning Olympic Slam) and the Grand Fall (reverse fireman’s carry into an inverted face buster), and he already has a good push going for him as a powerhouse worker. I just wish they’d stop trying to make him act like Shuji Kondo as there are definitely some similarities there with the way he keeps going for the big lariat all the time.
I liked the match, but it just felt too one sided for me and I would have preferred if it had been more of a see-saw battle instead.
Match Rating: *1/2

King of Gate Tournament: Susumu Yokosuka VS Dragon Kid
I thought this match was really solid compared to the previous two tournament matches as they didn’t one guy a clear advantage like the others did. Interesting start to the match as Kid tried a 619 fake on Susumu on the outside, but Susumu tried to lariat him out of it, resulting in Susumu hurting his arm and Kid hurting his knees! The match was mostly worked around Kid attacking Susumu’s arm, but Susumu was still able to battle back even if it did seem like he forgot to sell the arm at certain points.
They even managed to get in a few comedy spots with referee Bakery Yagi as Susumu pulled Yagi into the line of fire and he ate a missile dropkick from Kid, Kid than ducked a lariat from Susumu and Yagi at that too! Finally, Kid went for Deva Ju on Susumu, but Susumu passed him to Yagi in mid air resulting in Yagi getting flipped!
When things got serious again we were treated to some great action, like Kid giving Susumu a diving head scissors off the top flipping him off the apron to the floor, Kid countering a top rope Last Ride into a Franken-steiner, and a SICK Ultra Hurrican-rana from Kid that saw Susumu crash right on his head when they couldn’t get the complete flip! There was even a bit where Susumu started doing K-ness’ moves like the Darkness Buster and Blue Light! The only problem I guess I had with the match was the out of nowhere ending when Susumu flipped through an Ultra Hurrican-rana and got the flash pin. This was still a solid contest and the best match on the show up to this point.
Match Rating: ***1/2

King of Gate Tournament: Ryo Saito VS Masaaki Mochizuki
First we had Ryo working on Mochi’s leg, than we had Mochi working on Ryo’s arm, and after all that they put on a solid back and forth war. One of the coolest spots in the match was Ryo catching Mochi out of mid air in a knee-bar when Mochi tried for the triple jump flip kick.
The match boiled down to both men going back and forth trying to beat the crap out of each other, mostly with Ryo taking Mochi’s heavy kicks but being able to rebound back with some big moves of his own. The ending saw both men trying to beat each other to the punch and hit their dragon suplex finishers, with Ryo winning out in the end.
Match Rating: ***

Overall: A strong show overall with some good action throughout and two great main events. Check back soon when I review the finals of the tournament!

Labels: Dragon Gate

Warning! This Review may contain SPOILERS!
The annual anniversary show, and the first time under the Dragon Gate banner. Last year’s event was my pick for Puroresu Show of the Year. Can they impress me enough to do it again? First thing you’ll notice is how much the arena is set up to look like the WWE Monday Night RAW set, only the audience seats aren’t so compressed together, and much like last year, there are a lot of female fans in the audience.

Post Hearts (BxB Hulk, Super Shisa & Anthony W. Mori) VS Final M2K (Kenichiro Arai, K-ness & Susumu Yokosuka)
Is it just me, or is there something really wrong about seeing someone like Super Shisa doing a dancing intro like Post Hearts uses? Pretty obvious Hulk has a big future planned for him in Dragon Gate since he’s the focal point of the group eventhough Athony is the leader. Hulk got the statutory youngster treatment of getting beat down throughout the match with the small bursts of offense to pop the crowd. But when things got down to it, the kid showed that he definitely had some eye-popping skillz! Unfortunately he’s also still at the stage where he has signature moves, but they don’t do jack against his senior opponents no matter how impressive they look.
I like Anthony, I’ve always thought the guy had a good look to him and has some decent skills. But he still doesn’t look like a main event guy or even someone who should be leading a group. Super Shisa is a great speed worker, but like I said earlier, he looks out of place with a group like Post Hearts.
You gotta feel bad for a guy like Susumu Yokosuka, a guy who has all the talent in the world, yet stuck in a pointless match like this. Either way, he brought a lot of intensity to his team, and like Hulk did for the Post Hearts team, Susumu stood out here as the star of the team.
It’s been said before that one makes a great team truly great is tandem offense. And we got a lot of that in the FM2K team! Since they’ve been teaming together for about a year now, they all know how to work smoothly with each other, and they did some awesome double and triple-team moves here. I particularly enjoyed the sequence where Susumu and K-ness did a series of tandem moves leading to a double Darkness Buster and chained again into a double Blue Light submission hold!
Overall, this was a really strong match to kick off the show.
Match Rating: ***

Highlight video of the next match shows how the Florida Brothers abused referee Yagi, who is also the masked Johnson Florida. Johnson finally stands up for himself only to get beat down by the original Floridas. Than the mysterious masked man came to Johnson’s rescue and laid out Michael and Daniel, before departing with Johnson. Still down on the mat, Michael asked Daniel “Who was that masked man?” to which Daniel answered “Johnson!” And were off to our next match!

Florida Express (Johnson & Jackson) VS Florida Brothers (Michael & Daniel)
Funny start to this as Michael & Daniel refer to Johnson & Jackson as not the usual “bishonen” (pretty boy) team they are used to dealing with. They then proceed to sneak attack the Express team, but that doesn’t work out, so they call for back up before running back up the ramp way and disappearing behind the entrance curtain. We than hear a very badly done karaoke version of Mil Mascaras’ theme and out come the Floridas in masks! If you think hearing them speak with an English slang is weird, you ain’t heard nothing till they do it with a Spanish slang! After a few words with the ring announcer, we get a LAST MINUTE CARD CHANGE! Leading to….

Florida Express (Johnson & Jackson) VS Los Tagos De Calbatos (?) (El Hijo De Iwasanto & Michi Mascaras)
Everyone has been saying that the Florida’s act is getting stale, myself included, so I was really glad that they switched things up here BIG TIME. Either that, or I haven’t watched enough recent Dragon Gate to tell the difference. Either way, this match was loads of fun and just pure comedy, so don’t look for it to have innovative high-flying or technical moves, but instead innovative comedy spots from both teams!
Daniel actually did an impressive power display as he held Michael on his shoulders for a good period of time while they did hilarious “giant” spot with Jackson. Another fun bit was Michael and Johnson switching masks and Johnson bringing in loads of French bread to pile up on Los Tagos and set up the Clubhouse Sandwich Splash!
Overall, this was really hilarious stuff.
Match Rating: *
Entertainment Value:

Stalker Ishikawa charges his way to the ring only to get ignored by the Floridas, who leave tossing the leftover bread out to the crowd!

Super-X & Yuji Hino (K-Dojo) VS Shingo Takagi & Masato Yoshino
I’m not really sure what Yuji Hino’s credentials in K-Dojo are, but he looked a little green here and actually messed up two spots. Might be because he wasn’t used to working with the DG guys here? Either way, it’s no excuse for him to be missing his moves leading to them having to redo the spot again. Even worse when he sells a shot that was a clear miss cause he forgot he was supposed to duck and counter. He did do a really impressive delayed German suplex though. Super-X was just sorta there for me and really didn’t do much to stand out.
Of all the new guys Dragon Gate have debuted in the past year, Shingo Takagi is the one that impresses me the most and still continues to. Since he was the biggest guy in the match, he got to show off his power a bit, and worked well with Yoshino. Speaking of Yoshino, he did a really bizarre looking new finisher that I guess is best described as an inverted Olympic Slam where flips inward into a neck-breaker type move that looked really cool, but low on impact and I wouldn’t buy it as a finisher.
The overall match was ok, but nothing really special.
Match Rating: *1/2

Naoki Tanisaki VS Magnitude Kishiwada
Tanisaki got out of some really close near falls, and had some quick bursts of offense towards the end, but a squash is a squash no matter how you look at it. I really hope Tanisaki doesn’t end up getting lost in the DG shuffle (despite being built up scoring some wins over Shingo Takagi) cause the kid has a lot of potential and the fans (especially the females) love him. This is a kid they should be pushing along side Naruki Doi and BxB Hulk.
Match Rating: *

Magnum TOKYO & Genichiro Tenryu VS Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima
This match was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to see Magnum in the underdog role here, even against Nakajima! Magnum also had a fun kick exchange with Nakajima, which reminded me of Magnum in his younger days. Magnum and Tenryu (who spun a pink umbrella for a short while with a smile on his face during Magnum’s dance intro!) also showed some good team work. I like seeing Tenryu in the mentor role like this, showing tough love by not tagging in and telling Magnum to continue.
Sasaki and Nakajima continue to impress as a tag team, and really liked the Sasaki/Magnum exchanges as well as the chop battle between Tenryu & Sasaki. Nakajima also showed a lot of fire as at one point he even brawled with Tenryu, tossing a chair at each other! Good fun match overall, and having Tenryu, Sasaki and Nakajima on more shows in the future can only do good for Dragon Gate’s business.
Funny thing about this match though, despite the commentary going on, you could clearly hear another commentary team in the background of the match as this guy was shouting and calling the moves in the match so loud that it was picked up by the ring mics, and I’m pretty sure the a lot of fans could hear him clearly too.
Match Rating: **1/2

Intermission time and were treated to a look back at the history between TAKA & Mochi. We see a classic six man tag between TAKA, Sho Funaki & Mochi VS Nobunaga Shima (CIMA!), Sumo (Don) Fuji & TARU which took place in Michonoku Pro I think from 6/12/99. Mochi drops the fall to Shima, and TAKA argues with him about it.
Fast forward to 6/13/99 and they rivalry heats up in a tag match between TAKA & Funaki VS Mochi & Gran Naniwa, with Mochi getting the pin on TAKA.

We now go back to earlier in the evening with highlights of the dark match between Kenichiro Arai and Tozawa, in match 10 of Tozawa’s single match trial series. The kid shaved his head from when last I saw him. Skinny kid, but showed some potential by not tapping out to the single leg crab of rookie doom and had to take Arai’s tiger suplex finisher to put him out.

President Okamura comes out tossing t-shirts to the crowd than gives the annual “thank the fans for their support” speech, especially since it’s the official first anniversary under the Dragon Gate banner. He introduces the president of AAA, Antonio Pena to announce the working relationship of the two companies and Pena says a few words before the two shake hands to make things official. I wonder why no one from Dragon Gate took part in any of the AAA Invading Japan shows earlier in the year?

Open the Triangle Gate Titles: Do Fixer (Ryo Saito, Genki Horiguchi & Dragon Kid) VS Blood Generation (CIMA, Don Fujii & Naruki Doi)
I really liked the highlight video that built up this match as it showed Do Fixer as the underdog team defying the odds despite the fact they are the champions in their titles defenses. It also looks so good seeing Genki with a title belt around his waist.
Good Gawd this was a fantastic match, and what I really expect to see from a six-man Dragon Gate match! From bell to bell, nothing but high impact, fast paced action from both teams! Everybody in this match was given time to shine (even if Fuji & Doi still suck to a degree) even though I wasn’t big on the final outcome of the match. Good thing about watching some of these shows a few months late is you tend to forget the results, which is a good thing cause it adds emotion and excitement to the match which this one easily had a lot of. Match of the Night!
Match Rating: ****1/4

Great highlight video building up the main event. From Mochi’s title wins and defenses to TAKA coming out and challenging Mochi for the Dream Gate to add to his collection. Mochi tosses him the key, but Susumu grabs it out of mid air and challenges TAKA to go through him first, which leads to TAKA beating Susumu some time later with the Dick Killer, then TAKA giving Mochi a Michinoku Driver II to get the point across that he’s a threat.

Open the Dream Gate: Masaaki Mochizuki VS TAKA Michinoku
He might be the champion, but how corny is Mochi’s ‘70s style hero entrance theme? They bring up the fact TAKA is the first WWF/E light-heavyweight champion and has performed at Wrestle Mania before.
Focus of the match was TAKA attacking Mochi’s leg so he couldn’t use the Shin Saikyo High Kick and Mochi attacking TAKA’s arm so he couldn’t use the Just Facelock or Dick Killer. Pity both of them forgot about selling them later in the match, and again, the Shin Saikyo High Kick is a lame-ass finisher to begin with. Interesting seeing TAKA use a grapevine ankle-lock and Bret Hart’s corner post figure four, where as Mochi borrowed Susumu’s Yokosuka Cutter and Jumbo No Kachi lariat.
Both men worked hard and had a solid match, but I saw a lot of repetition (dozens of superkicks by TAKA and corner flip kicks by Mochi), and I felt they could have done better.
Match Rating: ***

Show ends with Mochi giving a brief thank you speech before leaving. It wasn’t as emotional as last year when the whole DG roster was in the ring together as it was the last show under the Toryumon banner.

Overall: A very strong show overall, but going into it, I knew from the card alone there was no way it was going to match up to last year’s show which really had that “special” feel to the card from top to bottom. Still, it’s the Wrestle Mania of Dragon Gate, and they more than delivered with some great performances.

Labels: Dragon Gate

This was of course the big one night, eight man single elimination tournament to crown the first ever Brave Gate champion, whis is a secondary title to the Dream Gate title.

OBG Tournament: YOSSINO VS K-ness
This was a lot more technical and grounded than I would have liked it to be. They did do some quick spots since YOSSINO is called the “Speed Star”, but most of the match was mat based with YOSSINO working K-ness’ bad shoulder, and it went longer than I would have liked. I also think this is the first time I’ve seen a match end in one of those quick sequences where the two guys counter each other’s pin attempts into pins of their own. I sorta made the ending look a bit like a lucky fluke win for YOSSINO when he should be on the level enough with K-ness to beat him like he did in the past.
Match Rating: *1/2

OBG Tournament: PSYCHO VS Naoki Tanisaki
Tanisaki showed a lot of animosity to the outsider earlier in the show when he tried to attack him during the wrestler introductions at the beginning of the show. This was a really fast paced match and PSYCHO was really impressive the way he zipped around and delivered some great acrobatic offense and kicks. Tanisaki was able to rebound back and the two put on an enjoyable, but short, contest. The only error you could probably find was at the end when PSYCHO botched his finisher and they redid the spot after.
Match Rating: *1/2

OBG Tournament: Super Shisa VS Naruki Doi
I actually found this match to be rather boring. Something about seeing Doi as the arrogant heel just didn’t sit right with me. I know it’s not the first time it’s been done, especially in Dragon Gate, but I also wasn’t a big fan of the Blood Generation interference which led to the No Contest and consequent restart. After seeing and knowing they were going to cheat, why didn’t President Nakamura just bar them from ringside?!?
Match Rating: *1/2

OBG Tournament: Daniel Mishima VS Genki Horiguchi
These two easily had the best match of the opening round! And I’m not just saying that cause I’m a big fan of Genki. These two worked a solid match that was well paced and well structured, and it really helped that they built up a mini-feud leading into the match. They worked the match in a way that kept you interested and not something you had to watch to get to the next match like some of the other matches so far were. Genki only had to work one match tonight, but luckily for all of us he gave us his best and did a great job putting Daniel over as a serious competitor. There were some things I didn’t like, like I believe no one should kick out of a move as sick as the Beach Break, but I loved Daniel’s cradle-backdrop as well as the killer dangerous backdrop he gave Genki.
Match Rating: ***

Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Yokosuka & Kenichiro Arai VS Ryo Saito, Dragon Kid & Syachihoko Machine
The fans LOVE Syachihoko Machine here! Despite his comedic antics throughout the match, the golden dressed deity really was entertaining and the crowd SO wanted to see him pull out a win! Heck, he had me on the edge of my seat rooting for him, so that tells you how good the match was at pulling you into it. ODG champion Mochizuki was fun to watch as well, as the Machine actually started off by taunting the champ. Another note on the match was the great chemistry Dragon Kid and Susumu showed when they worked against each other, either one of the two could make credible contenders for Mochi’s title. Saito is also showing the leadership qualities of a future champion, and I do hope he gets the belt one day as he’s truly deserving of it. This was the best non-tournament match of the night as it had great ring work and crowd heat. I haven’t seen any Syachihoko matches, but I definitely agree with the announcer that this would be his “best bout”.
Match Rating: ***1/2

OBG Tournament Semi Finals: PSYCHO VS YOSSINO
PSYCHO is making the best of his time in Dragon Gate as he sure seems to be up-showing the DG competitors as far as his abilities go, he’s even more impressive than in all the K-DOJO matches I’ve seen him in. He just seems to be moving at full speed compared to everyone else so far in the tournament, which is really what I usually expect most DG matches to be like. Both guys have similar a submission move, and it was fun watching them roll around the ring trying to lock it on each other. A fun match that was given good time to play out, and I would seriously like to see PSYCHO make more appearances outside K-DOJO since I see a lot of potential in the kid.
Match Rating: **1/2

OBG Tournament Semi Finals: Naruki Doi VS Daniel Mishima
They seemed to be building up to something until the infamous chair incident. They were doing some good ground work up until that point, with Doi desperately trying to avoid taking Daniel’s dangerous backdrops. When the chair incident struck, I really wasn’t sure if it was the chair, or the really bad fall Daniel took after the shot that knocked him out for a while. Bare in mind there were no protective mats around the ring area and Daniel’s whole body weight landed on his head. I honestly believe there was a chance the whole thing was worked since Daniel did indeed looked like he could still continue the match and was rather upset when President Nakamura ended the match and awarded it to Doi. The fans of course hated the decision and gave it a rightful round of boos.
Match Rating: *

Stalker Ishikawa VS Akitoshi Saito
I’ll honestly admit I don’t really find Stalker’s matches to be all that funny, but it is always interesting to see what kind of offense his opponents would allow him to get in and if Stalker could shock the crowd by kicking out when everyone thinks he’s down for the count. Now on an entertainment level, this was a really fun match with Saito of course dominating for the most part. Saito even delivered one of the longest delayed vertical suplexes I’d ever seen. Stalker did manage to get some comedic offense in, like his trademark two-fingered butt-poke, and he got good reactions from the crowd for avoiding some of Saito’s offense and kicking out of the big suplex, but we all know how it goes in the end.
Match Rating: *
Entertainment Rating:

CIMA, Don Fujii & Shingo Takagi VS Magnum TOKYO, Anthony W. Mori & BXB Hulk
Most of the match was Hulk getting a pounding from the Blood Generation crew. I don’t understand why Shingo is put on a level so high up above Hulk when he himself is new to the Dragon Gate roster. I didn’t seem right to see Shingo as a no selling senior to Hulk’s strikes. I liked the opening sprint between Magnum & CIMA where they traded moves at breakneck speed. The rest of the match was standard six-man fare, leading to the big sprint ending with everyone involved. It was good, but I’ve seen it been done better in the past, take the other six-man on the card for example. As for Hulk, the kid will definitely be a big name player in a few years. He’s already been given a look as well as a good move set to build on. I also find myself really liking Shingo Takagi since he’s got some good moves on him as well. His Last Falconi finisher is pretty cool too, and if you haven’t seen it before, it’s a wrist-clutch Olympic Slam. I also have an interest to see what Tozawa can do after seeing him escape the Blood Generation beat down and give Don Fujii a dropkick.
Match Rating: **

OBG Tournament Finals: Naruki Doi VS YOSSINO
Given the time and worked like a main event should be, but Doi is seriously lacking the offense to work a long match where he’s not the underdog. I do think it could have been done a little better to get the belt on Doi, but I did like the ending where the two were fighting at the top rope to try and hit their finisher. One thing I didn’t like though is how Blood Generation were still allowed at ringside after their interference earlier. If President Nakamura can come out and restart a No Contest due to their interference, why no bar them from ring side so Doi would have to win the match on his own?
Match Rating: **1/2

Overall: Just a good show overall, but overly outstanding. They REALLY should have started to push Michael and Daniel as serious competitors from here as it would have fit right in with the “new” Dragon Gate era. Not the best I’ve ever seen from Dragon Gate, but I’ve seen worse.

Labels: Dragon Gate