The Dragon Gate thread

[alexander]

It is PWT and I have no invites, sorry man.Yeah, I saw the Wrestle Jam Infinity. It's pretty OKish, Austin Aries is the standout Gaijin, but Rave brings the funny as well.

[JLM]

Infinity #45, 5/27~6/161. Akira Tozawa, Taku Iwasa vs. Magnum TOKYO, Anthony W. MoriTozawa-Juku continue their quest to recruit Antony here, with the stipulation being that a defeat for Antony's team would force him to join Tozawa's school. This is heavily clipped, though we still get to see some of the fun TJ spots before Magu screws over Antony by hitting the Egoist driver on Tozawa before rolling underneath him to deliberately drop the fall. Hee hee. Poor Antony is bundled away post-match and looks totally terrified. 2. Masato Yoshino, Naruki Doi, Naoki Tanisaki vs. Don Fujii, Jack Evans, Matt SydalThis was more fun than I expected it to be. Evans gets quite a lot of babyface sympathy and Don Fujii puts in another top performance. Sydal is keen to impress and the crowd responds well to most of what he does. He's certainly very agile and graceful, and his Shooting Sydal Press is as pretty as expected, but other than that he seems rather bland. Still, he's reasonably over here by default, and the finishing sequeince of 630 followed by the aforementioned SSP is well received. 3. Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Yokosuka, Keni'chiro Arai vs. Ryo Saito, Geni'chiro Tenryu, Dragon KidSo Kido gets his tag match with Tenryu and we also get the obligatory pre-Dream Gate champ vs challenger exchanges. Susumu has quite the swagger about him here as he punks out his prospective challenger, and Kid isn't given a whole lot to make himself look like a major threat. That said, the Ultra Hurricanrana is protected as Susumu is saved from it rather than kicking out, and he doesn't bust out the Dragonrana either. The closing stretch here is a good watch, very frantic and heated despite the predictable outcome.Araken is more fired up than usual, I enjoyed his attempts to take Tenryu down with his headbutts in particular. Ultimately though, he's always going to be the weak link in this match, and he quite predictably takes the fall. 4. Open the Brave Gate: Masato Yoshino vs. Genki HoriguchiEven the whacky DG bookers know that if you want to give a singles title some added credibility, you need to let Genki have a shot at it. Once again Genki proves just how good he is, as despite plenty of interference and shenanigans, he still helps to produce an invaluable defense for Yoshino, as Genki gives his all (including some blood, which is still quite uncommon in DG matches) in a vain attempt to dethrone him. The crowd believes he'll do it, Genki is so fired up that he's able to kick out of the lightning spiral, but the Sol Naciente is just too much for him, a point that further revives that move's status as a deadly finisher. As much as I'm praising Genki though, Yoshino deserves credit for his improvement throughout 2006 and is as good a pick as anyone to be holding the Brave Gate at the moment. 5. Open the Triangle Gate: Gamma, Naruki Doi, Naoki Tanisaki vs. CIMA, Magnitude Kishiwada, Masato YoshinoOoh, now this is awkward. CIMA holds the Triangle gate title along with Magnitude and Yoshino, but the latter two have recently turned on him and abandoned his stable to join the team that makes up the oppositiion here. What to do about the titles then? Well, why not put them on the line in a match that essentially puts CIMA in a ring with five of his enemies and see what happens. :laugh:Actually... make that six of his enemies, the Muscle Outlawz ref is in charge. The crowd's response is to cheer wildly for CIMA, who looks to be doomed here. Oddly, the match starts out fairly normally. Kinta ignores any cheating committed against CIMA, and the CIMA team tag via slaps to the head. but other than that it looks like there will be a match. However, CIMA starts doing a bit too well for the Muscle Outlawz's liking, and eventually it descends into everyone targetting him, which culminates in CIMA avoiding a multiple dropkick barrage, causing Kinta to be hit and knocked from the match. This prompts nintrusions from Evans, Sydal, BxB Hulk and Don Fujii, which evens things up a bit. Fujii is amazing in big hostile situations like this, and the reaction he gets when he squares up to Kishiwada is superb. Anyway, after much brawling and cheating and exchanges involving sub-referee Kanda, CIMA somehow manages to hit a Schwein on Naoki and score the shock pinfall victory! Post-match there's a lot of chatter and plenty more fighting. The belts are declared vacant, everyone is about to leave until Magnitude hits Hulk with a cheap shot and lays him out with the Last Ride. Everything kicks off again, matches are made, CIMA vs Kishiwada at World is made official, things are heating up very nicely indeed. Less of a match and more of a long segment that allows the MOz/BloodGen war to escalate further in the run up to World, and it makes for very entertaining viewing as well as making me wanting to see CIMA vs Magnitude quite badly. 6. CIMA vs. GammaUnfortunately this match is a casualty of the move away from PPVs. Infinity has to cover a lot of happenings from the Korakuen hall shows now that they're not on PPV, which means that footage from anywhere else gets even more heavily clipped. So, although they show a reasonable amount of this, they weren't able to show anything in full, which is a shame as it was built up so well.Anyway, this starts as scheduled, with the dastardly Kinta refereeing. After some brawling and stuff, Gamma's bamboo sword comes into play. CIMA takes it off him and, in a bid to keep this a fair one on one fight, hands it to Kinta with instructions to get rid of it. Unfortunately this all leads to CIMA being rolled up and fallling victim to a super-fast count from Kinta. The Hakata fans are furious, they throw loads of crap at the ring, Gamma is masterful in his efforts to wind them up even more and I continue to love this feud. After much debate, the match is restarted with both Kanda and Kinta as referees. This is of course destined to fail, as they constantly hit each other and generally disrupt the match constantly. The exchanges between Gamma and CIMA that are allowed to happen are good, but there's just a bit too much going on here. Ultimately it's CIMA who comes out on top once again, following a very sloppy looking 'Henkei driver', henceforth known as the Cross Fire. Bakery Yagi comes in to count the closing fall - it's quite hilarious that he's the referee that represents unbiased neutrality given his track record. As a pay off to the Gamma/CIMA rivalry this was disappointing. Checking the results, the two matches ran to about twenty minutes in total, but the clipping and general chaos here means that the whole thing isn't as involving as it should be. Post-match there's a rather unique segment where BloodGen allow the fans to come right up to the ring, whip them up into a frenzy with chanting and a breakdancing display from Jack Evans, start a "please come back" chant (in English) for the gaijins and round it off by stage-diving into the crowd. Must have been amazing for the live fans. CIMA leading the fans in "Dra-Gon-Gate!" and "Please come back!" chants really shows you how strongly he's taken to US indy wrestling. 7. Magnitude Kishiwada, Gamma vs. BxB Hulk, CIMAAt the start of this, we're only about an hour and twenty minutes into this episode, which means that this match isn't cut to pieces, and also that we're...erm...treated to a Pos.Hearts dance featuring CIMA, complete with brown hair and Hulk-style outfit. Yeah.This is followed by Gamma entering with a fantastic "what in the hell was that you absolute ponces?" look on his face. :DKanda is in charge, but not for long. He is beaten down and replaced by Muscle Outlawz's own referee very early. The match is decent, though again there's a lot of interference and cheating going on. Kinta diverting Hulk in mid air as he dives to make a tag is classic, as are CIMA's attempts to beat Kinta at his own game. CIMA gradually gets more and more angry with Kinta's antics, and eventually he snaps, delivering a Schwein and allowing Yagi to come in and take over. There's an amusing shot during this bit of Dr. Muscle checking on Kinta at ringside and prodding at him with a stethoscope. Once Yagi is in place we get a nice back and forth closing stretch, with BG starting to gain control as it goes on. Just as CIMA looks set to finish off the MOz team, the dreaded protein powder comes into play. Yoshino throws some in CIMA's eyes, Kinta returns ,takes out Yagi and becomes the ref for the match yet again and Gamma unloads about half a bag of powder on CIMA. Things get even more crazy as MOz start to pull the ring ropes down, using them to choke CIMA. All of this leads to CIMA taking a Last Ride before Gamma adds his own finishing touch by hitting the Gamma special and pinning him with a very arrogant posing cover. This is followed by a further kicking for CIMA, and more humiliation as Gamma gives him a ten count to get up, before declaring a KO. Once again, Korakuen hall is pissed. MOz continue the beatdown on CIMA after the match until Kanda~! shows up in his wrestling gear and saves the day. :)Quite the chaotic mess of an ending, which sums up most of this episode's content. Almost everything is building to World, nothing is very conclusive and not many of the matches are allowed to breathe because of everything else that's going on. Despite this, the BG/MOz feud is heating up very nicely indeed, and if you do follow the DG storylines then this show is still worth a watch. Aside from BG vs MOz... Genki/Yoshino is good but, like most of this show, suffers a bit from the heavy clipping required to fit all this stuff in. The Tenryu six man is a much needed break from the non-finishes and screwjobs and is a decent match in it's own right, and the Tozawa-juku stuff is fun, but again clipped to pieces. This episode is worth watching as an accompaniment to World, but there's nothing on here that's essential viewing on it's own in my opinion - partly because a lot of what could have been essential is edited into submission.

[JLM]

Pro Wrestling El Dorado: The Creation of El Dorado (7/16/2006, Korakuen Hall)So, my first El Dorado show, and the fourth in their..erm.. history. This is the debut proper for the promotion, and as such they've brought the fancy set, big screen and pirate outfits to tie in with the release of Pirates of the Carribbean 2. JUN of course looks cool as fuck in his Jack Sparrow get-up on ring announcing duties. C'mon now JUN, look at Kanda and Shimizu.. a return to in-ring action can't be impossible now can it? This show features many a new gimmick, so I'll be keeping track of who's who as this goes on. 1. Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, Manjimaru vs Motosugu Shimizu, Makoto Oishi, Shiori AsahiBrahman Shu and Brahman Kei = The Sato twins in a new gimmick with ties to Hinduism and the occult. This involves KKK-esque entrance gear and readings from a holy book pre-match. They also have cool new entrance music. The Sato twins have changed a lot since Toryumon X. They both have short black hair these days, and they've also adopted a hardcore brawling fight style, incorporating fire spots and other madness into their matches. They're about as far removed from the Sailor Boys gimmick as they could be, which is probably for the best. Manjimaru is the former Manabu Murakami, noteable for his rather tasteless Toryumon X ring attire that consisted of a thong and little else. He has also changed one hell of a lot. As Maguro Ooma in Mpro and now as Manjimaru he's tattooed up, can often be seen with beer in hand and is a hardcore rudo psychopath with elements of The Sandman and Masao Orihara forming his new persona. He seems intent on destroying Shimizu in El Dorado . Again, this can't be any worse than his old gimmick. Oishi and Asahi seem to be on every show I watch this year. I've seen them in Dragon Gate, their home promotion K-Dojo, Big Japan and now this show as well. I guess it's a good thing that they're surely one of the best indy tag teams in Japan then. Then there's Shimizu. Back in 2000 he was all set to be one of the top players in T2P before a shoulder injury put him out of action. His return was constantly talked about for years but it seemed that it was never going to happen. He had an exhibition match in 2004 before returning to his role as a DG staff member, then another series of exhibition bouts in 2005 before resigning and disappearing again. Then, out of nowhere, his name showed up on a RING SOUL card, and this appearance was followed by his participation in dragondoor before moving to Michinoku Pro and now El Dorado full time. For all that background info though, unfortunately the match kind of blows. An uninspiring and ultimately boring brawl around ringside, broken up with clipping and brightened by occasional flurries of Asahi and Oishi goodness. Disappointing. 2. brother YASSHI vs Jumping Kid OkimotoJumping Kid Okimoto is the former Small Dandy Fujii of Toryumon X, and is also reasonably well known as Rasse in Michinoku Pro. Brother YASSHI is better than you. These two have a feud that involves YASSHI making fun of JKO and his small stature. To counter act this, JKO enters on a set of Powerizers. Heheh. These take an awfully long time to remove, and the whole procedure is a little bit painful. The match is... different. It's made up almost entirely of the two guys headbutting the shit out of each other. It's in equal measures brutal and comedic, but not really a match. JKO gets to fly a little bit, but not as much as he should in his first El Dorado showcase match. Then, seemingly at random, YASSHI hits the Nice Jamaica and wins. Post-match it seems that YASSHI has more humiliation in store for JKO and he prepares to put an embarrassing photo of JKO up on the screen. Unfortunately for him, it seems his little opponent has gone one step ahead of him, and we're treated to an incredibly bizarre high school photo of YASSHI. It needs to be seen. If I'm feeling nice I may cap it at some stage.3. 3 Way MatchShogo Jet Takagi, Kinya Oyanagei and King PocotaSo we've had a fairly 'meh' brawl and a strange semi-comedy mess, then they follow up with a triple threat comedy match. This is stupid. It feels like the show is never going to get going at this rate. Whilst I am genuinely ecstatic to see Kinya Oyanagei back in action in D2P and El Dorado after way too long, it must be said that his new gimmick isn't nearly as fun as his lost Phillipino soldier and school pupil schtick from T2P. King Pocota is.. gold. Gold and weird. He has a bizarre outfit and doesn't really do anything. I don't know quite what to make of him at all. JET~! is thankfully on hand to save this match (rewind to 2002 and ask me if I ever thought I'd call Takagi the saviour of a match ) with his super-over punch flurries. The finish raised a smile, as did Oyanagei busting out the BANZAI! splashes and JET rocking the furry cat ears, but other than that this felt like a waste of time.4. Shinjiro Ohtani vs Bear FukudaThank the lord for Shinjiro Ohtani. Just as you're wondering whether or not there will actually be a wrestling match on this show, the ever reliable Ohtani and the former Mango Fukuda (and HUSTLE Kamen yellow~!) put on a lovely little 10 minute slugfest that hits all the right notes. I hope Fukuda goes somewhere from this, as Ohtani gives him enough to make this something worth building on. I like Fukuda, and I think he could be very useful now that he's free of the Salseros gimmick that never suited him They could eiter push Fukuda up into the mix with KAGETORA and Owashi, or make Fukuda vs Outsider a trial series of sorts for the next couple of shows. 5. El Blazer, Kota Iibushi, Milanito Collection a.t. vs Shuji Kondo,Takuya Sugawara and Ken45

[Spatular]

C'mon now JUN, look at Kanda and Shimizu.. a return to in-ring action can't be impossible now can it?

I dunno... I can still clearly picture when Doi threw him right on top of his head with an Aztec Suplex and his neck and shoulders were still way off the mat while the ref counted. That HAD to have messed him up big-time. :/I do miss that pirouette-kick thing he did. That was cool.PLEASE cap that YASSHI photo. Ideally his face afterwards, too. Better yet, vidcap and Youtube it.

[JLM]

Oh go on then, as it's you. Give me a moment and I'll edit it in here.

< JKO embarrasses YASSHI

< Owashi rubs it in at the end of the showAnd Captain JUN Sparrow:

[Spatular]

< JKO embarrasses YASSHI

WWE do this three times a YEAR and it's never once been that good.Awesome. Thanks

[BurningHammer]

I think I need to buying that El Dorado show!

[JLM]

Mr. Lantern, I have a question.The Wrestle Jam shows happened post-World. I was wondering, can they be watched without spoiling it? For instance, does the ODG champion turn up to his WJ match with the belt? Or do the ring announcers/commentators make reference to it? I'm presuming they do and therefore that it's not safe? My World download is going oh so slowly.

[alexander]

Yeah, you can't watch it without spoiling at least some of World. Sorry dude.

[Carbomb]

Where can I get a copy of the El Dorado show? For once I'd like to get in on the ground floor. (I know the DragonDoor shows were really the start, but gimme a break here.)

[Spatular]

Infinity #43I almost feel bad for people who skip the TV episodes and miss stuff like this.

Just watched this. It is better than any PPV they have done this year, up to but not including World (which I haven't seen yet). Everybody get it.I'd really quite like to punch Gamma now.

[JLM]

Yup, Gamma is quite the dickhead. :DIn other news... I HAVE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thoughts will be edited in here. Longest, most painful download of all time, several weeks of diligent spoiler avoidance, this had better be good.EDIT: Carbomb, Morty has the El Dorado show listed in his latest update.

[Carbomb]

Yup, Gamma is quite the dickhead. :DIn other news... I HAVE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thoughts will be edited in here. Longest, most painful download of all time, several weeks of diligent spoiler avoidance, this had better be good.EDIT: Carbomb, Morty has the El Dorado show listed in his latest update.

Cool, thanks muchly.

[alexander]

this had better be good.

[Carbomb]

JLM - did you mean Famous Mortimer? I couldn't find anything in his sig or profile.