The Dragon Gate thread

[JLM]

Might as well do a news and results round up to keep things current. 18th September - Takeshi Sato quit. He was to be the next rookie to debut after Yamato Onodera and had been wrestling exhibition bouts with Kanda. 18th September - Kanda fractured his eyesocket and was sidelined. 18th September - Owashi puroresu~! ran its show:

9/18/2006 Saku-shi Synthesis Gym ~ Touru Owashi Puroresu0. Bear Fukuda (2:56 Half Crab Hold) Youhei Nakajima1. Brahman Shu{W}, Brahman Kei (11:01 Zombie King) Jumping Kid Okimoto, Mototsugu Shimizu{L}2. Ibuki Offer Match: Cherry, Kyoko Kimura{W} (15:51 Big Boot) Mariko Yoshida, Hiroyo Matsumoto{L}3. Francesco Togo, Mori Bernardo, Milanito Collection a.t.{W} w/ Antonio Honda (14:34 Natare Bianco) KAGETORA, Takuya Sugawara, Manjimaru{L}4. Chanco Owashi Issei Muryou-ken Soudatsu Jikan-sa Battle Royal:Order of Elimination: Kinya Oyanagei, Ken45, King Pocota, Dump Matsumoto, Sanshiro Takagi, THE MAC, HARASHIMA, Bear Fukuda, Gorgeous Matsuno, TARU->Danshoku Deeno (25:16 Danshoku Driver) Shogo Jet Takagi5. Touru Owashi{W}, Shuji Kondo, brother YASSHI (16:58 Power Bomb) Toshiaki Kawada, El Blazer, Kota Iibushi{L}A few card changes here and there, including the surprise entrances of TARU and Oyanagei in the battle royal.Youhei Nakajima is a new rookie, perhaps even the first for El Dorado.Suga argued with Manjimaru, Shu and Kei and ended up leaving his match midway.

I want to see this show quite badly. The main event sounds excellent and has YASSHI and Kawada on opposing sides, the battle royal is wonderfully sleazy and Dick Togo is on the undercard. Covers all the bases really. 26th September - Don Fujii made his official challenge for The Dream Gate. Gamma waded in and said Fujii would have to beat the MOz "American Assassin" Kevin Steen if he wanted to get his shot. Worst final hurdle match ever? Quite possibly. 26th September - Yoshino made his 3rd successful defense of the Brave Gate against Antony W Mori. As you'd expect, there was much interference, which led to Antony demanding a rematch. A tag match was arranged with MOz vs Tozawa-Juku, but with the addition of Kinta and Flag-bearer Oyaji on the respective sides. A Tozawa-juku win would get Antony his rematch and force Kinta to go back to being a clean and unbiased ref, a MOz win would deny the rematch and force Oyaji to dress up as a woman for future flag-bearing duties. 26th September - There was some kind of costume switching stuff going on between CIMA and Gamma. A "costume exchange match" was booked - no one was quite sure what this meant. On the same show, Dr. Muscle busted out the Bakatare sliding kick. Iiiiinteresting. 26th September - Stalker Ishikawa announced "Stalker Bom Ba Ye" - a card promoted by Stalker featuring hismelf vs X in a main event with a loser must retire stipulation. I can only assume that this is Stalker's big retirement show. As others have said, his opponent for that match absolutely must be TARU if it is to be his last. 30th September - Ryo Saito, Genki Horiguchi and Dragon Kid won the Triangle Gate titles from BloodHearts - the champions failing in their first defense following MOz intrusion. 30th September - The early card for the big 11/23/2006 PPV in Osaka was released:

-WAR IJ Title: Pentagon Black vs. Masaaki Mochizuki-Ryuukon 10 Match Series #10- Yasushi Kanda vs. Geni'chiro Tenryu-Falls, Give Up, KO Only Rules: Gamma vs. CIMA-Open the Dream Gate: Susumu Yokosuka vs. Winner of 10/22 Fujii vs. Steen

This was also announced:

11/19/2006 Fukuoka, Hakata Star Lanes-WAR IJ Tag Titles: Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fujii vs. Magnitude Kishiwada, Pentagon Black

That looks like something I need to see badly and in full. This probably means I'll see 4 minutes of it. :(Other stuff announced for October:

10/20/2006 Tokyo, Korakuen Hall-Takayuki Mori, Taku Iwasa, Hatamochi Oyaji vs. Masato Yoshino, Magnitude Kishiwada, Kinta Tomoaka-Ryuukon 10 Match Series #8- Don Fujii vs. Geni'chiro Tenryu-Costume Exchange Match: CIMA vs. Gamma10/22/2006 Kyoto, Kyoto KBS HallOpen the Dream Gate #1 Contender Match: Don Fujii vs. Muscle Outlaw'z Assassin Kevin Steen

1st October - A mini ItaConne revival was announced for the 11/11 Ring Seoul live show, with Kondo, Yasshi and Milano teaming up to face TARU and two mystery partners. It has since been revealed that they are SUWA and Touru Owashi. What a bloody brilliant sounding match that is. I'll be looking out for this show for sure. 1st October - El Dorado held their "NOT THE WRONG SELECTION" show.

10/1/2006 Tokyo, Shin-Kiba 1st Ring ~THE NOT WRONG SELECTION: October1. Bear Fukuda{W}, Kota Iibushi (10:46 Final Flash) El Blazer, Milanito Collection a.t.{L}2. Ken45 (2:26 Scorpion Death ROCK!) King Pocoda3. Manjimaru (7:45 No Contest) Motosugu Shimizu4. -Minami-Kyoto High School #1 3 Way Match(7:21 No Contest due to Brahman Brothers Intrusion) brother YASSHI, Yuji Hino, Jumping Kid Okimoto5. Shuji Kondo, Touru Owashi, Takuya Sugawara{W} (20:55 Shiisanputa) KAGETORA, Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei{L}Suga dropkicked Kondo as he was going for the finish. There is now a level of distrust coming from all directions between Kondo, KAGETORA, and Suga. Because of this, all 3 will meet in a 3 way match at the 10/31 Conclusions of Autumn convention in Differ Ariake.Director Kawabata forcibly stopped the Manjimaru/Shimizu match. Manjimaru had racked up a bill of over 660,000 yen in damages during his matches with Shimizu due to his wild brawling style. Beause of this, Kawabata was also considering Shimizu as an accomplice. He is forcing them to team in an upcoming tag tournament, where the prize money can be used to pay for the damage they have caused. The 10/31 convention will have details of this tournament.

Scorpion death ROCK! is finisher name of the year for me. Absolutely beautiful. What he hell is he doing wrestling King Pocoda though? Aside from the main and possibly the opener it looks like quite a weak card to me. The tag tournament announcement is interesting, as is the growing Kondo/KAGETORA/Sugawara intrigue. I hope they start putting on more enticing undercards soon though. October 1st - Yoshino beat Mori again for his 4th defense of the Brave Gate. There were some shenanigans, but the finish itself was clean, Yoshino getting the pinfall following the lightning spiral. October 4th - Brother YASSHI got his first HUSTLE booking~! He participated on the October 9th show, though I'm not sure how he did or even what the match was. October 7th - Kevin Steen arrived. He beat up Tozawa early in the show and later pinned Jack Evans in the main event six man with his package piledriver. October 8th - Doi announced that he's about 60-70% recovered from his injury, and plans to return at about 90%. I hope he doesn't come back too soon and give himself further problems a la K-Ness as he'd be a huge loss if he was out for extended periods of time in future. October 8th - Kondo, Yasshi and TARU invaded New japan's WRESTLELAND show, battling to a no contest with Jado, Gedo and Minoru Tanaka. Sounds like that'd be worth seeing. October 9th - Shingo returned to action following his hand injury. Also, the first graduate from the DG Houston Dojo was unveiled. His name is Cyber Kong. He looks totally ridiculous. http://www.fullimpactpro.com/profiles/profilepics/kong2.jpgOh my. October 11th - The Stalker Bom ba ye card began to take shape:

11/12/2006 12:11 Kickoff Time, Tokyo, Shinjuku FACE~Stalker Ichikawa Bom Ba Ye-Yamato Onodera, Don Fujii, Tetsuhiro Kuroda vs. Gamma, Ishinriki, Chocoball Mukai-Kevin Steen vs. Shinobu-Mister Pogo, Touryu vs. Masayoshi Motegi, Katsunari Toi-CIMA, BxB Hulk, Onryo vs. Kota Iibushi, MIKAMI, Daichi Kakimoto-Stalker Ichikawa vs. X

The two six man tags have a great mix of DG wrestlers and indy sleaze stars. Also interesting to see Kota Iibushi of El Dorado in the same match as CIMA and Hulk. I never thought I'd see Onryo and Hulk on a team either, but that's weird in a different way. October 13th - An injured Fujii did a stretcher job, casting doubt over his match with Kevin Steen. October 14th - Fujii swore he'd make it to that match. Lastly, the next big(ish) show is on the 20th at Korakuen hall. Card is as follows:

10/20/2006 Tokyo, Korakuen Hall~GATE OF VICTORY1. BxB Hulk, Super Shisa vs. Genki Horiguchi, Dragon Kid2. Akira Tozawa, Yuki Ono vs. K-ness, Keni'chiro Arai3. Susumu Yokosuka, Yamato Onodera vs. Masaaki Mochizuki, Yasushi Kanda4. Ryuukon 10 Match Series #8: Don Fujii vs. Geni'chiro Tenryu5. Costume Exchange Match: CIMA, Jack Evans vs. Gamma, Kevin Steen6. Ryo Saito vs. Austin Aries7. Takayuki Mori, Taku Iwasa, Hatamochi Oyaji vs. Masato Yoshino, Magnitude Kishiwada, Kinta Tomoaka

Aaaand finally, I'm re-naming this thread, but it'll still be quite easy to find. It'll be the one that I bump every now and then with a review that no one reads.

[Famous Mortimer]

I totally just read it, so don't sweat it. I need to catch up on DG, which is what I will do as soon as I'm caught up on ROH. Ah, the perils of being a wrestling fan.

[JLM]

And this after I stopped sending you money for Tuff Discs because I got myself a puroresu torrent tracker invite. You are a kind soul. That said, talktalk's oh-so-fair usage policy has made any and all P2P usage damn near impossible for me now, so I may yet come crawling back to the traders and their shiny wares.

 

The thread title re-branding is just the beginning here. I soon will start abducting people and forcing them to view Dragon Gate in a Clockwork Orange style scenario except with less mind-warping and more effeminate Japanese men. Thinking about it, that'd probably be more mind-warping.

 

The main problem I have at the moment in terms of plugging is that DG has gone from being one of the most accessible Japanese promotions to one of the most likely to alienate people because of the ridiculously fast-moving and heavily edited TV and lack of pay per views.

 

There's not much point in me hassling people to order an episode of DG TV only for them to sit and watch a bunch of clips from matches that might be good but you can't quite tell interspersed with some promos they don't understand and various other bits of rapid storyline progression that require you to read DGUSA almost daily to keep up with.

 

Infinity has produced plenty of shows that were better than the PPVs at the same time, but the way they cram everything in now means that it just isn't happening at the moment. I reckon the fact that they ran a number of tournaments so close together has been a factor, so things may improve on that front.

 

The next Infinity looks like this:

 

Infinity #51, 9/17 Hakata, 9/26 Korakuen, 9/20 Osaka

-Open the Dream Gate: Susumu Yokosuka vs. Pentagon Black (King Shisa)

-Open the Brave Gate: Masato Yoshino vs. Takayuki Mori

-Open the Triangle Gate: Ryo Saito, Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi vs. CIMA, BxB Hulk, Jack Evans

-Others

 

Three matches I look forward to seeing there, but whether or not it disappoints me will depend on just how much "Others" they try and force into the show. All three of those matches were around the 20 minute mark - I hope that at least one of them is shown in its entirety. I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

To think I used to complain about the mediocre undercards on those PPV shows - at least the matches were in full. I fear I won't see a full Dragon Gate match again until the PPV at the end of November.

[Famous Mortimer]

You fell unlucky with TuffDiscs, I usually use Verbatim but sometimes I run out and have to buy whatever the man on the market has for sale that week. But if you're happy with the torrents, stick with em, as free is definitely better than paying.

[jae]

I want to see this show quite badly. The main event sounds excellent and has YASSHI and Kawada on opposing sides, the battle royal is wonderfully sleazy and Dick Togo is on the undercard. Covers all the bases really.

What they showed was pretty good. The battle royal especially was pretty entertaining.

[Spatular]

Bah. I'm still stalled in July, trying to work up the enthusiasm to watch the Wrestle Jam TV block. :(To be honest I'm currently more concerned with getting up-to-date with All Japan, thanks in no small part to The Greatness of YASSHI~! I can think of only one other man in wrestling who could pull off a strong-style parody while wearing Road Warrior facepaint, and he has a retirement match coming up.

[JLM]

[JLM]

OK. Two thhings:

 

1) Sorry to bump this thread.

 

2) The picture below does portray exposed male buttocks, but is essential viewing for those who appreciate the greatness of YASSHI.

 

Click to Show/Hide

 

How does he manage to keep increasing his level of greatness like this?

[Adam G]

I know nothing of Dragon Gate and I'm sure if I looked back in this topic I could find out exactly why this YASSHI fella is so great but its late and I get the feeling you wouldnt mind explaining his greatness. So would you kindly? Although I guess if I dont know anything about Dragon Gate I probably wont understand his greatness no matter how much you tell me about him, so nevermind.

[JLM]

Aside from his kinky sexscapades as detailed above, he's just one of the best little rat bastard heels I've ever seen.He abuses the fans, mocks his opposition, shouts "FUCK!" a lot and has to have last word on the microphone in any given situation. I've seen him being stretchered out of an arena after a savage beating and still demanding a house mic so he could attempt to talk some more shit. He hangs around with bigger, stronger and more important wrestlers and is happy to hide behind them when he needs to - but then there's other times when his massive sense of self-importance and ability goes to his head and he'll take someone on who's so out of his league that he gets pasted - and people LOVE to see that. It's as much fun to watch Kensuke Sasaki chop him til he can't stand as it is to see him kicking an opponent in the groin. When the ring announcer is introducing everyone at the start of his match, YASSHI puts his hand down the front of his shorts and grasps handfuls of pubes and ball sweat. When his own name is announced, he then struts forward and blows this into the faces of his opposition. He likes to do a spot in multiman tags where he waits for one of his partners to beat down an opposition team member, then he begs to tag in. When he's tagged in, he dances around the ring, middle fingers and verbal abuse a flying. He'll do a few laps of the ring, mocking the downed opponent and mocking his partners on the apron, then he'll tag out again without delivering a single offensive move. He has a tombstone piledriver variation where he gets the opponent into position, then thrusts his hips into their face and shouts "fuck fuck fuck" to make sure they're fully humiliated before he drops them on their head.In short, he's my hero.Oh yeah, he also likes to use the testicular claw, and then wipe his hands on the referee or another opponent in a not too subtle manner.EDIT: He doesn't actually wrestle for Dragon Gate by the way, he left quite a while ago along with his whole faction. His work can be enjoyed in All Japan, El Dorado, various other indies, New Japan's WRESTLELAND shows, HUSTLE and anywhere the Voodoo Murders and/or Shuji Kondo decide to go and raise hell next. Dragon Gate is just the place where he began to perfect the art of being a gobby little prick.

[Gwailofilms]

That's outstanding. Move over, Bad Batz Maru; it's time for a new avatar...

[Spatular]

Further evidence of The Greatness of YASSHI:Watched Hiroshi Hase's retirement commemoration match from the 27th August All Japan show last night - Hase, Kojima and Nakajima vs TARU, Suwama and The Great One. Not only does he grab the stick and spend three minutes insulting Hase before the match, but at one point he had Kojima in a ball claw with one hand and Nakajima in a ball claw with the other, so Hase enters the ring to a huge cheer to make the save. Without a free hand, YASSHI simply dives forward and bites the retired legend and former Japanese Senior Vice Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in the cock.Hase looked great in the match, by the way. When was his last match prior to this?

[JLM]

Oh, I need to get my AJ watching up to date so I can watch that, I've had it for a while now. In other news, the card for the big Osaka show in November is out:11/23/2006 Osaka, Osaka Prefectural Gym Main Arena1. Akira Tozawa, Taku Iwasa, Takayuki Mori vs. K-ness, Yamato Onodera, Keni'chiro Arai2. Dr. Muscle, Kevin Steen vs. Jack Evans, Matt Sydal3. Ryo Saito, Genki Horiguchi vs. Shingo Takagi, Cyber Kong4. Ryuukon 10 Match Series #10Yasushi Kanda vs. Geni'chiro Tenryu5. IJ Title: Pentagon Black vs. Masaaki Mochizuki6. Naruki Doi, Masato Yoshino, Magnitude Kishiwada vs. Dragon Kid, BxB Hulk, X (Revealed on 11/8)7. Hair vs. Hair: CIMA vs. Gamma8. Open the Dream Gate: Susumu Yokosuka vs. Don FujiiSay what you will about DG booking these days, but I cannot wait for this show, which by all accounts will be a Pay per view offering. Fujii vs Susumu has the potential to be amazing. Fujii's chances of winning are pretty damn slim, but I bet he'll make a believer out of me during the match anyway. CIMA vs Gamma will be gold too, and if that wasn't enough the rest of the card looks damn fine too. Mochi vs Pentagon Black, Kanda taking on the grumpy old bastard, Shingo back in Japan, two tasty looking six man tags and the Japanese landing of CYBAH KONG~! If this definitely on PPV, I'd like to put an early NO SPOILERS request out there.

[Carbomb]

It did seem a little like a generic anti-indy rant. Aries looked to be pretty good on the DG Impact shows, and I'd take him over most of the others. Rave is hilarious. Strong oozes bland from every pore though.

I just read this, and Lantern's post.Just to re-assure you:I stand by what I said. I saw quite a bit of RoH recently, partly so that I wouldn't be caught out not knowing the material, and partly because I desperately wanted to see what everyone else did. Nothing doing.Rave is a generic heel - only reason, as far as I can tell, that he gets a good heel reaction from the fans is that he seems to be one of the few RoH workers who has any kind of idea at all as to what he should be doing. He's not over because he's any great shakes, he's over because everyone else is so bad. Of course, I haven't watched DG in a while, so I'm still stuck on May this year, so I'll wait until then to see if he's just as bad in Japan.Aries - you kidding me? This guy suffers from Chris Daniels Syndrome - the moment he enters the ring, he seems to forget that he has any kind of character at all, and simply resorts to doing MOVES~! To be quite frank, there are only two guys in RoH who interest me at all at the moment (and two just isn't enough), and those are American Dragon, and Jimmy Jacobs. At least they have well-defined characters which they put across in their matches, and allow their characters to direct their flow.

[JLM]

I don't watch ROH, I'm only going by their appearances in Dragon Gate here.Aries was intense, looked like he wanted to win, had a decent presence about him and his involvement in the match made Roderick Strong look considerably better than he has on previous outings. I'm not saying I particularly want him on DG shows, but I'd certainly have him over Strong. He wasn't nearly as robotic as Daniels either, about whom I agree with you by the way. As for Rave, he just provided some comedic fun. The Japanese fans had been informed of the pre-match toilet roll schtick, and the ensuing toilet roll covered brawl and Rave's reactions were entertaining. Again, not saying he's a world class talent, just that he was a good laugh for that one show. Kevin Steen and Matt Sydal, on the other hand, can piss off. Sydal is like the generic man they use for move previews on the Smackdown games. He hits everything with mechanical precision, but is entirely anonymous.EDIT: On another note, do you have any plans to get up to date with DG in the near future Bombcar? It'd be nice if a few people were at least on their way to being up to date by the time that show comes around at the end of next month. If you're up to May, the end of monthly ppvs means that it's just Infinity episodes and World standing between you and current affairs.