Category Archives: Dragon Gate

Dragon Gate
Kobe Sambo Hall (Kobe, Hyoko, Japan)
King of Gate 2014 Tournament Final 

In terms of historical importance throughout the years, nobody is going to confuse Dragon Gate’s King of Gate tournament with the G-1 Climax or Champions Carnival.  The 16-person, single-elimination came off the heels of the promotion’s big Dead or Alive show and as such, felt more like a gimmick for a normal tour than a big anticipated event.  It is still 15 singles matches over a week and a half a period which is a lot for a promotion like Dragon Gate that leans heavily on tags and trios matches in its normal course of business booking.

T-Hawk’s offense – in general as well as in this match – is built around a hard knife edge chop.  In this match they demonstrated just one of the many ways you can get a lot out of such a simple signature move.  A few minutes into the match – after a fine feeling-out start – they spill to the outside.  Susumu ends up with his back against the ring spot and T-Hawk instinctively moves in for the chop.  Jimmy moves and Hawk smacks nothing but steel, which is always a great looking spot.  That one move sets in place the rest of the work for the match.

T-Hawk sells the wrist and fore arm the remainder of the match with Jimmy focusing on it at points.  Despite having the bum hand, T-Hawk continues to utilize the chops.  He is not going to drop his main weapon just because his hand and wrist are stinging.  It is hurting him – he makes that abundantly clear – but it is a pain he is going to choose to fight through rather than letting it define his strategy.  Later on when T-Hawk gains control of the match he goes right for Susumu’s hand/arm.  I loved the notion that the youngster T-Hawk remained calm and stoically sought his revenge by going all an eye an eye on Susumu.

T-Hawk’s arm revenge led us to the closing minutes of the 20-minute match where both guys were left exhausted and fighting with injured arms.  The ending wasn’t a barn burner like Dragon Gate often pulls out (for better or for worse) so I could see it leaving some people cold.  It wasn’t an ending that I thought was great, but it was perfectly effective.  Susumu has a taped up elbow which has been aggravated by the arm attack.  However, after surviving a few near falls he goes for broke by pulling off the elbow pad and landing a pair of lariats – the second of which wins him the tournament.

The knife edge chop match as always been a favorite of mine – the first 15-minutes of the “Summer of Punk” Roderick Strong vs. CM Punk ROH match is near all-time classic stuff in my book – so I liked this a bunch.  It is hard to go wrong when you a focus a match around a simple but logical premise like this one had.  It was maybe lacking a memorable ending to keep it from that next level, but I will take a match with a good body and decent ending nine times out ten.  Aside from a couple Ricochet matches and CIMA vs. Super Shisa, this is my favorite DG singles match of the year over other hyped matches like Yoshino vs. Mochizuki and Susumu vs. Flamita.

Diagnostics
Junior Singles | Worthwhile | Quality & Tournament Final

Dragon Gate
Kobe Sambo Hall (Kobe, Japan) 

Super Shisa tends to get lost in the Dragon Gate shuffle, but he shouldn’t.  Despite being on the tail-end of his career, he continues to be one of the more underrated mat wrestlers anywhere in the world.

The 2 count, 3 escape matches with and against CIMA have been impressive but it is hard to place your finger on how much of that should be credited to CIMA and/or the rules.  In a match where CIMA is not involved and the rules are standard pro wrestling fare, Shisa still impresses.  In a different environment or with more promotion, there is a good chance that many would view Shisa on the same level as other top-flight technical/mat wrestlers.

Shisa’s cohorts for this match include a relative rookie (Shimizu), a relatively inexperienced lower card guy (Tominaga), and fellow veteran K-Ness.  Shimizu and his comically oversized unibrow are very good for their experience level and the other two are capable, but Shisa is the standout.  Shisa blends the signature quickness of the Dragon Gate style with awesome submission attempts and counters.  He is beyond smooth in this match, pulling out all sorts of fun holds at just the right times.  He and CIMA are both great this style even working with guys who are less adept.  It makes me want to see him work some of the better mat guys in Mexico.  Super Shisa versus Virus has quickly shot up my own personal dream match wish list.

 Diagnostics
Junior Tag | Worthwhile | Quality & Performance (Shisa)

Dragon Gate
Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium (Nagoya, Aichi, Japan)
Open the Dream Gate Championship 

Even in losing the Open the Dream Gate championship in just his second title defense, Ricochet still comes off in this match like a wrestler who is not that far off from blossoming into a truly valuable worker.

The match is built around YAMATO grounding Ricochet by targeting his leg.  Two years ago having an average-ish wrestler like YAMATO control the match while Ricochet’s high-flying offense (really, his only offense) lays dormant would have been a recipe for disaster.  At best it would have totally downplayed Ricochet’s real value (crazy flying) and at worst the leg work would have just been blown off and rendered meaningless.

In this match at this point in his career, however, Ricochet does a really great selling job the leg.  He doesn’t overdo it and at points gets into that nice sweet spot of body part selling where you start to feel you are watching a guy who is hurt rather then watching a guy who is selling being hurt.  After a fine, slow burn to start (which again I am not sure would have happened between these two a couple of years ago), they transition into the legwork portion of the match when YAMATO uses a wrench to tweak Ricochet’s knee.  I thought that was a well done transition and the illegal object was used to good effect.

YAMATO’s limb work is nothing great but it did the job.  The cutoff spots were strong and Ricochet did an admirable job mixing in some of his flying and acrobatic spots well still selling the leg.  He also has added enough other offense to get by in these types of matches.  On Colt Cabana’s podcast recently, Ricochet described himself – somewhat tongue-in-cheek – as a suplex guy now and he does have some decent suplexes that have made his offense much more well-rounded.

Rather than Ricochet slow-climbing the ropes to payoff the leg work not on a 450 splash attempt, he instead got up to the top just fine but then paused in a very natural way as if second guessing if his leg can handle the stress of the move.  That split second delay allowed YAMATO to avoid the splash.

The ending goes a little further than I generally care for in-terms of kick outs in the sense that they didn’t really didn’t get near fall reactions nor did they ultimately feel necessary.  It wasn’t a deal-breaker though.

Perhaps this title switch was in the cards the entire time, but the timing does call that into question.  Ricochet was announced for the Best of the Super Juniors right before the event.  One can assume that if the original plan was to leave the title on Ricochet, that would have changed when he agreed to the BOSJ.  The promotion likely would not want their main champion dropping matches to Matt Jackson, KUSHIDA, or whoever and he will almost assuredly lose couple of falls during the tournament.  It is certainly possible that influenced the decision to a title switch.

If that is the case, I would also venture a guess that Ricochet is going to go far in the tournament or possibly even win it.  Unless NJPW’s monetary offer for the tournament was too much to pass up, it is hard to see a guy giving up the top spot in his main promotion just for a chance to compete in a tournament that he has competed in before.  I’d bet that Ricochet is winning the tournament, facing Ibushi for the title (in what could be a very fun or a mess of a match), and possibly winning.  The NJPW junior division needs a major overhaul.  Ricochet would not be a bad place to start.

Diagnostics
Juniors | Worthwhile | Quality & Title Switch