Jack’s Dragon Gate: Truth Gate 2.12.17 Review

Colossal shout out, forever and always, to iheartdg for being the best Dragon Gate resource on the web and providing the basis for the promo transcriptions that appear in this review!

1- DON FUJII, SYACHIHOKO BOY & YUKI YOSHIOKA VS. JIMMYZ (Genki Horiguchi, Jimmy K-Ness & Jimmy Kanda)

This is a breezy, low key opener. Don Fujii teaming with various youngsters has been a really fun dynamic over the last few shows, but on this occasion he’s more of an ordinary partner to Yoshioka and Syachihoko Boy, rather than their surly but nurturing Uncle. The two young lads don’t really stand out in the way other up and comers have been doing on recent shows, though Yoshioka has a springy dropkick on him and Syachihoko pulls out a lovely handspring moonsault. The finishing stretch does not get as wild as even a Dragon Gate opener is prone to, but it moves along quickly enough. The whole match lasts nine minutes but it feels even shorter. Jimmy Kanda puts down Yoshioka with a flying elbow drop. ** 3/4.

2- RYO JIMMY SAITO VS. STALKER ICHIKAWA

Stalker Ichikawa shows real growth as a wrestler by not getting pinned three seconds into the match off a Ryo Saito back elbow! Indeed, he lasts a full ten minutes in an admittedly ludicrous match. All the usual Ichikawa comedy spots are reeled off, from his dexetrous rope walk that unfortunately always ends in him getting crotched, to him using the referee as an offensive weapon. My favourite of his standards sees him surprise Saito with a perfect La Magistral, only for the referee to be unable to count because he’s just been headbutted in the bottom. Eventually, after a painful delay, he’s able to get to two, at which point Ichikawa loses patience and starts remonstrating with him. Even Saito joins in, indignant at the injustice. Of course, in the end Ichikawa slumps to defeat, caught in a schoolboy by Saito for the three. Repetitive though they might be, Stalker Ichikawa matches always have a certain charm to them. **.

Things take a sour turn after the match as VerserK make their presence felt. One of their members, El Lindaman, has been injured at the hands of Saito’s Jimmyz, and Cyber Kong thinks this is so unprofessional! (A reference to Kong himself being criticised by CIMA for injuring or bloodying talent). Kong, T-Hawk and Shingo want a Triangle Gate Championship match against the Jimmyz, and Saito is happy to accept the challenge!

3- MASAAKI MOCHIZUKI VS. TAKEHIRO YAMAMURA

THIS MATCH! THE WORD MUST BE SPREAD ABOUT THIS MATCH! This is such a perfectly formed, insanely fun undercard sprint. Takehiro Yamamura is having such a 2017, and his habit of starting his matches by dropkicking his opponents to the floor and then wiping them out with a tope makes him incredibly endearing. None of this fucking about with a feeling out process! From there the match becomes a strike based war of attrition. Ordinarily I can tolerate strike exchanges for about ten seconds before I start saying “OK, cool, now start doing some flips,” but I was on board with every moment of this one. This is because the whole bout was fought at a blinding pace, and it was also so exciting to see Yamamura go toe to toe with the undisputed premier striker in Dragon Gate and really rattle him at points. There’s not a wasted second in this, nor any wasted motion, it’s a magnificently tight twelve minutes. Mochizuki in the end picks up the win with a Cro Cop Kick, which is a tad disappointing because this felt like a fine opportunity to give Yamamura a meaningful win over a respected but not infallible veteran. Still, on the whole this was about as good as an undercard match can be without completely overshadowing the rest of the show. ****.

4- JIMMYZ (Jimmy Kagetora & Jimmy Susumu) vs. TRIBE VANGUARD (BxB Hulk & YAMATO)
After the highs of the last match, this one unhappily proves to be a letdown. The formative stages of this match see each wrestler play face in peril for a brief period, which is actually quite a neat way to establish a rhythm in a face/face tag match. Ultimately though BxB Hulk ends up getting worked over for a prolonged spell with these extended leg submissions, and it’s absolutely heatless and deathly dull, made all the worst by the knowledge that Hulk has never in his career showed much interest in selling anything. The finishing stretch takes an age to come to the boil as a result of this, but we do get a genuinely terrific sequence between Hulk and Kagetora to finish the match. Both are among Dragon Gate’s most graceful athletes, and they string together some really slick moves. Kagetora gets a series of quick near falls on Hulk, which seem particularly exciting because Hulk has only just had his title match against YAMATO which was designed to snap him out of his slump, and if he were to lose this, it would be very worrying for him indeed. But, he doesn’t lose this- he puts KAGETORA away with the First Flash superkick, spinning the storyline off in a much less interesting direction. ** 3/4.

Before we head to intermission, Masato Yoshino takes the opportunity to come out and update us on his back injury. He admits it might be a while before he’s ready to return to the ring, but he’s rehabbing and undergoing treatment and things are looking positive! VerserK attempt to spoil the good news, but Naruki Doi quickly appears to run the rudos off. Doi and Yoshino then joke about how much they hate each other, but the raw sexual tension is palpable. Doi promises not to find a new full time tag partner, and instead to wait for Yoshino’s return to the ring. Awwww!

5- OPEN THE TWIN GATE CHAMPIONSHIP- OVER GENERATION (CIMA & Dragon Kid) VS. TRIBE VANGUARD (Kzy & Yosuke Santa Maria)

Kzy and Yosuke Santa Maria are not my favourite Dragon Gate duo, and my hope for this match was that they would put in a strong performance but not come out the other end with the Twin Gate Championships. And that’s exactly what happened! Hooray! The match followed the usual tag formula, with Santa Maria playing face in peril. When she’s not doing her creepy, hyper sexual gross out spots, Yosuke is actually a likeable and sympathetic underdog, and the good thing about this match was that she didn’t really have a chance to start cheerfully molesting people for ostensibly comic effect, because she was catching a beating for much of it and the stakes were too high anyway for those shenanigans. There were only two points at which she slipped into her old habits, and one of them actually kinda worked. In the midst of a furious finishing stretch, and with CIMA and Dragon Kid in a strong position, Santa Maria suddenly grabbed CIMA and kissed him on the lips, which rather caught him off guard. It felt like a plausible and effective mind game, a desperate attempt to put him off and derail his momentum which actually worked. The heat segments with Yosuke themselves were OK, nothing special and a little flat but perfectly watchable. The finishing stretch was great, with all the big moves and near falls you’d expect. I’d have liked a couple more moments of real drama where Kzy and Santa Maria had the gold in their grasp with real close near falls, but the match didn’t suffer particularly for their absence. The champs retained after CIMA dropkicked Yosuke into a Crucifix Roll-Up from Dragon Kid. *** 1/2.

Post match, CIMA admits to Kzy and Maria that he expected this to be a much easier title defence than the one back in December against Shingo and T-Hawk, but he turned out to be totally wrong. He praises both of them, and says that any time either of them wanted a shot at the Twin Gate titles, he’d be willing to accept. Kzy jumps at that offer, and says this time he’d like to team with another Tribe Vanguard member, BxB Hulk. Hey! Poor Yosuke! But the match is set for a future show anyway.

6- ELIMINATION MATCH- BEN-K, BIG R SHIMIZU, EITA & NARUKI DOI VS. VERSERK (Cyber Kong, Punch Tominaga, Shingo Takagi & T-Hawk)

This is like a cageless War Games- two wrestlers start, and at regular intervals other members of their teams join. Unfortunately, the structure has two huge flaws. One is that the wrestlers enter too quickly for their appearance to have any real drama- everyone is in the ring within the first few minutes, which makes you wonder what the point of staggering the entrances was. It feels like the people already in the match are just killing time until everyone can get involved, like the opening moments serve no purpose whatsoever. The second is that people can get eliminated from this by getting thrown over the top rope, which really limits the crazy aerial warfare that makes Dragon Gate the best. So what we get is this astonishingly boring match which is killed dead by nothing going on for the first five minutes or so, and can’t even hope of being revived with state of the art high flying because everyone’s too scared of being dropped over the top rope. VerserK predictably dominate the match and are at least able to string some slick double teams together, but not enough to give the bout any momentum. Once the heat segment is over things, in fairness, do improve. There are enough moving parts to keep things interesting even without anyone doing flips- people zip in and out the ring and hit spots at pace and it’s very watchable. Once the eliminations start happening, the match improves further, because there’s much more of a sense of energy involved in trying to kick people out the match, rather than just waiting for them to be allowed in it. Punch Tominaga is the first member of VerserK to go, at the hands of a sit out powerbomb from Big R Shimizu, and that reassures me that his heel turn isn’t going to lead to him being repositioned as a really significant character. Even at this point though, they make the mistake of just having each team lose a member in turn, so there’s only a sense of real jeopardy when it comes down to Naruki Doi vs. Shingo Takagi & Cyber Kong. They tease Cyber Kong going over the top rope in some really neat ways, and eventually Doi despatches him to the floor with a Sliding Bakatare Kick off the apron! So it’s down to Doi and Shingo, who do a typical DG finishing stretch with Shingo rattling off his signature moves and Doi getting the shoulder up at 2.999. And then the actual finishing sequence is really awesome- Tominaga tries to restrain Doi on the apron but ends up eating Shingo’s blind charge, Doi bounces off the ropes but gets smashed in the back by T-Hawk and the signature VerserK crate. the impact sends him ricocheting into the middle of the ring, and out of nowhere he wraps Shingo up in a roll up for the three count! Super! It’s fair to say this was a mixed bag, but I’d certainly say this was the weakest Dragon Gate main event of the year so far, and not at all an accurate representation of what makes the promotion my favourite in the world. ** 1/2.

6.5

The final score: review Average

The 411

A hit and miss event, really blighted by the thoroughly underwhelming main event. Stop watching after the Twin Gate match, though, and you end up with a very fun five match card, highlighted by the absolutely terrific battle between Masaaki Mochizuki and Takehiro Yamamura. That one is must watch, and pushes the quality of the show up enough that I can give it a mild recommendation.