wrestling / TV Reports
Puro Fury: DDT Peter Pan
Image Credit: DDT Pro-Wrestling
Loading...DDT Peter Pan
August 28 2016
I woke up slightly late for this show, as in 15 minutes into it, and I am drunk as fuck from last night. All the booze in my house has gone. All of it. I join the stream during the second match and there’s a women’s tag match going on. One of the girls is dressed like the Hurricane/Green Lantern. Another is dressed as a genie. It looks fun. After the match finishes I realise it’s the second of two dark matches and is therefore relatively unimportant. The show is long enough as it is without two dark matches making air on Samurai TV.
Kouki Iwasaki & Mizuki Watase vs. Kazusada Higuchi & Daiki Shimomura
The DNA boyz are in the house for this official opener. Higuchi is way above all the other guys, even Iwasaki, and dominates whenever he’s in the ring. He looks really safe too. Like he’s been main eventing around Southern territories in the 1970s for his entire life. His tag partner Shimomura is the opposite. He looks like every Indie spot kid who you hate for having no psychology and he nearly moonsaults onto his head, on the floor and misses death by inches. It’s a terrifying moment and detracts from Higuchi winning the match moments later.
Final Rating: **
Video Control gives us a delightful recap of the DDT Ironman Heavy Metal title since Joey Ryan had it in the USA for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been witnessing multiple title changes on the Twitter Machine. It’s been a laugh.
Ironman Heavy Metal Championship
Battle Royal
There are a tonne of guys in this and the belt is being defended by Yakitori, which is a snack. Toru Owashi, who was the champ at the start of the day fell asleep with it on his chest and it pinned him. Kazuki Hirata is first in and he battles the meat on a stick, which manages to get him in an armbar. What? Joey Ryan puts the Yakitori in his pants. Cherry pulls it out, eats it and wins the belt. I love this company. The terms of this match are convoluted. You can eliminate people by pins, submissions or throwing them out of the ring but unless you do it to the champion you don’t win the belt. Keisuke Ishii submits Cherry to win the title. There’s a moment where Gota Ihashi, one of the world’s fattest men wrestles Saki Akai, one of the world’s thinnest women. It’s a bizarre visual. This is DDT. Lots of scrubs, who are only on the show for seconds, get tossed out before the obligatory multiple submissions spot where Hirata refuses to get involved because he wants to dance and YOSHIHIKO interrupts. The way YOSHIHIKO eliminates KENSO has me laughing so hard I start crying. I love wrestling. This is followed by Jun Kasai accidentally triggering the TOKYOOOOO Hirata music and then cleaning house until they both dance. Toru Owashi wins the title back by rolling up Hirata and YOSHIHIKO at the same time. After the match Joey Ryan rolls Owashi up to win the belt back and will probably defend it all over Twitter for another month after the hilarity of his last run. Comedy match of the year right here.
Final Rating: ****
KUDO & Masa Takanashi vs. Akito & Yasu Urano
This is KUDO’s big comeback match after months on the shelf. He gets a lot of yellow streamers to celebrate. His knee was broken so Urano targets the injury. The match is really solid when Takanashi, who is in great shape, is in there. KUDO ends up pinning Urano with the double knees, which is a bit weird considering his injury. I guess its his way of saying he’s fine. The match was ok but it was just for KUDO to show he was ring fit. It felt like filler and only the introductions and the finish mattered.
Final Rating: **3/4
Super Sasadango Machine & New Wrestling Aidoru (Makoto Oishi, MAO & Shunma Katsumata) vs. Antonio Honda, Trans Am Hiroshi, Gorgeous Matsuno & Ladybeard
SSM does a PowerPoint presentation to explain how awesome NWA is and what they’re going to do. The opposing team is downright weird. Trans Am is Hiroshi Fukuda. Matsuno is ancient. Ladybeard is a cosplayer. The NWA boyz sing during their entrance. It’s not good but it’s not horrible either. They do a solid job of it. The storyline is that DDT are having a music festival and NWA need to get 50,000 followers on Twitter to get booked on it. SSM has them wrestling against “idols” to make them more popular. That’s as maybe but the match isn’t too good. Fukuda sings. Ladybeard sings. Matsuno sings. Everyone is happy. Honda battles his way out of a chinlock to strains of “we are the world, we are the children”. The squad get too carried away with singing and Honda gets pinned with a MAO 450 Splash. This is the second match on the show where I ended up laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of what I was being presented with in the name of pro graps.
Final Rating: ***
AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Championship
Hikaru Sato (c) vs. Soma Takao
Soma is 7-0 at Peter Pan so this is a big match because his streak is on the line as well as the AJPW strap. It helps that both guys work in All Japan so there’s a feeling the title can change hands here. The show has been quite goofy up to this point so they switch gears and have a legit shoot style match up. It’s meticulously paced with Sato trying to grind Soma down. He switches from arm to leg seamlessly and just dismantles the poor kid with his superior grappling skills. It’s a great story for Takao because he has to overcome this maverick shooter who’s killing him one submission at a time and all he has is pluck and desperation. The story can work with either man winning but it’s Takao with the Takatonic and the streak lives! Takao is unbeatable at Peter Pan. Great match with epic storytelling. It would have been easy to just do a bunch of fun stuff but the match wouldn’t stand out like that. This was a legitimately good wrestling storyline with a happy ending.
Final Rating: ***1/2
Post Match: Takao lays out a challenge and Kazuki Hirata answers it. TOKYOOOOO!
DDT Extreme Championship
LiLiCo (c) vs. Danshoku Dino
The clips of LiLiCo working out remind me that she looks really normal outside of the ring. It shows how hard she works at her look. She came in for her first match as a fully fleshed out character. LiLiCo is in a relationship with Watase so they hug it out before LiLiCo defends the strap. The winner of this match also gets Watase, as Dino suspects he’s actually gay. There’s a strong chance of a heel turn in this match. Dino tries to get LiLiCo to molest him but apparently he has a baby cock and everyone has a good laugh about it. The wrestling is typically awful considering Dino only does comedy stuff and LiLiCo has only had a handful of matches. They abandon any pretence of working and have LiLiCo reapply her makeup while Dino works Watase instead. Dino then gets the crowd to chant “we want asshole” while LiLiCo has her face shoved into his rectum. The match is just trash. Dino heels it up by snogging Watase. LiLiCo gets mad about it but is flattened by the Danshoku Driver. Awful wrestling throughout this and Dino gets to split up the power couple too. If you were waiting for LiLiCo to get exposed in a big match and fall on her face this would be for you. Everyone else should skip.
Final Rating: ½*
Post Match: Watase refuses to be gay. Miyatake, the original choice for the LiLiCo storyline before he injured his shoulder, turns up and both he and Watase propose to LiLiCo. Then a string of others too, including Super Sasadango Machine, and LiLiCo laughs through the whole thing, unable to remain professional. They’re having a tournament and the winner marries LiLiCo. We then get a video plug for big events next year because DDT is 20 years old. They’re running the Saitama Super Arena, which holds around 20,000 people. Somewhere backstage Joey Ryan chokes on some Yakitori and Yakitori wins the belt again! We head back to the ring where Yoshihiro Takayama is introduced as a new DDT regular. Some pop idols come out to sing and Dino molests them. Are they having an actual music festival?
Great Kabuki, Yukio Sakaguchi & Kota Umeda vs. Sanshiro Takagi, Shiro Koshinaka & NOSAWA Rongai
This was supposed to be a big match focused on Terry Funk but he had a hernia and got surgery so he’s been replaced by Koshinaka on short notice. Kabuki is an ancient shower of shit so when he’s in the ring the match stinks. Sakaguchi and Umeda have bonded over a love of stiff kicks. They could become a very strong team. Koshinaka gets a lot of love for his hip attacks and he’s legitimately in good shape for an old timer. Until Yukio drops him on his head. That slows him up. The trouble they have in the match is both teams want to be heel. It effects the dynamic of proceedings and they don’t get heat on the match because of it. That and this show is a million years long. Takagi takes it with a sitout powerbomb. This came across like total filler without Terry being involved. Speaking of the Funker, his autobiography is a riot. It’s wall to wall ribs and stories. That man has had an interesting life.
Final Rating: **1/2
DAMNNATION (Daisuke Sasaki & Tetsuya Endo) vs. Dick Togo & Mike Bailey
Sasaki lost his title to Takeshita but in revenge has stolen Takeshita’s best friend Endo. He’s managed to anger a returning Dick Togo, who unretired himself this year. It’s a comeback I’ve been begging for because Togo is so great. Endo doing flips with Bailey is fantastic and they throw all manner of crazy dives into this. Sasaki is a magnificent asshole and Togo kills him for it. Bailey looks at home in DDT and there’s every chance he’ll be a showstealer for them going forward. He looks all fired up and wants to be a star. Speaking of stars, Sasaki’s has risen so highly since Kota Ibushi left (Ibushi is actually coming back to DDT). I thought he’d be screwed but he’s come good. Togo takes Daisuke to school in the match though with his surly attitude and grappling skill. He’s so good and he’s pushing 50. It’s insanity. His spots are crisp as ever and he tells a thrilling storyline with his aggression toward Sasaki. Endo vs. Bailey might be even better as they stiff the fuck out of each other. The match has such intensity all the way through and the near falls are all great. The stretch goes off the rails a bit because Togo runs in with a chair and doesn’t give a fuck whatsoever. It leads to a ref bump and Bailey manages to get himself busted wide open in the process. Endo hits the Sky Twister on the bleeding Bailey for the win. This was so good and it’s only the shoddy work at the finish that brought it down a notch.
Final Rating: ****1/2
KO-D Tag Team Championship
Ken Ohka & KAI (c) vs. HARASHIMA & Yuko Miyamoto
The champs go by “Bad Combi” while the challengers are known as “Yankee Smile” (an amalgamation of their normal teams: Yankee Two Kenju and Smile Squash). It’s really tough to get geared up for another tag right after that awesome match beforehand. Booking two tag matches back to back is poor form anyway but having the least interesting of the two on second kills these guys. And HARASHIMA is the companies ace but sometimes you cannot follow excellence. They work really hard to try and upstage the last match but it takes time to readjust to what they’re bringing to the dance. KAI and Ohka seem to have bonded over a love of wifebeaters (the shirt, not actual spousal abusers). KAI makes a point of murdering HARASHIMA with the Bucklebomb, a move that seems unnecessary at the best of times. He comes back from it to Somato his way into a title win. They did some clever stuff on the finish, including a miscued spear and it showed that HARASHIMA is capable of teaming with anyone. This was solid but would have come across better without having to follow a genuinely great match.
Final Rating: ***1/4
KO-D Openweight Championship
Konosuke Takeshita (c) vs. Shuji Ishikawa
Shuji is Sasaki’s attack dog (he literally debuted him on a leash) and he’s coming after Takeshita because the champ beat Sasaki for the belt. To actually earn a title match he won the King of DDT tournament. He feels like a genuine contender for any belt in Japan because he’s big and credible. Takeshita is feeling the pressure of having to main event the show and he looks out of sorts. He looks even more out of sorts after Shuji kills him with a powerbomb on the apron. It’s really harsh and big Shuji has begun the demolition of the young champion. They tell a good story with Takeshita getting killed and refusing to stay down. He even manages to pop off a German suplex! The idea behind Shuji’s abuse is targeting Takeshita’s back so he can’t hit any moves. The trouble is he then just hits moves. His selling of the injury is great but the storyline doesn’t go anywhere. Takeshita still looks good for getting all fired up and making the comebacks but he never sells an attempted move with failure. What is there to overcome? Especially with him popping German suplexes off all match so there’s no intrigue as to whether he can do it. Plus when Shuji sells fatigue the murdered Takeshita gets up first, even after taking a lethal looking Michinoku Driver. There are logic holes in the match that you could drive a truck through. However the effort is huge and they try to make the big moves feel like finishes. There’s lots of head dropping and if you can get past the obvious issues the match gets exciting. Takeshita gets to look really ballsy by coming after Shuji but in the process he gets absolutely killed. The false finishes are amazing. Splash Mountain should finish but it doesn’t so Shuji hits a backdrop driver and wins the title. Once I’d gotten over the flaws I got seriously into the murder of Takeshita. He got fucked up so badly in this match his career might be over. That’s how harsh it was. I was totally turned around on the match so I’m going heavy on the snowflakes.
Final Rating: ****
Post Match: Sasaki acts like a complete dick so a bunch of potential challengers pile in to get in the face of DAMNATION. It’s the entire locker room. I like that Sasaki is living vicariously through Shuji and shouting everyone down on his behalf.
