Section 1- Results
Zero-One: Their biggest show in some time, drawing over 4000, took place on Saturday. The main event was Omori taking back the AWA title from Ohtani. Hardcore legend Onita made his in-ring return on the undercard, though it won’t be a regular thing.
Section 2- News
All Japan: Their post-carnival tour schedule was announced, and it’s a very good sign for the company. The May/June ‘Rise Up’ tour is the longest in some time, with 15 shows over three weeks. One of these shows is titled “FEELIN’ COME KOBE”. Good ol’ Japanese-style English. Mutoh has helpfully suggested that he might nix the carnival tournament in the future, which I can only assume stems from his desire to make asinine statements.
Dragon Gate: The next match in the Magnum vs Tenryu series will take place on the 29th, in some venue called ‘Morodomi Culture Hall Heartfull’. I point this out because… what the hell does that mean?!
New Japan: The junior title picture for the coming tour has been revealed. On the 16th, Jado & Gedo face Kanemoto & Wataru Inoue for a junior tag title shot on 5/7. Kanemoto will get a shot at Tiger Mask on 5/3, which marks his fifth title shot in the last two years. Two New Japan mini-promotions have been announced, with the goal of running small venues using less-expensive talent. One will be run by Choshu, essentially a return of his Riki Pro fed (minus the ties to BIG MOUTH). The other will be run by Tiger Mask 4, and will be in the same line as Osaka Pro and Michinoku Pro, lighthearted family-oriented fare. Yukes has revealed that at the time it bought New Japan, the company was 1.4 billion yen in debt (roughly 13 million US).
NOAH: The final four of the contendership tournament are as expected Shiga, Sano, Saito and Inoue. Semis happen tonight. Scorpio vs Ricky Marvin for the openweight title will happen on Monday.
Section 3- Dragon Gate, the one fed I rarely discuss
I’ll admit, Dragon Gate gets only a fraction of the column space that other feds do. There are a number of reasons for this. First, it doesn’t operate on the normal, easy-to-cover and easy-to-analyze touring format of heavyweight feds. They have ‘tours’, but those are often arbitrary dividers. Because they run such a huge number of shows and don’t take 2-3 week breaks there isn’t the cycle of small shows leading to random meaningless tour dates leading to a big show with title matches. They essentially have two modes: meaningless tour dates and big shows, some of which are bigger than others. It’s hard to tell what big show will be really big more than a week or two in advance, unlike with heavyweight promotions where it’s a tour-ender at a large venue.
Another reason why I don’t discuss them more is the lack of business data. Specifically, ticket sales and attendance figures. However that changed for the better on Tuesday, when I was directed to the results section of their website. A few days after the fact (rather than the day of) they post attendance numbers. Based on a cursory examination I’d say that Dragon Gate is solidly ahead of Zero-One, but not quite at All Japan’s level, which is what I thought going in. They rarely run even mid-range venues so there isn’t much to analyze in regard to attendance unless things significantly pick up or drop off. Without the cookie-cutter tours and attendance analysis I’m left with analyzing the product… and I simply don’t watch the shows soon enough after they happen to do that on a regular basis.
[b]However[/b], now it is incumbent upon me to give my thoughts on what I have managed to see of the recent product, in the context of the tie-up with ROH. The first exposure the Dragon Gate crew got in the states was in their early days as young Ultimo Dragon trainees. Wrestling in WCW and tapes of the 1999 debut shows formed the first impression of guys like Magnum Tokyo, CIMA, Dragon Kid and others. Most people liked what they saw, but there was an undeniable amount of sloppiness and goofy run-in booking. Having watched the vast majority of the 1999-2000 era I can say that it was mostly missable, especially once you’ve seen the trademark moves. Few were raving about them.
The T2P Project, Ultimo’s second wave of students, arrived in 2001. They rocked and got similar hype, then in 2002 the newness wore off and they didn’t product five-star matches so the hype died down. During 2003 there were two very noteworthy shows (El Numero Uno final and June 29th) but as a whole Toryumon’s product was a blip on the radar compared to New Japan and NOAH. The split with Ultimo and formation of Dragon Gate happened with little fanfare, and Dragon Gate’s first full year of shows did not do anything to change that for the non-Japanese fans. CIMA and Shingo Takagi appeared on an ROH show last year, but they didn’t tear the house down the way Liger, Kobashi and KENTA did.
Suddenly the ROH/Dragon Gate alliance has bloomed. Reports from the ROH Tri-Shot weekend are glowingly positive of the Dragon Gate wrestlers. I got a sense from most of those reports that there weren’t many people who had seen any more than a handful of Dragon Gate matches. To anyone who was blown away by how good the Dragon Gate tag matches were, I say: go get some DVDs pronto. Or to a lesser extent try and find some to-remain-nameless source of wrestling downloads.
I say this because Ultimo’s proverbial children have finally come into their own. The potential demonstrated in the debut shows for both Toryumon and T2P is being realized. Not every last match is mindblowing, of course, but the more shows I see the more I’m struck by the consistency of the wrestling. NOAH produces more top-tier stuff over the course of a year, but they also produce a much higher percentage of life-drainingly dull affairs. Even the most diehard New Japan fanatic would have a hard time defending the quality of Black Strong Machine main events. For All Japan simply sub in Arashi.
There are a number of reasons why the Dragon Gate product is so solid. First, the wrestlers are all familiar with each other. Those few like Mochizuki who weren’t trained in the Toryumon Gym have generally been in the fed for years. Wrestlers who know each other are able to put together better exchanges, make fewer communication errors, and add the little touches that can make all the difference. Second, the wrestlers have developed niches and characters. This leads to contrasting styles, easy-to-make match stories and crowds who can easily follow what’s going on. Third, the roster is chock full of fantastic, charismatic athletes. I don’t need to detail how vital talent is. Fourth, they’ve been bringing in more in the way of outside talent for big shows. Finally, and perhaps most importantly when it comes to having a high-end product, the roster has learned how to work a match.
Not that they were clueless in 2001, but rather they simply didn’t have it all together. Knowing how to build a match, how to keep things interesting while the heels are in control, timing the spots, mixing things up from match to match, being complex without being convoluted, and so on. The difference between 2005 and 2000 is night and day, much like ROH’s 2005 compared to 2002. Singles matches like Ryo Saito vs Milano Collection AT and Mochizuki vs Fujii were as straightforwardly enjoyable as anything I saw from last year. Shingo Takagi vs BB Hulk from the King of Gate tournament was chock full of goodness for any wrestlers, let alone two rookies. And then there’s the tags.
Dragon Gate’s bread-and-butter are the lucha-esque tags, almost all of which can be deemed sprints. Everyone in Dragon Gate can do their part of a 6-man tag with their eyes closed. Most of the ones I’ve seen from the past year and a half make TNA’s X-Division spotfests look low-rent. The matches from the ROH weekend are already being given the “MOTYC” tag, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it’s just the standard high-energy Dragon Gate action. It’s just that not nearly enough people have [b]seen[/b] a standard Dragon Gate 6-man to know how good they are.
Again, I don’t want to make it seem as if Dragon Gate can do no wrong. What I do want to make clear is that show for show Dragon Gate is one of the best promotions in Japan, and that in seeking out what puro to watch they deserve every bit as much of your attention as the ‘big boys’. For more on Dragon Gate visit the authoritative Dragon Gate USA.
