Dramatic Dream Team Brings Its Greatness to Sumo Hall

Ryogoku Peter Pan 2014

(2014/8/17)

2.      14-MAN/DOLL BATTLE ROYAL for Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship

YOSHIHIKO’s got a tag team partner, may gods have mercy on us all.

GOLD

4.      KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship: Team Drift (Shigehiro Irie, Keisuke Ishii, Soma Takao) vs. Shuten-doji (KUDO, Yukio Sakaguchi, Masa Takanashi) ©

Takao changed his colors into blue, but I still don’t dig him. The match was good, although with a more colorful first half, could’ve been borderline great.

***1/4

5.      IMPORTANT SOMETHING TIMED BLAST DEATHMATCH for DDT Extreme Championship: Muscle Sakai vs. Danshoku Dino ©

The Goldberg entrance, stolen identities, trivia quiz, rape and ass explosions. Yep, Sumo Hall will never be the same again.

GOLD

6.      STREET WRESTLING: Sanshiro Takagi & Jun Kasai vs. Minoru Suzuki & Michael Nakazawa

Only DDT can book a 23 minute long “hardcore” match and get a free pass. Oh, and I want to see Suzuki/Kasai right fucking NOW!

***1/2

7.      Kota Ibushi vs. Shuji Kondo

Bloody excellent until the last chapter, before that you got Kondo almost decapitating Ibushi with everything he’s got, including some surly lariats, and it was rather great. Sure, it was a spotfest, but it was a great f’n spotfest full of rough stuff. Then the last five minutes happened, Ibushi made his crappy and inconclusive comeback, didn’t like it at all, it hurt the match. Still very good, but could’ve been brilliant.

***1/2

8.      Konosuke Takeshita vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

There’s something about Tanahashi, his grand presence gave the show some kind of big feel legitimacy. This was the match I was looking forward the most, and it didn’t disappoint. The story wrote itself, you got Tanahashi taking Takeshita to school, outsmarting him whenever he can, while Takeshita is way quicker and not afraid to roll, which naturally pisses Tanahashi off, just great stuff all around. There’s also the Generico callback, so there you go.

****

9.      3-WAY ELIMINATION MATCH for KO-D Openweight Championship: Kenny Omega vs. Isami Kodaka vs. HARASHIMA ©

Loved this, one of the best 3-ways ever, to be perfectly honest, and definitely the best one since Styles/Daniels/Joe from Turning Point 2009, a culmination of HARASHIMA’s ongoing arc of being the ultimate ace of Dramatic Dream Team, here he clashes against the King of DDT ’14, and against the guy with whom he fought to a draw at the last Korakuen show. Especially great thing about the match was the clear and defined roles: Omega is the muscle and powerhouse of the match, Kodaka is a skinny underdog whose body went to many gruesome deathmatch wars, and is still on his way of becoming an accomplished regular wrestling guy, while HARASHIMA is the invincible superman. The match had all you wanted from a 3-way, there were your typical moments where one guys sells while the other two are wrestling, there were moments with each guy selling struggle, and there were some visually nice action sequences with each guy participating. I totally loved everything about this match, it had excellent timing, rhythm, pacing, execution, drama, we got an awesome chapter closure, etc. Long live DDT!

****1/2

Superb event.

G1 Is Over? GOOD. Now I Can Finally Watch Some DDT!

Road to Ryogoku 2014

(2014/7/20)

1.      MIKAMI & Tomomitsu Matsunaga vs. Yasu Urano & GENTARO

Clipped, and that’s a shame because it looked good, they actually did ballsy thing and ended the match with a beautiful 40 second long headlock sequence. I need more of that in my pro-graps.

N/A

2.      Akito vs. Isami Kodaka

Sort of unreal, a 10 minute match that blew my mind, shit was tight. I mean, I expected good things, and that’s based on Akito’s majestic title match with KUDO few months earlier, as well as Kodaka’s improving progression in the world of regular wrestling. I don’t know whether or not Akito has spent some time in Mexico learning from old maestros, and I’m not bothered to check it out, but he sure as hell works that way, his style is very lucha influenced, he’s got that grace and swag all over his moveset, not mention the perfect timing. He’s one of my favorite wrestlers, quite a discovery from 2014. This match was completely ground-based, with nifty limbwork and excellent pacing, oh yeah, this is a MUST-SEE.

****1/2

3.      Shuji Ishikawa, Daisuke Sasaki, Gota Ihashi vs. Sanshiro Takagi, Toru Owashi, Taiji Ishimori

Buckets of fun. First of all, Shuji and Owashi had an amazing sequence that deserved fucking world wide headlines. When I say “amazing”, I mean that in a totally different fashion, mind you, this is DDT, after all, the greatest federation on Earth. Ishimori looks like a great fit for DDT and I’d pay good money to see him against Daisuke and Shuji. Also, Gota Ihashi has finally stopped being bad, at least it appears that way.

***1/4

4.      Danshoku Dino, Makoto Oishi, Super Sasadango Machine, DJ Nira vs. Michael Nakazawa, Kazuki Hirata, Hoshitango, Shunma Katsumata

I’m not gonna pretend I understood the story behind the match, nor some of the hilarious gags. This was your vintage DDT comedy match impossible to rate.

N/A

5.      3-WAY for KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship: Team Drift (Shigehiro Irie, Keisuke Ishii, Soma Takao) vs. Shuten-doji (KUDO, Yukio Sakaguchi, Masa Takanashi) vs. Happy Motel (Antonio Honda, Konosuke Takeshita, Tetsuya Endo) ©

It’s been said many times before, this year especially, that NO ONE does better 3-ways than DDT. Everything HONDA touches turns into gold.

***1/2

6.      KO-D Openweight Championship: Kenny Omega vs. HARASHIMA ©

Great, great fucking match with an excellent double KO finish, if something like this happened in America, they would get crapped on, but thankfully the crowds of Japan are patient, respectful and understand the game. I’m such a sucker for slow-paced Junior matches, and this one was no exception. Funny, few days ago I stumbled upon a random blog where I saw few reviews that involved HARASHIMA, and the blogger described him as “Japanese Davey Richards”. Honestly, fuck humanity, I hope Icke’s lizards conquer us all.

****1/4

The show was cartloads of fun, as expected, you can’t go wrong with DDT in Korakuen.

That Match Where Lesnar Fucking SQUASHED Mr. Sesame Street Wrestler

WWE SummerSlam 2014

(2014/8/17)

WWE Championship: Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena ©

Oh man, I liked this 10x better than their overrated Extreme Rules match. This one had the CLEAR CUT storytelling and sharp focus. Such a simple and effective match with brilliant pacing, Lesnar was an outstanding aggressor, and Cena sold for him quite exceptionally. I loved the Taker callback from Brock, now that was gold right there. Details matter. As far as MOTYC list goes, I only have Virus/Titan, Styles/Suzuki and Nakamura/Tanahashi (IA) ahead of this match. With this match being fucking great, just imagine what Bryan/Lesnar could be, I mean Bryan is half Cena's size, would sell even better for Lesnar, and unlike Cena, has the full throttle support from the crowds.

****3/4

G1 Climax 24 - Best & Worst

G1 Climax 24 Best & Worst:

-          Best Wrestler: KAZUCHIKA OKADA

Now, I do realize AJ Styles, Tomohiro Ishii and Tomoaki Honma dominate most of the lists, but I gotta go with the Rainmaker here. Thing is, his stuff mostly went under the radar since everyone was talking about the other three, and rightfully so, because those three were truly glorious, but Okada was patient, scooping one good performance after other, like a silent killer, and it all paid off later, when he busted out three great matches: Goto, Suzuki, Nakamura. Add that to the early classics with Makabe and Naito, and bang, you got the guy with FIVE great matches, and his weakest rated match was ***1/4 with Yano, so there you go. The Styles match was borderline great, but got clipped down a little bit due to useless interference by Yujiro, then you got the Tenzan match, the Anderson match, the Archer match, all good stuff.

Dude’s only 26, and is one of the best wrestlers in the world for two and a half years now, consistently. Mad! He’s technically insanely crisp, tall, good looking, popular and very over with the crowds, people are not tired of him, and Gedo & Jado are taking every advantage of it.

-          Best Matches:

*****

Styles/Suzuki (8/1)

****3/4

Ishii/Honma (7/26)

Styles/Naito (7/26)

Suzuki/Okada (8/8)

****1/2

Honma/Tanahashi (7/21)

Ishii/Nakamura (8/1)

Shibata/Honma (8/3)

Nakamura/Tanahashi (8/3)

Okada/Goto (8/4)

Ishii/Nagata (8/8)

-          Best Show: 8/1 in Korakuen Hall, one of the best shows I’ve seen in my life

-          Biggest Letdown: YUJIRO TAKAHASHI

For the second straight year, brothers, and at this point, I truly believe dude’s hopeless.

-          Worst Match: Yujiro/Yano (8/8)

-          Worst Show: 8/8