Kzy & Dragon Kid vs Knesuka (K-Ness & Susumu Yokosuka - DG The Gate Of Passion 2022 ~ Final Burst Out! K-ness Forever - Day 4 - 07/04/2022
Very few occasions are able to consistently draw the emotions out of its audience and the wrestlers involved. Dragon Gate retirements are among them. I never thought that highly of K-ness, only watching the twilight of his career but the raw emotion and sincerity of those in the match drew me in. In addition to being a highly emotional affair, this was an excellent bout in terms of wrestling as three of the four are still absolutely ready to go and K-ness was good despite him being on his last steps to retirement. Dragon Kid and Susumu were able to shine together with their chemistry. Susumu nailed Kzy and DK with violent lariats and was able to pull off an amazing death valley driver reversal to DK off Kzy's shoulders. Kzy and K-ness had their own "sorry, I love you" moment and despite it being easy to make fun of Shawn Michaels, the closing stretch was genuinely touching and deep. Kzy slowly beat down K-ness with elbows and upper cuts until K-ness could no longer kick out. The crowd broke the no-loud noise rule several times and deservedly so. The send off after the match was as touching as always. ****1/4
IWGP World Heavyweight Title Match: Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Zack Sabre Jr. - NJPW Hyper Battle 2022 - Day 5 - 09/04/2022
This match really sold me on the idea of ZSJ needing to put Okada away early otherwise Okada would beat him. The crowd truly bit on some of the earlier submissions of the match; Okada had very little answers for ZSJ's assault on the right arm and simply had to ride it out and let ZSJ get frustrated. And as the match progressed, Okada was able to figure out a way to win. In that way, the match was great. ZSJ's desperate attempts to avoid the rainmaker were excellently done. The counter wrestling sequences with Okada was executed in a way that was both unclean yet meaningful. The reversals of the Tombstone and Zack Sabre Drivers made for some of the best and most compelling spots of the match. I also thought that Okada's facial expressions at the end were great - faces of agony, frustration and then relief. Okada as champion simply never misses. Great title match. ***3/4
WWE NXT Title Match: Bron Breakker (c) vs. Gunther - WWE NXT 2.0 #501 - 05/04/2022
So they changed his name AND his theme? Great. I’m still calling him WALTER though. This was remarkably good. Breakker has made tremendous strides since the New Year’s Evil show - the last time that I watched him. He gets the crowd to bark along with him, his selling was good, giving him a good sense of vulnerability that WALTER could exploit while getting more and more explosiveness out of his offence. WALTER guided him well, working the arm and chopping the hell out of Breakker. The choice to have these two wrestlers early was an odd one until WALTER showed up on Smackdown. This was one of the last chances to do this match, and they did it well. ***1/4
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