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Dragon Gate Pro-Wrestling Festival In Kobe 2005 - 03/07/2005
Open The Triangle Gate Title Match: Do FIXER (Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito) (c) vs. Blood Generation (CIMA, Don Fujii & Naruki Doi)
Awesome match. Whether it’s better than the Supercard of Honor match depends on the person. Perhaps Don Fujii is up your alley more than Masato Yoshino. On its own merits, this is a great match though. The match starts off with mass brawling that spreads all the way upto the ramp, classic Blood Generation. Yagi is able to quickly reign everyone back into the ring where the magic really begins. First everyone paid off, Dragon Kid vs Doi, Fujii and Horiguchi and then Ryo Saito and CIMA, who had a great exchange together. CIMA is so athletic that he was able to leapfrog Saito twice and hit a high drop kick afterwards. While this top babyface run for Ryo Saito wasn’t an exact success at the time, his performances are still great. His speed and charisma causes me to be glued to the screen whenever he’s in the ring. A face Saito and a heel CIMA is perhaps my favourite combination of this era of Dragon Gate. The match turned into Blood Generation’s favour, who chose Genki Horiguchi as their main target, even over the smaller Dragon Kid. Blood Gen had a great spot where each member did their version of the world’s greatest move (the leapfrog over the shoulders into the opponent. Even Magnitude Kishiwada was able to make the leap but Masato Yoshino absolutely cleared Doi thanks to Shingo giving him a step up. The crowd got behind Horiguchi by this point, chanting H.A.G.E and Doi had the perfect response of putting his fingers in his ears like a child. The match rules fall by the wayside after Horiguchi makes the tag as the two teams breeze through a ton of awesome double and triple team moves. All of which looked fluid except maybe one which is an incredible ratio. Do FIXER gained the advantage and the momentum, getting the better of Doi and Fujii, causing Fujii to nail Doi with a lariat before Kid hit a Dragonrana for a very close two count. It had me. Saito hits a few fisherman suplexes but CIMA counters it with a suplex of his own, then CIMA misses a frog splash and almost gets pinned on a bridging german suplex. There is another amazing false finish after a top rope hurricanrana and giant splash combination by Dragon Kid and Ryo Saito but CIMA was able to stop the count just in time. The closing stretch is so frantic and in the moment that only one mistake could make the difference. Horiguchi brings it in the closing stretch with his selling and use of the backslide of heaven. He is able to survive the Schwein but not the frog splash and CIMA wins the titles for Blood Generation.
A pretty thrilling match from bell to bell. The face and heel dynamics are usually spot on in Dragon Gate and this was no different. I found everyone really did best in their different roles - Horiguchi as the FIP, CIMA as the main heel, Saito the badass face that can carry his team and Doi as the irritating shithead. The closing stretch was super good with effective uses of nearfalls and counter heavy sequences in the build. Despite the fast paced style, they made use of those tools in order to create drama and convince the crowd that something was the finish when it wasn’t, or other tools to get people firmly on Horiguchi’s side. ****1/2
Open The Dream Gate Title Match: Masaaki Mochizuki (c) vs. TAKA Michinoku
It’s really fascinating to see the older generation of Lucharesu (Michinoku Pro) against the newer version of Lucharesu (Toryumon/Dragon Gate). Taka Michinoku is actually younger than Mochizuki by four years but Mochizuki took to the style much later, as he came from a much different background. That overlap makes for an interesting dynamic than just old school vs new school. They are peers in the normal sense but that difference in worlds is still prevalent. Taka wrestles a trickier, technical style while Mochizuki throws strikes but the idea is style the same - isolate a body part. Mochizuki goes for the arm with kicks to the biceps, which hurts like you couldn’t believe, and Taka attacks the knee. The grappling was solid. Taka wrenches the knee at an angle with the smug look on his face while Mochizuki pulls at the arms to alleviate pressure. Taka transitions into the prison lock, where he further teases Mochizuki before applying the ankle lock/knee bar. Mochizuki does a great job of not only selling the hold but trying to escape each hold. The match is more grounded than you’d expect considering the prior match but the match works all the same. Plus it makes the bigger spots of the match - Mochizuki countering Taka’s springboard something with Sankakugeri - all the more better. The match progressed in a smart way as well. Mochizuki started to get the better of Taka’s submissions a bit more, countering them more and more, then applying his own. The closing stretch had a bit of everything. Taka goes to the air for the first time of the match, Mochizuki throws a bunch of desperate kicks and Taka goes for the Just Facelock that he used to beat Susumu Yokosuka to get the title match. The finish comes suddenly after Taka fails to cover Mochizuki after the Michinoku Driver and gets caught with some head kicks. While it wasn’t a dramatic close to the match, the finish was effective enough. My only gripe for the match was the lack of the long term selling of the leg by Mochizuki. Although with a strike heavy wrestler like Mochizuki, that sort of selling isn’t a real factor in most cases. Instead the story of the match drives everything and what becomes important is his comeback, and that certainly delivers. ****1/4
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