Salutations, wrestling blog readers, my name is Jeffrey Paternostro, wrestling show correspondent, or something. I’ll have Holzerman assign me a fancy sounding title at our next staff meeting. And this is your tape-delayed report of the DGUSA show from Philadelphia this past weekend.
Some background: I started watching Toryumon about the time M2K was being formed in late 99 and you could only get poorly dubbed VHS tapes from Highspots in the blue sleeves. I once drove nine hours to Buffalo, staying at the shadiest Motel 6 ever (hmmm, this door looks like it has been forced open at some point) to see CIMA wrestle at a hockey rink. My favorite wrestling match ever is the CIMA/Genki Horiguchi, the El Numero Uno final from 2003. I once dubbed an entire year of SUWA matches to give to Dean Rassmussen at a Super 8. Needless to say, I am a bit of a fan and have a few biases here. I kept saying I would go see the big DG/ROH shows, but they never seemed to be drivable. Then when DGUSA was announced I promised I would go to every show possible. But real life intervenes, as it does when you are no longer a college kid who can drive down to Delaware on a whim to see Necro Butcher wrestle on a bar patio.
So this was my first trip to The Arena (Say it in a monster truck announcer voice. “WELCOME… TO THE ARENA”) in a couple years. It’s nice to know that South Philly still hasn’t changed at all in the eight years I have been going to shows here. We even managed to find a close parking space instead of having to park down by the clothing outlet warehouses with their questionable lighting. Of course, if someone really wanted to pilfer my brother’s 2002 Honda Odyssey, I don’t think he would have cared.
We arrived for the meet and greet and the pre-show after a pit stop for the city special (3 bucks for well bourbon and a PBR tallboy) at the diviest dive bar I’ve been to in a while. The bartender looked like the guitarist from TV on the Radio let himself go, and they sold Cup o’ Noodles for 3 bucks. This is, of course, my kind of bar.
After the jump...First things first, I had to get a blurry blackberry photo taken with Yoshino. Check.
Only saw bits of the bonus matches as I was waiting in line for various things. The Jimmy Jacobs/Sami Callahan match was perfectly fine, though.
We sit second row camera side in front of the infamous Green Lantern Fan, who is apparently still going to shows and probably posting match times on the DVDVR message board. At least I hope so. It’s nice to think there are some constants in this ever-changing world of ours.
It warrants mentioning at this point that there is nothing resembling A/C, so it is about 100 degrees in the arena under the lights. I don’t remember this happening before, but I can’t recall if I ever actually went to a summer show in Philly. Most of my indy wrestling excursions were during the school year with the college crew. I went to the CZW summer shows in Delaware, but I can’t remember specifically going to a Philly show in the summer. So maybe it is always like that. Anyway, by the time I left there was no square inch of clothing not sticking to my body. Despite the oppressive heat, the crowd was pretty lively all night. I am a poor estimator of crowd size, but I would say 700-800. Main show started on time, which is always a plus.
N.B. I didn’t take notes at the event, since Holzer texted me during the show to ask if I wanted to write it up, so I am using 411mania (it still exists?!) for names and order and stuff.
The show starts, and CIMA comes out for the opening MC. One of the problems Tory/DG has always had is there is CIMA and there is everybody else. It used to be not as noticeable when you had the three aces TOKYO/Mochi/CIMA with SUWA there as well. Then they brought in Milano Collection AT and they had a bunch of guys that could carry the top of the card, but then they started leaving one by one and then Mochi moved into a more elder statesman/gatekeeper type role, and there was just CIMA. When they made the switch to Dragon Gate and split with Ultimo, they put the title on CIMA, because they had to. I don’t claim to be as tied into their Q rating in Japan, I’m sure Jae from IluvDG would know this stuff more than I do, but I don’t see anyone on the roster that can really stand up to CIMA in popularity.
The somewhat rambling point in here is that he is just so much more charismatic than anyone else on the roster. Yoshino is cool and really fast. BxB Hulk is all pretty and shit (pause). But CIMA is CIMA. You can see it in his mic segment, even in his second language. The first skinny, athletic, tanned indy dude of the night comes out (sorry, I am really not up to date on northeast indies besides the guys still around that were big in 2006). This one has a ponytail and is named Johnny Gargano. After a bit of back and forth, and a pimp slap from Gargano, we have our opener.
JOHNNY GARGANO vs. CIMA
The backstory is Gargano wants into CIMA’s Warriors group (formally Warriors 5). One of the things that drove me nuts about DG was the constant stable switching. Basically once a year it seemed like they drew names out of a hat and had people turn face and heel and form new stables. Hey Fujii, you haven’t teamed with Mochi in a while, INSTANT STABLE! Since Crazy Max dissolved, CIMA has been in Waka Waka Fujii Land, Blood Generation, Typhoon, Warriors 5 and now Warriors. I think he has been in a stable with every single member of the original full 2000 roster now. Though I’d have to double check that. Maybe not Mochi. Anyways, the match is a fun little opener, a bit of extended squash with Gargano showing some spirit by taking CIMA’s high end stuff, before CIMA finishes him with the Schwein and a diving double knee strike that looked sufficiently nasty. (NOTE: CIMA did the same finish to Gran Akuma at Chikara the next day - TH)
ARIK CANNON vs. ADAM COLE vs. CHUCK TAYLOR vs. RICOCHET
Okay, the four way.
I have seen a lot of four way, first fall matches. ROH basically ran at least one a card for every show I went to in the middle part of this decade. They all follow the same basic formula.
1. Guys pair off to some mat wrestling, stalemate, someone gets dropkicked out of the ring. Next guy comes in, repeat.
2. At some point someone gets knocked out of the ring, every one does a dive, one after the other.
3. They all get back into the ring, start working mid range offense, everybody kicks out of stuff like Northern Lights suplexes.
4. Extended finish sequence: lots of big moves, lots of guys breaking up pinfalls
5. Eventually someone finishes someone else off with a big move, while the other two are incapacitated outside the ring.
This pretty much followed this formula to a tee. It was a spotfest with some seriously big spots. Everything was hit more or less cleanly (and if not, the memory of it was immediately buried by six more spots in succession). But outside of the Psycho Driverish finisher from Chuck Taylor, and the crazy corkscrewy dive from Richochet, I couldn’t tell you who did what to whom 24 hours after the match. I do remember people getting dropped on their head a lot.
So, this was the second match on the card. Granted, I don’t know where it will air on PPV, and I assume there will be a storyline established with these guys competing to get one of the stable spots, but I don’t love burning up a ton of high end spots on the undercard matches. All the mains did go in different directions, so it ended up being less of an issue. Anyway, it was fun. It was good. It’s just not my type of match. It felt like an exhibition. I think at one point I turned to my friend and said only half-jokingly, “There are no more spots. They have used them all.”
Also, I think the Pennsylvania Athletic Commision should mandate that every short, athletic whiteboy indy wrestler put his ring name somewhere on his tights. It would make my life easier. What else does Frank Talent have to do anyway? At least Arik Cannon has the courtesy to be a little beefy.
DRAKE YOUNGER vs. NARUKI DOI
I have vague memories of Drake Younger, was he in IWA at some point? Doi looked hurt, maybefrom the big July Kobe show. They did seem to go at about ¾ speed for much of the match to compensate, but it was still really decent. Doi has always just sort of been there for me. He’s perfectly fine in pretty much everything I’ve ever seen him in, but he’s always struck me as sort of vanilla by DG standards, I guess. Plus he started off with that horrendous baseball player gimmick in T2P. One thing that I noticed in the DG/American indy guy matches is that the indy guys always look a bit sloppy by comparison. Doi always seems to hit his moves a bit crisper and be in better position to eat Younger’s offense. Now, some of this is a style bias on my part, but the DG guys just look better trained. I don’t know how the DG school works now, but Doi, for example, spent two years in Mexico training with the rest of the T2P classes and working IWRG undercard matches. They also work one of the most rigorous touring schedules in Japan. It pays off, as they can work very complex sequences in their sleep. Doi wins with his sliding kick to your freaking face. Afterwards Gargano attacks Younger who also wants in to STABLE MADNESS. Younger is nice enough to juice for the attack, though. I would not hate to see a singles match between these two. Good job, bookerman.
OPEN THE FREEDOM GATE TITLE: MASAAKI MOCHZUKI vs. BxB HULK (c)
Just to get this out of the way. If you are going to dance in a wrestling ring, you better be Magnum TOKYO. Sorry. I always forget that BxB came up through Toryumon X with that sailor suit-besotted boy band gimmick, but really, his dancing was pretty unenthusiastic compared to what I am used to in a DG/Tory ring. The Elvis wig was a nice touch as apparently he just lost a hair v. hair match to Shingo at World. I will say the buzzcut makes him look at least a bit less effeminate. There is a reason SUWA called it Social Dance Gate after he resigned.
Mochizuki has always been a bit underrated, especially by me. He wasn’t an Ultimo trainee, coming up in Tenryu’s WAR promotion in the mid-nineties. Even in M2K, despite being the ace, he was overshadowed by the flashier Susumu/Kanda combo. He doesn’t employ the usual brand of flashy high-end DG offense, using mostly kicks and then a spinning brainbuster or dragon suplex to win his bigger matches. But he leads BxB Hulk by the hand through my personal favorite match of the night, botched finish aside.
It wasn’t perfect, BxB ignored the extensive leg work of the first half of the match to do the run to the finish, but having seen that in approximately every big DG singles match in the last ten years, it doesn’t really bother me anymore. The match proper followed a nice young gun/wizened vet narrative; BxB trying to kick with Mochi, getting his leg worked over as a result. Still trying to kick with Mochi like an idiot, but showing enough spirit to beat the veteran in the end by kicking him in the face. The botched finish was pretty horrendous, though. I had a bad angle to tell exactly what happened, but it looked like an over enthusiastic timekeeper coupled with a less than emphatic kickout by Mochi. They probably shouldn’t have gone right to the real finish after that, cause the crowd was deflated, but I like that they paid the story off by having BxB kick Mochi’s face in.
Afterwards, a woman in a corset and gothic make-up comes out, straight out of central casting from a Sylvester McCoy era Doctor Who story. Are they running a “Ghost Light” angle? Cause that would be awesome.. 411 tells me she was one of his back-up dancers who has been corrupted by Kamikaze USA. Much less cool.
There are some shenanigans with Kamikaze USA and Bryan Danielson comes out to make the save.
INTERMISSION
This was probably longer than it needed to be. Not CZW long, mind you.
SCOTT REED vs. RICH SWANN
See, indy wrestlers with their names on their tights. Thank you.
Post intermission squash-a-thon. Swann actually impressed as much as you can in five minutes, flashing some nice athleticism and hitting everything crisply. Brody Lee comes out afterwards (he came out during the pre-show, too) and does his 2010 9-1-1 impression. I know Sapolsky is an ECW fan, but I really don’t care for angles like this. They never really seem to lead anywhere, and just make the midcard look bad. Lee says next time he is coming for a Japanese man. (pause)
MASATO YOSHINO/MIKE QUACKENBUSH/JIGSAW/HALLOWICKED vs. KAMIKAZE USA
This was elimination tag rules. I don’t know if they announced it and it just didn’t register with me, but I did manage to figure it out at some point. Probably after Hallowicked was pinned and the match kept going. I AM SMRT. This was somewhere between a big brawly blowoff tag and a regular DG multiman tag, and it didn’t really work for me. It seemed a little disjointed; not quite heated enough for a brawly blowoff, not quite as smoothly worked as a regular multi-man Yoshino, especially, looked kind of off, and didn’t really do all that much. I haven’t seen a ton of Yamato since his first year or so, and he didn’t make much of an impression. I am going to track down some of the recent big shows now, cause god knows I need to get back into purchasing wrestling tapes. I am curious to see his Open the Dream Gate title run to see how much he’s improved. Tozawa was the best in this match. He has a really fun heel charisma coupled with a distinctive style in the ring. I don’t really get the double tapout at the end, I think it makes Kamikaze look pretty weak, but I can’t say I know the angle well enough to know how this match fits in it.
“AMERICAN DRAGON” BRYAN DANIELSON vs. SHINGO TAKAGI
Dragon was way over all night. He comes out to no music, which was odd at the time. Personally, I think they should have just had him come out to “Final Countdown” and gotten it over with, it would have amped the crowd up even more, though they did get right into the proceedings. I like Danielson a lot, but the best in the world thing has always seemed a bit too akin to indy music snobbery to me. Takagi has never really impressed me much. This ended up being kind of surprisingly good, though. They did kind of just kill time for the first ten minutes, in that ‘welp, we’re going long tonight’ kind of way. They meandered about as Dragon dominated the offense, pausing every once in a while to do some strike exchanges, but when it finally kicked into high gear it took off. False finishes galore, a few of which actually had me convinced that Shingo might win the match (he probably should have, more on that in a minute).
I do wish they had established the Shingo-can-power-out-of-Dragon’s-subs-and-work-through-his-strikes-motif earlier in the match, (yes, I am the last person who should be giving Bryan Danieson pointers on how to structure a match) instead of having Dragon just sort of dominate him. Shingo was game, and had one of his better singles matches that I’ve seen, but I don’t entirely get the booking in the end. Shingo just won a big singles match at World. He’s one of the top tier Dragon Gate guys. Look, I know Danielson is going to win this first round of matches back on the indy circuit no matter where he goes, but he’s probably back in the WWE after the election. I don’t know if putting him over one of the top DG guys is a good idea. They could have established Shingo as a monster here. (NOTE: I guess that's where the horrible booking for Shingo/Equinox came from the next day - TH) I get why they didn’t, and he still comes out looking all right, but unless they are going to use Dragon to put over Hulk (which looks less likely based on their post-match alliance) I think they should have given Shingo the duke here.
But hey, then they couldn’t have ended the show playing “Final Countdown,” and with everyone chanting “Match of the Year” Always send the fans home happy, I say.
***BRIEF RANT AHEAD***
Look, why can’t a show just be very good and have very good matches. There were like fourteen “This is Awesome” chants and a “Match of the Year” chant. Plus a “This is wrestling” chant that I don’t really understand, unless the crowd is trying to make some sort of ontological statement. I had people behind me debating whether the four-way match was **** ¼ or **** ½. I understand the desire to ‘be there’ when something great happens. But the “This is Awesome” chants now have all the spontaneity of the “Let’s go this guy” “Let’s go that guy” chants, which was particularly amusing when they tried to do it in the main event, keeping the same rhythm, despite no one actually chanting for Shingo.
I know we live in a post-kayfabe world, and that indy wrestling fans have become more and more interested in showing each other and the wrestlers that they ‘get it.’ But what ends up happening is you have long dead spots where the crowd is waiting for something cool to happen so they can bust out another chant, or clap for matwork or shout “TWOOOOOO.” (Really we are still doing that? It happened on that one RAW in Montreal like five years ago and now we are stuck with it?) If you go back and watch stuff like Kawada/Misawa 6/94 or the old NWA mains from the eighties. Or even the Austin-era mains in the WWF, you have just walls of noise, crescendos for the big moments, sure. Chants for the wrestlers sure, but just constant noise. I think I kinda miss that.
I’m guilty in my own way, too. I over-intellectualize the stuff (I did refrain from making a reader-response theory vs. New Criticism joke about the four way) and probably get more bothered by the chanting than I should. It’s just how the crowd enjoys themselves now, and isn’t all about showing how clever they are. These sort of ‘secret languages’ happen in every subculture.
Anyway, it was a really good show with really good matches. And I think that’s just fine.
Oh, and good news everyone, the Oregon Diner is still open. And still very, very sketchy. No one hit me up for money this time, but there was a dude changing his shirt outside his van on the sidewalk. Yay, Philly.
I won’t say the show rekindled my love for indy wrestling (The ‘yay’ ‘boo’ dueling cheers during strike exchanges might be the most obnoxiously precious thing ever), but this was a high quality show top to bottom, and I’ll be there in Fall River in October.
So please please please put Genki on the card, Mr. Bookerman.
Your friend,
Jeffrey.
Photo Credit: JP
Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!
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