Is the DDT Waterslide Figure Four the Greatest Spot Ever? Yes, It Is.

One-half of the greatest spot in history? Yes.
Photo via Ikigai Pro

Dramatic Dream Team, the most unique wrestling promotion not just in Japan but in the world, is known for bringing wrestling to places where wrestling rarely ever happens outside of kids "trying this at home." It has graced train stations, forests, and creeks among other locales, and this past week, it took the fight to a waterpark. Granted, doing wrestling moves in the pool is perhaps the most time-honored tradition outside of doing cannonballs off the diving board and ignoring folks telling you not to swim until a half-hour after you've eaten. While the whole show was a hoot for those who watched, I want to focus in on one spot in particular, shared by the intrepid MrLARIATO on Twitter:

.@OBEYBrookes gets dragged down the slide while applying a figure four!! #DDTPro https://t.co/soFdgLYgIr pic.twitter.com/uuvt364l1b

— LARIATOOOO!! (@MrLARIATO) June 19, 2019

I know what you're thinking. This is the greatest spot in the history of professional wrestling, and you would be right. The sport/artform/whatever peaked at that moment, and it's all downhill from there. Now, why is it the greatest sequence in wrestling history? The reasons are plentiful:

• It's a spot that utilizes its surroundings. How many times have you seen a "Falls Count Anywhere" match in WWE where they maybe go onto the ramp for 30 seconds? Wrestling is best when it utilizes the full studio space, especially when it's expanded past the ring and the immediate ringside area. If you held a wrestling event at a waterpark and didn't utilize any of the slides at all, you fucked up.
• Chris Brookes applied the hold at the best spot, where he was out of the water and Shunma Katsumata was in it. How it turned out may give one cause to beg to differ. That being said, without knowing whether Brookes was the heel or the face here is irrelevant to how great the set-up was. If Brookes was the heel, it's the best possible setting to have his hubris bite him in the ass. If he's the face, he's taking a huge risk to get the big payoff, which is at the heart of a good guy's behavior. Either way, he's putting a dude in a submission hold from a position of leverage leaving him not only to writhe in leg pain but also possibly drown. It is the most real wrestling move in the history of wrestling moves, non-UWFi Division.
• Katsumata made sure to reverse the pressure and flip over while he was going down the waterslide. He not only went for the layup in dragging Brookes down the slide, he kept to general wrestling logic and flipped over. That is attention to detail at its finest.
• The fact that it was a figure four on a waterslide combined the best possible spectacle with the underlying uniqueness of them turning a bog standard submission hold into what was essentially a highspot. Like, if you can't see how special that is, I don't know what to say.

Of course, boring people stuck in 1985 made it their mission to snitch-tag Jim Cornette in hopes that he'd come down from Hamburger Mountain to rain judgment on Lariato for sharing such an anathema to professional wrestling. In addition to being cop-callers, those people fail to embrace the totality of what professional wrestling can be. Yes, the Midnight Express vs. the Rock 'n Roll Express in some dingy gym in rural North Carolina is essential pro wrestling, but so is DDT doing shows at a waterpark or Lucha Underground treating death the way a comic book would or Orange Cassidy's biggest high spot being Sweet Ankle Music. You can think all that latter stuff isn't for you, and that's fine. But praying to Cornette's shrine in 2019 only makes you look like the asshole you are.

Anyway, back to the waterslide figure four, I can forgive you if you don't think it's the best spot in wrestling history, because wrestling is subjective. However, for me, it's got everything I want out of wrestling as a fan. DDT will try to top itself, obviously, because one can never rest on their laurels even if their best is now in the past. They will be running a show at an elephant preserve in a few weeks, so you might want to keep your eyes peeled to DDT Universe.