Soma Takao & Mad Paulie vs. Mizuki Watase & Keigo Nakamura
A pleasant opening match where young Keigo Nakamura stood right on the line between Prematurely Good and Too Much Too Soon. Dug all the aerial shenanigans as always, but there’s no way this kid should be high kicking the Juggalo Juggernaut Mad Paulie off his feet at this point in time. Perhaps it’s an issue with Paulie not being protective enough of his character, or me being overly protective of my beloved monsters? YOU TELL ME! Soma Takao’s evil videogame overlord theme gets stuck in my head for weeks on end every time I hear it so my brain playlist is officially fucked until August. **
Danshoku Dino & Akito vs. Toru Owashi & Kazuki Hirata
This was a crash course in all the current DDT midcard comedy trends and trend-setters. Some are pretty good and some are very bad. I will let you guess which ones are good and which ones are bad. Toru Owashi: doesn’t understand lucha libre. Kazuki Hirata: lives to do the Magnum TOKYO dance and is a bit of an idiot. Owashi and Hirata: hate each other but must team up for the sake of comedy. Danshoku Dino: rapes anything that moves. I feel like the crowd reactions for Dino’s Cancel-ISM are not what they used to be, so that’s encouraging. *
HARASHIMA vs. Seigo Tachibana
Not super familiar with Tachibana – only saw a few WRESTLE-1 matches here and there including a real belter with Shotaro Ashino, but he seems to have a new (?) Yakuza slimeball gimmick that is possibly dialed up to 11 for his DDT appearances. His comically over-the-top bad attitude was good fodder for HARASHIMA’s righteous Ace Fury and it made for some solid character-based professional wrestling. Nothing must see, but Tachibana got over with his dirtbag facial expressions and HARASHIMA kicked the shit out of him. Sometimes that’s all you need. **1/2
Yukio Sakaguchi, Kazusada Higuchi & Saki Akai © vs. Antonio Honda, Hiroshi Yamato & Yukio Naya – KO-D 6-Man Tag-Team Titles
What a ride it’s been for Eruption. After shocking the world and overcoming the uber-powerful #DAMNHEARTS last week, they have to face the completely random team of noted conspiracy theorist Antonio Honda, studio vocalist Hiroshi Yamato and hoss-in-training Yukio Naya. Despite the thrown-together-ness of it all, the match was surprisingly bullshit-free! Straight to the point, done in 7 minutes tag team wrasslin’ with Eruption looking understandly strong against the mish-mash competition. Nice post-match surprise with Riho coming out to challenge. Do we need Honda to stick around though? **1/4
Jun Akiyama, Makoto Oishi & Hideki Okatani vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Yuki Iino & Shunma Katsumata
Akiyama coming out to Shadow Explosion felt like a big statement here. He’s not jumping ship to fuck around in comedy matches. He’s here to leave a mark. Everyone else seemed to get the memo as this was nothing like your usual DDT 6-man and felt more like a gritty All Japan throwdown. A tense atmosphere permeated the match: guys who normally work pretty light were laying in their forearms like they meant it, Okatani got to shine as the hungry young pup and Takeshita put his Big Ace Energy to the test against a legend. It all ruled – I’m officially here for this feud and hopefully we get an Akiyama/Takeshita singles match out of it. ***1/2
Yuki Ueno & Naomi Yoshimura © vs. Tetsuya Endo & Nobuhiro Shimatani – KO-D Tag-Team Titles
I was struggling to get into this initially due to some glaring missed cues and botchy double teams, but once it got going: it really got going. As much as I dig what they’re doing with Ueno/Endo booking wise, Yoshimura was clearly the star here. Really liking this dude’s goofy charisma – his big smile after the double Complete Shot and his no-selling of Shimatani’s miniature strikes were right on the money. He uses his size advantage logically and has the kind of no non-sense move-set that I’m partial to (Judo throws and lariats, baby). Shimatani seemed completely off-beat for a lot of the match but got his shit together for the ending stretch, nicely setting the stage for the big Endo/Ueno finish. Not on the level of the match against Chichiro/Iino from earlier this year, but a pretty good Nautilus defense nonetheless. ***
Daisuke Sasaki © vs. Chris Brookes – DDT Universal Title
Here’s a pretty normal wrestling feud that somehow escalated into international penile warfare over the last few weeks, because DDT. Their title match from March didn’t work for me and neither did this one. Every box of a big corny WWE main event was checked: contrived ref bumps, the babyface taking out the entire heel group, dead end limb work, table spots, etc. All of it ran through an indie sleaze filter of weak execution, dick jokes and last ditch attempts at 2.99 epicness. It might’ve worked a bit better with a regular Korakuen crowd, but with a Covid-era crowd instructed to minimize their reactions, all of the silly bullshit became even sillier. Hard pass. **
