Short background on the DDT Beer Garden shows. From what I’m gathering, this is a yearly tradition where the silly gets sillier and the drunk gets drunker. Wrestlers get to produce/book their own weirdo dream matches and it all gets pretty wild, even by DDT standards. So buckle the fuck up.
Daisuke Sasaki, Tetsuya Endo & Yuki Iino vs. Makoto Oishi, Mizuki Watase & Yukio Naya – Chinko KISS Touch Rule
Holy shit. This was extremely confusing and I have a feeling I’ll proclaim this a few more times on this show. What was originally meant to be a 3-way tag turned into a 6-man because Iino and Naya couldn’t get along as a team. They’d eventually reconcile after a drop toe-hold gone wrong caused them to accidently 69 each other, leading to a momentary Human Centipede head-in-butt-style alliance. Makes sense. Another big subplot here was Sasaki being drunk off his ass and the opposing team working hard to make him puke with spinning moves. Love the alcoholism. Also, if you’re wondering about the special rule: guys had to kiss their partner in the crotch to tag out. There were bits and pieces of actually good wrestling thrown in. DDT in a nutshell. **
HARASHIMA & Chris Brookes vs. Soma Takao & Mad Paulie
What’s the end game for the Brookes/Sasaki feud? Does every Chris Brookes match end with a Damnation run-in until the end of times? I did laugh at them integrating Daisuke’s rampant drunkenness in the interference finish for added comedy, but yeah. The rest of the match was pretty solid. All of these guys are good hands and know a thing or two about professional wrestling. HARASHIMA’s pleasant babyface offense is as clean as it gets and I did appreciate Brookes showing him proper Old Ace respect by addressing him as ‘’HARASHIMA-san’’ on the apron. Extra points for the politeness. **1/2
Muscle Sakai, Danshoku Dino & Antonio Honda vs. Akito, Yumehito Imanari & Shota – Hell in a Blue Sheet Time Blast! Kaidan Shin Numabukuro Death Match
See, this is the kind sexual assault-free galaxy brain performance art from DDT that I can get behind. The match took place entirely within the confines of blue sheets covering up the entire ring, hiding the crowd from the horrors happening inside the squared circle. Shota brought a house mic inside the death structure to call the action while performing. As an added twist, the sheets were removed after 5 minutes to reveal producer Imabayashi sitting at a desk and reading a terrifying ghost story to the wrestlers who started losing their minds one by one. The creepy horror movie soundtrack playing in the background put this over the top. My kind of indie sleaze insanity.
Jun Akiyama & Hideki Okatani vs. Naomi Yoshimura & Keigo Nakamura
About what you’d expect from any Junretsu tag in DDT: a whole bunch of fundamentally-sound wrestling with the anger dial turned all the way up. Akiyama seemed to have his sights set on little Keigo here as he kept getting in his face and forced him to work for every ounce of offense. Which is how it should be, god damnit. This was also the first meeting between Akiyama and Yoshimura and they were already a good fit. Yoshimura’s move set feels similar to a lot of current All Japan guys (Zeus and Koji Iwamoto to name two), so Akiyama probably feels right at home working this kid. Okatani still exudes greenness and lack of confidence, but his inclusion in Junretsu will likely fast track his improvement. Good suplexes already. ***
Sakisama, Yukio Saint Laurent & Jiroko Cawaii Kuroshio vs. Kazuko Hirata, Margaret Owashi, Francoise Ihashi, Generic Martha & Kazuko Higuchi – NEO Biishiki Army New Member Public Audition
Many layers of deep storytelling to unpack here. From what I can piece together, NEO Biishiki-Gun is Saki Akai’s alternate universe goth French maid aesthetic cosplay unit. She runs this part time endeavor with fellow Eruption member Yukio Sakaguchi aka. the stylish cyborg YUKIO SAINT LAURENT. The segment started as an auditon with various DDT midcard goofballs cross-dressing as potential new members, much to the confusion of Saki. Ikemen was a nice surprise addition and brought a lot of energy the eventual match, even if it was mostly non-sense. My main takeaway from all this is that tough guy Kazusada Higuchi was legit great at playing a shy female counterpart. Already spent too much time thinking about this match. *
Konosuke Takeshita, Shunma Katsumata & Yuki Ueno vs. Sanshiro Takashi, MIKAMI & Tanomusaku Toba – DDT Sauna Club vs. DDT Legend Army
What a fun blast from the past this was. Before fully diving into modern DDT this year, most of my knowledge of the company came from their ’99 to early 2000’s run (which I still have on tape somewhere at my parents’ place. Shoutout to Poison Sawada JULIE). Takagi and the Suicide Boyz were a big part of that era and seeing them battle the new generation was tremendous. Toba used to be a skinny blonde bastard who punched people right in the face with his big ol’ boxing gloves. Now, he’s a surly old fuck that seems to punch even harder. With this one performance, he came off as the most dangerous guy in the company.
This dude was sending the crowd into loud gasps of horror by straight punching the shit out Takeshita and Ueno. Fucking great. Meanwhile, Takagi seemed like he was ready to phone it in and pull a full-on comedy match early on but he ended up working some pretty high-end back and forth with Takeshita. Bless his old soul. The Shunma/MIKAMI stuff worked pretty well too but all I care about is this upcoming Suicide Boyz/Nautilus tag title match. More Tanomusaku Toba. More face puching. More violence. HYPE! ***1/2
