Soma Takao vs. Hideki Okatani
This accomplished all of its opening match goals in 5 minutes and gave us a nice little update on young Okatani’s progress. The kid has already learned the classic Jun Akiyama trick of jumping the vet right at the bell, so you know the training is going well. After much resistance on my part, Takao’s starting to grow on me. He did a lot of fun little things here to add vitality to the match, like taking a crippling neck bump for Okatani’s jumping neckbreaker drop. He’s also adept at using the missed dropkick into rolling dropkick that Minoru Tanaka/Heat used all the time in 2002 and it brings precious back memories of this terrible time period. Please come back, Blue Wolf. **1/4
Chris Brookes & Akito vs. Daisuke Sasaki & Mad Paulie
Back to Beer Garden’s more traditional pro-wrestling themes. And by this I mean raging alcohol consumption. They expanded on Sasaki’s drunkenness from the previous night by adding new beer game rules to the match here. Essentially, Brookes and Sasaki had to take a sip for every strike and illegal move. Soon, they were both too dizzy to wrestle and shenanigans ensued. As they both drank like half a beer: 0 points for realism, but…a few points for crowd-pleasing drunken non-sense. *
Jun Akiyama & Mizuki Watase vs. Kazusada Higuchi & Tomomitsu Matsunaga
The Junrestsu Three Star Special, baby. Can’t start my day without it. Watase played the Akiyama subordinate in peril, got body slammed a lot and surely learned a valuable lesson about fighting spirit. Inspiring stuff. Meanwhile, if the highlight during yesterday’s match was Akiyama/Yoshimura, today the spotlight clearly was on Akiyama/Higuchi. You know Showa Puroresu fanatic Higuchi’s been dreaming about battling Akiyama and their first meeting didn’t disappoint. Higuchi brought his hardest chops, Akiyama fought back with knees and lariats – it was great. Watching all of these exciting new Akiyama pairings in action is bumming me out about his absence in the upcoming King of DDT. Booking him through that thing probably would’ve been a logistical nightmare, but still. I need this Uncle Jun singles match action. ***
Danshoku Dino, Muscle Sakai, Makoto Oishi & Antonio Honda vs. Seigo Tachibana, Yuki Iino, Yukio Naya & Keigo Nakamura – Elimination Tornado Pantyhose Generation Fight
Poignant stuff here. What started off as a dumb comedy match eventually turned into a full-on philosophical battle for the soul of DDT. The high concept was that wrestlers had to cover their head with pantyhose, thus working the match while making funny faces. Simple enough. Yet, NEW CYBERFIGHT EVP AKITO would not stand for such non-sense and demanded that everyone wrestle seriously. But as everyone gave their all while ALSO making funny faces, Akito had a revelation about the DDT spirit and learnt to embrace the stupidity of it all. I feel like every conflict could be solved by a Pantyhose match. *
HARASHIMA vs. Toru Owashi vs. Yuki Ueno vs. Naomi Yoshimura vs. Kazuki Hirata – 5-Way Over-The-Top Elimination Match
Disaster Box COLLIDES. The rules here were a bit hard to follow, but ultimately: whoever scored an elimination was allowed to leave the match until the final two wrestlers fought one on one. Most of the action was comedy-based, as you’d expect from any match featuring Hirata and Owashi at this point. That being said, the final showdown between Hirata and HARASHIMA did get some actual heat from the crowd, which is always a good sign in the COVID-handclap era. Lots of ‘’Ooooh!’’ gasping for poor Kazuki’s desperate offense attempts. For losing the match, Hirata is banished from Japan and must be replaced in the unit by a new wrestler… ”brother” KAZUKI. Oh no. *3/4
Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata vs. Tetsuya Endo & Nobuhiro Shimatani – Hardcore Match
These four guys in a hardcore match had banger written all over it but helas, it never came close to reaching that level. Half of the match was an extended comedy introduction, with Super Hardcore Shimatani (in full Incredible Hulk body paint and denim shorts) having flex-offs with Takeshita while Shunma bailed on his partner only to return as THE CLOWN PRINCE OF CRIME JOKER KATSUMATA. Once Shunma got his Joker makeover, the bumps and stunts started coming fast and furious but it still came off as four pals trying out wacky prop-based spots for shits and giggles rather than a proper hardcore match. Takeshita’s 2nd-rope Blue Thunder through a table was pretty wild though, I’ll give ‘em that. Someone GIF that shit. **1/2
