Yusuke Okada vs. Yuki Ishida
Ishida’s sumo background clashing with Okada’s hard-ass basics made for good opening match wrasslin’. Big shoutout to Yusuke’s sweet new Burning jacket.
Rating: Half a plate of meat and potatoes
Danshoku Dino vs. Hiroshi Yamato
With Yamato no longer part of Damnation, the man can finally go back to his first love: professional singing. A blessed development. Unfortunately, he had to make with Dino at his most basic. Rapey matwork ensued and that’s about it.
Rating: Bad
Toru Owashi & Shuji Kondo vs. Soma Takao & Kazusada Higuchi
There’s the Aagan Iisou reunion you always wanted. I’m pro-Owashi in every context, but watching him drop the comedy to work as a straight-up mean dude was a fun change of pace. Everyone seemed fired up by the 2003 Toryumon nostalgia and put in a serious shift. You won’t find a better piece of midcard business than Higuchi standing up to Kondo’s Lanzarse.
Rating: GOOD
Chris Brookes & Masahiro Takanashi vs. Shunma Katsumata & MAO – Ultimate Tag League (Block B)
What an absurdly-tight package this was. Both teams brought the high-level tag chemistry and came up with all sorts of creative tomfoolery. Like 80’s TV wrestling with an extra dose of capoeira flippery. Every time I’m ready to give up on Takanashi, he busts out some galaxy-brained rollup reversal to reel me back in. Seriously, the timing on that finish has to be seen to be believed.
Rating: So much fun
HARASHIMA & Naomi Yoshimura vs. Yuki Iino & Yumehito Imanari – Ultimate Tag League (Block B)
In the grand pantheon of problematic DDT gimmicks, Iino and Imanari’s extreme horniness feels slightly less offensive than Dino’s sexual assault-based shtick. Am I crazy to think this? Has pro-wrestling finally reduced my brain to mush? I think I might even prefer this version of Iino to his previous bullshit haka gimmick. Please cancel me.
Rating: Butts
Konosuke Takeshita & Yuki Ueno vs. Tetsuya Endo & Jun Akiyama – Ultimate Tag League (Block A)
Yep, this delivered the exact kind of main event DDT-filtered-through-old-school All Japan tag team goodness that the doctor ordered. Take/Endo previewed their upcoming KO-D title match in grand fashion and I have feeling this one won’t look much like their 2019 banger. Judging by the ultra-physical matwork opening, they’ll likely be leaning less into the indie dream match tropes and more into the Jumbo Tsuruta-ISM that’s driven Takeshita’s latest run.
Meanwhile, Ueno played the world’s greatest babyface in peril, getting his ass kicked by Uncle Jun and making fiery comebacks. Go back and watch the 2021 D-Oh belter between these two if you haven’t seen it. The match peaked at the right time with a super imaginative ending stretch – Endo pulling off mind-melting acrobatics before biting the dust. Still trying to wrap my head around that handspring reverse DDT thingy.
Rating: I will pursue legal action against anyone who didn’t think this was great
Daisuke Sasaki, Minoru Fujita & MJ Paul vs. Yuji Hino, Akito & Yukio Naya
Man, Sasaki really is rounding up the sleaziest of the sleaze for this new version of Damnation. I’m half-expecting the Brahmans to join next. Naya was kind of the sole highlight here, as the match kept drowning in dry heel shenaniganz and Hino chop comedy.
Rating: Mostly not good
Yukio Sakaguchi & Saki Akai vs. Sanshiro Takagi & Maya Yukihi
They designed the match to put over Maya as a big deal and it worked like the charm. She came off as badass in all key sections of this professional wrestling journey – taking the intergender fight to Sakaguchi and big dogging Saki for the finish. The girl is looking like a fun addition to the DDT roster.
Rating: Solid
Konosuke Takeshita & Yuki Ueno vs. HARASHIMA & Naomi Yoshimura – Ultimate Tag League (Finals)
Certified banger of a tournament final with the Reggaeton Don Naomi Yoshimura delivering a career-defining performance next to three of the best wrestlers in the world. There’s guaranteed fireworks whenever you put the former Nautilus lads across the ring from each other and this felt like the high point of their story so far.
Emotions ran high and so did the high-concept ideas. This was a match with a lot of wildly inventive shit that could’ve easily collapsed if performed by lesser wrestlers. It all looked like a million bucks here and made for one hell of a ride. From all the wacky misdirection spots to HARASHIMA slipping out of the Sauna Club Doomsday Device with a freakin’ reverse Frankensteiner – the execution matched the ambition.
After a slightly disappointing showcase during the D-Oh tournament last year, this tag run with HARASHIMA helped put Yoshimura right back on track. I still don’t think he has the same kind of ceiling as his buddy Ueno, but the way he wrestled here made him look like a potential Shigehiro Irie-level dude who can more than hold his own in big main event spots.
Rating: Slobberknocker AF
