Matches from Dragon Gate Truth Gate Night Five
1.Skywalker vs Kagetora vs Kanda ***1/2
2.Mochizuki Dojo vs RED ***1/4
3.Tribe Vanguard vs Big Ben ***1/4
4.MaxiMuM,YAMATO,Horiguchi vs Masaaki,Doi,Saito,Susumu ***3/4
5.Dream Gate Titles:PAC(c) vs Kzy ****
Thoughts:
The first big show of the year from Dragon Gate lived up to my expectations, with five worthwhile matches.
Shun Skywalker continues to be a standout, this time showing off in a fun, spotfest threeway. Shun is being set up for a big things and I am very excited to see what they do next with him.
Up next was a nice trios match. The Mochizuki Dojo kids showed a lot of promise, all three of which should be part of Dragon Gate's foundation in the future. The weak finish sucked a bit of air out of this one, though.
KAI and U-T worked well together in our follow up tag. I had some reservations on adding KAI to Dragon Gate, but he is fitting in decently enough and it should be good experience for him. RED tensions, of course, continues to show up here. Entertaining contest setting up a rematch for the Twin Gate belts.
Our semi was a special one, meant to say goodbye to the Hakata Star Lanes venue due to close down next month. Special is actually a good way to define this one, as it did well to showcase what makes Dragon Gate different and seemed like a sincere, "goodbye, thank you". Great match full of action and callbacks.
We close with PAC's first defense of the Dream Gate Championship against Kzy. Both are talented workers, but this exceeded my expectations. Sure, the format was a bit iffy at times and the opening half wasn't as good as it should have been, but the endstretch made up for it. All together, this was a fantastic match when all was said and done.
A big surprise followed with Skywalker coming out to challenge PAC. I expected him to be in the Brave hunt for a while instead. The encounter felt a bit like something from an anime. I loved it, and expect their March 3rd outing to be excellent.
In all, everything I watched was worth the time it took to consume and you'd be missing out if you ignored them completely. At least consider catching the semi and main.
Dragon Gate is quickly becoming one of my favorite sources of wrestling again. I hope they are for you, too.
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