The Navigation Log 5.20.07: Open The Dragon Gate

Posted by Matt Short on 05.20.2007

The Dragon Gate promotion is gaining steam in Japan and in America. Thanks to putting on amazing matches in NOAH and ROH they've become the company to keep an eye on in Japan. We're taking an abridged look at the company's history, titles, and stables this week.

Well May is just about over. And it dawns on me that I've been over here in Japan for about nine months now. It feels MUCH longer than that. Luckily, right before I leave I'll be able to see the ROH show in Tokyo. The problem with that though is it comes the day after a massive rock concert that I've been planning on seeing. And it never fails, whenever I see the band that'll be playing I feel like death afterwards. So can I drag myself from home to Ginza, get onto the monorail of death to Odaiba and walk to Differ Ariake? Lazy me would say hell no. Drunk me would piss behind a bank.

So yeah, sure. I'm up for it.

NOAH's Northern Navigation is under way at last. But there's still really no news worth talking about coming out of the opening shows so far. No big matches really went down besides the handicap match between Bison Smith against Ippei Ota and Akihiko Ito. No word on how the match actually was, but it went just over seven minutes and seems to have consisted of Smith sailing into Tokyo Bay and forcing his opponents to open their doors for free trade. Then he killed and ate Ota and Ito. They seem intent on making Smith look like a real credible threat to Misawa's title when he challenges for it next month. I still have a hard time believing they will put the title on Smith, but as of now they're doing a good job of casting that little shadow of a doubt.

They have added to June 3rd a GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Title defense. And once again Kotaro Suzuki and Ricky Marvin are facing off against a team from Dragon Gate. This time its Taku Iwasa and Kenichiro Arai from the Tozawa-juku stable. Tozawa-juku's gimmick it that they're a gang of high school punks. Riding motorcycles, wrestling in school uniforms, huge pompadours, and other assorted things that Japanese high schoolers do on a daily basis. Other than that, I can't give an accurate description of how these guys' in-ring work is. Despite me not knowing who these guys are they are going in there with Marvin and Suzuki who always seem to bring their best stuff in the big matches. The important thing to note though it, once again it is a Dragon Gate team getting the title shot. This is following last week's victory over Dragon Gate's Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino, members of the huge heel stable, The Muscle Outlaw'z. NOAH's relationship with Dragon Gate is working out in spades for both promotions. Dragon Gate is getting its name out there to a larger audience and NOAH is getting fresh match-ups and allowing their Jr. Heavyweights to really show off in the crazy, fast-paced, multi-man matches Dragon Gate is famous for.

So Dragon Gate. I said I would look into them a bit and give you the people a little bit of background onto this up and coming company in puro. As active as NOAH has been in sending their top talent to ROH, Dragon Gate has been doing the same. Only when they do it they're sending six or so guys over at a time. So lets take a brief and poorly researched look at Dragon Gate.

Toryumon – Exit the Dragon
In 1999 masked enigma Ultimo Dragon founded his Toryumon promotion. It served as both a school and promotion for his students and has incarnations in both Japan and Mexico. The one we're focused on though is Toryumon Japan, where Ultimo spent the most time and all his students wrestled in a similar style to him. In 2004 Dragon left Toryumon Japan and in so doing took all his trademarks including the name and titles. Thus, the promotion was left high and dry. But despite losing their teacher, belts, and any recognizable trademark to their company the promotion decided to press on. They changed their name to Dragon Gate and gained a large cult following. DG still highlights a lot of the same style of action that Ultimo Dragon made famous, but they throw in their own special twists. For one thing, there is a great deal of comedy on Dragon Gate shows. For example, the use of characters like Stalker (a demon type thing that pokes people in the asshole) to the Muscle Outlaw'z Dr. Muscle. But Dragon Gate really started picking up steam when they began making appearances for Ring of Honor. This brought even more attention to their promotion, especially thanks to the show stealing six-man tag match between DoFixer and Blood Generation at Supercard of Honor in 2006.

Opening the Gate
Since they lost all their original titles Dragon Gate needed to make their own. And while creating their own, I think they may have come up with the coolest names for belts ever. The Open belts not only sound cool, but they look pretty awesome too. This is a quick rundown of the belts and their respective champions:

Open the Dream Gate: The promotion's top singles title. When Dragon Gate was first founded, it was awarded to CIMA as the company's first champion. It is currently held by one of the most legendary names in all of Japanese pro wrestling (or the entire world) in Jushin Liger.

Open the Brave Gate: The secondary singles title. Naruki Doi was the first man to hold it after winning a tournament back in 2005. Currently it is held by creepy looking heel Genki Horiguchi who beat ROH's Matt Sydal.

Open the Triangle Gate: Given Dragon Gate's huge amount of stables and the almost endless factional warfare between them, one could argue that this is the company's most important title. First won in 2004 by The Italian Collection of Milano Collection AT, Anthony W. Mori, and YOSSINO, of all the original Dragon Gate titles this one has changed the most. It is currently held by New Hazard, the team of Shingo Takagi, BxB Hulk, and Cyber Kong.

I-J Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: The only title in Dragon Gate that isn't original to the company. It originally started in the Wrestling Association R promotion, but was discontinued in 2000 when that company folded. Dragon Gate revived it in 2006 and is currently held by Gedo and Jado.

Ringers
Dragon Gate has been known for booking top American indy talent and has working relationships with Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. So while Dragon Gate stars have been working for both companies in major ways (Supercard of Honor, PWG's Battle of Los Angeles) stars have also been seeing action in Japan with Dragon Gate. Jack Evans is extremely popular over there and was a co-holder of the Open the Triangle Gate title at one point. Matt Sydal also held the Open the Brave Gate title at one point. Other notable indy stars who have gone over there are Jimmy Rave and Kevin Steen. Pro Wrestling NOAH has also developed a relationship with Dragon Gate lately, using junior heavyweight stars like Ricky Marvin, Kotaro Suzuki, and Marufuji have all been used to put together great matches in both promotion's shows. Dragon Gate loves the enhancement talent and these matches are so good that everyone gets over in the end.

Stable Wars – Who's With Who Now?
Dragon Gate is well known for their stables. All of their top stars are in one group or another. This has been going on since the start of the promotion and was highlighted for years by the feud between DoFixer and Blood Generation. These two went at it from 2005 to 2007 in a war that was literally all over the map. It's almost too hard to really go through all the swerves and stables that have existed in Dragon Gate to now, but the current war goes as follows:

Naruki Doi broke away from the main Blood Generation group in 2006 with Gamma and Masato Yoshino. They battled with CIMA and his followers for the Blood Generation name, which they won in the end. Rather than become Blood Generation themselves, Doi threw away the title and renamed the group Muscle Outlaw'z, which is currently the biggest heel stable in Dragon Gate. Genki Horiguchi left DoFixer, turning heel and changing from the lovable balding guy we all fell in love with to a weird looking creepy guy which can only really be compared to a Japanese visual kei band (look it up). CIMA then teamed up with former DoFixer members Dragon Kid and Ryo Saito along with Susumu Yokosuka and Anthony W. Mori to form Typhoon to fight MO'z. That right now is the main feud in Dragon Gate and is starting to involve foreign talent and well as MO'z challenging Ricky Marvin and Kotaro Suzuki for their GHC Jr. Heavyweight belts. The Muscle Outlaw'z are being booked a bit like the old NWO as they are having their own shows under their own name.

And that's more or less the ins and outs of Dragon Gate. Keep in mind that this is a rough outline of the company and the roster has a lot more depth than just the two main warring factions. The Florida Brothers for example are a really popular tag team of "Americans." They put on a product that is much different from a lot of the main promotions in Japan. They rely more on smaller guys and put on incredible fast-paced matches. They're growing their brand by leaps and bounds thanks to the ties they're building both in Japan and overseas. If you're looking for something that isn't your traditional puro fare, DG is the way to go.

Back Home
This was the week where WWE really trimmed the fat. Sabu, Scotty 2 Hotty, Ariel are all gone. And the rumor is that Rob Van Dam won't be hanging around much longer either. But really out of all of these names only Ariel is the biggest loss. Because she's actually doing something right now and was doing it effectively. She was supposed to be helping Kevin Thorn get over and was really doing it well. Thorn might not be the most accomplished guy in the ring, but he had a lot of character and Ariel was part of that. I hope they can still find something for him to do at least. Sabu was a long time coming if you as me. He just flat out hasn't done much in his ECW run and wasn't worth keeping around. I like Sabu well enough and his original work in ECW was really fun. These days not so much. He's not the kind of guy who you can just let drift around without a storyline. You either use him or you don't. Scotty being released is a bit strange as he's been a company guy for years. I think he's be good back stage for the WWE, but maybe now he can just take some time to rest. I'm pretty amazed though that Sandman is still hanging in there.

Judgment Day is tonight. Let's hope that we can keep the streak of good PPV's going here. Backlash was very good as was TNA Sacrifice. I think that the fact that both were so solid thanks to really simple booking, especially in TNA's case. After months of gimmick matches that the crowd shit on, Sacrifice was a straight forward PPV. The glut of multi-man matches could have been really repetitive, but luckily they were spread out enough that people didn't get too sick of them. The Texas Death Match was amazing and was pretty much my ideal way of booking the break up of a long term tag team. Long build into a brutal, bloody, extremely personal match. Chris Harris' promo before the match was really strong and the sight of him ripping the AMW shirt was a great visual. James Storm bladed like a champ which really added to the effect of the match.

Here's hoping Judgment Day can keep the ball rolling. Looking at the card the biggest weak points are Cena vs. Khali and the handicap match for the ECW title. And really, as long as neither Khali or Lashley win the titles I'll be happy. Lashley's improved a great deal, but I just don't like him as a champion right now. Khali is an absolute hell no to win the title and I really hope this only lasts a month. I can't get this horrible feeling out of my mind though that they're going to have another match at the next PPV and that it's going to be a Punjabi Prison match. I like the Punjabi Prison, but that's not going to change Khali being mostly crap in the ring.

Short Takes
-If they're not setting up CM Punk to lead a faction on ECW I don't know what they're doing. Between Punk refusing to be a "follower" to Thorn's prediction that the future of ECW lies in "new blood" I really get the feeling that Punk is going to get his own stable of newcomers. Whether or not it's what everyone's hoping for with Colt Cabana and Ace Steele coming up is up in the air, but it's going to happen.

-The biggest problem I've got with Vince McMahon being ECW champion is that there's almost no way he can lose the title to anyone other than Lashley. And I don't want Lashley to be champion again. Seriously, after listening to his "I say your name is Finlay and you're a bastard" promo again, he really reminds me of Corky St. Claire from Waiting for Guffman.

-Tiger Mask in TNA is pretty awesome, but I hope they let him do something other than job to everyone.

-ROH tickets went on sale here on Thursday. 70 bucks US for up front seats. Damn. I have no idea if they're going to sell tickets online, but as of now I got to save my cash to get some tickets to this.

Well that was a really fun column this week! I hope you all enjoyed it. I know I did. But now looks like the hand on the clock is saying that its time to bring her on home. Bobby, would you play us some farewell music? Drive safe folks and remember to fight to overthrow our oppressive capitalist system of government. The worker's paradise is within reach!