Dragon Gate: Infinity #3
By: Magnus Donaldson


Here we have Episode 3 of Dragon Gate's TV show. Note that there will be no recap of Episode 4 as it was merely a PPV recap show with no unique matches.

Match 1: Stalker Ishikawa vs. Naoki Tanisaki
No insult to Stalker, but if Tanisaki loses this then he truly has no hope whatsoever and should quit wrestling. Stalker got a few moves in this
 time around, indeed some of which should make him the Shark Boy of Japan. Strangely enough, Tokyo throws in the towel so Stalker wins.
 Tanisaki can maybe quit now, even if it wasn't his fault- 1/2*

Match 2: Florida Brothers vs. Naoki Tanisaki
Tanisaki comes out with the most homoerotic entrance in the history of mankind (even more than Daisuke Dino), dancing in the ring with at least
 20 oiled up men in only their underpants. Your standard Florida Brothers match here: there wasn't a lot else we haven't seen from them previously.
 Despite a few close near falls, the Florida Brothers actually got a clean pinfall win for possibly the first time ever following a Backdrop Driver Pin- *1/2

Match 3: Genki Horiguchi vs. Second Doi
Kind of ironic that Doi faces Genki, a man with a balding scalp after having a bad trip to the hairdressers at the PPV: now he can be called
 Doi Fuji. Fuji is actually out there to rout for Doi, really just to annoy him. This match is clipped so we don't see all of it, but what we saw was
 solid enough. The match was fairly back and forth, with a mix of high flying and mat based wrestling.
Genki got the fall with the Backslide from Heaven- *3/4

Match 4: Second Doi vs. Naoki Tanisaki
Two wrestlers who really need a win. Fuji is again at ringside to cheer on Doi, with Doi wanting nothing to do with him
 (the irony of this being Doi joins Fuji in Blood Generation around four months later). This match was solid, and went back and forth,
 with lots of high risk moves. The ref doesn't call for the DQ despite blatant interference from Fuji, allowing Doi to hit the Bakatare
 Sliding Kick for three. Poor Tanisaki with three losses on the same show (I know they were all different dates, but still)- **

Match 5: Aagen Iisou (Brother YASSHI, Shuji Kondo) vs. Do Fixer (Dragon Kid, Ryo Saito)
Solid tag team wrestling here, with the usual strong heel/face dynamic the Aagen stable can bring, but there was a lot of clipping. Most of the early
 portion of the match saw Aagen taking apart Saito with a series of double team moves and by cheating. Saito was able to get the hot tag after a
 Belly to Belly, and Dragon pulled off several high flying moves. Following a few near falls, the red box was brought into play along with
 Sugawara interfering, then Anthony Mori ran in causing a no contest- **

Match 6: Dragon Scramble Battle Royal
Really fun match: the exact way a match like this should be done. There was lots of comedy involved, including everyone joining in with
 the Florida Brothers antics, and Genki getting hat with a long piece of elastic again (eliminating himself as he was fed up with the punishment
 he was taking), and Arai eliminating himself with it. Fuji tries chopping about ten wrestlers in the match only to get chopped ten times back,
 It had serious wrestling as well of course, and what was serious was solid, but it was more a fun comedy match than a great wrestling one.
 It came down to YASSHI and Dragon Kid, with Kid getting three following the Ultra Huracan rana- **1/2, *** comedy

Match 7: Crazymax (CIMA, Don Fujii, TARU) vs. Final M2K (Araken, Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Yokosuka)
It was a solid six man tag main event, which helped build the CIMA/Yokosuka title match, but it never went to that next level that some of the six
 man tag's reach, plus there was some clear clipping . Still, some good exchanges between CIMA and Yokosuka were the highlight, and it looks
 like they will have a good match for CIMA's title belt. There were also a few interesting multi-man spots. CIMA hits the Schwein, but is held back
 for a critical few seconds allowing Yokosuka to kick out. Fujii would eventually pin Mochi following a German Suplex- **3/4

The final two matches help make this a solid TV episode, as the rest of the show was pretty average. As I said, the Battle Royal is a very fun match,
 and the main event had a good home straight that made it a solid, above average match. The rest of the show has no real redeeming qualities
 that we haven't seen previously.

Overall Rating of Show: 6/10