Dragon Gate PPV 8/28/04
By: Magnus Donaldson
 

Another big Dragon Gate event here, following on from a great edition of Infinity last time out. SUWA has now left the company
 for Pro Wrestling NOAH, leaving CIMA's Crazymax down by one member.

Match 1: Bat vs. Iron Perm: Catcher Fuji vs. Second Doi
This match is a grudge bout following Fuji's recent jibes at Doi's character. I'm not 100% sure of the stipulation, but I believe if Doi wins
 he gets his bat back, but if Fuji wins Doi has to get a iron perm hairstyle. Doi starts this one off quick by diving on Fuji before the bell,
 but Fuji soon takes advantage of Doi having injured ribs by working on them. Doi made his fight back despite consistent work on the injury,
and getting the Doi 555 for a near fall. Doi managed to survive outside interference and a Chokeslam. Doi reversed a second and got the Bakatare
 Sliding Kick for a near fall, but Fuji rolled him up for three. Average until a great final few minutes- **

Match 2: Final M2K (Keni'chiro Arai and Masaaki Mochizuki) vs. Aagen Iisou (Shogo Takagi and Brother YASSHI)
This match went pretty slow for the first few minutes, for YASSHI made a break for the door with Mochi chasing him down. Arai got the Dragon
 Suplex, but the ref was pulled out, then the other members of Aagen Iisou interfered, beating down Arai allowing him to be pinned- 1/2*

Match 3: Florida Brothers vs. Magnum TOKYO
The Florida Brother totally mock Magnum by wearing his mask to the ring and doing extremely bad dancing, then Magnum shows up late for
 his pre-match dance. Essentially your regular Florida Brothers awesome comedy match, with much of the same jokes as you would see in their
 regular matches: the best bit would be Genki and the ref getting involved, only for the ref to reverse the wristlock spot and hit a Head scissors
 Takedown. There was a very creative Hip Toss spot too (with the ref giving himself one). Magnum didn't fall for as many of the comedy spots.
 Another great spot see's the ref hit a Huracan rana inadvertently on Tokyo to get three. The finish saw Michael put on Tokyo's mask, hit the ref
 with a DDT, and then quickly put the mask on Tokyo to make it seem as if he did it, causing the DQ for Tokyo- *1/2 wrestling, **** comedy

Match 4: Italian Connection (YOSSINO, Anthony W. Mori) vs. Aagen Iisou (Shuji Kondo, Takuya Sugawara)
This is the beginning in Dragon Gate of the Mori/Sugawara feud. Kondo starts the match quick by brawling with YOSSINO into the crowd,
 while Mori and Sugawara brawl in the ring. Much of this match is a series of heated exchanges between Mori and Sugawara, with the others
 getting involved and helping their partners when needed. It made for a good dynamic and an entertaining match. Mori can close to victory
 several times, but Kondo's involvement stopped this fairly quickly. The ref was eventually thrown out for the DQ- **1/4

Match 5: Crazymax (CIMA, TARU) vs. Do Fixer (Genki Horiguchi, Ryo Saito)
Solid tag match here. It starts fairly even in the early going, with an exchange of submission holds and double team moves, as well as some
 hard hitting strikes. Genki was the one to be isolated, making the mistake of trying to exchange kicks with TARU. They toy with him, using
 some nasty cheating tactics (such as a blatant kick to the groin) and submissions. He made the tag after the HAGE chants, and he and Saito
 made their fight back. Both teams got some near falls following their signature moves, before CIMA pinned Genki with the Schwein. Kind of
 average tag match overall, it never had all that much heat or anything special- **

Match 6: Open the Dream Gate Next Challenger 4 Way Match:
Susumu Yokosuka vs. Milano Collection AT vs. Dragon Kid vs. Touru Owashi
The winner of this match will be the official next challenger for CIMA's title belt, which he was presented with earlier in the show. All four are
 in the ring at the same time for this one, and I believe the rules are you have to untie the turnbuckle pads, and if you get the right slip inside you win:
 yet pinfall and submission seem to count too? And it's elimination as well. Aagen Iisou interfered during much of this match, trying to help Owashi
 get the win, but it often proved ineffective. There were some very fun spots in this one: Milano tying up everyone in submissions so they can't interfere
 being one of them.

Milano is actually first to go, following a Yokosuka Lariat. Following this, Kid and Yokosuka briefly team up to try and topple the larger man,
 but this doesn't last long. Owashi throws Yokosuka into a pile of chairs outside the ring, allowing Owashi to untie some turnbuckle pads,
not finding the right ones and thus eliminating himself. He proceeds to him everyone with extremely weak looking chair shots, before Keni'chiro Arai
 makes the save.

Dragon and Yokosuka have some good ending exchanges, with both men going for turnbuckles and trying to eliminate each other with big high
 impact moves, but none of them can get the win. Yokosuka pins Kid with the Yokosuka Cutter, then gets the correct pad to win the title shot.
 Overall a good main event, but the over interference by Aagen Iisou annoyed me, and the rules were a bit confusing- **3/4

This was a disappointing PPV in my view. There were no real standout matches, other than the overbooked (in my opinion) main event and
 the Florida Brothers match. Everything was solid enough but there were no must see matches, so I can't highly recommend this show.

Overall Rating for Event: 5/10