DDT is running koroken hall and the card looked cool so I wanted to write a review of it. I don’t need to justify myself to you. I went to all in for this god dam website.

Match 1 Naomi Yoshimura & Tomomitsu Matsunaga vs Yuni & Yuki Ishida

Three of my favourite wrestlers on the roster, along with Tomoitsu Matsunaga. Matsunaga is a bad wrestler, but he’s such a funny guy in the way he looks and moves that I don’t mind him. Yuni and Naomi have great chemistry, telling the very simple but very effective story of size vs. speed. This is a great Naomi performance. The way he manhandles both of his opponents is just excellent. Fun opener. 

Rating: ** ¾ 

Match 2 HARASHIMA & Yasu Urano & Akito & Soma Takao vs Takeshi Masada & Yuya Koroku & Kazuma Sumi & Masami Inahata

Your bog-standard 8-man tag, but it was still fairly enjoyable. These are all good-to-great wrestlers, and Inahata continues to show signs of promise. Sumi put Koroku’s choker on at some point, so it’s nice to see the filthy slut has made a friend. 

Rating: ** ½

Match 3 Fuminori Abe & Jun Akiyama vs. To-y & Yuki Ueno

The first half of this match is built around Akiyama and Abe bullying To-y. If you find To-y screaming in pain as funny as I do, then you’ll get a lot out of this match. This bout really shows off all the things that make Abe great: bad wrestler thigh slap, good wrestling chest slap. There’s a sequence in here where Abe keeps hurting his wrist as he punches Ueno in the head, and god, I need to see this man become part of the full-time roster.

Abe does Abe: an elaborate pinning sequence and a sick-looking submission for the win. Fun match.

Rating: *** ¼ 

Match 4 Hideki Okatani, Ilusion & MJ Paul vs. Antonio Honda, Chris Brookes & Hinata Kasai vs. KANON, Viento Levante & Yukio Naya

Antonio Honda and llusion are really good in this, which makes sense since they’re two of the best wrestlers in the world. The rest of the match was quite boring. Illusion ends up pinning Honda, winning his Right to Challenge Anywhere, Anytime. A skippable match if I’ve ever seen one. 

Rating: * ¼ 

After the match they announced there bringing back muscle with all the young lads. Excited for this. 

Match 5 Shunma Katsumata vs. Kumadori

Katsumata goes into this match as a duel champ holding both the extreme and ironman title. This match has the stipulations that there are over-the-top-rope eliminations and that you’re not allowed to use the same move twice. They are allowed to use “basic” moves as many times as they like, though. I doubt you’d notice the second stipulation if it wasn’t told to you; all it leads to is a bout that’s more strike-based.

Both these men suck at throwing strikes, but if you can get past that, there’s a pretty good match in here that builds nicely. This is the most complete Kumadori has felt. He’s still got those GIF-able breakdance moments, but he struggles way less with the in-betweens here. They work the top-rope stip quite well, and it ends at its peak without overstaying its welcome.

Kumadori career match.

Rating: *** 

Post match Kumadori rolls Katsumata up for the ironman belt. Fun stuff

Match 6 Junta Miyawaki & Shinya Aoki vs. Danshoku Dino & Kazuki Hirata

Dieno didn’t even kiss anyone on the way to the ring, that’s how you know it’s serious. Miyawaki, during his entrance, keeps posing with children who clearly don’t care, and I can’t tell if it’s a bit or if he’s just a dork.

Part of why I enjoyed this match so much is imagining the people who only watch DDT to jack off over Shinya Aoki matches watching this bout, where Aoki gets stuck in Dieno’s arsehole. This is your typical, well-worked DDT comedy tag. Aoki and Dieno do some dick-based technical wrestling. They tease pushing someone into Dieno’s ass like it’s exploding barbed wire. Hirata doesn’t get a lot of his bits in, which is a shame, but still, fun stuff all round.

This match becomes incredible in its final moments, though. Aoki, who like a fool lowered Dieno’s thong, ends up getting sucked in by the centrifugal force of Dieno’s arse, which leads to just Hirata and Miyawaki, and they have a terrific final minute. The struggle these two pull off, with Hirata going for desperate roll-ups and Miyawaki slowly trying to manoeuvre Hirata’s shoulders to the mat, is just sublime.

Even if you’re not into DDT’s comedy stuff, I’d recommend watching this match just for the final moments.

Rating: *** 3/4

Match 7 Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Daisuke Sasaki

This match sucked lol. Slow and boring. Taguchi was fine but is there like another NJPW tournament we can send Sasaki to for a while. 

Rating: * ½ 

Post match Honda challenged Taguchi to a match. Looking forward to that

Match 8 MAO vs. Daichi Satoh

didn’t come into this match with high expectations. I love Satoh, but it’s a main event Mao match. I was expecting some bullshit, but I was delightfully surprised because this was a great match.

I’d call it a Satoh carry job, but I’d be lying. Turns out Mao can have a good match; he just has to do less of his Mao bullshit. They work the main-event epic formula perfectly, with both men throwing delicious kicks at each other. And once they tear up the ring mat, the near falls are brilliant. I fully believed Satoh had won this one.

I cannot believe I’m giving a Mao match the two-thumbs-up recommendation, but here we are. Never been so happy to be proven wrong. More of this, please, Mao.

Rating: *** ¾ 

Post match we got Abe challenging Mao. I’ve got high hopes for that now. And very happy that Abe is seemingly going to be a more featured player in DDT. All they need now is to sign Tim Strange.

Finale thoughts

This is a smaller DDT show that I normally don’t devote full reviews to, but the tag title match just looked so sick, and it delivered. Then I got the cherry on top of an excellent main event. The rest of the show is skippable. They announced a lot of stuff on here I’m looking forward to, the future is bright.