King of DDT has come and gone. How time flies. On this show, we have the two semi-finals and the final itself to review. There are also many non-tournament matches on the card. These took place both before and after the semi-finals, but I’ll review them all in a row before getting to the stuff that actually matters. Feel free to skip to the tournament matches if that’s the kind of guy you are.

Tomomitsu Matsunaga & Yuki Ishida vs. Akito & Hinata Kasai

Way better than what I was expecting it to be. I broadly like all four of the people in this match with Ishida and Akito being the standouts. But I was expecting a nothing-opening tag. The charisma that Ishida and Matsunaga bring as a tag team really carry this whole thing from their stupid entrance to the mid match singing, to Matuanga’s continued no selling for Kasai’s shitty dropkicks. What we have here is a very pleasant fast paste encounter. Good work all round. Tags like these are the rock that a great promotion is built upon.

Rating: **3/4 

Jun Akiyama, Junta Miyawaki & Naomi Yoshimura vs. Hideki Okatani, Ilusion & MJ Paul

Not a match where there’s much to talk about. It was a standard, nothing six-man tag. It did its job, it was serviceable.

What I will say is that this match once again showed that Okatani is the best heel in the company, and that Miyawaki is making a lot of progress. He came into DDT as basically a nothing wrestler, but he puts in some good face-in-peril work here and shows plenty of fire during his comebacks.

Rating: **1/4

Kazuki Hirata & To-y vs. Kaisei Takechi & Yuki Ueno

A match that is hard to review without just listing off all the funny bits. This match was funny and good. Five stars.

What I will say is that Ueno is working more and more like a heel. His bullying of Hirata, including breaking his glasses, adds an interesting wrinkle to what can often be a bland ace character.

Takechi plays a very good straight man, and his commitment to the dance break was a lot of fun. I’m not completely sure what To-y’s screaming kettle routine is supposed to be, but I like it.

Rating: *** ½

Antonio Honda, Chris Brookes & HARASHIMA vs. KANON, Viento Maligno & Yukio Naya

Antonio Honda is the best wrestler in the world.

Rating: ***

Daichi Satoh, Takeshi Masada & Yuya Koroku vs. Kazuma Sumi, Shunma Katsumata & Yuni

The match for the KO-D Six Man tag titles aims to showcases the best young wrestlers DDT has to offer, futures looking a bit grim. I like all six of these guys to varying degrees, but this match was a forgettable affair. 

It’s fifteen minutes of non-stop, go-go-go wrestling with very little else to it. If you’re going to work this style, you really need to commit to being the “most,” and this falls short of that.

The standout performances came from Yuni, who continues to be one of the best wrestlers in the company, and Satoh, who did some very good base work while playing off his flippy opponents.

Rating: ** ¼ 

Match 1 Minoru Suzuki vs. Shinya Aoki

Solid as a rock.

Aoki and Suzuki start this match as you’d expect, with some good old grappling. It’s neither man’s most compelling mat work, with both focusing on damaging each other’s lower legs. They fight over control of the hold, and it’s fine.

What’s far more interesting is Suzuki’s apparent admission that, on the mat, Aoki has him beat. He’s the one who steps away from the groundwork. He’s the one who takes the match outside, using chairs and leaving Aoki on the apron so he can punt him in the head. Even once they re-enter the ring, the advantage Suzuki gains from his outside shenanigans is short-lived before he’s outdone by Shinya’s elaborate pin attempts.

The final stretch, with Aoki trying various ways to get Suzuki’s shoulders down for the three count, is slightly hampered by Suzuki’s age. He no longer has the athleticism to make some of the spots feel completely natural, though that in itself has its charms.

Like every Aoki match, this one has a moment where he does something you’ve never seen before. In this case, once he gets a choke locked in, he tries to fall to the mat and wrap his legs around Suzuki. Instead, he falls back too far, dropping Suzuki on his head while simultaneously allowing him to escape the hold. Aoki is a master of finding new and interesting things to do in the small moments that we normally don’t give a second thought to.

This match also has a very tight runtime. It gets in, does what it needs to do, and gets out. Solid as a rock.

Rating:***

Match 2 Danshoku Dino vs. MAO

Sometimes your heroes fail, and that hurts. But it hurts even more when they go out in a match as shite as this.

I love Dieno and don’t care for MAO, but even if the winner of this match were flipped, I’d still call this a sorry affair.

From the beginning, this match lacks the special atmosphere that the previous two Dieno tournament matches had. Those encounters felt elevated, whereas the opening half of this feels like a standard Dieno comedy match. And I love Dieno comedy matches, but after those two stellar tournament performances, I wanted more.

Even as a comedy match, this is pretty bland. What makes DDT’s comedy division so great is that, despite the million matches they have every year, they’re always finding something new to play with. There may only be five total punchlines, but they keep finding new ways to get to those punchlines. This is just Dieno playing the hits.

But to get to the root of this match’s issues: MAO.

MAO sometimes puts in fine, even good, performances, but he mostly sucks. And he especially sucks in this match. The whole idea is that Dieno just can’t keep up anymore. His body is exhausted from the kicks and strikes that MAO has rained down on him. The problem is that MAO can’t throw a convincing-looking kick to save his life. You have Dieno delivering some career-best selling both physically and emotionally, but none of it works because the whole match looks like he’s being struck by feathers.

There are some Dieno roll-up attempts that I got some enjoyment out of, and against a competent opponent this would probably be viewed as a brilliant Dieno performance. But as it stands, this is just a really disappointing match.

MAO sucks.

Rating: * 3/4

Match 3 MAO vs. Shinya Aoki

They didn’t release a match graphic for the final, so I had to improvise. Sorry that Aoki looks a bit like Hitler.

So MAO does know how to wrestle then?!

This match plays on ideas that are present in a lot of Aoki’s work. Wrestlers are obsessed with beating Aoki at his own game: beating him on the mat and proving that they are every bit as much of a technical wizard as he is. But they never are, and MAO certainly isn’t. It is only when they abandon these goals that they stand a chance. If they let Aoki wrestle his style of match, they have no chance.

MAO showcases this perfectly. While he is not shown to be a complete scrub, he is completely outmatched on the mat. He only ever gains an advantage when he forces the match to become a more standard DDT encounter. But even when he gains those advantages, he lets his ego get the better of him, desperate to beat Aoki in his own wheelhouse, and it is that which costs him the tournament.

Aoki shows that he’s not a one-trick pony, though, proving himself capable in a more traditional wrestling style and delivering one of the sickest dives of his career. There’s a beautiful stretch of about three minutes where Aoki’s style blends with MAO’s, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted from an Aoki match. His opponent no longer feels like a lifeless blob stripped of his individuality.

However, MAO is a pretty boring sparring partner when it’s a mat-only affair.

Rating: ***¾

Overall show and tournament thoughts

This was the weakest of the King of DDT nights, and this was a weaker tournament than recent years. However, DDT is still the best promotion in the world, and this tournament was immensely enjoyable. I’d especially recommend the first two Dieno matches and Aoki vs. HARASHIMA.