That Was Then, Is This Too? 01.05.10: Enter The PPV

Welcome to yet another installment of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that looks for parallel lines in all the right places. After two weeks of recaps we have a new year and a fresh start, so let’s get right into it with Banner 2.0!

For any wrestling company to make the jump to pay per view is a huge leap. Several companies have tried it over the past few years, but very few have made it past more than one show without going bankrupt. Dragon Gate USA is the newest company to take the leap, taping bi-monthly two hour shows. They’ve taken over the gap left when Ring of Honor decided to give up on their bi-monthly PPVs, with G-Funk Sports & Entertainment as their distributor.

The first show, titled Enter the Dragon, was taped in the ECW Arena at July 25th, 2009. It was held in front of hundreds of ravenous independent wrestling fans who were familiar with both the Dragon Gate stars that were flown in Japan and the local talent that was provided by CHIKARA, which was the first of several partner companies to join up with Dragon Gate USA to fill in the blanks on the shows, letting them reduce costs by limiting the amount of Japanese talent they had to fly in.

The pay per view opened up with a match between Yamato and BxB Hulk. Even though these two aren’t the most well-known members of the Dragon Gate roster, they immediately established their roles. BxB Hulk was the fresh-faced babyface, dancing his way to the ring accompanied by two beautiful dancers. Yamato in contrast was a huge prick, flashing the kind of smirk that seems to be scientifically designed to be punched. Together they put together an exciting opener, with Hulk flying around the ring while Yamato kept him grounded. It was an excellent match, keeping the crowd in the right mood after the spotty opening match and immediately establishing the kind of action the PPV viewer can expect.

The match was followed by a CHIKARA exhibition match. In an atomicos match, the technico team of Mike Quackenbush and Jigsaw and The Colony took on the rudos of Gran Akuma and Icarus of Team F.I.S.T., Amasis and Hallowicked, who was subbing for the injured Ophidian. The match was a typical CHIKARA showcase, as it was a total spotfest that still told a coherent story. In a post-match promo, Quackenbush put over the friendly rivalry between CHIKARA and Dragon Gate USA, bringing up Jorge Riviera, who had a hand in the training of many of both company’s stars. This brought out Yamato, who mocked Riviera and Quackenbush in Japanese before punting him low. This brought out Jigsaw and Gran Akuma to make the save, but since Akuma is at the very least Yamato’s equal in dickishness, he jumped Jigsaw from behind, aiding Yamato beating down his maestro and his fellow CHIKARA wrestler until the rest of the CHIKARA wrestlers spilled out to make the save, setting up a tag match between Quacksaw and Yamato and Akuma for the next show and the first real PPV storyline.

The next match was another contest between two Dragon Gate veterans, as Dragon Kid took on Masato Yoshino. The match was actually fairly slow for Dragon Kid standards, but it was by no means a bad match. Dragon Kid worked in all his usual spots, including the 619, the Christo, the Jesus Walks and the Dragonrana. In the end, Dragon Kid pulled yet another page out of the Rey Misterio Jr. playbook to secure the win with the Ultimate Hurricanrana. It was by no means a bad match, but more than any other match on the card it was pretty much ‘just there’.

The semi-main event was an east vs. west tag team match, as CIMA, the former face of Dragon Gate, teamed up with Susumu Yokosuka to take on the Young Bucks, this generation’s Hardy Boys. The match was an absolute joy to watch, as the two teams went pretty much all out, displaying the kind of tag team wrestling that’s just far too rare these days. In the end the Bucks went over, scoring one of the biggest wins in their career in the closest thing they have had yet to a national spotlight. I’m not saying this match led directly to them signing on with TNA, but it certainly didn’t hurt either.

And then it was time for the main event, a non-title match between Naruki Doi, who was holding both the Open the Dream Gate and Open the Brave Gate championship from Dragon Gate USA’s mother promotion, and Shingo, the closest thing Dragon Gate has to a pure power wrestler and a former ROH world tag team champion. It was the perfect main event, as both men looked like the top stars of the company the moment they came out through the curtain. It was a typical power vs. speed match, kicked into overdrive in the balls-to-the-wall style that had been on display during the whole PPV. In the end it was Doi who picked up the win, but only after two Bakutare Sliding Kicks and a Muscular Bomb.

It was a near-perfect main event to close off a near-perfect PPV. It has won PPV of the year for dozens of wrestling newsletters and pundits. The PPV is rather unique and that it was almost entirely an athletic display, with the emphasis pretty much entirely on the matches themselves. It’s certainly very different from the PPVs Ring of Honor offered, but how different is it?

That Was Then…

The first Ring of Honor PPV, Respect is Earned, was taped in front of a rabid New York crowd at the Manhattan Center. It was opened by BJ Whitmer, who explained the competition-based attitude of Ring of Honor and laid out an open challenge for anyone in the locker room. It was answered by Takeshi Morishima, Ring of Honor champion and all around monster. They threw everything they had at each other for four minutes until Morishima simply killed Whitmer dead with a devastating Backdrop Driver.

After the match, Morishima was joined by Nigel McGuinness, who sang the champion’s praises and attempted to talk his way into a title shot. This in turn brought out Bryan Danielson, who made his big return after being sidelined with a separated shoulder for several months. He and Morishima ended up beating down Danielson, setting up for the eventual main event.

After a Brent Albright vignette, we got the second international match of the night as Japanese junior heavyweight standout Naomichi Marafuji took on No Remorse Corps member and the fourth Black Tiger, Rocky Romero. It was little more than an exhibition match, but it was still a great display of the junior heavyweight style. The two worked through all their usual spots, including Romero’s gorgeous Diablo Armbar, before Marafuji secured the three count with a pair of superkicks and a Shiranui.

After the sports, we got the entertainment in the form of a Larry Sweeney segment. Sweeney introduced himself as the super agent, putting over Chris Hero as the top athlete in Ring of Honor and Tank Toland as the best trainer. He also had a new acquisition to announce, as Sara Del Rey joins Sweet’n’Sour Incorporated. We suddenly cut to the ring, as Danielson and Morishima are beating down McGuinness again. Eventually KENTA makes the save, setting up the main event tag match.

From there, we go to the Briscoe brothers defending their tag team titles against Swiss giant Claudio Castagnoli and the future Evan Bourne, Matt Sydal. The story here is that Castagnoli held a tag team title shot, and he picked Sydal as his partner since hew as the one to pin Castagnoli to end the reign of terror of the Kings of Wrestling over the ROH tag division. The match told a good story, as while Castagnoli and Sydal are both great wrestlers, the lack of coherence as a team makes it impossible for them to get any real advantage over the brothers. In the end, Matt Sydal ends up taking the pinfall off the Springboard Doomsday Device in a great match. Following the match, Sweeney hit the ring to sign yet another new prospect. Castagnoli tried to talk Sydal out of it, referring to the bad history he had with Sweeney, but Sydal signed anyway and Sweet’n’Sour Inc. piled on for an old fashioned group beatdown.

This was followed by a grudge match between Delirious and Roderick Strong, the leader of the No Remorse Corps. We got a quick video package, showing the NRC repeatedly targeting Delirious and explaining why it was a grudge match. It was a nice but ultimately unremarkable grudge match, with Roderick Strong going over after a flurry of vicious finishers. To add insult to injury, the rest of the NRC comes out to lay out a guard rail, which Strong uses to deliver a vicious Gibson Driver on Delirious. Luckily babyface powerhouse Erick Stevens is out to clear the ring, sending the heels packing. From there we get a great promo from Adam Pearce that would eventually lead to the formation of the Hangm3n, a stable that unfortunately never lived up to its potential.

Finally we got the tag team main event, with Nigel McGuinness teaming up with KENTA to take on Bryan Danielson and ROH world champion Takeshi Morishima. By this point the wrestlers’ roles have been pretty much clearly defined. McGuinness is the strong babyface that got mauled by the heels and is now looking for defence. KENTA came to his aid, and makes a natural opponent for both Morishima and Danielson, as he has had rivalries with both. Morishima is the monster that simply destroys everything in his path. Danielson is the arrogant asshole with the overinflated sense of entitlement. The match itself has a lot of problems, and certainly doesn’t fully live up to what you might expect from these four, but it’s a nicely intense main event that’s won by the team of Danielson and Morishima, as Danielson makes his old rival KENTA tap out to the Cattle Mutilation.

…Is This Too?

As you might have guessed from my recaps, Dragon Gate USA Enter the Dragon is a very different PPV from Ring of Honor Respect is Earned. While Ring of Honor claims to be all about the in-ring action, the PPV was still filled with all sorts of storylines, many of which the people buying the PPV without being familliar with the Ring of Honor DVDs would have no prior knowledge of. In contrast, Enter the Dragon spent almost no time on vignettes and promos, in stead literally letting the in ring action doing the talking. They did develop some storylines and feuds, but mostly did so through backstage vignettes that aired on Youtube rather than the PPV itself.

And there’s a major problem that Dragon Gate USA simply didn’t have. In its two years of running PPV shows, Ring of Honor never managed to find a balance between the storylines that mainly ran through their DVD tapings and the ones that ran through their PPV shows. Because of title changes and major storyline twists, the delay between the taping and the publishing of DVDs grew, and it was getting very hard for Ring of Honor to keep juggling both.

Dragon Gate USA meanwhile starts out with a clean slate. Even though their first PPV was mostly exhibition matches, it was a far more consistent show than Respect Is Earned. They boast arguably the most athletic roster in America, and they made the most of it in front of an absolutely ravenous crowd in the Madison Square Garden of independent wrestling.

But we shouldn’t forget that wrestling fans don’t watch wrestling shows just for the athletic displays. The fight itself is as important as the reason to fight, and without the emotional investment, they simply won’t be able to keep their fanbase. Of course it’s hard to tell at this point, and reactions to the PPVs that have aired so far have been almost unanimously positive, but only time will tell if the company will be able to build up an emotional connection with its fans that goes beyond ‘ooh, flippy!’