DGUSA Open The Golden Gate |
DGUSA Open the Golden Gate was a great show. I'd highly recommend it, and in fact it's probably the best show I've ever been to. Granted, we're mostly talking WWE, WCW, one ECW show, and the World Wrestling Peace Festival, which previously held that title.
1) Low-Ki vs. BxB Hulk. Real good opening match. I'm probably gonna overrate everything as I was live seeing these guys for the first time and in the third row, but even if I try to mark matches down by taking that into account... I think this was ***1/4 at worst, possibly a touch higher. Lots of striking, obviously. Not a ton of nearfalls being an opener and all. Not an overly long match, Ki gets the Ki Crusher for the clean win.
2) Chuck Taylor & Scorpio Sky vs. Young Bucks (Nick & Matt Jackson). Scorp was in for Rich Swann who "missed his flight" according to Chucky T, who was extremely over in LA. Honestly, I thought this was slightly better than Hulk-Ki, which surprised me considering that's the match I was most hyped up for. Typical really good DG tag, tons of fast action, lots of nearfalls, intricate double team moves/sequences. Just a really good match, probably ***1/2.
3) Naruki Doi vs. Masato Yoshino. I was underwhelmed when it came to their Dream Gate match. This match was more like it. Though billed as a grudge match, it still didn't have the hate that the Dream Gate match lacked, but it's been more than a year since the turn so that didn't seem as important this time around. All that being said, it was just flat out a better match than the previous one was. Once again, when I watched it live, I felt it was better than the match that preceded it. Let's say ***3/4 because if I go up to 4 now, that means I gotta go even higher later on..
4) Sami Callihan vs. A.R. Fox. This is where it starts to unravel right? Not so fast. These guys may have .... I don't wanna say stolen the show but this match was way way better than it had any right to be. It was great in a different way. Fox wanted a no-rules tables match, so it was like a mid-90s ECW extreme lucha libre style match. Fox jumped the gun and hit a dive on Sami before the bell even rang and they just took off from there. It looked like the one table they had, the leg kinda snapped off early so they had to improvise. Sami bridged the apron and guard rail with a section of the guard rail and they did some crazy spots on there, culminating in Fox taking the sickest bump I've ever seen live. Sami had him up for a powerbomb and just tossed him right out of the ring (like Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. Naomichi Marufuji) ONTO the bridged guardrail and his head bounced off the actual guard rail too. And they still weren't done. It ended when Sami leaned the table against the rail and powerbombed Fox right through it. I don't really know how to rate it. You almost have to rate it as more of a spectacle than a wrestling match, but spectacle-wise... it was just amazing.
5) Jon Davis vs. Caleb Konley. The one throwaway match of the night. Davis has worked DG before, but I think the other guy is a local. It was a solid match, not bad by any means. It ended in maybe 7-8 minutes, so while it didn't meet the standards that the rest of the show did, it wasn't long enough to drag it down at all. This was also the first match following the intermission.
6) PAC vs. Akira Tozawa. Better than their Mercury Rising match, I think. I watched that again the night before, so I feel like I can say that and be reasonably objective about it. Tozawa was so over (obviously from his PWG days). Just a really good match that eclipsed everything that came before it. **** probably. PAC did British Airways and a couple other great dives to the floor. PAC kicked out of a normal German suplex, then then everest german suplex but then Tozawa hit the package German for the win.
7) Open The United Gate Title Match: CIMA & Ricochet vs. Masaaki Mochizuki & Jimmy Susumu (Yokosuka). Best match of the show I thought. CIMA/Ricochet work so well together with their coordinated, split-second timing type double team spots. Mochi was kicking people in the head, Yokosuka was throwing lariats all over the place and it had a lengthy and brilliantly executed finishing stretch. Typical DG at its best stuff... move after move, everything executed well and timed to perfection.. really stunning to watch it in person. Working at that speed and doing moves that difficult, the occasional flub would be expected but they nailed everything in sight. It was just magnificent. ****1/4 and like I said, I'm actively trying NOT to overrate here.
