Cero Reviews DDT Who's Gonna TOP? 2020

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Cero Reviews DDT Who's Gonna TOP? 2020

Post by cero2k » Sep 29th, '20, 09:24

DDT Who's Gonna TOP? 2020
September 26, 2020
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Announcements - They did a Junretsu and ALLOUT tug-of-war drawing for tonight's match ups, each member of each team had to pick up a rope that had the middle part hidden and the two edges of a single rope would meet up in tonight's ALLOUT vs Junretsu series. The pair ups are Takeshita vs Oishi, Jun Akiyama vs Akito, and Katsumata vs Watase. Katsumata vs MAO was announced for Ultimate Party for MAO's return from injury.

Opening video - Good. Explained the three big matches for tonight.

DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Nobuhiro Shimatani & Soma Takao) vs. Hideki Okatani, Saki Akai & Toru Owashi - 6/10
Kinda interesting that they have Saki Akai in the opener tag match while ERUPTION has a match later tonight were Naya of all people is involved. Naya should had been in this match instead, let ERUPTION be whole on the main event. Maybe they didn't want HARASHIMA to work along with ERUPTION.

Good opener, action packed. Paulie vs Akai kinda slowed down the match and I was ready to say "I told you so", but once it became Akai vs Nobu, it got much much better. Finish saw DAMNATION kill Okatani with a really ugly foot stomp by Soma.

Dieno & Hirata Promos - They both cut promos about who owns the 'second match' of the DDT shows and they're out there to prove who is the King of the Second Match.

Danshoku Dieno vs. Kazuki Hirata - 6.5/10
This was surprisingly good considering all the groping and dancing that took place. They told a short little story about how Hirata's dancing, the source of his power, was easily stopped by Dieno's groping, and as Dieno started taking off trunks and thongs, he became stronger. At that point, Dieno decided that he'd take over Hirata's dance and make him obsolete, but at the same time, Hirata took upon Dieno's way and with the combined power of dance and groping, Hirata won.

DDT Extreme Title "Lost Points" Match
Antonio Honda vs. Shinya Aoki - 7/10
The rules of the match is that there are no pins or submissions, but rather each man has 5 points to start the match, and they lose points if:

- Go down
- Escape to the ropes
- Get knocked out
- Tap out
- Laugh at the opponent's gag

Loser is he who loses all their 5 points first. In addition, there is a box with 'props' that are legal for this match in particular, both Honda and Aoki can use them at their advantage legally. Eat your heart out Pure Championship, you ain't got shit no this.

Match started and Aoki knew he had to protect the box of props away from Honda, so they mat wrestled for a bit, Honda had no idea what he was doing, but that's Honda in his core really, but in the process, Aoki submitted Honda twice, so Honda has 3 pts left.

Honda went for strikes and managed to get a hold of the box and dressed like a hippie, but Aoki held it and didn't lose a point, at that same moment, Aoki went for a submission close the ropes and kinda pushed Honda into them calling for a rope break. Sneaking bastard! Honda got the box and used some kind of neck fan and pretended it was Hogan's mustache and sang Real American to get Aoki to laugh and lose a point.

Aoki locked in a sleeper and KOd Honda for another point, he is down to won. Aoki decided to challenge Honda and started throwing props at him to improvise and prove himself. Aoki held strong for two, but lost at the third. Finish saw Aoki lock in a submission while Honda had a prop, and as much as Honda tried to make jokes under the submission, Aoki didn't laugh and Honda submitted.

This was a great and unique concept. It's not a wrestling clinic, it's not Okada vs Omega who apparently has to be the standard for everything even if you're doing comedy, but they took a comedy wrestler, an MMA fighter, and they had a compelling match with proper progression and ending.

Post-match - Imabayashi asked Aoki if he had another challenger in mind. Aoki called for Sanshiro Takagi at Ultimate Party! Takagi thanked him because he felt he was falling into obscurity now that the wasn't wrestling as much. He asked if Aoki had a stipulation, Aoki gave Takagi the honor to choose, so Takagi asked for a WEAPONS RUMBLE match!

KO-D Tag Team Title Match
Nautilus (c) vs. Chris Brookes & Drew Parker - 8.5/10
Parker and Brookes jumped Nautilus before the match, put them both through tables, Ueno with a powerbomb and Naomi with a plancha from Drew. They still kicked out them the match finally started.

The match was great, Parker and Brookes were total heels. They first worked over Naomi, Ueno had the hot tag, but was later forced to tag out, and then all 4 men went crazy. There was some cheating from Brookes and Parker, but it would eventually turn against them when Parker hit Brookes with a chair. Finish saw Naomi pin Brookes with a beautiful takedown and a powerbomb.

Post-match - Yoshimura challenged Brookes for a KO-D Universal Title match for 10.10. Brookes tried to pretend he didn't understand Japanese and English to get out of it, but accepted at the end.

ERUPTION came out and confronted Nautilus about them talking trash. Ueno challenged for the 6-Man titles and said that Hirata-San would be their 3rd man. Sakaguchi accepted if Nautilus would give him and Higuchi a tag title shot. Imabayashi wanted to know if they had dates in mind, but both Sakaguchi and Ueno agreed to do it the same day, one match after the other! I'm salivating over Naomi vs Higuchi!

ALL OUT vs. Junretsu Series Match 1
Konosuke Takeshita vs Makoto Oishi - 7/10
Good match, it was a submission vs power match, with Oishi going after Take's leg, while Takeshita just kinda hit Oishi with a bunch of power moves and heavy strikes. This went kinda long considering this 'match' consists of three matches, it would make sense given match #2, but it adds to the rivalry that Takeshita was taken to the (almost) time limit of the match to get the win, 5 seconds left I believe.

ALL OUT vs. Junretsu Series Match 2
Jun Akiyama vs Akito - 6/10
...but PERFECT for what it was! The level difference between Takeshita and Oshi is far greater than Akiyama and Akito. The previous match was more about having an underdog Oishi hurt Takeshita who is undeniably stronger, but in this match, Akito is no underdog, he could beat Akiyama any day of the week, so they played a different story. Akito went straight for Akiyama's leg too, and Akiyama knowing that he'd probably wouldn't be able to last long with Akito, went straight for the kill instead, his first move was a Piledriver, followed by two Stemness Drivers, a bunch of knees to the head, and a King Crab Lock to choke out Akito and get this over with fast. Arguably a squash, but it didn't come off as one, it gave a sense of urgency from Akiyama and he managed to capitalize.

ALLOUT vs. Junretsu Series Match 3
Shunma Katsumata vs Mizuki Watase - 6.5/10
And now it's down to the match between the two guys that could lose because neither are building towards Ultimate Party, it's just common sense. Katsumata won, but I think we can make the argument that Watase, the rookie, lasting so long versus Katsumata, is a slight feather in the cap for Junretsu.

Match started with Katsu with the advantage, Watase had some hope spots that hurt Katsu, but it led to a big exchange of school boys that ended with Katsu winning.

ALLOUT defeats Junretsu 2-1. Overall, this was a another great concept match to keep building the rivalry but keeping Take and Jun away from each other.

Post-match - Takeshita cut a promo saying that it was a good win for ALLOUT. Akito apologized for losing, but since he was in national news this week, it was like a win to him.

Endo vs Sasaki Ultimate Party Video Package - Good. The subtext here is that Endo considers Sasaki his good friend, but inferior wrestling-wise, and you can tell that it bothers Sasaki that Endo doesn't take him seriously. Big line here is Endo saying "I can read you like a book".

DAMNHEARTS (Daisuke Sasaki, Tetsuya Endo, El Lindaman, & T-Hawk) vs. ERUPTION (Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi), HARASHIMA & Yukio Naya - 8.5/10
This was just great, it was chaos all over the place. We got some awesome pair ups between Higuchi vs T-Hawk, HARASHIMA vs T-Hawk, Higuchi vs Endo, Lindaman vs Naya which is always fun. Really action packed. There was a cool spot with Lindaman taking out all of the other team, and it started with making Naya and Sakaguchi kick each other and it looked both awesome and stiff.

At the end, it was all about building Sasaki some since he's the challenger to the Endo's title and well, he needs all the help he can get. Giving him the win, even if it's over Naya, helped give him an extra confidence boost for the post-match angle.

Post-match - Sasaki got the mic and said that that random team right now would had been able to beat the team of T-Hawk, Lindaman, and the two main eventers of Ultimate Party. Sasaki and Endo talked some friendly trash to each other until Endo said that he was tired of Sasaki talking about his 'conditioning', and so Sasaki had enough and low blowed Endo.

Sasaki started attacking Endo, he said that ever since he was named challenger he had one thing in mind, kicking Endo out of DAMNATION. No one from DAMNATION is doing anything, Lindaman's face was priceless. Sasaki tried to rally up DAMNHEARTS behind him, but no one would join them, and suddenly and finally, Nobu attacked Sasaki with the wooden sign.

Each member of DAMNHEARTS attached Sasaki, even Paulie, and at the end, Endo got up, took out Sasaki told him that he can read Sasaki like an open book (ah ah reference from the previous interview), and said that ever since he made him the challenger, he wanted to kick him out of DAMNATION. The whole stable posed over Sasaki's dead body before ending the show. Good little angle, hard to imagen that it's Sasaki that's gonna be babyface without help in this scenario, but I couldn't imagine Endo gone from DAMNATION either.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Great show by DDT, the top three matches were great, we had two really fun and unique matches in the undercard, some innovative concepts, and the build towards Ultimate Party keeps getting better.
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