What’s that in the stands? Is it… is it fans? Alright, so the last two shows I reviewed both had a live audience, but allow me my joke, please? DDT has returned to Korakuen Hall and opened up the doors to their adoring public. Is it perhaps too early for them to be doing this? Hm, maybe, but that’s not really for me to say. Instead, I’m going to sit back and enjoy some new wrestling from one of my favourite companies.
The world is fucking weird at the moment and, as of today, I don’t have a job, so if you like my rambles, get ready to see a lot more of them. With that weirdness, there are suddenly a lot of people with a hella lot of time on their hands. Now, I don’t normally do listicles on this website because, well, why would I? I spent some time in the trenches of making money by writing for WhatCulture, and it ain’t much fun. However, what better way to spend all that free time than by getting into everyone’s favourite pseudo-sport, wrassling! Usually, when people try to get you into wrestling, they’ll go straight to WWE. There is a decent chance they’ll show you Mick Foley being thrown off a cage because of the wrestling fan’s innate need to prove it’s not fake. However, that’s dumb, and WWE sucks. So, I’ve decided to put together a list of matches, all of which you can watch for free, that might tempt you to fall in love with this world that gives me so much joy.
There are no good photos from these shows. Credit: ROH
Right, I vowed not to leave it another year between these reviews because I would quite like to get to the point where ROH is actually good, so here we go again! We’re onto Ring Of Honor’s fourth show, and it’s built around a tournament to crown their first-ever champion.
A quick reminder that this is only the second Ice Ribbon show I’ve reviewed, so I’m still not attuned to the promotion. If I make any unforgivable mistakes or miss out on anything major, please let me know in the comments as I am here to learn. That aside, let’s watch some wrestling!
I have long been a supporter of the idea that wrestling can be whatever you want it to be. Whether it’s the Marvel-esque crash and bang of New Japan main events, the art-house genius of Gatoh Move or whatever the fuck it is WWE is up to, wrestling’s beauty comes from its ability to be twisted into any form.
DDT returned to the Dojo for another fun wee show to fill in this continually widening gap without the joys of wrestling. Wash your hands, throw away your tissues and read me having a blather about what went down.
I think this is probably the most diverse match of the month list I’ve put together yet. In the past, I’ve had star ratings to work by when figuring this out and, honestly, I think that was restricting the way I did it. Now, I’m just pulling out the notebook and picking the ten that have stuck with me the most. So, welcome to a rather different, but certainly not worse, round-up of my favourites matches from last month.
Fresh off my favourite show of the year so far, Tokyo Joshi were back in the Dojo for another tournament. This time the roster was split into teams based on the colour of their attire, with wins earning two points, draws one and a loss none. The team with the most points at the end of the night would win themselves a day pass to a theme park, so that’s exciting. Will it be more hotly contested than the free meal? Time to find out.
Insert joke about Stardom drawing an awful crowd for their latest Korkauen here. For yes, with coronavirus still causing chaos, Stardom chose to hold their monthly trip to the Hall without any fans. It’s not all bad news, though, as they also streamed it for free on YouTube, making it the rare Stardom show that can be watched straight away and has commentary, with a whole load of familiar faces (including Jushin Liger) popping up throughout the show. If we’re lucky, it might even become a regular thing. Anyway, on with the wrestling!
Every one of these DDT Dojo shows has at least one super interesting match on it. For last Tuesday’s, that treat was newbie Royce Chambers taking on Chris Brookes in the main event. He was given a chance to show-off on the previous show. Now it was time to find out if he can do more than that.