Dramatic DDT

DDT “WRESTLE PETER PAN 2021”, 21/08/2021
Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki

0. Under Match: Yukio Naya & Keigo Nakamura Vs Hideki Okatani & Yuya Koroku
0. Electric Current Explosion 8-Man Tag Death Match: Atsushi Onita, Sanshiro Takagi, Akito & Maki Itoh Vs Kuro-chan, Super Sasadango Machine, Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Hikari Noa
1. Special 10-Man Tag Match – El Unicorn & Ilusion Debut Match: HARASHIMA, Naomi Yoshimura, Yusuke Okada, Raimu Imai & El Unicorn Vs Yuji Okabayashi, TAMURA, Mizuki Watase, Yuki Iino & Ilusion
2. Double Ring Double Singles Match: Toru Owashi Vs Antonio Honda
2. Double Ring Double Singles Match: Danshoku Dieno Vs Kazuki Hirata
3. Special Hardcore Tag Match: Shunma Katsumata & MAO Vs Chris Brookes & Jun Kasai
4. KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Titles: Tetsuya Endo, Soma Takao & Yuji Hino (c) Vs Kazusada Higuchi, Yukio Sakaguchi & Saki Akai
5. DDT Universal Title: Yuki Ueno (c) Vs Daisuke Sasaki
6. KO-D Openweight Title – BLACKOUT Presents: Jun Akiyama (c) Vs Konosuke Takeshita

As danger and uncertainty over the pandemic remains around the world, the wrestling industry is determined to chug along and to stick to their plans. This weekend more than any other is proof of that. In America, the next couple of days will no doubt become a landmark period for the modern era with massive shows from two companies along with the long awaited return of a certain hockey fan from Chicago. Japan isn’t taking it easy either as some companies begin to head outdoors for major shows held at sports stadiums. That’s what DDT is up to for “WRESTLE PETER PAN” this year. They will be at Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki, the former home of FMW’s most legendary battles. The actual venue is different because it went through renovations in the 2000s and also a name change in 2014. Hopefully the spirit of those famous shows still remains when DDT takes their crack at it. Pandemic restrictions are in place so the card is shorter than usual. Plus the risk of last minute cancellations can rear its ugly head. At this point we just have to keep our fingers crossed. There is something extra added to the show. Two wrestling rings will be set up in the stadium. The reason why will be explained in the related matches below.

0. Under Match: Yukio Naya & Keigo Nakamura Vs Hideki Okatani & Yuya Koroku

Let’s see how the low tier of DDT’s undercard has been doing lately. Yukio Naya is slotted into the novelty matches. He’s there when DDT needs a heavyweight so he’ll always have a place on the card. His family ties also means he will be a regular for any matches built around product placement. Keigo Nakamura stepped up a level by being part of the new KO-D 8-Man Tag Team Champions in Team Olympian. He has new ring gear too which is usually a sign of a wrestler moving onto the next stage of his career. He is still often the butt of jokes but when he gets the chance to be serious in the ring, he takes it. Hideki Okatani is probably the one out of this lot who advanced the most over the last year. He should have, given who he is learning from in Junretsu. He is still far away from being a polished product but he definitely moved up to No. 3 in his unit in the last few months. Yuya Koroku debuted in DDT back in April and comes from the highly regarded Animal Hamaguchi Gym. His work so far has been promising but he had a slight setback earlier this month that made him miss a few shows. That’s the problem with rookies. They break easily.

0. Electric Current Explosion 8-Man Tag Death Match: Atsushi Onita, Sanshiro Takagi, Akito & Maki Itoh Vs Kuro-chan, Super Sasadango Machine, Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Hikari Noa

Here is how loaded this weekend is. DDT has to blow up a ring at Kawasaki Stadium during the dark match to get any sort of attention! If you’re doing a major wrestling show inside Kawasaki Stadium then you have to have Atsushi Onita in an Exploding Ring Death Match. Those are the rules. That is why DDT is setting up two rings, one for the regular matches and one for Onita to blow up. As soon as Onita found out about the second ring he got in touch with DDT and demanded his match take place on the pre-show! His reasoning is it takes a lot of time and dedication to set up the explosives so he wants it to be over and done with before the main show even begins. It also sneakily moves the match over to the main ring instead of the side ring because DDT now has time to clean up the mess after the pre-show. That Onita really is a sneaky git. He has promised to use three to five times the amount of gun powder for explosions than these matches usually use.

The match itself has a lot to unpack. Onita’s run in DDT over the last year has seen him feud with a pervy comedian named Kuro-chan. Onita gets the win most of the time but their last match in December ended in a massive upset. Kuro-chan pinned Onita one, two, three! He stole Onita’s jacket, called himself the new “Evil Ways” and left thinking that was the end of it. Demands for a rematch were ignored by Kuro-chan until his manager got wind of it and decided “WRESTLE PETER PAN 2021” would be the perfect time and place for it to happen. The two went to put their teams together. Onita has DDT’s crazy president Sanshiro Takagi, the not yet crazy Vice President Akito and the right amount of crazy Maki Itoh. Kuro-chan has to team with Super Sasadango Machine because they both have the same agent. However his also gets Hikari Noa and FMW alumni Tetsuhiro Kuroda, which improves his team’s chances. Sasadango had to lie about Noa thinking Kuro-chan is cute to convince him to finally accept the match. Noa in particular has been wanting to do death matches for ages. Her goal is to either run over Takagi in a truck, blow him up in an explosion or do both. The stage is set and one last factor has been added to the match. Kuro-chan wants sole ownership of Exploding Ring Death Matches if his team wins! He also wants Onita to retire when he loses but we all know what that is worth so just ignore that bit.

1. Special 10-Man Tag Match – El Unicorn & Ilusion Debut Match: HARASHIMA, Naomi Yoshimura, Yusuke Okada, Raimu Imai & El Unicorn Vs Yuji Okabayashi, TAMURA, Mizuki Watase, Yuki Iino & Ilusion

DDT looks to the future with the introduction to the DDT Teenage Project. They have spent the last year training four teenagers in secret to become pro wrestlers. Two of them are ready to have their official debut match. On one team is the 13 year old, El Unicorn. On the other is Ilusion, 18 years old. The project is meant to be for those aged 15-18 but there is a reason El Unicorn is there. Not to spoil the kid’s identity but he was already under DDT contract before this project began. Both rookies are eager to fight the larger wrestlers like Naomi Yoshimura and Yuji Okabayashi. There’s another teenager in the match too. Raimu Imai from HEAT-UP is 16 years old and still in his first year of wrestling. His claim to fame is his mother Eriko Imai is a former pop singer and current member of Japan’s House Of Councillors. Raimu’s master TAMURA is on the opposite team. He marvels over how quickly the new generation of wrestlers get to make it to the ring. HARASHIMA and Okabayashi were last seen together as Smile Pissari but they are opponents here. Yusuke Okada and Yuki Iino get to collide with stronger opponents. Last but not least there is Mizuki Watase, who recently returned from injury and finds himself restarting his wrestling progression from scratch again.

2. Double Ring Double Singles Match: Toru Owashi Vs Antonio Honda
2. Double Ring Double Singles Match: Danshoku Dieno Vs Kazuki Hirata

Look, spots for this show are sparse this time around and DDT isn’t able to produce two dozen matches in one night. This isn’t an AEW taping. With the card filling up, the groups of wrestlers nicknamed the DDT Variety Team all began to squabbling with one another. This resulted in them all challenging each other to singles matches, no doubt earning two of them coveted main event spot. That wasn’t going to happen. Hisaya Imabayashi told the wrestlers there was room left on the show for only one more match. They can do Toru Owashi Vs Antonio Honda or Danshoku Dieno Vs Kazuki Hirata but not both. Hirata then had a brilliant idea. There will be two rings available so why not do both matches at the same time? Imabayashi loved the idea and put forth DDT’s first ever Double Ring Double Singles Match! Just don’t be surprised if the two matches still interact and get mixed up with each other. Oh and I think Dieno is currently the Iron Man Heavymetalweight Champion. I lost track of that.

3. Special Hardcore Tag Match: Shunma Katsumata & MAO Vs Chris Brookes & Jun Kasai

The main card gets some of the violence left over from the pre-show. Is there anything you can do to Jun Kasai that would hurt him? He’s been through it all, literally if the thing is made out of glass. He sees the hardcore matches DDT have been doing over the last year and they left him feeling lukewarm. The weapons used and the atmosphere surrounding the matches are a bit too relaxed for his tastes. Relaxed is the accurate word to use given these matches have involved Shunma Katsumata & MAO from The 37KAMIINA (The Sauna KAMIINA). Their obsession with saunas rose to new levels ever since the DDT Sauna Club was formed. They aren’t pushovers though. Katsumata is wrestling death matches in Big Japan more often and MAO always has fucked up ideas for things to do in the ring. They want to show Kasai they can dish him the worst pain he has ever felt and they know just what to use. They found out that Kasai doesn’t like the pain you get from stepping on Lego. It’s his biggest weakness! Kasai refuses to confirm if that’s true or not, explaining that he never feels pain from anything when he wrestles in front of his fans. During all of this, Chris Brookes began feeling like the odd man out. He doesn’t even appear in the advert for the match! All the attention is on the other three and he doesn’t like that. He’ll take his anger out on Katsumata to feel better.

4. KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Titles: Tetsuya Endo, Soma Takao & Yuji Hino (c) Vs Kazusada Higuchi, Yukio Sakaguchi & Saki Akai

DAMNATION’s most successful ventures over the last half year have been in the trios division. After Tetsuya Endo was finally knocked off the top of the mountain, he rallied together Soma Takao and new member Yuji Hino to win the KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Titles. Endo was then able to defend the belts in his hometown. He has felt invincible ever since and thinks he has the power to banish those he defeated from his hometown. The big challengers coming in are Eruption. They held the titles before and Saki Akai in particular thinks it is time to take them back. The build up has seen Kazusada Higuchi reignite his rivalry with Endo. Yukio Sakaguchi and Takao has come to blows several times too. But the spotlight shines brightest on Akai along with Hino’s reaction to her being in the match. Hino thinks Eruption are fighting with a handicap because a woman is on their team. He also refuses to throw any Chops at Akai because he is convinced they would legit murder her. All this attitude has done is fire Akai up even more to prove her doubters wrong. She’s been wrestling for 8 years now and has shown she is not a one trick pony. It also created an unusual situation where Akai slaps around her partners because they haven’t been as determined as she is to win! Keep in mind this is when Sakaguchi is constantly getting into fights with Takao.

5. DDT Universal Title: Yuki Ueno (c) Vs Daisuke Sasaki

DAMNATION’s second most successful venture over the last half year is Daisuke Sasaki stealing the DDT Universal Title belt from Yuki Ueno. I didn’t say winning the championship, I mean literally stealing the belt. That’s not to say Sasaki hasn’t brought it in the ring. He has won several big matches in the King Of DDT tournament by cheating like hell throughout the whole thing. That includes a quick win over Ueno. Another quick win in a later tag match resulted in Ueno giving Sasaki a title shot in order to win back his pride. Big mistake. That is what caused Sasaki to blindside Ueno, steal the title belt and promise to humiliate him even further. The last month has seen Ueno chasing after Sasaki only to see him get away with the belt time and time again. Their last confrontation inside a ring ended with Sasaki beating Ueno bloody. What has been a breakout year for Ueno has since turned sour and could take a turn for the worse if he can’t get his title back.

6. KO-D Openweight Title – BLACKOUT Presents: Jun Akiyama (c) Vs Konosuke Takeshita

Talk about a deal paying off big time. Jun Akiyama to DDT could not have worked out any better if I do say so myself. He is now six months into his KO-D Openweight Title reign with three defences under his belt. He has also taken to the player/coach role in Junretsu rather well (just remember Makoto Oishi is the official leader). The likes of Endo, Higuchi, Dieno and HARASHIMA have all failed to beat him. And then there is Konosuke Takeshita. What a journey this guy has been on. He went through two singles losses to Akiyama in back to back months at the end of 2020. Those results made him self reflect. For the first time he began to question the DDT style he so proudly represented. Things had to change in 2021.

But does it, really? When this year began, Takeshita’s Sauna Club with his friends turned into The 37KAMIINA. What followed has been a year of hot matches and aurora skies. He took a sabbatical to AEW in April, winning over a new audience of fans abroad by being himself and wrestling how he always does. When he returned, success came his way in the tag team division with his sauna buddies. He and Ueno successfully represented DDT against NOAH at “CYBERFIGHT FESTIVAL 2021”, he and Katsumata won the first Ultimate Tag League and then followed it up by winning the KO-D Tag Team Titles. To cap it all off Takeshita rose even further back to the top by winning the King Of DDT tournament. His redemption is almost complete. All that is left to do is finally beat Akiyama one on one.

Easier said than done, right? There’s also one other thing that makes it that little bit more difficult. Kenta Kobashi will be at the show as a special guest to witness the main event. Everytime Kobashi has played this role for a Jun Akiyama singles match, Akiyama has won. Endo learned that the hard way back in “KAWASAKI STRONG 2021” back in February. Akiyama’s previous two victories over Takeshita have both been by submission as well. It’s all well and good to make it three submissions in a row but Akiyama doesn’t care for that kind of stuff. If he has to win by pinfall then so be it. This is the man who comes from King’s Road. He learned that the Giant Baba style has all the right answers for pro wrestling. That is why he is the champion! Takeshita wants to prove there is no correct answer for pro wrestling that applies to everybody. The DDT style he proudly represents can be just as effective for him as King’s Road is for Akiyama. If this match is the end of his journey, we’ll find out which answer is the right one.