Dragon Gate 11/15/2020 - Dragon Gate Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2020

 Dragon Gate 11/15/2020 - Dragon Gate Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2020

 Open The Brave Gate Title - Keisuke Okada vs Kaito Ishida

Kaito Ishida with the long hair, Keisuke Okada with the blonde hair

I've been a big fan of Okuda everytime I've seen him. Just a total alpha. They did a flurry strike exchange early and Okuda got dumped on his head with a german. Ishida put him in a tree of woe and then started slapping and kicking him which was awesome. Then he hit him in the ankle with a chair. Ishida worked the leg a little more and Okuda sold it, making it the story of the match. Ishida took a cradle shock onto chairs. They traded more shots and then kicks with Ishida nailing the injured leg. Okuda no sold a german and they did simultaneous high kicks before Ishida got hit with one of the best knees I've ever seen. Okuda tried to powerbomb him but his knees gave out, then they did it again and got it right. Ishida put him in an ankle lock and then it got turned into a sleeper. Ishida tried to get up and took a nasty sleeper throw and then got put back in the sleeper. Okuda no sold a tiger suplex then put him back in the sleeper to win. I really liked this match alot minus some of the no selling. This was an intense and high energy battle with a lot of nasty shots. One of the better matches I've seen in a long time.

There's a comedy battle royale here that I think we can skip.

Madoka Kikuta and Taketo Kamei vs Boku R Shimizu and Ryo Saito

Saito and R got kicked and then dove on to start. R and Kikuta had a shoulderblock contest which R won. Kamei tried a hurricanrana on R, but R caught him and turned it into a crab. Kamei made a comeback and a tag to Kikuta, who took a hard lariat from R. He didn't really sell it though even though it was brutal. Kamei and Kikuta did some double team splash from an electric chair position and Kamei took a rough release german. Kamei then got splashed by both opponents. Kikuta got one of the nastiest forearms I've ever seen and then did a good yakuza kick. Ryo traded pins with Kamei and then kikuta came out nowhere with a spinning lariat for the win. Good match with R stiffing people like I've never seen and Kamei really taking a whooping.

Genki Horiguchi, Don Fuji, TARU and Masaaki Mochizuki vs Taro Nohashi, Susumu Yokosuka, K-Ness and Yasushi Kanda

TARU got a long entrance here and they made a big deal about him. This is a collection various DG/Toryumon vets. I think Ohashi was in Toryumon X briefly, though I'm not 100% sure on that. Susumu is somewhere around 40 and has a head of hair better than people half his age do. Susumu and Genki do a little technical face off exchange and Ohashi and Fuji trade shoulders. Genki got beaten up for a while and they did the spot where Ohashi got hit in the face with the stretched out rubber band. They put Ohashi on his head and kicked and hit him in the crotch multiple times, then they did the rubber band to the crotch. Poor guy. Kanda did a tope and then Ohashi asai moonsaulted multiple people. Susumu and Mocchy traded lariats for kicks. Genki took a bunch of moves and Taru cleaned house. We went into a finisher train with everyone hitting or trying to hit theirs and then Taru took the win over K-Ness with a driver. This was a half-comedy/half-tribute match. It was fine for what it was.

Dragon Dia vs Dia Inferno

Despite looking almost the same, Dragon Dia is not Dragon Kid. He got a music entrance though and suffice to say, the girls did not stick around for Inferno. Dia got thrown up to the apron from the outside and did a very high asai moonsault that he got lucky Inferno caught. Dia did a hangspring elbow and a flip over the ropes into a hurricanrana. Inferno bounced Dia with a backcracker. Dia came back with a dropkick while he was on the top rope and then a headscissors from the top. Inferno hit him hard with a stiff powerbomb and ripped his mask for the DQ in a disappointing finish. Then his RED group ripped the mask off completely and scuffled with Dia's buddies.

Naruki Doi, Masato Yoshino and Toru Owashi vs Team Dragon Gate - Kzy, Punch Tominaga and Strong Machine J

I'd love to skip this for probably being a throwaway but I always like Yoshino and Doi. Kzy did a running blockbuster onto Yoshino. Punch tries to chop Toru and pays for it with more chops back. DoiYoshi did a high speed double team baseball slide. Punch got beaten up for a long time here and took a nice double team flapjack. Punc also did a cool limbo evasion of the Doi 5's here. Yoshino won this here with a Sol Naciente on Punch. This was a weird match with theoretical heels being in the sympathetic babyface spot, getting picked on by the faces and then not really selling.

Open the Twin Gate Championship - Kota Minoura and YAMATO vs BxB Hulk and Yamato

The finish

RED won with a KAI drop on Minoura. This wasn't any good at all. RED just sucks the life out of every match I see them in. They always look so slow and out of place. Hulk is awful these days as he clearly gained weight and is doing all kinds of bad looking axe kicks and weird spins. This just dragged and I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Open the Triangle Gate Title - 3 Way Elimination Tag Match - RED (Kazma Sakamoto, SB KENTo and Takashi Yoshida) vs Team Toryumon (Dragon Kid, Kagetora and Masato Yoshino) vs Team Dragon Gate (Ben-K, U-T and Yosuke Santa Maria) 

Dear God...a crossdresser and Takashi Yoshida in the same match. Yoshino is a surprise partner for Team Toryumon. This is a 3 way elimination match with teams of 3, so there's always going to be 3 people in the match at one time. Toryumon invented this concept and some of the original matches were just incredible. But, they've been doing it for 16 years now and they have a formula to it now so it isn't as exciting. They also didn't choose the best talent for this, which is likely going to bring it down a notch.

SB KENTo got the win over here first eliminating U-T with a sharpshooter then eliminating Yoshino with it too after throwing powder in his eyes and stomping on his nuts. As expected, this was one of the least impressive multi-team trios matches I've seen. Anytime RED got in there they just slowed it down and stunk up the pace and the "comedy" from Santa Maria didn't help things either. They really didn't even do a lot of the usual spots either aside from the endless corner lariats and a 4 person suplex. Disappointing stuff.

Open the Dream Gate title - Eita vs Shun Skywalker

They did some basic feeling out stuff to start. Then RED got involved and blatantly beat the crap out of Shun for like 5 minutes straight outside while the ref was "distracted". See this is stupid and makes no sense. You're going to tell me that the NINE members of RED out there (plus Eita) can't just beat the crap out of Shun together on the outside and end this in like 2 minutes? Just nonsense. The ref went down later in the match and Red had 5 members in the ring. Shun somehow took out 4 of them seperately, of course. Eita blocked a moonsault attempt with his feet and then gave Shun a hard superkick. Later Shun hit a moonsault double knee and a moonsault with a spin drop to win in a lame match. I already went into the issues with this above, but then RED not even trying to get involved in the finish was dumber. And Eita going down so easy, with no real big kickouts or anything in the main event of this was the cherry on the turd sundae here.

Overall thoughts: Started off well and progressively got worse. RED sucks and ruined the show. The main event and semi-main were low effort matches and some of the worst efforts I've ever seen DG wrestlers put out.