Dot Net reader Austin Vitelli watched the 11/12 Dragon Gate iPPV "Bushido: Code of the Warrior" iPPV and sent along the following report.

I thoroughly enjoyed this show considering it was the fastest two hours of wrestling I’ve ever experienced. This was my second Dragon Gate USA iPPV that I’ve ordered (I saw Untouchable 2011 in September) and it was just as good. The theme of the show was unique in that for many of the matches a new DGUSA star faced an established veteran. The show started just a few minutes after 5:30, which was the advertised start time.

1. Masato Yoshino defeated AR Fox in 8:00. DGUSA got off to a poor start and decided to give us no audio for the first seven minutes of this match. There were also multiple stoppages in video feed (one for multiple minutes), so I didn’t really see a lot of this match. Later in the match Fox hit a nice 450 Splash, but Yoshino kicked out. Yoshino then proceeded to lock in the Sol Naciente (Straight jacket triangle choke) and made Fox tap out.

It was a solid match from what I saw with good action from them both. After the match, Ricochet and CIMA came out and taunted Yoshino. (A side note: the microphone didn’t have a cord this time, which is an improvement from their Untouchable show in Chicago a couple months ago). Ricochet says that Yoshino won’t beat CIMA tomorrow night. Ricochet and CIMA attacked Yoshino, but PAC made the save. This led right into the next match.

2. PAC defeated Brodie Lee in 10:41. This match began immediately with Blood Warriors of Ricochet, CIMA, and Akira Tozawa watching the match ringside. Eventually, it was just Tozawa on the outside, and he acted as if he was a lumberjack for the whole time. At 1:30, Brodie Lee somehow hit a hurricanrana and a suicide dive! He got massive cheers for that, and they were deserving because it was amazing. Seven minutes in PAC hit the British Airways, but Lee kicked out at one. Later, Lee flipped off the crowd and was verbally heard saying the F word. At 8:00, PAC hit a monster German Suplex for huge “PAC” cheers. PAC was hit with the Truck Stop (huge tilt-a-whirl slam) nine minutes in, and immediately after was hit with a Hangman DDT while his feet were propped up on the top turnbuckle. Somehow, PAC kicked out of both of those moves at about 9:30.

PAC came back with some offense and hit the Shooting Star Press and British Airways again for the win. There were huge cheers for PAC at the end and the crowd absolutely loved this match. I personally thought this was also a great match, and overall it was the third best of the night. Rich Swann came out right after it, rapping his theme music while Johnny Gargano followed him. Tozawa, who came into the ring post-match to check on Lee, was challenged to another rap battle by Swann. Tozawa responded: “No one wants to hear you rap, they want to hear me sing!” Chants began for Tozawa and he began to sing very well. Swann looked stunned, then attacked Tozawa and began a match between them.

3. Rich Swann defeated Akira Tozawa in 8:08. They brawled for a bit to start, then Tozawa grabbed a chair on the outside and threw it at Swann (I guess the ref wasn’t looking?). Throughout the match there were conflicting chants for both men surprisingly. Later, once they were both in the ring, they were trading pin attempts when Swann won with a quick Crucifix. Tozawa looked stunned as Gargano came into the ring to celebrate with Swann. BxB Hulk then came out and stared down Gargano to set up their match. Personally, this was probably one of my least favorite matches, which is surprising considering both of these men are great workers. There was just nothing special about it in my opinion.

4. Johnny Gargano defeated BxB Hulk in 15:51. Throughout the beginning there were chants for both men. Brodie Lee was on commentary for this match and he was actually very entertaining. At 4:30, Hulk got some red wine from a bottle outside the ring and spat it in the face of Gargano (the ref still wasn’t looking…). For the first half of the match, there was practically no offense by Gargano. Then at 8:00, Gargano hit a massive spear by jumping from the apron and through the ropes. Lee, who added a lot to the match with his comedy, did not like the ref either and said: “This umpire sucks.” I thought it was pretty funny because he reminded me of CM Punk when he was in the announcer’s booth.

Anyway, shortly after that Hulk hit a huge powerslam off the top rope, but Gargano kicked out at two. Gargano hit his finisher right after that, but Hulk kicked out. Gargano then locked in the Gargano Escape and Hulk struggled for a little, but finally had to tap to give Gargano the huge victory. This was an excellent match and definitely the best of the night in my opinion. It’s amazing because I thought Gargano had the best match at the Untouchable show I saw in September when he faced Akira Tozawa. Anyway, after the match, Lenny Leonard started to promote the DGUSA Black Friday sale when Lee cut in and said: “I hate Black Friday. I have to drive my truck all over the country because idiots want to buy stuff.” Lee is classic on the mic and luckily stayed for the next match.

5. Sabu defeated Pinkie Sanchez in a South Philly Street Fight in 8:39. The street fight stipulation allowed for the use of anything, but all we saw were two chairs and one table. It only took a minute into the match for Sabu to introduce the first chair. At three minutes, Sanchez hit the ugliest suicide dive I’ve ever seen in my life that barely connected with Sabu. Ugh. Later, Sabu hit his classic jump off a chair onto the top rope and sprinboarded onto Sanchez on the outside. Once back in the ring, Sabu hit the Arabian Facebuster with a chair 7:30 in, then hit another one with a chair that put Sanchez through a table.

Sabu decided to win the match off a submission, but it took him three tries to make Sanchez tap in the Camel Clutch. Finally, Sanchez tapped to end this okay match. If you’ve ever seen a street fight, there’s no use going out of your way to see this one. After the match, the rest of D.U.F. came out and attacked Sabu. Jon Davis and AR Fox came out to make the save. The scene ended with Sami Callihan and Arik Cannon dragging Sanchez like a sand bag to the back to head into the intermission.

6. YAMATO defeated Chuck Taylor to retain the Open the Freedom Gate Championship in 17:58. The intermission only lasted about five minutes, and was only used to clean up the broken table from the last match. YAMATO came out with a towel on his head, and when he took it off he was bald! The announcers said that he lost it in some sort of 6-Man Cage match in Japan where the last man to escape had his mask removed/head shaved. Lee left commentary after the last match unfortunately, but Rich Swann joined in with Leonard. YAMATO utilized the knife-edge chop a lot in the match and left huge visible red marks on Taylor’s chest.

Later, Taylor was choking YAMATO with a wire on the outside (but once again, the ref didn’t do anything about it. By this time, the crowd would boo the ref before every match when the ring announcer said his name). Once again, the crowd was split between the two men during the whole match, but it seemed as though YAMATO was playing the heel. Nothing really happened for most of the match until Taylor hit the Awful Waffle at about 17 minutes in and got the pin. YAMATO’s foot was clearly on the rope, and Gargano, who was watching, saw it. Taylor began to celebrate with the title when the ref asked Gargano if YAMATO’s foot was on the bottom rope. He said it was, so they restarted the match. It didn’t take long after that for YAMATO to hit the Galleria at 17:30, but Taylor kicked out!

YAMATO then locked in the crossface on Taylor to pick up the submission victory. Taylor, who was visibly mad, then stole the title from YAMATO and ran away with it. Overall, it was just a pretty good match, but I definitely expected this to be the main event. I had much higher expectations for this match.

7. CIMA and Ricochet (Blood Warriors) defeated Arik Cannon and Sami Callihan (D.U.F.) to retain the Open the United Gate Championship in 17:56. The video feed froze for practically both teams’ entire entrances, so I don’t know what happened there. It then unfroze with Callihan talking in the ring, but there was no audio. The audio finally came back on just in time to hear Callihan say the F word like three times. The match then began as an all-out brawl with Brodie Lee getting involved and hitting a Big Boot on Callihan. B.J. Whitmer then came out and took out Lee. It took about three and a half minutes for regular tag team rules to go into effect.

It was just basic tag team wrestling for the first half of the match, but from the 10-16 minute marks there was great action. At 16 minutes, there was a “This is Awesome” chant. Swann, who was still on commentary for this match, decided it would be okay to do his high pitched scream every 2 seconds, which became very annoying by the end. Back in the ring, Ricochet hit a crazy 630 Splash and got the pin on Cannon. Overall it was a very good match (my second favorite of the night) and definitely the better of the two title matches. Ricochet got on the mic at the end and said they’re the best tag team in the business. CIMA then got on and had some choice words for some fans. I really have no idea what he said, but I did hear him say “Eagles suck,” which I didn’t appreciate at all considering I’m a big Eagles fan.

Notes:

The entire iPPV lasted about 2 hours with the intermission taking only about 5 minutes total. There were some good matches such as YAMATO/Taylor and Yoshino/Fox, and there were some great matches such as the main event, PAC/Lee, and Hulk/Gargano. It was well worth the $15 I spent and they said their next event would be in late January on a Friday night. I liked the storyline problem that could possibly occur between Taylor and Gargano if Gargano wins the title from YAMATO on Sunday. This was definitely not a TV-14 PPV considering they made no attempt to censor the F word. But overall, it was a very good show and anyone who’s a fan of good, solid in-ring work should check this out.

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