Cero Reviews DDT Into the Fight 2021

[cero2k]

DDT Into The Fight 2021
February 28, 2021
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Keigo Nakamura & Yuki Ueno vs. Toi Kojima & Yusuke Okada - 6.5/10

Great opener. Great wrestling from all four, no doubt that Nakamura is super underrated and versatile, he can have total comedy matches and follow up with a totally serious and competitive match. The stuff with Okada and Ueno was great too, and with Okada actually pinning Ueno, they're surely building to a rematch between the two. There is no argument that leaving AJPW and joining DDT of all promotions was the best decision.

Post-match - Okada and Ueno faced off. Okada challenged Ueno for the Universal title, to which Ueno accepted. After leaving, the whispered to the camera that he lost on purpose to get this match with Okada.

DDT Iron Man Heavy Metal Championship 6-Way Match
Young Bucks: Killing The Business From Backyards To The Big Leagues Book (c) vs. Antonio Honda vs. Danshoku Dieno vs. Kazuki Hirata vs. Saki Akai vs. Saki Akai Photobook: Lip Hip Shake - 4/Fun

Rules of the match is that whoever pins the YB book for 3 seconds, wins the match and belt, BUT if the book can make it to the 10 minute time limit without being pinned, it retains the title.

Young Bucks book was carried out by Imabayashi, the book had it's own personal catering in it's locker room. Gotta respect the champion.

Obviously a lot of comedy going on. Among it, Dieno tried to start a tag team with the YB book. Honda did his fake injury Gon the Fox tactic. At one point, Hirata, desperate that the book was too strong for them, decided to go to the back and find a contender that could take out the YB's book, and that was Saki Akai's 2006 photobook: LIP HIP SHAKE. They did some spots with Dieno's ass giving electric powers to Akai's book and well as Gon the Fox. Between the Fox and the book, they took out all participants in the match and the Akai book ended on top of the Bucks' book, pinning it to win the title.

Post-match - Hirata tried challenging Akai's book for the title, but got his ass handed by the book, and Akai's book retained. Afterwards, the owner of the book came out to retrieve it. Little bit of trivia, Akai's book is the 1,499th Ironman Heavymetalweight Champion! Whoever pins it, will be the 1.5K champion.

DAMNATION (Daisuke Sasaki, Mad Paulie & Nobuhiro Shimatani) vs. DISASTER BOX (HARASHIMA & Toru Owashi) & Yukio Naya - 6.5/10

Ok match, there was some good stuff between HARASHIMA and Sasaki, and some good big boi stuff with Paulie vs both Owashi or Naya, but beyond that, it was just there. At the end, HARA beat Nobu with Somata

DAMNATION (Soma Takao, Tetsuya Endo & Yuji Hino) vs. ALL OUT (Akito, Konosuke Takeshita & Yuki Iino) - 7.5/10

This had some interesting levels to work from. Akito is the one representative of the 6-man champions that will be facing the DAMNATION team of Endo/Soma/Hino soon, so there is that tension. You have Iino, who has been feuding with Hino, and has promised that if they face each other again, he'll win; and finally, while it's not an active rivalry, Takeshita (who doesn't really have a beef with DAMNATION right now) and Endo will forever be a rivalry to be the face of DDT.

And so, this match made sure to feed, build, and give us a little bit of everything. We got a lot of Hino vs Iino, we got some Endo vs Take, and we got a short sequence were DAMNATION showed their 3-man teamwork against Akito. At the end, it came down to Soma and Iino, with the latter having some advantage until Soma started going for the certified Endless Waltz until he got the win with the third attempt. Really good match, workrate wise, best of the night so far.

Post-match - After the match, Akito called out Take, Iino, and Katsumata to the ring. He proposed that it was time to disband ALL OUT, he was focused on the trios titles, Katsumata and Take are doing their own thing and surely focused on the Sauna Club, and Iino, he was doing great by himself since his return. Take wasn't convinced, while Katsu accepted that he was in the main event tonight and a champion, and he had done it without the help of ALL OUT. He was ok with the decision. Iino said he was sad, he was grateful that they kept ALL OUT alive while he was gone and was grateful there was a place for him to come back, but he reluctantly accepted that it was time for ALL OUT to close it's history.

Takeshita said that they couldn't just end it here and then and asked Imabayashi for a farewell show to say goodbye to the fans. This suddenly turned into a really sad show.

Eruption (Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi) & Chris Brookes vs. Junretsu (Hideki Okatani, Jun Akiyama & Makoto Oishi) - 7/10

Purpose of this match is to build Higuchi vs Akiyama for the title match, and it was quite productive for that. They did a lot of Higuchi vs Akiyama, but they also had Sakaguchi fight Akiyama, which I was thinking that it wouldn't be a bad singles match to have as part of the build up. One of the things that they seem to be doing with Akiyama is showing that he has a somewhat weak head, while Higuchi was straight up thrown head first into the ring post and didn't hurt him.

Brookes mostly got in the ring with Oishi and Okatani, who ended up pinning with the Praying Mantis Bomb. Brookes kinda felt out of place in this match, but him getting the pin actually helps him towards some post-show plans.

At one point in the match, Akiyama paired up with Sakaguchi and I found it incredible to believe that they're 51 and 47 years old respectively.

Post-match - Higuchi, who had the claw on Akiyama, had to be pulled away by Brookes and Sakaguchi. Akiyama was left laying. Nice to see Akiyama selling for Higuchi in a post-match angle, and love that Higuchi is coming at Akiyama like a Rhino.

DDT Extreme Championship Kid's Room Sauna Count Edition Death Match
Shunma Katsumata (c) vs. MAO - 9/10

Rules of the match are that all weapons in the ring are legal, outside weapons are legal at the discretion of the referee, who is a father of 3, and has to judge if such weapon would be safe for his own children. In addition, there are no rope breaks or countouts. And one last thing, pin counts are accumulative (assuming it's not a 3-count) and whoever reaches 37 first, can win the match.

This was a great match, it was super brutal regardless of the fun title give to it. A lot of the toys are just not meant to be used as weapons, well, I guess none of the toys are meant to be used as weapons, and so taking bumps on plastic tables and breaking a plastic box on someone's head just looked brutal. I loved how they played around with the pin counter until the very end, when it came down to MAO having 36, and Katsumata kicking out before 1, then Katsu coming up to 35, for that last minute raise to a pin.

As for weapons, we saw a lot of lego and kids tables and such, but at points, they tried to bring in harder stuff, like MAO dropping a cinder block on top of Katsu, that was disguised as a big lego block, so it was taken out of the match. At another point, MAO convinced the referee that a table was a 'homework table', and so it made it in. Skewers and barbwire was also considered unsafe for kids.

Post-match - After MAO and Katsu had their moment, Brookes came out and politely challenged Katsu to a title match, a 'clean' match. Katsu accepted since Brookes had asked nicely with really good Japanese by the way, but when they shook hands, Brookes kicked him in the dick and told him he'll kill him! Katsu asked Imabayashi to cancel the match, but it had already been announced and he couldn't false promote.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Really fun show, had a little bit of everything. Can't really say it was a newsworthy show, or a must watch MOTYC, but it was one of the upper middle shows with a hell of a main event.