Cero Reviews DDT April Fool 2021

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Cero Reviews DDT April Fool 2021

Post by cero2k » Apr 12th, '21, 13:47

DDT April Fool 2021
April 11, 2021
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Hideki Okatani vs. Toi Kojima - 6/10
Your usual rookies match with good basics. Okatani won as expected.

Announcements - Maki Itoh is here to promote the 4.17 TJPW show where she's challenging the White Dragon for the title. King of DDT starts on 6.10, 4 days after Cyber Fight Fest. Gorgeous Matsuno is having the last fight of his 50's today, he was going to have a birthday show, but the venue booked turned into a COVID vaccination site, and so instead, he'll just have a Birthday match on 4.18.

Opening video - Great, they built both title matches for tonight, and they played a Japanese version of Basket Case from Green Day.

Yusuke Okada vs. Yuya Koroku - 6.5/10
This is Yuya Koruku's debut. Koruku has a good body, right now he looks green with nil personality obviously, but he did show a lot of potential, he showed some fire and decent selling for his first match.

Match was quite good, given that Okada carried him, but it was better than the pre-show match. Koroku showed some of his amateur wrestling training, which helps him show off a bit on a debut. Okada won with a Boston Crab.

Akito, Kazuki Hirata, Keigo Nakamura & Makoto Oishi vs. Chris Brookes, Saki Akai, Yuki Ino & Yukio Naya - 7/10
Brookes is the Extreme champion, Akai the Heavymetalweight champion, Naya the 8-man champion, and so Iino came out with a leather belt...like a normal belt, the one you use on your pants. So now everyone has belts in this team. The other team corpsed, I don't think they knew he was doing that.

Match was quite good, the only had one comedy spot with Hirata controlling Iino by using his dance glasses on Iino, but later Iino revealed that he was in control all along, letting Hirata find a false sense of confidence, allowing IIno to drop him with a Samoan drop. At the end, Akai pinned Nakamura with a Quetzal Coatl.

Post-match - Akai asked Brookes to stay in the ring. She said that everyone in DDT has been working hard, and for months, she's been in ERUPTION's corner, seeing Higuchi and Sakaguchi challenge and defend championships, and so she wants to put in the work and challenge Brookes for the Extreme championship. Brookes accepted. Imabayashi however, made it a title vs title if Akai can retain the Heavymetalweight championship until them. DDT has been reading the fantasty romance novel I'm writing.

Antonio Honda, Gorgeous Matsuno & Toru Owashi vs. DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Nobuhiro Shimatani & Tetsuya Endo) - Dud, but perfect
Matsuno called out Endo to start the match, and Endo pinned him in under one minute.

Post-match - Everyone but Matsuno was already half way to the back when Imabayashi ran down to the ring, irate, called everyone back to the ring and yell at them for not reading the room and realizing that this was Matsuno's final match of his 50's, he made Endo feel bad saying that Matsuno is a friend of Endo's father, he even berated the referee for making the count. He ordered the match to restart and do better.

Antonio Honda, Gorgeous Matsuno & Toru Owashi vs. DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Nobuhiro Shimatani & Tetsuya Endo) - 7/10
Match restarted and DAMNATION took Imabayashi's comments as a green light to beat up Matsuno and tease with pins before breaking them up, but eventually, Matsuno did get the tag to Owashi and Honda, who did the Gon The Fox spot before getting the pin over Nobu. Honda is going into the tag tourny, so I think they wanted to give him a win since he IS the weakest member going in.

Naomi Yoshimura Announcement - He said he's rehab is almost over and he'll be returning on 5.9. He asked for Ueno to be his first challenge that day.

DAMNATION (Daisuke Sasaki, Soma Takao & Yuji Hino) vs. The 37KAMIINA (MAO, Shunma Katsumata & Yuki Ueno) - 8/10
We're still building Soma vs Ueno, so they give a lot of time to both guys to wrestle it out. They started the match, and then had a second run towards the end, where they really leaned in to the idea that Soma has Ueno's number, he had a clear win after a Vertabreaker, but broke off his own pin, hit a low blow behind the referee's sight, hit a GIn & Tonic, and got the cockiest pin since Jericho was young.

Other things in the match saw MAO vs Hino and Sasaki vs Shunma, plus a little bit of comedy with Katsu and Hino. All good stuff, but it really was all about Soma vs Ueno.

Post-match - Soma got the ring just to call Ueno weak and that he'll take his championship on 5.4.

KO-D Tag Team Title Match
Eruption (Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi) (c) vs. Smile Pissari (HARASHIMA & Yuji Okabayashi) - 8.5/10
The people have asked for Higuchi vs Okabayashi for months now, so a big part of this match was just about letting those two beat the hell out of each other. They had a really short babyface in peril sequence, that they got out of the way to allow Higuchi and Okabayashi to do their thing.

Also, since they we saw HARASHIMA defeat Sakaguchi in about the perfect 6 minute match, those two also paired up for a couple of teases and callbacks to that match. At the end, it came down to Sakaguchi and Okabayashi going at it, with the latter somewhat easily overpowering Sakaguchi, HARASHIMA tagged in, and after a ugly looking powerbomb from Okabayashi, HARASHIMA hit Somata for the win.

I'm not crazy about the title change, there is obviously a lot to do with Pissari as the new champs, and they could potentially look to push Higuchi as a singles now, but I still feel that ERUPTION should have kept the titles longer, hell even Yoshimura is about to come back, I don't know what they're doing with him and Ueno, but if Nautilus is breaking up, then have them challenge on last time before realizing it's over. We had on the very same show, Akai saying that she wants to challenge Brookes because she sees ERUPTION with defending and challenging for titles, and now they lost those titles.

Dieno vs Akiyama Build Up Video - Good. Dieno talked about Akiyama saying he's the flavor of the month, how unimaginable happens in DDT, so you never know what will come out of this match, implying he'll bring Akiyama into Dieno's world.

Akiyama talked about how he was trained to bring out the best of his competitors, and he hopes to do so with Dieno. He said Dieno is the wrestler with the most guts in the promotion, how everyone walks on eggshells around him, but Dieno walked straight to him and grabbed his balls

KO-D Openweight Title Match
Jun Akiyama (c) vs. Danshoku Dino - 7.5/10
Dieno's long time friend Oishi is in Akiyama's corner now. That has to sting a bit. The corners are actually interesting, Akiyama obviously has Junretsu with him, but Dieno has a compilation of comedy acts of DDT, Honda, Super Sasadango, and Owashi. Masa and Akito are out there too, but they may just wanna see the match up close.

This match was as good as it could had been all things considered. Not that Akiyama can't have a good match with comedy or that Dieno can't main event, but they had to tell a long story and make it come to a point that Dieno had a couple of good near falls.

After Dieno's first plan failed, story of the match was that Dieno kept pushing Akiyama with his brand of wrestling, both to freak him out and catch him off guard, which worked for a while. Akiyama used his style of wrestling to gain control for a while, but Dieno made a comeback and started hitting Akiyama with his greatest hits, he got near falls with a Dieno Driver, later on, he hit the SHIN Dieno Driver, a Dieno Driver with no more underwear between Akiyama's head and Dieno's penis, but nothing to keep Akiyama down. Dieno even relied on a pre-recorded tape to distract Akiyama as a means to recover and try and make a comeback, but no avail.

The match eventually reached it's climax when Dieno took all his clothing off, only relying on a thong hanging from his penis from the show not having to get censored. He went for his ultimate naked moonsault, but Akiyama dodged. The finals minutes was all Akiyama delivering his high knees and Sterness Drivers, but defiantly, Dieno kept popping back up and flipping off Akiyama, after a fourth, Dieno had no more gas in the tank, and got pinned.

I liked that Dieno kept true to his style of wrestling throughout the match, and Akiyama too for that matter, neither man just turned into the other's style in order to counter them or anything of the sort. It's something that we see a lot with Dieno, with the opponent kissing or getting naked, but not Akiyama, and that's how it should had been.

Post-match - Akiyama, in his most passive aggressive style, put over Dieno saying he has never faced anyone like Dieno in all his career. Before he could continue, HARASHIMA came down and told Akiyama that he has been rolling over the DDT roster, but he hasn't lost to him, and so he wants a shot at the title. Akiyama said that he just beat the one icon of DDT, but HARASHIMA is the other, and a match like this should be in a big stage, and so Imabayashi said that it will take place at Super Saitama Arena for the Cyberfight Fest.

Akiyama asked that if he is giving HARASHIMA a shot, it only be fair if he and Oishi get a shot at the tag titles too. HARASHIMA and Okabayashi (who also came out) agreed.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
This was a ok to good show, nothing really blew my mind, which is saying something considering how hyped I was for the tag title match. In a way, this match felt like it a mid-size show that is building up to Cyberfest and some upcoming bigger shows.
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