DDT Ultimate Tag League 2021 In Korakuen Hall

Hideki Okatani vs. Toi Kojima - 6.5/10

Good opener with the rookies, just great basics all around. Okatani over Kojima with a Northern Lights pin.

Into The Ring Rules Four Way Tag Team Match
Sanshiro Takagi & Yukio Naya vs. Danshoku Dino & Super Sasadango Machine vs. Akito & Keigo Nakamura vs. DISASTER BOX (Kazuki Hirata & Toru Owashi) - 4/10

Rules of the match are technically, those of the Reverse Battle Royale from TNA, except it's one fall to the finish, the decision falls between the person tossing someone into the ring. In addition, due to Korakuen Hall regulations, all the orange sitting area is off limits, not like DQ off limits, but because there is a Korakuen Hall security guard that doesn't want anyone jumping into the orange sitting area. Everything else is legal.

I don't have to tell you that this wasn't much of a match, just a bunch of spots around the ring. Takagi being the president, was overly careful that people were not jumping to the Orange sitting area, since he didn't want to have trouble with the venue's management, yet in the end, he was the one tossed into the area, so he spent the rest of the match apologizing, along with Naya.

The finish came with Dieno propping up Nakamura into SSSDango's arms and into a suplex into the ring for the win. It actually looked quite cool.

Post-match - Dango cut a promo that he and Dieno have not been booked for the Saitama Super Arena show, and so he proposed that there should be match of styles, NOAH's heart and soul vs DDT's heart and soul, and so he challenged Sugiura-Gun to a match against him and Dieno, who wasn't looking forward to stepping in the ring with Sugiura.

DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Soma Takao & Tetsuya Endo) vs. Eruption (Kazusada Higuchi & Saki Akai) & Yuki Iino - 7/10

This was good, but it was all over the place. It started with Iino jumping DAMNATION, then Akai being the babyface in peril, but once they got the hot tag, it all went crazy with people coming in and out. With Iino not being part of Eruption, there were some miscommunication spots, but the story did kinda showed that towards the end, Eruption was trying to work with Iino. It all kinda felt like a fieldtrip for DAMNATION, especially Endo, who was just out there having fun wrestling Akai mostly. At the end, it was Endo getting the win over Iino with an SSP.

King of DDT 2021 Announcement - The participants are: Jun Akiyama, Yuki Ueno, Chris Brookes, HARASIMA, Konosuke Takeshita, Tetsuya Endo, Akito, Kazusada Higuchi, Daisuke Sasaki, MAO, Yukio Sakaguchi, Soma Takao, Makoto Oishi, Shunma Katsumata, Naomi Yoshimura, Yuji Hino. Not a single comedy wrestler, all workrate.

Round one takes place on 6.10 at Shinjuku FACE, Second round on 6.20 at Korakuen Hall, as are the Semi and Finals, on 7.4.

Yukio Sakaguchi vs. Yusuke Okada - 8/10

This was awesome! I saw it on the card and didn't know what to expect, it felt like a weird pair up. Well, it ended up being a perfect chemistry between each other. It's just two guys that are really good at making their offense look real and then went balls to the wall from the start. A lot of kicks, headbutts, strikes, and it all ended with a right Roundhouse from Sakaguchi for the KO win.

You're not gonna find many better 5 minute matches out there.

DISASTER BOX (HARASHIMA & Naomi Yoshimura) vs. The 37KAMIINA (MAO & Yuki Ueno) - 8/10

This is Yoshimura's first match in months, coming back from surgery. He had requested a match with his former tag partner in Nautilus, Yuki Ueno, and thus we got this weird tag combination. It's the old DISASTER BOX versus their former member and his new stable, and for that matter, HARASHIMA is challenging for the World title and not likely taking losses, Ueno is the Universal Champion, who is going against Akito in the future, so he's not likely taking loses, Yoshimura just came back and they may not want to give him a loss just yet, and then there was MAO. Yoshimura did end up taking the loss at the hands of his former partner, which could potentially lead to something.

The match focused a lot in HARASHIMA vs Ueno first, and even when they actually started the match, they left the real Ueno vs Yoshimura until the end for the decision. MAO mostly came in and out to transition spots and had some cool stuff with Yoshimura. Ueno defeated Yoshimura with a BME.

Post-match - Ueno cut a promo giving Yoshimura the welcome back to the promotion. Yoshimura said that facing Ueno in this match showed him how much the gap between them had widen and now he knew how much more work he had in front of him to catch up and take that title away from him. He said he'd do his best for himself and for DISASTER BOX.

Ultimate Tag League 2021 Match
Antonio Honda & Chris Brookes [0] vs. Junretsu (Jun Akiyama & Makoto Oishi) [0] - 7/10

The planets have aligned and in opposite corners, we have Antonio Honda and Jun Akiyama, and in case you we doubting my planetary calculations, the alignment is so precise, that Antonio Honda won the match against Akiyama and Oishi, with actual wrestling!

The story of the match was that Honda was kinda scared to take on Akiyama, who is not going to fall for Honda's schtick. Honda kept it low, but at the end, he did managed to get Oishi and Akiyama to listen to his Gon The Fox story, but not even that worked against Akiyama. What did work, was that with Brookes there to cancel out Akiyama, Honda was able to reverse a Fujiyama Knee Lock into a pin and get the win. Beyond that, Honda was mostly getting worked while Brookes was the offense part of the team. For that matter, I didn't think that Brookes vs either Akiyama or Oishi was noteworthy, not bad, just not special either.

Post-match - Honda cut a promo talking about miracles. Brookes then said that he was so impressed with Honda beating Akiyama, that he challenged Higuchi and Hino to come at them and try to show they can hang with Honda!

Ultimate Tag League 2021 Match
DAMNATION (Daisuke Sasaki & Yuji Hino) vs. The 37KAMIINA (Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata) - 9/10

Well, they went for the 30 minute time limit draw and managed to make it quite dramatic. Ever since ALL OUT broke up and Hino came back, DDT has been slowly boiling Hino vs Takeshita confrontations in every DANMATION vs 37KAMIINA matches, and it kinda felt like this was the big climax.

The match was a lot of back and forward, and with 30 minutes, everyone got to pair up with everyone, but there surely was a high emphasis on everything between Takeshita and Hino, as Hino is one, if not THE, powerhouse of DDT, and Takeshita is the babyface face of the company. The one big factor that kept changing momentum in the match was that all of most of DAMNATION was out there with Sasaki and Hino, so on a constant basis, there were referee distractions, referee bumps, interference, and such, that I wasn't minding, because the babyfaces always came back from it, which now in hindsight, I can see because they were going for the draw, and not a cheap finish.

As for relevant spots, probably the biggest was Takeshita doing a deadlift delayed suplex on Hino with the spike assist from Katsumata. A bunch of great Germans from Take, some Last Ride that Sasaki reversed into a Destroyer on Take, and about a thousand lariats from Hino.

OVEARLL THOUGHTS

Great start of the Tag League! Not only did the have two good league matches to close the show, the rest of the undercard was quite fun and in some case, overdelivered. Some of the rest of the shows are going to be just the tag league matches, so just a 2-match show, so not many excuses to not follow this tournament.