DDT Ultimate Tag League 2021 The FINAL!!

Keigo Nakamura & Yuya Koroku vs. Hideki Okatani & Toi Kojima - 5/10

Kojima is still doing the 37KAMIINA Neppa, so I guess he's not done trying to join the stable. This was a good, rookie level match, all good basic stuff. Okatani submitted Koroku with a Liontamer.

Announcements - Not a lot of updates, they ran down tonight's card. DISASTER BOX opened the show. They talked about this being the final show in Tokyo before CyberFight Fest and how they're going to win the 6-man titles. They were all acting weird for some reason.

Antonio Honda vs. Danshoku Dieno vs. Kazuki Hirata vs. Saki Akai & Yuki Iino - 5/Fun

Honda is back to where he belongs, the comedy second match of the night, just a couple of days after I said he had my favorite match of his.

This was for the most part a combination of all gimmicks, we got Hirata not being able to dance, Honda's Gon The Fox, Dieno molesting people, Iino trying to do his haka's, and Saki just kinda trying to take things seriously. It all led to DIeno offering his anus for electric charging, and so each wrestler charged one of the limbs with electricity, which led to an electric fight where Iino took out Honda, only for Hirata to jump in and steal the pin.

Hirata finally got to dance at the end.

Akito, Yukio Naya & Yusuke Okada vs. The 37KAMIINA (MAO & Yuki Ueno) & Chris Brookes - 7/10

This was great and really chaotic, but in a good way, MAO and Ueno aside, none of these guys are tag teams, so they were all over each other's spots, in a sense that made the action look slightly more real and with a sense of urgency to get the upper hand. The match was obviously about pairing up Ueno and Akito, but they also added some heat between Brookes and Naya

Post-match - Ueno said that he's all patched up tonight, but come the title defense, he'll be 100%. The build to Akito vs Ueno continues.

DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Soma Takao & Tetsuya Endo) vs. DISASTER BOX (HARASHIMA, Naomi Yoshimura & Toru Owashi) 7/10

Kinda interesting that they're building a 6-person title match with a 6-person match that only includes half of the participants of the upcoming title match, but for what it's worth, it served its purpose by having Yoshimura and Owashi work a lot with Endo and Soma. In addition, HARASHIMA had some build up towards his match with Akiyama, mainly in the finish where instead of getting the win with Somata, he used a front neck lock to submit Paulie.

Ultimate Tag League 2021 Match
DAMNATION (Daisuke Sasaki & Yuji Hino) [3] vs. Eruption (Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi) [4] - 7/10

Good match, but I was kinda disappointed by the pair up of Higuchi and Hino, I'm starting to realize that Higuchi's proficiency comes from being a huge guy versus someone either smaller or his size. Someone who does spots where he is seen as the smaller guy don't work for him and he's not the best seller of those spots. Being the biggest guy in the ring is Hino's gimmick.

As for the match, we saw Sakaguchi and Sasaki mostly be the guys getting worked on, while Higuchi and Hino were the powerhouses that did the momentum trading between the teams. There was a lot of hoss stuff done between Hino and Higuchi, from shoulder tackle exchanges to a chop exchange where Hino took his shirt off for, but then put it back on once they were done. The stuff with Sakaguchi and Sasaki was mostly submission work, DDT has been trying to convince us that Sasaki is a competent grappler, to the point that the decision came from Sasaki submitting Sakaguchi with his Crossface.

Ultimate Tag League 2021 Match
Junretsu (Jun Akiyama & Makoto Oishi) [4] vs. The 37KAMIINA (Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata)[3] - 8.5/10

This is potentially the finals if Junretsu can get the win and rank up 6 points, beating DAMNATION's 5 points. BUT, if the 37KAMIINA can get the win, we're having a tie breaker match after this. For what it's worth, if this ends in a tie, DAMNATION wins.

The way this match went, I started to think that there wouldn't be a tie breaker necessary, they were going all out, and in a way, Junretsu vs HARASHIMA/Okabayashi is something that had been talked about, it's even something that HARA and Okabayashi already kinda agreed on as a payment for Akiyama giving HARA a title shot at CyberFight Fest, but alas, DDT is smart and why have one contender when you can easily build two.

The match was great, a good babyface underdog story with Katsu. The story started with 37K having the upper hand against Oishi, pissing off Akiyama, who just got in there and started dominating Katsu, cutting him off, and between slams and submissions, they broke him apart until Take was able to get tagged in and bring things back to a balance.

At the end, things happened to come down to Akiyama and Katsu, and for anyone watching, I'm sure that's when we thought that that was it, that it was on purpose, predictable, and only a matter of minutes before Akiyama pinned the smaller, lower in the totem pole, Katsu, but NO! Katsu manages to get a school boy on Akiyama that he can't escape and pins the champion!

Shunma Katsumata has pinned Jun Akiyama. Give me a Katsu vs Akiyama Lego Match! Katsu is only the second man in DDT to pin Akiyama, the first being Higuchi last year.

Ultimate Tag League 2021 Final Match
DAMNATION (Daisuke Sasaki & Yuji Hino) [5] vs. The 37KAMIINA (Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata) [5] - 7.5/10

There it is, the reason why, for months, they built Take and Shunma taking on Hino in random 6-person matches between the 37KAMIINA and DAMNATION. They ended up being the finals of the tag team tournament. In addition, while not trying to imply that Eruption wasn't a hard fight for DAMNATION, they at least got about half a hour of rest before this match, while 37K had to do this back to back with only about 5 minutes in between.

The story here was trying to pair up all guys for different purposes. Take and Hino obviously did the powerhouse stuff, but we also saw Sasaki work over Take's hurting leg, the one that Oishi worked on in the previous match. Katsu, having been destroyed by Junretsu, had a harder tie getting in the match, a slam by Hino was enough to take him out for a while, so he was out there fighting a giant.

Towards the end, the match came down to a Sasaki vs Take pair up in which we saw the transition of dominance, as Take started to make a comeback, that would eventually lead to the win after Katsu managed to slam Hino somehow, and after a spike piledriver, called the Brainbuster MADMAX, Take pinned Sasaki for the win.

Post-match - 37KAMIINA got their 1M Yen cash prize, they cut promos about the fans supporting them. The immediately said they'd challenge HARASHIMA and Okabayashi when they can work out a date with BJW.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Good show, but I don't think any of the matches were must sees. This was more about seeing the finals of the tournament that we've followed for some weeks now.