Wrestling thoughts (and demons)

Ko-D Tag Team Championship – Chris Brookes & HARASHIMA [c] (Fantômes Dramatic) vs Shinya Aoki & Junta Miyawaki

If you're on wrestling Tumblr you've probably already seen gifs of Chris Brookes. He's the tall British guy who wrestles like a horny stick insect. But despite being built like a sentient coat stand, he also hits like a truck, due to the combination of his freakishly long limbs and the physics of levers.

Harashima on the other hand, you may not have heard of, which is a damn shame because he's secretly been one of the best wrestlers in the world for about the last 20 years. If Ueno is the modern ace, Harashima is the veteran ace of yesteryear. Think of him as the Tanahashi of DDT, but with better knees and slightly smaller tits. He's in his 50s now, but he must have a withered portrait in his attic somewhere because the man does not age. He's still throwing out poison ranas like it's nothing. The only indication he's on the older side are his pleather trousers, which are straight out of a mid 00s indie show.

Their challengers are one of my favourite odd couple tag teams in wrestling currently. On paper, the combination of a colourful, happy-go-lucky superhero and a gravelly former MMA fighter should absolutely not work. But they both have hidden depths. Underneath the neon orange cape, Junta Miyawaki secretly knows his judo well, and despite being a serious technician, Aoki secretly loves to piss about a bit. Otherwise why would he have joined DDT, the Pissing About promotion? (‘Fork complains about being found in kitchen’ etc etc.)

I'm expecting this one to be 100% My Jam though: by which I mean super technical (Aoki is such a purist in the ring that he rarely wins by submission because he finds it too easy and therefore boring). All four guys are very comfortable on the mat, so expect the gay sex to get very complicated.

Prediction: Chris and Harashima retain

Result I'd like: honestly I'd be very happy with either team winning. I'm just here for the pretzeling! 🥨

Special Singles Match – Danshoku Dieno vs YAMATO (Dragongate)

If I had a nickel for every time the middle aged ace of another promotion had come to DDT to get their face shoved in Dieno’s arse, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. 

Having watched Tanahashi Enter the Dieno Hole, Dragongate’s Yamato apparently decided he wanted some of that action for himself. I’ll admit that I’m not a Dragongate watcher, so I don’t know anything about Yamato beyond that he’s well regarded and for a long time was considered the ace of the promotion. Fortunately, @scarskelly has written an introduction to the guy! So go read that!

Danshoku Dieno is also hard for me to introduce, but for different reasons. I am very familiar with him (intimately familiar with some parts of him), but on paper, his character sounds pretty offensive. I think at some point in the past it probably was: afaik the whole joke was originally “lol he’s gay and he likes to kiss men, yuck”. But at some point in the intervening years, he’s morphed into an absolutely beloved icon of DDT: a sort of gay high priest who bestows his blessing on men in the crowd by kissing volunteers before every match. It’s genuinely lovely to watch! He's the heart and soul of the promotion.

Dieno might not be for you and that's okay. To be honest, he’s not always for me, depending on the particular match. But it would take a whole essay by someone other than me to properly dissect the cultural background and ethical implications of his character, so I’ll keep to explaining his kayfabe lore, which is surprisingly intricate:

At some point he will try to sit on your face. This is called Nightmare and is to be avoided at all costs

His kiss/liplock is a debilitating submission hold - opponents sometimes pass out due to its sheer power!

However! One of his weaknesses is if you kiss him first! But watch out! You must be true of heart and sure that your kiss is sufficiently powerful. 

At some point he will sit on the turnbuckle, arse towards the ring, and show hole. Anyone whose face is shoved betwixt his cheeks is briefly rendered unconscious

He isn’t able to move at this point, so he becomes a sort of environmental hazard, like a windmill in a particularly lewd game of mini golf

He employs the advanced wrestling technique of Anal Penetration, which is especially impressive considering his opponent's posterior is usually fully covered

One of his main ways of escaping pins is to grab your dick

His finisher is waiting until your head falls into his trunks (I think his penis may have some kind of magnetic powers?) and then hitting a piledriver

So yeah. Even if Yamato manages to overcome all that, it's unlikely he'll ever be the same again. Also we'll probably see his entire arse 🙏

Prediction: Yamato wins (but at what cost)

Result I‘m hoping for: Dieno wins (as the beating heart of DDT)

Bring Your Son to Work Day Special Tag Team Match - Jun Kasai & Hinata Kasai vs Jun Akiyama & Rukiya 

What’s better than teaming up with your actual real life dad? Why, teaming with your dad on the 1st anniversary of your debut, of course! Not that you’d really know Jun was Hinata’s dad just by looking at them. If you’re not familiar with Jun Kasai, imagine the scariest looking man you’ve ever seen wearing flannel (if you live in Seattle I understand there's some competition). His body is 90% scar tissue and his favourite pastime is sticking skewers in his own scalp. By all accounts, he’s an absolute sweetie irl though, which I guess is something he has in common with his son!

Hinata, you see, is a fresh faced youth who looks about 16 despite being 22. He's a literal babyface. I think it’s fair to say he’s had a bit of a rough start as a wrestler, given he’s yet to win a match (he’s been on a winning team a few times, but he’s never got the pin himself). As a performer, he’s still got a way to go too, but it’s been fun watching him develop! It's early days, but he seems to have an aptitude for bati-bati and shoot style, which is somewhat unexpected! Maybe his mum's an MMA fighter or something.

I’m intrigued as to how this one will go: I don’t think Jun has ever had a match that didn’t involve weapons, and I’m not sure Hinata has ever so much as looked at a light tube, let alone swung one in anger. So however this shakes out it's going to be a new experience for one of them.

Their opponents almost don’t matter – this is the Kasai Family Show – but there’s a nice parallel with Akiyama being a legendary veteran at the end of his career and Rukiya being a young whippersnapper under his tutelage. Rukiya's main notable traits are: a) being angry and b) sometimes wrestling in what look like Spider-Man undies.

Prediction: the Kasais have it

Result I’m hoping for: Hinata gets his first pinfall/submission victory! 

Special Tag Match – Minoru Suzuki & Sanshiro Takagi vs Kazuki Hirata & To-y

This match can be summed up as two grumpy middle aged drinking buddies vs two of the most fucked-up fuckers in the company. And when that company is DDT, that's really saying something.

How does one even begin to describe Kazuki Hirata? Like many of the best things in life, he really must be experienced to be understood. He's so many things: a great dancer, a flamboyant showman, an abject coward, a more cunning strategist than many of his opponents expect, a slightly less cunning strategist than he believes himself to be, a massive JoJo fan… and above all, a deceptively excellent wrestler. If you waft a feather in his general direction he'll probably eat shit and get pinned. If you so much as look at him slightly funny he'll tap out. And yet. He often somehow manages to end up sneaking away with a title. He even won the main K-oD title recently, in one of my favourite storylines of last year.

He's also the owner of endless pairs of sentient glasses which confer a 20% stat buff on the wearer (this is specified in the canon) but also cause the irresistible urge to dance. A classic cursed magic item.

To-y is equally weird but in a different direction. In many ways he's quite a classic puro wrestler, with fierce chops and a cool moveset. However he also happens to be an insane baby. That's not just a metaphor: he literally learned his special technique by watching YouTube videos of a baby being weird. The technique in question is where you hit him and then he makes a weird noise, shakes his head, and becomes invincible. It’s so simple and effective that I think more wrestlers should consider watching strange toddler videos on YouTube tbh. His other special technique is his diving crossbody, but that one isn't quite as effective due to the fact that he chooses to go for it at seemingly random times, unrelated to the current location of the other wrestlers. 

Normally I would feel sorry for their opponents, but one of them is Minori Suzuki. You probably already know who Suzuki is, but in case you don't: he's possibly the scariest middle aged man on the planet. He’s literally one of the pioneers of modern MMA and despite being 58 he could probably still break every bone in your body in about 20 different ways without breaking a sweat. I am fully expecting Hirata to try anything to get out of having to wrestle this match.

Sanshiro Takagi is scary for a different reason: he's the boss (and founder) of DDT which I think gives him an unfair advantage. Imagine if one of the tennis players at Wimbledon had the power to fire all the others! Talk about a power imbalance. Get the union involved I say. For some reason he is also Stone Cold Steve Austin, which is treated as perfectly normal. I thought I was having some kind of hallucination when the glass shattered and a middle aged Japanese man wandered out to pounding techno. 

Anyway this match probably is going to be very weird and might break the world record for the shortest match if To-y can't stop Hirata from tapping out as soon as Suzuki even looks as him.

Prediction: Suzuki & Takagi win (and Suzuki turns Hirata into a fine red mist)

What I'm hoping for: go on Hirata. Pin Suzuki. It'd be so funny, even if it would probably be the last thing you ever did.

Ko-D 6-man Tag Team Championship – paleyouth (Takeshi Masada, Yuya Koroku & Daichi Sato) vs Strange Love Connection (KANON, Viento Levante & Yukio Naya)

Remember those Exciting Youngsters I talked about in part 1? Well three of them are in the recently formed faction paleyouth (who you know are youths because of their casual disdain for capital letters).

Takeshi Masada is a self-proclaimed babygirl who used to be weird, lonely and sad, but now is mainly just weird and only occasionally sad. He’s not lonely any more because he has his own faction so they have to be friends with him! (He also imprinted on a puppet called Bunbun, but I'm not sure that's exactly a mark in the “doing well” column.) Yuya Koroku is like if Kushida got really into joshi gear. And Daichi Satoh is the world's coolest 17 year old. Seriously, it's really unfair just how good he is for his age. Someone tell him he should be writing bad poetry or pathetically trying to impress other teens by reading Camus in public instead (purely hypothetical examples of course). Or maybe he's finding time to do all that as well, I don't know.

Anyway, their challengers are Mao's goons! Kanon is Mao's smooth, round, cuddly boyfriend. Viento Levante is a lucha skeleton (who's actually Keigo Nakamura in a mask but everyone agreed not to talk about it like that scene in Spider-Man 2 or the end of the Hannah Montana movie). Yukio Naya is mostly Large.

Like most DDT 6-man tags, I'm expecting this one to be fast and frenetic from start to finish. Think a Sims-style cartoon dust cloud with limbs flying out, until suddenly the bell rings and apparently someone won, but you were busy helping yourself to another slice of pizza so you missed it.

Prediction: genuinely not sure! SLC win maybe?

Result I want: paleyouth retain (they're my favs!)

Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship Clusterfuck  Delayed Entry Battle Royal

You can keep your IWGP heavyweight title. You can keep your Stardom red belt. You can keep your AEW World championship. There's only one true contender for the most prestigious title in wrestling: DDT's Ironman Heavymetalweight title. It's a 24/7 title, which means all you need to win it are the champion, a ref, and the element of surprise. This also means it changes hands approximately once every 2 minutes. By the time you've finished reading this post, there'll probably be a new champion. In fact, Wrestle Universe has this disclaimer on the match listing:

There have been so many title reigns (over 1,800 and counting) that cagematch can't fit all of them on the page. I would highly recommend reading the “List of champions” page on Wikipedia, especially the inanimate objects section. I discover something new every time: e.g. today I was delighted to learn that some unspecified yakitori has held the title not once, but three separate times. On at least one occasion the title was won by the belt itself. But I think my favourite title change is when a bus was champion and the driver told a wrestler to stop bending the windscreen wipers, which the ref counted as a submission. Anyway, this title is where the silliest stuff in DDT happens, which is why it's automatically the best title.

The stakes are especially high this time of year, as I believe the holder of the title will get a year's travel pass for the Shinkansen!

As for the match itself, it's a “time-delayed entry battle royal”, AKA “it's a royal rumble but if we called it that then WWE would sue us”. Unlike US rumbles , the Japanese version usually has pinfalls and submissions too. It's bound to be a clusterfuck, so I'll just give brief run down of all the announced participants:

Yuki Ishida [c] – sumo enthusiast in the middle of a quarter-life crisis. Recently lost his luscious locks in a hair vs hair match! 

Yuki Iino – extremely loud barrel of a lad with insane hair who looks like the front half of a centaur. Currently a tag champ in Noah!

Toru Owashi – semi-retired giant with a passion for lucha libre that sadly is not matched by his agility (he is trying!)

Akito – underrated technician who gives off chill bike messenger vibes. Also happens to be one of the bookers

Soma Takao – his main/only character trait is edging the crowd by pretending to take his shirt off, which pisses me off to an unreasonable degree 

Fuminori Abe – expert mat wrestler and part-time Buddhist priest (!). Loves Battlarts and comedy in equal measure (same)

Naomi Yoshimura – big strong boy who looks like a cool henchman from a video game. Thighs 4 dayz

Masami Inahata – DDT's most recent signing! I haven't got a good handle on his personality yet, but he seems to be enjoying himself 

Super Sasadango Machine – masked powerpoint enthusiast (there are literally dozens of us). Will often pause proceedings to deliver his slideshow

MJ Paul – immoveable clown who may or may not be an alien. Looks like he's auditioning to be one of the Joker's goons

Ilusion – tiny rude evil bug man festooned with belts (not all his). Surprisingly deep voice for an insect 

Yuni – literal teenager who's somehow a grizzled 9 year veteran already. Does a good flip

Given the belt can change hands at any point, the match itself is little more than a serving suggestion. There's just as likely to be a title change after the final bell which will render everything null and void, so it's generally recommended to just sit back, enjoy the ride and don't try to follow what's going on or your brain will hurt.

Prediction: Hopes will be kindled and then dashed. Empires will rise and fall. SSM might do a powerpoint. There's no way I can call this one.

Result I'm hoping for: it's anyone's game, but Ishida needs some positives after his close shave, so I'm hoping he'll manage to cling onto the belt against all odds

Main event: Ko-D Openweight Championship – Yuki Ueno [c] vs MAO

Ueno is the young ace of DDT, whose stated goal is to lead the promotion to a show in the Tokyo Dome, and by God everyone else is coming with him if he has to drag them there himself. (Technically DDT has already run the Dome twice, but with the small caveat that there were no fans in attendance...)

He has sadomasochistic tendencies and consequently seems to enjoy wrestling very much. Nothing makes him happier than being bullied by an older man, except perhaps doing some bullying of his own. Ueno is also one of those wrestlers who seems to be annoyingly good at literally every single style of wrestling.

Mao is Mao. He's built like a Wendy's hamburger patty and likes endangering his own life by jumping off tall things.

The two have a long history as friends and faction mates, having main evented Peter Pan 2024 in an excellent match that showcased their love of wrestling and shared vision for what it can be. Unfortunately there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, most of it bad. Mao left their faction, 37Kamiina (pronounced “Sauna Kamiina”), last year to start his own group, Strange Love Connection, who can only be described as a bunch of loveable dorks having a great time LARPing as Pokémon villains. (They also happen to be named after a song by one of my favourite bands, but that's by the by.)

Despite being champion, Ueno actually requested this match himself! He seems to think it's time for Mao to stop pissing around with his friends and step up to help carry the company to the Tokyo Dome. Mao, on the other hand, would like to continue to do Mao Things. The tension between them means I'm expecting a very different match from their last Peter Pan encounter. They obviously still have a lot of love and respect for each other, but I think we'll see more piss and vinegar this time, with maybe a soupçon of actual animosity creeping in, if the preview tags have been anything to go by.

It's also worth noting that this match is for the top belt in DDT, which Mao has never held before! He's always been on a level just slightly below the absolute top tier of DDT wrestlers, but this is his chance to show that he has what it takes to be the face of the company. But Ueno lives and breathes DDT, so that's a baton he won't pass unless he's absolutely sure that Mao's ready. So you can expect a hard-fought struggle, which Ueno will undoubtedly enjoy immensely, the magnificent pervert.

Prediction: MAO wins the big one

Result I'm hoping for: Ueno wins (as much as I love Mao, I think Ueno's title reign has even more mileage yet, and I'd love for one of the youngsters to be the one to take the belt off him eventually)

Special Singles Match – Konosuke Takeshita vs Kaisei Takechi 

Speaking of people who are annoyingly good at wrestling… I present these two fuckers.

If you've watched any wrestling promotion on Earth (or possibly Mars tbh) in 2026 you'll almost certainly have seen Takeshita. The guy is collecting wrestling contracts like they're Pokemon cards.

You don't need me to tell you that he's probably one of the best wrestlers on the planet. Like his good friend Ueno (what a power couple!), there is simply no aspect of wrestling he hasn't mastered, including having perfect hair and making things very horny when he feels like it. Simply unfair! Save some talent for the rest of us.

On top of it all, he seems like a genuinely lovely guy, even if his character in DDT these days is an arrogant bastard who left the company to travel the world. (In a lovely touch, his name is usually styled in western characters in DDT these days, to show that he's fully Yankified.)

Takechi, on the other hand, is a different kind of talented. For a start, he's a successful idol performer with the group Rampage from Exile Tribe. If you know something about jpop, that may mean something to you, but to me it mainly just means he's incredibly handsome and dances very well. He decided to go all-in on this whole wrestling thing in 2024 and become a proper wrestler. He hasn't even wrestled 20 matches yet, but already he's super impressive. His moves may not be as flashy as some other 'celebrity' wrestlers, but he looks remarkably natural in the ring. As you might expect from an idol performer, his charisma is off the charts, but he's also surprisingly good at those tricky aspects of wrestling, like selling and timing.

This match was originally supposed to happen in January, but Takechi was ill, so I'm very glad it got rescheduled! Takeshita's nickname for a lot of his time in DDT was “The Future”, but in this match he's definitely the Present, with Takechi who's the one looking to prove himself as champion material.

Also, you might want to shield your eyes in this one, because the levels of sheer handsomeness will be reaching dangerous levels. And I'm fully expecting the entrance gear to be worth the price of admission on its own. 

Prediction: Takeshita wins (but Takechi puts up a good fight)

Result I'm hoping for: it'd be fun to see Takechi get the upset, but this one isn't really about the result: it's about seeing what Takechi can do against one of the best in the world right now

DDT Universal Championship – Kazuma Sumi [c] vs Ryusuke Taguchi (NJPW)

I don't think anyone was expecting Sumi to win the Universal title, DDT's secondary belt, back in March, least of all Sumi himself. While he's an exciting high-flyer with a bright future ahead of him, he's only 23 and, respectfully, most of his short career has been spent doing some very cool flips before getting pinned. But despite his win seeming like it could be a fluke, he's managed to hold onto the title for almost 5 months!

Admittedly, that's partly because he's only defended it twice, having spent some of the time recovering from an eye injury obtained in rural France, of all places. But having defeating his greatest rival, the French medical system, he now faces his toughest challenge to date… Okay, that's not strictly true. On this show, he faces NJPW's Ryusuke Taguchi, the self-proclaimed “low wall” for up and coming wrestlers to hop over.

I can't believe it's taken Taguchi so long to show up in DDT. He's the kind of deranged freak who fits in perfectly. His backstage promos crack me up every time, e.g. that time he advised Master Wato to get divorced to give himself some character depth (Wato is not married). But underneath his butt stuff and poorly concealed public humiliation kink, Taguchi is secretly a very capable wrestler. As someone who first encountered him as the Funky Weapon, I was shocked to learn that he used to be a well-respected and fairly serious junior heavyweight in his prime. It makes sense though, because he can definitely still turn on the fireworks in a big match situation when called upon. I'm hoping we get to see that side on Tuesday! Although, as always, I'm sure the side of him we'll see most of is his Funky Weapon (his arse).

Prediction: Sumi retains (and nimbly hops over the low wall)

Result I'd like: Sumi retains (as much as I'd love a Taguchi title run in DDT, I think Sumi deserves to rack up some more title defences)

DDT Extreme Championship – Barbed Wire Deathmatch – Hideki Okatani [c] vs Shunma Katsumata

Let's get extreeemmeee! DDT's Extreme title is unique in that every match has a gimmick, usually decided by the title holder! It can range from comedy shenanigans (my favourite being Kazuki Hirata’s “Ghosts and Balloons Deathmatch”) to veritable “for the sickos” bloodbaths.Okatani announced the other day that it'll be a barbed wire deathmatch, so unless the barbed wire is purely decorative, I suspect this match may be the latter... As a Certified Sicko, consider me excited!

These two have a long history together, with Shunma having introduced Okatani to his very first hardcore match way back when! They also had a Painful Jungle Deathmatch a couple of years ago, which I have yet to watch, so I don't know what makes it Painful or Jungle, but I have been assured it's very good. There's a neat watchlist here if you want to delve into the back catalogue!

Since then though, Okatani has become a certified Bad Boy, by which I mean he now wears a black t-shirt, more eyeliner, and a morose expression. Shunma’s main goal in life on the other hand seems to be to get as many different concepts and fabrics into his gear as possible. He also has his own teen idol boy band, NWA Jr, which consists of: Yuni (an actual teenager), Kazuma Sumi (23), and Shunma himself, who is a 33 year old man. Never give up on your dreams, king.

Both of these guys love hardcore wrestling, so I'm expecting plenty of gnarly shit. I saw that they were tweeting stock photos of barbed wire and thumbtacks at each other, so either they're planning some agricultural DIY or we're in for some violent delights.

Prediction: Okatani retains

Result I'm hoping for: Okatani retains (I feel like I still haven't seen his vision for the Extreme belt yet, so I'd like his reign to last a bit longer)

Special Tag Team Match – Daisuke Sasaki & DOUKI (NJPW) vs Antonio Honda & Tetsuya Endo

The set-up for this match has been the wrestling equivalent of edging. What feels like decades ago now, DDT announced that Sasaki would be in a tag team match at Peter Pan with three mystery wrestlers, and ran a competition for fans to guess who they might be. If you're not familiar with Sasaki, he's a misanthropic and perpetually drunk little gremlin man who leads DDT's resident faction of ne’er-do-wells, Damnation TA (short for Total Addiction and not, as I always assumed, Territorial Army). He's also a master shitposter, both online and irl.

After another few long months, Sasaki’s first opponent was revealed as Antonio Honda, best described as the weird uncle of DDT. He wears tasteful floral prints, used to be Italian, and suffers a career-ending injury every match, which is an excuse for him to tell a dick joke about a fox called Gon, which is in itself a distraction so he can poke his opponents in the eye. As you do. Pretty derivative wrestling gimmick I'm sure you'll agree.

It took another few eons for their tag partners to be revealed, but long story short: Sasaki is teaming with DOUKI from NJPW, who's like if Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat did lucha. I used to love him and he still shows flashes of brilliance, but sadly he has now entered the House of Torture Vortex and is now Not For Me. (In his defence, he suffered a pretty nasty injury a while back so maybe the HoT style is a bit easier on his body.) 

Someone who doesn't know how to take it easy, on the other hand, is Antonio’s partner: noted naturalist and naturist Tetsuya Endo. He's popping back to visit DDT while on his extended holiday in Noah, which he says won't end until he wins Noah's top title. He left for his hols basically as soon as I started DDT watching regularly (rude), which means I don't know a huge amount about him. I do know he has a long love/hate relationship with Sasaki, however, dating from his time in Damnation. They seem very normal about each other, even at a distance. 

I don't know what to expect from this match, and honestly some of the references may go over my head, but Endo is always very fun to watch! And if the homoerotic yearning gets too intense, Antonio Honda is guaranteed to lighten the mood by being really fucking weird. 

As for who won the competition? I can only assume that they have sadly passed away from old age since entering. RIP.

Prediction: erm… NJPW is pretty protective of their top stars so Douki might pick up the win?

Result I'm hoping for: Antonio Honda sweep 🙏🦊🇮🇹

Okay, this is getting long, so that's where I'll leave it for now! Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a part 2 tomorrow! Also please forgive me if I got any facts wrong: I was writing this in a rush so it's mostly just based on ✨v i b e s✨.