This extends naturally from my Open the Dream Gate Championship reviews. The Open the Freedom Gate Championship was the top title in Dragon Gate’s american offshoot, Dragon Gate USA. As a Dragon Gate fan, I was insanely excited about DGUSA’s debut and hoped it would fill the void in my fandom left when Ring of Honor stopped being interesting to me. It kind of did for a little while, but then… well let’s just get into it.
January 22, 2010 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
BxB Hulk def. CIMA, vs. YAMATO, and Gran Akuma {Open the Freedom Gate Championship Elimination Match}
From Freedom Fight. Hulk is in World-1, CIMA is in WARRIORS 5, YAMATO is in Kamikaze, and Akuma is in Team FIST (which was a CHIKARA stable, not a Dragon Gate one, but I like calling it out in this context. In a neat touch, each wrestler is introduced as the winner of his particular qualifying match by the theme name. Hulk had won a Redemption match because he and Brian Kendrick had both lost in their first DGUSA matches, CIMA had won a “Salute to Skayde” match, YAMATO won a “Next Level” match against Davey Richards because the indies are dorky and those two guys were ascendant at the time, and Akuma won a six-way mess called “Generation New”. Gabe was never great with names. YAMATO and Akuma played heel against Hulk and CIMA. YAMATO eliminated CIMA early in a surprising move. Hulk then eliminated Akuma, then hit YAMATO with two EVOs and the Final Flash for the win and the title at 15:54. Hulk was totally on his game, seemingly more motivated by the prospect of winning his first singles title than in his usual performances in Japan. YAMATO, Akuma and CIMA were all jiving too, making everything come together in a nice match. ***¾
January 28, 2011 – New York, New York
YAMATO def. BxB Hulk {Open the Freedom Gate Championship Match}
From United: NYC. Hulk is in World-1 and YAMATO is in Kamikaze. This review is from 2011 but I’m adding a few notes from 2020 in italics. Julius Smokes ran out and attacked Jon Moxley at ringside. I don’t recall who Moxley would have been cornering but my guess is YAMATO. He actually ran by me in the crowd to get to the ring, and I thought at first it was just some drunk moron rushing the barricade. They brawl through the crowd (which the fans pay attention to instead of the match) as Hulk regains control with a headlock. Moxley runs to the back to get away from Smokes. Moxley, the wrestler, running from Smokes, the manager. Smokes cuts a cookie-cutter promo on commentary, threatening to steal Moxley’s couch. YAMATO works over Hulk’s leg until the champ is too hurt to stand. He avoids the EVO and goes back to the half crab. Hulk gets to the ropes and hits a leg lariat because he’s not great at understanding how an injury should work. He hits the EVO for 2. He hits the axe kick and the First Flash for 2. He screws up a phoenix splash but smartly sells it like his leg injury messed him up. Props. YAMATO counters the EVO to a sleeper hold. He hits the sleeper suplex, a brainbuster, and a weak Galleria for the win and the title at 19:16. Like always Hulk sold like crap. The finish was trash too, as the Galleria has never looked worse. Those two BIG problems aside this was pretty much on par with their match from Final Gate, which isn’t saying a ton. Plus that whole Smokes/Moxley thing. ***
November 13, 2011 – New York, New York
Johnny Gargano def. YAMATO {Open the Freedom Gate Championship Match}
From Freedom Fight. YAMATO is in Junction Three and Gargano is in Ronin. The crowd is split. YAMATO chops Gargano off of his feet. Gargano hits a chest kick for 2. He hits a neckbreaker and then poses like a goof. You’re not Low Ki, dude, be thankful for that. Gargano clotheslines YAMATO to the floor and hits a dive off of the apron. The crowd was hoping for something flashier and gets pretty quiet. A Gargano spear wakes them up a bit. The referee gets taken out with a dropkick. Gargano hits the Hurts Donut but there’s no referee. YAMATO hits a low blow. Chuck Taylor runs out and tries to hit YAMATO with the title belt but hits Gargano by mistake. That gets 2 for YAMATO. YAMATO and Gargano trade elbows, dazing each other. YAMATO hits the Galleria for 2. Gargano blocks the brainbuster and hits the Hurts Donut for 2. He puts on the GargaNo Escape for the win and the title at 26:48. The overbooking worked because DGUSA crowds aren’t used to seeing it all the time (it actually almost never happens in DGUSA) so they blew up when the extracurricular activities started. This didn’t need to be quite as long as it was, but the crowd ate up the title change and most of the second half of the match. ***¾
Gargano held the title for almost two and a half years. In that time, DGUSA stopped bringing over Japanese talent and I lost interest in it. Gargano defended the title at DGUSA and EVOLVE shows, and one time in Japan against Ryo Saito on a house show.
April 4, 2014 – New Orleans, Louisiana
Ricochet def. Johnny Gargano {Open the Freedom Gate Championship Match}
From Open the Ultimate Gate. Gargano is unaffiliated and Ricochet is in Monster Express. Masato Tanaka was on this show, but no Dragon Gate wrestlers were. I’d complain about it, but this was the penultimate DGUSA event ever, making me wonder why they didn’t swap the titles of the shows that weekend. Ricochet was Open the Dream Gate Champion here, but didn’t have the title belt because absolutely nothing from the real Dragon Gate was allowed on this show apparently. They accomplished a ton in this match. They paid off bits from Gargano’s heel turn against Shingo Takagi and they played off of the year-long chase Ricochet gave for the title. It felt a little bit bloated in the beginning, but Gargano begging off from Ricochet added to the catharsis of Ricochet winning. I think the referee could have done a better job at not magically popping up when needed after his ref bump, but the ref isn’t really on trial here. This match was tremendous. Ricochet hit the Benadryller for the win at 31:37. ****¼
During DGUSA’s short life, its DVD distribution company WWN turned itself into something of a wrestling governing body known as WWN Live. They started acting as the umbrella organization for EVOLVE, Shine, and Full Impact Pro. Though DGUSA never ran a show again after April 2014 (Dragon Gate UK certainly doesn’t count, and regardless it too was dead by August), the Freedom Gate title continued to be defended on EVOLVE shows and WWNLive Supershows.
November 16, 2014 – Haidian, Beijing
Johnny Gargano def. Ricochet {Open the Freedom Gate Championship Match}
From WWNLive Supershow in Beijing. Ricochet lost the Dream Gate title shortly after winning the Freedom Gate belt. Gargano is a full blown babyface now and Ricochet is a heel. Heel Ricochet is fun, but Gargano does annoying things as a babyface that he doesn’t do as a heel. One such thing is charging up for a move while his opponent is already in the position that Gargano needs him to be in. Why are you wasting time? To get the crowd fired up, I know, but then Ricochet should be out of position and getting into position so it doesn’t look like Gargano is just standing around like a goof. This had a bit of a half-effort house show vibe to it, but that’s not surprising given that the fans were seated so far away from the ring. It’s far and away the least exciting of the three matches I’ve seen between these two. Gargano hit the Lawn Dart for the win at 18:41. That really never should be more than a transition move. ***¼
March 28, 2015 – San Jose, California
Drew Galloway def. Johnny Gargano {Open the Freedom Gate Championship vs. EVOLVE Championship Match}
From WWNLive Supershow Mercury Rising. This match happened very early in the show and nothing that came after it seemed as important. Curious. I liked most of this. They spent a lot of time brawling in the dark on the floor early on, which is too removed from what the rest of the match wound up being for my taste. Seeing Brian Cage watch the match from a merch table looking bored was kind of a bummer. I was less put off by Ethan Page’s unrealized interference because it gave us the Gargano-won’t-cheat moment. And I liked that Gargano paid for even considering it. They did a good job of making the much smaller Gargano feel like he could win at various points, though the crowd was mostly in the bag for Galloway. Galloway hit a jumping Tombstone Piledriver for the win at 21:13. ***¾
July 10, 2015 – Tampa, Florida
Timothy Thatcher def. Drew Galloway {Open the Freedom Gate Championship & EVOLVE Championship Match}
From EVOLVE 45. Galloway cut a long promo before the match about how he won the two titles, kind of telegraphing that he’d be losing them. You could suspend disbelief because only the EVOLVE title was originally on the line and the promo was used to add the Freedom Gate, but come on. The Claymore Kick was still being called the Sick Kick here. Did you know I coined that name? This was surprisingly subdued, especially after Galloway started the match by promising, “Two big motherfuckers beating the shit out of each other.” It was good, but felt like a midcard match in both length and depth. Thatcher locked in an armbar and made Galloway tap out at 15:32. That’s a definitive way to crown the new top guy. ***¼
During Galloway’s reign, Gargano had asked him to give back the title so he could retire it, since DGUSA was gone. Galloway refused, preferring to defend it. At EVOLVE 47, Thatcher did what Galloway wouldn’t, saying that he’d never even been to Dragon Gate and that Gargano deserved to decide the title’s fate. It was a pretty cool way for the title to go out. Later in the show, Rich Swann turned on Gargano, helped Page beat him in a street fight, and wrapped the title around Page’s waist. At EVOLVE 48, Swann beat Gargano, and he and Page draped the title over his prone body. And that was the last the title was seen, as Gargano was without it at EVOLVE 49.
DGUSA reminds me a bit of NXT UK in hindsight. It was an offshoot with some cooperation from the mothership, but not a lot and in the end wound up feeling completely separate. Both brands had trouble finding and keeping an audience, but both put on some great matches and engaging angles. It’s interesting to me that it’s EVOLVE, a much more boring concept, that outlasted it.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
