There was a time when I could claim to have reviewed every televised match in Shingo Takagi’s career (except his first two K-DOJO matches in 2005). That more or less ended with Takagi’s defeat of CIMA for the Dragon Gate Open the Dream Gate Championship at the 2013 Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival. I took a five-year break from my wrestling fandom. I’d like to be able to reclaim that achievement, but Dragon Gate now streams something like 60-70 events per year in full, vs. the 25-35 (usually edited down to an hour or two) they were showing back when I was reviewing the show regularly, that feels out of grasp. At least for now.

But my Takagi fandom is renewed, especially with his ascension in New Japan. So I’m going start a series to look back at the end of his Dragon Gate run and at all of the important matches in his New Japan run. 

During my hiatus from watching wrestling, Takagi had what many describe as his best run in Dragon Gate, scoring a third and fourth Dream Gate title run in quick succession and putting on great matches. But after his title reign ended, he became a less-focused-on entity in Dragon Gate. He started working more outside dates, including being part of Big Japan’s Saikyo Tag League, All Japan’s Champion Carnival, and in forming a rivalry with freelancer (and weirdly, future Dream Gate Champion) KAI. In September of 2018, he announced that he’d be leaving Dragon Gate in a month, presumably to become a freelancer. 

This post will look at that 2017-2018 time period when he was getting ready to leave Dragon Gate. It’s mostly made up of matches outside of Dragon Gate, because that’s where Takagi’s passions clearly sat at the time, and because a couple years ago I dipped my toes into watching some of Takagi’s more renowned late-career DG matches.

September 20, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan 

Shingo Takagi & Yuji Okabayashi tld. Daisuke Sekimoto & Kohei Sato {Round Robin Tournament Match}
From BJW Saikyo Tag League. This was the opening match for both teams in the tournament. For the first 15 minutes of this match, things were going along nicely but not stupendously. Then, Okabayashi got a hot tag and did the goofiest dance you’ll ever see to get the crowd hyped for the violence he was about to perform. Then, he had some fun mimicking Takagi’s offense. I’ve never seen Okabayashi enjoy himself as much as he did here. The last ten minutes of the match was pretty much all Takagi vs. Sekimoto. Takagi and Okabayashi were partners and thus couldn’t fight each other, so Takagi vs. Sekimoto is pretty much all I wanted. So this match really worked for me. They beat the crap out of each other until the 30-minute time limit expired. The draw left both teams with only one point, giving them a scoring disadvantage throughout the tournament. Neither team wound up winning. ****

April 7, 2018 – Sendai, Miyagi 

Shingo Takagi def. Kento Miyahara {Round Robin Tournament Match}
From AJPW Champion Carnival. This match is kind of a trip to watch now, as Takagi and Miyahara were like three weeks away from overlapping as the IWGP World Heavyweight and Triple Crown Champions, respectively earlier this year. It’s still kind of a trip, as Miyahara was Triple Crown Champion during this match, and Takagi was a four-time Dream Gate Champion. Takagi kind of rolled through Miyahara. The champ didn’t get in much offense until near the end, and when he did start getting some momentum going, Takagi hit the Last Falconry out of nowhere for the win at 14:28. Takagi is still owed a Triple Crown title match as far as I’m concerned. I wonder if they thought he might come back for a bigger match down the road and that’s why they kept this relatively short. I guess we’ll never know. Takagi won all of the remaining matches in his block until he came up against Shuji Ishikawa in the last block match. ***½ 

April 29, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan 

Shuji Ishikawa def. Shingo Takagi {Round Robin Tournament Match}
From AJPW Champion Carnival. When I first heard about this match, I misread Ishikawa’s name and thought it was Takagi vs. Shuji Kondo. That would have been cool from a historical perspective, but no doubt this pairing gave us a better match. Cagematch has this (at the time I’m writing this) listed as the 311th best match of all time. I don’t know about that. I liked it a lot, but it wasn’t much more than both guys throwing cannonballs at each other. There was a piledriver off of the apron tease that was more exciting than most of the wrestling I’ll watch in a given day, but beyond that it was rather typical strong style fare. I like strong style fare, so it was a solid way for me to spend almost 20 minutes. Ishikawa kicked out of the MADE IN JAPAN and hit the Giant Slam for the win at 18:37. That gave Ishikawa the same amount of points as Takagi in the block, but because he beat Takagi one-on-one, he advanced to the finals. Takagi wrestled in a six-man tag match on the final night. I still want to see a Takagi vs. Kondo singles match, but now that Kondo is bizarrely back in Dragon Gate that’s probably not going to happen. ***¾ 

July 7, 2018 – Yokohama, Kanagawa 

Shingo Takagi tld. KAI
From Yokohama Children’s Hospice Charity Pro-Wrestling. Nice of KAI to put on a show for the kids. At this point, he was mostly working in All Japan, but it wouldn’t be long before he set up shop in Dragon Gate and became their champion. This was very much an indie show, taking place in a small (but packed) room, seen only from the hard camera, with a crowd that never got all that worked up. The bright side of the atmosphere is that it was fun to see Takagi interact so much with the crowd. The match could have used a better structure, as their way of killing time before the finish was just for Takagi to hit all of his signature moves and for KAI to kick out of them, and then they’d switch roles. There wasn’t much to it and the fans never bought that a pin was coming. Maybe they were dazed from the opening fifteen minutes of ringside brawling that didn’t lead to anything. The lariats they traded in the final minute before the 30:00 time limit expired was kind of fun. ***¼ 

July 22, 2018 – Kobe, Hyogo 

Masato Yoshino def. Shingo Takagi {Open the Dream Gate Championship Match}
From Dragon Gate Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival. Yoshino was in MaxiMuM and Takagi was in Antias. Takagi was 3-1 against Yoshino in singles matches going into this. Yoshino had recently won the King of Gate tournament and gotten a title shot against Masaaki Mochizuki, which he also won. Takagi had pinned Yoshino in the King of Gate tournament, which I assume is how he got this title shot. This is pretty damn fast (three months) for a singles rematch in Dragon Gate, but they’d been doing a bit more of that in recent years. There was an astounding amount of standing around in the early minutes of this match. It was as if they were putting on a parody of a Kobe World Hall main event, citing the criticism that they’re slow to start. Yoshino is the Speed Star; why is he moving around so slowly?! They put effort into giving this match the trappings of a big show main event. It was long, they did moves to each other on the ramp, and there was a table spot. But at every turn, at least in the first half, it felt like they were using kid gloves on each other. I’m all for safety, but if Takagi is going to take the entirety of his piledriver through a table on his own butt, just don’t do it. Things picked up in the middle with a hard fought battle over a suplex, followed by some cheating from Takagi that got the crowd foamed up a bit. So we got into second gear for the remainder of the match, but things really only picked up in the final two minutes. That’s not enough. Yoshino hit the Lighting Spiral and two Torbellinos before putting on the Sol Naciente Kai for the win at 27:04. These two historically had good matches against each other, but far from great ones. This is no different. Actually, this one is a little different in that it took some will power and faith to get through the first half of it. And while I appreciate that they went in an almost completely different direction than their King of Gate match a couple months earlier, I prefer the shorter, less bloated bout they had then. At least the crowd got to watch a dope match before this one. Takagi attacked Yoshino after the match, which is a bummer of a way to end your marquee show. **¾ 

September 14, 2018 – Los Angeles, California 

WALTER & Timothy Thatcher def. Shingo Takagi & Ilja Dragunov
From PWG Battle of Los Angeles. Takagi and WALTER actually met in a tag match eight years earlier, and you can read my review of it right here. This match is way better. WALTER was the PWG champ here. This was Dragunov’s United States debut. Takagi had announced his departure from Dragon Gate by this point, so it stands to reason he felt he should show off. WALTER and Thatcher were set to fight each other in the first round the following night, as were Takagi and Dragunov. I was like a kid in a candy store watching most of this match. It saw a beautiful combination of a ‘90s All Japan main event tag match with more cooperation between partners for tandem moves for a bit of flare and modern flavor. They got a bit carried away with the tandem cuteness in the second half, but not so much that it significantly dampened my enjoyment of the match. I loved Takagi’s narrow focus on WALTER, and Dragunov’s willingness to launch himself into danger. The crowd must have been really tired because they seemed to tune in and out. Thatcher countered a lariat from Dragunov to an armbar and turned it into a V9 Clutch for the win at 22:18. Dragunov makes nice with his wXw buddies after the match, but Takagi isn’t having it and walks out on the lot of them. ****¼ 

September 15, 2018 – Los Angeles, California 

Shingo Takagi def. Ilja Dragunov {Opening Round Match}
The tournament proper begins for Takagi! This was fun, though there were a couple of instances during which Takagi seemed either unable to fluidly hit the move he was going for or the sweat on Dragunov’s body caused Takagi to lose his grip. In both cases, Takagi weathered the storm and acted as if it was all intentional. Dude is a pro. I didn’t get as much out of this as I wanted to, but my expectations were unfairly high given where Dragunov was at this point in his career. This was a rather straightforward, kick ass test of who could clothesline the other guy harder. Takagi won that exchange, hitting a devastating Pumping Bomber and then finishing Dragunov off with the MADE IN JAPAN at 16:20. ***¾  

September 16, 2018 – Los Angeles, California 

Shingo Takagi def. Robbie Eagles {Quarterfinal Match}
Night three of tournament action. This was a weird one. I don’t believe I’d ever seen an Eagles match before this. I thought he was pretty impressive. This made me curious about how people are receiving his New Japan stuff these days. The weirdness came in how much Takagi gave up to him. Eagles kicked out of MADE IN JAPAN and the Pumping Bomber, and he blocked the STAY DREAM. Then he got near falls on a couple of his finishers. That whole bit made this feel like a match that was scheduled to go longer but halfway through they were told to wrap things up early. Takagi took Eagles down and locked in a gnarly STF for the win at 9:59. The action was good, but structurally this didn’t really make sense. *** 

Shingo Takagi def. WALTER {Semifinal Match}
This was dope as hell. Takagi had an incredibly hard time figuring out a way to put WALTER down. None of his power moves worked because he could barely lift WALTER up for anything. The only time he was able to get the big man off of his feet was for a desperate DVD. So MADE IN JAPAN and the Last Falconry were out of the question, let alone the STAY DREAM. He’d pepper WALTER with elbows, but that barely dazed him. For his part, WALTER calmly took control basically whenever he wanted. But his confidence waned a bit when he couldn’t keep his grip on a Hangman’s STF. Takagi got the win by hitting a FAST Pumping Bomber and scooping up WALTER’s legs for a deep pin at 17:21. Great stuff, though I think they have an even better match in them. **** 

Jeff Cobb def. Shingo Takagi and Bandido {Tournament Finals Elimination Match}
I remember at the time I wondered if Takagi and CIMA would both end up in this match to give Takagi a redemption story from their previous Battle of Los Angeles encounter. It wasn’t meant to be, as Joey Janela of all people took out CIMA in the second round before being eliminated from the tournament by Bandido. You have to wonder if there was politics behind not putting them together, as CIMA had bailed on Dragon Gate earlier in the year. But Takagi was on his way out too so who knows. From a storyline perspective, having Takagi get eliminated first made sense. He wasn’t going to be coming back on a regular basis, Cobb used his win here to vie for and win the PWG Championship from WALTER, and Bandido wound up being the guy to take the belt off of Cobb. But as a Takagi fan, I felt a little deflated after he got knocked out. The truth is, Takagi’s portion of the match didn’t really work. The first few minutes were cool because there was a nice bit where Cobb gave both Takagi and Bandido trouble, but once that dynamic ended things got kind of dull. Bandido hit Takagi with the Revolution Fly to eliminate him. After a slowish start, Cobb and Bandido turned in a wild run toward their finish. Cobb caught Bandido with an avalanche Tour of the Islands, then hit the move again regular style for the win at 24:04. If you cut out the Takagi portion, this would probably get a higher rating. ***¾ 

September 24, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan 

KAI def. Shingo Takagi
From Dragon Gate Dangerous Gate. Turns out there wasn’t much to this. The crowd didn’t care and didn’t get involved until the last few moments of the match. Takagi seemed to have things well in hand, during the bulk of the match and towards the finish, but KAI caught him with a Gannosuke Clutch for the win at 12:18. Even if the match was kind of nothing, I think it’s sweet that Takagi left the company by putting over his training buddy, especially given that KAI became such a big part of Dragon Gate’s main event later. **½  

October 7, 2018 – Fukuoka, Fukuoka 

BxB Hulk def. Shingo Takagi
From Dragon Gate Gate of Victory. Hulk was one half of the Twin Gate Champions with YAMATO at this point. Takagi led Hulk 7-4-1 in career singles matches going into this. This started out quite strong but turned into a bit of a nothing burger by the end. The first chunk of the match saw them really laying into each other, but when the crowd didn’t immediately buy in, the action shifted down a gear. They pretty much ran through their hits for fifteen minutes until Hulk finished off Takagi with a pair of Final Flashes, the second of which was really awkward, at 17:56. In fact, the finish was flat in the exact same way as their Final Gate main event, with Hulk’s final Final Flash feeling like an afterthought and the pin getting no reaction. After the match, Hulk, Kzy, Punch Tominaga, Naruki Doi, Yoshino, and YAMATO all gave Takagi parting words. ***

The next night, Takagi shocked the wrestling world by showing up in New Japan and revealing that he’d signed with the company. In the next post, I’ll look at his start in their junior division.