People seem to be digging Konosuke Takeshita’s North American output, so I’m going to take a look at this whirlwind tour of the West that he’s up to. This review only includes his 2022 excursion, not the false starts that preceded it.
April 25, 2022 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Konosuke Takeshita def. Brandon Cutler
AEW Dark: Elevation 60. It’s weird to me that Takeshita has to work his way up from the very bottom in AEW given that he’s a top guy in DDT. Minoru Suzuki got TV main events right off the bat. Suzuki is a lot more well known you say. I agree, but then the commentators shouldn’t pretend that everyone in the AEW audience sitting on their hands for Takeshita’s entrance know who he is. Especially when Mark Henry lists All Japan and New Japan during said entrance and doesn’t know to mention DDT at all. Excalibur bails him out. To be fair, Henry is generally more fun on commentary than Excalibur, sounding more enthusiastic about what he’s watching, even if he doesn’t really know the players. Cutler is insufferable, and watching him kick out of Takeshita’s signature moves was a bummer. At least Takeshita was able to no-sell Cutler’s chops? I dunno, Cutler kicking out of the Blue Thunder Bomb and the brainbuster was awful. Takeshita got cold mist to the face but hit a jumping knee for the win at 4:57 anyway. This was a disaster to me. If they think they have anything worth anything going with Cutler, they’re wrong. He jobbed here, but not even a fraction hard enough. ¼*
May 1, 2022 – Los Angeles, California
Konosuke Takeshita def. Aramis
From PWG Delivering the Goods. I was thinking they were going to let Takeshita roll through Aramis here for a glorified squash, but it turned into a fun, competitive match with more lucha flare than I was expecting. I thought I knew Aramis from Lucha Underground, but I was thinking of Argenis. I’m embarrassed to admit that, and wondering why I left this in when I had total control over whether or not anyone knew this. Anyway, he was impressive, and apparently he’s very, very young. So good on him for keeping up with Takeshita here. Takeshita blocked a roll through and hit an Ocean Cyclone Suplex for the win at 10:02. I wonder if I’d have been even more impressed with this match had I watched it when it happened early on in Takeshita’s American tour, and not six months after the fact. ***¼
May 2, 2022 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Konosuke Takeshita def. Rhett Titus
From AEW Dark: Elevation 61. Week two of this excursion and Takeshita still isn’t even seen as important enough to be in the YouTube thumbnail for the episode. Titus didn’t get an entrance. How is he lower on the totem pole than Cutler? By not being under contract. Fine, but it’s still wrong. No Excalibur on commentary this week, so no one mentions Titus’s ROH history. This was a bit more squishy because they didn’t have to waste time with unfunny comedy spots like they did the week before, but it was a lot more entertaining because for the brief moment that Titus was on offense, the match didn’t make both guys look incompetent. Takeshita got a head of steam going and then hit the jumping knee for the win at 4:40. **¼
May 6, 2022 – Baltimore, Maryland
Jay Lethal def. Konosuke Takeshita
From AEW Rampage 40. Good to see the transition from YouTube to TV happened quickly for Takeshita this time around. Lethal was on fire here. I’ve never been the biggest fan of his, always sort of begrudgingly admitting he’s talented. But he was feeling it in this one. Takeshita was having fun too, and they made a bit of magic in this match. The highlight was a lariat from Takeshita while both guys were standing on the top turnbuckle. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before. There was also a great counter from the Figure 4 Leglock to a brainbuster. These two have great chemistry. Takeshita was giving Lethal trouble every time Lethal went for the Lethal Injection, but the third time was the charm and Lethal hit it for the win at 9:38. There was a commercial break during this match, but the bright side of waiting over two months to watch an AEW TV match is that you have to find an international version streaming somewhere online that keeps the commercial segment intact. ***½
May 18, 2022 – Houston, Texas
Adam Page def. Konosuke Takeshita
From AEW Dynamite 137. The big sell here was that CM Punk was on commentary, hyping his upcoming PPV title match against Page. As such, this was non-title. I couldn’t hear anything Punk had to say because, as this match is more than two-months old, I had to watch the Spanish language commentary track. I kind of hated this. If you were to watch this with an uncritical eye, you might say it was just a rather dominant showing for Page with a decent comeback from Takeshita plugged in. But if you pay even the slightest bit of attention you’ll notice that every single big move in this match is no-sold. The awesome lariat off the top? Page screws up landing on his feet after getting hit with it, but acts as if it never happened anyway. Both guys drop each other on top of their heads, both guys no-sell it. Yeah, they collapse after simultaneous lariats after that, but the Germans landed them on top of their heads. The worst offender was Takeshita, after getting hit with the Buckshot Lariat, immediately gets to his feet. And why? Because the angle dictated that Page needed to quickly hit him with the Go2Sleep to finish the match at 12:14. So Page allows his own finisher to look bad so that he can show that he knows how to hit Punk’s? That’s dumb as hell and I hate it. This is the Transformers movie of wrestling matches. If you don’t shut your brain all the way off, it doesn’t work. **½
May 20, 2022 – Raleigh, North Carolina
Konosuke Takeshita def. Adam Brooks
From DEADLOCK Pro-Wrestling Fire 9. One EVOLVE match aside, this is Takeshita’s American indie debut. DPW is pretty new, so I think you could call this booking a coup. I wonder why he worked this show. It’s not particularly close to Houston, where he was working a TV match just a few days later (or earlier, in broadcast kayfabe). Brooks is an Australian Buddy Murphy disciple. Not satisfied to let the top rope lariat be the highlight of his May run, Takeshita hit a pop-up German superplex early in this match. Just wild. This was a bit squishy, as Takeshita controlled almost the entire match. But Brooks got in a very good comeback at one point. After strikes were getting him nowhere, Brooks took Takeshita to the floor in spectacular fashion and hit a swinging DDT there. He hit another in the ring for a near fall. From there, Takeshita took over again and it was all Brooks could do to hang on. A crossbody was blocked by Takeshita’s jumping knee. Another jumping knee and the Zahi gave Takeshita the win at 8:40. This was a very entertaining sprint. ***¼
May 30, 2022 – Paradise, Nevada
Konosuke Takeshita def. Ryan Nemeth
From AEW Dark: Elevation 65. Takeshita makes the cut for the YouTube thumbnail, but it’s a weird episode of Elevation with only two matches on it. But the commentators are talking about him as a guy who has made his name in AEW, so that’s good. On commentary, Paul Wight makes a big deal about Takeshita having had over 800 matches and only being 26 years old, and then Henry accidentally undercuts it by saying he has that many matches in his first two years. It’s pretty clear he misspoke, but for the sake of being a data nerd, Henry had fewer than 100 matches in his first two years, and reached his 800th match 12 years into his career. This was a rather straight forward squash, with a bit of Nemeth showboating thrown in. Rather than have Nemeth kick out of Takeshita’s big moves, Takeshita just didn’t go for the pin after hitting most of them. I like that. Peter Avalon tried to get involved, but that backfired and Takeshita hit the jumping knee for the win at 5:31. **
After CM Punk got injured, AEW ran a complicated “tournament” to crown an interim champion. Part of that was a Casino Battle Royal on June 8, which Takeshita took part in. But he didn’t do much in the match and got eliminated by Team Taz in a rather unceremonious way, so I’m not going to review the full 26-minute match just for that.
June 10, 2022 – San Francisco, California
Konosuke Takeshita def. Mike Bailey
From West Coast Pro 93 Til Infinity. This was the most pure fun I’ve had watching a wrestling match in some time. The most important thing that his match had going for it was the way both wrestlers were faking being prone to attack in moments when I was thinking that they looked like they were telegraphing being in prone positions. I love that, because it makes both guys look like they have incredible ring savvy while at the same time using what is typically a detraction (wrestlers telegraphing the next move or staying in a prone position longer than is believable) as a boon for the match. Terrific. Specifically, Takeshita three times doubling over in the corner so that Bailey would go for the Ultima Weapon, only for Takeshita to move and hit his own offense was spectacular. Bailey got in a few similar hits too. On top of that, this match made Takeshita look like an absolute beast. Bailey worked the knee throughout the match, culminating in blocking a German suplex by kicking back at both of Takeshita’s legs. But Takeshita then hit a German suplex while on his knees! All of Bailey’s (really well executed) acrobatics weren’t enough to save him from a bridging German suplex, giving Takeshita the win at 17:50. I half expected this to be another example of an overblown Bailey performance a la his C4 Championship match against Kevin Blackwood that happened two weeks after this. It was not at all. This is a top 10 match of 2022 for me so far. ****½
June 14, 2022 – Ontario, California
Konosuke Takeshita def. Nick Comoroto
From AEW Dark 148. Takeshita is back to not being in the thumbnail. What gives? Does AEW not think he’s a draw? Anyway, after the first couple of minutes in a Comoroto rest hold, this became a very entertaining battle of strength. Comoroto mostly won that battle, but it showed a lot that Takeshita more than held his own. It also showed a lot that Takeshita was able to hit the jumping knee without any running start and pick up the win with it at 6:42. I dug this more than I expected to. **¾
June 18, 2022 – Pomona, California
Konosuke Takeshita def. Lee Moriarty
From Prestige Wrestling The New Reality. Both guys were making their debut for the company here. The commentators bring up Takeshita’s love of Cinnabon here for the first time that I’ve noticed during the tour, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it got some play during the yet-to-be-watched-by-me PWG match against Aramis. This match was nutty. There were so many fluid counters that looked 100% organic, not at all forced, and gorgeous in this thing. Takeshita’s selling was terrific, and my only complaint about this is that it stopped being a part of the story toward the end of the match. Moriarty’s attempts to win with the Border City Stretch worked incredibly well in building drama and getting the crowd to lose their minds. Ultimately, Takeshita hit an absurd inverted package piledriver after Moriarty blocked a German suplex, and then finished Moriarty off with the jumping knee and the Zahi at 17:55. ****
Takeshita took a two-week break here, so I’ll use that as an excuse to end part one here and come back when he returned to action in July.
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 
