2. Dragon Gate Fantastic Gate at Korakuen Hall:  Ryo Saito vs Shingo Takagi

Now from a previous match list I did, we know that Ryo Saito is the Open the Owari Gate Champion, which is the comedy championship. This doesn’t sit well with Shingo and the rest of the Verserk stable, so this match was a way for Saito to prove himself. If Saito loses, he will be forced to join Verserk as the lowest member, so the proverbial piss boy of the heel stable.

It’s worth noting that Shingo Takagi is a former bodybuilder and trained by the same man that trained Evil from New Japan’s Los Ingobernables de Japon. That’s important since the size disparity is fairly large and Shingo has that same vicious brawling style many of us have come to be aware of.

As the match goes on, it becomes more and more obvious that Takagi isn’t taking him seriously. Even goes as far as grabbing the Owari Championship Belt and tearing it apart, then using it to beat Saito with. Even without knowing Japanese, the story is very obviously that Shingo thinks Saito is below him and starts to toy with him.

Arrogance, is the downfall for Takagi. Aside from purposely allowing Ryo to hit certain moves on him, his outside managers start running interference and throwing in many foreign objects. So Takagi goes to hit Saito with a CHAIRSHOT while he’s being held, he misses and hits his manager instead. This gives Ryo the opportunity to hit a Dragon Suplex and barely hold on for the pinfall victory.

Should be interesting to see if there’s any fallout from the loss to the comedy champion. But I just hope Takagi gets some good storylines, because his ability is definitely on main event level.

Ranking: Gold III

1. NXT: Johnny Gargano vs Kassius Ohno

Well leave it to NXT to continue proving that WWE does Indy style better than the Indies. With Velveteen Dream’s injury, William Regal had to find a new opponent for Kassius Ohno, and this turned out to be a great surprise.

Gargano has been on a fairly monumental losing streak and Ohno has been the guy to face if you need to right the ship, and look like a million bucks while doing it. This match was exactly that, a great back and forth fight that had Ohno take an early advantage, and get a few very believable near falls thanks to Gargano’s lack of winning lately. But, Johnny showed the typical babyface heart and resiliency to work through an early beating and catch Ohno by surprise. A quick exchange and bouncing off the ropes, Ohno catches him, spins him around and Gargano locks in his crossface submission Garga-No Escape.

This win puts Gargano into the number one contender fatal four way, breaks his losing streak and could snowball nicely into a championship match. One more win and he gets a shot to avenge his loss from Takeover: Brooklyn III against Andrade. So things are looking up for Johnny Wrestling, should be fun to see how far it goes.

Ranking: Gold II

So next week will begin the Match of the Year vote, but first we need to find out who wins from November. My choice for best match of November is, NJPW Power Struggle: IWGP Intercontinental Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Kota Ibushi , this match had everything you could ask from wrestling.

As for this week, Dragon Gate Fantastic Gate at Korakuen Hall:  Ryo Saito vs Shingo Takagi ,  a well told story in the ring, as well as showcasing an amazing not very well known talent in Shingo Takagi, is what puts this over the top to me.

I look forward to what all of The Chairshot personalities decide upon, and when the match of the year vote starts, that should be really interesting to see how different it is from other places.