Essential Japanese Wrestling Discussion/News

[Hey_zeus]

To be fair, Dragon Gate was barely discussed even when they were the n°2 promotion in Japan

They'd sneak into the convo especially when discussing juniors. They were basically Jr division of Japan for a lil while. All the interesting Jr heavies came thru there at the time.

 

[Jmare007]

They'd sneak into the convo especially when discussing juniors. They were basically Jr division of Japan for a lil while. All the interesting Jr heavies came thru there at the time.

They were still niche even by puro discussion standards. The only one with some kind of "voice" that was constantly propping Dragon Gate was Alan4L.

2005-2010 they had some more traction because of the ROH relationship and later DGUSA but still, for a company that was doing so well in Japan, their angles and stable wars never had even close to the level of presence as a dying NOAH and surging New Japan had at the time. Hell, even All Japan when Akiyama went there and DDT when Ibushi took over as their Ace had more traction than DG even though they were still the bigger promotion.

It was always a weird deal with them, it never really broke through westerners and even to those that did, they didn't really engage with the rest of the western puro fanbase, or didn't try to shoehorn DG in convos, except for Alan .

 

[Hey_zeus]

They were still niche even by puro discussion standards. The only one with some kind of "voice" that was constantly propping Dragon Gate was Alan4L.

2005-2010 they had some more traction because of the ROH relationship and later DGUSA but still, for a company that was doing so well in Japan, their angles and stable wars never had even close to the level of presence as a dying NOAH and surging New Japan had at the time. Hell, even All Japan when Akiyama went there and DDT when Ibushi took over as their Ace had more traction than DG even though they were still the bigger promotion.

It was always a weird deal with them, it never really broke through westerners and even to those that did, they didn't really engage with the rest of the western puro fanbase, or didn't try to shoehorn DG in convos, except for Alan .

Well the joke was always they were never considered real wrestling even in Japan. Must have been some truth there. But they been irrelevant for such an amount of time that the small time they had a buzz was has become a blip on the scale.