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DDT does these big, all-star tags better than pretty much anyone. Our, ahem, HERO! goes for a handshake at the beginning, but gets blown off. Takeshita and Sakaguchi begin in a battle of power vs. technique. That's not a match we've seen much of, to my knowledge, so it's nice to get a glimpse of it here, however brief it may be. HARASHIMA & Akiyama continue where they left off at CyberFight Festival, having a gripping mat exchange. Every time HARASHIMA goes for a tag, Honda hops off the apron until Antonio's former Happy Motel stablemate, Endo, comes in. They trade punches, and Honda collapses in one fell swoop, but he baits Endo in for a strike. Endo kicks out his leg of Honda, causing the enemy team to mock him as he tries to enter the ring. This section is so joyous that even the usually straight-laced Sakaguchi can't help but crack up on the apron. Honda is oddly endearing as the face in peril, constantly hurting his bad wheel in increasingly hilarious ways, including one where he goes for a dropdown and gets tripped by Endo. Wholesale tags to HARASHIMA and Akiyama follow. HARASHIMA gets the better of an exchange, and we go into a showdown between one of the most reliable pairings in DDT, HARASHIMA, and Sakaguchi. The two batter each other with kicks, each glancing blow having more impact than the last. Things eventually boil down to Endo & another of his former Happy Motel teammates and storied rivals, Takeshita. Despite being the least interesting section of the match, having neither the charm of Honda's isolation nor the intensity that HARASHIMA, Sakaguchi, and Akiyama bring to the table, it's still more explosive than Takeshita and Endo's recent singles efforts. Honda comes in swinging, jumping over Endo to try and knock Sakaguchi and Akiyama off the apron, but Endo trips him up. Honda then grabs the microphone and does his usual comedy routine. The Burning and Sakaguchi trio's energy is infectious, as they can't stop laughing at Honda's antics. Except for Akiyama, who takes an errant swing at Honda. Honda goes for a dive off the top rope, but Endo gets his feet up, only for Honda to reverse his pinfall attempt in a great nearfall. Takeshita and Sakaguchi wipe each other out with dueling Jumping Knees, and once again, it comes down to Honda and Endo. Endo fells his old mentor with a Torture Rack Bomb and a Burning Star Press for the win. A fitting celebration of DDT's 25th anniversary, displaying its past in Happy Motel and its present in Burning. While it's unlikely to be remembered as one of the best matches of the year, it's perhaps one of the most enjoyable.

KO-D Tag Team Title Match: Eruption (Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi) (c) vs DDT Sauna Club (Konosuke Takeshita & MAO) - DDT Effort, Friendship And Victory In Nagoya 2021 - 23/02/2021 I thought this was excellent. The rating on cagematch raised a few eyebrows, but I'm in no way disappointed with the outcome. Whether it was Higuchi pairing off with MAO or Eruption’s incredible teamwork, this was purely quality. MAO sold for Higuchi’s back based attacks really well, bumping around while using his charisma to shine as an underdog. Sakaguchi was the right partner to compliment Higuchi’s work too. Even outside of the wrestling itself, Sakaguchi made Higuchi step on the gas even more with a few words and a slap. And that he did - just when the match seemed to be peaking, Takeshita and Higuchi match up and ramp up the intensity ever so more with an outstanding, bombastic closing stretch that saw Higuchi pick up the win after plenty of hard suplexes and throws. ****1/4

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Takeshita has really grown from beautiful wrestling prodigy into a bully role seamlessly, and he decides early on to try and destroy Endo's brain. His STF is really great too. Tetsuya works pretty much pure babyface, which, though he's historically great at being a dick, is obviously a great use of his athleticism. If I had to criticize, there's a point this gets to where Endo is selling his brain damage so well, that returning to kind of a traditional big move-trading structure for the last part of the match seems a little wasteful, but that's just nitpicking. This is well worth everyone's time. ****1/4 That's three Takeshita matches I have at 4 plus stars in 5 days. DDT rules.

Jiro gives an incredible, optimistic babyface performance here, and the crowd eats it up (as did I). He pulls out some fun stuff on the mat, and his commitment to his jacket is my favorite love story in wrestling. The last few minutes here might seem like overkill, but just when it seems like the typical finish where the underdog has busted out everything he can to no avail, we get a twist, so I think that overkill kind of works. I'm probably in the minority here but I liked it even better than the also quite good Bailey/Ishikawa match on the same card. ****

KO-D Openweight Championship: Konosuke Takeshita © vs. Tetsuya Endo Neither of these guys are interesting characters, but they were working very hard to captivate the Sumo Hall crowd, trading stiff offense and taking hard bumps. It's like watching two Hirooki Goto's go at it. The match was based around mutual neck work, and I thought they did a swell job of selling the damage. The middle finger spot would have worked better for Endo, given his role in the match (working underneath). But that is only a minor complaint. Good match! ****

I've been going through this year's DDT recently, cherry picking interesting-looking things here and there and I haven't been watching every single one of these slightly different tag matches, but I figured I'd check this one because it's for the vacant titles and good god-damn am I glad I did. Higuchi is especially good here, as he gets his arm worked over and sells it really nicely throughout. There's an especially nice subtle spot where he catches Takeshita with a powerslam of sorts but has to let go with one of the arms midway through. The go all out on a fast, intense finishing stretch, including both Irie and Higuchi diving onto Takeshita to try and incapacitate him long enough so can't interfere in a pin attempt. This wildly exceeded my expectations; it's my favorite DDT I've seen so far this year and one of my fav tag matches anywhere. ****1/2

Takeshita, much like Okada, is a tall young guy. Thus DDT pushes him pretty hard. Much like Okada he isn't very good at pro wrestling. He just has no clue what to do. His early leg selling was eye rolling and on the bad side of melodrama. When you sell something as much as he sold the leg and then just drop it after two minutes it looks ridiculous. If he'd sold it less I would've been completely fine with it but this way it just looked comical. I liked Umeda on offence, he threw a lot of cool kick variations and had real intensity behind them, always looking to hurt Takeshita, who on the other hand would do a move, then try to remember where the hell he is for about fifteen seconds, and then do another move, and that really was every control segment of his, move weird pause move weird pause, it looked completely unnatural, I imagine stunt doubles used in fight scenes in D-level movies would make for better pro wrestlers than him. Match went too long considering it was between two guys at their experience/skill level and was very rough around the edges with plenty miscommunication especially once it got closer to the finish. I'm sure Takeshita could be able to find a job outside of wrestling via being tall and pretty and I hope he chooses to do so. **

I have no idea what's going on in DDT ever so I'm trying to figure out how the short match time figures into the match and whether Takeshita is one of those young guys DDT gave title shots or whatever but actually isn't that high on the pecking order and could still get run over by Big Dog and end up freaking out when I realise he actually has a chance of winning. A very exciting four minute sprint for sure.

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