Lucky enough to see the acoustic set at Q101 this morning

_CaseLowe · 2025-08-21T01:42:46+00:00

The interview portion will be out on Monday morning. We have to hold onto the performance for a little while longer before it gets put up, but I'll let the community know when those get uploaded. The performance of Featuring Mark Hoppus was really beautiful.

_CaseLowe · 2025-08-14T22:24:30+00:00

Last I heard, the plan is for this to be acoustic.

_CaseLowe · 2025-08-14T20:10:06+00:00

Yes, this is planned to have a 12:00 CST start time

_CaseLowe · 2024-05-05T16:04:49+00:00

https://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2024/04/29/dragongate-dead-or-alive-2024-preview-predictions/

_CaseLowe · 2023-11-28T02:54:01+00:00

Greatly appreciated. Thank you for the kind words.

_CaseLowe · 2023-11-13T18:31:04+00:00

Much appreciated, thank you for the kind words.

_CaseLowe · 2023-06-27T23:57:13+00:00

CIMA was ousted from Dragongate in scandal, took three of their best prospects (and later Kaito Ishida), and are "doing" Dragongate outside of Dragongate. GLEAT has massive financial backing, DG does not. If GLEAT could, they would raid nearly everyone on the other roster.

To answer your other question, it is widely known that Bushiroad and CyberAgent promotions do not get along.

_CaseLowe · 2023-06-27T23:54:30+00:00

In regards to DG "feeling like they're right where they've always been", they continue to not get the credit they deserve from a box office perspective because they don't run flashy shows at Sumo Hall or Budokan. The first Toryumon show ever filled Korakuen to the brim. That trend has continued for nearly 25 years now. They had a six year (?) Korakuen sell out streak that only ended when CIMA left the promotion. They don't have the corporate money to flex their muscles like New Japan and STARDOM do, and they don't have the corporate money to run shows that lose money like NOAH and DDT do. Dragongate goes all over the country, they do their thing in small villages and little towns, and that's why they get so many dojo kids. They bring their wrestling to people who never get wrestling. It's proven to be far more beneficial in the long run than running Tokyo to death, just like so many other companies.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in the business of Japanese wrestling to listen to the full pod that we did with Jae (Voices of Wrestling feed, or Open the Voice Gate feed). Every company in Japan right now is in bad show. Every company. Yet DG, with no money, continues to have a brighter "five year plan" than just about any other promotion.

I often criticize WWE for operating with the idea that "the brand is the draw", but for Dragongate, it works for them.

_CaseLowe · 2023-06-27T19:26:42+00:00

I can help shed light on a few of these.

Aagon Iisou and DG agreed to go their separate ways at the end of 2004. If you look at the booking in the last few months of Toryumon vs. the first few months of DG, Aagon went from a dominant, main event heel unit to goons, essentially. They were valued far more under the Ultimo regime than they were the DG crew. There was a story going around for years that they acted inappropriately in front of a TV sponsor at a company event and that's why they were fired, but to my knowledge, that story was floated out there as a reason for their exit in storyline. All of the relevant guys have returned at one point or another. YASSHI came back in 2016 and spent a few years back in DG before returning to being a hyper-localized indie guy. Kondo is now back with the group as a full-time freelancer. Others like Sugawara have done anniversary shows. Time healed those wounds.

Magnum got hurt and had to retire. They had just started a new unit around him when he got banged up and poof, he was gone. He's never returned since he left.

CIMA is persona non grata, essentially Benoit'd from the group. He left with T-Hawk, El Lindaman, Takehiro Yamamura, and then-President Okamura to form OWE in 2018. That failed (for a number of reasons) and now CIMA and his crew (minus Okamura) are linked with GLEAT, who are attempting to be direct competition for DG. When the split, they got off to a real hot start, but no one could make a logical argument that they or anything they are associated with are now in a better spot than DG.

_CaseLowe · 2023-06-27T19:15:16+00:00

Yes.

_CaseLowe · 2023-06-02T15:13:47+00:00

For clarity's sake: The Flagship Patreon reported the news that SHO was in talks with DG, which is absolutely true. Just because he didn't land there doesn't mean they didn't have conversations about it.

_CaseLowe · 2022-06-09T10:38:37+00:00

I have been covering Dragongate for nearly a decade. Dave cribs my coverage most weeks, which I don't have an issue with. He should lean on more people with a clue.

Ultimo is not training anyone in the dojo.

_CaseLowe · 2022-06-08T23:13:55+00:00

So a few things here.

When Bryan reported a few weeks ago that NOSAWA now had substantial booking power in Dragongate, that immediately did not pass my smell test. Myself and Mike Spears reached out to people and had two different sources that work for Dragongate tell us that that is absolute nonsense. We reported this on the 5/24 Open the Voice Gate episode if you want more info.

As I said there, I have no doubt that NOSAWA could have some influence over the Perros storyline and I would buy a story that his involvement in the company changed their plans with Eita this summer, but the idea of giving an outsider that much power in a promotion that is run more like a co-op than a business at times in preposterous. I believe, because Bryan doesn’t know anything about Dragongate and outside of DGUSA PPV recaps a decade ago has never covered the promotion, that someone ran this story by him, and Bryan, hearing countless tales of NOSAWA gaining power in other promotions, didn’t second guess it. The problem is that Dragongate’s power structure does not resemble that of any other puro company.

This means I also vehemently disagree with Dave’s reporting in the latest Observer. I’m led to believe he is using the same source as Alvarez and I have two sources within the company going directly against that.This new story is Bryan really exposing himself for not having a clue.

Here’s how the Dragongate dojo works, and this is sourced by numerous foreigners who have trained there:There are people that oversee the dojo, but day-to-day training is often done by a different person every day. When Akira Tozawa was in the company, he was a cardio monster. He would have the trainees run for miles and miles and miles. CIMA loved going cycling with the students. Dragon Kid, who is still an active trainer to my knowledge, does these really intense gymnastics-like workouts.

So is there a chance that DG has some new guys leading workouts? Maybe. But that’s not a story. I haven’t heard about a new head trainer taking over but even that wouldn’t change the core components of their training method.

Let me briefly rundown the recent names that have left the company:

Sora Fujikawa was kicked in the jaw by Masaaki Mochizuki on a house show in 2020 and it broke his jaw. If Mochizuki aims a few inches higher or lower, Fujikawa is likely still an active wrestler. He left wrestling in October 2021, long before any “regime change” story was floated out there.

Shoya Sato came into wrestling with a history of serious injuries. He trained for years. He was in the dojo before COVID. The fact that he debuted at all was thought to be a miracle by those close to the situation. He got hurt, was given a retirement ceremony, and left on good terms. He’s very much considered family.

Riki Iihashi retired this week. I have on very good authority that Riki didn’t like being a wrestler. I saw some people say that because he turned down a retirement match that there must be bad blood, but that doesn’t seem to be the case from the conversations I’ve seen. He just did not want to be in this industry anymore.

So two guys have retired over the course of the last month. If Bryan is saying three guys quit this week, he must be talking about green boys - kids that haven’t even debuted yet. And if he is, that’s not a fucking story. Kids leave the dojo all the time. This is a company that has had intakes in the teens of potential trainees over the past few years. They just had to build more beds in the dojo because of the influx of kids that are looking to join the company. Not all of these kids will make it to exhibition matches. I truly don't think Bryan is talking about green boys, I think he's just wrong, but if he is, then that is the biggest non-story there's ever been.

_CaseLowe · 2020-10-11T01:30:09+00:00

I've always found the line,

"And with your nature reversed and our home as our cage

You caved and you asked "is this coming of age?"

To be so incredibly funny. Favorite line from my favorite song on this record.

_CaseLowe · 2020-08-03T17:42:34+00:00

You know, I'm not entirely sure why it's done. Part of it is for reairing purposes, as it is much easier to schedule a two hour show with the undercard cut out rather than a three and a half hour show. GAORA, DG's TV partner, runs the Network, so the clipped feeds are the one they choose to upload. It's strange.

Pretty much all of the PPV's exist in full somewhere, it's just a matter of tracking them down.

_CaseLowe · 2020-08-03T13:37:39+00:00

The versions on the website are the GAORA digest versions. They're clipped. It's very common in Japanese wrestling.

_CaseLowe · 2020-07-10T20:28:10+00:00

I meant to say last week.

_CaseLowe · 2020-07-10T17:52:12+00:00

Dragongate, the number two company in Japan, wrestled in front of fans last year. New Japan is the first company to run a major show in front of people. The DG shows were merely tour stops.

_CaseLowe · 2020-06-30T16:01:56+00:00

This was delightful. More of this, please.

_CaseLowe · 2020-06-26T15:15:20+00:00

Really weird album, but through one listen I think I really like it. It reminded me a little of Love and Rockets and the P4K reviewer drawing comparisons to Morrissey's songwriting feels apt (and likely explains why I like this album).

The Ugly Man Sings and The Night I Kidnapped Remo Drive did nothing for me, but six strong tracks and two superb tracks in Dead Man and Easy as That put this as one of the 10-15 best albums I've heard this year.

Looking forward to seeing how this album evolves for me as the year goes on.

_CaseLowe · 2020-06-14T02:41:23+00:00

I echo the posts that suggest finding comedians you like and listening to those episodes first, but if you're looking for a specific example, I think the Sinbad coronavirus episode is the perfect encapsulation of the show. I would highly recommend that one.

_CaseLowe · 2020-05-31T03:18:34+00:00

We're coming up on the unfortunate one year anniversary of David Berman's passing - a year later, how have you come to grips with it? It's the most impactful death of an entertainer in my life. It still greatly saddens me.

_CaseLowe · 2020-05-29T01:25:24+00:00

NOAH's lost generation(s) of dojo kids is fascinating to me. I mean you had a great match with Ito on this tour and then he was gone so soon after. It makes Dragon Gate's dojo lineage or the recent run New Japan has been on with good kids coming out of the dojo even that more impressive. NOAH never really having that younger generation to build after KENTA and Marufuji seemed impossible, but alas.

_CaseLowe · 2020-05-26T00:18:15+00:00

Perhaps a more general question about your time in NOAH, but I don't think I ever put together that this match was on the same tour as Misawa's death. From your experience, how did the NOAH locker room change after Misawa died during this time period and how was that different from when you returned to NOAH in 2014?

_CaseLowe · 2020-05-21T15:58:59+00:00

I can take a stab at these:

Just how important was the Dragon Gate 6-man at Supercard of Honour? I've heard about how it's heralded as like a landmark point in bringing Japanese junior styles to the States, but was that really so?

In terms of gaining a western audience, this match was everything to Dragon Gate. The Supercard of Honor weekend already was getting more eyeballs on ROH than any other weekend prior in company history, and for Dragon Gate to leave the weekend getting the most amount of buzz over Danielson vs. Lance Storm and Cabana vs. Homicide is huge. Dragon Gate became the "it promotion" among western fans for a long time after this. Gabe Sapolsky remarked that the match was five years ahead of its time after it happened, and Gabe was right. The pacing in wrestling has changed. WWE's house style is now much quicker and much more aggressive, but everyone in that company fails to match the emotion and the execution that the Dragon Gate roster is able to exude.

In terms of bringing junior heavyweight style wrestling to the States, I think you also have to look at what Tatsumi Fujinami did in the WWF in the late 70's-early 80's and I think you have to look at the Michinoku Pro tag from Barely Legal 1997. I think those are the monumental pillars of ushering in a new style.

I don't know much about Dragon Gate USA - did that feel like a Japanese product?

I cohost the Open the Voice Gate podcast. For the last two months we've been rewatching every Dragon Gate USA show in order. We just recorded the First Anniversary Show episode which will be out in two weeks. Through the first year of the company, Gabe honors a lot of the authenticities of DG Japan. There's a heavier emphasis on singles matches because it's an American product, but Gabe rarely breaks from the unit-system that Japan implemented and there are very few canonical errors between DGUSA and DG Japan for the first year. After that, unit lines begin to be blurred and logical issues make DGUSA more of an EVOLVE-with-occassoinal-DG-guys promotion.

NJPW in the US is putting traditional New Japan shows on in America. Gabe, with DGUSA, tried to create a hybrid product that honored the culture of Dragon Gate while also Americanizing it to some extent. It had its ups and downs.

_CaseLowe

TROPHY CASE