No longer rookies: How Dragon Gate used 2020 to shape its future

The Story of HipHop Kikuta, SB KENTo, Sora Fujikawa & Taketo Kamei 

In the back: Madoka Kikuta & Kento Kobune

In Front: Sora Fujikawa & Taketo kamei

Prepared for the future

On December 22. 2019 Dragon Gate trainees Kento Kobune and Taketo Kamei has their debut match in Dragon Gate. No longer trainees, rookie members of the Dragon Gate roster. About six months later Madoka Kikuta and Sora Fujikawa follows along as they have their debut match (delayed a bit as Covid-19 shuts down Dragon Gate's operations) and becomes rookie members of the roster. From what you see with many other promotions, in particular with Japanese promotions like New Japan Pro Wrestling, you would expect these four to remain at the bottom of the totem pole for quite a while. It almost seems like an unwritten law of wrestling, that you need to go through the motions of being a rookie or a young lion, fighting your fellow rookies and be the fall guy with the veterans, then go on an excursion or something, when you return then you can return and rise in the rankings. 
And that is how it looks like it will go for three of them as Kento Kobune, Madoka Kikuta & Taketo Kamei fights each other in tag matches and are the fall guys when teaming with the more senior members of the Dragon Gate roster. On the 17^th of October, Day 9 of The Gate of Victory tour, something changes. Kobune, Kikuta & Kamei is in the opening six man against former Open The Dream Gate champion, Ben-K and his partners, Open The Twin Gate Champions Jason Lee & Kota Minoura. All logic says that this should be an easy victory for the team of Ben-K, Lee & Minoura. After all the opponents aren’t even 1 year into their careers. But that is not how it goes, the match ends in a fifteen-minute time limit draw. It must have been a fluke. And for the rest of the tour it seems like everything is back to normal rookie stuff. But for Kento Kobune, everything is about to change.

Unforeseen circumstances creates stars

A saying goes: one man’s loss is another man’s gain. For Kento Kobune this turns out to be more than true when Diamante of the R.E.D unit, and one of the reigning Open the Triangle Gate champions is injured. The team is set to win the belts back and KAZMA SAKAMOTO & Takashi Yoshida is now having the mysterious X as a partner. Speculation is wild as to who this person could be. For Kento Kobune and the rest of the rookies the night starts out great as the manage to do better than their match against Ben-K and the Open the Twin Gate champions, when they manage to actually beat a veteran team in Team Toryumon, especially shocking when Kobune is the one to get the fall over former Dragon Gate ace, Masato Yoshino. His night becomes even better when it is revealed that he is the mysterious X, turning heel in the process as he joins the R.E.D unit and wins his first championship, despite not even being one year into his career.

A quick name change, and SB KENTo is born. With a new attitude and a whole new rank in the Dragon Gate pecking order everything seems to have changed for Kento Kobune overnight. He has gone from being on losing rookie teams to being on the winning side teaming with his fellow R.E.D members. This new push doesn't quite seem to have rubbed off on Taketo Kamei and Madoka Kikuta, they still spend some time taking loses, although they manage to pick up the upset win every now and then. Then in the beginning of December, during Dragon Gate's Fantastic Gate tour something changes for the rookies again, this time it is Madoka Kikuta that sees the allure of the R.E.D unit, and what it did for SB KENTo, so, following his fellow rookies example, Madoka Kikuta turns his back on the faces, and Taketo Kamei his fellow rookie, and joins up with villainous R.E.D unit, as HipHop Kikuta.

Together with R.E.D, SB KENTo and HipHop Kikuta makes it their goal to end the run of the Team Toryumon unit, a unit comprised of wrestlers from the original Toryumon, trained by Ultimo Dragon. And when Final Gate 2020 rolls around at the end of December a No DQ Elimination match is set between R.E.D & Team Toryumon, losing unit must disband. both SB KENTo and HipHop Kikuta are part of the match and given integral roles. SB KENTo actually manages to be the last survivor, technically making him the one to end Team Toryumon, something that he’ll be able to play up for years. Now he’s beaten the most important of old timers and champions, he’s absolutely on their level.

The future is secured

The last two remaining rookies are now Taketo Kamei and Sora Fujikawa. Sora Fujikawa was unfortunately injured in the middle of 2020 and had to watch as his fellow rookies ascended to stardom. But with the way the other three have been handled, I have no doubt that Fujikawa will be on a higher level once he returns. Taketo Kamei has risen a bit in the ranks, but certainly not as far, and as quickly as SB KENTo or HipHop Kikuta, but it looks like he has been accepted as a pupil by a lot of the veteran Toryumon guys. So he might be the fave rival to the heel SB KENTo and HipHop Kikuta, Sora Fujikawa might join him in that category, and we'll see these four rookies divided up in two succesful young heels and two successful your faces.

In my mind, Dragon has done something that I haven't seen from a promotion like New Japan. They have taken four guys, all aged around 20-21 and made them stars overnight. They have put them on the level of some of their veterans, something that usually does not happen until they've spent a good amount of time being rookies and doing the usual rookie wrestler stuff. Dragon Gate saw that since 2020 has brought so many challenges with it, they might as well take a chance and do something different themselves. And I personally think that it has paid off, two of these four rookies can be seen as legitimate threats when you put them in matches against veterans, and I'll wager that in 2021 the other two will be on that level as well.

As all of these guys are barely in their twenties, and since Dragon Gate guys usually tend to stay with Dragon Gate until their forties, if not longer. I think that Dragon Gate has just managed to secure their future for the next many years.