Category: In Depth
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Courage, and Nothing to Lose
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The Brave Gate Championship match at Kobe World 2025 was a match featuring two wrestlers who both had valid reasons to win. Each brought a unique and very different personal story to the overall match tale. This is a story of growing through learning, struggling and ultimately finding yourself and your self worth.
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Kzy: Ode to Joy
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For almost twenty years, Kzy has been a singular presence in the colorful and ever-shifting landscape of Dragongate.
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Home is where the heart is: the battle of Mu-chan and Se-chan
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I was so confident that the match would be everything I hoped that I started writing this article weeks before they actually met in the ring. And then it happened. And my hopes seemed small by comparison with what the match became.
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Being Dragongate’s Brave Heart
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Some wrestlers get narratives they can’t shake. For better or worse, a version of their story, their character, some shorthand for their whole career, becomes widespread and sticks. There is a version of U-T’s story that goes something like ‘really talented guy, shame about the injuries’.
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We Are Unfashioned Creatures: Wrestling, the Constructed Self, and Shun Skywalker
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Shun Skywalker is the best character in professional wrestling in my opinion, and I do not believe it to be a particularly close race. This is not to dismiss, minimise or disparage the work of other wrestlers telling great stories and performing great characters, but Skywalker provides something that I have yet to see in…
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The Budokan Rebellion: a play of light and shadow
The Budokan Rebellion is more than the destruction of one man and the elevation of another. It is the culmination of and synthesis of two parallel visions and the creation of a rivalry that has the potential to shape NOAH’s future.
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The kids are alright (and the old guys too): what LIMIT BREAK taught me about wrestling in 2024.
I can’t tell you that LIMIT BREAK was the best wrestling to happen in 2024 (it might be, I just can’t exactly remember what I’m comparing it to) but I can tell you that it meant something to me.
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Becoming: Yuma Anzai & the Triple Crown
Everyone’s path to greatness – and what it means to be great – is different, and it is rarely straightforward. What comes easily to some might be a game of trial and error to others, and the Fates can be cruel to those who attempt to reach above their station. But it often, if not…
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A Sunday in Korakuen Hall
Jessica gives an insight into one of her favourite matches of the year – one that connects All Japan’s past and present, and brings lots of joy.
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Flight of the Eagle: Yuto Kikuchi
The story of those six months between Kikuchi’s first foray into the NOAH ring and the confirmation of his place within it is one of friendship, betrayal, jealousy, and ambition. This is the story of how Yuuto Kikuchi became the Black Eagle.