I was at Dontaku both days. It’s interesting how different the shows feel live in the crowd. Here are a few interesting observations:
Naito’s star power is unmatched. What happens when Naito’s theme song hits is absolutely insane. I was curious beforehand who would get the louder reaction – Naito or Goto. The difference is huge. Every second person is wearing Naito/LIJ merch, and there are a lot of Naito cosplayers around too.
Boltin, Wato, and O-Khan were the three from the tag matches who were really over compared to the others. Oiwa, Ishii, and Callum got the least reactions.
ELP and Takeshita are both extremely over and have great chemistry. The crowd loved their match.
ZSJ got a pretty mediocre reaction for a former world champion. TMDK in general didn’t get much of a response. The only real exception was Robbie Eagles.
Shota barely gets any reactions – live it’s just like it sounds on World. A few older ladies or kids call out for him occasionally, and that’s about it.
House of Torture is actually really well received in Japan.
The War Dogs, and especially Gabe, are over. The crowd barks and chants mainly for Gabe. Apart from LIJ/Naito, the War Dogs/Kidd got the loudest reactions. It was really impressive.
Yuya vs Yota didn’t land well – live it felt like the match was lacking speed. Only the last five minutes got any sort of reaction.
Callum really impressed me! He came out to zero reaction. But because of his strong performance, he got over and the crowd started chanting for Callum louder than for Goto. He’s definitely really good in the ring, but he still needs to work on his charisma.
by YakuzaAHD