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Gianni Valletta’s Improbable Journey to Dragongate’s King of Gate 2025

Gianni Valletta’s journey to capturing King of Gate 2025 is a reminder of the beautiful simplicity of pro wrestling done right.
Case Loweby Case Lowe•

When Ricochet won Dragongate’s King of Gate tournament in 2013, it was the culmination of a wrestler tailor-made for their specific promotion, ascending to the heights that many expected him to once he found his footing in the promotion.

Gianni Valletta’s King of Gate 2025 victory, both on paper and in actuality, was a shock to the system and a rare example in 2025 of a promotion having an idea, sticking to it, and then making the most of it. 

Gianni Valletta entered Dragongate as a virtual unknown. 

The pride of Malta’s wrestling scene, the 6’3” giant was dubbed “Malta’s Rikidozan” after helping get the industry off the ground following his 2011 debut. The early days of his career were spent spanning the globe in whatever place would have him. Notably, there’s a one-off match against DJ Hyde in 2016 for New York Wrestling Connection that just must be abhorrent. Valletta would spend time running Pro Wrestling Malta while balancing a busy schedule on the UK indie scene. He’d work against the likes of Pete Dunne and TK Cooper, stand out names from that scene, but would never find himself in PROGRESS or Rev Pro during the height of their powers. 

Instead, his big break came in 2018 when he worked his way into All Japan Pro Wrestling and found steady partnership with Tajiri. While his employment in Zen Nippon would offer him his largest platform yet, he himself found working without critical acclaim. In a review of All Japan’s Royal Road Tournament Finals in 2018, Voices of Wrestling contributor Paul Völsch wrote , “Poor Hikaru Sato has to lug around Gianna Valletta’s useless ass around for this match. Valletta is easily the worst wrestler in All Japan right now and I can’t wait for his tour to end and for him to go back to Malta and stay there. It makes All Japan look worse if they bring in Gajins like that if you compare it to the people other promotions bring in.” 

Whatever Valletta did during that year’s Tag League was good enough for the promotion, however, as he’d be brought back in 2019 and would participate in that year’s Champion Carnival, picking notably up a win against Kento Miyahara in the tournament. His matches were short and gimmick-heavy, as he relied on the chain he carried to the ring to do most of his offense. In 2025, seemingly every male-dominated Japanese wrestling organization has gravitated towards embracing “heat” in a way that mirrors what Valletta did in the 2019 Champion Carnival. In real time, however, the Maltan was a stark contrast in a tournament that sported names like Miyahara, Joe Doering, Yuji Okabyashi, and Yuma Aoyagi. Valletta was sticking out, as is the goal with any gaijin spending time in Japan, but he was still sticking out like a sore thumb. 

By the time that year’s Tag League rolled around, Völsch had softened on Valletta’s presence. Instead of saddling up alongside Tajiri, All Japan found another import to team up with Valletta, Dragongate’s Takashi Yoshida. In a show review from that tour, Völsch noted , “Gianni Valletta will never be a great worker, but he has improved. He is still a dollar store Bruiser Brody but he has refined his act and clearly has good chemistry with Yoshida. I wouldn’t mind them remaining a team beyond the tournament.”

Unfortunately, the Bruiser Brody-inspired giant would be forced to say goodbye to the promotion that Brody once called home to. The COVID-19 pandemic and continued shifts in focus in All Japan would leave Valletta without a home promotion. He’d briefly show up in Kyushu Pro, thanks to Tajiri, with his other notable place of business during this time being the Naucalpan-based IWRG promotion in Mexico. There, he’d be pushed at the top of the card, winning the promotion’s Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and later challenging for the IWRG Mexico Championship. 

On December 19, 2023, it was announced that Valletta would be on Dragongate’s first tour of 2024 and that he’d be linked up with Z-Brats, the promotion’s heel unit at the time, led by KAI and Shun Skywalker. The announcement was met with confusion by Dragongate fans. Z-Brats had just finished hosting legend Demus as a Z-Brats-affiliated wrestler on a handful of shows that December, but no one was clamoring for more international talent to gum up the Z-Brats works by the time Demus flew home. At least with Demus, he had spent his entire career demonstrating that he could work a fast-paced, high-flying style that would benefit him in Dragongate. Valletta seemed like such an odd choice. Even during his time in IWRG, he wasn’t working as a Claudio Castagnoli-like base, which would aid him in a promotion like Dragongate. Instead, he was banging around with the biggest heavyweights on the Mexican indie scene. No one knew what to expect when Valletta crashed Korakuen Hall on January 10, 2024 . 

What was most notable about Valletta’s first foray into Dragongate was just how quiet the crowd was given all the chaos that ensued. His act was unchanged from what it was in All Japan years prior. He came out, he whipped his chain around, he attacked young boys, and he ran through the audience in an attempt to terrify those in attendance. It took him all of 2 minutes to destroy the lowly Punch Tominaga in their tag match (Valletta flanked by KAI, Tominaga flanked by Ultimo Dragon). Following the bout, I wrote, “He [Valletta] is a Bruiser Brody-type who destroyed a crop of young boys on his way to the ring. That part of the Valletta experience was excellent. He destroyed Daiki Yanagiuchi and some green boys and although over-the-top, it was highly entertaining. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone cared. 

Valletta sticks out like a sore thumb in modern Dragongate. That isn’t to say that he isn’t talented, but everything about him is different from the polished and sometimes subdued roster. Valletta, if anything, could be dinged for simply failing to do something original in a company that is always pushing innovation. I know the point of his act is that he’s just like Bruiser Brody, but I think that means less to a Dragongate crowd than it does nearly anyone else.”

It was unclear, at that point, how long Valletta was going to stick around for. Dragognate had kicked the tires on a few foreigners, like the aforementioned Demus or Willie Mack, years earlier, who had only been around for a short stay. Throughout January 2024, Valletta’s presence on Dragongate shows became A Thing, with the English-speaking bubble speculating on how long Dragongate would try an act that seemed so out of place in a pretty-boy promotion. 

The first glimpse of hope I had for Valletta came on January 21 when Dragongate made a stop in their home base of Kobe. He spent his first few televised matches in simple, paint-by-numbers squash matches that didn’t garner a reaction. This was the first time that he was thrown into a truly Dragongate match. Alongside ISHIN, KAI, and Yoshiki Kato, they defeated the Natural Vibes quartet of Big Boss Shimizu, Kzy, Strong Machine J, & U-T. Valletta was thrust into chaos and he succeeded. He didn’t try to emulate the Dragongate style in a way that would’ve had him in over his head, nor did he try to morph into a Kevin Steen-type wrestler who used his size and his speed while on tour in Dragongate. Instead, he was just himself. He was a brick wall that was placed in the middle of the ring and time after time, the smaller opponents in Vibes would bounce off of him with devastating results. His monster vs. monster interactions against Shimizu were equally as thrilling. 

It was at that moment that I saw the vision. Valletta, the antithesis of what Dragongate normally does, was going to work far better as an integral part of this promotion, rather than as a side-show attraction. 

Speaking to a longtime Dragongate fan who attends shows in the Kobe and Osaka markets, they described to me the sheer insanity of Valletta’s entrance after attending a show in Osaka, “The family sitting next to me was already holding their personal belongings prior to him coming through the curtain in anticipation of his arrival. When he stormed out, they sprinted in the opposite direction at a hilariously quick speed. Valletta walking in my direction was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I stood up and promptly got out of the way. I cannot stress how much aura he has in the building. I went to the bathroom after the match. There was a mother consoling a young daughter who was crying hysterically, and I have to assume that it was due to how frightening Valletta was. Additionally, the trainee who was checking tickets at the entrance was still selling Valletta’s attack from the post-match. Everything about it was wild in a way that I can’t properly encapsulate with words.”

Valletta stayed through the spring. In April, the promotion added warning sirens to the start of Valletta’s entrance music as a way to warn the audience that he was about to storm through the crowd. As time went on, his gimmick, which had largely been described as “cosplay Bruiser Brody”, felt more authentic and more like “Brody done through the lens of Dragongate”. On April 10 in Korakuen Hall, following a tag match between Valletta & KAI against Toru Owashi & Ultimo Dragon,  I wrote  “Dragongate has proven that basic pro wrestling instincts are not dead with the way that they’ve handled Gianni Valletta. Valletta has been handled the way that all giants should be…In the three months that have followed [his debut], Dragongate has elevated Valletta from a Brody cosplay act to someone that feels genuinely dangerous to not only the Dragongate roster, but the fan base at large. They have embraced all of Valletta’s quirks and as a result, he now feels like he’s crucial to Dragongate’s day-to-day. 

This was merely an angle disguised as a match. Valletta stormed through the crowd and attacked green boys during his entrance, as he’s prone to do, then minutes into the match, ripped Ultimo Dragon’s mask clean off. It was shocking to see how easily Valletta ripped off the legend’s mask. 

Luis Mante stormed the ring after the unmasking, who at this time last year was in a mask-related feud against Ultimo. This time, however, Mante stepped right up to Valletta, posing the most intense threat to Valletta in his Dragongate career. A brawl broke out between the two, which led to GM Ryo Saito booking a match between the two for the Open the Dream Gate Championship at Dead or Alive…Simply put, Mante vs. Valletta is the highest-risk Dream Gate match in history.” 

If there is a blemish on Valletta’s Dragongate resume, it is the highest-risk Dream Gate match in history. I think all parties involved, from Valletta to Mante to the company itself, would like to have that one back. 

Heading into the match, I preached about the dangers of this match going wrong. Mante, the Mexican-import who had transformed from “Ultimo Dragon’s base” and “arguably the worst wrestler in DG history” to “one of the best wrestlers in the world” and literal Open the Dream Gate Champion, was far from a proven or stable champion when May 2024 rolled around. He won the belt in rushed fashion and then stormed past his main rival, Shun Skywalker, in his first defense. That left him in no man’s land going forward. I worried that a poor showing against Valletta would kill his chances for good as a genuine top-of-the-line Dragongate wrestler and unfortunately I was correct. Mante’s aura has never been the same since that match. 

The match was not an embarrassment. There have been far worse Dream Gate matches – including far worse Dream Gate matches on Dead or Alive, specifically (CIMA vs. Cyber Kong, I’m looking at you) – but the match did no one any favors. Mante’s title defense saw him and Valletta stumbling around without the hatred nor charisma necessary to draw in the Aichi audience. It was obvious in the moment that things weren’t going well, and in the 18 months that have followed, the few positives in my mind regarding this match are nothing more than a distant memory. 

Valletta was at risk of losing the dangerous aura that he had so carefully cultivated since debuting in January. The Dream Gate match felt so deeply unlike the prior Valletta matches, which hurt it greatly. In the immediate aftermath, I feared that they had killed what made Valletta so special, for good. 

It was assumed at that point that Valletta would wrap up his time in Dragongate at the Korakuen Hall show immediately following Dead or Alive and that he would be looked at as a fun footnote in the company’s history. He’d be referenced alongside Peter Kaasa or Rocky Lobo as a “remember when they toured” type of wrestler. 

To my delight and to the shock of many, the May 2024 Korakuen show made it clear that Dragongate was far from finished with the Maltan madman. 

Valletta once again scared fans and killed young boys en route to a quick victory in a tag match over Kenichiro Arai & Yasushi Kanda. After the match, still furious over the result of the Dream Gate match days earlier, he continued attacking the same young boys that he regularly tore apart during his entrance. For the first time ever, the young boys attempted to fight back, but their offense was no match for Dragongate’s most fearsome oaf. It was during this post-match melee that the man now known simply as Riiita appeared, returning from a severe knee injury that he suffered the summer prior, and attempted to stop the monster. One issue: Riiita stands 156cm, or 5’1”, and that’s on a good day. 

Before he could die in a trial-by-fire scenario, GM Ryo Saito stepped in and said that he appreciated Riiita’s eagerness to fight Valletta, but Valletta had to return home to Malta. If he were to return to Dragongate, Riiita would get his match. 

September 5, 2024 is one of my favorite Dragongate Korakuen Hall shows ever, and easily one of their best in the post-OWE split era. From its earliest days as Toryumon to now, the promotion has always been at its best when it’s operating at a rapid-fire pace. The best Dragongate shows at Korakuen Hall, in particular, feel like American TV wrestling on steroids. The charm is often found in the idea that Dragongate still has the order and structure that you’d find on any Japanese wrestling card, but they aren’t afraid to shake the snowglobe harder than any promotion ever has. 

In the span of an hour, Dragongate completely rewired the promotion. 

The festivities kicked off when Homare Kato, the 20-year-old blue chipper from Shizuoka debuted in an incredibly hyped and heated affair against Masaaki Mochizuki. Whispers of Kato’s potential had been running rampant months before his debut, and his first outing in Dragongate surpassed any possible hype imaginable. After the contest, members of Big Hug and Gold Class ran down to the ring to try to recruit the rookie into their group. Kato thanked them for the offer, but then shocked everyone in attendance by announcing that he’d be leading up with the heel unit Z-Brats and would be under the tutelage of their leader, Shun Skywalker. By itself, this was one of the greatest angles in Dragongate history. 

After intermission, Z-Brats, now with Homare at ringside (he’d dump his last name and opt to go by Homare going forward), squared off against what was left of the Gold Class unit, which featured Riiita. Right when it looked like Riiita was going to score a huge win for his team by pinning his former friend Kota Minoura, a familiar siren echoed throughout Korakuen Hall. 

Suddenly, Gianni Valletta had returned. 

Valletta, just as he had done earlier in the year, came through the crowd, destroyed everyone in sight, and then turned his attention to Riiita. Right before he could destroy the man half his size, Ben-K, Riiita’s partner, ran in and speared the big man. This prompted a pile-on brawl that made it clear that the business between Valletta, Z-Brats, and Gold Class, was far from over. Valletta’s return was met with nothing other than sheer joy and enthusiasm from everyone in Z-Brats with the exception of their newest member, Homare, who spent the entire angle side-eyeing the Maltan. Six months ago, Homare was one of Valletta’s nightly roadkill victims. Homare and his classmates were beaten senseless time and time again by Valletta during his entrance. It would take a long time for those wounds, both physical and emotional, to heal. 

It was during Valletta’s second and third tours of Dragongate that vaulted him up the ranks of wrestlers I enjoy most in the company. The beauty of Valletta is how simple he is to book. He and Riiita squared off in their highly-anticipated singles contest in September, with Valletta steamrolling the much smaller competitor. The match was beautifully simple. It looked, felt, and ended exactly how it should have. Throughout their history, Dragongate has been a forward-thinking, progressive, rewrite-the-rule-book-type of wrestling organization. The way they’ve handled Valletta couldn’t be further from that, however. Each tour he works, Dragongate puts on their Bill Watts Hat and books the giant the way that a giant should be booked, something that American wrestling has properly failed to do for over three decades now. In modern wrestling terms, the booking process behind Valletta, specifically, is a mix of CMLL’s simplistic, logical booking, with nods to yesteryear that a promotion like MLW accelerates at. There’s something beautifully and deeply pro wrestling about the way that Valletta has been handled, and wrestling in 2025 doesn’t have enough of that. Looking at the way that he’s been booked, you have no choice but to throw your hands up at your TV and say “see, it’s not that hard.” 

Nothing exemplified this thought process more than how Valletta closed out his third tour of the promotion in the spring of 2025. His first tour was all about carnage en route to a Dream Gate match. His second tour was all about destruction and deeply weakening the Gold Class unit. He looked invincible heading into his third tour. Prior to his return in March 2025, he was 25-2-2 in singles matches with a pair of no contests and his only two defeats coming by way of Mante in the Dream Gate match and Ben-K in a singles match in Osaka in September 2024. He’d continue dominating in both singles and unit competition in 2025, notably mowing down a generation of wrestlers that debuted in the Toryumon days this time around, rather than the young boys that he had taken umbrage with in his earlier days. 

In succession, Valletta defeated Susumu Yokosuka in his hometown, Genki Horiguchi in his hometown, and Don Fujii in his hometown in the build to a feverish singles contest with Masaaki Mochizuki in his hometown. The flare that the veterans brought to their matches with Valletta, as opposed to the young guns a year prior, gave the Maltan a new mode of approach. Despite largely repeating the same idea that he was doing a year earlier, his matches felt dramatically different, with the Yokosuka bout, in particular, being a work of art. Those matches led us to Tokyo, Korakuen Hall, otherwise known as Mochizuki’s home field. 

The encounter between Mochizuki and Valletta is one of Mochizuki’s most unique matches of his 31-year career. So few times in his career has he been that big of an underdog. He was David fighting for his life against a Maltan Goliath. He bled buckets, a rarity in Dragongate. So often, it looked like Valletta was going to chokeslam him through the mat and put him away just as he had his friends. Because he’s Masaaki Mochizuki, however, he survived and eventually stole the victory with a flash pin on the big man. That victory led to Valletta packing up his things and heading home and Mochizuki challenging then-Dream Gate Champion YAMATO to a title match. They built Valletta up as an old man killer, had an old man beat him, and then that old man got a title match. It’s not fucking hard. 

Whereas he went home with a whimper in May 2024 following his match with Mante, he went out with a bang on his third tour a year later, which left me dying to see more of him. 

Just as an unexpected siren rang out on September 5, 2024, Dragongate returned to the well on October 18, 2025 in Kobe Arts Center. In the midst of a tag match between KAI & Madoka Kikuta vs. Homare & Shun Skywalker, the latter duo having split from the company’s heel unit since Valletta’s last appearance in the promotion, the chain-swinging freak made his return to Dragongate. Just as Skywalker had KAI positioned for an SSW, which would’ve surely won him the match, the skyscraper-like figure of Valletta appeared. There is a woman sitting in the front row directly across from the hard cam who clocks the siren sound immediately, and is both uncontrollably eager and terribly frightened at his return. She’s the perfect encapsulation of The Gianni Valletta Experience. 

In a scene of sheer chaos, Valletta chucked the referee out of the ring and then stood over Homare and Skywalker, seemingly aligning himself with the new heel unit, Gajadokaro. KAI and Kikuta fed their opponents to Valletta, who quickly wrapped each hand around their throats. With the Dragongate theme song playing over the PA, KAI and Kikuta’s smiles that they had etched across their face shifted to fear and dread in an instant, as Valletta turned around, dropped Homare and Skywalker from his grasp, and lariated the muscle of Gajadokaro out of the ring. This allowed Homare and Skywalker to clear house and send the heel unit packing. In the ring, the three, plus the mysterious El Cielo, shared handshakes and officially formed the unit known as PSYPATRA. 

Valletta’s turn will be forgotten in time because it happened on a weird Dragongate Network broadcast from Dragongate’s backup Kobe building that is an eyesore aesthetically. It happened mid-tour, sandwiched between shows that had bigger stakes at play. That’s a tragedy, because both the in-the-moment shock of Valletta siding with PSYPATRA over Gajadokaro, and the long-term investment of Valletta finding fellowship in Skywalker and Homare over KAI, who helped bring him into the promotion, was so beautifully done. 

The PSYPATRA era of his career has been one of great success. In November, alongside Homare and Skywalker, the trio captured the Open the Triangle Gate Championships in a stellar contest against ISHIN, KAI, and Yoshiki Kato. Open the Voice Gate host Mike Spears reviewed the match and noted, “Gianni Valletta, as a tweener heater, getting the pin to a monstrous pop, was not what I expected to see or write in this show review. Valletta’s work on this tour has been yet another surprise in his DG tenure: The same kind of Bruiser Brody tribute that worked so effectively as a heel in Z-Brats can easily be transitioned to tweener Psypatra. The way he went for the finish in the opening moments against Yoshiki Kato felt extremely deserved and fitting.”

While the Triangle Gate belts would have to be vacated shortly after due Homare’s lingering shoulder injury, Valletta’s momentum would not be halted. 

He cruised past Dragon Kid and Kzy, both of whom looked microscopic standing across from Valletta, in the opening two rounds of King of Gate 2025. Met with an opponent his own size, Valletta took down Gajadokaro’s resident giant in Yoshiki Kato en route to a semi-finals match against his on-again-off-again rival in Riiita. 

Their King of Gate encounter was their fourth singles match and first televised since their Gate of Origin encounter in September 2024. Now one-half of the Twin Gate Champions, Riiita posed a far greater threat to the big man than he did at this time last year. At no point did it feel like the most rambunctious member of Love & Peace had full control of the match, but his offense was far more devastating than it had been the last time these two were in the ring together. It was remarkable seeing Valletta, who very rarely has had to sell throughout his time in this promotion, sell in a completely believable and convincing way for the smaller opponent. The biggest nearfall of the match came when Riiita planted Valletta with the Riiitanic, only for Valletta to wildly throw his shoulders off the mat before the count of three. Just as he’d done to so many men prior, Valletta eventually put his opponent away with a devastating King Kong Knee Drop to advance to the finals. 

Aesthetically, the 2025 King of Gate Finals with ISHIN and Gianni Valletta was such an aesthetical shift away from, say, the 2021 King of Gate Finals with Kzy and Kota Minoura. That match was a sleek, deeply lucharesu contest that sported tricked out grappling among two gorgeous individuals. ISHIN vs. Valletta was an ugly match with ugly men, and the end result was something truly beautiful. 

This match was worked with a level of enthusiasm between the two competitors that is unexplainable, yet painfully obvious when you watch it. ISHIN and Valletta, two of the more unique combatants in the promotion’s history, brought out the best in one another. I loved the early spot in which ISHIN ate an Iron Claw Chokeslam, but then rolled out of the way of the King Kong Knee Drop and bailed to the floor. He never imagined that Valletta would’ve stayed on his feet, ducked to the apron, and then floored him with a flying crossbody from the apron to the floor. That immediately gave this match a different vibe than any of Valletta’s prior tournament matches. It was a stark contrast to his prior high-profile singles matches against Mochizuki or Mante. He pushed himself in this match, and we were all rewarded for it. 

Given his staunch heel positioning prior to October, this was the first time we got to see Valletta deal with overwhelming heel shenanigans. ISHIN blinded Valletta with black mist and nearly stole the victory from there, but Valletta, even without sight, was able to continue fighting. His patented Iron Claw Chokeslam and King Kong Knee Drop combo weren’t enough to put ISHIN away. Valletta was forced to climb to the top rope and deliver an Avalanche King Kong Knee Drop to secure the top tournament prize in Dragongate. 

Valletta’s win came at the expense of Yuki Yoshika’s comeback story. The former Dream Gate Champion was sidelined for over a year with a debilitating eye injury and has spent 2025 climbing his way back up the card. On paper, this year’s King of Gate tournament was designed for him to finally cement himself once more as a main eventer. Any other promotion would’ve put their head down and gone with Yoshioka as the winner of King of Gate. Dragongate now gets to reap the rewards of taking a dramatically different path. 

Legacies are not made in one night, but after Gianni Valletta’s first night in Dragongate, it would’ve made sense if the promotion decided to give up on the idea of ​​him ever truly mattering in the promotion. He could’ve been a one tour sideshow attraction that would’ve been remembered as a trivia question years from now. Instead, Dragongate put their head down, dialed up what they do best, and locked in on concepts that have made pro wrestling work for decades. 

Valletta’s win in King of Gate symbolizes not only a landmark new for him, but a reminder of how exciting wrestling can be when bookers put time, energy, and thought into their promotion. Every one of Valletta’s appearances since the beginning has been calculated. He’s been presented in a certain light, and that light has been the right one from the jump. It should be widely celebrated throughout wrestling that a promotion made up of pretty boys and athletic supernovas took a beast from Malta and made him the best booked giant wrestling has seen in decades. 

Gianni Valletta will now get the second challenge of his Dream Gate career on December 16 against Madoka Kikuta.

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Reviewing AAW and Dragongate for Voices of Wrestling. Lucharesu historian. @_InYourCase on Twitter.

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