No Vision, No Guts & No Desire To Innovate: Dragongate's 2026 Identity Crisis

This is an excerpt from Case Lowe’s review of Dragongate Tokyo Infinity Hectopascal, published at Voices of Wrestling on September 14.

For the first time in 426 days and after 12 successful defenses, Ryoya Tanaka is no longer Open the Brave Gate Champion. For Dragon Kid, this reign marks his fifth occasion with the belt and his first since 2019.

It was always going to come to an end, the only question was how.

Tanaka’s Brave Gate win at Kobe World 2025 was widely celebrated as the logical step following the title’s intense rehab that it had undergone in the last year. After a hot start to the 2020s, mainly by way of SB KENTo leading the charge, the Brave Gate belt fell into the doldrums until a summer 2024 Dragon Dia reign reinjected some life into Dragongate’s lightweight title. The belt bounced from Dia to YAMATO before being vacated, then scooped up by U-T for a “gold watch reign”. U-T valiantly carried the belt into the summer before he was dethroned by Tanaka. The leader of Xenostal Nova then turned the title into one of Dragongate’s featured attractions, rattling off a record-setting 12 defenses against 12 different opponents. He defended the title three times in September 2025, which set off alarms in the mind of every longtime Dragongate viewer. It was clear at that point that he was gunning for PAC’s record of 11 defenses.

Not only did he end up clearing that record, but his reign is the only thing that rivals PAC’s career-defining time with the belt in 2010-2011.

As a champion, Tanaka was utterly brilliant. He pulled off so many different styles of matches. My two favorites were his defenses against aging veterans Billy Ken Kid and Naruki Doi. The former, his protege, felt like a genuine turning point in the way that Tanaka was perceived by his home audience. The latter, a summer 2026 Korakuen Hall affair, showed just how sickeningly good Tanaka had gotten. The bouts with Jacky Kamei, Riiiita, and Jason Lee, among others, were all absolute gems.

Tanaka’s title matches have become a stabilizing force in a promotion that desperately needed stability due to their creative tailspin. On shows big and small, the Osaka-native represented all things still good and true about a promotion that had started to lose its way. His defenses this calendar year, in particular, shed a light on just how important this belt had become. Both at Kobe World in July and here, I was startled by just how hot the crowd seemed compared to the title matches that had gone on earlier in the night.

Throughout this bout with Dragon Kid, the crowd hung on to every move like it was life and death. On this past week’s Open the Voice Gate, I pontificated that this match would be built around Tanaka kicking out of the Ultra Hurricanrana, the move that pinned him at the prior Korakuen Hall show. 12 year ago at Kobe World, that is what Dragon Kid did with then-burgeoning Brave Gate star Flamita. I expected this match to mirror that one. Kid’s first attempt at the Ultra Hurricanrana was caught and turned into a Celtic Cross-like maneuver. The crowd gasped when Kid leaped through the air, realizing then that Tanaka’s reign might be coming to an end. They roared with excitement when Kid kicked out of Tanaka’s counter, as it meant the match could continue.

Minutes later, when Kid whipped Tanaka through the air with a successful Ultra Hurricanrana only for Tanaka to kick out, Tokyo became unglued. At that point, Dragongate had done their job. What was needed from that point on was for Tanaka to grab Kid, hit him with the Cross Sabre, and then Stardust Press him into oblivion. Up to that point, they had perfectly executed a match that would’ve been referenced until the end of time as the night that Ryoya Tanaka became the best Brave Gate Champion in history.

Unable to score the victory with the Ultra Hurricanrana, Kid ascended to the top rope for Dragongate’s equivalent of the Burning Hammer, the Dragonrana. By my recollection, the last time that Kid used this move was at Gate of Destiny 2018 against Bandido. Since that moment, eight years have passed, Kid has turned 50, and in 2024, he suffered a career-altering neck injury. I assumed that there was no way that he would risk disaster. As far as I was concerned, the tease was the most we were going to get, and that tease was intercepted by an insane one-man Spanish Fly from the Brave Gate Champion.

The Spanish Fly wasn’t enough to end the contest, nor was the Crimson Smash that Tanaka followed it up with. With the crowd at their loudest point throughout the night, Tanaka dropped the challenger on his head with the Cross Sabre. Kid kicked out, but it seemed like he was dead weight. Just as he had done in nearly every other title defense, Tanaka followed that kickout with a trip to the top rope. He twisted his body through the air, looking for a Stardust Press, but Kid moved out of the way and sent Tanaka crashing to the canvas. By the time Tanaka was back on his feet, his opponent was back on the top rope, and at 21:41, Dragon Kid ended the best Brave Gate reign in 15 years with the Dragonrana.

In my 11 years covering Dragongate, this is one of the hardest results I’ve ever had to stomach.

It’s one of the worst booking decisions I’ve ever had to analyze.

I’m glad that in the ensuing 24 hours, Dragon Kid got his flowers on Twitter from the likes of AJ Styles and Will Ospreay. He deserves them. From the perspective of someone on the outside looking in, Dragon Kid winning the Brave Gate belt at age 50 after a stellar match is the type of thing that should be celebrated at large.

As an in-the-weeds Dragongate viewer, however, I found this result catastrophic.

A long title reign does not always need to end by “making” someone new. Wrestling booking is not a series of baton passes that elevate careers with every title win. Sometimes great reigns end, and the following champion should have no expectation of doing half of the things that the prior champion did. While I had been lobbying for GuC to be the one to defeat Tanaka (in Korakuen Hall as a full-circle moment for GuC, who used to work at Korakuen before becoming a wrestler), I would’ve been satisfied with the likes of Hyo or Jacky Kamei eventually ending the great run that Tanaka had been on. I also would’ve been satisfied with Tanaka never losing the title and eventually vacating it en route to a Dream Gate challenge (and subsequent win).

In 2026, I do not buy the idea that Dragon Kid as champion is going to sell one more ticket than Tanaka as champion. For a promotion that has done so much wrong in 2026, they’ve handled Tanaka perfectly. He feels like a star. He’s leading a unit with a singles title, something that feels far bigger than a half-hearted Triangle Gate reign with his two unit mates. The idea that it’s a good thing that Tanaka can now go win the Triangle Gate belts is asinine. Those titles mean nothing. I wish they meant more. I wish they’d headline “B-level” shows with those titles. That hasn’t been true in years. This company does not care about the Triangle Gate belts, and they aren’t going to care about them when Tanaka becomes champion.

Since the turn of the decade, the Brave Gate belt has been dominated by youth. That has been a risk, as the belt has sometimes been in the hands of talented wrestlers who weren’t quite ready for that responsibility, but the risk has been worth the reward as Hyo, Riiita, and Tanaka have become kingpins for the title, putting their own positive spin on a belt that desperately was in need of a refresh. Dragon Kid is a rehash. His best days are behind him. We’ve seen him at his best with this title, and there’s no way that he’s going to be able to match that this time around. He’s not offering any new ideas or new elements to this title reign. He’s a vestige of the past. He’s a reminder of what once was.

I think the concept of “passing the torch” has dominated Japanese wrestling discourse for most of this decade, which makes sense given the star crisis that has plagued this region.

I do not, however, feel that it is a moral failing for an older wrestler to dethrone a younger wrestler. I thought certain pundits were far too hard on YAMATO taking the Dream Gate belt from Ben-K in 2024. It made sense within the context of the promotion. The promotion had a story to tell: a slew of young guys getting their hands on the Dream Gate belt for the first time before YAMATO got the title back into his possession. During that timeframe, it felt like YAMATO had something to prove as champion. My complaints about Dragon Kid winning this title aren’t simply rooted in him being older than Tanaka. My issues are rooted in what this means going forward.

It mattered far less who beat Tanaka and far more who Tanaka lost to. How can I buy the idea that Tanaka is “losing up” when he lost to a 50-year-old man with a massive neck injury? I’m supposed to believe that the best Brave Gate Champion since Obama’s first-term isn’t better than him? I would’ve accepted any one of Tanaka’s contemporaries beating him. They all, no matter what their eventual reign turned into, would’ve gained something from beating Tanaka. What does Dragon Kid gain other than some international Twitter followers by way of Will Ospreay? If Dragon Kid is factored into your long-term business plans at this point, then you are in desperate need of a pivot.

The nightmare scenario in all of this is that there’s a possibility that they moved the belt from Tanaka to Kid so that they can move the belt from Kid to Ryu Fuda in some heel-interference-bullshit match. If that happens, that might actually break me.

Ultimately, I found this loss to be absolutely heartbreaking.

Tanaka represented a promotion that was trudging forward. They tried something, they stuck to their guns, and it worked. The pivot to Kid feels like a promotion waving the white flag and retreating to the comfort of what once was. Tanaka is not better off for losing to a legend. He would’ve been better off beating that legend. You’ll never get this title reign back.

The circumstances surrounding this match and the momentum that Tanaka had coming into it cannot be duplicated in the aggregate. The argument that this is somehow an obstacle in Tanaka’s way and that he’ll eventually overcome this is nonsensical. Breaking PAC’s record was the obstacle. This was supposed to be another hurdle set there for Tanaka to easily clear.

This loss told me that Tanaka, who is supposed to be operating at the height of his powers, is no match for a man who is long past his prime.

It represents a much bigger issue.

It represents a promotion with no vision, no guts, and no desire to innovate.

This is just a painful reminder that the promotion that once represented the future of wrestling is now painfully stuck in the past.