This review was commissioned by Alex Fyrehart over on my Ko-fi account.
A fun little glimpse into an earlier time for these two. 2019 was just the start of my interest in DDT, and now that we’re removed from this bout by about six years, the differences in both competitors’ careers and in-ring personas comes through most starkly. I think one feels that more in Higuchi than Takeshita though. From a structural standpoint, this kind of match feels a lot more like a Takeshita match than the kind we’d get from Higuchi later on in the 2020s. Soup’s modus operandi hasn’t changed too much though, building things as a rather direct back and forth leading into a big bomb throwing bout towards the end. He’s a little leaner here, but the spirit of Takeshita’s general output is about what we’d expect from him in 2025, if just lacking the kind of old school heel tactics he’s learned as part of the Callis Family.
Higuchi, however, feels distinctly lesser than what he’d become. That’s not a major slight on him, really, one would hope a wrestler only gets better with time. But here, he’s more of the comfortable upper midcard gatekeeper than the unstoppable beast that would dazzle in 2022. Opposite to Soup, he’s bulkier here than in later years, and his offense isn’t entirely developed into the heart-stopping, all stiffness that it would come to be. That’s not to say he doesn’t hit hard in this though, he fucking does. The chops and lariats in the back half are signature Higuchi, but beyond all that, it’s a difference in carriage too. It’s perhaps something clearer in hindsight, but here Higuchi isn’t quite the worldbeater he would come to be later on. Even when he busts Soup’s nose deep in the match, it feels like Soup’s match to lose as he’s far more well-established at the top of DDT at this point.
This gets heated when the stiffer blows start raining down in the back half. And we even get a few primordial attempts at things that would become much clearer Higuchi signatures down the line. Most noteworthy, of course, is when Soup goes for a big elbow and Higuchi stops it entirely with his own head–a moment he’d come to refine and turn into pure iconography when these two would wrestle again in 2022. The moment doesn’t quite have the time it needs to sink in though as Takeshita reasserts himself in control and moves right onto the path to victory.
Hard hits, a little blood, and doesn’t go too long, there’s certainly a lot of worst ways to spend your time.
Rating: ***1/4
