Dragon Gate expands to the US

[Soulpower]

PHILADELPHIA - Japan's Dragon Gate promotion has announced its expansion into United States with Dragon Gate USA at last night's Korakuen Hall event in Tokyo. It has named Satoshi Oji as the President and Gabe Sapolsky as the Vice President of Dragon Gate USA. DGUSA will make its online home at www.DGUSA.tv as the site was launched late last night.

Dragon Gate's roots go back to Mexico in 1999. Now Dragon Gate promotes over 250 shows per year in Japan. It will increase its schedule by running live events under the Dragon Gate USA banner every other month in the United States. The first show is scheduled for Philadelphia at The Arena on July 25th. Already announced for this event are CIMA, Dragon Kid, Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino. Tickets will go on sale on April 29th. Information will be coming soon about DGUSA's Chicago debut on Labor Day weekend.

Oji has been a long time employee of the Dragon Gate promotion and will run an office out of Houston. Sapolsky, the former booker of ROH and office worker in the original ECW, will head the Philadelphia office.

"This is a natural progression in Dragon Gate's growth," Oji said. "The entire company in Japan is looking forward to bringing our style of wrestling to the United States. The wrestlers are all very excited to make a new home in the United States."

"This is a great opportunity to bring something new, fresh and unique to the American pro wrestling scene," Sapolsky said. "DGUSA is going to be about quality over quantity. This is the haven for pro wrestling fans. Our goal is to become known as the premium brand of pro wrestling."

We encourage you to visit www.DGUSA.tv for feature articles, a roster section, a mission statement, the chance to order Dragon Gate USA merchandise and more. All the latest information about this revolutionary promotion is now at DGUSA.tv.

Thank you for reading this press release

Finally, Gabe's wish has come true.. He is now working for a Japanese promotion.

I have to say, the timing of this is a bit odd since the reports about ROH owing money to some DG wrestlers came out a couple of days ago... Maybe with ROH going in a new direction, DG will usurp them.

The bad news, this might lead to the end of finding Dragon Gate stuff online with ease.

 

[Montana]

Big News....I would assume they would want to include some american wrestlers to cross over a bit. Should be interesting to see how this goes.

 

[comicgeekelly]

Good to see Gabe get back into the wrestling business.

 

[Headfirst For Hardcore]

Looks really good for Dragon Gate. I don't know if it's a good idea to start off in Philly, but they probably will get a pretty nice following regardless. It's nice to see them going more mainstream here in the US, under their own banner.

 

[Hometown Kid]

Big News....I would assume they would want to include some american wrestlers to cross over a bit. Should be interesting to see how this goes.

I agree, Chuck Taylor would be a REEEEEAAL nice fit in DGUSA in my opinion. Maybe Kenny Omega too. FIP and PWG and possibly NWA would be some good places to look for US talent. Very excited to see how this branch out will unfold.

 

[THE Brian Kendrick's Biceps]

omg, I'd mark for Kenny Omega getting involved in this. Hopefully they sell their DVD's cheap. >_>

 

[Qwake]

Good for Dragon Gate, this will be the first Japanese Company that I follow from now on. The first show already has four great wrestlers scheduled and hopefully they get a good mix of American Wrestlers too.

Should be interesting to see where they go from here on out.

 

[Montana]

Well...sounds like their may be some Dragon Gate/ ROH war starting to build. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but it sounds like some ROH talent may be hoping on board to work with DG USA.

 

[THE Brian Kendrick's Biceps]

I wouldn't blame any of the ROH talent either. Sapolsky definitely books a better product than Pearce. The only thing is that they'd probably be paid better by ROH since they run more shows a year.

 

[Headfirst For Hardcore]

If this is an ROH/Dragon Gate war, I'm all for it. The way ROH has been lately has just been horrible, they've taken 2 steps back as a product. And it seems like tons of people are starting to get their shit out on ROH, like Sweeney and one of the UK promoters. Hopefully it'll help ROH step their game up.

 

[DerrickNorth]

ROH vs Dragon Gate could be huge and would give Dragon Gate great publicity, sounds like a great idea for both companies.

 

[Soulpower]

At today's show, Mike Quackenbush's CHIKARA Pro Wrestling announced that they have entered into a working agreement with the new Dragon Gate USA promotion. CHIKARA talent will be appearing at the July 25th debut show. Also, CHIKARA will be sending matches to Dragon Gate and could possibly host Dragon Gate matches on future CHIKARA events.

Credit: Pwinsider.com

Awesome.

 

[kraynor3]

I have to agree.

Awesome.


With the great talent of Dragon Gate combined with the best of Chikara, and most importantly, the return of Gabe, it should tear the house down.


I'm extremely anxious to see this.