Ryōgoku Peter Pan (2018)

Promotional poster for the event, featuring various wrestlers

### Tagline(s)

"Fall Pro-Wrestling Cultural Festival" (Japanese: 秋のプロレス文化祭, Hepburn: *Aaki no puroresu bunkasai*)

## Information

### City

Tokyo, Japan

**Ryōgoku Peter Pan 2018** was a professional wrestling event promoted by DDT Pro-Wrestling (DDT). The event took place on October 21, 2018, in Tokyo at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan. The event was the tenth event under the Peter Pan name and the ninth promoted under the Ryōgoku Peter Pan name, which is DDT's biggest annual event and has been called "the largest wrestling show in the Japanese independent circuit" The tagline of the event was named after the traditional Japanese cultural festivals.

The event was headlined by Danshoku Dino defending the KO-D Openweight Championship against the winner of the 2018 King of DDT Daisuke Sasaki. Another high-profile match scheduled for the show featured Konosuke Takeshita facing Oriental Wrestling Entertainment's CIMA.

The event also featured another title match with DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Tetsuya Endo, and Soma Takao) defending the KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship against Disaster Box (Kazuki Hirata, Toru Owashi and Yuki Ueno). The event aired live on Fighting TV Samurai as a pay-per-view (PPV) and on DDT's streaming service DDT Universe, while part of the event was streamed on YouTube. This was also the only Peter Pan event to be held in fall instead of the summer.

## Production

### Background

Since 2009, DDT began annually producing shows in the *Ryōgoku Kokugikan* held in the summer under the name Peter Pan, becoming DDT premier annual event and the biggest event in the independent circuit of Japanese wrestling. Following the financial success of the first and following shows, DDT held a show at the Nippon Budokan, which also ended being a success with DDT selling out 10,124 tickets. Since 2013, the event returned to be held at the *Ryōgoku Kokugikan* in August, but the 2018 event became the only Peter Pan event to be held in fall instead of the summer.

On March 25, 2018, DDT announced they would hold another show in the *Ryōgoku Kokugikan* on October 20, with the tagline being the "2 Days Of Hell", due to DDT's sub-brand MUSCLE being the one to hold the MUSCLE Mania 2018 on the previous day of Peter Pan.

### Storylines

The Ryōgoku Peter Pan 2018 event featured twelve professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.

The Ryōgoku Peter Pan was main evented by Danshoku Dino defending the KO-D Openweight Championship against the winner of the 2018 King of DDT Daisuke Sasaki. Over the summer of 2018, Dino was DDT's director and publicly showed no desire for the KO-D Openwight Championship, but Dino had the ambition of main eventing a Peter Pan event, leading him to cash in a "Right to Challenge Anytime, Anywhere" contract that was gifted to him by Super Sasadango Machine, to win the KO-D Openweight Championship from Shigehiro Irie on August 14. Afterwards, Dino quit as the DDT Director, in order to not grant Irie a rematch, but ended up losing the title to Meiko Satomura, who cashed in her "Right to Challenge Anytime, Anywhere" contract on August 28. Meanwhile, two days earlier, Sasaki defeated his DAMNATION stablemate Tetsuya Endo in the finals to win the 2018 King of DDT earning his spot the main event for Peter Pan. On September 23, Dino defeated Satomura and Irie in a three-way elimination match, to guarantee his spot in the main event of Peter Pan, leading him to be confronted by Sasaki after the match. On October 2, during the 19th episode of the DDT Live! Maji Manji, Dino, and Sasaki faced each other in a tag team match, which ended with Dino pinning Sasaki. Sasaki returned the favor on October 10 during the 20h episode of the DDT Live! Maji Manji, when Sasaki submitted Dino during a six-man tag team match.

On September 23, Strong Hearts made their debut in DDT confronting ALL OUT. Takeshita then challenged Strong Hearts' leader CIMA to match instead of a tag team match between ALL OUT and Strong Hearts. T-Hawk then suggested that the other members of ALL OUT and Strong Hearts faced off in a six-man tag team match at Peter Pan, prompting ALL OUT's Akito to accepted, leading Interim General Manager Tetsuya Koda announcing both matches for the event. The two stables then agreed to an eight-man tag team match on September 25 during the 18th episode of the DDT Live! Maji Manji. At the September 25 event, Strong Hearts defeated ALL OUT in an eight-man tag team match.

On September 4, DAMNATION (Mad Paulie, Tetsuya Endo, and Soma Takao) defeated *Shuten-dōji* (Kudo, Yukio Sakaguchi, and Masa Takanashi) to win the KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship. Afterwards, Disaster Box interrupted DAMNATION and challenged them to a title match. Afterwards, DDT General Manager Tetsuya Koda asked who would represent Disaster Box in the match, leading a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine that Kazuki Hirata, Toru Owashi and Yuki Ueno would represent Disaster Box in the title match, leading to making the match official at Peter Pan.

On August 26, it was announced that Super Sasadango Machine would face Andreza Giant Panda at the event. The following month, Soken Holdings was announced as the sponsor for the match. On October 11, after Andreza defeated Gorgeous Matsuno, Sasadango entered the ring carrying a rope. Before the match, Sasadango revealed that Andreza's weakness was his handler, Samson Miyamoto, leading Sasadango to tie up Miyamoto with the rope and lay him out with the *Vertical Drop Lehmann Shock*. Sasadango taunted Andreza by kidnapping his handler. The following day, Andreza rescued his handler after attacking every participant in a match, that Sasadango took part in. Sasadango offered a handshake but Andreza lay him out with the *Lightspeed 3m Headbutt*. On October 10, during the 20h episode of the DDT Live! Maji Manji, Sasadango asked Sanshiro Takagi to dress as a panda to help him with some research. During a PowerPoint presentation, Sasadango has learned Andreza’s weakness, Andreza’s finishing moves. During the match, Sasadango distracted Takagi with bamboo, which led him to win the match and end the research.

During the year of 2018, MAO wanted to take the title of King of Street Wrestling, after DDT returned to focusing to its Falls Count Anywhere matches, leading to a feud with Sanshiro Takagi, in which MAO drove a van into Takagi during a match then threatened to blow up Shin-Kiba 1st RING with bottle rockets. Their feud reignited on July 31, during their match in the first round of the 2018 King of DDT, when their match got out of control with bicycle crashes, the destruction of plastic boxes, and MAO and Takagi chasing each other in cars, which MAO won the match. Afterwards, MAO and Takagi agreed to a rematch in a Weapon Rumble match. On September 25, it was announced that MAO was injured on his foot, but he managed to return for the match. On October 6, MAO and Takagi faced off in a six-man tag team match, which MAO's team won. During the match, attacked each other on the stage with a volleyball and later threw chairs at each other in the audience. Before the show, MAO went training in the Arakawa river bed with his Moonlight Express partner Mike Bailey. The training was focused on improving MAO’s accuracy with a pico pico hammer, but MAO threw it away. He went searching through the grass, but he unexpectedly found the God of Arakawa, who gave him the Legendary Pico Pico Hammer.

## Event

First on the undercard was a ten-man Rumble rules match. Amongst the participants was a fake Tiger Mask V.

The second match of the undercard was Mira Shirakawa's first DDT match and featured six Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling talents.

On the main card, Disaster Box (Toru Owashi, Kazuki Hirata and Yuki Ueno) challenged DAMNATION (Soma Takao, Tetsuya Endo and Mad Paulie) for the KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship.

Next was a six-team Gauntlet match in which two tag teams begin the match and are replaced whenever one is eliminated (by pinfall or submission) until there is only one team left.

Next was a tag team match dubbed "Super Joshi Pro Wars 2018" pitting Cassandra Miyagi and Meiko Satomura from Sendai Girls' Pro Wrestling against the team of Maki Itoh and Saki Akai.

Next was a six-man tag team match between All Out (Akito, Shunma Katsumata and Yuki Iino) and Strong Hearts (T-Hawk, El Lindaman and Duan Yingnan).

Next was an intergender tag team match between real life husband and wife Joey Ryan and Laura James, and real life fiancés Makoto Oishi and Misaki Ohata from Pro Wrestling Wave. The match was dubbed "The World's Crazy Couple Battle".

Next was a match sponsored by Souken Holdings dubbed "Eat Or Be Eaten!? Giant Special Single Match" between Super Sasadango Machine and Andreza Giant Panda, a gigantic panda mascot.

Next was a Weapon Rumble match dubbed "The Difference In 27 Years Of Age! Bloodbath Between President (48) and Roster Member (21) — Final and Conclusive Weapon Rumble" in which various weapons secretly chosen by the participants beforehand were being introduced one after another at regular intervals.

Next was Shigehiro Irie send-off match. He teamed up with his Team Dream Futures partner Keisuke Ishii to take on the team of HARASHIMA and Yukio Sakaguchi.

Next, Konosuke Takeshita faced off against CIMA.

In the main event, Daisuke Sasaki challenged Danshoku Dino for the KO-D Openweight Championship. Sasaki won the bout and was granted a 2,000,000 yen prize by Good Com Asset, the sponsor of the match.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `PeterPan2018CM`
2. ↑ Grabianowski, Ed. How Pro Wrestling Works . *HowStuffWorks, Inc.*. Discovery Communications. Retrieved on 2014-09-13.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `DDT2018PL`
4. ↑ *ja:両国ピーターパン2018～秋のプロレス文化祭～* (in Japanese). *DDT Pro-Wrestling* (2018-10-21). Retrieved on 2020-02-03.
5. ↑ DDT Results 2018 . *Dramatic DDT*. Retrieved on 2020-02-03.