Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival (2017)

Promotional poster for the event, featuring various Dragon Gate wrestlers

The **Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival (2017)** was a professional wrestling event promoted by Dragon Gate (DG). The event took place on July 23, 2017, at the Kobe World Memorial Hall in Kobe, Japan. It was the 14th Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival, which is Dragon Gate's biggest annual event and it's similar to NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom.

The event featured four matches of contested for championships. In the main event, YAMATO defending the Open The Dream Gate Championship against the 2017 King of Gate winner T-Hawk in the main event. The other matches featured Jimmy Kagetora defending the Open The Brave Gate Championship against Flamita, CK-1 (CIMA and Dragon Kid) defending the Open The Twin Gate Championship against DoiYoshi (Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino) and VerserK (El Lindaman Shingo Takagi and Takashi Yoshida) defending the Open The Triangle Gate Championship against the winners of the tournament Jimmyz (Genki Horiguchi H.A.Gee.Mee!!, Jimmy Susumu and Ryo "Jimmy" Saito). The event is available in their streaming service Dragon Gate Network.

## Production

### Background

The Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival (2017) aired in Japan through Dragon Gate's internet streaming site, Niconico, with Japanese language commentaries. The Japanese commentary was provided by Katsuya Ichikawa. The event also aired on tape delay on Japanese TV Gaora Sports to be launched in Dragon Gate's ~ Infinity ~ Series.

### Storylines

The 2017 Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portray villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that build tension and culminate in a wrestling match or series of matches.

The 2017 Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival was main evented by YAMATO defending the Open The Dream Gate Championship against T-Hawk. Last year at the 2016 Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival YAMATO won the title by defeating Shingo Takagi. Throughout 2016 and 2017 since YAMATO won the title, he had been defending his title against all comers, even defending his title in a Steel Cage Survival 5 Way Match at the 2017 Dead or Alive PPV. Meanwhile, T-Hawk turned heel joining VerserK and he also won the Open The Triangle Gate Championship. Then in June during the King of Gate, T-Hawk would start a feud with YAMATO after his VerserK stablemate Shingo Takagi cheated to defeat YAMATO's Tribe Vanguard stablemate BxB Hulk, and then YAMATO intervened, Hulk and YAMATO started to speak badly about Takagi on being proud of a dirty win. Then Takagi's stablemate T-Hawk came in and started to talk about Tribe Vanguard's accomplishments. This led to a match between the four on July 6. This followed up on June 11, with T-Hawk defeating Naruki Doi to win the King of Gate. After the match, T-Hawk called out YAMATO stating his intentions for the Open The Dream Gate Championship. At first, YAMATO didn't want to give T-Hawk his title shot and even joked about it. Then YAMATO would agree to give T-Hawk his title shot. On June 17, the two would later set their match to be on the main event of the Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival. The match between the two would later be announced on the following day.

The Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival (2017) will also feature a match for the Open The Brave Gate Championship, where Jimmy Kagetora will defend against Flamita. On March 20 at the Memorial Gate in Wakayama Kagetora defeated El Lindaman in the finals of a tournament and to win the Open The Brave Gate Championship for the first time. In the past in 2014 when Flamita was the Open The Brave Gate Champion, he would defeat Kagetora to make his third title defense. Flamita reign as Open The Brave Gate Champion ended when he vacated the title after Flamita left the belt in the ring in protest, following his ninth defense ending in a disqualification. Since then Kagetora has challenged for the Open The Brave Gate Championship twice, falling to win the championship, while Flamita took a hiatus from Dragon Gate and returned on 2016 joining the Tribe Vanguard stable and also unsuccessfully challenging the Open The Brave Gate Championship once. On June 10 during the semifinals of the King of Gate tournament, Kagetora challenged Flamita into a match with his Open The Brave Gate Championship on the line. However, Flamita was in Mexico so he asked his Tribe Vanguard stablemate Kzy to pass him this message. Then Kagetora started to make challenges for his title including Kzy and Kaito Ishida. Eight days later Flamits's Tribe Vanguard stablemate BxB Hulk announced that he would return to Japan next week. Flamita's return match took place on June 22, when he, YAMATO, BxB Hulk and Kzy defeated Naruki Doi, Big R Shimizu, Ben-K and Kotoka in an eight-man tag team match. Then on July 1 Kagetora and Flamita settled their match to be at the Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival.

Another title match would see CK-1 (CIMA and Dragon Kid) defending against the Open The Twin Gate Championship against DoiYoshi (Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino). This match was set up during Dragon Gate's Rainbow Gate tour on the seventh day on July 1, when, after DoiYoshi called out CK-1 challenging them to a title match, which CIMA one-half of the reigning champions accepted the challenged. On May 28 Doi and Yoshino made their tag team match return defeating RyoSuka (Jimmy Susumu and Ryo "Jimmy" Saito). Both teams have one victory against each other. The first time both teams faced each other was during the 2007 Summer Adventure Tag League, were CK-1 won. The second time both teams faced each other was on 2012 during 6 Unit Warfare One Night Tag Tournament, where this time DoiYoshi won. During this space of time, DoiYoshi won the Summer Adventure Tag League three times and twice the Open The Twin Gate Championship and even broke up two times after Doi turned on Yoshino twice but they reunited in 2017 forming the stable MaxiMuM. While CK-1 broke up once and they reunited on 2016 after Kid joined CIMA's Over Generation stable and later the two even won the Open The Twin Gate Championship and retaining until now. This was the third time that these two teams faced each other.

In the Open The Triangle Gate Championship match was VerserK (El Lindaman Shingo Takagi and Takashi Yoshida) against the winners of a tournament early in the show. On July 1 Lindaman, Yoshida and Takagi defeated MaxiMuM (Big R Shimizu, Ben-K and Naruki Doi) to win the Open The Triangle Gate Championship. Before MaxiMuM lost the titles MaxiMuM was feuding with Jimmyz and later also with Over Generation. Then VerserK also joined this feuding challenging MaxiMuM for the Open The Triangle Gate Champions. Later Gamma made a challenge for the Open The Triangle Gate Champions on Over Generation's behalf. Then after Lindaman, Yoshida and Takagi won the Open The Triangle Gate Champions the Jimmyz challenged for the Open The Triangle Gate Championship. This followed up with with Gamma challenging for the Open The Triangle Gate Champions on Over Generation's behalf with his partners being Eita and Takehiro Yamamura, who early in the show Yamamura got the win against the Jimmyz and also Kotoka challenged for the Open The Triangle Gate Championship on MaxiMuM behalf and early in the show Kotoka and Masato Yoshino defeated CIMA and Dragon Kid after Eita interfered in the match, and it was backfired and an errant superkick allowed Kotoka to pin CIMA. After the that Tribe Vanguard also followed up with a challenge for the titles. Then the champions VerserK since they didn't want to defend the titles in a five-way match, Takagi proposed a tournament were the winning team would face VerserK later on the show for the titles then the general manager Takayuki Yagi announced a tournament where the winners would face VerserK later on the show and the tournament matches would have competed under two count rules.

Other matches at Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival (2017) included Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fujii, Jimmy Kanda and Jimmy K-ness J.K.S. taking on Kaito Ishida, Yuki Yoshioka, Shun Skywalker and Hyou Watanabe. The full card of the event was announced on July 7.