El Dorado Wrestling

***El Dorado Wrestling***
 **Headquarters** | Japan

**El Dorado Wrestling** or **El Dorado** is promotion based around the Dragon System that tried to be an alternative to Dragon Gate. El Dorado had a better time at being presented as a full fledged promotion than it's predecessor DragonDoor and even had its own dojo. However, the promotion developed a unrelenting curse in that many of its talent would get injured prior to shows, causing plans and storylines to either be postponed or scrapped altogether. And like DragonDoor, El Dorado faced the problem of making stars out of its talent when the fans preferred to see the members of Aagan Iisou. After roughly 31 months of activity, El Dorado would fold.

Outside of the actual wrestling, the shows displayed a pirate motif, specifically based on the Pirates of the Caribbean films. As ring announcer, Jun Ogawauchi would sometimes cosplay as Captain Jack Sparrow and a slight variation of the films' main music theme would be used as the promotion's theme.

## History

Almost immediately after DragonDoor was closed, Noriaki Kawabata would go on to create El Dorado on February 23, 2006 as the "Next Door Project." Having learned from the mistakes in the previous promotion, El Dorado concentrated on what was popular with the fans and used it as a springboard in expanding the "event" premise of DragonDoor. Whereas DragonDoor appeared chaotic and in disarray, El Dorado came off like a true promotion, more orderly and presentable.

The first year was very much focused around the on-going feud between Aagan Iisou, this time with all of its members, and the upstart STONED faction. At the center of the feud was Takuya Sugawara, who was being courted by both sides. While Sugawara would end up siding with STONED, the actual feud itself never really had a resolution due to what would become known as the *El Dorado Curse*. Long term injuries would put everything in a holding pattern and left shows in the latter part of 2006 with very little focus.

Beginning in March 2007, El Dorado had a complete rest. All existing alignments would be scrapped and they would take a page from Dragon Gate by focusing on multiple factions. In April, the appointed leaders would be Aagan Iisou members Shuji Kondo, "brother" YASSHI, Takuya Sugawara, and Toru Owashi. Because of his semi-retired status, Shogo Takagi would not be a leader of a faction. The four leaders would recruit whoever they wanted into their units by August. Virtually any wrestler not in a unit by then would be fired.

In 2008, however, the unit concept was abandoned for the most part. This was largely due to most of the units, outside of the Sugawara started Hell Demons, never really sticking within their recruited partnerships. Nevertheless, it seemed that things were looking up for the promotion as they started running shows more frequently from once a month to twice, sometimes even four times a month. Furthermore, Kondo managed to bring TARU in to be the promotion's General Manager.

Unfortunately, August 24, 2008 marked the last appearance of the whole Aagan Iisou unit in El Dorado as all five left. The move was intended to be temporary so that the remaining talent in the promotion would have a chance to shine on their own and thereby interest in the company would be renewed upon their return. Yet this ended up not being the case. Lingering money troubles and the cancellation of an October show at Korakuen Hall made it hard to ignore the writing on the wall. The death blow came when Kondo signed a full-time contract with All Japan Pro Wrestling, making it almost impossible to ever come back to El Dorado.

The promotion would stop running shows at Korakuen Hall altogether and focus on the FACE BASTA shows at Shinjuku FACE, but it was too little too late. With disappearing fan interest and talent already jumping ship to focus their attention in other promotions, El Dorado ran its last show on December 15, 2008 and ceased operations.

## El Dorado Dojo

Despite being active for roughly 31 months, El Dorado managed to run their own dojo which saw a few actually graduate and make the main roster prior to the promotions closing.

 Yamada Man Pondo | January 2007

* Go actually started training in the Dragon Gate dojo in 2005 and wrestled a number of exhibition matches before dropping out and disappearing in the summer of 2006. He was thought to have retired until he showed up in El Dorado, becoming the first graduate of their dojo.

## Championships Promoted

 UWA World Tag Team Championship | 2008
 UWA World Trios Championship | 2004–2008

* While El Dorado was not founded until 2006, the history of the UWA World Trios Championship since its disuse by the former Toryumon Japan are recognized as El Dorado is associated with Toryumon in general.

## Tournaments

 Treasure Hunters Tag Tournament | Dick Togo and Shuji Kondo | December 27, 2006