Trivia / Dragon Gate

• Breakup Breakout: Many examples.
  • The biggest would have to be the Toryumon/Dragon Gate split. Toryumon Mexico eventually lapsed into obscurity, while Dragon Gate went on to become arguably the #2 promotion in Japan.
  • Akira Tozawa to the entire promotion, as he the first Dragon Gate trueborn to make it to WWE.^note Uhaa Nation and Brodie Lee got there before he did, but they were respectively a part-timer and a guest appearace. He was later joined by Ricochet.
  • Of the four core CrazyMAX wrestlers, CIMA went on to the greatest success, becoming the top name in Dragon Gate. In economical terms, the next would be TARU, who became the Big Bad of All Japan Pro Wrestling, but only as a manager-like figure (admittedly, as he had always been). Meanwhile, SUWA went on to be a popular midcarder in NOAH, but achieved relatively little before retiring due to injuries, and Don Fujii remains in Dragon Gate, albeit primarily as an undercarder. As for the non-core members, JUN retired from injury and went to land in the diminutive promotion Secret Base, Chocoball KOBE simply disappeared, and Stalker Ichikawa is still a comedy wrestler. The only CrazyMAX guy who had individual in-ring success anywhere comparable to CIMA is Shingo Takagi, who was only in the stable for a few months at the very end.
  • Among the Italian Connection, YOSSINO went on to tons of success inside Dragon Gate as Masato Yoshino, Condotti Shuji revitalized AJPW's junior division as Shuji Kondo, and YASSINI went on to have a prolific if not spectacularly successful career as brother YASSHI; it is hard to measure who became the most successful. Ironically, stable leader Milano Collection A.T. seemed to have the biggest part of the cake, as he joined New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but he got lost in the shuffle and had to retire from an eye injury, and Berlinetta Boxer went on to become Shogo Takagi and retire shortly after Aagan Iisou left Dragon Gate.
  • Susumu Yokosuka joined Toryumon as half of a tag team with Yasushi Kanda. Kanda injured his neck severely, and Yokosuka went on to form equally successful tag teams with K-ness and Ryo Saito, and held the Dream Gate title on two separate occasions. In fact, Yokosuka has gone on to markedly more success than K-ness as well, and slightly more success than Saito.
  • When Kzy debuted under the name m.c.KZ, he was considered the second best rookie of his class, behind a guy named Lupin Matsutani. The two of them joined the main roster as a tag team called Lupin the KZ. However, Matsutani suffered a career ending neck injury very early on in his career and retired.
  • Among the Royal Brothers, for years it looked like Anthony W. Mori was going to be the Breakout of the team. Philip J. Fukumasa had retired after not quite 2 years in the business, and Henry III Suguwara (later Takuya Suguwara) departed the promotion with the rest of Aagan Iisou. Then Suguwara reinvented himself in Pro Wrestling ZERO1 as a Lower-Class Lout who enjoyed cigarettes and cheap booze, while Mori kept using the Royal Bros gimmick and got lost in the shuffle. Eventually Suguwara would return to Dragon Gate as one of the main members of heel stable Deep Drunkers, while Mori won and immediately vacated the Brave Gate Title^note because there had been interference in the match and he didn't want to hold a title he won on a tainted win, and retired shortly after.
• Creator Backlash: Akira Tozawa's time in The Metabolic Brothers with Yuki Ono. ^note Ono gained a lot of weight, got quite fat, and inexplicably became popular. So Tozawa was forced to gain weight as well and form a fat man tag team with Ono. The tag team wrecked both their popularity
• Follow the Leader: The annual Dead or Alive hair vs. mask cage match brings to mind CMLL's "cage of death", which has roughly the same stipulations.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • Aagan Iisou remains one of the most shocking examples of this trope, as it was an entire stable who got fulminantly fired when it was at the peak of its popularity (and it was probably the hottest stable in the promotion at its time!) for reasons that have never been clarified other than unspecified behavior troubles. The most popular rumor is that its member YASSHI did something in a party that offended a Gaora TV executive, which endangered DG's entire TV deal and angered the promotion's management enough to fire the entire gang. It has since been claimed that the stable quit over having been collectively demoted to extra and that Dragon Gate simply lied about it to save face.
  • At the end of 2016, when the wrestlers address the fans and thank them for their support, Keni'chiro Arai cut a rather salty (and presumably off-script) promo where he complained about how rarely he was booked in Dragon Gate events. He then stopped being booked by Dragon Gate entirely^note before being brought back in 2019 for the Dragon Gate vs Toruymon vs R.E.D angle, leading people to think it made him fall completely out of favor with the executives.
• What Could Have Been: It is believed that Dr. Muscle was supposed to be played by Raimu Mishima, who was going to get a post-Florida Bros. push the same way Taku Iwasa did, and that the angle was abandoned after Mishima jumped to Kensuke Office. Consequently, the character drifted aimlessly with different people playing it before it was phased out.