What is a dream? Is it a fantasy? Is it a vision? Is it a hallucination? There are many different ideas behind what’s really a dream. In popular media, we’ve seen the idea of dreams accompanied by the pursuit of something greater than we could ever imagine. Just like the American Dream is the pursuit of the glory that supposedly capitalism can give us all there are many different kinds of dreams people have. Dreaming is a manifestation of what we desire in that moment and the ways we can get closer to it. What we desire is what motivates us to keep going and battle against the injustices of life and fate. Dreams are the manifestation of something that can happen in the future, and what we saw yesterday on the King of DDT finals with Chris Brookes beating Kazusada Higuchi was exactly that, a dream.
Brookes was always a special case in DDT. For some reason, and despite the number of things he did for the company outside of the in-ring product he was never a “protagonist” in his own right. After his rivalry with Konosuke Takeshita, we saw a different kind of fire in him. He bet on himself and left his home to chase a dramatic dream. And here he was, fighting The Ace of DDT in a match that defined his career, or at least we thought it did. After this, Brookes became a figure in DDT, a supporting character that embraced DDT’s stupidity and made it his own. But what we were seeing in DDT was only the tip of the iceberg. Brookes’s work outside of DDT was outstanding in his own right. His matches against Lulu Pencil on Gatoh Move, his work as CDK with Masa Takanashi, and of course his personal project, BAKA GAIJIN made waves around a man that was getting better and better as time passed. Chris Brookes threw the “gaijin” out of the window and became something that DDT needed for a long time.
The last “gaijin” that decided to break those unwritten rules of what should be an American/Canadian/British pro-wrestler in Japan was the One-Winged Angel himself. The mere idea of Brookes embracing that role once again was something of a dream, a vision, an hallucination. But then, the crowd started to support him even more. He became a known face for not only DDT but TJPW alike, participating in commentary, having sick matches, and being a core individual in DDT’s wrestling universe. He started speaking Japanese fluidly, and cut his own promos in that language. Long gone was the young Brookes that arrived in Japan as part of Fight Club: PRO. We were seeing a manifestation of a dream that he once had. CDK was big, but Brookes started to create his own legacy in DDT. His matches with Poko-tan and his quick showdown with Chii-tan made people understand Brookes’s goal in a promotion that let him do whatever he wanted. And then, the King of DDT started.
No one thought he was going to win. At least I didn’t. There were so many names that could’ve won the tournament easily, there were so many roads to travel and so many matches to have. We had Sanshiro Takagi’s last big run, and the fire of his match with Takeshita on our minds made us think he was going to win. We had Yuki Ueno’s road to redemption after losing against Kazusada Higuchi in 2022. We had MAO’s breakout performance, we had the future of DDT in Takeshi Masada, we had the stiffness of another Jun Akiyama KO-D title reign, we had “The Last Dance” of HARASHIMA, and of course, we had the idea of a two-time winner Higuchi, reclaiming his throne as the King of DDT. But against any predictions, laws, and unwritten rules, Brookes defeated HARASHIMA and Sanshiro Takagi back to back. And then, I saw something. I saw the vision. Chris Brookes as the King of DDT 2023 winner. The first time I came to that conclusion it sounded really weird and impossible to happen. But then I remembered that I had the same thought for Maki Itoh’s 2021 Tokyo Princess Cup. Was it destiny?
The semi-finals were set, and Chris Brookes was going to face Jun Akiyama. Former KO-D Openweight Champion and former D-Oh Grand Prix winner was going against a man that was never meant to be here. And I thought this was going to be the end of the road for him. This match was rough to watch. The stiffness of Akiyama and his slow and methodical pace became a nightmare because I never knew when he was going to hit that Exploder and that knee to beat Brookes.
The thing is, he never did.
He never beat Brookes. Because Chris stood tall and fought for his dreams. Chris fought for his destiny. And when I saw Brookes beating Akiyama, that vision became a dream for me. A dream of seeing a wrestler as that One-Winged Angel that made DDT bigger than ever. A vision of that wrestler that wrote his own legend under his own terms. The final was set, and Chris Brookes had his final test against the winner of last year’s tournament, and 2022’s greatest champion, Kazusada Higuchi.
Higuchi was a god in this tournament. The whole idea of his run was to make him be this entity, this wrestler that you couldn’t beat no matter what you do. His headbutts were lethal, his strikes were brutal and his aura was slowly building him as the winner of this year’s tournament. Brookes had no chance going against this man, but I believed in him. I believed in his own dramatic dream.
What followed was easily DDT’s best match of the year. A story as simple and as effective. The underdog fighting for his life to slay this mythical entity once and for all. Standing up, bloodied, battered, and broken against this man that was not meant to fall. A man that had this tournament in the palm of his hand. A beast, a flagbearer that was touched by God and was meant to win and crown himself again. A wrestler’s wrestler that was playing on his ground, with his own rules. Brookes couldn’t do anything to him, Brookes couldn’t even touch him and make him bleed. After a series of headbutts that didn’t do anything, it seemed this chapter was meant to be closed. Two-time Higuchi was manifesting, and it looked as real as ever. Drew Parker and Masa Takanashi’s screams echoed in the Korakuen Hall, and Brookes was still standing. He didn’t want to fall. Higuchi prepared the final blow. And this was meant to happen. Fate made it that way.
These are the rules of the game, and you either like them or you don’t. But against any stupid law, against any idiotic thought, against any bad-faith prediction, and against fate itself, Brookes broke those unwritten rules once again and somehow defeated Higuchi. Because that’s what he does. That’s what he lives for. That’s his goal. His own dream manifesting. His own fantasy. When Brookes won the King of DDT tournament that vision manifested in front of me, and I’m sure as hell Brookes’s dream was meant to happen. He knew it. He fought for it. His “destiny” is the Sumo Hall, and let’s hope whatever is up there lends him a hand because we’re now waiting for his happy ending. The image of Brookes having the trophy is something that you can’t imagine. Is a vision, a hallucination, something that you just don’t see in any other place. An image that, as the song says, you can see only in dreams.
Check out Chris Brookes’ win over on WRESTLE UNIVERSE.
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