On July 4, 2004,
Último Dragón departed from the
Toryumon Gym and seized ownership of the "Toryumon" trademarks. The
Toryumon Japan promotion subsequently restructured and changed its name to Dragon Gate. Dragon Gate declared
Cima (the last one to hold the
Último Dragón Gym Championship) to be the inaugural
Open the Dream Gate Champion, thus making him the first champion in the promotion's history. Dragon Gate would make a TV deal to air on Gaora TV, who was also a shareholder of
All Japan Pro Wrestling after Motoko Baba sold the rights to the company and gave her power to
Keiji Muto. Dragon Gate TV's first episode aired live on July 16, 2004. AJPW TV episodes would also air commercials advertising Dragon Gate's TV debut and would frequently promote future Dragon Gate shows during AJPW commercials, despite there being little interpromotional crossover of AJPW and Dragon Gate in their events. Dragon Gate TV would use an anime intro depicting their wrestlers, the intro's art style being a blend of mainstream anime with
Fujiko Fujio-esque animation. Since its founding, Dragon Gate wrestlers have also made appearances on the
United States independent wrestling circuit, including
Ring of Honor which held a Dragon Gate Invasion show on August 27, 2005, in
Buffalo, New York, Dragon Gate Challenge on March 30, 2006, in
Detroit, Michigan and
Supercard of Honor and Better Than Our Best in
Chicago, Illinois on March 31 and April 1, 2006, respectively. A six-man match pitting Cima,
Naruki Doi and
Masato Yoshino against
Dragon Kid,
Ryo Saito and
Genki Horiguchi at Supercard of Honor is one of only a handful of North American matches that wrestling journalist
Dave Meltzer has given a
five-star rating. Both Ring of Honor's All Star Extravaganza III on March 30 and
Supercard of Honor II on March 31, 2007, in Detroit, Michigan featured Dragon Gate in the main events. On October 12, 2007 Baseball Magazine Sha, the publisher of
Weekly Pro-Wrestling released Dragon Gate
trading cards. In 2008, Dragon Gate promoted their first set of shows in the United States. The first show took place in Los Angeles on September 5 and featured
El Generico,
Necro Butcher, and
Kendo. Their second show was in Hawaii on September 8. Japan's Dragon Gate promotion announced its expansion into the United States with
Dragon Gate USA on April 14, 2009, at the
Korakuen Hall event in
Tokyo. Also in 2009 it was announced that they created another branch promotion Dragon Gate UK. Their first show was held on November 1, 2009, in
Oxford, England. On March 21, 2018, Dragon Gate announced the creation of
Dragon Gate Network, an on-demand service similar to
WWE Network and
New Japan Pro-Wrestling World. The service officially launched on April 1, 2018. On May 7, 2018, Okamura left his job as president. Toru Kido became the new president and Cima became the President of Dragon Gate Inc., the international department with the headquarter in
Shanghai, China. In 2019, the promotion celebrated its 20th anniversary. As part of the celebration Último Dragón returned to the promotion in July as a senior advisor. Afterwards, the promotion changed its logo and its parent company Dragon Entertainment would be known as Dragongate Inc. Within the time of all the changes of the promotion, they started to use the combined
Dragongate moniker as its official
romaji name. On February 1, 2020, Dragongate announced a working relationship with American promotion
Major League Wrestling (MLW), which would include a talent-exchange between the two promotions. On December 15, 2023, Dragongate was announced as one of the founding members of the
United Japan Pro-Wrestling alliance, a joint effort to further develop professional wrestling in Japan through promotion and organization, with
Seiji Sakaguchi being named as the chairman of the project. ==Features==