Like a Dragon Gaiden's pro wrestling debut was a shockingly entertaining tribute to Yakuza's goofy violence

gamesradar.com:

Last night's episode of pro wrestling show AEW Dynamite featured a match called the "Like a Dragon Gaiden street fight presented by Sega," and folks, it was even wilder than that name suggests.

Pro wrestling has a long history of questionable crossovers with other brands and entertainment properties, from that time RoboCop showed up in WCW to the more recent Mountain Dew Pitch Black match in WWE. AEW has its own history of weird sponsored matches, including the Texas Chain Saw Massacre death match, which ran in promotion of the recently released video game. Leatherface was there. It was profoundly dumb.

So when AEW announced that it was being sponsored by Sega for a street fight inspired by Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, precedent had conditioned me to have low expectations. Doubly so since it seemed to be tying into one of AEW's most notable grudges without much rhyme or reason, and since it felt as if several of the match's eight participants were kind of just thrown into the whole thing at random.

I pretty much turned around on the whole thing the instant I saw rising star pro wrestler Konosuke Takeshita beat up several men with a bicycle in classic Yakuza style. He did the giant Kiryu bike swing and everything. It was perfect. The match was full of fantastic tributes to Yakuza and Like a Dragon, with the ringside area decorated by various Kamurocho-style street signs and restaurant menus - many of which naturally ended up being used as weapons. My favorite touch was the way the entrance ramp was transformed into a Kamurocho street corner, complete with NPCs wandering back and forth, many of them oblivious to the ongoing violence.

A few of the participants dressed for the occasion, too. Takeshita