Open The Owarai Gate Championship

The Open The Owarai Gate Championship is the comedy-based championship in Dragon Gate. Otherwise known as Open The Comedy Gate, it is a unique championship that is awarded not so much based on the match results, but of the performance of the competitors. Once the actual match is finished, the audience decide who amused them the best. Sometimes the fans will end up choosing someone who is not actually in the match itself simply because they found them funnier than the competitors.

Overview
The championship was established when Stalker Ichikawa embarked on his first trip to the United States in May 2007. A fan of the wrestler, then-Pro Wrestling Guerrilla Commissioner Dino Winwood issued a request for the development of a championship for Stalker to have. Dragon Gate officials agreed and created the belt. Ichikawa was initially provided with ten free tickets that could be used to ensure a successful defense regardless of the outcome. However, the tickets were destroyed by Kikutaro prior to his challenging for the title, forcing Ichikawa to defend the belt on his own merit.

When Kikutaro did finally win the championship in 2009, he made three defenses before he presumably lost it in his otaku room for roughly one and a half years. The title was seemingly forgotten about by virutally everyone until Dragon Gate began planning for the Don Fujii Homecoming in Mie on April 10, 2011. They finally managed to contact Kikutaro to not only appear, but to defend the Open The Owarai Gate Championship. Fujii officiated the match and appealed for a fan vote that resulted in his winning the championship, thus returning it to Dragon Gate for good.

The music theme leading into the championship defenses uses snippets from the main theme of the Super Mario Bros. video game.