Why not revive my old blog where I reviewed video games and make the first post reviewing a wrestling show? And also commit to reviewing 19 wrestling shows over the next month, urgh!
New Japan Pro Wrestling's G1 Climax is an annual tournament that runs during July and August, and produces some amazing matches. I've been a wrestling fan most of my life, started following NJPW in 2012 after an awesome Hiroshi Tanahashi/Minoru Suzuki match got a lot of buzz online, and I've managed to watch all of the G1 shows for the past two years. It's quite a time commitment to keep up with them, each show is roughly three hours long and they often have shows on multiple consecutive days.
A quick overview of my wrestling habits. I keep up with WWE news but only watch things that sound worthwhile, so not much recently. I try and keep up with NXT news, and always manage to watch the Takeovers, which have yet to be anything less than amazing. I watch NJPW's big shows, and keep up with what's going on and watch the smaller shows if they sound interesting. AEW is just starting up and I've seen all their shows so far (All In, Double or Nothing, Fyter Fest) and am quite liking their direction. I don't follow any other promotions, but if I hear of great matches from elsewhere I will try and see them.
For this year's G1, for the first time ever they held the first night outside of Japan, it taking place in Dallas, Texas. Japanese wrestling crowds are quite different to American crowds, and NJPW have been working on their global expansion for the past year or so, so putting a G1 show in the US is certainly interesting. NJPW have a show in the UK coming up at the end of August called Royal Quest which I have tickets to, and I am very excited about that.
I plan on watching and reviewing all the G1 matches, but I'm not sure if I'll manage all the tag matches on the shows too. I would like to, but the time commitment is severe. I'll try my best!
Anyway, on to the matches.
Roppongi 3K (Sho & Yoh) vs Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa)
I like both of these teams, but I can't say I love them. Tama Tonga is brilliant at being an unlikable prick, but it seems like he's toned that down in recent months. Roppongi 3K are a junior heavyweight team, both Sho and Yoh have both just competed in the Super J Cup tournament, but I can see them moving up to heavyweight, at least as a tag team. I have no clue if they would be able to compete at heavyweight as a tag, and as junior for singles. There may be rules preventing such a thing, but it is wrestling so the rules don't matter too much.
On to an actual review of the match: it was good. G.O.D won with their badass Bret's rope power bomb.
Tomohiro Ishii & Shota Umino vs Jeff Cobb & Ren Narita
I'm not that familiar with Jeff Cobb, I'm a bit off and on with New Japan so I seem to have missed his tours, but from this match I have to say I like him. He reminds me of Rhyno in so much as he looks like a tank. Ishii is brilliant and the two facing off in this tag got me very hyped for their singles match on Night 2. Ren Narita is my favourite of the current Young Lions, and I liked him in here too. It looks like Shota Umino is cultivating mass right now and getting slightly away from the generic Young Lion look.
I don't expect much from the tag matches on G1 shows, but this got unexpectedly great when Ishii and Cobb faced off and the crowd got super into it it. The crows were great all night really. Cobb won with his hilarious swing slam finisher. Good match!
Yoshi-Hashi & Hirooki Goto vs Chase Owens & Jay White
I really really like Hirooki Goto. He has badass music, he looks like a killer Buddhist monk, his moves just feel really powerful to me. Of the NJPW mainstays, he is probably my favourite. Yoshi-Hashi is pointless. Chase Owens is pointless. Jay White is OK, but I can't say I like him too much. I wish Goto all the success in the world, but the other three in this match I don't care about.
Goto pinned Chase Owens after his Goto Revolution, which is a cool name for a move!
Jushin "Thunder" Liger & Juice Robinson & Toru Yano vs Bushi & Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito
Liger is a legend! I really like Juice in New Japan, he's so much better than he was in NXT, or maybe NXT was holding him back, I don't know. He cut off his dreadlocks recently which I am disappointed in. I go through phases of thinking Toru Yano is amazing, and phases where I absolutely hate him. These tend to coincide with whether I care about his opponent or not. On the Los Ingobernales de Japon side, I don't have any feelings towards Bushi. Shingo Takagi is excellent, and Naito is pretty great. Takagi is probably my favourite of the LIJ bunch, I didn't know him at all before he joined NJPW last year, but he's completely won me over with being awesome. He was in this year's Super J Cup and he was excellent, and I'm very happy he's in the G1 too.
I'm surprised LIJ lost this match, as they are an actual team compared to the others who are just randomly thrown together. Toru Yano sort of breaks NJPW's strive for a "realistic" pro-wrestling presentation, but he has to win here to make it seem like he might beat Naito in their match on Night 2. Yano rolled up Bushi for the win!
Will Ospreay vs Lance Archer
On to the G1 matches, this was brilliant and my match of the night. Will Ospreay is the Junior Heavyweight champion after winning the Super J Cup and beating former champ Dragon Lee a month or so ago, and now he's in the G1. Over the past year he has become one of my favourite wrestlers. He used to be an awesome flippy guy but not much more, but he has really stepped up his game in the past year. I didn't think I cared at all about Lance Archer, but he was very impressive in this match.
These two put on a great match, Archer looked like a total monster, and Ospreay looked like he had an unstoppable heart. There was a great Spanish Fly off the top rope that Ospreay did where he landed on his feet, it looked devastating, I'm not a big fan of old school moves like The Claw that Arhcer used, especially when done in NJPW, but aside from that this match was excellent.
Archer won with The Claw, something I really didn't see coming. Amazing match!
Evil vs Bad Luck Fale
I quite like Evil in a "fat, goth RVD is funny" kind of way. I don't like Bad Luck Fale. To be honest, I did not watch this match.
Bad Luck Fale won. I'm sure it was ok.
Sanada vs Zack Sabre Jr
This is the match I was most looking forward to and I feel like it delivered and then some. These two had a match during last year's G1 and I thought that was excellent, and this one was better. I have been a huge fan of Sanada since I first saw him, he's my favourite LIJ member for sure. I really like his cool demeanour, and I think his wrestling style has a really good mix of athleticism, submissions, and strikes. ZSJ is one of my favourite wrestlers, I love that one of his moves is named after a Stewart Lee joke (Orienteering with Napalm Death), I love his submission style where he moves from move to move if it looks like his opponent is about to break out, and I love that he has turned into an insufferable asshole since joining Suzuki-gun.
I think these two have amazing chemistry. One(legitimately valid) criticism of ZSJ is that he always wrestles his style of match, as opposed to practically every other wrestler in the world who varies it up, and I can't really disagree with that. However, I think the way he wrestles is excellent, so I'm always happy to see more of it. Sanada is a perfect opponent for ZSJ as it feels like he can almost keep up, and he has enough extra strength and athleticism to outpace Zack. I really enjoy their matches and this was no exception.
The finish came with Sanada doing a fancy pin on ZSJ, which was great. Zack is a submission expert so even though Sanada technically out-wrestling him, he still looks very strong. I loved this!
Kota Ibushi vs Kenta
Ibushi is the prettiest boy in the world, and also one of my favourite wrestlers. He has great strikes, great flips, and is seemingly determined to end his life inside the ring. On the other hand, I am mostly familiar with Kenta from his disastrous WWE run, I've only seen a handful of his matches from before then and while I liked him, I didn't find him anything special. I was really hoping in this match Kenta would turn into the dangerous murderer he apparently used to be so I could see him at his best.
Unfortunately I don't think that happened. Kenta was a bit slower than I was hoping. His kicks looked awesome, but I felt he was lacking something. Kenta having most of the control of the match also meant I never got to see Ibushi shine like the diamond he is, so I was slightly underwhelmed. The match was ok, but I expected better.
Kenta won after a Go 2 Sleep.
Kazuchika Okada vs Hiroshi Tanahashi
Okada and Tanahashi have had an excellent rivalry over the year, but I felt it ended a couple of year's ago at Wrestle Kingdom with Okada finally getting a solid victory. They had a couple of matches since then, they had that great match last year where Okada had to beat Tanahashi to get the title defences record, but I think the rivalry is over. They still put on great matches, but I think they've lost their eminence.
Having said that, I was expecting this match to reignite the rivalry somehow, but it didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, it was a great match, but I thought it would be more than just great. Okada winning pretty definitively came as a surprise as during last year's G1 they went to a draw. I thought they might do that again, or have Tanahashi win, but that didn't happen. Tanahashi peaked this year with his Wrestle Kingdom win over Kenny Omega, and since then he has been losing a lot, almost like he's on his way out and putting everyone over that he can. Who knows?
Okada won with a Rainmaker, in a great match.
Conclusion
There was some hesitance with whether a G1 show in the US would still feel like a G1 show, but I think it definitely did. The crowd felt different but there wasn't the usual amount of dickish-ness you get from American crowds, and they were great throughout. The tag matches were better than I expected, and the G1 matches were all great, save for the Evil/Fale match. None of the matches were mind-blowing, but the show overall was excellent. If you don't have time to see everything, try and watch the four good G1 matches, because they were very good. Great show!