Day six of the G1 is B Block action with Moxley vs Ishii in the main event. This is gonna be good!
Bad Luck Fale & Chase Owens vs Zack Sabre Jr & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
Zack started this tag match off strong but Fale overpowered him. Kanemaru got some good offence in, but accidentally spat his whiskey into Zack's face!
Fale pinned Kanemaru after a Grenade. Post-match ZSJ attempted to attack Fale but got beaten down. Zack looked terrible here which inversely makes me think he's more likely to win his match with Fale tomorrow.
Lance Archer & Minoru Suzuki vs Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tomoaki Honma
Honma looked even more robotic than usual. There was a moment where he ran the ropes and it looked completely unnatural. This guy needs to retire!
Once again Minoru Suzuki was awesome, taking a break from beating down his opponent to beat down an endless stream of Young Lions. Tanahashi didn't do too much in this match, I think he was probably taking it easy.
Archer won with The Claw to Honma. Post-match Archer and Suzuki decimated the Young Lions. I am really liking Archer in this tournament.
Evil & Sanada & Bushi vs Kenta & Kota Ibushi & Clark Connors
The two matches this tag was setting up both look awesome, but this match itself was sort of nothing.
The best moment was after the match when Evil and Kenta were beating each other on the outside, whilst inside the ring Ibushi and Sanada were have a pose-off. That was cool.
Bushi pinned Connors after an MX.
Will Ospreay & Toa Henare vs Kazuchika Okada & Yoshi-Hashi
Ospreay apparently still has the neck injury but he didn't seem to have slowed that at all. He did some good in this match, but Okada stood firm against him.
Yoshi-Hashi got the pin on Henare after a fisherman's buster. Sort of like the ZSJ/Fale tag earlier, I think team Okada winning this match is setting up a reversal for tomorrow with Ospreay beating Okada. I hope that happens!
Shingo Takagi vs Taichi
Really good match here, one of the best performances I've seen from Taichi. I like that he can be a badass when he wants to be, but most of the time he prefers being the phantom of the opera and loves to cheat.
Shingo got the win after Last of the Dragons. Really good match.
Juice Robinson vs Jeff Cobb
Kind of a nothing match. These two did not mix well together and the crowd weren't really into it. I expected better.
Cobb won after Tour of the Islands.
Jay White vs Toru Yano
Another Toru Yano comedy match, but this time with Jay White also doing everything he can to cheat. Jay is great when he's not doing proper matches so I really liked this.
Yano got the win after punching White in the dick with brass knuckles. White is now 0-3 in this G1. Going in he was one of the favourites so this is crazy booking!
Hirooki Goto vs Tetsuya Naito
Good match from these two, but I expected a little better. I don't think Naito has been on his game this tournament, he's still quite good but he should be great.
Having said that, Naito did this awesome move where he slammed Goto's leg into the edge of the apron and it looked like he bent his knee the wrong way, it was sick! Naito worked over the left, Goto tried to fight back, there was some good hard shots.
Naito eventually won after a couple of Destinos. Good match.
Jon Moxley vs Tomohiro Ishii
Match of the night and one of the best Moxley matches I've ever seen, he seemed so much better than he was in WWE.
The match started with Mox dragging Ishii all over the arena, smashing him into the far wall and generally being a horrible human being. Ishii turned things around and they brutalised each other.
There was an awesome spot where Moxley pulled out two chairs, threw one at Ishii's feet and then they had a chair sword-fight which ended up completely destroying the chairs. Moxley set up a table outside but Ishii placed him on it and hit a splash from the top all the way to the floor Yeah!
The finish came with Moxley hitting a Death Rider for the win. Great match! Moxley is now the only person in B Block who's undefeated. NJPW are really pushing him hard.
Conclusion
Honestly not that great of a show, the final two matches were both worth watching, but everything else on the show was typical New Japan fare. When I say the show wasn't great, I don't mean that it was bad, it was still very watchable, just that with the quality level of these G1 shows where so many are amazing, the ones that are just "really good" seem worse in comparison.
Ospreay/Okada tomorrow should be great. I can't wait!