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NJPW G1 Climax 28, LIVE AT THE BUDOKAN! 7/14-8/12


Raziel

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Nobody wants to bump fists with Naito. Thou if Ibushi at some point actually did I'd crap myself. Golden Tranquilo? Book it Gedo. Either way I hope that their actual match won't be about leg work since Ibushi tends to ignore it.

Elgin sold more of his arm. Sure, at some points it got ignored, but at the same time I think it is slowly getting better. Ending was usual bullshit.

Page got his first legit win, but I still don't really see anything in him. Some of the stuff that he does looks bad or very telegraphed like the ending of this match. Sure, a good hand to fill out the card, but it feels like they are building him up for something bigger.

Two Nakamura cosplayers had a decent match. Jay got the boos, Yoshi got some cheers. They went for the usual White's finish, but altered it slightly and it ended up looking better than White/Page overall.

Tanahashi and Evil had a fun match that ended up being pretty hot at the end. Nothing crazy, but fun pro wrestling. Also, I guess a good example of how to properly do finisher stealing as opposed to Sanada/Juice match. It felt completely natural in this match and made sense. Sad part about this is that Evil got eliminated so now upcoming Okada/Evil has less heat thou nobody probably would expect him to win again and eliminate Okada.

Suzuki usually shows up for Okada and this wasn't an exception. Match itself was a bit weaker than their previews few bouts I think, but still solid fun. And hey, another example of how to do move stealing appropriately. I guess this is a good ending to their rivalry, well obviously till they meet again.

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DAY 13 INSTATHOUGHTS

Elgin-Fale from the lowest bar of expectation possible they started to have a good match based around Elgin's bicep injury and him not playing cornball monster. The ending was fine if it results in a DQ in the end and I was fairly amused by Elgin clearly no-selling a bunch of Tama's shots to him. This was decent. ***

Page-Makabe on the contrary to my learned friend above, I thought this one showed that Page has got something pretty good in his locker. Makabe growled and grunted and Page overmatched him when he returned Makabe's level of fire. Very good ending. ***1/2

White-Yoshi keeping on with the theme of very solid wrestling here. The story of Yoshi outwrestling people but just not being wily enough is actually quite good and - as it was all night - the crowd really helped this one. White is doing a thing and I expect he won't do it forever (I mean how recently was Kenny a cheating goof heel?) so I am choosing now to roll with it. ***1/4

EVIL-Tanahashi really enjoyed this, a kind of 'classic 2013-2015' G1 style match where they serve up an elegant compression of the longer match they could do down the line. I also marked out at

S P A C E T O R N A D O T A N A H A S H I

good to see Tanahashi has had time to hit the gym too. ***3/4

Suzuki-Okada probably as good as their match in the rain a few weeks ago but no more. Couple of nods to Gotch from both men (think it's the anniversary of his death recently, Nakamura made reference to it on instagram) that were very classy. I've enjoyed every match between these two that I've seen.

Started like a WWE main event from when The Rock was champion, all crowd brawling, and then settled into a comfortable groove in-ring. Some nice highlights, like the wriggle out of Heavy Rain into juji-gatame, and I thought Okada's steal of the kata hajime was very good too. Suzuki's dropkick remains superior to Okada's in terms of impact and timing. I got the feeling they were teasing the draw by booking the previous matches shorter, but they went with a decisive result that I think was probably the right thing to do on balance. ****

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-Tanahashi finishing with an STO, given the Inokism chat and his role in twilighting it, feels accidentally very appropriate. Or maybe he lurks!? In any case, I liked this a lot. Probably overreacting but it feels like something that could be January worthy, given, y'know, the natural passage of time mixed with some booking. We had handsome battle; I want highlights warfare. 

-Okada and Suzuki hit eachother really hard. I'm basically always gonna love it. I suppose the important thing, though, is that it perhaps served to wake Okada up a little--although his post match promo was the sort of goofy babyface trolling he's been indulging in all tourney.

-Page and Makabe felt like a win for the former to me, going in--it'd be big enough to be a step up, but not implausibly so--and I left feeling that way. Ugly brawler versus pretty but tough athlete. It works. I get how some of his stuff looks very choreographed, though; at times I feel he's just athletic enough to do stuff he's not athletic enough to do perfectly well.

-The CHAOS tags made me care about White/YH more than I otherwise would have, and the crowd really helped too. I'd still feel better if Jay didn't need chicanery to beat a really lower tier guy, but I appreciate the wrongness of doing it on a stablemate a little more. It's transgressive enough to feel a little more fresh than it is; and yet it's not, because why should he really care about those allegiances? Crucially, it also keeps White in contention, with tiebreakers over both Okada and Tana. I still don't think he gets there, but...

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On 7/30/2018 at 4:52 PM, Oyaji said:

Been thinking about smilin', penis balloon toting Okada and I'm of the mind he's trolling the fans at this point. He knows he's not beloved like a true ace (Tanahashi) and he's not the cool outsider (Naito), so now that he is no longer defined by the belt and the reign of all reigns, he's poking fun at the fans for never getting behind him. My guess is some level of resentment had been building over the past few years and this is his catharsis. Shoving the false pretenses of a babyface back at the fans ("This is my favourite town! But I may say this at the next town." ). Also, if there were a time for mindless fun, this would be it.

Or maybe he's trying to show he can be wacky and have fun so WWE will call him.

Or maybe

 

1 hour ago, Tromatagon said:

I feel like everyone's logical booking forgets Jericho exists and that he still hasn't wrestled Okada yet.

tumblr_ogyob0b0Y01rfd7lko1_500.gif 

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Tanahashi's made a lot of noise about wanting to wrestle Jericho, and is the one who might care about a dickhead usurper running off with the IC title belt. But then that would leave Naito and Okada trying not to make eye contact across the rapidly filling dance floor, because it's too soon and the stakes aren't right. Okada could, as mentioned already, put down the White insurrection, while Naito... uh. There are a lot of main eventers, and only so many so-called main event slots, even if there aren't any Jericho level surprises this year.   

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Naito as world-traveling NWA champ! I'd watch every second of NWA's series if it was just ten minutes of him confusedly stumbling from town to town, facing an unending stream of local yokels. An Ascendió y tranquilo en los Estados Unidos fever dream. (This is no less bonkers than my Okada/Tana hair vs hair idea, but whatever; it's August and everything is possible.)

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On 7/31/2018 at 7:57 AM, Beech27 said:

Having tried to talk myself into some reason for the low blow spamming, because New Japan tends to have reasons, even if they're bad ones: I wonder if the idea behind it is that: A) No one will cheer such a tactic, and they want to hold off on him becoming a cool/workratey tweener for as long as possible; B) It suggests a sort of casual cruelty beyond seeking to just win matches. Like, he can beat Hangman Page without such tactics, surely--we've seen him do so--but he does it anyway, because he's a petulant brat who just thinks it's fun (and it denies us better matches, which we would ultimately come to respect and enjoy him for delivering).

So I... get it? I think? But I'm not enjoying it being deployed what feels like every other day, even with my most generous meta-narrative seeking goggles on.

They're ripping off Nakamura, maybe? It might be some kind of karmic revenge; their top star leaves and turns into a ball breaker so they have the new heel foreigner do the same thing. 

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I don’t know that it’s a shot at Nak, since his contract is up in early 19 and I’m sure they’d like to make a run at him, but I also think it’s probably not coincidental given White’s jacket, red gear, the CHAOS heel lineage, etc. This is probably a dangerous comp to make, but I could see it being a Kylo/Vader thing, where the young edgelord tries somewhat ineffectually to mimic the old master he never actually knew. (Although Nakamura loves sand.)

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Not dangerous at all. Jay White is 100% the Kylo Ren of New Japan. Still not sure who his Vader is, but Nakamura certainly makes the most sense.

Also, el oh fucking el at the sand comment.

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6 hours ago, iowanole said:

For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten into this years G1.  How has it stacked up so far to previous years?

Unbalanced. Block B has ranged from damn good to incredible, Block A ranging from lethargic to very good (getting better though).

I seem to recall previous years have a night or two on the road that are just crazy and I'd say we've not really had that. But Osaka is next.

Also cheating has featured probably in the heaviest amount ever, including the Devitt heel run. 

I'm enjoying it and a strong home stretch will see it hit the heights of recent years. 

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On 7/22/2018 at 1:23 PM, sevendaughters said:

ok so just been doing a bit of a recap on my old ratings for recent G1s (can't find anything that I wrote about G1 26 thus far, I definitely watched it and wrote about it. hmmm...) and - it must be stressed these are just my opinions - here is how things track in terms of 4+ matches per tournament

G1 24: 26 in 112 matches (11 x 10 match cards, final, and a runners-up match) = 1 per 4.3 matches
notes: lots of ***3/4 rated matches by me here.

G1 25: 21 in 90 matches (same format as now, but Nakamura missed one due to injury) = 1 per 4.28

G1 27: 28 in 91 matches = 1 in 3.25

G1 28 so far: 6 in 35 matches = 1 in 5.83

stats latest

12 in 65 = 1 in every 5.41 matches have been 4+ or better.

I also have 12 matches rated 3.75, which tends to be my "I'll watch this again" threshold.

Looking ahead I expect, based on general tastes, performances, and previous (ie. finals are usually always brilliant), that we can expect 8 more with an outside shot of up to 12. Obviously this is a messy and subjective way of talking about wrestling but it would take a lot for me to hit the best parts of 24-27. DAVE thinks it's better than last year already, so buyer beware.

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For being two super smart wrestlers and one of them being an all time great, it's kind of surprising that EVIL and Tanahashi haven't had a truly great match yet. They have well worked matches that make sense but don't hit the high notes later on that you expect from the best of NJPW. Yesterday's encounter was again very good but still didn't feel like they got out of third gear, even with the STO being a beauty. I don't think it's just a case of it being the G1 either because their IC match from last year (or was it 2016?) was just fine but was built around EVIL cheating and felt a bit hackneyed. Tana winning means it's unlikely he beats Okada. Okada beats him and White beats EVIL. Jay goes top on the tiebreaker. Book it, Jack! I mean, they could have EVIL beat Jay and play spoiler while Tanahashi avoids defeat. But running back Naito and Tanahashi this soon feels cheap and they've already done Tana/Ibushi enough the past year too. I guess they could do the Kenny undefeated champ deal but I don't see it. Perhaps Okada defeats Tanahashi but then that should mean Ibushi wins B Block because we don't need another Okada/Omega match at this point, nor is it time for Naito's revenge. White/Naito and Okada/Ibushi seem like the two best options though I predicted and would like to see White/Ibushi. 

Jay's cheating against YH makes sense to me. He doesn't need to but wants to in order to show Chaos the way forward. 

A friend and I watched last year's Suzuki/Okada masterpiece, the draw in the rain and yesterday's match back to back to back. I liked yesterday's match more than the hectic but crazy fun match in the downpour and I'd have it above the IWGP match from last year, as that was great but way too reliant on Suzuki's holds. Okada finally got the advantage in this match after getting his ass beat around ringside and he chose to bait Suzuki into a strike exchange he knew he could not win but it got MiSu away from working his arm. Previously he couldn't capitalize on the rainmakers due to his injured arm (Great Pirate Festival) or neck (G1). Yesterday he could because of that strategy. Incredible. These guys are geniuses. Awesome match.

We also watched Ibushi vs. Ishii and while not all or even most of the throat strikes landed where I thought they did Ibushi's first punch looked clean to the throat as did Ishii's chop in the corner. Incredible match but it does make me feel gross watching it. And yeah, that has never stopped Dave previously. 

Again, I'm ready to be heartbroken with the main event coming up. I want Ibushi to get that big elusive win not just to set up a dream block decider with Kenny and give that match the weight it deserves but also as a sense of character progression. They've addressed his inconsistencies and slumbering ways with the Yano loss and Ishii win. If they don't pull the trigger now, I feel like that's kind of the last big chance for him even if he beats Kenny and plays spoiler in the Budokan. The time feels right for him. I don't know what they would do with Naito or Okada at WK tho... 

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The tags were all fine. Sanada/Yano was goofy fun. Ignore the Tonga match. ZSJ/Juice had a very good match with Zack torturing him. Ishii and Omega beat the fuck out of each other and it was great. Ibushi and Naito was also amazing in a totally different kind of way. 

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What a fucking war Omega/Ishii was. My only beef was that the loser's shoulder had to be at least a foot off the ground on the pinfall. The stage is setting nicely for the final group night.

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I didn't mind shoulder being up (after all he didn't lift it himself) since at that point it looked like he was dead-dead and 1-2-3 count was just a technicality. I'm sure that blood wasn't planned and at few instances it looked like they botched their sequences, but in the end it added to the match and finish.

ZSJ did another weird looking submission. I guess safe bet that Juice/Zack is happening at some point for the title?

Main event was scary at times and that leg work, yeah. Also, did they blatantly repeat the sequence at the end when, I think, Ibushi screwed up Destino? Like maybe that was supposed to happen, but it looked weird that they immediately went for identical sequence again and this time Destino landed. Other than that great match. Naito should honestly wrestle only in Osaka because Osaka's crowds are best when it comes to reacting to Naito's antics.

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