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


Raziel

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Just got home from the show, some thoughts from being there live:

-Shota is gonna be great. I'm sure this is a thing with the young boys, who wouldn't dare "go through the motions," but his fundamentals are so good. His lockups, the way he hits the ropes, and he's got some good fire. Crowd was definitely into him, and I fully bit on that 2.9 he got on Sho.

-I want to like Zack Sabre, I really do. He's just such a GEEK. He's the epitome of a guy playing at being a wrestler. The first time I saw him was in the CWC, and I was excited to finally check him out, and I came away thinking, "Him?" 2 years later, despite the push and having TAKA doing this amazing intro, he still does nothing for me.

-Amazed that they did literally nothing for almost 10 minutes in that 6-man and had the crowd in the palms of their hands. The only negative was that the GOD managed to beat down 6 guys. Yuck.

-Elgin/Makabe: Makabe can still deliver. I'm not necessarily the biggest Elgin fan, and it seems Gedo has cooled off on him, but he was fine tonight. Like sevendaughters said, I was just waiting for them to start throwing bombs, and they had some nice ones.

-Yoshi/Page: Yoshi-Hashi is--a guy. Out of the seemingly infinite members of Chaos, he's easily the least interesting, and desperately needs a refresh. I really don't see what him going over Page does for anyone. As for Page, this was my first time seeing him live. The first few times I saw him, I wrote him off as a black hole of charisma. Recently, I stumbled upon the footage of Bullet Club invading Bar Wrestling, and as hokey as all the Joey Ryan stuff is, I remember thinking of Matt Striker/Stryker and wondering if there were two DIFFERENT wrestlers named Adam Page. Just night and day from everything I saw before that. This got me to start watching BTE, and I've been enjoying him showing some personality on there. I think the tricky thing about trying to judge the WWE viability of gaijin wrestlers in NJPW is the fact that they don't have that many opportunities to have singles matches, or to cut promos. He's definitely delivered in his first G1. There was a short segment tonight, where he had Yoshi down and was sort of kicking/toying with him, but live it came off more like he didn't know what to do, and they definitely lost the crowd for a moment. So--he's still putting it together, but I think in another 2-3 years, he'll be a better version of Seth Rollins.

-Suzuki/Fale: They lost me here. What's the point of having a faction, when you're facing a group whom you KNOW is going to cheat, and your other 2 boys who already had their match earlier in the night don't run out to prevent a 3 on 2 beatdown? Ridiculous.

-Evil/White: Both guys continue to grow on me, and this was cool up until the end. Evil came off like a dope when he got the chair from Jay and teased using it. Yeah, he was mathematically eliminated, but he was playing spoiler to Jay. Why would he risk getting DQed?

-Main event was a good one. This was my second time seeing these two face off live (first was Wrestle Kingdom 9). The crowd was nearly unanimously in support of Tanahashi. I feel like Gedo must be in denial, which is why he wasn't at ringside. The story I took from it worked, though--Tana only needed a draw to win the block, but the Ace doesn't go for a draw. He aggressively pursued a win--Okada coming out and sort of big-timing Tana, combined with the 30-minute time limit, made this a real uphill battle for him. I think this was the best way to get Tana to the finals without hurting Okada. Side note--Red Shoes is HORRENDOUS. I was having flashbacks to early ROH Sean Hanson. He's not as bad on TV, where he's not in every shot. But when you're there live--there were times in the match where it was impossible to follow the action because he was just so distracting. I don't understand how he's still a thing.

For those who enjoy looking at ticket sales: I bought tickets for tonight's and tomorrow night's shows just this past Monday. I was able to get A block seats in the 7th row of the 100 level, just to the side of the hard cam--terrific seats. For B block, I was only able to get 200 level standing room tickets. Sunday show was completely sold out. Saturday seems like it will be as well. Tonight, though--the floor was full (although they could have easily put down another 3-5 rows of chairs on all each of the 4 sides), but there were 3-4 entire sections upstairs that were 100% empty. Also, the last 4-5 rows of EVERY 100 and 200 section were empty. Nowhere near a sellout tonight. Granted, it would have looked better in Kokugikan, where there are 3,000+ fewer seats. But I'm not sure how much the difference has to do with Friday vs Saturday, or the weak A block vs the stronger B block. Just something to chew on.

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1 minute ago, sevendaughters said:

kinda crap if true but the weekend will do 36000 rather than 24/25 so it's a net positive by 33%.

Is Okada vs. Tanahashi just not a draw anymore?

Like their 2016 G1 match in Sumo Hall had a higher attendance than this one in Budokan and it was also on a Friday.

This is the weakest attendance for the last 3 days of G1 since AJ/Tanahashi (A Block Finals) in Sumo Hall in 2015 which drew 5,658.

Like I know the Friday shows never draw particularly well but this was surprisingly bad.

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7 minutes ago, crazypook said:

For those who enjoy looking at ticket sales: I bought tickets for tonight's and tomorrow night's shows just this past Monday. I was able to get A block seats in the 7th row of the 100 level, just to the side of the hard cam--terrific seats. For B block, I was only able to get 200 level standing room tickets. Sunday show was completely sold out. Saturday seems like it will be as well. Tonight, though--the floor was full (although they could have easily put down another 3-5 rows of chairs on all each of the 4 sides), but there were 3-4 entire sections upstairs that were 100% empty. Also, the last 4-5 rows of EVERY 100 and 200 section were empty. Nowhere near a sellout tonight. Granted, it would have looked better in Kokugikan, where there are 3,000+ fewer seats. But I'm not sure how much the difference has to do with Friday vs Saturday, or the weak A block vs the stronger B block. Just something to chew on.

How much would a sell-out draw with the setup that they are running?

 

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not sure. there's a lot of theories out there.

i'd say some of what you said, and people being legitimately more interested in the story of Kenny-Ibushi returning to Budokan. their story is legitimately hot, less so BC.

Block A has been weaker, but I guess most tickets were bought way in advance. people only gonna spend so much on high end wrestle tickets.

personally i wouldn't run three days in Tokyo at the end - i'd go two at Budokan, Sat/Sun, have day 1 be all the remaining block matches.

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Agree on Elgin/Makabe. Would have been pretty great match if they skipped first 3-4 minutes and just went straight to killing each other. Either way I wonder whats next for Elgin since his booking has been weird for months now. Yes, there are reasons for that, but I'd prefer if they either released him or gave some direction to him.

Yoshi/Page was good match and I'm probably one of few people who liked that Yoshi got the win. One negative I'd say is that when Page was doing heelish stuff like slapping Yoshi's head, it really looked robotic to me. Like you know, I'm heel in this match, this is what I should do, no I don't like doing it, but thats what I got to do.

Fale/Suzuki was bullshit. I stopped caring about it when Loa started interfering and Desperado, a brutal heel in his own way, was shouting at the ringside instead of doing something. Honestly only people that ended up looking good due to BCOGz booking this tournament were LiJ because in case of Evil/Naito they came out to help and got the points while Sanada managed to outsmart them on his own. Everyone else gets a doze of plot induced stupidity to make them look good.

White/Evil was good, but lacking in the end. Evil managed to take Elgin out of his comfort zone in their match and delivered enjoyable bout while this here was just another variation of White's match that is a bit boring by this point. I guess in the end they told a story that while White can beat good guys with his cheating he can't really hang with actual bad guys since if I'm not mistaken he lost to Fale, Suzuki and Evil.

Main event was very good and worthy G1 semi-finals main event with many nice moments (I marked out when Tanahashi did Styles Clash because I really liked his styles clash -> HFF sequence that he started doing shortly before AJ Styles came to NJPW), but... the ending left my jaw open. Not only Okada failed to beat his old rival in under 30 minutes, it also ended up looking like Tanahashi had him beat. You know what this means? More Okada/Tanahashi matches, last thing Okada needs.

And if those ticket sales are legit then it looks ugly, can't be excused by this being Friday.

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30 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

If the crowd sounded so massive while only filling roughly half the building, Omega/Ibushi is gonna be rapturous, and a final night with Tanahashi might threaten Kobashi's cancer comeback decibel levels.

I love Sumo Hall but Budokan needs to become the permanent home of G1 Finals.

Sumo Hall can still get big shows like Sakura Genesis and King of Pro Wrestling.

But the atmosphere of Budokan is another level.

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9 minutes ago, sevendaughters said:

They, as alluded to earlier, definitely need to move the ringside seats up about a good 8 yards. 

I think that was intentional because of the low attendance. I know somebody on Wreddit who said they had tickets for row 15 on the floor on Saturday for B Block but there were only 13 rows on the floor for today’s show. So I imagine the seats will be moved up tomorrow because of the sellout crowd.

 

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1 minute ago, D.Z said:

I didn't expect them to sell out the budokan for that show. Might be more likely to sell out the finals, which most people buy tickets for.

New Japan announced that tomorrow and the finals are sold out already, though people on twitter are reporting that they can still get standing room tickets at the box office.

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41 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

New Japan announced that tomorrow and the finals are sold out already, though people on twitter are reporting that they can still get standing room tickets at the box office.

How much would a sell out be with the setup they run?

Was today’s show really less than half capacity?

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It certainly looks way more than half full, but Wikipedia (I know) says it holds 14471 for wrestling, and NOAH announced 17000 for Final Burning, as an example. I’m not sure what New Japan will call a sellout, but we’re about to see.

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1 minute ago, Beech27 said:

It certainly looks way more than half full, but Wikipedia (I know) says it holds 14471 for wrestling, and NOAH announced 17000 for Final Burning, as an example. I’m not sure what New Japan will call a sellout, but we’re about to see.

My theory is that the paid attendance was 6,180 which is less than half capacity but they did a lot of papering to fill the building as much as possible.

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I was in tears for the final thee minutes of the main event. A night where the oyaji desperately fought off both time and the younger generation perhaps for one final day. What a beautiful match and it so suited both Tanahashi's resistance and big G1 run contrasted with Okada being cut adrift without his belt still. And fuck yeah Makabe over Elgin. Seriously though, Tanahashi's desperation was magnificent. I love that man and that's the kind of story that makes pro wrestling so great. Fuck a draw go for the win, Ace! Easy 5 boy for me. Shamefully I still haven't watched their most recent match from a few months ago but plan on doing so with a friend and then watching this again. I imagine it would only add to my appreciation for this match. 

And those ticket numbers are astonishing. Certainly makes one (me) question whether or not Okada is the draw they need right now and they've milked this match for most everything it's worth. I know what Archibald is saying in that Okada needs to beat Tanahashi again to show that he's back when he gets his shit together but they really shouldn't rely on it as a main event ever again barring something crazy like a departure or retirement, which itself sounds nuts. This is definitely not a Friday thing either. Mayhaps they run Ryogoku Friday and Saturday and then Budokan Sunday in the future? Or Ryogoku Friday because it's the weaker drawing night historically but I can't imagine that incongruity flying. 

And yeah, there are a handful of incredibly promising young lions right now and Umino (Red Shoes' only positive contribution to wrestkling aside from flipping off the OGs?) is right up there with Kawato. Uemura is ridiculously tight fundamentally speaking for somebody who just debuted too. What a factory to have and then you add that the company could always pluck wrestlers from other organizations whenever they want too. 

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45 minutes ago, sevendaughters said:

one total nitpick but I prefer the way AJPW and Final Burning shot Budokan, with either the ramp to the left and the crowd in the shot, or just randomly appearing from the back somewhere and crashing through the mob.

It's a little WWE of them to make most buildings look the same with how they shoot them and set up their entrance ways and ramps. Love the old setup as well. 

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51 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

It certainly looks way more than half full, but Wikipedia (I know) says it holds 14471 for wrestling, and NOAH announced 17000 for Final Burning, as an example. I’m not sure what New Japan will call a sellout, but we’re about to see.

16,300 was the "default" wrestling capacity for years and years, although it looks like they're using a different layout with the video boards by the entrance way.

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22 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

It's a little WWE of them to make most buildings look the same with how they shoot them and set up their entrance ways and ramps. Love the old setup as well. 

Really? I never got the sense that NJPW make all the buildings look the same like WWE.

This show and the set looked very different compared to Osaka-jo Hall or the Sumo Hall shows or Edion Arena for example. 

In WWE, literally every show expect WrestleMania has a uniform set.

The old Budokan setup is awesome but it’s 2018 and everybody has video boards now. I really liked the set they had with the 4 screens.

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1 hour ago, Oyaji said:

And those ticket numbers are astonishing. Certainly makes one (me) question whether or not Okada is the draw they need right now and they've milked this match for most everything it's worth. I know what Archibald is saying in that Okada needs to beat Tanahashi again to show that he's back when he gets his shit together but they really shouldn't rely on it as a main event ever again barring something crazy like a departure or retirement, which itself sounds nuts. This is definitely not a Friday thing either. Mayhaps they run Ryogoku Friday and Saturday and then Budokan Sunday in the future? Or Ryogoku Friday because it's the weaker drawing night historically but I can't imagine that incongruity flying.

Okada is certainly a strong draw. His title reign proved that. His title defenses against Shibata and Marufuji were the largest non-G1 Final Sumo Hall attendances since 2000. Both Kenny matches at Dominion sold out very quickly. His match against Kenny in the G1 B Block Final last year is the largest attendance for any of the Block Finals since they switched to the 19 day format (this will change tomorrow). His defense against Naito in the Tokyo Dome was the largest attendance of the Wrestle Kingdom era and in all of Japanese wrestling since 2005. His defense against Fale sold out Fukuoka which Naito and Ishii couldn’t do the previous year. His title defenses against Zack Sabre Jr. and EVIL did surprisingly good numbers considering neither are established main event wrestlers. By every metric, Kazuchika Okada’s title reign did great business and he proved that he was a top draw for NJPW.

The reason that this Okada/Tanahashi match drew badly is because people are just tired of the matchup now. It’s not an indictment against either guy as draws. If either of them had wrestled Naito, Omega, Ibushi for example, it would’ve done much better. Both guys are still great draws individually but the Okada/Tanahashi match is just no longer a ticket seller. The title defense this year actually drew very well but that was because of the stakes with the record and it was their first title match in two and a half years but that match felt like the end of the story and now people don’t care anymore. Any more matches just feel like an epilogue.

I really don’t get where you got the idea that Okada isn’t a great draw from. In fact of the top NJPW guys, he’s probably the most proven, reliable draw.

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