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

[Beech27]

43 minutes ago, EVA said:

I couldn't disagree more with the Jay hype coming out of that match.  Okada gave him the match, and I thought it was a fairly meandering affair until all the shenanigans at the end.  He's gotten very good at being a dick heel,  but he still doesn't have much of an idea of how to fill up the middle of a match without Juice leading him by the broken hand.

Suzuki/Tana seemed like a reheated version of their IC title match back in February. I still love Minoru, but he's slipping into this kinda lackluster formula where he takes the whole match and then eats as little offense as possible before losing.  Although his sell of the inverted dragon screw at least made the abrupt finish a little more viable than, say, the brainbuster that led to the finish against Naito.

Agree that Minoru is showing some of his GHC reign of terror tendencies. Obviously he picks his battles these days, and should, but...

The case I’d make for Jay is that he does a great job of combining heel stuff with straight-line violence, and visibly trying to win. So, so many heels build matches around getting the face a comeback pop, and it ends up being transparent and thus—paradoxically—taking me out of the match. They don’t want to win a fight or hurt the face, they just want the fans to clap at the right time. Jay, on the other hand, takes the obvious thing and hurts it. Near the rail, he throws you into it; near or on the apron, he throws you into it; take his head, he drops you on yours; drop your head, he throws you into the mat; etc. He has more signature offense too, of course, but I really like how he filled the match by just doing the obvious “as the crow flies” attack—on top of being a real prick.

[OSJ]

1 hour ago, EVA said:

I couldn't disagree more with the Jay hype coming out of that match.  Okada gave him the match, and I thought it was a fairly meandering affair until all the shenanigans at the end.  He's gotten very good at being a dick heel,  but he still doesn't have much of an idea of how to fill up the middle of a match without Juice leading him by the broken hand.

I think you're being a little overly critical of a 25 year-old, who has rocketed into the discussion for one of the five best heels in the world. I have to disagree that his problem (which is an easy fix that will  come with time), is not what he doesn't do to fill up a match, but more of a case of doing a bit too much when it isn't needed.) He's really got all the dickish heel mannerisms down, and more importantly, in promos he makes you believe that he thinks he's in the right. That's what made Ric Flair a better promo guy than Kevin Sullivan, you believed that Flair thought he was entitled to the belt, the women, the limousines, and Lear jets because he thought he was the best in the world and deserved nothing less. As entertaining as I found Sully, he was at  the end of the day just another heel spouting more interesting nonsense than most. 

You believe Knife Pervert is there to hurt people because that's what he needs to do to reach the top. Granted, the kid has an amazing roster of guys to help him improve, but in a year from now if someone makes a Best of Switchblade dvd, it will be going into my collection (and probably yours, the kid has that much potential!)

[Archibald]

2 hours ago, EVA said:

Makabe/Yoshi-Hashi was...fine.  Not the dumpster fire it could have been.  I did think it was interesting that commentary was putting over how Hashi might be holding himself back because of his unwillingness to push the line.  Foreshadowing Hashi joining Switchblade's side in the coming CHAOS war?  Freshening him up as a heel is probably the one thing they have left to try to salvage him.

I thought that his new pants looked somewhat similar to Jay's. And they are advertising Okada/Yoshi-Hashi as a revenge for Yoshi-Hashi so it would make sense probably. Heel Yoshi couldn't be worse than what we have now.

I think White still has lots of stuff to do and I probably preferred Minoru/Tanahashi as my MOTN, but White was good as well. On the contrary, I didn't feel Okada at all. He is doing some slight changes to his character now and I think he hasn't arrived there yet so it feels a bit less than what he was few months ago.

Elgin/Evil was also pretty good. I wonder if it was Evil forcing Elgin to not do 50 different bombs in 4 minutes or did Elgin figure it out himself finally? Either way I hope that we will see more of this Elgin.

[EVA]

Yeah, I don't get what Okada is doing right now at all.

[Jiji]

I'm somewhere in the middle on White. I don't think the main event holds a candle to the Juice match. While I enjoy Beech's take on White's offense and control segments, in that he will take whatever is given to him and really go over the top with the violence rather than do a bunch of rest holds to keep the crowd into it, he did in fact lose the crowd about halfway through his lengthy assault on Okada. I don't think that's all on White, though. Okada has a tendency sometimes to give too much control/direction of a match to his opponent and this was a case of that. We rightfully praise him for his ability to work within the parameters of his opponent's match and style, but sometimes he gets a little lazy and goes into complete passenger mode. Outside of that incredible moment where he was tired of Jay's shit and got up after staring at Jay to choke a bitch, I felt he mostly mailed it in. I actually like the goofy adjustments to his character because it shows how much of his personality and character was defined by the belt and by being The Man. He's lost without it and trying to find a new path, unsuccessfully so far. So while that may hurt match quality right now (and the G1 is never hurting for match quality), I think it makes perfect sense for Okada to play around with ideas he's probably been saving up for the better part of a year. White is so close to being something incredibly special. Perhaps if you take into account his age, he's already something very special. But there are just a few things missing. I'll say this, his character work as being the Kylo Ren petulant brat that think he's outsmarting everybody else is really fantastic and he's starting to nail the character aspects. I think he can keep polishing that part of his game, continue with the extreme and sometimes simplistic violence, and still round out some of his pacing and timing issues to become a contender for best in the world.

Suzuki and Tanahashi are two masters who are so perfect together. This wasn't as good as the February IC match but still a great truncated version of it with Tanahashi getting some revenge. That inverted dragon screw and the sell job by Suzuki absolutely made the finish. I thought he legit blew out his knee for a bit there he was so convincing. But, and this has been my criticism of Suzuki when many were anointing him to be the best or second best, his match structure is way too rigid and sometimes falls into the lazy/predictable category. He  kind of broke that mold over the past year or so but he does fall back into it quite a bit when he's at his worst. This was somewhere in between in that it made sense to dominate the still nowhere near 100% Tanahashi and to build on their previous encounter.

I thought YOSHI-HASHI/Makabe was really fucking good and about the best permutation the match could've been. Taichi and his glorious smedium trunks tho.

I really still feel uncomfortable watching Elgin even though he's committed to losing some of his unnecessary body fat and hopefully toning down the bombz. And was it just me or did he drop the arm selling more or less whenever he was on offense? He'd shake it out after hitting his moves as normal the odd time but I thought if the match is going to be structured around EVIL attacking Elgin's arm, it should've not been dropped so easily.

White Meat Babyface Page is the best version of Adam Page, as I said in the ROH/All In thread (I forget which). That was a great showing from him and Fale looked extra surly, as he really put his weight behind some of those tosses into the seats. Fun stuff.

The undercard was fine. Goto gave Narita a lot and both looked really good! I CAN say something positive about Goto, there! The CHAOS tag was really neat aside from the miscommunication between YOH and Ishii. I LOVED Yano trying to stop himself from cheating with the urging of SHO and the referee. Tomorrow's match should be a blast.

Overall, an easy 3 hours that mostly breezed by though it didn't have a MOTYC level match. But three matches in the 4 star range if you're not above such things is pretty great. The Ota fans seemed way, way more into Naito than Kenny, so tomorrow's match'll be interesting. G1 is here, yay! My second favourite time of the year!

[Tromatagon]

Someone tell Gedo Russo that every faction doesn't need to have a civil war at the same time, please.

[Jenalysis]

I thought he didn't lose the crowd so much as the crowd was a bit stunned by what they were seeing and didn't know how to react.  I know in my case it didn't feel boring at all- and I liked how violent Jay was.

 

The big test for Jay is going to be vs the Yoshi-Hashis and Makabes of the world.

 

I like the idea of Jericho and Jay having some interactions- I think Jericho could really push Jay's promo work into the next level, because there's a similarity there- Jericho's also a master at being the type of heel who makes you believe he's in the right - something which he worked on in his WCW days and was really good it during his Bockwinkel tribute years.  (he admitted to that one)

 

 

 

[Infinit]

As fun as today's show was, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's. Ishii/Yano might be good. Tama's coming out party as leader of the Firing Squad vs Juice could be real fun. Goto/Sanada could be very good. And Ibushi/Sabre & Omega/Naito could deliver MOTYCs.

[Jiji]

Ibushi vs. ZSJ from last year's G1 was one of the best matches of the year imo. They did Zack's match but with the looming threat of Ibushi's strikes and explosive athleticism peaking in here and there. 

[Archibald]

Speaking about undercard, Zack used Michinoku Driver/Saber Driver to win his match. This is so obvious that I was surprised a bit that it didn't happen earlier.

And yeah, crowd was like 90/10 in favour of Naito when he was in ring with Omega. Maybe this was this specific crowd or maybe they'll react differently to actual singles match, but at the moment it feels like only Tanahashi is able to get something like 50/50 split against Naito. And well Osaka, where Naito does 50/50 split on his own.

[Ryan]

Zack used to use that move anyway, so it's all just full circle. Oh and Yano was declared IWGP champ and G1 winner on account of everyone coming down with bad food poisoning, in this parallel universe fan fic I'm writing.

[Beech27]

-Juice’s hand is gonna give really compelling structure to every match he has this tourney, and I kinda appreciate the return of Blatant Heel Bullet Club, so this was fun enough. If you were hoping Tama had some special coming out party in him though, this wasn’t that.

-SANADA showed a little urgency more against Goto than usual; and Goto, for whatever faults he has, fires up and invites the same. Made for a really fun finish.

-Sabre and Ibushi are such natural foils and so uniquely interesting to watch that I’d probably like any match they could have. And I liked this one. A little thing that really helped was Ibushi fighting most submissions and every pinning combo. So many people just play jungle gym for Sabre, but Ibushi actually sells that this is a struggle he’d rather win. 

-Naito may have had 90/10 at times here too; never less than 60/40. Kenny seemed to have fun with it, though. Really, they both did. For all their kayfabe animosity, the extent to which they love wrestling each other is almost too clear. Finally, someone with whom I can trade taunts and exotic choreography done at lighting speed! And they did all that. Probably the best finishing run wrestlers in the world, so they just made the finishing run half the match. Worked for me. One of those matches that you’d show a lapsed fan, because everything just has such obvious aesthetic appeal. Even if you didn’t know these guys or grasp the character work/Easter egg moments, there’s something to be said for work that’s beautiful and violent looking all at once. Pretty shocked Kenny won, though. 

[Firebreaker Chip]

LMBO at Ishii cheating to beat strong style iron man Toru Yano with a rollup

[Jenalysis]

Loved Ishii/Yano, and ZSJ/Ibushi, and Naito/Omega delivered as they usually do.  Juice is good but Tama's bad outweighs it, and Goto/Sanada was just good.

Sabre/Ibushi I'd love to see a best of 7, those two just are perfect foils for each other, I think Ishii/Yano can be that as well.

 

 

 

[Archibald]

Juice/Tonga sounds like a suitable semi-main for upcoming USA show.

Gedo immediatelly threw away possibility of Omega/Naito title match at KoPW which makes things interesting, but... I started thinking whats next for Naito and there isn't much outside of winning G1? Alternatively if Ibushi ends up winning G1 then Naito still could be his challenger, but he is probably losing that then. What else is there to do for him? Feud with... Goto?

And you know, possibility of Jericho match at WK kinda puts Naito into the box. He can't go anywhere. Would be rather weird booking if their most popular guy ends up having, in essence, empty 2018.

[Beech27]

30 minutes ago, Archibald said:

Juice/Tonga sounds like a suitable semi-main for upcoming USA show.

Gedo immediatelly threw away possibility of Omega/Naito title match at KoPW which makes things interesting, but... I started thinking whats next for Naito and there isn't much outside of winning G1? Alternatively if Ibushi ends up winning G1 then Naito still could be his challenger, but he is probably losing that then. What else is there to do for him? Feud with... Goto?

And you know, possibility of Jericho match at WK kinda puts Naito into the box. He can't go anywhere. Would be rather weird booking if their most popular guy ends up having, in essence, empty 2018.

Small thing, but Ibushi/Naito in the G1–and as a hypothetical briefcase defense—got some interesting framing, courtesy of Omega’s post-match promo, where he “congratulated” Naito on the effort, and said he could be a good number three behind himself and Ibushi.

But yeah I was sure Naito would beat Kenny here, and him not doing so makes KOPW really interesting to consider. ZSJ and SANADA would make credible defenses, but now I’ll suggest it should be Ishii. He never got that shot versus Okada, so the crowd would really get behind him.

[Archibald]

If WK main event is to be Omega/Okada V then doing Omega/Ishii would make sense. But we also probably should add one of the Destruction shows to the list as well since Jericho won't be for those and they'll need a big match to replace IC title defence.

If Omega gets two defences then I think it would be more likely for Omega/Ishii to happen on Destruction show than on KoPW.

[EVA]

Tama Tonga continues to display everything you could want in a pro wrestler...except the ability to put a decent match together or cut a promo.  If he couldn't do anything memorable with Juice serving up a deliciously simple story with his broken hand, I don't see him finally breaking through as a singles guy in this G1.  It honestly wouldn't surprise me if they move the US title right on to Tama, though.

Ishii/Yano was even better than I expected it to be.  Yano breaking out some of his old offense at the start and Ishii cheating to win were a treat.

Goto/SANADA had a great finishing run, but was otherwise just those guys trading offense without much heart.  It was fine.

I may have liked Omega/Naito more than their finals match last year.  It was probably 25% less insane and, at least to on my first viewing, seemed to feature fewer instances of guys getting murdered spectacularly...and then immediately going on offense.

Barring some sloppy execution toward the end, Ibushi/ZSJ was about as perfect of a match as those two are capable of having. We've probably already seen the match of the tournament on Night 2.

[sevendaughters]

Whatever Okada is doing is straight-up nuts. 

Enjoyed Suzuki v Tanahashi, Ishii v Yano, Omega v Naito (best so far), ZSJr v Ibushi. 

Everything else fine except Tama v Juice which was horrid. How did they get 14 minutes? 

[Jiji]

Tama being so bad is really unfortunate. Like you said, EVA, all of the tools but no toolbox. You can't even get a decent match out of juice with the hand injury? Get the fuck out. 

Kenny/Naito was fucking insane. Naito dragged some pretty good character work out of Kenny at the start. They don't have deep, layered storytelling like Omega has with Okada yet but they have such a magnificent way of countering each others' signature offense without it looking like the Cena/WWE dance. I'm not going to complain with Gedo avoiding the obvious outcome either. I guess it makes Ibushi beating Kenny on the last night for the block even more of a possibility. 

Zack and Ibushi are ideal for each other. Tremendous! Two fantastic matches tonight and a super fun Yano/Ishii match with the perfect ending. Goto/SANADA was a nice mixture of approaches and styles. I thought they meshed really well even if the wrong guy won. Awesome finishing stretch too. 

[EVA]

2 hours ago, sevendaughters said:

 

Everything else fine except Tama v Juice which was horrid. How did they get 14 minutes? 

Because this G1 is the start of Tama's singles push and they thought anybody could have a good match with Juice.

They were wrong.

[Infinit]

Maybe GoD will be going after the Bucks and Fale gets the big singles push?

[matt925]

14 hours ago, Archibald said:

Juice/Tonga sounds like a suitable semi-main for upcoming USA show.

 

Feels like that will be the Long Beach match although I’d rather have almost anything else. Just plug Ishii in there and have a good match with Juice retaining. We’ll see. 

I really enjoyed Ishii/Yano, that was a lot of fun. I’m more looking forward to Yano’s matches in the tournament than a number of others  

 

[Archibald]

Well basically anyone would have better match with Juice than Tonga, but I doubt that this is their primary concern. Bullet Club members will get featured heavily on probably every USA show. And you know, Juice is good babyface so they'll get good reaction for all the fuckery that Tonga and his family will do.

I hope that Gedo goes into "plans changed" mode after seeing that Juice/Tonga match, but I'm not hopeful. Worst case scenario he ends up with something like 6 G1 wins.

One thing that I forgot from undercard. White refused to break a pin for Yoh because he didn't use a chair against Finlay. That looked good.

[Jiji]

That was great storytelling in a throwaway tag match. Jay White gets it.