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NJPW G1 Climax 30.


The Natural

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11 hours ago, Craig H said:

This is going to sound completely fucking random, but I had a dream last night that Taichi was IWGP champion. How or why I dreamed about Taichi, I don't know. I just know he was champion and I was completely meh about it.

If he winds up winning the G1, I don't think I'm going to sleep again.

Inception wrestling dream!

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I got home from work just in time to catch the latter part of EVIL v Yoshi-Hashi, which... I can't imagine anyone being really happy that they got home fast enough to catch that. You won't believe this,but:

Spoiler

EVIL and Dick Togo CHEATED!!

Naito v JSZ was tremendous, but obviously I am a fool for hoping that Naito won't put himself through 20 plus minutes of nearly getting killed every night he's fighting in the G1. It was cool how he spent so much time struggling to escape from Sabre's world, and they pretty effectively teased maybe going to a time limit draw. Maybe the dude will give himself a bit of a night off against Yano and/or Yoshi-Hashi... but there are gonna be at least five more epics in Naito's immediate future. I guess I need to get over my desire for him not to put himself through that, and just enjoy the ride.

I guess I'll stick around for the replay - assuming there is one - and catch Yano v Tana. Thanks for the heads up, @sabremike

EDIT: Another enthusiastic thumbs up for Yano v Tana.

2nd EDIT: I enjoyed SANADA v Goto and KENTA v Juice from Night 4 quite a bit more than KENTA v Goto and Juice v YOSHI-HASHI from night 2. SANADA v Goto definitely didn't overstay its welcome. Juice v KENTA was more hard-hitting and less fancy-dan than their Night 2 matches. 

Also: The young boys have been reliably cromulent every time out so far. 

Edited by gordi
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I enjoyed Night 4 more than Night 3. Though that might have something to do with whatever is going on with Okada. And being not that into Ibushi. Or Jay White.

Liked Goto vs. SANADA way more than Goto vs. KENTA.

Yano is great. Props to Tanahashi; the end of the match was brilliant.

Matches 3 and 4 were okay. Can't remember much about them right now.

ZSJ vs. Naito was probably my favorite long match from any of the four shows thus far.

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I find that with attempting to catch up on everything else I may only catch matches of interest in G1 instead of trying to check every match.  I did catch a lot of night one but have some catching up to do.  But one thing I had to promise myself is that I will not watch a Yano match unless my wife is around.  We fucking love him to bits and hearing about his first two G1 matches has me excited to check them out.

And I guess there was a directive to not yell like normal due to COVID but it was sad seeing Suzuki's entrance and not hearing them scram "Kazi Ni Nare!"  I get why as there's a risk and all but props to them for cheering along best they can via clapping.

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And Jay White being the ultimate bastard is trying to goad the fans into breaking the rules and mocking the faces for the lack of cheering. I think it’s Milano on commentary doing his disapproving hums to express himself in a compliant way too.

Suzuki, Ishii, Taichi matches all worth a look plus Naito/ZSJ though I’m a sucker for the extended submission stuff so your mileage may vary.

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21 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

And I guess there was a directive to not yell like normal due to COVID but it was sad seeing Suzuki's entrance and not hearing them scram "Kazi Ni Nare!"  I get why as there's a risk and all but props to them for cheering along best they can via clapping.

Out of context it would sound like the work of some kind of sinister COVID-spreading cult if they weren't so well behaved. Thousands of people attend a public event and at one previously-coordinated point expel the virus into the air with the full force of their lungs and the words 'become the wind'.

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25 minutes ago, Salads said:

Out of context it would sound like the work of some kind of sinister COVID-spreading cult if they weren't so well behaved. Thousands of people attend a public event and at one previously-coordinated point expel the virus into the air with the full force of their lungs and the words 'become the wind'.

Yeah, it would be weird if that was out of context.  But if they weren't asked not to and just knew to do that themselves then I love every single one of them so much for that.  Even if they were asked to that's quite alright as well.

Good thing I waited to watch the Yano matches.  We absolutely loved both and were almost in shock at the result of his match against Tanahashi.  The guy really a gem and a half and I appreciated that he had different tricks for both matches.  As much as I like Jay White it's almost a template with how he ducks outside first and how Gedo is used.  Which is fine but if you're gonna fuck around then having the creativity Yano has goes a long way.

Oh, and I thought it was adorable when he sprayed the ref's hands in his first match.  The crowd gave a nice round of applause for that and I just couldn't help but smile.

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Updated Top 5 after 4 days:

White/Ibushi, Naito/ZSJ, Suzuki/Ishii, Evil/Yoshi-Hashi, Naito/Tanahashi

In the past I'd often get a bit excited about Yoshi-Hashi and then I'd come back to realisation that he is a job guy and I'd just lose interest in the middle of his match. But pandemic has been kind to him. He ended up winning his first title (for those who haven't seen it trios title tournament was pretty great) and even if his singles results are still bad (likely he'll finish with 2 wins) it does feel like he has more confidence currently. And he got that injury storyline from NJ Cup that played out nicely in his match against Evil. I loved their match and there were 2 or 3 spots where I thought that Yoshi might actually get his revenge.

Other than that I think that B block is doing better work, at least for me.

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Even Juice Robinson can make a promo about sharting awesome. Seems like his character has less of a chip on his shoulder and is more confident now.

seeing Yano beat Tanahashi did bring a smile to my face.

Edited by TheVileOne
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After my big fighting words of returning to G1 I only just sat down now to watch everything back-to-back. Suzuki-Ishii the clubhouse leader after 3 matches. They went at each other like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Great finish too.

I'm going to root for Yujiro though. He's got such 2010 Zero1 energy these days, he doesn't even feel like a NJPW dojo guy anymore. He feels like a last minute desperation ringer who doesn't know how to Douki his way into favour.

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Just coming to the end of night 3 after a day on the sickbed catching up. Naito-Tanahashi was so good. You run out of superlatives with those two. Excellent match that would surely work in most promotions in the last 30 years.

Really like J1 taunting the fans for not being allowed to open their mouths. He's not the Pacific Ric Flair but he is certainly something.

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10 hours ago, sevendaughters said:

Just coming to the end of night 3 after a day on the sickbed catching up. Naito-Tanahashi was so good. You run out of superlatives with those two. Excellent match that would surely work in most promotions in the last 30 years.

Really like J1 taunting the fans for not being allowed to open their mouths. He's not the Pacific Ric Flair but he is certainly something.

Get well soon.

8 hours ago, Valcourt said:

Popped hard for that. Out of nowhere. What a great match. Looks like Zack put a little bit of weight on ? 
 

So good. 

I did as well. I think Tetsuya Naito vs. Zack Sabre Jr is now my #1 match of the G1 Climax 30 so far.

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Hope this hasn't been posted but I stumbled across the following picture showing some G1 stats for this year's entrants. The bits that stood out to me were EVIL already having a positive win/loss record going in, and 50/50 booking giving all five men who debuted in last year's tournament identical results.

Spoiler

3kfh2a21gsn51.png

 

Also of interest (to me at least) are the previews NJPW are putting up on their site (like this) showing the singles and G1 singles record for individual match-ups. Every match on night 6 has someone who has yet to beat their opponent in a G1, for example.

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I enjoyed Night 5, though Ishii vs. Suzuki from Night 1 is still my favorite match of the tournament. The last three matches went too long, though none of them were near the time limit (at least according to some results I've read).

Loved the dueling heeling of Taichi and Takahashi. Very fun.

Liked Suzuki and Cobb. Pleasantly surprised by its length.

Ishii pulled a good match out of Ibushi, though they got a bit too cute near the end; some finishing exchanges looked awkward, and they could have cut out one or two or three of them. (Then again, I did wind up second guessing the result I anticipated.) Enjoyed that they were consistent about who was better than the other at specific kinds of strikes (elbows vs. kicks). Not a big fan of the dueling no-sells, especially since one of them is way better at no-selling than the other. Liked the post-match bits too.

Couldn't get into Takagi vs. Ospreay. Too long. Too many leg slaps. Not thrilled that it was also the longest match (I think). Happy with the result, though.

Main event was pleasantly shorter than I expected it to be; didn't like that the end echoed the ending of another match on this card. Not a fan of either guy right now; wish Ishii vs. Ibushi had main evented. [EDIT: Rewatched the main event. I think I enjoy it more than the other Jay White and Okada matches in the tournament thus far. Some good things here, but mostly forgettable. No idea what's going on with that cobra clutch . . .]

 

Edited by doctorhbomb
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I don't know, Ospreay is doing the work and outside of being curious for Ospreay/Yujiro match I have found his next two matches disappointing. As I said, he is doing the work and matches are good, but they don't really have that extra bit that his pre-pandemic matches had. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with his UK controversies because I'm awful person and I don't really care.

Cobb showed some depth in the match against Suzuki and it was ok. Last year I think I liked only his matches with Naito and Ishii, this year I already got 3 that I don't dislike so thats a win in my book.

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Another enjoyable night of pro wrestling. I though everything was at least good, but nothing on the card was excellent. 

I'm happy to see the young boys continue to put on solid showings.

I wasn't paying close attention during Tokyo pimp without Pieter vs Taichi without Miho Abe because on paper that was the match I had the least interest in in this G1. #s 2 and 3 on that list were Yoshi-Hashi vs EVIL and Yoshi-Hashi v Juice. And now all of those matches have come and gone, and all were cromulent enough. I don't think any of those guys stink, it's just that none of them have ever really grabbed my interest... yet. 

I surprised myself by enjoying Ishii v Ibushi more than MiSu v Cobb. I think Ishii set the bar of my expectations for a "2020 G1 Minoru Suzuki match" way too high. I thought Cobb showed too much light a couple of times. That being said, his rolling deadlift gutwrench suplexes are very impressive indeed. I enjoyed the finish to their match.

Ishii v Ibsushi was probably my personal MOTN. I liked the tidy little story they told of how Ibushi was able to hang with Ishii when they were trading strikes (and as @doctorhbombastutely points out, how Ibushi was better at kicking while Ishii was better at forearms and elbows) but how Ishii just couldn't keep up with all of Ibushi's fancy Dan stuff. If anyone had told me, as recently as three or four years ago, that Ibushi would one day be able to believably go toe to toe with the toughest guy in New Japan in the G1... I would have thought they were insane. Yet, here we are. Hats off to pretty boy, he can go.

Also, if you'd told me a few years ago that Shingo v Ospreay would be a viable NJPW heavyweight G1 battle, I doubt I'd have believed you. And if you'd told me that Ospreay would damn near out-muscle Shingo in 2020... .... ....but here we are.

I wanna like Jay White more than I do, but I find a lot of his matches to be very formulaic: He begs off and bails out like a coward to start things off, works the crowd in an ironic fashion as soon as he gets the advantage, Gedo interferes... I absolutely do not hate the guy's work, and it's not like Ric Flair and Bret Hart didn't have a formula, but I am certainly not aboard the Jay-1 hype train... yet. Okada's been on an underwhelming run so far. Such are the burdens of high expectations. It was a good match. I hated the ending.

 

 

Edited by gordi
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I haven't seen night 5 (or 4) yet but I'm trying to hang with the Okada submission sub-plot. Since KUSHIDA and Kyle left and Shibata got bonced there's been a real dearth of proper submission stuff: Suzuki does some but partly to cheat, Sabre's are fanciful and entertaining, Tanahashi has got the Cloverleaf over, but SANADA's looks like crap, Naito's is just an extension of his taunt, and outside of that there's not a lot! I'm not saying they should go RINGS but it wouldn't harm things if they had people who could exchange holds on quieter nights rather than shitty walk'n'brawl around the ringside.

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