#actually i just remembered ospreay had them too during his match with kenta

[ringsidedishes]

elp vs kenta has me by the brain, took so many clips for gif-ing upon rewatch 😳😩

[wrestlingisfake]

G1 Climax 30 preview

This is New Japan Pro Wrestling’s annual heavyweight singles tournament, scheduled for 19 shows between September 19 and October 18.  The winner receives a trophy and a contract for an IWGP heavyweight championship match at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4.  Whoever holds the contract is expected to defend it in singles matches, sort of like a championship.  If the IWGP heavyweight champion himself holds the contract, he may name his own challenger for January 4.

The G1 is a 20-man round-robin tournament, split into two blocks of ten men.  Each participant has a match against every other man in his block.  That works out to 45 matches in A Block and 45 matches in B Block.  Points are awarded for each block match, and whoever has the highest score wins the block.  The A Block winner then meets the B Block winner in the final on October 18, to determine the winner of the entire tournament.

Each match is worth 2 points--the winner gets 2 and the loser gets 0.  A 30-minute time limit draw awards 1 point to each participant.  I could do a deep dive into scoring and potentially complicated tiebreaker scenarios.  But through the magic of pro wrestling, scoring is mostly straightforward, and usually each block comes down to two guys who just happen to face each other in the deciding match in the last round.  So I’ll go over the three final shows (October 16-18) in more detail when we get there.

Western wrestling fans are more accustomed to single-elimination tournaments, so newcomers might find the G1 Climax a little confusing and arduous.  It’s nineteen shows, all in one month, with ninety-one tournament matches.  The story is mostly told in the ring, with few if any angles.  And it’s fairly predictable, so a cynic could just skip to the last few shows without missing a lot of bracket-busting surprises.  The actual point, though, is match quality.  Every participant wants to deliver their personal best performances of the year, so you’re kinda guaranteed about a dozen four-star matches.  Besides, it’s perfect entertainment for staying at home binging TV--I have been going nuts waiting for this since the pandemic started.

Let’s take a look at the participants...

A Block

Jay White - The leader of Bullet Club and a former IWGP heavyweight champion.  White has been the de facto top foreigner since Kenny Omega left.  Prior to that New Japan kind of had a “Big Four” (Okada, Tanahashi, Naito, and Omega) that would be heavily favored in big events like this.  Now it’s more of a “Big Five” (Okada, Naito, Tanahashi, Ibushi, and White), and I would argue White just barely makes the cut by virtue of being the top heel and the biggest dick in the company.

Other than a couple of matches for New Japan’s LA-based show, White has been out of action since February.  I actually almost miss the bastard.  Before he left it felt like questions were brewing about KENTA eclipsing him as the biggest dick in Bullet Club.  While they were both away, Bullet Club reorganized around EVIL as the dickiest dick that ever dicked.  I smell a very slow burn storyline.  Since White’s not in the same block as the others, we probably won’t see him meet Evil or Kenta during this tour.  But I expect it will be very interesting which of the posts the best performance.

White’s style is to counter offense, often by going limp on the mat to prevent an opponent from hitting a signature move.  He’s honed this into some very solid chickenshit heel work that gets massive heat from the crowd, but I’ve found it incredibly tedious to sit through.  His matches with Okada, Ibushi, and Ishii will probably be heavily promoted as main events, but I’m more curious to see how his shenanigans will mesh with Taichi, Will Ospreay, and Minoru Suzuki.

Jeff Cobb - He’s a free agent, although it’s been strongly rumored that he’s about to sign with somebody and it’s probably going to be New Japan.  Because of the pandemic, there are a lot of hurdles for non-Japanese wrestlers to come in for a tour, so I’m pretty glad this absolute unit made it in.

Cobb was in last year’s G1, but many of his opponents this year weren’t in his block last time, so he’s got a lot of fresh matchups.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Cobb vs. Okada, Cobb vs. Ibushi, or Cobb vs. Suzuki.

The big issue for Cobb is that he ought to do better than his 8-point performance in last year’s tournament.  To get to 10 he’s probably going to have to score a big upset.  A victory over White is plausible but probably not in the cards.  Okada, maybe?

Kazuchika Okada - The leader of CHAOS and a five-time former IWGP heavyweight champion.  This seems to be a rebuilding year for Okada, as he takes a break from the limelight to give Naito a chance to shine.  That could mean he’s set to come roaring back in 2021, which could mean he’s booked to win this tournament.  On paper he’s a clear favorite, so I suppose he’s my pick to win A Block.  But as far as winning the whole tournament...I’m not feeling it, for some reason.

Ordinarily, Okada is either the defending champion or a top contender, so he loses very few tournament matches, which makes it a big deal for someone to actually beat him.  This year, though, Okada has been feuding with the likes of Taichi and Yujiro Takahashi, and getting pinned by Toru Yano.  So maybe they figure Okada won’t be back in title contention for a while, so it’s okay to make weaker opposition look stronger against him.  If he fails to win at least 10 points, that would be a very ballsy storyline.  At the very least, they might tease the possibility with an early slump.

Okada’s match with Will Ospreay on October 16 is probably going to decide the entire block, so I expect that to be a centerpiece for the tournament.  Okada vs. Ibushi is a rematch from Wrestle Kingdom and should also be excellent.  I’m personally most interested in Okada vs. Shingo Takagi, since I can’t recall them ever meeting one-on-one before.

Kota Ibushi - The 2019 G1 Climax winner, and a former IWGP intercontinental champion.  He represents Hontai, the default “home team” faction for all the purest babyfaces.  Ibushi has been a fan favorite for years, but New Japan never went all the way with him because he was a free agent.  That changed last year when he signed a long-term deal, although I was surprised they still had him choke at Wrestle Kingdom.  Nobody has won the G1 Climax two years in a row since Hiroyoshi Tenzan in 2003-2004, but I could see Ibushi doing it.

The story for Ibushi this year is that he needed to recover from going 0-2 in the Double Gold Dash series at Wrestle Kingdom, and he found new purpose in a tag team with his idol Hiroshi Tanahashi.  But the new Golden Ace team lost the tag title to Zack Sabre Jr. and Taichi, and it quickly became apparent that Tana is the weak link in the team.  So there’s intrigue about whether Tanahahi should pack it in, and whether Ibushi should leave him behind to pursue a top singles title.  An Ibushi-Tanahashi match in the finals would be a really easy story to tell.  Or they might be saving that for a non-title match at Wrestle Kingdom, which would mean neither of them are winning this tournament.

Ibushi has two modes--daredevil flippy guy or stiff strong-style mean guy.  So his matches with Will Ospreay and Tomohiro Ishii are always scary and nuts, for wildly different reasons.  I personally get a kick out of Ibushi vs. Suzuki, because Suzuki is all >:( and Ibushi is all :D

Minoru Suzuki - The leader of Suzuki-gun and current NEVER openweight champion.  Last year’s G1 was so stacked that Suzuki didn’t even make the cut, but he’s back with a vengeance.  The cool thing about Suzuki is that he’s old as balls, but he’s scary as fuck, but he’s not invincible.  So it’s sort of like having the Undertaker in the G1, except he can do four or five jobs and maintain credibility so he doesn’t have to squash everyone.

There are plenty of fresh matches for Suzuki in this field, but I’m particularly interested in Suzuki vs. Taichi, since they’re in the same faction.  Suzuki-gun vs. Suzuki-gun matches tend to be wild, vicious brawls, and I don’t remember these two ever meeting one-on-one before.  This is probably the year to do it, since Suzuki is only getting older and Taichi’s career is at an all-time high right now.

Anyone who beats Suzuki during the G1 should be in line for a future title match, although big-name guys like Okada, White, and Ibushi may pass on it to pursue bigger opportunities.  In terms of setting up future challengers, though, I think Ospreay, Cobb, or Takagi would all make sense.

Shingo Takagi - A member of Los Ingobernables de Japon and a former NEVER openweight champion.  Shingo is big and mean and tough and I like him a lot.  I’d like to think he’s being set up for bigger and better things down the road.  But for now he’s a middle-of-the-pack guy, and middle-of-the-pack guys don’t win the G1.  It’ll be a moral victory if he finishes in third or forth place for the block.

I’m kinda looking forward to all of Shingo’s block matches.  He’ll demolish Yujiro, he’ll give Taichi and Jay White the fight of their lives, and he’ll hang with big mean guys like Ishii, Cobb, and Suzuki.  Takagi vs. Ospreay might have been my favorite match in 2019, so that should be treat this year.

Taichi - One of the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions, and a member of Suzuki-gun.  The tag champs have not appeared in the G1 in recent years, but Taichi is a full-time regular, and he was in the tournament last year, so it’s not like being a tag champ was going to be held against him or anything.

I’m not expecting Taichi to do particularly well, but he needs some wins or else way too many guys will be in line for tag title shots.  It’ll be interesting to see which guys they’re willing to feed to him, because it’s hard to imagine most of the field jobbing to him.

Tomohiro Ishii - Basically the #2 guy in CHAOS and one of the NEVER trios champions.  Ishii is always an imposing obstacle in the G1 but he never actually strings together enough wins to really matter in the endgame.  So I think they’ll make a big deal about the threat he represents to guys like Ospreay, White, and Ibushi, but then they’ll just beat him like it’s no big deal.

Oddly, the one Ishii match I’m really interested in is with Taichi, because they were doing a program last year where Ishii brought out the best in Taichi and motivated him to fight honorably.  I’m interested in how they revisit that.

Will Ospreay - A member of CHAOS and the RPW British heavyweight champion.  Last I heard, Ospreay planned to live in Japan, but he got stuck in the UK when the pandemic travel bans went down. 

I heard a lot about how Will’s mental health was suffering from being away from wrestling.  Then he was distraught about Hana Kimura’s suicide.  Then he got called out amid the #SpeakingOut movement.  If I understand correctly, he was accused of helping to blackball a woman from the BritWres scene because she claimed a friend of his sexually abused her.  So there’s a lot going on here, and I’m not sure how it all will affect his career or relationship with the industry and fans.

In light of the allegations against him, I expect some Western fans will not be happy to see him back in New Japan.  I get the feeling New Japan will ignore the controversy, which may frustrate fans agitating for Ospreay to face consequences.  Speaking personally, I considered Ospreay a sentimental favorite last year, and I’m not sure the things he apparently did rise to the level of “kick him out of the business,” but it feels weird bringing him back like nothing happened.  I’m not sure how he can repair the damage to his reputation, and I don’t think I want New Japan to give him a free pass on doing that.

Dave Meltzer has suggested that, before the pandemic, New Japan planned to start pushing Ospreay hard as a heavyweight, with a lot of key wins in the G1.  If that really was the plan, could the pandemic have changed all that?  I guess we’ll find out.

Yujiro Takahashi - Bullet Club’s resident prelim guy.  This is his first G1 in five years, and even back when he regularly appeared he didn’t score very well.  I strongly doubt he’d be in this thing if they’d been able to fly in more foreigners.  But someone has to lose a lot for the big names to rack up points, and he’s suited to the role.

The most interesting thing about Yujiro is that he’s accompanied by PIETER, who is hot.  Unfortunately, Pieter is not exactly what you’d call an essential worker, which is probably why she hasn’t appeared at all since the pandemic.  Watching a Yujiro singles match without Pieter is kinda like just reading Playboy for the table of contents.  Actually, the most compelling thing Yujiro could do here is a match with Taichi, and that’d mainly be to see Pieter interact with Miho Abe, who probably also won’t be on this tour.

B Block

EVIL - The turncoat who betrayed Los Ingobernables de Japon to join Bullet Club.  Evil captured both the IWGP heavyweight title and IWGP intercontinental title from Tetsuya Naito earlier this year, but lost them back to Naito a few weeks ago.  Everybody was kinda “Really?  You’re pushing Evil?  Really?”  So it’s fair to say he’s got a lot to prove.

I don’t expect Evil to win the block.  But as a recent former champion, he needs a strong showing, if only to sell the idea that anyone who could win the title is a serious threat.  You don’t want to Jinder Mahal this guy, and I think New Japan knows better than to do that.

I think everyone in this block has had a singles match with Evil, but few have worked with him since the heel turn, which freshens up those matchups.  I’m curious how he’ll interact with Yano or Sabre, for example.  There’s obviously a grudge match in Evil vs. Naito, but Evil and SANADA were tag team partners for years, and we’ve conveniently avoided getting Sanada’s take on the Evil turn. 

The big deal, though, will probably be the match with KENTA.  I’d rather see Jay White have to face Kenta or Evil, but this will have to do.  Every Bullet Club vs. Bullet Club match in the G1 kinda plays out the same, but every year I put on my clown wig and hope we’ll see a real rift form in the group.

Hirooki Goto - One of the NEVER trios champions, representing CHAOS.  Last year they made a big deal about Goto reinventing himself at the LA Dojo, but it’s a year later and he’s pretty much the same Goto.  I just don’t have any confidence in him to score a win that’s going to move him up the ranks.  He’s easy to take for granted.

I’m all for seeing Goto pleasantly surprise me with a hot run, but how would he even do that at this point?  I guess he could pin Naito to set up a title match, but that wouldn’t get me to believe he could actually win said title match.  A victory over Evil or Tanahashi would be more doable, but does that really get him anywhere?  Maybe he could beat Sabre to set up a tag title program, but I’m so bored with matching the six-man tag champions against the regular tag champions.

Hiroshi Tanahashi - The eight-time former IWGP heavyweight champion and leader of Hontai.  He’s already won this tournament three times, a stat that puts him up there with legends from the 1990s and early 2000s.  But New Japan has been increasingly playing up the idea that age is catching up with him.  At 43, he’s not the oldest guy in this tournament, but the idea is that his knees are shot and he’s only hanging in at this level through sheer god-given talent.

In principle, you can always do a “living legend proves he’s still got it” story with Tana defying age and the odds to win one more G1.  The problem is, they already did that story in 2018, and there’s no good reason to rehash it so soon.  So I figure he’ll probably get beaten down a lot in the early going, to build sympathy for him having a bad run, and then he’ll rebound to give fans hope, and then he’ll come up short in the very end.

The biggest marquee match in this block is Tanahashi vs. Naito (they’ve been kept apart for a few years now).  But I’m more interested in seeing him battle fellow white-meat babyface Juice Robinson, or mega-dicks like Kenta or Evil that he hasn’t worked with much since they turned.  Of course, the strongest grudge match for Tana is against Sabre, playing off the recent Golden Ace/Dangerous Tekkers feud.  That one’s set for the last day of B Block, and I get the feeling it’s because Sabre is finally going to put Tana’s knees out of their misery.

Juice Robinson - Joliet, Illinois’s favorite son is finally back in Japan.  Juice had a memorable feud with Jay White in 2018 to win the IWGP US championship and take a big leap forward, but unfortunately it’s been choppy sailing since then.  He benefited from feuding with Jon Moxley and the Guerillas of Destiny, but he also lost those feuds.  At the same time, Will Ospreay has kinda leapfrogged him as the top babyface foreigner.  We’ll never know how he might have recovered from all that if not for the pandemic.  But the road back starts here.

Even as a Juice fan I don’t think he has any business winning the block.  But he’s one of those guys that is in striking distance of finishing a G1 with 10 points, and I think that would be a big milestone at this stage of his career.  Trouble is, I don’t even see four matches where he’d be the favorite, let alone five.  To get that 5-4 record he’s going to have to shock someone like Sabre or Kenta, and that’s pretty hard to imagine.

KENTA - Kenta came to New Japan for last year’s G1, and then turned heel and joined Bullet Club at the end of the tour.  Since then he’s held the NEVER openweight title, but he’s probably more infamous for beating up the retired Katsuyori Shibata, and ruining Tetsuya Naito’s celebration in the Tokyo Dome.  In a faction of dickasses, Kenta is the dickest, assest one of them all.  It’s almost admirable, in a dickish sort of way.

Before the pandemic, Kenta’s heel heat was so hot that it seemed like he was a potential rival for Jay White’s leadership of Bullet Club.  Then most of Bullet Club was unavailable this summer, and what was left kind of reorganized around Evil.  So does Kenta just accept being the #3 guy in the faction?  Or does he remind people he’s still in the “who should lead Bullet Club” conversation?  The answer is probably somehwere in the middle.  But his performance in this tournament might give us a clue.

SANADA - The dark horse of Los Ingobernables de Japon, and maybe the whole promotion.  At the end of 2019 I was dead-certain that Evil and Sanada were stuck as the two guys just below the Big Five, with no hope of upward advancement, so they’d just keep winning World Tag League forever and ever.  Now Evil’s been the champ, and Sanada fandom is heating up.  Pretty sure I saw some betting site give Sanada the best odds of winning the whole tournament.  It seems kinda crazy to me, because I’ve been watching him fade into the background for years.  But I sure wouldn’t mind if he just went and won the big one.

There’s not really anyone in this block that Sanada can’t beat.  I don’t think he ever has beaten Naito or Evil, but I certainly believe he could.  Really, the only guy that consistently makes Sanada look like a chump is Okada, who is conveniently in the other block.  Sanada having to beat Okada to win the G1 would be a really good story.  So I don’t know, maybe it really could happen.

Sanada vs. Naito and Sanada vs. Evil are clearly the big things here, but for my money you can’t go wrong with Sanada against Yano or Sabre.  Those matches always go down smooth, for incredibly different reasons.

Tetsuya Naito - The leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon and the reigning IWGP heavyweight champion and IWGP intercontinental champion.  Neither of Naito’s belts are on the line in this tournament, but anyone who beats him during the tournament is practically guaranteed a title shot by the end of the year.  To that end, he will probably lose very few block matches.  But since the point of the tournament is to name a challenger for January 4, it doesn’t do much good for the champion to win.  So watch for him to finish at like 7-2, but still come up short.

The usual pattern for a champion in the G1 is that he loses a couple of matches to set up main events on the Destruction and Power Struggle tours in September, October, and November.  That’s tricky this time because the G1 is so much later in the year, so there will be fewer big shows between now and January 4 to book Naito title matches.  In addition, Naito is a double champion, and has expressed a preference to defend each title separately.  So maybe they could do a thing where he loses G1 matches against, say, Goto and Kenta, and then they book Naito vs. Goto for one belt and Naito vs. Kenta for the other on the same tour.  But it’s pretty clear New Japan is kinda playing 2020 by ear, so they may not even be sure where they’re going with this stuff.

For several years now there’s been a lot of concern about Naito’s body being “thrashed,” and whether he can keep up with the physical demands of a top champion.  In New Japan, working the G1 is the most demanding of those physical demands.  He had a few months in the spring to heal up, but that was a couple of tours ago.  Now the real grind begins, so if he’s still having problems, that probably doesn’t bode well for his long-term career.

Toru Yano - The first KOPW titleholder, representing CHAOS.  Yano’s gimmick is that he seems like a prelim comedy guy, but he’s so good at cheating and misdirection that you have to take him seriously.  He’s not going to win the block, but he can definitely hang in long enough to play spoiler.  Last year he notably handed Jon Moxley his first New Japan loss--it was by count-out, but two points is two points.  You underestimate Yano at your own peril.

Yano’s matches are often pretty short, and don’t involve a lot of hard work for the wrestlers.  It’s sort of like each of the other guys gets a “night off” by playing his game.  Some fans think he shouldn’t even be in there, but I’ve come to look forward to all the different ways he’ll try to steal wins.  For fans expecting “sports entertainment” in the G1, this is your guy.

YOSHI-HASHI - One of the NEVER trios champions, along with Goto and Ishii, from CHAOS.  Yoshi is a journeyman, who just won his first NJPW title after 12 years with the company.  There’s a “lovable loser” quality to the guy, and he has his fan following.  But in terms of the G1, he’s a jobber.  He hasn’t been in the tournament since 2017, and that year he went 2-7.  I’m not expecting much better this time around.

Zack Sabre Jr. - A member of Suzuki-gun and Taichi’s partner in the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions, Dangerous Tekkers.  Sabre’s emphasis on chain wrestling, grappling, and submissions causes the style of his matches to stand out from the rest.  Where other heavyweights train for size and strength, he stays lean and noodle-y to wriggle out of holds.  He’s completely different, which is vital to avoid the feeling that every G1 match is just, like, two strong style dudes slapping the shit out of each other.

Sabre has always impressed me but that doesn’t translate into big pushes for him.  They’ve given him some key feuds over the RPW British title, but it never feels like he’s really truly in the mix with the top guys.  I’d like to see that change, and maybe get him back into the 10-point range.  But in a way he’s kinda like Ishii and Sanada, where they talk like he’s a big deal but then he loses a lot to make other guys look better for beating a “big deal.”

Like I said before, Sabre vs. Tanahashi is a natural grudge match and will probably be the main focus of this tour for Zack.  But I think it’ll be interesting to see how he handles Evil and Kenta now that they’re heels.  And Sabre vs. Sanada is always a treat.

Predictions

I think I’ve talked myself into an Okada vs. SANADA final, but I could see New Japan going in other directions.  Ibushi vs. Tanahashi would be a rehash of 2018’s tournament, but that was a great match so I don’t know if anybody would mind.  The biggest match they could do might be another Okada vs. Tanahashi match, but I don’t know if this is the right year to go there again.

Of course, the G1 final doesn’t have to be a dream match.  You can put the guy who’s going to win in there with someone that nobody thinks can win.  Kenny Omega vs. Hirooki Goto in 2017 and Kota Ibushi vs. Jay White in 2019 were foregone conclusions, but they made you believe that maybe there’ll be an upset when you kinda knew there would never be.  I could see them doing something like that with Ospreay, Takagi, Kenta, or Sanada.  Actually, an Ospreay-Sanada final might be hot because they’d both feel like underdogs, so you wouldn’t feel like one of them definitely has to win.

If that was like picking a Royal Rumble winner, I’d think WWE wants to pick a new guy to push as a top babyface challenger, and Sanada would make sense.  But I’ve seen so many years where New Japan stuck with what works that I’m reluctant to pick anybody outside the Big Five.  So I guess I’m going to pick Okada to win the G1, and then kinda hope I am pleasantly surprised.