11th August 2015.
We’re in Tokyo, Japan in the Korakuen Hall. The latest issue facing this year’s G1 coverage is a severe lack of time to get the last week of shows done in. My boss is off at work, which means more days and longer hours for me. Have no fear though, as insomnia has struck. This means I’m writing at 4am on Wednesday, the day after Day Fifteen. I worked all of yesterday and missed the show completely. Seeing as I’ve been awake since 2am, I figured I might as well watch some wrestling. Here are the Blocks going into Day Fifteen. BLOCK A: Tetsuya Naito 10 Bad Luck Fale 10 AJ Styles 10 Hiroshi Tanahashi 10 Katsuyori Shibata 8 Togi Makabe 8 Kota Ibushi 6 Toru Yano 4 Hiroyoshi Tenzan 2 Doc Gallows 2 BLOCK B: Kazuchika Okada 12 Karl Anderson 10 Hirooki Goto 10 Shinsuke Nakamura 10 Tomohiro Ishii 8 Michael Elgin 8 Yujiro Takahashi 4 Satoshi Kojima 4 Yuji Nagata 4 Tomoaki Honma 0 Still six people vying for Block A. That will change tonight. If either Shibata or Makabe fail to win this evening they are eliminated. Togi has the main event, opposite Tanahashi. Even a win for either guy may not be enough. Meanwhile AJ vs. Fale could be an eliminator this evening also. We’re getting into the business end of the G1 and every match is a ‘must win’ for anyone serious about winning. Bullet Club (Yujiro Takahashi & Cody Hall) vs. Mascara Dorada & Jay White Yujiro has Bullet Club buddy Karl Anderson tomorrow night so his warm up match is this throwaway contest. I like the idea of getting Yujiro out of the way by putting him on first and this might actually be the impetus to send me back to sleep where I belong at 4am. Certainly a Cody Hall heat segment on Jay White does nothing to stimulate my senses. Cody gets more joy manhandling Mascara Dorada, where his power advantage works just fine and Dorada still pops off moves, despite being a junior as Cody is still a young boy. Dorada is out to prove himself and has spent most of this tour popping the crowd for his amusement. Jay White has grown in stature during G1 and he’s great again here, countering Takahashi spots and making Yujiro seem worthwhile. Eventually Jay falls to Miami Shine but he out-shone Yujiro. Final Rating: ** Bullet Club (Karl Anderson & Tama Tonga) vs. KUSHIDA & Captain New Japan You know the scene in Fight Club where the narrator has insomnia and just lies there staring at the TV? That’s me right now. Anderson goes for a rare move on CNJ; the old unmasking attempt. Maybe he was watching Dragon Gate’s PPV last week. Tama continues his personality improvement, slinking around the ring like a lunatic. His face-paint helps as he’s covered most of his beard with it. He looks completely insane. During G1 he’s really improved his approach to wrestling and made himself stand out. If it wasn’t for Naito it’d be the most dramatic change in NJPW. This match is really short, just over five minutes, as Bullet Club don’t get paid by the minute and it’s always hilarious when Captain New Japan gets cut down in rapid fashion. He takes the Gun Stun and surprisingly Tama doesn’t get a pin. Final Rating: *3/4 Michael Elgin & David Finlay vs. Hirooki Goto & Yohei Komatsu #BigMike has Goto on Day Sixteen. That should be a slobberknocker. Elgin has excelled during G1 and Goto has been consistent. They’ve got no experience together so this should be a chance to get acclimated. We get a precursor to Wednesday’s match with both guys throwing lumber. Like Goto’s match with Ishii only less crazy. The Young Lions have a decent contest too, with Finlay eager to prove he’s on a par with Komatsu (arguably the top of the class for this pack of lions). Their presence is very much to reduce the amount of work the two G1 participants need to do, on what is essentially an off-day. Not that Goto needs off-days. He’s got a ridiculous engine and never seems to tire. His cardio is beyond reproach. Elgin just destroys poor Komatsu. The young boy looking stunned at Elgin’s power. Komatsu goes for a rana and Elgin just stops the move and counters into the Bucklebomb. Komatsu is like a training dummy to him. Elginbomb finishes and Goto looks upset but he’ll probably go over tomorrow and forget all about this. Final Rating: **1/2 Satoshi Kojima, Tomoaki Honma, Yuji Nagata & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada, Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI) We’re on hype mode for Day Sixteen now with Kojima-Nakamura, Okada-Nagata and Ishii-Honma being shilled. The Ishii-Honma match is actually the main event of Day Sixteen and they had a ***** belter earlier in the year for the NEVER belt so we’re expecting big things from that one. Nakamura seems to have caught on to Taguchi mocking him recently (telling him to shut up on Twitter) and the potential joy in this one comes from Nakamura teaching him a lesson. Nagata, he of the injured ribs, seeks to troll Okada in this one. To make him suitably angry that he makes a rare mistake tomorrow. How does he achieve this? By booting Okada off the apron, taunting him and forcing the champ to wrestle Taguchi. Then he beats the shit out of the champ for good measure. I love Nagata. It’s a shame he’s been booked as a weak old man in this tournament. The Okada match should be good based on one thing; will Nagata be able to limbo under the Rainmaker? Not with those bad ribs, you’d think! Nakamura storyline injured his arm against Nagata so the second layer of this match is him taking it out on Yuji’s ribcage. You’d be forgiven for thinking CHAOS are using team work to soften up their opponents for tomorrow. Not that Ishii is all that bothered about softening up Honma as they’ll just batter each other regardless. Which is exactly what they do here. The great thing about NJPW is you don’t notice them building up to something really fun; here it’s Taguchi’s Nakamura thing actually paying off as they wrestle each other. Taguchi even hits a butt version of the Rainmaker on Nakamura. It’s brilliant. Eventually Taguchi eats the Boma Ye because anything else would be crazy but the sly way they made me want that match and then delivered it was great. The match ending doesn’t end the fun as Ishii decides he can’t wait until tomorrow to punch Honma in the face a load and they have a big old brawl through the crowd. I had this as the second best undercard tag on the entire tour. The only one I rated higher also featured Ishii and Honma. No coincidence. Final Rating: ***3/4 KOKESHI COUNT – 1 missed. 2 hit. G1 Climax Block A Doc Gallows vs. Tetsuya Naito Pre-Match Pick: Naito. He should go into the last show with a shot at winning the Block. The Tenzan match might be a different story. Doc isn’t keen on Naito’s sexless striptease. “He looks like a dick”. “Come on, asshole!” “TAKE THEM OFF!” Doc sounds like a really aggressive patron at a gay strip club. Heel Naito even gets a bit of babyface love in this one, even though he’s always been more over in Tokyo than in other areas of Japan. It’s not a good match with the styles clashing and them never clicking, even in the slightest. Doc is mostly to blame, lumbering his way into spots at half-speed. When he’s clearer on the spots, like his strikes, the match is way better. Naito picks his moments and never looks troubled. Pluma Blanca would probably finish if Doc’s legs weren’t so long. Naito attempts something weird off the top so Doc counters into the UNHEARD OF SUPER MEHSHUGGANATOR for the pin. Obviously Naito’s career is over. His back shattered into a million pieces. Not a good match but the finish was pretty cool. Clearly Naito won’t even be in contention going into the final day. Somewhat of a shocker. Final Rating: **1/4 Picks: 51/71 G1 Climax Block A Katsuyori Shibata vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan Pre-Match Pick: Shibata. He must win or he’s done. This starts out with tremendous promise as they wail on each other with strikes. Tenzan hasn’t been great at any point during G1 but he’s been pretty solid. Shibata has been outstanding. Neither guy wants to back down from the opening scrap so Shibata takes Tenzan’s bad leg. Then he bootscrapes that head injury from earlier in the tournament. Shibata is a motherfucker. This provokes Tenzan into working in brutal responses. It’s like watching an angry young Tenzan in action, hauled out of the past by Shibata’s aggression. Tenzan hooks Anaconda Vice on Shibata’s arm, which was injured pre-tournament. There were question marks over Shibata’s involvement, the injury was so severe. Shibata wrestles his way out, because that’s what he does. Shibata even sees the opening during a series of Mongolian chops and slips under into the sleeper. However Tenzan catches Shibata with a few headbutts and hooks the Anaconda Vice again. This time Shibata passes out from the pain and Tenzan gets the spoiler win. Shibata’s run of defeats toward the end of this G1 has been disheartening but entirely predictable. Except I keep getting the predictions wrong, damn it! The match was short but brutally fantastic. Probably the best performance Tenzan has mustered all tournament long. Final Rating: ***3/4 Picks: 51/72 G1 Climax Block A Toru Yano vs. Kota Ibushi Pre-Match Pick: Yano. Kota is already out of contention. Yano tries to sell one of his CHAOS DVD’s to Kenta Kobashi. He’s not buying. Fortune Dream can’t be drawing that well. Kota does some fun stuff with Yano, ever the mimic master and steals a load of Yano’s stuff including the turnbuckle pad bit. Yano nut shots him and gets the roll up in no time at all. You can’t out-troll the ultimate troll. Yano steals Kobashi’s drink to celebrate a ‘hard-earned’ victory. They were probably out there for 50 seconds. Final Rating: SQUASH Picks: 52/73 G1 Climax Block A AJ Styles vs. Bad Luck Fale Pre-Match Pick: AJ. It might have been a night of upsets but surely AJ goes over to set up him vs. Tana for the Block on Day Seventeen. Bullet Club come out together to show unity. “Too sweet”. Fale even teases lying down for AJ before having a change of heart and kicking out. That in itself is a better story than any straight up match they could have told. Fale deciding he was worth more than being AJ’s job-boy. I’m not keen with Fale playing the babyface in all this but I do like Karl Anderson playing peacemaker. Or trying to anyway, considering he did something very similar to AJ last year. AJ decides he’s going to take some enormous rag doll bumps to get the match over and make the monster Fale into a legitimate threat. His bump over the rail is sensational. Both guys try to cheat but the rest of the Bullet Club continue to stop this from going too far. Part of me hopes that they’re running a Bullet Club self destruction angle but that won’t happen for one very serious reason and it’s the same reason the WWE won’t turn John Cena heel; merchandising. Those Bullet Club shirts are worth keeping the group around. Hell, even I have a Bullet Club shirt and I don’t even like the Bullet Club, it’s just a cool shirt. They try and make this a different match and brawl into the stands. I recognise a lot of the Korakuen from DDT shows, and having been there myself, so it’s nice to see the familiar bleachers in action during G1. Fale teases a Bad Luck Fall into the crowd, which would be completely unacceptable…even in Japan. AJ is simply too slick, too fast and too good for Fale. The one issue remaining is; how does AJ beat Fale? The big impact moves are likely out so AJ goes after the Calf Killer. They have a few fun finisher counters, with the BLF being teased continually until AJ goes the old Flair heel route and pins using the ropes. Hey, a win’s a win. Good match, especially considering Fale was in it. I like the storyline they told. AJ shows a little fear post match but they hug it out and all is forgiven…thank God. I have no interest in seeing a Fale vs. AJ feud. Very interesting storytelling in this match though. It was different to anything else in G1. Final Rating: ***1/4 Picks: 53/74 G1 Climax Block A Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Togi Makabe Pre-Match Pick: Tanahashi. I’ve gone with him all tournament long and it makes sense he wins here to set up vs. AJ for the whole hill of beans on Day Seventeen. Although that would also work if he lost here, as long as Naito lost on the last day too. They set out for the long haul in this contest with early counters at a methodical pace. Tana is the better technician of the two but it’s nice to see Togi even attempt half of the stuff they go for. It shows he’s no slouch, something people tend to forget because he does so much smashmouth stuff. Tana plays the match with a touch of heeldom about his work, playing air guitar, like a dick, while standing on Togi’s knee. As the match progresses I keep looking at the Block standings and mentally trying to figure out where NJPW is going with the booking. Which is one of the problems with tournaments, you get into the maths of the thing rather than the action sometimes. In the match Tanahashi works the knee over at length, including a number of Dragon Screw legwhips and a tasty Texas Cloverleaf. Not only does this stop Togi’s momentum but it outright slows him down to a snail’s pace. He has to grab Tana to do any damage. Makabe doesn’t sell the knee on any major spots, a German suplex has a perfect bridge for example, but he does a fine job of conveying the struggle outside of that. He’s certainly better at selling than Nakamura or Ibushi in similar situations. Tana flattens him with High Fly Flow regardless and that’s that. This was a bit sluggish but a decent way to end the night. Final Rating: ***1/4 Picks: 54/75. I got caught out with a few upsets this evening but I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that Gallows would lose to Naito and Tenzan to Shibata. Oh well. Here’s the Block before we leave: BLOCK A: AJ Styles 12 Hiroshi Tanahashi 12 Tetsuya Naito 10 Bad Luck Fale 10 Katsuyori Shibata 8 Togi Makabe 8 Kota Ibushi 6 Toru Yano 6 Hiroyoshi Tenzan 4 Doc Gallows 4 Losses for Shibata and Makabe confirm they’re out. The fact that AJ and Tana both won means Naito and Fale are done too. AJ vs. Tanahashi headlines Day Seventeen. The winner is in the G1 final. The maths was easy in the end. Summary: Not one of the better shows from this year’s G1. An underwhelming show with various wrestlers jockeying for position as the tournament comes to a conclusion. One great undercard tag, second only to that one with Honma, Ishii and Elgin, and a couple of decent G1 matches. I liked Tenzan-Shibata more than most but it was honestly a strong performance from Tenzan. A few people have commented that it might be his last G1. If it is, he’s trying to go out strong. Verdict: 66
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AuthorArnold Furious Archives
April 2016
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