Previously on NJPW: Okada lost his smile and gained balloons, Jay White tried to turn an EDM kid emo, and Bad Luck Fale got a new catchphrase I have to put an asterisk in to publish on With Spandex.
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And now, the best and worst of Night 3 (July 16, 2018) of G1 Climax 28, in Sapporo.
Best: Seven Minutes And Under In Heaven
The show starts off with bite-sized B Block preview tag matches, all entertaining, fast-paced, and a little over seven minutes at the longest. Up first, to set up Tama Tonga vs. Sanada, Henare and Umino have to wrestle three-time IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Champions the Guerrillas of Destiny. But what this tag match is really about is that, as Kevin Kelly suggested on commentary on Night 1, Henare would really like to join Bullet Club now, please. He’s extra hyped up from the second he gets in the ring, and calls out the G.o.D., who look pretty embarrassed by his tryhard attitude and also his entire gimmick.
From a pure wrestling perspective though, this match might be the best Henare has ever looked. He and Tanga Loa, respectively an ex-rugby and an ex-football guy, naturally start with a shoulder tackle-off. Henare still looks like a rookie here, but one with a bright future. Though the G.o.D. dominate, Henare gets in a surprising amount of offense, including knocking both brothers down with a double shoulder tackle that they don’t no-sell in the slightest.
Backstage, Henare sucks up to the Bullet Club guys so hard, saying fighting them helps him improve as a wrestler, that Tanga Loa is worthy of being named after the Maori sea god as well as a Tongan family of gods/sky god (I think?), and telling the guys who just beat him up, “It’s all about pride. It’s all about sovereignty… Tongan brothers, I get it… You guys keep doing you.” He even finishes the promo with phrases in both Tongan and Maori to drive home that he would really like to sit at their lunch table.
Tama says he still considers Henare a Young Lion due to his lack of experience and shades his gimmick again, but says he can relate to the guy. So I’m guessing we’ll probably see David Finlay eat a Gun Stun during the C Block finals.
In Match 2, Toru Yano and Jado defeat Zack Sabre Jr. and Taka Michinoku. Yano continues to have halfway turned over a new leaf, going straight for the turnbuckle pad and his opponent’s eyes at the beginning of the match, but also doing multiple holds! And a strike exchange! And an arm drag! He pins Taka to win the match, and the Suzukigun team vows revenge against this “king of the dickheads.”
Juice Robinson and David Finlay defeat Kota Ibushi and Yujiro Takahashi, the current NJPW tag team with by far the most confusing vibe, to set up Juice vs. Ibushi. These two clobber each other, and both get to shine more in this babyface vs. babyface matchup after having to deal with heels torturing them in their first B Block bouts. Juice gets in his signature punches, and his style leaves way more room for Ibushi to show off his superhuman athletic ability. I have no idea how that crossbody to Finlay on the mat after JUMPING FROM THE RING OVER THE TOP ROPE was physically possible.
In the post-match promo (I enjoyed a lot of the promos for this show, by the way; there is a higher than average amount of them embedded in this article), FinJuice continues to be at their goofy best. Finlay clarifies it’s “C Block, not cockblock… C Block, it’s what the people want,” and asks Juice not to punch Ibushi in the face because Ibushi’s so pretty. Juice is in good spirits, having moved on from his Night 2 loss, and grants Tama Tonga a U.S. title shot if he wants one.
Tetsuya Naito and Sanada defeat Tomohiro Ishii and Sho to set up Ishii vs. Naito, and make me question how I overlooked how great the Naito vs. Ishii matchup is when thinking about the possible best matches in B Block. The crowd has not cooled off on Naito at all, which commentary acknowledges, and Naito’s spitting fires Ishii up. Sho and Sanada look good here too, and finish off the match with a good sequence of Sho fighting to land a German suplex on the larger Sanada, and Sanada eventually knocking him out with a Giant Swing to a Skull End.
Backstage, Ishii and Naito sound incredibly mature and well-adjusted for pro wrestlers, especially in B Block. Ishii says this is the perfect block for him because he’s lost to all the guys in it before except Yano. Naito puts Kenny aside “for now,” and is definitely still upside about that loss/rivalry, but isn’t going to whine about it. He has a brilliant and tranquilo strategy for beating the former RevPro champion the next day.
And speaking of sleeping, the next tag match reminds us that despite spending most of the year so far in face vs. face mutual respect feuds following a great Wrestle Kingdom match, you should never be doing that on Hirooki Goto. Goto’s next match is against Kenny Omega, a gaijin IWGP Heavyweight Champion and one who recently accused the Japanese talent of coasting. This perfectly compliments the theme of Goto’s G1 promotional video, that the Fierce Warrior is the only Japanese champion in the heavyweight division while “foreigners dominate the championship scene.”
In this tag match, we see Goto more motivated and heroic than we have since he faced Suzuki, and Kenny (and Chase) the most underhanded of this heel turn. When Goto calls him out to start the match, Kenny feigns like he will, but has actually told Chase to attack Goto from behind. Chase later pushes Yoh over the top rope for Kenny to claw at his eyes. (Kenny used eye clawing in the Naito match too, and I admire how gross it feels to see that from the promotion’s top champion, especially one who can do the crazy-athletic things Kenny can.) Goto and Kenny had a great match in the 2016 G1 final, which Kenny won, and this final tag preview of the night makes their rematch look really promising.
When Goto pins Owens after a GTR and points to Omega, the Best Bout Machine is visibly irritated. Backstage, Kenny calls the NEVER belt “shitty,” but says he might want it because it’s the only singles belt he hasn’t won in NJPW. He could challenge for it if he beats Goto the next day. He also makes it sound like the whole Power Of Love kick was either the result of honeymoon phase euphoria or always a just a front, saying, “I believe in revenge. My career has fundamentally been built upon revenge,” without any hint of the regret he expressed about being motivated by hate leading up to the Dominion match.
Worst: Hanging And Banging
After five tag matches with near-Breaking Bad amounts of chemistry, Michael Elgin defeats Hangman Page in a match with very little. Technically, the match is well put-together. Cool, athletic stuff happens in a way that makes sense. But the weakness in Elgin’s selling, the inherently unsympathetic nature of Page’s character’s facial expressions, and that lack of a spark between them stands out when they start having to do big moves while also playing hurt, tired, or fired up. A lot more physically impressive things happened, but my favorite part of this match was Page spitting on Elgin and Elgin removing his elbow pad to finally go full monster with his strikes.
Big Mike wins after an Elgin Bomb, and Page cuts a backstage promo that did a lot for me for his character in this tournament. He thinks he might throw up, he’s dejected because even though he’s two points up he hasn’t really won a match yet, and Okada’s up next. “I’m f*cked,” Page says, and I’m excited to see how that informs his future creative moonsaults, etc.
Best/Worst: The King Of Darkness Vs. The Emperor Of Anxiety
Evil defeats Yoshi-Hashi in a match that continues Yoshi-Hashi’s character rehabilitation, but mostly makes me want to see Evil face everyone in A Block other than the two he’s already faced. After another aggressive start from the Head Hunter, Evil dominates most of the match, mostly working his right arm, which is conveniently both Evil’s favorite thing to work and attached to a taped up shoulder. Yoshi-Hashi kicks out of a lot of moves, and gets a good moment countering an Everything Is Evil into a backbreaker. But ultimately, as we all know by now, everything is evil, and the King of Darkness picks up a W with that move.
Best: King Of The Jungle
In a match that is so clearly the beginning of The Good Stuff for the night, Togi Makabe defeats Minoru Suzuki. These two start shoving each other before the bell and run right at each other for strikes as soon as it rings. This is a hard hitting match with a lot of trash talking between two characters who probably respect each other and definitely hate each other. It also has a fun Shenanigans Section in which Suzuki powders out and Makabe follows him for more strikes. They shove the ref (Marty Asami, the same one who DQ’ed Fale) aside so they can have a CHAIR DUEL… until they both just decide to fight in the ring again.
Suzuki dominates most of the match and looks like he could win via ref stoppage with the rear naked choke, possibly having learned his lesson from going for the Gotch with Tanahashi. But he does go for the GSP when Makabe seems nearly out, only for Makabe to block it twice before hitting the Death Valley Driver. From there, it’s the Unchained Gorilla’s greatest hits for the win. Suzuki’s G1 is off to a surprisingly terrible start, and he throws a tantrum and chairs backstage.
Best: Guerrilla Tactics For A Rainy Day
A Block’s other unexpected loser so far, Kazuchika Okada, enters for his match with Bad Luck Fale (seconded by Tanga Loa) looking more broken than ever. He even surpasses the t-rex pose in terms of weird mental breakdown behavior when he tosses one of his balloons to a child, but it lands on the floor in front of the guardrail and he just LEAVES IT THERE, and the kid just doesn’t get a balloon!
Okada does look more confident during the actual match though, and it turns out to be one that makes both men look great. Fale shows his versatility as a Big Guy, getting in way more varied offense than when he was just trying to murder Hangman Page. The Rainmaker, now facing someone who does not at any point try to smother him in the ring skirt, gets creative to deal with the size and numbers advantage. But the numbers advantage is what finally wins the match, because the BCOGs this time care about the W and are smart about cheating. After a dropkick sends Fale crashing into Red Shoes, the Underboss traps the ref against the turnbuckle with his body long enough to give Tama the chance to hit a Gun Stun outta nowhere on Okada. Now Okada is out and can’t escape the Bad Luck Fall like he did earlier in the match.
Fale welcomes his buddies to the ring afterwards like they’re supposed to be there to Down Low Too Sweet over Okada’s body, exit to boos, and flip off the camera. Kelly says “the BCOGs are going to be a problem for everybody,” and it feels like they will now that we’ve seen an example of their best possible strategy. It’s definitely way more interesting than just showing up and stomping on people until the ref kicks them out of the ring.
They have their evolved squad dynamic down in the backstage promo too, with Tama monologuing like he’s Roy Batty on death’s door, Tanga Loa playing hype man (and nearly corpsing), and Fale specifying that when he says “F*ck them!” he includes the Elite, New Japan, and Okada’s pants.
Best: Love Is Dead
The night’s main event, Jay White vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, is a rematch from the lackluster Wrestle Kingdom 12 bout that the recently-evolved-to Switchblade had to recover from in kayfabe and as a performer. Here, defeating Tanahashi is another step in White’s seemingly unstoppable (well, we’ll see what happens when he gets to the other shady people in A Block) climb up the NJPW totem poll.
The crowd is super hot for the Ace, who seems to control the match early as he maintains a wrist lock through several escape attempts. A classic face/heel dynamic is established here as White gets frustrated about being outwrestled and resorts to hair pulling. White soon focuses on Tanahashi’s knee, working it with submission holds, kicks, and against the ring apron and ringpost.
Tanahashi is In Peril for a lot of the match, but does manage to give back most of what he receives, whether legitimate offense or that low blow. My favorite Tanahashi offense sequence was after the High Fly Flow that White tried roll through into a Blade Runner, but was countered into a straight jacket suplex. The cartoony moment when you can see White realize he’s trapped and about to go for a ride was very entertaining.
Ultimately, White wins with basically the same shenanigans he used to defeat Okada, and hops on the mic to say, “I told you so.” He puts himself over as a legend killer and repeats, “I do not care what you think or what you feel.” You know how you feel the need to address the people with a melodramatic, braggy speech after accomplishing anything when you don’t care about them? Switchblade buries fighting spirit, passion, and the concept of love as things that “get you nowhere” (Rocky Romero on commentary, perfectly: “That’s the foundation of this company!”) I don’t know if I’m ready to breath with the switchblade, whatever that means, but I am always down to love to hate this guy.
After two days of competition with some surprising results, here’s how the A Block wrestlers are doing:
- 4 points – 2-0 – Jay White, Michael Elgin, Togi Makabe
- 2 points – 1-1 – Bad Luck Fale, Evil, Hangman Page, Hiroshi Tanahashi
- 0 points – 0-2 – Kazuchika Okada, Minoru Suzuki, Yoshi-Hashi
I’ll see you back here after the weekend/FOUR MORE CONSECUTIVE G1 DAYS to review the tournament’s progress. Maybe Okada will have gotten his smile back in a way that doesn’t look like he’s possessed and/or incredibly constipated!
