New Japan Pro Wrestling‘s G1 Climax Tournament is less than a month away, so now, to paraphrase Smash Mouth, the announcements start coming and they don’t stop coming. At the beginning of yesterday’s Kizuna Road show, NJPW told us which wrestlers will be competing in G1 Climax 28. Today they announced who will be in A Block and B Block for the round-robin portion of the tournament. Now we know what matches we’re getting for the majority of the nineteen shows, which will all air live on NJPW World with the option of English commentary.
The blocks for G1 Climax 28 are listed below, with a breakdown of some notable matchups and rivalries in each block.
A Block:
- Hiroshi Tanahashi
- Togi Makabe
- Michael Elgin
- Kazuchika Okada
- Jay White
- Yoshi-Hashi
- Bad Luck Fale
- Hangman Page
- Evil
- Minoru Suzuki
A Block features some rematches, in neat 30 minute time limit packages, for rival wrestlers we saw face off earlier this year: Okada vs. Tanahashi, Makabe vs. Suzuki, Tanahashi vs. Suzuki, White vs. Page, White vs. Tanahashi, and Fale vs. Tananashi. Okada also defended the title it’s still weird for him not to have anymore against Evil and Suzuki in 2017, and has faced them in tag matches in 2018.
It’s always fun to see stablemates who don’t usually wrestle each other have matches in these tournaments, and in A Block we have three members of Chaos, one of whom was very into hinting he was going to challenge for his pals’ titles back when they all had them, and two members of Bullet Club, one from the ROH and one from the New Japan half. Just as matches in themselves, my top three “let’s see how this goes” matchups in A Block are Page vs. Tanahashi, Makabe vs. Evil, and the Grandpa Sadist vs. Knife Pervert Battle of Suzuki vs. White.
B Block
- Juice Robinson
- Hirooki Goto
- Tomohiro Ishii
- Toru Yano
- Kenny Omega
- Kota Ibushi
- Tama Tonga
- Tetsuya Naito
- Sanada
- Zack Sabre Jr.
In B Block, we’ll see the dream match that could mean the end of a popular tag team as Ishii and Yano face off. Oh, also, THE GOLDEN LOVERS WILL FIGHT for the first time in a singles match since their reunion and also 2012, and I’m emotional already. B Block also features some inter-faction matches to watch for in Naito vs. Sanada and Omega vs. Tonga, whose match last year revealed a lot of issues that have almost definitely not been resolved.
We’ll also see rematches of Robinson vs. Goto from their recent NEVER Openweight Championship match, Naito vs. Omega (who insulted the former after his recent title win) from last year’s G1 finals, Ishii (current RevPro champ) vs. ZSJ (guy Ishii won RevPro title from), another Omega vs. Yano singles match after their controversial (some people thought it was funny and some people didn’t) match from last year’s tournament, and ZSJ vs. three people he beat in this year’s New Japan Cup: Naito, Sanada, and Ibushi. I’m also excited to see Naito vs. Ibushi, Robinson vs. Tonga if only for the possible new heights of NJPW in-ring swearing that could be reached, and Goto vs. Omega.
Tomorrow New Japan will announced the tournament schedule and we’ll find out which matches will be given main event prominence (although, like we saw in this year’s Best of the Super Juniors, with the current NJPW roster match of the night is likely to show up anywhere on the card.) What are you most excited to see now that the blocks are announced? Is one more stacked for you than the other? Let us know in the comments!
