The Best And Worst Of NJPW G1 Climax 26 Finals

Hello, readers! As summer winds down, we once again find ourselves at the G1 Climax Finals, the culmination of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s heavyweight title-shot tournament. Before we break all the action down, a few notes:

– If you haven’t checked it out already, go read my piece on the wild year that KUSHIDA is having. It’s a great way get familiar with some of the action and emotion you’ll see in NJPW.

– Did you miss the show? Try NJPW World and catch up on the whole G1 tournament, plus years of archived matches! They have a Google Translate feature on their site to make it a bit easier to sign up.

– Make sure you’re following us on Facebook and Twitter. My personal Twitter is here as well, just in case you don’t have enough Overwatch memes in your life.

– And of course, share this column everywhere you can! It helps, trust me.

And now, here’s the Best and Worst of the G1 Climax 26 Finals.

Opening Tag Team Lightning Round

As mentioned last year, if you’re on the New Japan roster and you don’t really have anything going on at the moment, they’ll usually just stick you in a tag team match at the beginning of the show. If current young lions Yohei Komatsu and Sho Tanaka weren’t on excursion Mexico right now, they’d be in the first match, I guarantee it. Let’s go ahead and power through these first three matches.

Worst goes to Ryusuke Taguchi, who seems content to give up anything that made him interesting in the first place. First, he started copping Shinsuke Nakamura shirts and doing Nakamura’s taunts after his departure, which seems kind of heelish for such a clear babyface. But now, he’s also forgone his Seatbelts-esque “Master of Dropkick” theme and started lip-syncing his way to the ring. I’m not sure what the song is, but it sounds like what you’d get if you gave Tuxedo Mask’s theme a few bars of Xanax. He and David Finlay (yes, that’s Fit’s son) lost a quick match to Jushin “Thunder” Liger and Tiger Mask, who should really be using the tag team name “Team ThunderCat.”

Best goes to Jado for returning to the ring for the first time since January and teaming up with his longtime friend/tag partner/co-booker Gedo. As mentioned on the English commentary, Gedo and Jado are hilariously drawn to cheating in the ring, and it’s great to see that their tag-team chemistry has yet to wear off.

A strong Worst, however, will go to their opponents, Yoshitatsu and Captain New Japan. Ever since being released from WWE and returning from his neck injury, Yoshi has committed himself to the world’s saddest Triple H impression as a jab at his former employers. He switched to short trunks, he spits water on the ring apron, he worked the spinebuster and pedigree into his moveset, the whole nine yards. Also, he started the Hunter Club in hopes of eradicating the Bullet Club from New Japan. The trouble is, he couldn’t find anyone to join said club, with the exception of human pratfall Captain New Japan. I’m surprised these nerds didn’t lose this match via atomic wedgie.

Best will go the the CHAOS duo of Tomohiro Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI for their victory over Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma. YOSHI-HASHI and Ishii are two of the hardest-working guys on the roster, even if Ishii gets all the credit for feeling no pain and having no neck. Makabe and Honma seem to be continuing their backwards slide after losing the IWGP Tag Team Championships, however.

And finally, let’s send a Best to good ol’ Rocky Romero on English commentary. Steve Corino and Kevin Kelly were joined by the Roppongi Vice veteran, and it was the mother of all upgrades from Yoshitatsu. Apparently, you need a third man for a three-man booth … who knew?

Best: Bad Blood, Figuratively

Worst: Bad Blood, Literally

The G1 Climax field will usually have a special guest or two each year. Last year saw the NJPW introduction to current IWGP Intercontinental Champion Michael Elgin, so being an outsider in G1 can be a huge jumping-off point. This year’s guests were Naomichi Marufuji and Katsuhiko Nakajima, both representing Pro Wrestling NOAH. New Japan and NOAH have been in a working relationship for a while now, so it all made sense. They haven’t been functioning as New Japan’s answer to NXT like some theorized, but the bridge was there and ready to be crossed. But after this match and Marufuji’s match later in the night, the bridge appears to be laden with explosives.

The fourth match of the night saw a NOAH all-star team (Nakajima accompanied by Masa Kitamiya, Maybach Taniguchi, and Go Shiozaki) take on four of New Japan’s best: Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi, and Katsuyori Shibata. This was a tense, heated affair right from the opening.

It appears that we’re slamming the gas pedal on this, because we blew right past the Inter-Promotional Tension phase of this storyline and we’ve arrived at Full-Blown Faction Warfare considerably ahead of schedule. If they can sustain this for a while, I’m eager to see where it goes. There’s a lot of slept-on wrestlers in NOAH, and the frantic brawl here after the final bell tells me that they’ll probably want to bring backup to this next fight.

With that addressed, we need to talk about Katsuyori Shibata. When he returned to NJPW after his time in the world of mixed martial arts, he was captivating to watch because of the sheer violence he brought to the table. It was a novelty at the time, but now it’s kind of worrisome. Being the hardest striker on a roster where everyone strikes hard means that you’re going above and beyond to hurt people. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this is his one-man crusade to bring legitimacy to pro wrestling. But regardless of his goals, Shibata is going into his matches with the express purpose of injuring people. And with the physical toll it must take on him and his opponents, I’m really hoping that we don’t end up in Chris Benoit territory years down the road. In case you think I’m exaggerating, check out the most disgusting headbutt in wrestling history. Make sure you’re not eating.

Human heads aren’t supposed to make that sound. This is the kind of strong style that would make Antonio Inoki himself say “Hey, take it down a couple of notches.”

Best: Hang ‘Em High

I like the moments where you feel like a wrestler has “arrived,” so consider me happy to see that Adam “Hangman” Page is finally coming into his own. If you aren’t familiar with his work in Ring of Honor, he didn’t do much besides being B.J. Whitmer’s young boy (in the puroresu sense).

There have been Bullet Club signees in the past that felt like more of a “Why not?” move, but Page looks like the kind of guy that can elevate the faction and his career by joining. Seriously, he went from being an afterthought in ROH to strangling people with a noose in New Japan. I think he’s finally a Gyarados after years of being a Magikarp.

Case in point, he was part of a really solid match for the IWGP Tag Team titles. He and Yujiro Takahashi challenged reigning champs Jay and Mark Briscoe, and I don’t think there was a single dull moment during this bout. In fact, it’s probably one of my favorite Briscoes matches to date. So yeah, praise all around here. The gaijin champs look good and Page is bringing some new intensity to the Bullet Club, nothing to nitpick here. I even liked Steve Corino trying to flirt with Takahashi’s valets, considering that he didn’t go full Jerry Lawler with it.

Worst: Foregone Conclusions

Just to be clear, this is not a Worst for either the defending Ring of Honor World Champion Jay Lethal, nor is it for the challenger, Satoshi Kojima. This is more of a complaint with knowing exactly what would happen by the end of this match. Jay Lethal has multiple ROH title defenses lined up into the coming weeks, and they’re all built around him being the champion. Granted, the commentary team made clear there were contingency scenarios in place if Kojima should become champion, but the more we heard about Lethal’s blood feud with Adam Cole, the more it seemed like the outcome of this match was clearly telegraphed.

That’s a real shame, because there’s probably a really fun alternate timeline where Kojima is now a champion in Ring of Honor and he’s making his first defense against longtime tag team partner Hiroyoshi Tenzan, simply because he asked so nicely in that video you see above. That’s one of the cool things about Kojima: Out of all the Battle Grandpas you’ll see in NJPW (Nagata, Nakanishi, Liger), he seems like the most gentlemanly one.

Speaking of the video above, let’s go ahead and throw a supplemental Worst at the ROH production team. “Hiroshi” Tenzan? Really? New Japan doesn’t come to your events and start talking about Dalton Cassidy and The Lads.

Best: Tetsuya Naito Is The Dean Ambrose We Deserve

The all-too-brief era of Tetsuya Naito as IWGP Heavyweight Champion was exciting because he felt dangerous. He finally figured out that the best way to antagonize NJPW was from the top, and his reign of terror was a wild ride once he arrived there. He would confront the president of New Japan at corporate events, he would intentionally damage the championship belt … and people loved him for it.

As far as “loose cannon” champions go, he might have been the most authentic since Stone Cold Steve Austin. You believed him when he threatened to take the company hostage. It’s a real step up from WWE’s current loose cannon champion, who owns an asylum and a leather jacket.

Naito and his Los Ingobernables squad (SANADA, BUSHI, and EVIL) took on Hiroshi Tanahashi, Michael Elgin, KUSHIDA, and Juice Robinson. Yes, it is still the strangest thing in the world to see C.J. Parker talking jovially with New Japan’s ace, thanks for asking.

This match looks to be setting up a lot of potential rivalries down the road. KUSHIDA and BUSHI seem to be on a collision course for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, and Naito is clearly gunning for Elgin and his Intercontinental title. The former seems like something we should get out of the way soon, but I’m hoping we can sustain an Elgin/Naito feud, maybe even up until Wrestle Kingdom.

Worst: Three Tongans And A Bad Idea
Best: Bad Blood (Part II)

I wasn’t really crazy about the six-man tag match pitting the Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, and Tanga Roa) against Kazuchika Okada, Naomichi Marufuji, and Toru Yano. Most of it seemed to focus on Yano’s comedy, which was a bit out of place in the semi-main event of one of the year’s biggest shows. He and Marufuji had no real tag-team work to do, which is another weird call if you want them to be a big deal as tag team champions in Pro Wrestling NOAH. Honestly, this was all about Okada getting his G1 frustration out.

Speaking of which, let’s get back to that NJPW/NOAH feud that we seem to be charging toward. After bad-mouthing Fale on the microphone, Okada addressed Marufuji and told him to come looking for a title shot, which got a huge response from the crowd. I’m all in for this. Marufuji has always been really good, but I think he needs people around him that can elevate him to the next level. He’s cool with being NOAH’s standard-bearer right now, but the chance to mix it up with Okada and further an inter-promotional storyline might just bring out the best in him.

Best: Omega Weapon

The last few days of the G1 tournament were off-the-charts crazy. A time-limit draw between Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi meant that Hirooki Goto would be the surprise winner of the A-Block, while the B-Block came down to Kenny Omega’s final-day victory over Tetsuya Naito. A year ago, New Japan’s big four consisted of Okada, Tanahashi, Shinsuke Nakamura, and A.J. Styles. Not a single one would be among the last two men standing in 2016.

Here’s the thing: Either man winning would set up great storylines down the road. Hirooki Goto is the eternal bridesmaid in NJPW, with one G1 Climax title and three New Japan Cups to his name. He’s knocked on the door of the heavyweight title so many times, only to be denied. So when Shinsuke Nakamura departed, he joined CHAOS to get closer to Okada. He’s never been overt about it, but I think he’s setting himself up to be the Starscream of the operation.

So what would happen if we ended up with Okada vs. Goto at Wrestle Kingdom? Who would win, the young leader or the wily second-in-command? For now, we don’t know, because Kenny By-God Omega had himself a date with destiny.

NJPW pulling the trigger on Kenny Omega right now is the best thing they could have done, because he’s been nothing short of revolutionary lately. On a technical level, he’s somehow managed to bring the speed and agility of a junior heavyweight with him as he transitioned to competition among the heavyweights. Aside from that, he’s a super-charismatic heel that Japanese audiences can’t help but love because he’s immersed himself so sincerely in their culture. He constantly makes headlines, whether he’s bringing the ladder match to Japan or throwing down at Street Fighter tournaments. East meets West, old meets new. Kenny Omega is the right man at the right time.

The final sequence is where Omega goes nuclear. He summons the ghosts of Bullet Club’s past and hits Goto with Bloody Sunday and a Styles Clash before finally sealing the victory with the One-Winged Angel, and it’s amazing. You’re not getting up from that, I don’t care who you are. The first Westerner to win the G1 Climax is the same guy who left WWE developmental because he knew he could make it on his own steam. Whoever is defending the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at Wrestle Kingdom should take heed, because Kenny Omega is the best he’s ever been.