This years G1 Climax tournament from New Japan Pro Wrestling has just concluded. The round robin tournament split into two blocks, with the winner of each block meeting in the final.
The tournament itself was adapted from recent due directly as a result of covid29 restrictions and was better as a result! With Less matches taking place each night, with only one preliminary match prior to the tournament matches, considering that there are 19 nights of the tournament, this slimming down of the tournament and eliminating the multi-man prelimiary matches was a welcome change.
The tournament has some great matches, it also had some not so great matches as well, it struggled as it has in recent years with too many entrants who you know have no chance of winning or even coming close to winning being involved.
The final night, prelimary matches and the final itself set up future story lines, interestingly the prelimary matches, in my view were more interesting than the final. The card was as follows
This was a standard multi-man match under card from New Japan. The first match up pitting Chaos up against Suzuki-gun epitomised this, but it did also include some story line development, Suzuki-gun picked up the win but at the end Douki held up the 6-man tag titles indicated that there will be a challenge from him and Suzuki-gun against Chaos for the titles, a much needed focus on the 6-man titles which have completed dropped off the radar.
The second match was a hard hitting brawl, although a tag team match it centred around the rivalry between Shingo and Suzuki and seemingly set up a future match the Suzuki's Never Open weight Championship. The third match was just a classic multi-man match from New Japan and there is very little to say about it, other than it did seem to show case Master Wato a little, which seems to be perfectly timed for the upcoming Best of the Super Juniors.
The next match was the most interesting, not the match itself, but what it represented With a The Great-O-Khan returning from excursion in the UK and teaming with Ospreay who had turned on Okada, in process looking to setup a new faction. Hopefully something more comes from this. The Chaos stable has been around for years and is completely stale and something new needs to arise in its place.
Next up was a tag team match the Bullet Club up against LIJ, continuing the feud between Naito and Evil, this was run of the mill, but Evil stood tall and the end, likely to be setting up a title match between the two at Power Struggle.
The final was a break back and forth match between Ibushi and Sanada, the only thing that it suffered from was that it was completely predictable. It was obvious that Ibushi was always going to be the winner as as good as Sanada is, he has not been positioned to main event Wrestle Kingdom and that did take away from the match, knowing who the winner would be.
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