G-1 Climax 33 – The wrap-up!

Howdy!

19 shows later, it’s all over.

So let’s talk about it.

Let’s watch some wrestling, shall we?

No formal organization to this, but there’s a lot to talk about as the G-1 has come to an end; let’s dive right in.

I. The right guy won – The Ballad of Tetsuya Naito

They chose the right guy. This year’s G-1 was won by the most popular wrestler in Japan by any reasonable metric, the leader of LIJ, Tetsuya Naito. Sometimes, you engineer a result where the guy that everyone loves goes over in the end to make people happy.

And in this case, they ran the tentacles back for months into last year. Naito’s 2022 was all groundwork for this moment, as he avenged his loss to Will Ospreay in the G-1 semifinal last year by sending Will home in the semi this year. He followed that up by defeating Kazuchika Okada, who beat him in 2 out of 3 singles matches in 2022. This was a tournament where all the family business was settled.

But further, the booking was centered around the quest for Naito to get that elusive roll call for LIJ on the biggest stage of them all, the Dome and Wrestle Kingdom. Even though he had triumphed once before on that stage, his post-match celebration was inexplicably interrupted by KENTA attacking him after the match. This feels like this is the year he stands tall and the crowd chants along as he defeats former LIJ stable member SANADA for the title, which I expect will occur; with Naito’s neck and knees looking creakier by the day, this may be the last bigtime shot for him. And we’ll get to the current IWGP champion in a few moments.

It’s not even the title, it’s the moment he seeks. And I expect he will get it. They chose the cup of a carpenter this year for a G-1 winner; they chose wisely.

II. They chose poorly – The Ballad of EVIL

On the other hand, we have EVIL.

Now, let’s be totally fair in our thoughts here. From the perspective strictly of an angle, the Bullet Club rebuild angle has been pretty well-thought out. David Finlay (oh, we’ll get to him a bit later) taking the reins of Bullet Club and reforming it into a group of young killers, whose motto was to bring either victories, or if not those, at least bring bodies, stood in stark contrast to EVIL’s much more campy and cartoonish heel antics. El Phantasmo had already been expelled from the group and it appeared that the entire House of Torture could, in fact, be next unless EVIL proved his worth and that his approach to winning worked. And so it did! In fact he made it all the way to the semis!

Which was unfortunate.

Look, I have no idea how much merch the HoT sells or why they continue to have such solid pushes, but EVIL’s tournament was almost exactly what would be expected. Continuous, weary, agonizing interference finishes over and over again, to the point where even when matches were well-wrestled (EVIL can work when he chooses to), the viewer was simply waiting for the run-in. Dare to watch the Finlay/EVIL ‘match’ featuring 5 ref bumps amongst it’s other virtues.

But regardless, EVIL made the Final 8 over other more deserving workers in his Block, and then the problem happened. The most ridiculous booking decision in a tournament that was filled with many of them, where EVIL went over World Champion SANADA in a result devoid of reason after SANADA went 7-0 and undefeated through Block competition. This was all (presumably) to set up EVIL vs SANADA in October as SANADA’s last defense before the Wrestle Kingdom. A match that EVIL has almost no chance of winning.

Could have had Okada beat SANADA on his way to the Final. Could have had SANADA drop 1 Block match to the likes of Kaito Kiyomiya to set up an inter-promotional fight for the title. Instead, it’s going to be EVIL.

The mind boggles.

III. New Japan vs NOAH – stop, stop, he’s already dead.

I generally like Kevin Kelly as an announcer. I think he does the job well and is a clear, concise play-by-play man.

All that having been said, he was absolutely insufferable during Kaito Kiyomiya’s matches during this G-1. Yes, he is the head English announcer for New Japan. Yes, it is his job to put over the product that he is paid to call. Yes, it makes total sense that he would make sure that New Japan is seen as superior to NOAH. I have no qualms with that.

But his over the top burial of NOAH at every given opportunity (along with, to a lesser extent, Chris Charlton) just made Kiyomiya seem like a second rate wrestler who should consider himself blessed by the Gods that he was chosen to compete against Chase Owens. The former NOAH GHC Champion. And you might be saying “Hey, why SHOULD Kelly put the guy over?”, and the answer is simple – you’re going to be beating him in the end, so why not make him seem like a bigtimer so when you beat him, it fucking matters? I seem to remember, in fact, a guy who bought his own competition and instead of making them a threat to be vanquished and thereby make a metric fuckton of money, he decided to bury them six feet under for spite. I don’t know that many people who thought that was particularly bright decision.

And speaking of beating him in the end…..

I’m starting to wonder if this Kaito thing is a way to get heat for KENOH or someone else in NOAH, or if the guy pissed in someone’s cornflakes or something, because New Japan has been allowed, clearly with NOAH’s consent, to just beat the shit out of this guy at every opportunity. He had the big angle with Okada that looked like it was going to be awesome with the hardway kick and subsequent pull-apart brawl. So what happened from there? Okada beat him in less than 20 minutes at a NOAH show, not even a New Japan one.

Okay, so maybe New Japan didn’t want Okada to lose under any circumstance? Fine. Don’t tell Bryan Danielson, but fine.

So then, Kaito gets added in the G-1 after several crossover shows where New Japan won all the main events. So this is the moment, right? This is what they laid the groundwork for, now Kaito will get a deep run into the G-1, maybe pick off a few big stars, and quite possibly beat Okada to pay him back, setting up a rubber match in the future.

At least, that’s what one idiot on this here website predicted in his G-1 preview.

(IT’S RICK, RICK WAS THAT IDIOT. TAKE THE REST OF HIS ANALYSIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.)

Instead, Kaito got off to a decent start, going 2-0-1 in his first 3 matches, heading into a showdown with the IWGP World Champion, SANADA. And even there he did great, losing his first match with less than 5 seconds to go before the time limit draw. And that…..was it. He wouldn’t win another match, finishing the G-1 by going draw, loss, loss, finishing with an overall record of 2-3-2.

Now, why in the WORLD would NOAH agree to that? Their young gun and former World Champion?

This is not meant to be a full-throated love letter to Kaito Kiyomiya. In fact, of most of the NOAH talent that I’ve seen, he’s pretty low on my list of guys I think will end up great. I don’t see a lot of excitement with the guy at all, nowhere near what others do – I think he’s an above-average to good worker who does well when in the ring with a better wrestler. He’s not Katsuhiko Nakajima or Go Shiozaki. But that’s hardly the point, isn’t it? At the end of the day, Kaito’s booking in this tournament defied reason and logic unless the point was for New Japan to just beat up on a NOAH guy and NOAH being completely fine with it.

But hey, at least they’ll get a Young Lion out of the deal.

IV. Booker of the Year…..maybe.

I’ve lauded a lot of praise on GEDO this year because, frankly, I think that he’s done a terrific job.

The breakup of Suzuki-Gun late last year scattered a lot of chess pieces onto GEDO’s board, and he’s moved them around exquisitely. Zack Sabre Jr becoming the head of TMDK and having his own faction was absolutely the correct move. The Just 5 Guys faction, orginally seen as a joke, now bodes two title holders in KOPW holder Taichi and IWGP World Champion SANADA, whose defection to the group from LIJ gave the impression that he was finally stepping out from underneath Naito’s shadow after so many years.

Keeping Desperado with Minoru Suzuki to mentor young Ren Narita in Strong Style has allowed Narita to start exploring things beyond being a Shibata clone. And speaking of the young guys, the story of the younger wrestlers of New Japan returning to seize it by the throat was bearing fruit this year. Shota Umino, mentee of Jon Moxley, has started to blossom into the top babyface that they wanted for him all along after months of settling into the role. And of course, the Gene Blast himself, Yota Tsuji, who came back so strongly that many, including myself, thought that he should have been given the absolute rocket and beaten SANADA for the World title in his first match back.

Younger guys who aggressively changed personalities mixed and matched perfectly, as seen in the Bullet Club War Dogs of Gabe Kidd and Alex Coughlin. Or Dan Moloney and Clark Connors. GEDO’s booking this year highlighted all of these men and made them look like threats as they collected title belts and main events.

And then, this G-1 happened. And I don’t know exactly why some of the choices were made. But many of them ran contrary to a lot of the groundwork we established from earlier in the year, and chief among them was that the young dudes got put in their place.

In A Block, where we had the likes of Tsuji, Narita, Umino, and Kidd, the two men advancing were SANADA and…..Hikuleo. The rest of the wrestlers advancing to the Final 8 were EVIL, David Finlay, Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada, Tetsuya Naito, and Zack Sabre Jr. All of them (well, most of them) are excellent wrestlers who deserved those spots to a certain extent, it could be argued.

But…..Hikuleo? EVIL? Finlay? Those were the guys you chose to push while bursting at the seams with young talent that could have done more with it and laid a stronger foundation for tomorrow? How fast do you think WWE will go after Hikuleo if he gets good? 10 minutes? 5? So why are we putting him over all of the younger guys who are the future of the company? EVIL needed to be reheated for a title match for some damned reason, instead of trying out a guy like Shota Umino in that spot?

There was no reason to put all the young guys into the same block and not have a single one of them get out of that block. Zero.

SANADA goes 7-0 in the Block and loses to EVIL? Why? Why put SANADA over everyone and then have him lose like that? What are people going to remember, that he went 7-0 or that he lost in the first round of the playoff to EVIL of all people?

I think that GEDO has been tremendous this year, but this year’s G-1 booking could bear to be scrutinized.

INTERLUDE: TOP TEN WRESTLERS NOAH HAS AGREED TO JOB KAITO KIYOIMYA TO IN THE UPCOMING YEAR:

10. Kairi, before she returns to America
9. Great Muta, coming out of retirement just to beat Kaito
8 – 1. Anyone else on Earth.

Don’t yell at me, dude. You know I’m right.

V. Maybe there was just too many.

I think that we may have found out how big ‘too big’ looked like in the G-1, and this was the year.

I don’t enjoy the 4 Block structure, frankly. I think that 2 Blocks of 20 wrestlers (24 if we HAVE to go that high) is the top amount for the G-1 and this year, with 32 wrestlers, proved it. The cry I keep hearing is that the matches were very good from a lot of the wrestlers you wouldn’t expect, but so what?

Yes, Shane Haste is a really fun wrestler. Does he belong in the G-1 Climax? Where he’ll have zero shot to win? Chase Owens needs to be in this thing? Tonga Loa was a cringe-worthy sight 7 times this year, for fuck’s sake. Just because we got rid of Bad Luck Fale doesn’t mean we needed to replace him!

The G-1 would work best as the top 16 wrestlers from New Japan along with 4 Wild Card guys, and that’s where you put your Eddie Kingstons and Kaito Kiyomiyas. 32 was bloated beyond belief.

VI. But by God, the wrestling

Every year, the G-1 gets the rep for being some of the best wrestling of the year, and this year was no exception. In fact, the new 20-minute time limit worked better to slim down the matches and eliminate the bloat while giving us some tremendous finishing sequences as the time limit approached.

And then, we got the top 8, and this was just filled with great performances:

• Will Ospreay carrying David Finlay to **** and Finlay’s best match ever in the Quarters.
• Kazuchika Okada and Zack Sabre Jr continued ZSJ not being able to conquer Okada (he’s 0-4 in matches in NJPW, although he does have a win in Revolution Pro) in what would have been the MOTT in almost any other year, a ****3/4 affair in another Quarter.
• Naito and Ospreay having a classic semi-final, in which Naito was clearly knocked out by an errant kick and Will had to all but wrestle for himself to get to the finish in the last minute, another ****3/4 match that a lot of folks I know went 5 on.
• Okada trying his hardest with EVIL in their semifinal and getting quite a bit out of him, including the single most INSANE kickout of the tournament, where EVIL hit Everything is EVIL and Okada kicked out at 2.99999999999999999999 and the crowd nearly went feral. I had the match at ***3/4, myself, but that moment was something else.
• And in a decidedly uncomfortable Final, Naito and Okada went ****1/2, as they spent their entire time hitting each other with moves aimed at the neck and head. While everyone seemed to come out of it okay and the intensity was off the charts (the crowd may have RIOTED if Naito hadn’t won this one), I did watch this one back and thought it played better once I knew everyone was fine. In the moment, it was rough to watch. But spectacular pro wrestling.

Combined with a strong tournament of Block competition, and this G-1 was as stellar as they come. I have zero complaints about the in-ring performances this year.

INTERLUDE: EDDIE KINGSTON’S LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE AFTER WORKING IN THE G-1, MEETING TOSHIAKI KAWADA, AND GETTING A RIBERA JACKET AND THIS BIT OF SUNSHINE LIT UP MY VERY SOUL IN THE DEEPEST, DARKEST RECESSES.

Rock on, Mad King. You were just about the best thing in the G-1 this year. It’s a beautiful thing to see this artform possess the power to move someone like you were moved this year.

VII. Random thoughts to finish us off.

• David Finlay grew on me, but I still don’t see him as Bullet Club leader type material, sorry. Were it not for his publicized issues, Gabriel Kidd seemed to me to be the ideal choice.
• Further pontificating on Bullet Club a bit, the idea of a slimmed-down Club where they just go back to a small group of aggressive foreigners would likely work, but it needs them to dump guys like KENTA, Chase Owens, the HoT, etc.
• Part of me wishes they would have gone further with Jeff Cobb, as they started him off undefeated before the wheels came off; if it leads to him becoming more aggressive as a consequence, all the better.
• Of the Reiwa 3, I think that Umino did the most in this tournament. Tsuji was inexplicably booked to drop matches he shouldn’t have lost and Narita just wasn’t really presented as a huge threat most of the way.
• On the flip side, the shocking pin of Will Ospreay by Tsuji in the tag on the Final night will likely lead to an excellent match, and is the type of booking Yota likely should have had all along.
• Tonga Loa SUCKED in this thing. Holy shit.
• El Phantasmo was fantastic and almost completed the comeback in his block; while I totally understand the point of putting Ospreay over him because Naito needed to beat Will as part of his story, the crowd was READY for ELP to pull off the big upset and I’m bummed he didn’t, honestly.
• Hiroshi Tanahashi is not ready to be put out to pasture just yet. He had a far better tournament than most anticipated, and the Lion in Winter may yet come to pass.
• While there were better matches, nothing matched the sheer joy I had watching Eddie Kingston vs Tomohiro Ishii. All 3 times I did.

Fin. At the end of everything, I loved the hell out of my time watching the G-1 this year. Am I saying this because the guy I wanted to win won?

Well, yes.

But also, this is just a really great place to watch wrestling with other people. I know I put this place over far too sincerely sometimes, but we had such a good crew this year keeping some very odd hours to watch some NJPW, and it made even the mediocre matches that much more fun to watch. Didn’t save the EVIL matches, but still.

This is the best place on the internet to watch wrestling, and we’re lucky to have it and each other. Thanks, everyone.

See you all soon!

As always, thanks for reading this thing I wrote,

Rick Poehling
@MrSoze on Twitter
jedimacewindu@yahoo.com for email