G1 Climax 27 Night 2 Recommended Viewing
By: Matt Ederer
I tried to watch WWE Smackdown last night and couldn’t make it through to the end. The WWE is struggling to produce compelling content these days, and with so many different genres trying so many different and exciting things in 2017, a TV show purposefully spinning its wheels to kill time seems especially egregious. Jinder Mahal and Rusev are both bad guys who hate America, in 2017. We have a illegitimate child angle going on, in 2017. It’s a new age of digital, unscripted content on the internet where fans can connect directly with content creators, and the one show in WWE that felt modern in that way, the WWE Network’s Talking Smack, has been cancelled. In 2017.
AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Kevin Owens are incredible performers, but by the time Smackdown’s main event rolled around, WWE just seemed so…boring. Professional wrestling is a vibrant and exciting business, behind and in-front of the camera, everywhere except WWE television. On WWE TV, nothing matters, nothing happens, and nothing is ever different. It’s not bad. Just not exciting. With today’s reports that WWE is potentially eyeing a move to Facebook or a streaming platform for its weekly TV shows once it’s current TV deal ends, it honestly feels like a waste of your time to watch Raw and Smackdown until 2019.
It’s been one day, and already the G1 climax has ruined all other wrestling for me.
Simply put, the G1 climax is the height of pro wrestling, a month-long round-robin tournament featuring the best wrestlers performing the best wrestling in the world. If you need a little information as to what New Japan or the G1 climax is, or if you missed those matches, here’s my Night one review:
There are numerous non-tournament matches on every show, but for now I’ll just be looking at the matches in the actual G1.
G1 CLIMAX 27 NIGHT 2
Juice Robinson v. Satoshi Kojima
A nice student vs teacher match, and a great showing for Juice — his honor indeed was strong and his heart truly pure. This was a really good, lively, back and forth professional wrestling contest. Similar to Day 1’s Nagata v. YOSHI-HASHI, in a lot of ways. It was a veteran vs young upstart, with the crowd behind the veteran solidly. Though to be fair, the crowd really was with both guys. People love the Juice.
Sorry about that, and thank you if you made it to the end of that caption. Moving on.
Robinson as a pure babyface was quite entertaining. He projects an innate likeability through his selling, bumping, fire and general white meat babyface-itude (such as the post match stuff here). What might seem corny from another character sincerely works for him, in the way that it does for a Sami Zayn, or Tye Dillinger. I think every company needs a pure “Heart and Honor” style babyface on the roster and I am glad that it has become Juicey’s character. The end of the match, with Juice visibly thanking a vanquished Kojima and then getting on the English commentary table to note “That’s why I do everything Kojima tells me”, was respectful both in and out of character, and something you really only see in NJPW anymore.
Big start to a big month for Juice Robinson.
3.5*
Tama Tonga v. Michael Elgin
By the way, NJPW threw in an awesome touch I just noticed this time around: the start of the show had the old Royal Rumble style promos, where each wrestler would do a quick 1–2 sentence blurb about themselves. Great! Every pro wrestling tournament, battle royal or multi-man match needs to do this. The vast majority of these promos were not even in English, but through the costumes, the delivery, the lighting etc etc, you easily picked up a sense of each person’s character and general motiviation.
Anyway, the point of me bringing that up was that Michael Elgin’s Royal Rumble promo was hilarious. Seemed like they cut him off mid sentence. “You know the G1 Climax means a lot. That’s how I debuted in New Japan Pro Wrestling.” *Breath* ….. SMASH CUT TO THE NEXT GUY
Decent match here, I would call it slightly above average but not something you need to go out of your way to see. Comparable to a solid Raw match.
Tama Tonga is the kind of guy who I think is actually far better suited for WWE than NJPW. He’s got an great look, with or without the facepaint, and has a certain confidence to his movements and various…hand gestures, that keeps you invested. You really want to watch him. Come to the ring.
Then the bell rings, and that kind of goes away to a degree. Especially in NJPW, where guys are piledriving people off the second rope. Still, Tonga has has a very unique and interesting presentation and I think could be awesome as a foil to, or partner of, Roman Reigns.
Decent match, pretty much exactly why I created a category between “skip it” and “watch it” and the end of the column down there.
3*
EVIL v SANADA
Evil, the King of Darkness vs Sanada, the Cold Skull. NJPW is awesome.
Fun, unique match here. Different than anything else we have seen so far, for sure.
- it’s heel vs heel, the rarest of the rare
- it’s two guys from the same team fighting each other, both part of Los Ingobernables de Japon, led by noted dickhead, Tetsuya Naito
So we get a match that starts with a handshake and devolves to EVIL wildly swinging chairs at his partner’s face, because HE IS EVIL.
SANADA is a guy I don’t know a ton about, but he really impressed here. He has some really nice high flying offense and takes a hell of a bump. EVIL is alright, he’s kind of like a worse version of Hirooki Goto in a lot of ways? Anyway, a fun little match, I enjoyed this one. A lot going on here.
4*
Toru Yano vs. Kazuchika Okada
Did not much care for this match. Like the previous match, Yano and Okada are on the same team, but that’s pretty well where the similarities end. This was a comedy match based around low blows, and the managers low blowing each other, and various shenanigans like the one up there ^. It wasn’t bad, and you need that variety in the G1, but it didn’t hook me personally.
Yano is not incapable, he has had some really fun matches in the past that I would call objectively good, but this was not one of them. Not awful, not without it’s charm, but below average. I wouldn't seek it out again.
I will say that I really liked Okada’s submission at the end. It was a slick looking move and it was interesting to see what was seemingly a transition move like that put down an opponent. I am a fan of finishes that come out of nowhere generally, and this one especially, as it educates us fans to know that when Okada throws the leg trap camel clutch, it could be a match ender.
Basically a night off for the champ. Toru Yano keeps gettin them NJPW checks.
Not great, but I appreciated what they tried to do and I thought the camel clutch ending was clever.
2*
Kenny Omega vs. Minoru Suzuki
Much to my surprise, the internet appears to be divided about this one. Many people thought this match was bad and a disappointment. I personally loved it, thought it was quite good for a lot of different reasons.
The bad: There was a ref bump, and interference. Also, it did feel like a pretty serious style clash. Suzuki botches a few of Omega’s insane moves. Kenny tried a reverse rana on Suzuki which was a straight-up botch and a mistake, maybe a bad idea. The dragon suplex, I actually really liked because it looked like if someone threw a full nelson suplex in real life. But I understand why a fan might just think it was bad.
The good: Omega, Omega, Omega. Kenny played the babyface here, and he was great at it. I really like the way he fought from behind, as if he knew Suzuki was very dangerous and had to stay on the attack throughout. For example, Suzuki wears down Kenny’s leg, so Kenny throws a one legged moonsault off the middle rope to Suzuki.
Kenny keeps working and fighting like a good babyface should. Also, THIS KNEE AND THE SELL IS EVERYTHING I WANT OUT OF WRESTLING
I thought the ref bump and interference here was pretty clever and didn’t detract from things at all, really. In fact, I thought it added to the match. Things like outside interference are not inherently bad if used sparingly and for a purpose, and New Japan is pretty good in that regard. Not only did we get some nice babyface heat on Kenny via the three-on-one assault from Suzuki-Gun, not only does New Japan now get to tell the story of “why didn’t the Young Bucks and Cody come out to save Kenny??”, but we also got the hilarious visual of Chase Owens, Bullet Club jobberroo, coming out to be the one to save Kenny only to get quickly and thoroughly shit-housed.
It was a style clash yes, but I think what we ended up getting was a nice mix between the typical Suzuki match and typical Omega match, maybe heavier on the Suzuki-side. I still love the Minoru Suzuki match, and am OK with the things we have to sacrifice in order to get it. Truthfully you can rationalize them in kayfabe anyway: for example, Kenny’s leg was hurt, he wouldn’t and shouldn’t have the strength to hurricanrana-whip Suzuki over with a damaged leg. But, even as a massive Minoru Suzuki apologist, it’s hard to deny that Suzuki is an old, slow man. As I said, this really isn’t the typical Kenny Omega match. This is not Omega/Okada III.
You may not like this as much as I did, but I suggest giving it a chance. It’s worth checking out for yourself, if for no other reason than to see where you stand on it.
4.25*
Another great day for the G1, probably more complete top-to bottom than Day 1, but nothing really came close to the heights of Naito/Ibushi.
DEFINITELY WATCH RIGHT NOW
Ibushi/Naito — Day 1–4.75*
PROBABLY FOR SURE WATCH AT SOME POINT
Omega/Suzuki — Day 2–4.25*
Tanahashi/ZSJ — Day 1–4*
EVIL/Sanada — Day 2–4*
Ishii/Goto — Day 1–4*
Juice/Kojima — Day 2–3.5*
YOSHI-HASHI/Nagata — Day 1–3.5*
WATCH IT MAYBE IF YOU LOVE THESE GUYS
Tama Tonga/ Michael Elgin — 3*
SKIP IT
Okada/Yano — Day 2–2*
Makabe/Fale — Day 1–1*
