1. G1 Climax – Block B: Hirooki Goto vs. Toru Yano
Sometimes going just a couple minutes is for the best. Goto won this wrestling match with a cradle after pretty minimal shenanigans. *1/2
2. G1 Climax – Block B: Juice Robinson vs. Tomohiro Ishii
Incredible match with a great dynamic: blinding white meat babyface Juice Robinson wants to prove himself to the dad of a legend opposite him, Tomohiro Ishii. To do so, Juice took an outrageous onslaught of offense: chops, elbows, and headbutts were thrown and everything connected, with sweat spraying into the air on almost every one. To counter this Juice threw the same back and seemed to be instructed to hit Ishii as hard as he possibly could. So he did, and it all looked like it really hurt but was also somehow honorable. It was a match that was basically all about hitting and staring intensely at each other and sometimes that’s the best wrestling. Juice was a facial expression dynamo here too, whether daring Ishii to hit him again or reacting with disappointed shock on a kickout.
Ishii going for the kill at the end was incredible and created big drama, with Juice refusing to stay down. They did an Actually Good fighting spirit spot where both guys kept getting up off of progressively bigger moves before they both stumbled down not like fools but exhausted warriors. Juice nails a right hand, looks at his hand as if he just realized he had the Infinity Gauntlet, then sets up Pulp Friction which is countered with a TIGER SUPLEX. A brainbuster was the move that finally kept Juice down, and I loved Ishii grabbing his orbital bone and not even being able to hook the leg as he covered too. There was a lot going on here. ****1/2
3. G1 Climax – Block B: Taichi vs. Jeff Cobb
Taichi brings the camp and occasional banger but him going 12 minutes with Jeff Cobb felt like half an hour. Nice Axe Bomber towards the end by Taichi, otherwise this stunk. They lost each other on an attempted Cobb pop-up powerbomb to deadlift backdrop suplex towards the end, and my only question is: why? What is the deadlift adding anymore??? *
4. G1 Climax – Block B: Shingo Takagi vs. Jay White
Inevitably you run into a match at this midway point in the G1 that may or may not be a victim of all the great wrestling that surrounds it. This might’ve been that match. Or not. It was 20 minutes of stuff, and any wrestling match is 20 minutes of stuff, but this was 20 minutes of STUFF. It was all solid and the crowd popped here and there but it never really felt like it was actually working. White has a decent cocky guy shtick down, it’s just not shtick that works for a 20-minute competitive G1 Climax match. Shingo usually brings his opponent up a level, but it felt like White brought him down one. **1/2
5. G1 Climax – Block B: Tetsuya Naito vs. Jon Moxley
A match of guys who totally don’t care, but actually do. A match where they didn’t take it seriously, until they did. It was great, like really great, but the real masterpiece here was Naito’s entrance: watch this thing from beginning to end and follow his eyes, his amusement, the joy he gets from making Mox wait for him, the lack of respect for this WWE superstar. It’s an absolute journey from this casually great wrestler who has the eyes of a silent film star, and though they only went a little over 15 minutes here bell-to-bell there is five plus minutes of Naito stalling prior that could’ve been followed by a complete turd and I still probably would’ve loved this. Moxley is living his best life, doing Naito poses and brawling with him, then building to an epic finish that felt dramatic and intense but not over-the-top, outside of that Frankensteiner that nearly killed him. ****1/4
