BRM Reviews NJPW G1 Climax 25: Day 18 (GREAT!)

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW G1 Climax 25: Day 18 (8/15/2015)- Tokyo, Japan

reDRagon vs. SHO TANAKA & YOHEI KOMATSU- 5.5/10
After the match, the Young Bucks showed up and laid reDRagon out with the belts. Then they started beating up the young boys just because, which brought out the gaijin young boys for…

JAY WHITE & DAVID FINLAY JR. vs. YOUNG BUCKS- 5/10
After the match, reDRagon showed up to get some revenge and posed with the belts.

BULLET CLUB (AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, & Cody Hall) vs. KAZUSHI SAKURABA, TORU YANO, YOSHI-HASHI, MATT TAVEN, & MICHAEL BENNETT (w/Maria Kanellis)- 5/10
The AJ vs. Sakuraba stuff was exciting, but the rest of it was eh.

HIROSHI TANAHASHI, KUSHIDA, HIROYOSHI TENZAN, TOGI MAKABE, & KATSUYORI SHIBATA vs. TETSUYA NAITO, RICOCHET, MANABU NAKANISHI, KOTA IBUSHI, & CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN- 6.5/10
Fun stuff. Shibata kicked Naito’s ass after the match. Tenzan showed his approval by giving Shibata a fatherly pat on the back. They teased a second confrontation which ended when Naito decided to be a cowardly dick.

G1 CLIMAX 25 BLOCK B MATCH: Tomoaki Honma vs. Yujiro Takahashi (w/)- 7/10
Great match, but I really don’t like Honma taking the loss. The match is irrelevant and Honma just got his big first G1 win at the last B Block show after almost two years of trying… so why not start a new story for him by giving him the win here, then letting him start off next year’s tournament with a major hot streak?

G1 CLIMAX 25 BLOCK B MATCH: Michael Elgin vs. Tomohiro Ishii- 7.5/10
I was dreading this match because I was certain that between Elgin really wanting to prove himself in New Japan and Ishii- well- being Ishii, the match was going to be filled with dumb Ishii sh*t. Surprisingly it wasn’t. They only had one dumb Ishii spot, and it was actually Elgin who did it. They just had a hard-hitting match, and it was great!

G1 CLIMAX 25 BLOCK B MATCH: Yuji Nagata vs. Hirooki Goto- 6.75/10
Nagata picks up the W and crushes Goto’s hopes in the G1. I was surprised by how little offense Goto got in.


G1 CLIMAX 25 BLOCK B MATCH: Satoshi Kojima vs. Karl Anderson (w/Tama Tonga & Doc Gallows)- 7.75/10
Throughout this whole tournament (especially in Yano matches), the referee has allowed weapons shots and many other illegal things. Now the ref won’t even count a pin that is happening right in front of him just because a chair is in the ring, even though he knows the chair was not used.
They told a great story with Anderson targeting Kojima’s arm to weaken his lariats, then changing his focus and working over the neck to try to get the win. Kojima looked like an awesome babyface for being willing to fight through the pain to hit his lariats.

G1 CLIMAX 25 BLOCK B MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada (w/Gedo)- 9.25/10
An awesome match with an insane last few minutes full of jaw-dropping reversals. The finish did seem a bit disconnected from the story of the rest of the match, but was awesome enough to overlook that.

A GREAT show from B Block (definitely the best show of the block portion of the tournament), but I was a little disappointed that they didn’t give Anderson and Goto wins and do some sort of four way to decide the winner of the block, just to make it feel a bit different than A Block, which also went into the final match with only the two men in the match having a chance of winning (also doing this would mean you could have Anderson take the pin and thus wouldn’t need to beat Goto again).