Cero Reviews NJPW G1 Climax 28 - 7.27

[cero2k]

NJPW G1 Climax 28, day 9
July 27, 2018
Act city Hamamatsu

Henare & Shota Umino vs Hirooki Goto & YOH - 5/10
Henare and Shota worked on YOH for a while, even to the point that Shota had YOH pinned and Goto had to come in to break the pinfall, which is usually weird on a Young Lion's pin. Shota kicked out of the Falcon Arrow! YOH then won the match with a Lion Tamer. Shota was great in this match, Goto technically had the night off.

Zack Sabre Jr & TAKA Michinoku vs Guerrilas of Destiny - 6.5/10
Another interesting confrontation between heels. Before the match Tanga Loa did the introductions for themselves, why isn't this dude cutting more promos!?

Match saw GoD work over TAKA for a while. Sabre and Tama Tonga showed off their stuff and they seem like a goo pair, fast action, both men working the arms, half striking half submission work. Loa won with Apeshit on TAKA.

Juice Robinson & David Finlay vs Toru Yano & Gedo - 5/10
Juice and Robinson did small thing with Yano kinda working clean until Gedo started cheating and brought the cheater out of Yano. Finlay won with a stunner on Gedo. This felt mostly like a good spirited match with tons of cheating.

Tomohiro Ishii & SHO vs Kota Ibushi & Yujiro Takahashi - 6.5/10
SHO VS IBUSHI! Honestly, all pairings in this /match were great, tons of action, Ibushi and Yujiro worked over SHO for a bit, Ishii and Ibushi did their thing, at the end, we had Yujiro and SHO fighting until Yujiro won with the Pimp Juice. Ishii and Ibushi had a stare down after the match, kinda intense.

Kenny Omega & Chase Owens vs SANADA and Tetsuya Naito - 6.5/10
Tomorrow's match is Omega vs SANADA, Naito is just here for the ride. This was a somewhat weird match because we're trying to build SANADA and Omega, but there was a lot of Omega and Naito instead, and they played with the Nudo thing between SANADA and Owens, and at the very end, it was about 2 or 3 moves between Omega and SANADA. Finish came with Naito pinning Owens after Destino.

G1 Climax 28 Block A Match
Minoru Suzuki (4) vs Michael Elgin (4) - 7/10
Suzuki worked on the injured arm of Elgin, so Elgin had to either attack with his other arm, or straight up power through the pain. Overall this was a much stronger dude in Elgin, but Suzuki being resilient, injured Elgin enough to even things out. Suzuki kept going for submissions, but Elgin kept powering himself out, so at the end, Suzuki went for the pin instead and hit the Gotch Piledriver for the win. Ok match, good story.

G1 Climax 28 Block A Match
Hangman Page (2) vs EVIL (6) - 6.5/10
Good match, but it will be lost in oblivion. Story was kinda that Page was bringing it to EVIL, and he did indeed pull off some awesome moves, Top Rope Moonsaults to the outside and such, but at the end, the match felt good, but kinda flat. Page looked great in this match, but I'm not fully in with a babyface 'Hangman' Adam Page, I love the Good, Bad, & Ugly feel to it, but he still feels like a heel to me. EVIL won with Everything is Evil.

G1 Climax 28 Block A Match
"Switchblade" Jay White (6) vs Bad Luck Fale (2) w/Tanga Loa - 7/10
I liked the match for what it was, but some parts about it felt like wrongly booked, and some make perfect sense.

Match pretty much from the beginning was about White trying to outsmart the Tongans into getting rid of one in order to fight Fale. He succeeded at first, but soon after, Loa came back and got in his way. White fought off two guys outside, chairs and count out teases happened. Back in the ring, White had control of Fale for a long while, he worked his leg during this time. Fale made a comeback as they started chasing their finishers, as White is coming close to hitting Bladerunner, Fale takes out the ref which led to Tama Tonga hitting the ring, so now the top heel of Block A is valiantly fighting against 3 guys all by himself. Numbers overcome White as Tama Tonga lands a Gun Stun and Fale hits the Bad Luck Fall for the win.

In a void, this was a fun match, I don't even mind the overdone finish, it's the gimmick and they're having matches every night. My problem is that this isn't a void and the heel played a super babyface match here, a Hiroshi Tanahashi level match. The thing that I didn't mind, but see it as something to think about later on is that no one (excusing Okada and YH who had a match later), came out to even the odds for White, not YOH who was on commentary, not Rocky who was on commentary. No one. If this whole story doesn't end with White getting kicked out, it should end with him quitting the stable.

Also, during this match, English commentary lost all audio due to 'shoves by White/Fale', so it made the match kinda weird, but let's not pretend like KK/Rocky make or kill matches.

G1 Climax 28 Block A Match
Hiroshi Tanahashi (6) vs Togi Makabe (4) - 6.5/10
This was kinda underwhelming, not that I expected a classic, but it just never picked up for me. It started slow, Makabe doing some technical wrestling, and then they started chasing their finishers, they kicked out of some Slingblades, and a couple of High Fly Flows was all it took to take out Makabe. It's not even the fact that these two have been fighting for decades, it just wasn't exciting.

G1 Climax 28 Block A Match
Kazuchika Okada (4) vs YOSHI-HASHI (2) - 9/10
This was a bit of a roller coaster of a match, the match started super hot, but then once Okada got control, the slowed down the pace a lot, and it wasn't until YH made a comeback and they went back and forward, that the match got awesome again. This is the story on how you never should piss off Okada.

Match started with YH going strong after Okada, actually caught him off guard and was about to beat him up outside the ring, but Okada turned it around, and visibly annoyed, he started working over YH for a long while, he went for YOSHI's injured shoulder. Okada landed a Rainmaker that YH kicked out off, and when he went for a second, YH actually landed one first. YH made a comeback here, he dodged a Rainmaker and locked in the Butterfly Lock for a great near fall battle. Around this point, YH got cocky and started pissing off Okada, and once Okada got truly pissed, so Okada stated his punishment. YH went for 2 Karmas, one that Okada kicked out off and one that he reversed into the Tombstone. 2 Rainmakers later (a Spinning one at that), and Okada took the win.

This match did a great job at making us believe that this was the underdog fluke win from the tournament.

Post-match - Okada was doing his 3 Point Promo, but didn't actually do 3 points, he just said this was his third win, said sorry for having a boring match, to which he faked (?) cried when the crowd said it was good, he said he liked the town, and thanked everyone. Pretty generic, even for Okada.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Good show, this was a better than I expected coming in, but still it wasn't a must watch show. The pairings were just not that exciting, some did good, some were ok. Only the main event was good. Points wise, it's interesting to see EVIL take a lead mid tournament, he has top names ahead, tho.

A BLOCK STANDINGS
Jay White - 6
Hiroshi Tanahashi - 8
Hangman Page - 2
Togi Makabe - 4
Michael Elgin - 4
Kazuchika Okada - 6
Minoru Suzuki - 6
EVIL - 8
YOSHI-HASHI - 2
Bad Luck Fale - 4

B BLOCK STANDINGS
Kenny Omega 8
Kota Ibushi 4
Hirooki Goto 4
Tama Tonga 2
Tomohiro Ishii 4
Tetsuya Naito 6
Zack Sabre Jr. 4
SANADA 6
Juice Robinson 0
Toru Yano 2