G1 Block A Tournament Match: Hangman Page vs Bad Luck Fale

Bad Luck Fale looks great having dropped 30lbs according to commentary. Sadly, his matches unless against a more dynamic opponent still tend towards the lethargic. This one started off hot with Fale brawling through the crowd like Suzuki-Gun’s largest and most secret son with Page getting thrown through roughly 9/10 of the arena’s chairs. Sadly when it got back to the ring, this settled into something of a standard big man vs bigger man encounter. Luckily towards the end of the match, the Guerillas of Destiny came out to cause interference (and also give Page another man to moonsault onto) and eventually cause a disqualification beatdown after Tama hit a chop block on Page in the middle of a Rite of Passage attempt. This wasn’t so much a match as a continuation of the Bullet Club civil war angle but the crowd were into it and Page looked pretty good in his G1 debut. Post-match, GoD and Fale continued the beatdown till Omega, Ibushi & Owens made the save. But not Yujiro, hmm…

Winner: Hangman Page

Hangman Page: 2 Points

Bad Luck Fale: 0 Points

G1 Block A Tournament Match: Fuck Michael Elgin vs EVIL

Teach me how to say goodbye, Large Michael. I know I’m not supposed to like you and as a person, I get the feeling I wouldn’t but damn it man, can you work. This was EVIL and Elgin’s first match of this year’s tournament but they fought it like it was the bloody final. It started off pretty standard stuff with EVIL attacking off the bell and playing his part well sadistically trying to work over Elgin but about halfway through, it just kicked into another gear as both men threw out big move after big move and near-fall after near fall with the finishing sequence as both men moved between roughly their entire arsenal of moves to find something to latch onto the other being insane. There was a point where I felt like with all the arm-work done on Elgin (it was so well done that I bought into the near-count out false finish), his fiery comeback to win was inevitable but they smartly played on a few minutes after to make me doubt that and give Elgin a deserved and hard-fought victory after a Splash Mountain Crucifix Bomb into a Sit-Out Powerbomb for the pin. Keep going like this and we might even consider removing the ‘Fuck’ from the beginning of your name, Michael.

Winner: Michael Elgin

Michael Elgin: 2 Points

EVIL: 0 Points

G1 Block A Tournament Match: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Minoru Suzuki

If you didn’t expect me to tell you this was incredible, you haven’t been paying enough attention. Only recently, Minoru Suzuki celebrated 30 years since his debut, this is Hiroshi Tanahashi’s 17th G1 Climax yet this was no nostalgia act, this was as hard-hitting as they come. The story of the match was simple, Suzuki wanted to break Tanahashi’s fucking leg, Tanahashi wanted to survive, this played out over a series of agonising kneebars, heel hooks and general joint manipulation with Suzuki showing how much he can do with so little but as often happens, Suzuki tried to finish with the Gotch-Style Piledriver which gave Tanahashi the opening to forge a comeback. I thought it would peak with Suzuki throwing the stiffest palm strikes I’ve seen in a while but the moment this match became legendary was when Tanahashi hit an inverted Dragon Screw. Now you have two men working with two good legs between them, there’s a metaphor somewhere in there that if I had more time, I’d deconstruct. Either way, after a gruelling match, Tanahashi got the pin off a High Fly Flow frog splash but the question is, has the damage been done here? Will either man still be able to walk tomorrow? I don’t know but I’m more than curious.

Winner: Hiroshi Tanahashi

Hiroshi Tanahashi: 2 Points

Minoru Suzuki: 0 Points

G1 Block A Tournament Match: Kazuchika Okada vs Jay White

You have to give Jay White credit for audacity: he gets into a controversial incident in San Francisco where he suplexes Juice Robinson into a barricade knocking a table into Jim Ross, possibly breaking one of his ribs so what does Jay do here? He doubles down on barricade-based offence including repeatedly ramming Okada into both the apron and the barricade. Overall, this was another great match with both men going the distance and White playing the opportunistic, Machiavelian schemer while Okada is still the Rainmaker but isn’t quite the same since losing his belt but he sure does have a fantastic dropkick. It’s fascinating that while White is representative of the new school, he is simultaneously representative of old-school CHAOS values and seems to be looking to a return to the days when Nakamura was the ultraviolent king of New Japan, with there being no coincidence that members like YOSHI-HASHI have recently gone for a similar black-on-red  colour scheme to their outfit choices. Beyond symbolic colour schemes, there was so much to love here that I can’t even begin to cover the whole match beyond saying it was so very near a perfect first round match. If it hadn’t been for the feeling that there was maybe five-ish minutes too many tacked on just to make sure it had that main event ‘big match’ feel, it would have been stratospheric but then with that, this was just another notch on Jay White’s bedpost as he really has had an incredible year, what will be interesting will be seeing if he can exorcise the demons of Wrestle Kingdom 12 as his next match is Hiroshi Tanahashi, the man he had a good but not quite good enough match against. White won after ref bumps, chair shots and a very Nakamura-esque low blow with the Blade Runner swinging reverse STO for the pin.

Winner: Kazuchika Okada

Jay White: 2 Points

Kazuchika Okada: 0 Points

With that, we end Day One of the tournament and a mighty fine day one it was too with 4/5 tournament matches delivering big time and a great undercard tag match in the form of Ishii/Sho vs Yano/Yoh. We’re going to change up the format after these first two days and only bring you summaries every few shows instead so that you only hear about the matches you need to see but so far,on the basis of day one, there’s going to be a lot of them.