NJPW G1 Climax 2017: Early Favourites To Win

10. Togi Makabe

Togi Makabe
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New Japan has seen a couple of extremely serious injuries in 2017 already. Katsuyori Shibata suffered a subdural hematoma in his Sakura Genesis main event match with Okada, just six weeks after Tomoaki Honma damaged his cervical vertebrae in a multi-man match on the Road to the New Japan Cup.

Honma's tag team partner Togi Makabe has been somewhat anonymous ever since. The 'Unchained Gorilla' has turned up in the odd multi-man match, doing a whole lot of nothing other than grunting, swearing, and celebrating. Those wrestling fans who are new to NJPW can be forgiven for thinking that Makabe is a total non-entity.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite his current middling position on the card, Togi Makabe is a legitimately popular star in Japan. It has been years since he was a main event calibre performer but his popularity remains, and when this is combined with the potential sentiment of a Honma-inspired G1 run, it is difficult to rule the 2009 winner out entirely.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.