11 Things We Learned From The 2018 NJPW G1 Climax

9. Toru Yano Is Immensely Valuable

Juice Robinson Toru Yano
NJPW

Love him or hate him, it is difficult to deny that Toru Yano is immensely valuable in tournaments like the G1. The Sublime Master Thief isn’t going to give you any truly epic matches, but his bouts are always a refreshing change of pace on the routinely intense G1 cards.

But even Toru Yano has to evolve, and he showed plenty of variety in this year’s tournament. He pledged to change his cheating ways, but soon found that less success came his way when he followed the rulebook. This was followed by a strange half and half Yano, one that wanted to break the rules but ended up losing to those who beat him to the punch.

Yano eventually reverted back to full Yano, but the initial confusion made this less irritating than normal. YTR also plays a valuable role as believable spoiler in the G1, as seen by his victories over Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi. Yano’s matches might not be the incredible art put together by Ishii, Naito and the rest, but the man’s creativity cannot be denied.

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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.