11 Things We Learned From The 2018 NJPW G1 Climax

7. Terrible Finishes Are Just That — Terrible

Hangman Page Tama Tonga
NJPW

Once again, the G1 Climax offered up some of the best professional wrestling in recent memory. It should have gone down as the best edition in the history of the tournament, but the mass of dirty finishes will stop it from doing so. The A Block was particularly plagued with this, and it hurt the quality of a lot of matches.

Jay White had a breakout tournament in many ways, but it remains to be seen how much he actually benefited from his six wins. Cheating to beat Okada and Tanahashi is one thing, but did Switchblade really need to go dirty in order to beat Togi Makabe and YOSHI-HASHI? Big wins are big wins, but it is likely that low blows and chair shots will be White’s legacy from this tournament.

Which brings me to the Tongans. The big angle at the end of the G1 Special in San Francisco made it clear that this was going to be a big tournament for Tama Tonga, but Haku’s son offered up a number of forgettable matches plagued with miserable finishes. Tama is prodigiously talented athlete, but by the end of the tournament his matches were eminently missable. Why bother sitting through 10 minutes of action if you know it is just going to end with a ref bump and masses of interference?

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

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.