11 Things We Learned From The 2018 NJPW G1 Climax

6. Juice Has Improved, But There Is More To Come

Juice Robinson Hirooki Goto
NJPW

What a couple of years it has been for Juice Robinson. The former CJ Parker has well and truly shed his NXT skin, and now finds himself as one of the most popular stars in all of New Japan Pro Wrestling. He is widely regarded as the best English language babyface promo in the business, and is the current IWGP United States Champion. It has been a fantastic year for Juice.

With that in mind, should we be more than a little disappointed with a G1 that brought him just three victories? Juice only came out on top against Toru Yano, Hirooki Goto and SANADA in the tournament. These are impressive victories without doubt, but represent a backwards step following on from his four wins last year.

Juice is a star right now, make no mistake about it. The problem he has is that he is the sort of character who seems unaffected by wins and losses, but that can only last so long in the eyes of the fans. He is an established star, but he still loses far more than he wins. Once that turns around, professional wrestling might just have a megastar on its hands.

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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.