11 Things We Learned From The 2018 NJPW G1 Climax

5. Tomohiro Ishii Is The Real Mr. G1

Tomohiro Ishii Juice Robinson
NJPW

Tomohiro Ishii will end his career without winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The Stone Pitbull will never main event Wrestle Kingdom, will never be considered the number one guy in the company, and will never be the face that stands front and centre of NJPW advertising. That is fine of course, as not everyone gets to that point.

With that in mind, there is every chance that Tomohiro Ishii might go down in history as the best wrestler to never hold the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. No man brings their game to the G1 like Ishii, undoubtedly the most consistent singles wrestler in the company. Ishii wrestled like a man possessed in this tournament, putting on legitimate classics with Omega, Ibushi, Naito and Hirooki Goto.

Ishii also managed to get a great match out of his tag partner Toru Yano, along with further fantastic bouts with ZSJ, SANADA and Juice Robinson. He even got a good match out of interference-obsessed Tama Tonga. In short, nobody had as good a G1 from bell-to-bell as the former NEVER Openweight Champion. His upcoming IWGP Championship match with Kenny Omega is guaranteed to be one for the ages.

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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.