BRM Reviews NJPW G1 Climax 29: Day 17 (GREAT!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews NJPW G1 Climax 29: Day 17 (GREAT!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Aug 14th, '19, 23:23

NJPW G1 Climax 29: Day 17 (8/10/2019)- Tokyo, Japan


JON MOXLEY & SHOTA UMINO vs. JUICE ROBINSON & REN NARITA- 2.5/10
This was very short, even by G1 undercard standards (3:41), but it was good while it lasted. Juice hurt his knee on a dive, allowing Moxley and Shota to double-team Narita for the win. Moxley then attacked Juice's injured knee to set up for their match tomorrow.

TOMOAKI HONMA & TORU YANO vs. JEFF COBB & TOA HENARE- 4/10

CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, YOSHI-HASHI, & Hirooki Goto) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, & Taichi)- 4.75/10
Suzuki-Gun jump the bell on the babyfaces. Goto got a nearfall in but he got cut off and we spilled to the outside for the usual bullsh*t. The match got decent after that.

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, & BUSHI) vs. BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens, Yujiro Takahashi, & Jay White) (w/Gedo)- 5.5/10
Bullet Club’s new thing is to have one of the guys on the apron run out and attack the legal babyface. The problem is that- like Suzuki-Gun and Bullet Club themselves jumping the bell on the babyfaces- it happens so often that the babyfaces look dumb for not seeing it coming.

BLOCK A MATCH: Lance Archer vs. EVIL- 4.25/10
They trade strikes and then spill to the outside. Instead of following up on his opponent, Archer wastes time attacking a bunch of young-boys. What is the purpose of this stupid sh*t? To get heat? Well in that regard it clearly fails because absolutely no one seems to give a sh*t. Not the babyfaces, not the fans, not the company. And this sort of thing happens in basically every match that Bullet Club or Suzuki-Gun are involved in. Cheating in New Japan is like taking candy from a baby. Stealing is morally wrong, and taking a treat away from a child just to be a dick makes it worse… but a large portion of the impact is lost if some guy in running around the waiting room in the doctor’s office stealing the lollipops from all of the sick children, but instead of the children bursting into tears and the adults all yelling at the thief and trying to tackle him/her down, the only thing that happens is that the children frown for a few minutes as all the adults just ignore it. The reaction is so abnormal that it takes me out of everything.
And even if you think I’m being overly critical about that, you can’t possibly deny that if the purpose of Archer attacking all of those young-boys is to get heat, that it’s not a good idea to have him do a big impressive moonsault to the outside ten seconds afterwards to make everybody cheer. Also, while this was happening, we got various bad refereeing shenanigans.
Speaking of bad refereeing shenanigans, we got a ref bump that didn’t do anything for the match. This is a meaningless match between two upper-midcarders. Must we really have this crap? Archer won, and left his dreaded submission finisher in for almost half a minute after the match, a fact that will matter a grand total of zero times in the future, so why even do it? All it does is kill the effectiveness of all future post-match angles you might decide to do.

BLOCK A MATCH: Sanada vs. Bad Luck Fale (w/Chase Owens & Jado)- 4/10
Oh goody. Yet another f*cking Fale match where the first few minutes contains a spot where the opponent ducks a Fale clothesline and then Fale grabs the ref while Jado hits the opponent in the back with his Kendo stick. EVERY. F*CKING. MATCH. Why is this any better than every WWE match going to a commercial after a big dive?
Kevin Kelly and Rocky Romero tried to convince us that Fale might not be invited back to the tournament if he doesn’t win tonight’s match and make it up to eight points. It’s a valiant effort to try to give this match some meaning, but the problem is that we routinely see guys get less than eight points and get invited back. Hell, Fale himself left year got only six points, plus “ruined” the tournament with all of the interfering and getting DQed he and his buddies did, but they still brought him back, so why should I believe that scoring the same number of points plus being better behaved will hurt his chances at being invited back?
Their story was Sanada’s back getting worked over plus the size difference. Eventually we got a ref bump in yet another meaningless match. The ref bump in this match saw Chase Owens pull Marty Asami out of the ring. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because this exact same thing happened on day nine in the Fale vs. Ospreay match. In that match, Red Shoes came down to the ring and disqualified Bullet Club. It’s now two weeks later, and still the same tournament, but this time Red Shoes is nowhere to be found. Instead we got Sanada putting Jado and Owens in the Paradise Lock, then getting pinned by Fale via small package. Why can’t the guy who just beat Okada get a f*cking win in this meaningless match? F*ck Gedo.

BLOCK A MATCH: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. KENTA- 8.25/10
More of this, please!

BLOCK A MATCH: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Will Ospreay- 8.75/10
Tanahashi works over the knee to try to stop Ospreay from doing his stuff but Ospreay guts through the pain and gets the HUGE win. I can’t remember the last time Tanahashi did a job in the G1 that felt like it actually elevated someone instead of feeling like something that had to happen because everyone has to take some losses in the G1.

BLOCK A MATCH: Kazuchika Okada vs. Kota Ibushi- 9.5/10
An exciting and epic battle built around their big head-targeting finishers. This was very close to a 10/10, but it just didn’t get there for me. I think it suffered from a bit of Rainmaker overkill, and a feeling of painful predictability about who would win, with the only real questions being how, and how many finishers it would take.


A great show from Block A, with all of the big stars delivering and the others… not so much, but the top guys pulled enough weight for everyone tonight. We’ll see if Block B can come close to this tomorrow night.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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