BRM Reviews NJPW G1 Climax 24: Day 1

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW G1 Climax 24: Night 1 (7/21/2014)- Sapporo, Japan

BLOCK A MATCH: Tomohiro Ishii vs. Bad Luck Fale- 7/10
A very good babyface vs. heel monster match. Ishii didn't take Fale off his feet very often, but every time he did, they made sure it meant something.

BLOCK A MATCH: Doc Gallows vs. Shelton X Benjamin (w/ TAKA Michinoku)- 2/10
Weapon shot in front of the referee with no consequences at all. It didn't matter for anything, either, because Shelton wound up winning clean. All this did was make Gallows, one half of the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Champions, look like crap.

BLOCK B MATCH: Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. Karl "Machine Gun" Anderson- 4.5/10
Some of their stuff really didn't look good at all.

BLOCK A MATCH: Yuji Nagata vs. Satoshi Kojima- 5/10

BLOCK B MATCH: Toru Yano vs. Minoru Suzuki (w/TAKA Michinoku)- 1/10
The match was short. Suzuki jumped Yano before the bell and beat him up a lot. TAKA distracted the ref, which allowed Yano to hit Suzuki with a low blow and roll him up for the win.

BLOCK B MATCH: Tetsuya Naito vs. Yujiro Takahashi- 7/10
Both guys worked over the neck. Great match.

BLOCK B MATCH: Togi Makabe vs. Hirooki Goto- 7/10
Makabe charged right up to Goto before the bell and got in his face and started throwing forearm shots to the jaw, trying to get revenge for Goto breaking his jaw back in May. And that's what this match was: Two guys trying to break each others' jaws.

BLOCK A MATCH: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tomoaki Honma- 7/10
Honma worked over Tanahashi's head. The match was great, but that's not a surprise or anything.

BLOCK A MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Katsuyori Shibata- 5.5/10
Nakamura didn't sell his leg at all, despite being in a submission hold for a good minute or so. Shibata did his spot where he keeps forearming the guy in the corner, completely ignoring the five count, and then the ref doesn't disqualify him just because that's not the spot. Then they no-sold some German Suplexes. Then they got back to good wrestling (minus Nakamura's no-selling), and even did a clever spot with Nakamura playing possum out of a sleeper hold to come back and cut Shibata off.
It's not that everything in this match was bad. It wasn't. There was a lot of stuff in here that was good, but it all felt disjointed and separated by the bad stuff, so it's narrative never came across well. The one thing they did get across well, though (especially in the beginning) was that Shibata was NOT fond of Nakamura's.... Nakamura-esque... antics.

BLOCK B MATCH: AJ Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada (w/Gedo)- 8/10
They had a great match with some spots that were very basic but came off as very cool. AJ worked over Okada's head until we got a pretty creative ref bump and then Yujiro interfered. After some initial offense, Okada fought him off, but this gave AJ time to recover and take over. Things got disappointing after that, though, as AJ pretty much no-sold a Tombstone by getting up after it pretty quickly... and then it would up meaning nothing because he got pinned by a Rainmaker five seconds later. Don't get me wrong, the match was awesome, but it is not the MOTYC that some people (Meltzer) are making it out to be.

A good show from New Japan, the top two matches really didn't deliver to the level that I was hoping that they would. Hopefully the rest of the G1 will be closer to expectations.