NJPW G1 Climax 27: Day 9

MICHAEL ELGIN & DAVID FINLAY JR. vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Sanada & BUSHI) - 4.75/10

Very good for the time it got.

KATSUYA KITAMIYA & HIRAI KAWATO vs. vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Hiromu Takahashi & EVIL) - 4.75/10

Another match that was much better than you would expect it would be for the time it was given. Hiromu won with the Liontamer, so it looks like he's developing a submission finisher as well.

BULLET CLUB (Tama Tonga & Yujiro Takahashi) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki & Taichi) - 4/10

Bullet Club wins when Yujiro pins Taichi. Tama Tonga and Suzuki brawl after the match.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN & SATOSHI KOJIMA vs. BULLET CLUB (Kenny Omega & Chase Owens) - 5.75/10

The match was fine. As part of the finish, Kojima hit Okada with what I assume was supposed to be a Cozy Cozy Cutter but Omega came down like it was a DDT. It looked a little scary but Kenny seemed to be fine.

CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano, & Gedo) vs. JUICE ROBINSON, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, & TOMOYUKI OKA - 6/10

Juice was still selling his knee because he's a f*cking professional. This was a nice fun match, with thankfully little in the way of Stupid Yano Tricks. He did, however, hit a low blow to help himself get the win. On Oka. A young-boy. If this f*cker can't beat a young-boy clean, why is he in the G1?

BLOCK A MATCH: Togi Makabe vs. Yuji Nagata - 6.5/10

Another slugfest. Such matches don't seem to play to Nataga's strengths. He's YUJ NAGATA! He's supposed to suplexing guys and making them tap.

BLOCK A MATCH: Kota Ibushi vs. Bad Luck Fale - 0.75/10

Before the match Fale destroyed another Darryl doll. This one belonged to a fan. Then he attacked the ring announcer. Why has this man not been punished yet? We started out just like last night's six-man tag with Kota doing some hit-and-run stuff, using his speed to avoid Fale's strikes. This time, though, Fale managed to put a stop to it with one good strike to the knee. Fale worked the knee over a lot and Kota sold it well… until it was time for his big comeback and he just stopped selling it at all. They also decided that it was necessary to brawl all the way to the back of the ground-level seats so that Kota could climb up and do a dive off of a balcony. If you want to do this then that's fine, but at least bump the ref first so that there is a reason you're not getting counted out other than "because we wanted to do our spot." Fale eventually took over and got the win by hitting a big lariat where it looked like he knocked Kota out, then an atrocious Grenade where I don't he made any contact with Kota whatsoever, then a Bad Luck Fall that I'm sure gave Kota a concussion.

BLOCK A MATCH: Hirooki Goto vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (w/El Desperado) - 7/10

We get a quick shine on Goto before a distraction by El Desperado allows Zack to take control. Zack worked the arm while Goto worked the head. They had some really great reversals in here, but alas Zack was not able to reverse the final GTR, so Goto adds his name to the big list of guys sitting on top of the block with six points (for the record, as of this moment, that is Zack, Goto, Fale, Makabe, Tanahashi, and Naito.

BLOCK A MATCH: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. YOSHI-HASHI - 7/10

These two had a pretty great match but it felt like a match that could have been a lot more if they had told a more focused story. Both guys jumped around a lot with which body part they were working. This normally wouldn't bother me (and I didn't lower the score because of this here, either), but if Tanahashi has the injured arm, why would YOSHI-HASHI start targeting something else? And for Tanahashi, if you're going over and you start off by working the other guy's knee, why not just stick with the knee and win with the cloverleaf instead of the High Fly Flow. Despite going into this tournament with a major arm injury, Tanahashi now leads his block, and is 4-1 so far because TanahashiWinsLOL.

BLOCK A MATCH: Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tetsuya Naito - 8/10

Naito spent most of the match just beating the sh*t out of Ishii and targeting his head in just about every way imaginable and Ishii was selling it all so well and wasn't doing any of his usual bullsh*t... and then they went and ruined it all by having Naito hit Ishii with his big super-finisher Destino… and not only does Ishii pop right back up, not selling it at all, but Naito is down and selling so that Ishii can hit him with a sliding lariat. HOW F*CKING STUPID CAN YOU GET?! Imagine if Okada hit someone with the Rainmaker and they took this huge bump for it, but then popped right back up while Okada collapsed in pain. It'd be f*cking idiotic. IF SOMEONE HITS YOU WITH A MOVE, YOU SELL IT! It's not a difficult concept to grasp!

And now f*cking Meltzer is going to put this over for being so fighting spirit strong style OMFG I LOVE NEW JAPAN SO MUCH and he's going to give this match *****************3/4 and then a bunch of Meltzer-mark indy dorks are going to start doing it and now every f*cking indy show I watch that isn't EVOLVE or CHIKARA is going to have two or three different matches where guys are hitting their own finishers as ass-backwards transition spots. Without that one stupid spot, I would have given this, like, an 8.75/10. Why is it so difficult for people nowadays to just have good professional wrestling matches where everything makes sense?

Final Thoughts
This was a decent G1 show. The undercard was a lot better than most have been, but the top of the card was… well… I think that if this wasn't a G1 show, this show would have felt like it was a lot better. There were a few great matches, but while they were great, they weren't the quality we've come to expect from the G1.