NJPW G1 Climax 29, 7.29

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI) & Yota Tsuji vs. Tomoaki Honma, Tomohiro Ishii & Yuya Uemura - 6/10

Ishii vs Goto is gonna be awesome, there rest were just there. Tsuji vs Uemura was far better than Honma vs YH, but that's obvious. YOSHI submitted Uemura with the Buttergeek Lock.

Ren Narita & Toru Yano vs. Jon Moxley & Shota Umino - 5/10

This was something, I feared that Mox and Yano wouldn't clash if Mox was all snob about doing comedy, but he actually played his part well. This was a good combination of showing the contrast between Mox's aggressive side, and Yano's comedy side, like the standoff of chair vs soft and fluffy corner pad. The match was mostly both men trying to steal roll ups, one up each other, and at the end, Yano rolling up Umino after he shoved him into Mox. Narita and Umino were good here too. I do fear tho that with Yano picking up the win here, Mox is going to beat him and also eliminate half of the block. Okada vs Mox at the G1 finals sounds abysmal to me right now. Too soon.

BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens, Jay White & Yujiro Takahashi) (w/Gedo) vs. Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) - 5/10

Taichi and White paired up nicely, I actually found myself cheering for White for some reason, and I'm someone who actually likes Lord Taichi. Having said that, once again, I find myself wishing we were getting Suzuki vs White here instead. The rest were good, but nothing special, Owens pinned Kanemaru with the PP.

Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) vs. Jeff Cobb, Juice Robinson & Toa Henare - 6/10

The best thing here was actually the battle between Henare and Shingo, that was fucking awesome. This, however, failed to get me excited about Juice vs Naito, and only slightly about Cobb vs Shingo, which I think has more potential given their respective strengths. Shingo pinned Henare with the Pumping Bomber.

G1 Climax 2019 Block A Match
Bad Luck Fale [2] (w/Chase Owens & Jado) vs. Kota Ibushi [6] - 7.5/10

This was good for what it was, probably one of the better Fale matches this tournament. Fale jumped Ibushi and worked over his back all match, a bunch of slams and planchas, and Ibushi sold it really good. We obviously had the Owens and Jado interference, but it wasn't as bad as with Ospreay at least. Ibushi ended up winning with Bomaye and Kamigoye.

G1 Climax 2019 Block A Match
Will Ospreay [4] vs. Zack Sabre Jr. [2] - 9/10

This was as awesome as I hoped it would. This was more of the style of Sabre, with him working over Ospreay's neck. The match was A LOT of counter, transitions, reversals, and what not. Ospreay really held his own when going move-by-move in the mat. Towards the end, Sabre started also working on Ospreay's arm, so that when he went for Strombreaker, Sabre countered into an Octopus Stretch, transitioned into a tighter hold, and Ospreay immediately tapped out. Great stuff, and for once in a Sabre match, I kinda hoped Ospreay was winning.

G1 Climax 2019 Block A Match
Kazuchika Okada [10] vs. Lance Archer [4] - 9/10

This was another great match with a superhero fighting a giant. Archer worked over Okada for a long while, similar to Fale vs Ibushi, and Okada made a great comeback and won with the Rainmaker. This was text book on how a giant should be booked and I loved that Okada sold the match and offense like if he had been run over by a monster truck. Last minutes were pretty intense because Archer kept hitting a lot of big moves on Okada, and given Okada's points, he can take a loss anytime now. He ended up winning with a Rainmaker.

Archer at one point did his Old School move and ended with a fucking moonsault. Fucking Archer watching too many Brian Cage matches. I did hope that given the wrist control of that move, that Okada would counter it into a Rainmaker.

With this win, Okada just eliminated Ospreay, SANADA, Sabre, Archer, and Fale. Kinda upset about some of those, not that I expected any of them to win, but I thought that Ospreay and SANADA should have been alive at the end, surely over EVIL at least.

G1 Climax 2019 Block A Match
KENTA [8] vs. SANADA [2] - 8/10

I liked this match, but I don't think it was close to it's potential. If anything else, I saw it more as a bit more character building for KENTA and SANADA, who played to the crowd. Match was a lot of athletic stuff and striking until they started chasing their respective finishers and they started trading reversals. There was some botches here that seemed more as both men just being really tired of wrestling everyday, which is something i've started to notice where a lot of the talent, not just here. SANADA won with the moonsault after Skull End.

G1 Climax 2019 Block A Match
EVIL [6] vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi [6] - 9/10

This was a really good match, and what I thought helped a lot was not knowing who was winning, especially knowing that whoever lost would be now so far from Okada's 12 points.

This pair up really helped EVIL look strong and fast since Tanahashi is now on the slower side of the spectrum, so EVIL looked dominant when he was working over him. This was easily the best EVIL, and likely Tanahashi matches so far in the tournament, it was straight up main event worthy. The crowd was going crazy towards the end.

Continuing from his match with SANADA, Tanahashi sold his knee, which EVIL worked in the teaser and here. He went for submissions, strikes, and big moves, slowing down Tanahashi more and more, who fought with heart, went for EVIL's legs and head with his usual arsenal. They played into Tanahashi's tournament where he has been losing the matches where he fails to hit the second High Fly Flow, but he managed to kick out after his fail, and regain himself to hit it one more time later on for the win. This was top match Tanahashi.

Post-match - Tanahashi played guitar and said that this is where he belonged, the main event. 11 dates in and Tanahashi, just now, got to play his guitar. Times are a-changing.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

This was a consistently good show, but not a blow away show that will be talked about since there wasn't any particular match that stood out. I'm not gonna lie, seeing Okada eliminate so many people with so much tournament left kinda got me, we're now talking several shows left were not all matches will be spoiler matches.