NJPW G1 Climax 30 9.24

Yota Tsuji vs. Yuya Uemura - 5.5/10

Tsuji really needs to grow back his beard and consider undoing the perm, his look is so distracting for me now. Good match, but not as good as the last three we've seen, it was somewhat slower since Tsuji was on top. I do love me some Tsuji spear, and that new Avalanche Powerslam that I don't think I had seen before is great, likely to become a bigger move later on. Tsuji won with a Boston Crab. I take it these 3 guys are gonna go 50/50 on all openers. After the match, Kidd had some hate stares for Tsuji. Beautiful.

G1 Climax 30 Block B Match
Hirooki Goto (0) vs. SANADA (0) - 6.5/10

This started kinda slow and boring, the crowd itself was mostly dead for the match, but after some spots outside the ring, the match really picked up. They started chasing their respective finishers, and it was great since both the GTR and the Skull End had similar set ups, so it let to good counters. We also had SANADA hitting Ushigoroshis and Goto hitting modified draping GTRs for near falls, but then Goto just hit GTR and won.

G1 Climax 30 Block B Match
Hiroshi Tanahashi (0) vs. Toru Yano (2) - 7/10

Referee made sure that Yano had to tape hidden in his trunks. Yano's plan for this match was to get Tanahashi out of the ring and find a way to get a win by countout, maybe knowing that Tana's knee is busted and he wouldn't be able to run at full speed back to the ring. Once that plan didn't work, he went for the medical tape on the outside, but Tana foiled the plan, taped over Yano's eyes and even so made it back to the ring.

And this is when we discovered that Yano's power is limitless, because even blinded, he dodged Tanahashi's attacks, rolled him up, and won. Yano is 2-0 while SANADA and Tana are both 0-2 at the hands of Yano.

G1 Climax 30 Block B Match
KENTA (2) vs. Juice Robinson (2) - 6.5/10

I'm gonna be honest, it took me until the striking exchange to really get into this match. I was finding this way boring, Juice's big moves kept making me pay attention, but I would easily go back to thinking about how Juice seems to have both his legs completely tattooed. And right when they got my attention, they botched a GTS setup and right to the finish. The wrestling itself all looked good, but it just wasn't exciting. I think the Sapporo crowd agreed with me.

Post-match - Juice signaled that he wanted the US Championship title shot from KENTA.

G1 Climax 30 Block B Match
YOSHI-HASHI (0) vs. EVIL (0) (w/Dick Togo) - 8.5/10

Right before watching this match, I was checking social media (not during Juice vs KENTA, promise), and I saw a couple of drawings of YOSHI-HASHI with this staff over EVIL, pinning him down. He looked awesome, he looked like a fucking monkey god legend. And so the match started, he came out, i'm hyped for the spot, and then it happens and well, it was shitty and I got disappointed, and as cool as you can draw, you just can't take the geek out of YOSHI-HASHI. Worth mentioning that EVIL's initial attack was somewhat a call back to their New Japan Cup match where EVIL decimated YOSHI-HASHI, and so here, YH was somewhat ready for the attack.

So, as much of a geek I think YH is, this was a pretty good match, I enjoyed all of YH's comebacks, at least until he started chasing his shitty ass Butterfly Lock, this YH hug makes Okada's Cobra Clutch look legit. Even the submission tease was nicely planned, but the move just looks shitty. At least I can say that after that, he started chasing Karma and the match picked up again.

EVIL having this much trouble to defeat YH made me think less of him. New Japan Cup EVIL destroyed YH and would have even if he hadn't attacked him with a chair. But i'll give credit to YH, he is having a good G1 so far, surely above the expectations I have of him.

G1 Climax 30 Block B Match
Tetsuya Naito (2) vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (2) - 9.5/10

Naito said in the last interview that he considered Zack Sabre the most dangerous opponent in the whole block. I would disagree and say that man is Yano, but Sabre is surely a close second. If you watch this match, you can't disagree with Naito, Sabre took him to the limit, literally about a minute away from the time limit. They made Sabre look incredibly strong here, the tag champion took the world champion to the limit and I couldn't be happier.

Match was a total Sabre match. We saw Sabre work over Naito's neck, which is as good as a target as any in Naito's body. Naito pretty much fought an octopus by striking it and dropping it on top of his head. The match had a nice progression from submissions to striking to bigger moves, with short submission teases sparingly added throughout. The match really really picked up when they announced they had reached the 25 minute mark, they were already on second gear going for their bigger moves, but it was here that I suddenly realized that maybe just maybe, they were going for the time limit draw. I felt that they could still go for those 5 minutes, Sabre hit a Zack Driver and didn't even go for the pin, I thought it would had been a lot for Sabre to get a draw with the double champion, so urgency hit for Naito, I started counting the seconds. Eventually, Naito did deliver first Destino for a kick out! 2 minutes to go, but then he delivered a 2nd Destino and Sabre couldn't kick out. Just amazing.

I don't know what the plan is, but New Japan is really investing on building their tag team champions right now, Taichi decisively defeated Cobb and Suzuki, Sabre defeated EVIL and took Naito to the limit.

Post-match - Naito cut his winner's promo thanking the crowd and doing LIJ roll call.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Arguably the worst of the G1 shows so far, it was bound to happen, but it's not like the other nights were bad, so it's not the end of the world, and let's not pretend like the main event was awesome and the semi was considerably better than it deserved to be.<