G1 Night 8 B Block

 

What is this, night 8? B Block? Sound right? Woefully behind, and yet I guess I am still hammering away at this. Perhaps it was best to let the insane ravings of the last G1 breakdown in which one armed women and dogs in reservoirs tangled with Antonio Inoki and too many versions of Octopi pluralosity, which is a word I just made up, linger in the collective psyche for a long moment before delving into whatever the fuck this is gonna be. Let’s find out together.

 

 

Juice Robinson vs Toru Yano

 

Yano, of course, is a walking poem, a man who will one day walk into the clouds and never return and people will wonder whatever happened to Old Yano and then his face, his giant fucking face, will appear on the moon for a second and the whole world will laugh and cry and go insane, but for now he is still trying to use his tricks to get over on yet another rube.

 

Juice is a natural jackass who plays well into Yano’s shenanigans, but he also doesn’t like being caught out as a jackass and so he starts bellowing at Yano in savage American English and Yano doesn’t know what the fuck to do other than to try to tape this jackasses leg’s together. But Juice beats him to the punch, quite literally, and then poor Yano is left to wonder what he did wrong, and wallow in the shame of being outdone by an American Jackass who probably would have been machinegunned right off the fucking boat at Guadalcanal.

 

I like both of these dudes for both of their touched ways. Yano is Yano and if you can’t take five minutes to Yano it up, you lead too high-strung a life and probably get nose bleeds and can’t get your dick hard without help from medicine which is no shame if you take it so you can fuck longer or to counteract the stifling nature of other drugs, but it is kind of a shame if you need it because you are a nervous punk who drinks too much coffee and doesn’t have time for a Yano match.

 

Juice is building a quality tournament for himself, at least results wise. Quality wise is always up for debate with Juice, but I like the dude and think he can bring it if and when it gets hotter than a Yano mashup session. Also, he likes to swear a lot and so do I, so let’s not pretend there isn’t some kinship here. Juice is a fucking jackass and so am I.

 

 

Hirooki Goto vs Zack Sabre Jr

 

This is almost too dark to write about. Goto’s shoulder or arm or whatever is so fucked and he can’t do anything and so it is only a matter of time before ZSJ tortures him like Goto’s granddad probably did to ZSJ’s granddad in fucking Burma or some place like that. Goto gives it a try, but it’s no good, and ZSJ doesn’t even do him the honor of submitting him by ripping his shoulder apart, he just uses one of those tricksy pins he learned avoiding pedophiles in grim English basements during his “training.”

 

Goto is pretty much a ghost for this tournament, just a wrecked man with no shoulder who has let down Shibata again, and even the LA Dojo kids are probably like lol this guy can’t fuck while Goto stares at them solemnly, and it’s just not a good time in his life right now, which sucks because I like Goto, he can kick people in the chest and face and also throw them around a bit and he is always up for a Spirit Warrior Fight To The Soul Death kind of match which makes New Japan so compelling. But these are Hard Times for Hirooki Goto and he doesn’t have Dusty’s charisma to carry him through and so this could get very bad for him and he might find himself where he always seems to find himself, searching for a reason for his near pointless existence.

 

That is harsh, but a man’s got to start fucking sometime. ZSJ is of course a mousy pest who should be drowned in a bucket, but he is what he is and I will not argue with you about it. I wish I liked him more, I really do, as leftist submission machine should always work for me, but it’s too hard to see any of it as real for whatever reason, maybe it’s the birdcage chest or maybe it’s the cockiness that seems like a false front, I don’t know. I am likely just being stubborn.

 

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Yoshi-Hashi

 

I am in the tank now for Yoshi-Hashi, who has taken his whole Spooked Nerd Reaches For An Inner Fire thing to a point where the Spooked Nerd isn’t even seen at all and instead it’s this dude reaching into the deepest places of himself to slay his heroes and icons, the men who have playfully goofed him around over the years, maybe made him do some things in the locker room that aren’t talked about. Yoshi-Hashi has left that Dark Nerd in the past and is bringing the fire you would expect from a legit G1 warrior.

 

He even tries to savage Tanahashi’s knees, which a scared young boy of old wouldn’t have done, and Tana knows he is in a fight with Yoshi-Hashi, and it is a good fight, as Tana draws on Yoshi-Hashi’s New Energy like a vampire, feeding off of his youth so that he may wrestle and fly like a goddamn man again. And Tana of course gets the win because Yoshi-Hashi can only take this so far before his elders remind him that he still has to mop the toilets with his tongue after the show.

 

But you have to feel for Yoshi-Hashi now. Before he was just some geek who deserved to get beat on, but now he has earned a moment that has not come yet, at least not in my week or two behind ravings, and now I want to watch Yoshi-Hashi win these matches. I tweeted something like this a couple of nights ago and it got no response, no favs, nothing, so it is clear that poor Yoshi-Hashi has not yet made inroads into the Collective Heart or maybe everyone has muted me, who is to say? But I will be the dude who takes up the flag for Yoshi Fucking Hashi.

 

 

KENTA vs EVIL

 

I’m not sure if this was interesting or trash. It is obviously a Bullet Club Civil War match which is for sure interesting as we finally get a look at how the hierarchy maybe shakes out. I’ve talked about this a bit, as KENTA made the move last year and became the Hot Shit and then Jay White was lost to Covid shit for a while and so EVIL was brought in to fuck things up. But then Jay White comes back and he still has Gedo with him, marking him as the Ace of Bullet Club still, and EVIL is gifted Dick Togo befitting a dude who has his own designs on being Top Dog, and KENTA . . . KENTA is left with nothing. He is the forgotten man, a hired hand, forced to eat lunch with Yujiro and his tricks.

 

So, it was interesting to see KENTA kind of become his own man again for a moment here, messing around with Dick Togo and Evil for a while and then finally just beating on both of them, but of course, it doesn’t work out well for him as he gets the symbolic punch to the dick and eats the loss and goes back to Yujiro’s rat table.

 

It even seemed like The People were starting to get behind KENTA which is ironic given that was the entire reason he was thrown to Bullet Club last year, their cold hearts refusing his comeback from years of diabolical soul raping in America. But The People and KENTA’s pride are not enough to overcome the dick in the ring and the Dick outside the ring. To be fair, KENTA also cheated it up a bit because he’s still a snake, but snakes eat rats and EVIL right now is pretty much a rat, and so you root for the fucking snake.

 

EVIL is kind of lost here still, I think. His gun poses are corny and lame and he has lost the gravitas of his prior persona. Now he’s just an asshole, and not a very compelling one. I want him to start throwing guys around again instead of hitting them in the junk. It is sad that it has come to this, perhaps a Poor Choice even if it did get him momentary champ status. He is clearly better positioned than he was before, but life is all about momentum and right now his is kind of rolling back on him a bit. But he’s gonna get time to figure out what this new EVIL looks like and wrestles like and I just hope it gets better, you know?

 

 

Tetsuya Naito vs Sanada

 

Naito has been, so far, for me, the Best Dude in this G1, which is not my usual stance as some of you dirtbags know. I’m sorry for calling you dirtbags since the people reading this are almost all Dear Friends unless someone lets this shit out into the wild which I don’t even know is a good idea and what the fuck am I talking about? Oh yeah, Naito, who has won me over and is representing the company as champion like a boss king.

 

This was always gonna be Sanada’s moment, though. It had to, right? Hometown boy hadn’t won a match yet and was facing his Fucking Boss. Gotta win that one. And Sanada did, redeeming his shitty tournament and possibly setting up even more friction in LIJ, although probably not because Sanada is pretty passive and Naito is secure enough in his own cajones as he would probably call them thanks to his Mexican experience to not let this become A Thing. Sure, it might lead to a match down the road, but it won’t go down like the EVIL shit did.

 

I always like Sanada matches that go deep into the night, both dudes exhausted or wrecked, and while it maybe quite didn’t reach those epic heights, which no match in this G1 really has yet to be honest, it was still compelling and still very much what you would expect to see in a Naito vs Sanada match. Things even got a little dangerous with Naito getting brought down from the top rope on his fucking head by Sanada, and if any two dudes are gonna start cracking walnuts like Ibushi, it’s these two, but it didn’t really degenerate into anything more than that, again a theme of this entire tourney, which has been fairly subdued in just about every way you can imagine, from the fans to the ring work to the fires which never quite get started. It’s being played off as a STRATEGY thing, but I don’t know if that’s just a cover for some listless work. Of course, I’m probably being worked.

 

I don’t want any of that to diminish this match, which was perfectly fine, and Sanada gets to go to the back knowing that he just beat his boss man, and Naito knows that he has to keep an eye on Sanada now, especially after the shit that went down with Evil, but Naito is Tranquilo and maybe no other LIJ member reps that as well as Sanada, and so everything’s cool, baby. For now.

 

 

 

G1 Night 7

 

G1 Night 7 gets underway as I write this ten days later and since last year I would watch them and then write them on the same day , I feel as if I have failed you a little maybe. But then again, I have been churning out lots of words instead of a couple of flimsy paragraphs which seemed to suffice last year but maybe that is the trade off we are making idk I just work here, right underneath Pieter’s assssssss.

 

 

Minoru Suzuki vs Yujiro Takahashi

 

Poor Yujiro makes some Poor Choices, both in the context of trying to out-ghoul Minoru Suzuki with strikes and kicks and such and in the context of life, as there are no women here for him to sell for pennies on the yen or whatever the exchange rate is over there for a dick in the mouth which I imagine is more than pennies, although pennies *are* from heaven according to that one song and so is Pieter’s delightful ass so maybe this is what the G1 CLIMAX is really all about or maybe it is about men in their underwear hitting each other really hard, who is to say???

 

But The Tokyo Pimp seems to understand that he must kick people in the face sometimes because it’s his JOB in every sense of the idea but that is something that Minoru Suzuki also understands because he has been doing this a long time, perhaps longer than Yujiro’s been working those streets, going back to a time in which he wrestled Dutch Kickboxers and American Degenerates in Pancrase because he liked to hear their joints pop more than he liked to hear the crowd yell out the names of Chono or Muta or Hashimoto or old man Inoki who would ask you to smell his fingers after you wrestled him or help him with his Octopus which never ended up like eight pussies like the name foretold but you smelling his fingers again as he stretched parts of your body that Minoru Suzuki does not like to remember. Or maybe they all fucked Octopuses and yes that is the correct plural form but I bet Yujiro has fucked one or all eight of them (they come as a set) and does he remember this as he drifts off to sleep in the coiled arms of another man or do all those memories blend with the memories of the rest of the heads which have been dropped in Korakuen through these many years and many tournaments of men and octopi holy shit there is more than one pluralization!!!!!!!!!!! And thusly is the essence of the G1 fulfilled.

 

 

Kota Ibushi vs Jeff Cobb

 

Ibushi and Cobb are friendly which seems strange as Ibushi’s only real friends are those wild dogs he played with up by the reservoir last week and maybe that crazy lady with one arm who lives in an old Wisteria Tree and knows how to use that one arm. It certainly isn’t some GEEK named Kenny and lol why do all these gaijin have to have crazy names like Kenny or Jeff especially when they all get kicked the same way as Ibushi caught his dad kicking his mom or wait, was it his mom kicking his dad? It doesn’t matter as all faces break and he definitely remembers the bone-er.

 

Cobb, sadly, is not a striking young man, at least not in the sense of hitting people real hard, he may be a striking young man sartorially tbh I don’t know what he does on his days off, maybe round up those dogs at the reservoir and no I won’t bow to the commercialism and refer to them as Reservoir Dogs although I guess I just did, it’s all a trap, folks, not unlike the trap Jeff Cobb walked into or knelt into called the Kamigoye which Ibushi ruins him with after Jeff made a pretense of being able to toss Ibushi around which that lady with one arm can’t do but she sure does toss him off another way. (She plays with his penis until it ejaculates semen)

 

 

Kazuchika Okada vs Taichi

 

Maybe I’ll talk about the wrestling in this one, you just don’t know, just as Okada doesn’t seem to know what the meaning or purpose of the G1 life is because is it about trying out new submissions or is it about making sure you don’t tweak your bad back like that one-armed lady that Ibushi fucked too hard that one time lol and Gedo didn’t even get her company insurance. It’s hard to Book these matches and tournaments and fucks year after year.

 

Okada is just maybe too lazy this year, or not inspired or maybe those two ideas are the same idk, but Taichi is not a degenerate who you can just fuck around with and expect to come out of it okay or oh wait, Okada just chokes Taichi’s ragged ass into a place where Miho Abe’s shadow dwells, waiting to tease him in his sleep while her corporeal form tries to figure out how to fly me directly into her even with this pandemic, don’t worry, baby, these things figure themselves out.

 

But until the Dream Time can make the G1 something really special, we probably should talk about how listless Okada is, no? Part of it is Okada himself, fucking around with the Money Clip almost obsessively, but I wonder how much is that the Korakuen faithful almost shockingly don’t know how to make the Right Noises for this show, which is their Whole Deal but given the Covid of it all they are off their game, unable to shout names or scream their banshee wails when someone gets dropped on their heads, the rhythmic clapping almost desultory, uninspired, a sad echo of what passions might have been.

 

But they are not here and Okada has yet to be Enraptured by Mania in this G1 tournament, which is a problem he faced the last time he lost the title, to Ibushi’s geeky friend Kenny and even that dork is finding something, anything, with those dogs down at the reservoir like Moxley and Hangman Page. Okada, though, can’t even get a one-armed woman to jack him off, literally or spiritually, and all of Korakuen lazily claps this into oblivion like they all have one goddamn arm, maybe they stole the other one.

 

 

Will Ospreay vs Jay White

 

A song, sung by Jay White and okay that Ospreay jackass too, as they put on quite the lovely wrestling match and there are no wild dogs running reservoirs here or one-armed jackoff artists, just good wrestling being done as it should. Ospreay’s bleating idiocy can’t even ruin it and this is his lucky day as he somehow magically countermands the brass knuckle buffoonery of Gedo and also the attempted Dick Punchings and rumor is that’s how that chick lost her one arm.

 

Ospreay beats Jay White and come on we all knew he would because he is destined to be Jay’s Yin or perhaps Yang who is to say who is who just yet as the Westward Expansion Dreams are Dreamed although Big Harold just Harry Carryed himself and by that I mean he ate about a dozen hot dogs with some actual dogs down at this reservoir he knows about.

 

White’s throws are sick here, his uranage remaining the best in the world, and the wheel work on Will Ospreay isn’t completely ignored which is nice to see as sometimes the PSYCHOLOGY does get ignored no matter how hard those Psych students are working on their books when they should be cheering for Quality Wrestling like this. That is probably unfair as they want to get into this but can’t ALL THE WAY and I am just picking nits at this point so everyone settle down, okay. SETTLE DOWN.

 

These are two dudes who are the future(ish) for New Japan, especially as they try to conquer distant shores, but the future might also be now, here already as Terminators look for Sarah Connor who rumor has it lives in an old Wisteria Tree, but don’t quote me on that. What’s important to take away is that this Delivered in a tournament which at least thus far – THUS FAR – has not been that great for me. Damning words? These things must be taken in Context as this is still the best pro wrestling in the world if you dig the style and fortunately I do. Maybe that is what has been lacking a bit, New Japan’s signature style and EPIC BIG BOUT feels, but maybe that is also slightly intentional as everyone and everything builds to an exciting climax which hey is part of the G1 name, is it not? Perhaps dudes getting head-dropped into the Oblivion of becoming Future Benoit as he hunts baby Daniel should be saved for bigger matches and later dates, but New Japan also needs this to be good as they try to pull everyone out of a pandemic funk, but the crowd is kept from being fully engaged by that same pandemic and it’s RULES so I don’t know, I am just thinking and writing aloud here as is my wont and Inoki just asked me to smell his fingers but so far I have REFUSED.

 

 

Tomohiro Ishii vs Shingo Takagi

 

My previous caterwauling aside, this match also Delivered which it very much needed to do, with Ishii and Shingo doing what everyone expects of them at this point which is maybe A WHOLE LOT but such is life when you are perhaps the greatest G1 performer ever like Ishii YEAH I SAID IT and his LIJ nemesis and in many ways doppelganger in Shingo.

 

That is a weird thing to say given that the two don’t share too many similarities aesthetically aside from maybe both being weird creatures who are not maybe Leading Men handsome, but they are both outsiders from the company’s snug SYSTEM of Young Lions training by fighting dogs in reservoirs and what not, they both like that I HIT YOU YOU HIT ME LOL LET’S DO THIS UNTIL NEITHER OF US CAN SEE OR SPEAK WITHOUT BELLS GOING OFF IN OUR HEADS AT ALL HOURS style, which at least in this match included a bunch of sick and mutual chops and punches right to the fucking throat. Called upon often to deliver, both are perhaps destined for an endless career of this sort of thing without ever getting to The Top, which isn’t that fucking bad, I mean Jake the Snake wasn’t exactly awash in titles either even if he did once steal a woman’s arm to pay for crack cocaine which is a scourge amongst minorities in the USA or at least was possibly perpetrated by the CIA who have never EVER performed weird experiments on those dogs down by the reservoir or held onto damaging photos of Antonio Inoki with OCTOPI for potential blackmail reasons and anyway both Ishii and Takagi don’t care about ANY OF THIS as they just beat the shit out of each other for damn near a half an hour until Ishii finally gets the pin he needed, while Shingo skulks off to climb Wisteria Trees in search for meaning and also this one lady Ibushi told him about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

G1 Night 6 B Block

 

Day six of the G1 is underway as I remain an unworthy drunken fool, but it is perhaps better than the high as fuck fool I have presented you always. In any respect, I am determined to see through this G1 of our heart and our souls before it becomes too late for any of you to care. So, with all that said, let’s G1!!!!

 

 

Sanada vs Yoshi-Yashi

 

B Block action of the G1 gets underway in Day 6 and somehow Yoshi-Hashi has become more interesting than his stablemate Okada. Perhaps it is due to his underdog status or maybe it is due to the sheer fieriness of it all, who is to say? All I know is that I made roughly six or seven typos in that last bit but such is my own drunken descent into madness which is sill better than my drug induced typos. By the way, I just made three or four more, but we press on. Just made four more lol I am fucked up.

 

Anyway, yeah, somehow Yoshi-Hashi has proven more compelling than even Okada and it is with Great Joy that we celebrate his win over Sanada here. It is the sort of thing worthy of a dude with the underdog fire of Yoshi-Hashi, who remains a loveable loser and yet he gets the Korakuen faithful behind him as he strives to put away the hapless Sanada, who remains mired in a winless funk after Evil’s disgusting betrayal.

 

It’s easy to see how this becomes a storyline for Sanada, but all of that is overshadowed by Yoshi-Hashi bringing the Fire in a way unmatched by anyone else in this tournament and it is only right and good that he finally earns a win to show for it all. I have decided I love the idiot, which is somewhat remarkable given his loser status over the years. And yet here we are, with Yoshi-Hashi beating Sanada after hanging tough against Evil, and his surprising Fire remain a surprise and a testament to his latent ability, which has been buried through the years by his sheer seeming ineptitude.

 

But it is all on display here, and it somehow doesn’t feel out of place that he beats Sanada, such is the fiery renaissance of Yoshi-Hashi, even if it did take me five tries to spell “renaissance” correctly in my drunken state. It certainly means a lot given his own stablemate’s struggles in Okada, and Yoshi-Hashi being More Interesting and also deserving of the win remains shocking and also heartwarming in its own This Is Pro Wrestling way.

 

Sanada, on the other hand, remains lost following Evil’s despicable betrayal, and falling to 0-3 in this G1 it becomes clear that he is still a man in search of an identity beyond being the number two or three guy in LIJ. He is already less than Shingo, which has to sting, and yet he cannot betray his brothers like that shithead Evil even if betrayal did mean Evil’s improbable march to the top. And so Sanada remains loyal to Naito and also perhaps a hapless victim to his own sad loyalty as one would suspect a Gedo or Dick Togo or even Jado would be enough to get him a win or two he would otherwise not deserve, and yet he remains the aloof and perhaps the put-upon Sanada of old, and even Yoshi-Hashi can put him away. It is a dark fate, albeit honorable, but that is the tragic nature of Life in poetic form.

 

In any event, this was a decent enough match, Sanada’s listless Skull-End no match for Yoshi-Hashi’s surprising fire, and so we press on in this G1, each match a revelation, perhaps depressingly enough to Sanada who falls to 0-3 against Yoshi-Hashi of all people, but then again, Yoshi-Hashi’s own loyalty to The Right Way of Doing Things and also his babyface fire are themselves revelatory and self-justifying and now he has a signature win to back it all up and it is all Pro Wrestling at its finest.

 

 

Zack Sabre, Jr. vs KENTA

 

It is perhaps interesting that at one time WWE was able to roll with KENTA, ZSJ, Kota Ibushi and Shinzuke Nakamura under their proverbial umbrella and yet both Ibushi and SZJ told them to fuck off while KENTA devolved into an injury plagued nightmare while Nakamura cashed paychecks in spite of the soul crushing ennui of it all. But what’s important is that Fate has contrived to bring JSZ and KENTA into conflict here in the G1 in New Japan Pro Wrestling instead of the soulless ring of WWE.

 

KENTA in particular is a man who fairs better having escaped the brutal soul washing of WWE, and despite his many, many injuries, he hits a Go To Sleep on ZSJ for the win and reminds everyone that he was the originator of the move CM Punk’s soulless degeneracy aside. KENTA is still KENTA despite his many, many injuries and also his soul crushing excursion with WWE.

 

ZSJ, meanwhile, is in much the same boat, albeit one that never sank quite like KENTA’s. He had his WWE moment in the Cruiserweight Classic and still said No Thanks to the 205 Live of it all, and has since prospered in New Japan. It was a bold choice on his end, and yet has largely paid off.

 

I say this all as a dude who has largely shit-talked ZSJ over the years. But I think I am coming around to him despite myself, which may be pure resignation as much as anything, but does it really matter? I mean, I find myself appreciating ZSJ more than I ever thought, sorry Kendall, and think he has managed to apply himself on a New Japan level more than on a lazy and False American/British level. Fuck 205 Live, this dude is competing for G1 and thus New Japan Glory.

 

And yet, KENTA is more than ZSJ, at least on this day, and you’re reminded that his own WWE/NXT failures aside, he remains a spiritual giant in Japanese wrestling. Sure, he might not be near as compelling as one would hope, especially on the Grandest Japanese Wrestling stage of them all, but he is still KENTA and very few people can match up against that, and he drops ZSJ with a Go To Sleep because he was the originator of the move and because he can. Fuck the Bullet Club of it all, which has seen him relegated to third most important member of his own stable, he is KENTA and ZSJ is not, and fuck WWE, he is still the dude who set NOAH on fire, broken but still capable of dropping fools when the need calls for it. ZSJ remains such a fool despite his efforts and thus the hierarchy of New Japan asshole remain firmly in place. Never fuck with KENTA. That is the lesson here, long may it be taught.

 

 

Juice Robinson vs Hiroshi Tanahashi

 

I am writing these as I watch them which is different for me as I usually watch the entire show and then write about it, but in these times of drunken excess, it is necessary maybe for me to do it this way before I forget what the fuck just happened. Perhaps you shake your head in disgust at me, but I am used to that, having lost several friends to my drug induced antics, and this is already far too dark so let’s just move on.

 

Juice, of course, remains utterly ridiculous, and yet a man capable of working the crowd like few can although the Korakuen faithful don’t quite go along with him here for some reason which is perhaps shocking because it’s fucking Korakuen and they would probably cheer Roman Reigns given the chance. But maybe it is because Juice is fighting Tanahashi and the People are not about to pick Juice over Tana despite his lovable ass, which again is attired in Blues Brothers fashion, one Joliet fool to another.

 

It is a match, but not exactly a five star classic, just two fan favorites looking to steal one against one another, which is a step-up for Juice who is 2-0 coming into this and a step down for Tana who is 0-2, but such are the vagaries of fate and age. Tana gets the win off of kind of a cheap flash pin which again is kind of beneath him maybe but a win is a win especially in the G1, and especially in a match in which Tana literally showed ass.

 

Juice as the dude who controlled the match for the most part against Hiroshi fucking Tanahashi shows how far he’s come and he was *this* close to making it 3-0 in this year’s G1 and it’s obvious he will be an important figure going forward in New Japan’s Westward expansion, the antithesis of Will Ospreay in many ways, beloved and interesting even with his clownish behavior. But said clownishness is adopted by the crowd for the most part regardless of what town they’re in, Juice’s inner fire never exactly concealed and even enhanced maybe by his clown like tendencies, which are more Dusty Rhodes than a Toru Yano.

 

But Tanahashi had to win here. 0-3 was unthinkable and so he gets the win while Juice stews in his own, uh, juices and also regret. It was not maybe the most exciting of matches and yet the Stakes made it compelling, especially given that Juice was an unlikely 2-0 given his rather shitty G1 history and the Ace was 0-2, having lost to Toru Yano of all people in what was maybe a dark chapter of his life. But he makes up for it here by stealing a win and Juice is left to wonder what might have been had he surged to 6 points, which he almost managed to do, hitting the left hand of god and everything. And yet, Tana is the one raising his hand and celebrating in relief having earned his first 2 points and such is the drama of the G1.

 

 

EVIL vs Toru Yano

 

This was always going to come down to who could hit who in the dick and although they both managed to do it, Yano emerges the Dick Master after hitting both Evil and Dick Togo in the dick. For Evil it is a humiliation that perhaps makes him question his recent Poor Choices, and yet he has a title win out of it all so maybe not. Dick Togo remains a False Gedo, which is a shitty career turn for a dude who was once much more, but hey what the fuck, at least he is getting paid, right?

 

Yano, of course, remains a dude who you do not want to fuck with on his level. Try to match his insanity and get punched in the dick and lose, it is just the way it is. Evil learns a crucial lesson and yet remains a dude who will probably figure into the Final Result here in Block B, especially if he can dick punch Naito yet again. But this is not the way to get there, at least not against Yano, who remains a chimera, indecipherable by Man, capable of using his many heads to defeat anyone and everyone and thus he is at 6 points with an entire tournament to go and imagine a G1 won by Yano lol.

 

His poetic nature looms large, especially against Evil who cannot hope to match it and is thus perhaps shown to be False, a desperate man clinging to a Poor Choice, but it did get him double gold so who is to criticize him for it? It is perhaps telling – it was perhaps always telling – that he was given Dick Togo instead of Gedo himself, but Dick Togo is also a figure who looms larger than Gedo in a historical sense, so who is to say? But you cannot deny that Gedo is the Gold Standard when it comes to heel accomplices and so Evil suffers in the exchange, much like KENTA, who does not even get an Ersatz Gedo to help him cheat his way through.

 

But this is as much about Yano as it is Evil, one dude using every trick he has to get to 6 while one falls an unfortunate victim, playing a game that is perhaps beyond him, which is saying something since he is named EVIL of all things and also because he has made dick punching his Thing, but you punch dicks against Toru Yano at your own peril, and like Tanahashi before him, Evil is left to learn that you don’t play Yano’s game and expect to come out victorious. It is an insane world, that of Toru Yano, and yet perhaps it is the only world that makes sense in the pandemic madness of 2020. 6 points is 6 points and even if it doesn’t lead anywhere, Yano has already dragged this G1 into his own insane world, and such is the power of poesy, bless his crazy ass.

 

 

Hirooki Goto vs Tetsuya Naito

 

Poor Goto has a fucked-up shoulder which makes this tournament, years past his former glory, all the more painful in both a physical and spiritual sense. I mean, it’s been more than a decade for his G1 glory and even his New Japan Cup dominance is 8 years in the rearview window. He needs this, as much for his own sense of self as the tangible meaning of it all.

 

But Naito is The Champ and Goto isn’t, and a pair of Destinos spell the end in desultory fashion for Goto who is left to ponder what is to become and also his own sense of self. It is a dark time for him and yet he is not a complete spiritual wreck as he hangs with Naito and makes a match out of it. Still, it is not so much an OMG MATCH as EH A MATCH which is perhaps more damning or maybe a condemnation of Naito more than Goto.

 

Is that fair? I don’t know. All I know is that this G1 has been largely underwhelming so far and while that may simply be an effect of the G1 being so goddamn great year to year more than dudes shitting the bed, maybe there has been some bed shitting, I don’t know.

 

Naito is the Champ, though, and of course he was always gonna win this one, but you would hope for more from the Champ, right? It is a win, though, and he remains the man to beat in the B Block, which is perhaps not the best block and yet the A Block is disappointing a bit too. I feel like a cruel hater, but fuck, it’s time to speak truth to power. This was okay, but little more than that and given it was the main event, Naito is the champ and Goto has a long history of being Champ adjacent, it was disappointing. Sadly, the A Block is doing little better as Okada flails away uselessly and Jay White gets maybe a little too lazy, but at least that block still has Ishii and Kota Ibushi getting crazy. The B Block needs Naito to deliver and when he doesn’t the result is this, an okayish match topping an okayish card in front of a Korakuen crowd that wants to go apeshit but can’t and even if it could probably wouldn’t.

 

This is all perhaps a cruel condemnation of a block which lacks firepower beyond Naito, but Naito has never exactly been the Monster Five Star monster people want him to be. He is always reliant on his opponent to force him to Great Heights but Goto is not the dude for that, at least not this year and it perhaps becomes time to wonder if Goto can ever be that dude again. But for Naito, it is a somewhat lackluster win, and yet a win nonetheless and he awaits yet another showdown with Evil, which hopefully will fire him up and this entire insipid block, which is most definitely the junior block next to the A Block, and maybe that is intentional but goddamn dudes and lady dudes, it would be nice if it that wasn’t so fucking obvious.

 

But the Future remains and we will just have to see if these dudes, the entire collection of them, can pull through and make something beautiful and memorable. Even the A Block aside from the Ishii and Ibushi of it all is suffering this year and it is perhaps strange given that year after year the G1 has somehow surpassed its past glories, but I guess Time is always a bitch and this was always destined for a fall, especially given the Covid of it all. Disappointment is never a thing one expects from New Japan and yet these dudes are only human and there is still plenty of G1 to go, so let’s not get too crazy and cruel here. But the trend is Not Good and it is hard to press on to be honest, but what else are we gonna do? Watch WWE? Don’t be fucking ridiculous. This is still the G1 and this is still New Japan Pro Wrestling and so we will have Faith.