G1 A Block Final

Evil vs Lance Archer

Evil is my boy, but even Evil can’t escape from Lance Archer, who has conquered many universes and hell places and come out of it more alive than ever. Archer terrorizing all the Young Lions before the match and during was like a dude taking a flamethrower to a bunch of kittens, and yes, Everybody Dies. 

My dream match at this point is Archer vs Brock Lesnar, which would be the wildest fucking match ever. You know I’m right. Imagine Lesnar and Archer throwing each other around, Archer clawing Brock’s purple head, Lesnar busting out that shooting star press he almost paralyzed himself with in that Wrestlemania match with Kurt Angle back in the day . . . it would just be so much goddamn fun. I think it should take place on a boat in international waters, no laws, no rules, no promotions, just Lance Archer and Brock Lesnar wrestling like King Kong vs Godzilla for all of our hearts, destroying the world and each other as we all hurtle laughing into oblivion. Everybody dies, baby. Everybody dies.

Sanada vs Bad Luck Fale

Not the best day for my sweet LIJ boys in the A Block, with Evil losing to Archer and now Sanada falling to Fale, which is a thing that is obscene, and yet this is just what Fale does year after year after year. It was every Fale match you’ve ever seen which is of course one too many, and let’s not waste time on this shit.

KENTA vs Zack Sabre Jr.

Jesus, it’s cold out on them streets for KENTA. He can’t even catch a smile from his own people, who have rejected him utterly. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to watch at this point, like you get the sense that a little girl would spit in his face or an old, old man would accuse him of fondling his pendulous balls just to get to see KENTA humiliated and beaten by the police. It’s not a good place for this dude, and I feel bad for him, especially because all he wanted was to forget the last five years of shit and get respect from every dude out here who lapped his shit up back in the day.

But instead, he’s getting roasted by the crowd against ZSJ of all the fucking people, and ZSJ isn’t respecting him either and what the fuck this was not how it was supposed to be. KENTA can still kick everyone very hard but they don’t give a fuck, do they? Instead of this being a feel good comeback kind of thing, it almost feels like everyone is just taking the piss on this poor dude, abusing him because he tried to do something different and got fucked with. It’s fucked up and I don’t like it.

ZSJ was ZSJ and you either dig it or you don’t, you know? I will say that he and KENTA work well together, with KENTA exploding ZSJ’s bird chest with every kick. Unfortunately, ZSJ got the rub here, which sucks because KENTA honestly deserves better even though he’s all broken down. I get using that to get dudes over or whatever dork shit, but goddamn, sometimes a dude just needs a break, and no one is willing to give him one. Just let the man keep some dignity for fuck’s sake. These are dark times for KENTA. Dark times for all of us.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Will Ospreay

Ospreay continues to shed his shit skin, and this is probably the match where it all gets left behind and he will now go on to be the best dude because this was of course excellent, and Ospreay has stopped being so goddamn theatrical. Getting a win on the Ace is a big deal, and I imagine this is all the start of his rocket ship ride to the top as long as his neck doesn’t disintegrate or he gets too full of himself and humiliates himself on social media or some shit.

As for Tanahashi, it’s just that time for him, when he has to be the dude eating the ass end of these things so that the kids can have fun tomorrow, and you have to feel for him because he’s still just so very good at the whole pro wrestling thing. Even the crowd was kinda abandoning him here, which is fucked up, and I mean you don’t have to shove the dude out the door just because it seems like it’s the thing to do. I want Tana to be around for a long time, let him figure out some shit style wise that is comfortable for him and let him be the Ace of the universe.

Anyway, great match, everyone’s happy, stars were thrown, Tanahashi will rise again and we can all live in the comfort of his bounty.

Kazuchika Okada vs Kota Ibushi

Obviously this was epic and a total fucking blast, and our sweet Ibushi comes out of it victorious, his head scrambled, his ankles fucked, his heart bursting with autistic fervor for the pro wrestling, and it’s all good.

Okada makes this happen because he just does everything so damn good. He’s the perfect partner for Ibushi to get wild with on an athletic kind of tip, but he’s also able to absorb all of Ibushi’s wildness and make something foundationally strong underneath it all. He let Ibushi give him a sick head drop, but it never seems to be as scary with Okada because he just kinda has this way about him, like you can somehow believe that he has figured out a way to effortlessly let that shit flow through his neck without him feeling a goddamn thing. You ain’t breakin’ Okada because he’s made of professional wrestling and his neck is just an idea that he can fuck around with to make the art be what it is. I don’t even know what I’m babbling about either, but you get what I’m talking about, right?

Ibushi moves on to the final, where I predict he and Naito will head drop each other into oblivion again, and it will be dangerous and gross and people will get upset and it will all be beautiful. And then one of them will have another go at Okada and more heads will be dropped and necks broken and on and on we will go, never ending, until we are all dancing in the cerebral fluid of Mitsuharu Misawa in the cosmos.

G1 B Block Gibberish Day Eight?

Toru Yano vs Taichi

Another Yano poem, and proof that you can’t out-clown the ultimate clown. Taichi tried Shenanigans to get over on poor sweet Yano only to have Yano employ the same tricks to better effect, to such effect that they left him victorious yet again over a dude who would laugh and spit on him because he doesn’t understand what it means to be a poet clown like Yano. And even better, Yano didn’t have to lower himself like Juice and some others to harass my sweet Miho Abe.

Yano was always gonna be the hardest dude for Taichi to beat simply because Yano is smarter than him, and Taichi can’t fuck with him like he does everyone else and thus must find another way but he is too lazy and so it’s a simple thing for Yano to humiliate him and take his manhood and his friends away from him at the same time. And now Yano is dancing and he keeps on dancing and he says that he will never die and I believe him. I believe him.

Jeff Cobb vs Tetsuya Naito

In the end, it’s probably gonna come down to Naito and Jay White for block supremacy, which should be no real surprise, and the way they’ve gotten it there has been well played, with White being humbled and humiliated by the Chaos dudes he betrayed and Naito laying in the weeds like he always does, ready to take it in the end because he’s better than all the swine like Jeff Cobb.

I shouldn’t be so hard on Cobb and I’m really not because he brings all the fun throws and such, it’s just that this tourney is so High Level and almost all the dudes are so damn good that it’s hard to pull for the token ROH dude, a dude who could probably stand to lose a few so he doesn’t get so easily gassed, and who has the personality of one of the giant tuna caught off the coast of his Guam homeland. I will still respect him for the throws and such and hope he gets better and better because New Japan always needs a hoss like him and it would be even better if that hoss was able to take it up the card a notch.

Naito, of course, is Naito, a rapscallion who is always gonna be there in the end, and who I think is probably the best bet to take the block and then down Ibushi in the finals to set up a champion vs champion match at Wrestle Kingdom which will inevitably end with Naito’s head getting dropped a bunch and also with him finally cashing on his popularity and drawing ability with New Japan. But that is all just idle speculation as we near the end of this beloved tournament, and I will just move on.

Hirooki Goto vs Jon Moxley

Surprised that Goto took this so quickly, but in the end it was always gonna be Moxley vaulting these dudes to new heights so he can ride away to AEW glory come the fall, and so Goto comes out of this looking vastly rehabilitated, a shining example of the power of Big Shibata Energy. He survived a nice head spiking near the end and turned right around and dropped Moxley to emphatically win and hey, what more can you say? My heart is open to the dude and I hope he continues to get the love.

Moxley, meanwhile, remains a Real Dude, showing again that he can wear different skins depending on who he’s facing and what the situation calls for, and this tournament for him was all about showing everyone that he can do all the things the oldsters swore he could do back when he was a rising young lion and not the watered down wild and crazy guy wrestling in fucking jeans in WWE. He can take this and use it as a canvas, a month or so of just good ass wrestling, varied and true, to show everyone that he is a legit dude, a star, and someone who absolutely deserves the chance to run to wear his heart wants to take him and us.

Juice Robinson vs Jay White

I’m gonna say something here that will probably make you go okay Neil, fuck off, but this was maybe my favorite match of the entire tournament so far. From the intimacy of it, which I have talked about before, where you can hear everything everyone is saying and feel the emotions that are driving them, to the deliberate pace, which made every movement each dude make feel vitally important, this was a masterclass to me of what wrestling can and should be, and even better for those who care about such things, it didn’t involve a lot of dangerous or stupid shit or head destruction. It was just two dudes who know each other very well, who have Feelings of a sort for one another, trying to hurt the other and trying to win a goddamn wrestling match in the process, and it was all very Real and very True.

Jay White remains the absolute slimiest dude in wrestling, and I’m gonna say another thing here that some people will get mad about, but I think he’s the best wrestler on the planet right now. Everything he does is perfect. From the vile character work and shitheaded insolence to the cruelty of his throws, their precision, he has the whole thing down cold and you can absolutely see why Gedo is determined to ride this dude to the end.

Also, it’s kind of funny how New Japan supposedly wants to get guys to tone down the swearing, but then you have Gedo of all people audibly screaming fuck every match and, well, good luck trying to get the rest of the boys to behave when the head dude is out there going raw as hell every damn time.

As for Juice, it’s remarkable how far he’s come, and how much he Gets It, whether it’s an old school approach like this or whether it’s him standing and trading fire with a dude like Ishii, everything he does feels important, it feels meaningful, and it’s easy to see how that translates so well to an audience that should by all rights have dismissed him as a fucking goof long ago. But they haven’t. They love him, and that’s all because he makes you want to care about him. He still has a shitty finisher, but fuck it, man, that is a minor thing in the grand scheme of things and one day he will almost surely figure out a better one and then we can all die happy.

But . . . yeah, I loved this match probably more than anyone else will, and I like these two dudes probably more than anyone else does. They are an obvious bridge to western audiences, but more than that, what they do translates so well to the Japanese fans, who care hotly one way or another about both of them, two white dudes who came up in their dojo system and who are now the ultimate face and the ultimate heel in a land where people dumbly say those things don’t matter. They matter, it’s just that they have to connect on a visceral level, whether that comes from the grandiosity of honor wars like Ishii or the old All Japan dudes were a master at, or whether that comes from a more westernized approach to showing Real Emotions. In the end, whether it’s Real Techniques or Real Emotion, it’s all the same thing, and in the best cases, like with Jay White, it is both.

Tomohiro Ishii vs Shingo Takagi

This was, of course, a blast, as everyone knew it would be, too old gnarled goats just trying to ruin each other and steam roll their way into the hearts of everyone, a battle of will and honor, of vicious No Surrender strikes and head drops. Both come out of it looking like Grade 1 Spirit Warriors, and hey, what do you know, that’s the name of the fucking tournament.

Ishii has made himself into a legend with matches like these year after year in the G1 and while he’ll never be The Guy on account of he looks like a broken down potato, he is basically the gatekeeper of greatness in New Japan. He is Heimdall standing on the bridge of Asgard, not letting anyone in who isn’t willing to sacrifice himself or show that he can bring the thunder when it’s called for. He doesn’t take shit from anyone and asks for no quarter in return and everyone sees this and loves him for it. He is an eternal champion of the New Japan Spirit Warrior way and we should commend him for it.

Takagi, of course, remains a great favorite of wrestling fans because he shares a lot of that in common with Ishii, but also because he has tools, speed and power, that separate him from almost every dude he wrestles, allowing him to run in whatever gear a match calls for. It’s probably too late for him to be a Top Top Dude, but it’s a hell of a thing when New Japan can just reach out to a guy like him when they’re in need. You don’t see that anywhere else really, and it’s just one more reason why, for me, New Japan is, and will probably be for quite some time, the best place for the pro wrestling that we all know and love. Except for you Dobbsy, because you like all the crazy seven foot cartoon shit, but that’s okay because you’re still my dude and on some level your tastes are actually high level, understanding that above all, wrestling is a goddamn spectacle and should be loved as such. It is just that, for me, and for most of you reading this, that spectacle is never so pure or so emotional as it is here in the beautiful New Japan Pro Wrestling. Now if they’d only sign Sid . . .

G1 A Block Gibberish Day 8?

Sanada vs Lance Archer

Archer’s violence vs Sanada’s speed makes for everything you could want out of this sort of match, and as sad as I am that my man Archer wasn’t able to take it here, I can’t fault the effort. But more than that, this match recalled something I said a while ago on Twitter, you know that lawless land where you almost assuredly followed me from to here, that New Japan’s whole presentation is so intimate, and what I mean by that is that from the camera work to the performances of the wrestlers themselves, you feel like it is all going on right there in front of you and that you are seeing something real and provocative, whether that’s Archer literally smashing Sanada’s head into the camera or Jay White deciding to beat up Rocky Romero on commentary, shot in a way that almost makes you feel as if the assault is happening on you, and the whole thing is just . . . intimate.

Anyway, intimacy aside, I of course dug this match as I knew I would, and I hope that Archer is given another look as a singles dude because he is bringing it, both in terms of energy and in terms of doing fun shit in the ring, and with his size and that Everybody Dies attitude, he is everything a pro wrestler should be.

But, here, Sanada takes it, and that’s fine because Sanada is also a dude doing good things, and he has started to evolve from a sort of bland Muta takeoff into something truly unique, and it’s all just so much fun to watch. He and Evil are both kinda breaking out for me, and it will be interesting to see how they continue to evolve, both within New Japan and their faction, LIJ, and it should make for a lot of fresh and fun shit which is how you keep this thing moving forward year after year. Dudes come and dudes go, but as long as you have dudes fighting their way up like Sanada and Evil, it just replenishes itself, and this is how you do pro wrestling.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Bad Luck Fale

This was basically a replay of the Fale vs KENTA match, with the frustrated hero trying to win out against the swarm of Bullet Club shitheads but falling short thanks to said shitheaderry and also Fale’s enormous walrus girth. It sucks for Tana, as he is eliminated from G1 champion aspirations, but this is just the way of things as you get older and you get caught out by these fuckers who have been hounding you for years now.

Fale is Fale, which is to say that he is very enormous and very ponderous and sometimes very frustrating to watch, but he serves his role, which is as Bullet Club’s chief pain in the ass, and without him and his ilk there would be nothing to overcome from our dudes like Tanahashi. He will forever muddy up the G1 because that is just his way and his purpose and we cannot fault him for that, can we?

Will Ospreay vs KENTA

Man, you have to feel for KENTA, as you can almost taste his anger and frustration at being a dude utterly rejected by his own because of some Poor Choices. Broken down and embittered, he just wants to show that he is still the man that he used to be, which is the man that inspired half these clowns in the first place, but he is not that man anymore and he has to live with that. He’ll blow some spots, and his body isn’t gonna hold up, but a diminished KENTA is still worthy of respect, a broken dragon just trying to fly again, each threatening movement an echo of his majesty, and if you get too close he’ll breathe fire on you and remind everyone that, yeah, this is still a fucking dragon and you should leave its ass alone.

Ospreay, meanwhile, continues to bury some of his shittier tendencies as he rides that line between junior and burgeoning heavyweight, and this win felt like a kind of statement, both that he is ready to move on from being a junior and more specifically from being a junior tied to the devotion of those who came before him, like KENTA. In the end, you have to kill your father to become a man. It’s a nasty bit of business, but that is just life, dude. You can’t be a little boy anymore, bleating like a wounded sheep, you have to be a man, willing to destroy the neck of your hero and yours at the same time in pursuit of some crazy artistic glory that no one else understands,

Kota Ibushi vs Zack Sabre Jr.

These two always have the same sort of match, with ZSJ trying to catch Ibushi in his goofy holds while Ibushi just has to fire up the intensity to liquify ZSJ’s smug face with his bare knee. It is good that Ibushi won because you don’t need a birdman like ZSJ getting too big for his britches and because it shows that Ibushi is ready to leave this trash clown behind to deal with his true peers like Okada.

I know I go hard on ZSJ, and a part of that is simply because he does play that role so goddamn well where you want to see him get humiliated, but a part of it is also because his shit is just that goofy. You can buy that he is some sort of wrestling wizard if you just let yourself go with it, but there is no real immediacy to his violence, like he doesn’t come across as particularly dangerous, aka a man who will snap your arm on a dime, but more of an annoyance, a dude who will writhe and pester you with cheap tricks until you finally just get tired of it and tap out so he’ll leave you alone.

But that is just one interpretation of this whole damn silly thing, and you don’t have to view it through the same lens as I do. If ZSJ makes your dick hard, I am certainly not going to try to debone you. It’s just that I like to fuck someone with a little meat on them, that’s all.

Kazuchika Okada vs Evil

Shit, man, I really wanted Evil to pull this off just like Sanada did and vault into the main event conversation, but in the end, Okada is still Okada, majestic and unwilling to get caught out a second time by the same gang. Still, Evil did his evil best here, including trying to stomp Okada’s entire head through the mat and just flat out chucking a chair into his face because fuck Okada, this is Evil’s town.

But Okada would have none of it, and every time Evil was on the verge of triumph, Okada would slap him back down until finally our poor sweet Evil could not get up again. Okada uber alles I guess, but damn, you don’t have to break a man’s heart like this.

Anyway, Evil will be fine, and I still really feel like he and Sanada are both making that move and one day they will both break out and we’ll have violent times spiced with old begrudges and it will be a beautiful thing to watch. Like I said before, this is just how you keep the wheel turning year after year after blessed year.