asteroidcitizen

I did not like this match at all. A real compendium of all the flaws of the NJPW main event style in 2018 (with the exception of it coming in under thirty minutes, I guess). It was athletically impressive, but so much of it made no sense. Sanada works the knee, but Ibushi barely sells it, and then just carries on doing his crazy springboard moves (as Nivvad says, this comes as a surprise to absolutely noone, but it's actually worse when you're expecting it before it happens); Sanada on at least two separate occasions does a moonsault as a transition into the dragon sleeper, to the audible bafflement of the crowd; the grappling early on felt like killing time, with no urgency or sense of purpose (and coming right off the back of Sanada's great match with ZSJ it's harder to forgive). And then down the stretch we get all the usual hyper-speed reversals, nearfalls, strike exchanges, etc., and maybe it's the G1 burnout talking but I found it completely formulaic and impossible to care about any of it.

This has probably overtaken Suzuki vs. Tanahashi as my match of the tournament so far. It managed to avoid all the issues I had with Ishii's underwhelming match with Naito, despite being somewhat similar - it felt tighter, more intense, and much more violent, despite both matches being roughly the same length. Ishii's selling is hit or miss for me, but when he's on he's very good, and he was on here for sure - and it didn't hurt that (apart from a few weak forearms early) everything looked like it was doing some real damage. Ultimately it was nothing we haven't really seen before from these guys, but at the same time it's also pretty much the only match so far in this G1 (except for maybe Tanahashi/Suzuki) that I'm likely to remember once the tournament is over - and even go back for another watch - and that does count for something.

This was MOTN on what was probably the best night of the G1 so far. Those countout teases, which have come to feel very formulaic in NJPW, really worked, and ZSJ's growing frustration made for a very engaging story. Yano, as ever, has the best nearfalls in the business, and the whole thing peaked at the right time. A top five match of the tournament, as of night four.

While I'm lower than most on the Ishii/Naito match, I seem to be higher than a lot of people (except for Meltzer) on this one. Yes, Omega was being goofier than he's been recently, and Goto doesn't do much for me outside of certain contexts (e.g. vs. Shibata or Suzuki), but I thought this was a fun, engaging match that did a few things you don't really see in NJPW main events (the fighting into the stands), and never dragged. I wouldn't say it was a high-end MOTYC - or even approaching that level - but it was a really fun match with some nice memorable moments.

I'm a low voter on this one - I found it very unengaging for pretty much the first two-thirds of the match, outside of a few cool moments (I did like Naito spitting at Ishii while he was getting chopped), perhaps because I'm a bit burned out on Ishii matches that are built around strike exchanges and no-selling. In the context of a 10-12 minute sprint, sure - but this one dragged. They kicked it up down the stretch, but even then there was a lot of sequences that felt very choreographed, and even more no-selling, which, while it can be fun, causes me to kinda switch off at a certain point. I can enjoy the performance, but it's just a performance. Overall, I'd still say it was a decent match, but if I were giving stars out I'd struggle to go over ***.

This was a great match, felt like a breath of fresh air coming after two quite generic matches on night three. I loved them just beating on each other right out of the gate, and the stuff on the outside felt very chaotic and violent. It wasn't quite as good as their match at the Anniversary show - I was hoping for another of Suzuki's spectacular dropkicks, and it probably went a little long before Makabe made his comeback - but it was great fun to watch and probably in my top three for the tournament so far alongside Suzuki/Tanahashi and ZSJ/Ibushi.

There were things I liked about this, and for the first half Tanahashi was doing an absolutely heroic job trying to trade on his beloved status to get White over - him stumbling backwards and falling into the corner after landing on his worked-over knee drew an audible gasp - and White, for his part, was generally looking focused and heeling it up well, though he did seem a bit lost at points, and did that irritating thing of doing a spot, getting a pop for it, and so doing it twice more to diminishing returns. And then it sort of takes a turn (as I felt that White's match with Okada did) to him suddenly forgetting about the knee so he could start hitting his big moves and dropping Tanahashi on his head a bunch of times - a saito suplex on the outside (I'm really not digging him doing this every single match), a half-nelson suplex, and a deadlift german that looked like it about killed him. It all felt like it just had to be there because he's got his big moves and he's got to use them even when it doesn't really make sense. And from there, again, another weird turn to him deciding to cheat - again, as though, because he's the guy who cheats his way through the tournament, he's just gonna do it regardless of if there's any logic to it. As in the Okada match, the shenanigans were too convoluted with the multiple ref bumps, and overall the finish came off flat. So yeah, I know some people have turned around on Jay White with his first two matches in this G1, but I'm not seeing it at all. I will grant that he's looking a bit more comfortable and doing some nice things when working on top, but he has a bunch of bad habits in terms of just doing stuff to try and get a reaction, and the OTT bullshit finishes haven't helped.

As some others have said, this felt like two guys doing a bunch of stuff without much rhyme or reason to it. Some of it looked cool and it was overall entertaining, but it really did come off as just a series of "sequences" or "exchanges" lined up in a row, and they ran through them in order. Overall it was perfectly diverting but I didn't care about any of it.

This was a good match, even very good, but not a great one. I enjoyed them trying to piss each other off in the early going, and Omega's back work was pretty good, but there was a good five minutes in the middle where it was just kinda there, the usual back-and-forth stuff without any real sense of focus or direction, before they hit their stride again in the last few minutes, which were really enjoyable. Not MOTY level for me, but certainly sitting just behind Tana/Suzuki and Ibushi/ZSJ in terms of the top matches of the tournament so far.

This was fine, kinda meandering back-and-forth stuff for the most part but I did think they got some good drama going down the stretch with some nice reversals that didn't look too contrived. Nothing I'll remember by the end of the first week, though.

This, much like the main event, was a very good match that went a bit too long - though in this case I thought it was the finishing stretch that felt a bit drawn out and convoluted. It also seemed a shame that Ibushi never really felt in any danger of submitting - obviously ZSJ working the knee helped him avoid Ibushi's finish, which was cool, but considering how their NJ Cup went I think they could have made a lot more out of the holds towards the end. Those are relatively minor things though, and this is probably second to Tana/Suzuki for my favourite of the tournament so far.

This was great - add my vote in for the length really helping it. It felt very focused, kept a great intensity throughout, and peaked at the right time with that great slap battle leading straight into the finish. These are the kind of matches I want to see in the G1, and that seem to have become rarer in the last few years. Also, Suzuki's sell on that dragon screw near the end was phenomenal.

I actively disliked a lot of things about this match, though there were a few nice things in there, particularly early on. White does some nice heel work at various points, but has some bad habits in terms of just doing flashy moves for no real reason - like in the Juice match, I felt he lost focus as the match went on. The finish was convoluted and silly, and yet another case of NJPW making its refs look dumb, and the whole thing came off as flat when it should have been a big moment - didn't help that the whole thing went too long. I thought Okada was generally quite good here, which helped save it from being outright bad, but overall I thought this was a below average match.

Enjoyable match, though I wouldn't go as high as many others. I really liked the way they used the stipulation - lots of inventive stuff using the stairs and the announce table, but also at the same time stuff that seemed quite natural (shame about the crowd being vocally disappointed that they didn't start smashing tables). Even the spanish fly, which is an inherently contrived move (and way overused right now, for my money), was incorporated in this very smooth way. The superplex off the stairs was a great visual and very unique. Having said all that, it did feel a bit overlong to me, and went for the "shocked face after kickout > this is awesome chant" thing a bit too much towards the end, which then resulted in what was a pretty cool finish feeling oddly underwhelming and sudden. It can be a problem, when you do so much stuff, to have the finish stand out from all the things that have been kicked out of already in the match. But yes, definitely more enjoyable than a lot of WWE gimmick matches in the last few years which, for me, have tended far too much towards the contrived stunt-show end of the spectrum.

I loved this, possibly top five for the year for me. Hideki was a major discovery for me last year, but I've not seen anything of his in 2018 - and it seems that for a lot of people he's been disappointing. This, however, was incredible - a very simple teacher/student set-up with Hideki dominating early, though not really able to pin Nomura down. And then when Nomura does suddenly get a few shots in, it's phenomenal - Hideki seems to almost panic, covering up and hitting the mat trying to avoid the strikes, and there's a real surge of excitement for something so simple and direct, with the sense that we might get a big upset. The ending, which may be offputting for some, I loved - Nomura had his chance, couldn't get it done, and then all it took was one opening for Hideki to put him down - and the fact that the crowd knew this was a possibility was what had them going crazy for each small shift of momentum. I've seen people saying this was too short, or that it would have been a great match if it were longer. This is probably a discussion for a different time, but I find that notion very weird, and quite telling in terms of the broad model of what a great match is in 2018 - a model that I think needs challenging. To me, this was pretty much perfect as it was - what they did only worked because it was this length, because the finish could come out of nowhere, and because everything counted. Not to say that there's no place for a good epic, just that there's no reason for that to be the standard to which all great wrestling must aspire.

I enjoyed this match enormously - much more so than I expected given that, as with a lot of people who have been talking about this match in the last few days, I'm not generally interested in deathmatch wrestling. I often find (based on occasional, cursory viewing) that they oddly don't have a real sense of violence or danger to them - largely because they seem very collaborative, with the competitors working together to set up the big spots. So you have this strange sensation that something which, in actual fact, is risky and painful, doesn't seem so - whereas my favourite matches are often the opposite, where basic, relatively safe things are made to seem brutal. This largely avoided that problem - I particularly loved Kodaka launching the chair at Takeda's head when he wasn't able to unfold it properly as he set up the glass pane, rather than just carrying on and taking ages to set the spot up while Takeda waited. And generally it felt very intense and aggressive throughout. Some of the visuals were extraordinary, and the superplex from the ladder onto a canvas now liberally covered in broken glass will stay with me for sure (again, unlike a lot of dangerous/painful deathmatch bumps, which are forgotten even before the match is over). But I do have to say I'm one of those people klhare mentioned who is put off by the no-selling near the end - that knee drop from the ladder by Kodaka looked absolutely devastating, and I found it immersion-breaking to see Takeda up doing a quick back-and-forth sequence moments later. It wasn't even a question of believability so much as thinking that it must have been seriously painful to take the move, so why move on so quickly and get so little out of it? Overall, though, I liked this far more than most deathmatches I've seen in recent years (which, again, is not many), and will probably be rewatching to see if it gets better when I'm more in tune with the logic and expectations of that kind of match. Definitely going to catch the December Takeda/Takahashi match, too, which I've been hearing about for a long time