We’re chugging along with night five of the G1, held in Fukushima. Here are the results from this morning’s show:
YOSHI-HASHI defeated David Finlay with the butterfly lock. That seems to be his new submission finish.
Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi, Jushin Thunder Liger, Satoshi Kojima, & Katsuyori Shibata defeated Ryusuke Taguchi, Tiger Mask, Juice Robinson, KUSHIDA, & Michael Elgin after Kojima pinned Robinson with the lariat.
Yujiro Takahashi & Kenny Omega defeated Captain New Japan & Tomoaki Honma after Takahashi pinned, who else, Captain New Japan with a DDT.
EVIL, BUSHI, & Tetsuya Naito defeated Katsuhiko Nakajima, Gedo, & Toru Yano after BUSHI pinned Gedo with the codebreaker.
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Bad Luck Fale
Fale’s new gimmick before every match is to shove the announcer down for no reason. Not very nice. The size difference here is huge too. I’ve never even considered Ishii on the smaller side until now! It did make the visual cooler when Ishii gave Fale a giant German suplex.
It was a nice back and forth match. Fale is obviously limited but they did a good job of making this a pretty solid match, not great but Ishii did a good job of selling and making Fale look dangerous. Ishii got the win with a giant brainbuster.
SANADA vs. Togi Makabe
SANADA took it into the crowd early, brawling and using weapons. SANADA looked very good here, spot on with everything he did. Pretty good back and forth match once it got back in the ring, but nothing totally special. Makabe got the win with the Spider German and the King Kong knee drop.
Naomichi Marufuji vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan
Another good match. People are into the Tenzan gimmick of this being his last G1. They did a brawling spot outside the ring. Why do they need to do that two matches in a row?
Tenzan missed the moonsault he has won previous matches with and Marufuji fired a comeback. Tenzan countered with headbutts, but Marufuji laid him out with kicks then pinned him with the Shiranui.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tama Tonga
I haven’t been too into Tama Tonga in this tournament, but he did good with Tanahashi here. They had a very nice back and forth match even though Tanahashi still isn’t at 100%.
Tanahashi hit the High Fly Flow, but Tonga blocked it with his knees. Tonga then hit the Gun Stun and pinned Tanahashi clean. The crowd DIED after seeing this. It wasn’t just that Tanahashi lost, but he lost clean out to nowhere, and to Tonga of all people. That was a gigantic upset.
Tanahashi was not too happy with the result after the match, obviously, yelling out loud as he was making his exit.
Hirooki Goto vs. Kazuchika Okada
It’s hard to get into this match considering I’ve seen these two face each other for what seems like years, but both are great enough workers that this match caught my interest pretty quickly. Okada did a huge crossbody dive over the guardrail, sending Goto into the chairs.
They went into back and forth mode from there, and it was great. Very intense match with the crowd into it all the way. Okada tried to sneak his way into a Rainmaker but Goto countered with a headbutt. Goto tried for the GTR but Okada countered with the tombstone. Goto ate the Rainmaker and that’s it! Great match with a lot of heat.
Seems to me that the tournament this year will have a lot of good, not great matches. That was the theme of tonight’s show, but the main event was really good.