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What’s the story?
New Japan Pro Wrestling’s 28th edition of the G1 Climax started off in the most surprising way possible with two massive upsets on the very first night of the one month long tournament.
In case you didn’t know…
The G1 (Grade-One) Climax is an annual tournament which is held every year in the month of August by New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Despite being held as a single-elimination tournament, the G1 is currently held in a round-robin system, with the winners of the two blocks (Block A and Block B) squaring off in the finals to determine the eventual winner of the tournament.
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The winner of the G1 Climax is awarded a shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at NJPW’s biggest event of the year.
The Wrestle Kingdom and past winners have already included the likes of Kenny Omega, Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tetsuya Naito and legends such as Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, and Andre The Giant have also won this prestigious tournament.
The heart of the matter
The first night of the G1 28 kicked-off with former winner Togi Makabe picking up a win over Yoshi-Hashi and former IWGP Intercontinental Champion Michael Elgin scoring first win over Evil.
However, the heated drama of the night eventually started to unfold during the first Bullet Club showdown of the evening between Bad Luck Fale and Hangman Page, who made his G1 debut on the night.
Page and Fale’s showdown ended in a rather more unusual manner as The Guerrillas of Destiny ran in and attacked Page, which led to a DQ finish, as Page picked up his first points and win in the G1 Climax.
Later on in the night, Hiroshi Tanahashi also got off to a flying start in this year’s G1 after avenging his previous IWGP IC Title loss against Minoru Suzuki, in what was indeed a very shocking win for ‘The Ace’.
However, the biggest surprise of the night was arguably the main event of the evening as CHAOS stablemates Kazuchika Okada and Jay White squared-off against each other in an intense one-on-one match.
White who is competing in his first G1, has been rather keen on splitting up CHAOS ever since joining the stable, the former IWGP US Champion has now gotten off to a perfect start in the G1 Climax as he picked up a huge win over former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada, who still hasn’t picked up pinfall victory ever since losing his title belt to Kenny Omega at Dominion 6.9.
What’s next?
The second night of G1 28 takes place later today as we get set for another set of mouthwatering clashes as Zack Sabre Jr. goes one-on-one against Kota Ibushi and Kenny Omega squares-off in a G1 27 rematch against Tetsuya Naito.
Who do you think will win G1 Climax 28? Have your say in the comments.
