Secondly, I want to offer my congratulations to Mick Foley for having a crocodile named after him by Terry Irwin. That's awesome, and it's wonderful that Foley has been helping animals so much on top of his work to help people!
Thirdly, I'd like to apologize for cutting Teddy Hart out of last week's post so viciously. I was wrong, and I am sorry. He's totes a Hart, guys. He's Bret's nephew. I need to research stuff better. Also, there's a New Hart Foundation and... uh...
They're really good, guys.
Finally, I'm going to let Mr. Hiromu Takahashi and Mr. Belt tell you the bittersweet news we learned this week in New Japan:
And yes, Hiromu drew that. He also directed it. If you're not having a good time trying to watch this vid on my blog, check it out on YouTube. It's worth it! (You may have some difficulty understanding, since it's in Japanese, and if you're like me, the in-video subtitles, while helpful, can be hard to read on some screens)
It's bittersweet because his reign was so short, but at least he's almost certainly coming back eventually!
Alright, this week's news has been concluded! Let's get down to business.
The 2018 G1 Climax was bananas.
Not only did we get the match that nearly ended Hiromu Takahashi's career (and life!), we saw some of the best work I've seen yet from people like Juice Robinson and the Tongans. And oh boy, the Tongans... they've been running roughshod over everyone. What started as fractious behavior from Cody Rhodes trying to make himself into the new leader of the Bullet Club became an all out civil war between the Tongans (who were founding members of the Bullet Club with Machine Gun Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt, both of whom are now in WWE as Karl Anderson and Finn Bálor) and the current Bullet Club, made up of Chase Owens, Cody Rhodes (I will always give him his father's name), Hangman Page, Kenny Omega, Marty Scurll, Matt & Nick Jackson, and Yujiro Takahashi.
A quick rundown on gimmicks:
- Chase Owens is called the Crown Jewel, which I think is a rib because he's the most mediocre gaijin (foreign wrestler) in New Japan. He's reliable, and he always takes the pin when Bullet Club needs to lose in a lesser match.
- Cody Rhodes (called Cody because Vince McMahon is a dick) is a smarmy douchebag who wants to control the Bullet Club and has been seen in the backstage segments as a manipulator who also wants to run for public office in America. His rivalry with Kenny Omega has been tearing the Bullet Club apart, which has lead to this civil war between the "Elite" and the "OG"
- Hangman Page is a cowboy in-ring, but in the Being The Elite series on YouTube, he's also shown to be slowly going insane because of dick jokes gone much too far. He's also possibly a murderer (having been shown "killing" Famous Dick Wrestler Joey Ryan in a jealous rage over who had the bigger, better "package"). Wrestling is weird.
- Marty Scurll, aka The Villain, is a British wrestler who dresses as a plague doctor coming out to the ring and who is often teased as being one of the smallest members of the current Bullet Club. He's a passionate wrestler and singer, but he's infinitely better in-ring than in-sing, if you catch my drift. Marty is actually a very accessible guy, and outside the ring, he's about as un-villainous as you can get, often championing mental health causes.
- Matt & Nick Jackson are the Young Bucks, ringleaders and megastars of the Elite. Where they go, money follows, because these two are amazing in-ring performers. I'm concerned that they're going to be jumping ship to WWE because they miss their families and that Vince & HHH will treat them terribly in a fit of pique, the way they have most of their New Japan acquisitions. They dress like absolute madmen, sometimes having costumes made entirely out of their own faces or wearing more tassels than the Ultimate Warrior and Macho Man Randy Savage combined. They're the defacto seconds in command in the Bullet Club. They also love to use more superkicks in a single match than Shawn Michaels did in his entire career and it's awesome.
- Yujiro Takahashi, aka the Tokyo Pimp, is right there with Chase for being the group's jobbers (guys who take the loss for the team), but he has much more personality from what I've seen. That's probably because Chase is still a very young man, but Yujiro has been wrestling since 2003 after a long amateur background. I'm now realizing that pretty much everyone in the Bullet Club is very young. Yujiro is only 37, and Hangman's only 27. That's the full range, right there, too. Anyway, as his nickname suggests, Yujiro often comes out to the ring draped in beautiful women who New Japan apparently hires from a strip club. The most famous (or infamous) of these is PIETER Tokyo Latina who often wears a bunny mask out to the ring.
- Kenny Omega is the leader of the Bullet Club, though he has recently rejoined his "Golden Lover" Kota Ibushi to form "The Golden Elite". He's incredible in the ring, and he's a cool guy outside the ring, too. He's also an enormous nerd, which really appeals to me... There are not enough good things to say about his skills - he speaks fluent Japanese, he wrestles like a god, he has a fantastic sense of humor, he has the poise of a model, he has a steel trap mind, and he's an all-around cool guy.
So now that you know the Bullet Club, I can talk about the match that I referenced last week - the Six Man Tag match between the Bullet Club (team of Kenny Omega, Yujiro Takahashi, and Chase Owens) and the Chaos team of Stone Pitbull Tomohiro Ishii, Switchblade Jay White, and Toru Yano. Of the second team, there's only one usual-jobber: Yano. It was pretty clear from the start that the double-jobbered team of the Bullet Club were going to lose, but at least we got to see the Tokyo Latina.
Remember that picture?
— aj (@ffdpbfmv) August 12, 2018
Here's the breakdown:
The six men have gotten together to form a "rowing machine", which is when you grab a guy's legs, spread them really far apart, and then pull them in a rowing motion. It's silly, but that's the tone of the match.
The Bullet Club have the Chaos guys spread open in kind of a starfish pattern, and are doing the rowing machine. Tokyo Latina sees this and seizes her opportunity to get in the ring and get some attention.
She hops into the center of the group and begins gyrating.
Everyone loses their concentration. All pain vanishes. Chase gives her the OK symbol (which is an obscene gesture in Cyprus). Switchblade is openly grinning. Everything is marvelous. Except...
Kenny Omega is frustrated by the whole thing, because honey, there's a MATCH going on and I'm now the only one doing my job!
In the end, everyone's disappointed by Kenny, the only not 100% straight guy in the ring (his own admission is that he's probably bi), who ejects Tokyo Latina from the match.
The morale is so disrupted and low that Chaos wins.
I've got to say, though, that the whole G1 was great!
The Bullet Club OGs (the Tongans and Bone Soldier) would disrupt matches the Bullet Club Elite were having. This got so bad that the new person running NJPW, Harold Meij (the guy who was Senior VP of Coca Cola Japan), had Tama Tonga ejected. Apparently there's some legal action maybe being taken after Tama Tonga was seen littering. Japan is strict. Wrestling is weird.
As for the rest of the G1, the matches were really good, though I'm sorry Juice Robinson didn't win more. He's really come into his own since leaving WWE and his CJ Parker gimmick behind. The whole competition (which is a points-based tournament too complicated for my pea-brain) culminated in three of the best matches I've seen in a while:
And finally, the amazing and heart-stopping match that made our Wrestling & Toy Blog Friendo angry as heck because he is salty about the winner:
The match was intense, insane, and I was begging for both men to ease up by the halfway mark. And then they went harder.
All in all, the G1 this year was a blast. If you ever get the chance to go to one of the shows (and there were shows going from July 14 to August 12 this year), do it! Just be aware that you might be there for longer than you think. The Final match lasted 35 minutes.
In total, the A Block singles matches alone lasted about 10 hours 50 minutes. (My calculations are 10:48:23, but I could have added incorrectly somewhere). The B Block singles matches took about 10:37:50. The Final was, of course, 35 minutes.
My point is, you cannot watch this tournament over the course of a single day. It's inadvisable to try and watch it over the course of a single weekend. Take a few days, watch one or two tournament days every day, and remember to hydrate and eat.
Again, all of these matches, the whole tournament in fact, are on the NJPW website, and you can sign up for their network for cheap. It's not exactly $9.99, but it's a good deal. (It's 999 yen last I checked), and they take PayPal now.
Am I a shill for this company? Kinda. They don't pay me, and they don't know I exist, but I love them. I love the wrestlers, I love the direction they're headed, and I love that I get to go see some of them this year! They'll be right in my home state doing a joint show with Ring of Honor (another company I love to follow).
I think that's got to be all from me. I've been up since 10am and haven't eaten yet. It's almost 2pm. Hm.
I'll let you go now :)
Go Enjoy Something!
FC
The six men have gotten together to form a "rowing machine", which is when you grab a guy's legs, spread them really far apart, and then pull them in a rowing motion. It's silly, but that's the tone of the match.
The Bullet Club have the Chaos guys spread open in kind of a starfish pattern, and are doing the rowing machine. Tokyo Latina sees this and seizes her opportunity to get in the ring and get some attention.
She hops into the center of the group and begins gyrating.
Everyone loses their concentration. All pain vanishes. Chase gives her the OK symbol (which is an obscene gesture in Cyprus). Switchblade is openly grinning. Everything is marvelous. Except...
Kenny Omega is frustrated by the whole thing, because honey, there's a MATCH going on and I'm now the only one doing my job!
In the end, everyone's disappointed by Kenny, the only not 100% straight guy in the ring (his own admission is that he's probably bi), who ejects Tokyo Latina from the match.
The morale is so disrupted and low that Chaos wins.
I've got to say, though, that the whole G1 was great!
The Bullet Club OGs (the Tongans and Bone Soldier) would disrupt matches the Bullet Club Elite were having. This got so bad that the new person running NJPW, Harold Meij (the guy who was Senior VP of Coca Cola Japan), had Tama Tonga ejected. Apparently there's some legal action maybe being taken after Tama Tonga was seen littering. Japan is strict. Wrestling is weird.
As for the rest of the G1, the matches were really good, though I'm sorry Juice Robinson didn't win more. He's really come into his own since leaving WWE and his CJ Parker gimmick behind. The whole competition (which is a points-based tournament too complicated for my pea-brain) culminated in three of the best matches I've seen in a while:
 |
| A-Block Final was Tanahashi vs Okada. Tanahashi wins! |
 |
| B-Block Final was the heartbreaking match of Golden Lover vs Golden Lover. Kenny Omega vs Kota Ibushi. Ibushi wins, but they seem ok with each other. |
 |
| Tanahashi vs Ibushi. Ibushi, sadly, did not win. But daaaaaaaaamn what a show! |
All in all, the G1 this year was a blast. If you ever get the chance to go to one of the shows (and there were shows going from July 14 to August 12 this year), do it! Just be aware that you might be there for longer than you think. The Final match lasted 35 minutes.
In total, the A Block singles matches alone lasted about 10 hours 50 minutes. (My calculations are 10:48:23, but I could have added incorrectly somewhere). The B Block singles matches took about 10:37:50. The Final was, of course, 35 minutes.
My point is, you cannot watch this tournament over the course of a single day. It's inadvisable to try and watch it over the course of a single weekend. Take a few days, watch one or two tournament days every day, and remember to hydrate and eat.
Again, all of these matches, the whole tournament in fact, are on the NJPW website, and you can sign up for their network for cheap. It's not exactly $9.99, but it's a good deal. (It's 999 yen last I checked), and they take PayPal now.
Am I a shill for this company? Kinda. They don't pay me, and they don't know I exist, but I love them. I love the wrestlers, I love the direction they're headed, and I love that I get to go see some of them this year! They'll be right in my home state doing a joint show with Ring of Honor (another company I love to follow).
I think that's got to be all from me. I've been up since 10am and haven't eaten yet. It's almost 2pm. Hm.
I'll let you go now :)
Go Enjoy Something!
FC
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