Day 12; a 1-match -show

Tama Tonga vs. Tomohiro Ishii

Some very dull work by Tama on top, but Ishii's comebacks & overall all the times on the offense were absolutely tremendous. A solid carryjob from the man. **

Juice Robinson vs. SANADA

Very odd structure, with them starting with the classic "we're equals" back & forth shtick, but they actually went with that all the way through. I don't think it worked too well with this pairing, as there were more than a few awkward looking sequences, but the match definitely wasn't bad overall - just very, very, very forgettable. **

Tetsuya Naito vs. Toru Yano

Pretty disappointing in all honesty. Toru Yano has been great all G1 long, and Naito is Naito, and with their characters I thought this one would be very fun, but sadly the end result was very different than what I had imagined. Much like Tama/Ishii & Juice/SANADA, this wasn't bad, but it was something that I won't remember in a few months. **

Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr.

The battle between the best bout machine & Kenny Omega was one of the most exciting looking G1 match ups in this year's tourney, and they delivered one of the best matches of the whole thing. They told the story of Zack's dangerous ground game vs. Omega's superior power & flips wonderfully; it went on for about 15 minutes, and that was the absolute perfect length for it. If it went on longer, I could see myself getting annoyed by Kenny's selling of the work on his injured foot by Zack, but here I thought that even though he was still running around doing his thing, he employed the idea of "I can't show him that I'm hurting really bad" very well. ****

Hirooki Goto vs. Kota Ibushi

As dry, dull, boring & soulless as a match between Hirooki Goto & Kota Ibushi could be. Even the finishing stretch was very tame by NJPW standards. Just nothing interesting or good about this one; too long, uninteresting pace - just an absolute bore all around. Really wish we could've got a midcard smackfest between them instead. *