G1 Day 13!

 

NJPW G1 CLIMAX 30 - DAY 13


Jeff Cobb vs. Tomohiro Ishii
Well holy shit, this was all kinds of epic. You see, Jeff Cobb's whole thing is that he is extremely powerful. And then there is one Tomohiro Ishii, who is THE toughest son of a gun out there. Putting that out there, out loud, you can already imagine how beautiful it could possibly be. And when it comes to Jeff Cobb vs. Tomohiro Ishii, they delivered just about the best match possible here. Such a great bout all the way through. Cobb looked like a million (& then some) bucks & Ishii's performance was simply masterful with the way he put everything Cobb had to offer over. ****

Taichi vs. Will Ospreay
Felt like a total Ospreay wankfest for the majority of it. I just don't care about those flashy movez he busts out seconds after Taichi hits him with something awesome like his lariat or those kicks. A total yawn, this one was. To sum it up & put it simply, I'd say that there was simply way too much Ospreay on the offense, totally taking me out of the match. I do think the sequence leading up to that OsCutter was legitimately very neat though, and really should've been the finish. But yeah, the true highlight of the overall thing was Milano confessing his love for Ospreay after the match was done. *1/4

Kota Ibushi vs. Minoru Suzuki
They beat the crap out of one another & smiled about it. Extremely enjoyable match. Some nice new ideas to the usual match type, but the highlights of the thing indeed were them just battering each other relentlessly & refusing to go down for another. Good shit. I didn't care for ALL of the forearm trading, because it's such a tired _thing_ in the grand scheme of things, but for the most part, these two were SO nasty with 'em, I couldn't help but to like what I was seeing. ***1/4

Kazuchika Okada vs. Shingo Takagi
I haven't followed this Okada "story" fully (as in I've skipped quite a few of his matches along the way), but this felt like somewhat of a return to form for the man, as this was a very generic, typical Okada big match main event. Extremely forgettable first half or so, with them then kicking the thing into the next gear & having some helluva closing minutes. I thought it was perfectly fine & pretty good, but yeah, nothing standout. Seen the same ol' song n' dance so many times. Thankfully Shingo is a stud of an opponent for Okada so everything in the match at least looked good & the last third or so was indeed some pretty good stuff. Also it didn't feel like it dragged on for eternity, which can be a thing in this kind of matches for most of the time. Okada's submission finish still falls a bit flat, but Shingo's selling of it here was awesome at least. **1/2