G1 Climax 24 - Day 8

G1 Climax 24

(2014/8/3)

1.      Block A: Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Tomohiro Ishii

The winning crowd pleasing Gedo & Jado formula of booking Ishii in opening matches to warm up the crowds is fruitful, as this was another damn good opener. An Ishii sprint, through and through. Oh, and Davey Boy wasn’t bad either, credit where credit is due. Unfortunately, Ishii dislocated his shoulder here, hopefully he’s okay.

***3/4

2.      Block B: Toru Yano vs. vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan

Similar to Yano/Archer, where Yano’s cheating tactics backfired in a fun fashion. Not as good, but still passable, and Tenzan winning by submission made me a very happy camper. Go Tenzan!

**

3.      Block A: Shelton Benjamin vs. Yuji Nagata

These two had a borderline great match last year, and this one was no exception. Awesome mixture of heavy smacking and gnarly holds, I really dug it, not to mention this was a second match in a row ending by submission, fuck yes. That poor commentator (Iizuka’s regular victim) went nuts on commentary, by the way.

***3/4

4.      Block A: Doc Gallows vs. Satoshi Kojima

Basic, simple, fast, good, with a cool finish… joy everywhere. From what I see around the web, I’m one of the rare people liking Doc’s G1 work. What’s wrong with everyone? Dude’s good, he was also really good here, I’m very into his rough traditional American brawling style. Check this match.

***1/2

5.      Block B: Tetsuya Naito vs. Hirooki Goto

Very good match, worked mostly in back-and-forth pace, everything was smooth and slick except for that one clunky Goto moment (hey, what else is new?), the crowd was into the match, with a split support, but only until Naito decided to enter the Tanahashi mode by not giving Goto a clean break and heeling up for awhile. Sweet stuff all around.

***1/2

6.      Block B: AJ Styles vs. Lance Archer

AJ’s glorious G1 run continues with this very good match. What was so good about this is that they never abandoned the big guy vs. small guy story, you could feel throughout entire match you’re watching power vs. speed, and it was so sweet. Nice legwork by AJ, his strategy was to ground Archer, because there’s no way he hits him with the Styles Clash, and it had a nice, effective payoff at the very end. I really dug this.

***3/4

7.      Block B: Minoru Suzuki vs. Togi Makabe

I’ll be honest here, I didn’t really feel or get the match on the first viewing, but then I decided to give it some fresh eyes, and it’s bloody great. It starts off as a solid brawl, but then it goes in the limbwork zone down the road, and gets better, and better, and better. Watching Makabe kneading Suzuki’s leg was kind of surreal, such an interesting twist that was, and it led to yet another excellent finishing stretch by MiSu, fuck yes, this was great.

****

8.      Block A: Katsuyori Shibata vs. Tomoaki Honma

Eh, you know it already, fantastic match, yada-yada-yada… rough as fuck, etc. Not as high-end as Shibata/Ishii, but close enough. Honma’s babyface/underdog aura is just majestic, and Shibata was knocking the shit out of him, smashing stuff. Seriously though, he was basically throwing kitchen sinks at him for 10+ minutes.

****1/2

9.      Block B: Yujiro Takahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada

Yujiro is the guy who betrayed Okada, CHAOS and entire puroresu in Fukuoka three months ago when he cost Okada the title and joined Bullet Club, he also interfered into his matches few more times. Naturally, this was supposed to be a heated, full throttle war, but it wasn’t. I mean, it was, by not on the epic scale I was expecting. Okada got his partial revenge, he beat Yujiro, but I don’t know… I guess I wanted more mayhem and punishment. Don’t get me wrong, the match was good, but needed to be better. Funny thing about Yujiro, he seems to be better in matches against wrestlers with whom he has no direct beef with, huh.

***1/4

10.  Block A: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

Hot crowd, nice callbacks to the previous matches, teases, taunts, tremendous pacing, natural and organic flow, charisma galore, clever finish… Just another day in office for these two, they make it seem so easy, it was a beautiful match.

****1/2

It has become a very redundant and repetitive thing to say, but this was another really fun show.