NEW JAPAN G1 CLIMAX PRIMER: Lansdell’s full preview of this year’s round-robin tournament including overview of how it works, its history, what to expect this year

For fans of New Japan Pro Wrestling, the Road to WrestleKingdom begins July 20 with the start of G1 Climax 34. This year’s tournament looks to correct some of the wrongs of the last couple of years, cutting much of the chaff and slimming the field down to top names.

What’s a G1 Climax?

A 20-man, multi-week round robin tournament that will ultimately determine who will challenge for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship at the annual WrestleKingdom show on January 4.

Those 20 men are split into two blocks of ten, with each man facing the other nine once. After that, the top 3 from each group move on to the elimination round. The winner of each group gets a bye to the semis, with the second- and third-place wrestlers facing off to determine who goes to the semis. Naturally, the winners of the semis will move on to the final, one from each block, where the winner will be crowned.

Matches are usually one fall with a 30-minute time limit. A win gets you two points, a draw gets you one, and a loss gets you nothing. If two wrestlers are tied on points, their head-to-head result will determine who finishes on top. In more convoluted situations (three-way ties, two people tied who drew in their head-to-head) there is usually a tiebreaker match. It’s worth noting that ties only get broken when they determine who will advance.

In recent years, the winner has carried around a briefcase (or a cloth tote bag, in the case of Tetsuya Naito last year) containing their WrestleKingdom contract. Often they will defend that contract against anyone who might have beaten them in the round robin portion of the tournament.

Seems like a lot of work for a title shot

Compared with winning the Royal Rumble to get that guaranteed WrestleMania shot, it is. The winner will have to wrestle a minimum of ten tournament matches, plus a few more “preview tag” matches, over the course of the 29-day tournament. It works out to about a match every other day for a month.

But there’s a lot more at stake here. There are multiple champions competing in the tournament: World champion Naito, NJPW Strong champion Gabe Kidd, King of Pro Wrestling provisional champion Great-O-Khan, NJPW World TV champion Jeff Cobb, Never Openweight champion Henare, and Global champion David Finlay. Beating any one of those champions typically earns you a title shot after the tournament. Yes, even beating the world champion.

Occasionally this also goes for tag team champions, especially if both members of the team lose to two members of another team. However the tag champs (and the six-man tag champs) do not have their full teams in the tournament this year; Hirooki Goto is a tag team champion and Boltin Oleg is one-third of the six-man champs, but their partners are missing.

Wait, the world champion is in it? What if he wins?

An astute question! As with the World Tag League and Best of the Super Juniors, if the champion wins they get to choose their own opponent for WrestleKingdom. That’s only happened twice, and not since 2000. The reigning champ hasn’t even made the final since 2007.

Can’t it get a bit boring or predictable?

Honestly, in some years it has been. However, the booking of the tournament almost always throws in some upsets, some draws, a few comedy spots (though that might be a little lacking this year, but more on that in a bit), and stories woven throughout.

What kind of stories?

Well there are the obvious ones, like someone losing their first couple of matches and then winning several in a row to have a shot at qualifying on the last night. We’ve seen injury angles, especially in matches with technical wrestlers like ZSJ putting on a hold and their opponent not wanting to tap out. Bad landings and pre-match attacks have also played a part here.

But there have also been more interesting stories. One year, Kazuchika Okada was determined to win with his Money Clip submission instead of the more established Rainmaker. Chase Owens didn’t expect to win many matches, but put everything he had into trying to beat the champion and earn a title shot that way. A multi-year story saw comedic goofball Toru Yano as something of a kryptonite for murder grandpa Minoru Suzuki.

Perhaps the most interesting story was from last year, when the three young stars (Ren Narita, Shota Umino, and Yota Tsuji) fought to a series of draws. Tsuji was able to pick up a win in the last minute against Umino, putting him at the top of the proverbial ladder of the new generation.

So who is in it this year?

This might be the most concentrated G1 in several years, with no real lower-card filler in either group. The decision to drop to 20 competitors (and yes, that is a reduction from 28 in 2022 and 32 last year) has left us with more genuine contenders and an anticipation to see who will be booked to lose some of the marquee matches on offer.

Let’s start in the logical place, with the A block:

Shota Umino

Tetsuya Naito

Shingo Takagi

Sanada

Great O-Khan

Zack Sabre Jr.

Gabe Kidd

Jake Lee

Evil

Callum Newman

This is definitely the more stacked of the two blocks, with two former world champions and the current one all in the mix. The addition of Pro Wrestling Noah’s Jake Lee adds a wrinkle, especially given his ongoing feud with Naito. Jake Lee and Callum Newman are appearing in the tournament for the first time.

While it has less top-tier talent, B block still has some strong names:

El Phantasmo

Hirooki Goto

Yota Tsuji

Yuya Uemura

Jeff Cobb

Henare

David Finlay

Ren Narita

Konosuke Takeshita

Boltin Oleg

Konosuke Takeshita is intriguing here, as AEW traditionally has not sent over big names for these events and New Japan has been notoriously stingy with letting outside talents win many matches in these tournaments. In addition to Takeshita making his G1 debut, it is the first time for Boltin Oleg and Yuya Uemura as well.

Any notable omissions?

You might think that reducing the field to 20, with two outsiders and five debutants, would mean a lot of names are missing out. While there are a couple, the majority of the cuts represent a trimming of the fat more than anything.

The most notable omission is Hiroshi Tanahashi, a multi-time former world champion who has not missed a G1 since 2001. He’s the president of the company, one of its most recognizable faces, and can still put in quality on his best days. He is on the downswing of his career though, and his loss to Oleg in the qualifying tournament helped the young guy far more than it hurt Tanahashi.

In a similar vein. Toru Yano is missing his first G1 since 2006. His absence is more notable because of the lack of comedy spots than for any real quality or threat to win. That said, I have found those matches and his antics to be a nice little palate-cleanser amid the usual NJPW G1 fare. Yano also lost to Oleg in the qualifying tournament, meaning that Oleg beat both of his partners as six-man tag champs to qualify.

Other recognizable names missing out this year are Tomohiro Ishii, Taichi, Yoshi-Hashi, Kenta, and Minoru Suzuki. The first four all lost in the qualifying tournament, while Suzuki seems to finally be ready to take his place in the “seniors circuit” of opening-match multi-man tag matches.

We’ll be back in a few days to break down the competitors in each block and some of the matches to look out for. You can contact me at lansdellicious@gmail.com or on Twitter @lansdellicious. Thanks for stopping by!

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