Note: some aspects of this piece have previously been noted in a series of articles I wrote for the site last year, which itself was an extension of my ludicrously long and sloppily brazen essay for the 2019 ebook. While they are technically rewritten and rephrased, there are some redundancies, for which I apologize. I also apologize for writing articles and reviews so intolerably prolonged and messy that Rich canceled the ebook forever. Sorry about that.

A Celebration of the Expected and the Narrowly Defined

In wrestling, predictability works until it doesn’t. New Japan Pro Wrestling was, at least when it came to booking the G1 Climax, a predictable company. Now they are not. 2020 was the crashing wave that toppled that intricate sandcastle, that refuge, that cozy memory that provided comfort to wrestling fandom.

From 2015 to 2019, the G1 Climax had predictable options for final decision points, like all proper and decent professional wrestling should be. Potential G1 Climax winners could always be narrowed down to a select oligarchy of workers, and from that foreseeable group, one could start the real discriminating analysis. Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada were the established, monolithic permanent members, while Naito forced his way into permanent status. That reliable triumvirate allowed the Omega’s, the White’s, and the Ibushi’s to burst forth and occupy rotating positions.

Power comes from concentration. In a large number of these goddamn isekai light novels and anime, of the endless goddamn isekai light novels and anime (each one more derivatively jejune than the last, to the point that the genre is now driven by subversion of the genre), a common trope finds the Earnest Overpowered Main Character Fuckface giving actual names to the overlooked and exploited, and from that method amassing a formidable coterie of companions. The point: whereas before these poor creatures were once aimless, amorphous, shapeless, cursed by a boundless existence, the Earnest Overpowered Main Character Fuckface unlocked their potential by narrowing their scope of existence. In short, they attain an identity. The ability to be defined concentrates one’s strength. Polymaths can get fucked. Parity is a scourge.

G1 Booking, by reliably narrowing the field of legitimate contenders, actually amplified the intrigue, stress, and animus inherent in the analysis of the tournament. Because things were definable, they were explorable. There were robust opportunities to analyze, evaluate, and define both the wrestlers in the G1 Climax and the G1 Climax itself. And, because fundamental aspects of the tournament were so formidably established, the debate could be vigorous in the lead-up, during its laborious timeframe, and in its aftermath.

Debate was centered upon the wrestlers and the results, not trying to decipher process. One could look at the final night and backwards orient the entire goddamn tournament. Were Gedo and Jado booking this, or Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, am I right? There was a direct connection between who main evented a block final night and cumulative card placement (that is, who accumulates the most main events and semi-main events, both in their block and overall, between the two blocks). The two wrestlers in the block with the strongest booking would meet on the final night, and the winner of that match would win the block. It was simple and accessible.

It fucking was. These notions and patterns were obliterated in 2020. The established, clockwork booking trends of 2015-2019, five straight years of reliability and accessibility were completely discarded. The idea that each block would, ultimately, be contested between the wrestler with the most main events in the block and the person with the most semi-main events in the block: dissolved in acid. We lost something there, and what we gained, if we gained, is inchoate.

Patterns of Booking in the G1 Climax, 2015-2019

The gist is this:

  1. From 2015-2019, the person who had the most overall semi-main events in that year’s G1 always won their block. Five out of five times.
  2. From 2015-2019, the main event of every block final night was between the person with the most main events in that block versus the person with the most semi-main events in that block. Ten out of ten opportunities.
  3. Thus, the two strongest booked competitors in each block always faced off in the block final main event.

There are even some wrinkles beyond that:

  • From 2015-2019, the person with the most semi-main events in the entire tournament (or someone tied for most semi-main events) always won their block.
  • In three out of the five G1 Climaxes from 2015-2019, the #1 in main events overall and the #1 in semi-main events over (or, at least, tied for #1) were from the same block.
  • The #1 and #2 in main events have always come from different blocks. The #1 has always been clear, with ties for #2 between wrestlers that came from the same block.
  • The #1 and #2 in semi-main events, or those tied for #1 in semi-main events) always came from different blocks, except for 2015 where there was a three way tie for #1 (Togi Makabe and AJ Styles both from the A Block, guitar accessory Shinsuke Nakamura from the B Block)

Card Placement and Block Final Main Events, 2015-2020

For the sake of being thorough, this is what the final night booking actually looked like in each G1 Climax since 2015. We use 2015 as the starting point, obviously, as that was the year the tournament switched to the current 19-date, one-block-per-night schedule. The schedule that has undoubtedly ended numerous personal and professional relationships and prevented countless relationships from forming. Every time the G1 starts, a Run Lola Run picture montage runs of all the joyous moments, fulfilling promotions, and blissful sex that you would have had if they just maintained the two-blocks-a-night schedule.

Haha, just kidding; we all suck.

Anyway, a look at the connection between block final main eventers and cumulative card placements:

  • 2015:
    • A Block
      • Hiroshi Tanahashi had the most main events in the A Block and in the entire tournament (7).
      • AJ Styles was tied for the most semi-main events in the A Block and was tied for the most semi-main events in the entire tournament (4).
      • Main Event of A Block Final Night: Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated AJ Styles to win the A Block outright (14 points).
    • B Block
      • Kazuchika Okada, had the most main events in the B Block and 2nd most main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Shinsuke Nakamura had the most semi-main events in B Block and was tied for the most semi-main events in the entire tournament (4).
      • Main Event of B-Block Final Night: Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Kazuchika Okada to win the B Block (tied with 14 points, Nakamura won by head-to-head tiebreaker)
    • G1 Climax 25 Final: Hiroshi Tanahashi, who had the most main events in the 2015 G1 Climax, defeated Shinsuke Nakamura, who was tied for the most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 25.
  • 2016:
    • A Block
      • Hiroshi Tanahashi had the most main event in the A Block and 2nd most main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Kazuchika Okada had the most semi-main events in A Block and was tied for the most semi-main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Main Event of A-Block Final Night: Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada wrestled to a time limit draw. Improbably, Hirooki Goto (Tied for 3rd most main events in the A Block, tied for 4th most main events in the entire tournament) moved on to the G1 Climax 26 Final.
    • B Block
      • Tetsuya Naito had the most main events in the B Block and in the entire tournament (6).
      • Kenny Omega had the most semi-main events in B Block and was tied for the most semi-main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Main Event of B-Block Final Night: Kenny Omega defeated Tetsuya Naito to win the B Block (tied with 12 points, Omega won by head-to-head tiebreaker).
    • G1 Climax 26 Final: Kenny Omega, who was tied for the most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 26, defeated Hirooki Goto. Goto had nothing noteworthy regarding his card placement (from 1 to 5: 0-3-2-1-3).
  • 2017
    • A Block
      • Hiroshi Tanahashi had the most main events in the A Block and the 2nd most main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Tetsuya Naito had the most semi-main events in A Block and the 2nd most semi-main events in the entire tournament (4).
      • Main Event of A-Block Final Night: Tetsuya Naito defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the A Block outright (14 points).
    • B Block
      • Kazuchika Okada had the most main events in the B Block and in the entire tournament (6).
      • Kenny Omega had the most semi-main events in the B block and in the entire tournament (5).
      • Main Event of B-Block Final Night: Kenny Omega defeated Kazuchika Okada to win the B Block outright (14 points).
    • G1 Climax 27: Tetsuya Naito, who had the 2nd most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 27 defeated Kenny Omega, who had the most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 27
  • 2018:
    • A Block
      • Kazuchika Okada had the most main events in the A Block and in the entire tournament (8!).
      • Hiroshi Tanahashi had the most semi-main events in the A Block and in the entire tournament (7!).
      • Main Event of A-Block Final Night: Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada wrestled to a time limit draw. Tanahashi won the A Block outright (15 points).
    • B Block
      • Kota Ibushi was tied for most main events in the B Block and the 2nd most main events in the entire tournament (4).
      • Kenny Omega had the most semi-main events in the B block and the 2nd most semi-main events in the entire tournament (5). He also was tied for the most main events in the B Block and the 2nd most main events in the entire tournament (4).
      • Main Event of B-Block Final Night: Kota Ibushi defeated Kenny Omega to win the B Block (tied with 12 points, Ibushi won by head-to-head tiebreakers over Kenny Omega, Tetsuya Naito, and Zack Sabre Jr.).
    • G1 Climax 28: Hiroshi Tanahashi, who had the most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 28, defeated Kota Ibushi, who was tied for the 2nd most main events in the G1 Climax 28.
  • 2019:
    • A Block
      • Kazuchika Okada, had the most main events in the A Block and in the entire tournament (6).
      • Kota Ibushi had the most semi-main events in the A block and the 2nd most semi-main events in the entire tournament (5).
      • Main Event of A-Block Final Night: Kota Ibushi defeated Kazuchika Okada to win the A Block (tied with 14 points, Ibushi won by head-to-head tiebreaker).
    • B Block
      • Tetsuya Naito had the most main events in the B Block and 2nd most in the entire tournament (5).
      • Jay White had the most semi-main events in the B Block and in the entire tournament (6).
      • Main Event of B-Block Final Night: Jay White defeated Tetsuya Naito to win the B Block outright (12 points).
    • G1 Climax 29: Kota Ibushi, who had the 2nd most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 29, defeated Jay White, who had the most semi-main events in the G1 Climax 29.
  • 2020:
    • A Block
      • Kota Ibushi had the most main events in the A Block and the 2nd most in the entire tournament (4).
      • Jay White had the most semi-main events in the A Block and the 2nd most in the entire tournament (4).
      • Main Event of A Block Final Night: Tomohiro Ishii defeated Jay White. Ishii was tied for 3rd most main events in the A Block (tied for5th overall in the entire tournament) and tied for 4th in semi-main events in the A Block (tied for 6th overall in the entire tournament. Because of White’s loss, Kota Ibushi won the block outright (14 points)
    • B Block
      • Tetsuya Naito had the most main events in the A Block and in the entire tournament (5).
      • EVIL had the most semi-main events in the A block and in the entire tournament (5).
      • Main Event of B Block Final Night: SANADA defeated EVIL to win the B Block (tied with 12 points, SANADA won by head-to-head tiebreakers over both EVIL and Tetsuya Naito). SANADA was tied for 3rd most main events in B Block (tied for 5th overall in the entire tournament) and was 10th in semi-main events in the B Block (tied for 17th overall in the entire tournament).
    • G1 Climax 30: Kota Ibushi, who had the 2nd most main events in G1 Climax 30, defeated SANADA. SANADA had nothing noteworthy regarding his card placement (from 1 to 5: 2-2-2-0-3).

To sum this up: everything was good and decent and contentedly uncomplicated professional wrestling from 2015-2019, and then 2020 was fucking nonsense. And it was a torturous experience, to boot; we knew that from the day the cards were revealed, which was essentially the driving point of my articles last year. It was jarring to experience, slowly progressing towards the final nights, fully aware that pain awaited. Or rather, EVIL vs. SANADA awaited us, and we were dreading it the whole way. This was not exactly Sydney Carton bravely facing la guillotine at the end of A Tale of Two Cities. 

Ultimately, it was not as painful as it could have been. The B Block was fairly straightforward even if SANADA, by his booking, had absolutely no reason being in a block final. As has happened almost every single time since 2010, the winner of the block final main event won the block; SANADA defeated EVIL, the manifestation of everything discouraging and deflating about this company. SANADA moved on.

Jay White vs. Tomohiro Ishii was, on paper, a less drastic abrogation of what worked in the past. By the booking patterns of 2015-2019 that had been established and successful, the A Block Final main event should have been Jay White vs. either Okada or Ibushi. But they didn’t really run from success too badly in this one, considering how frantically they sprinted away from previously successful methods most of 2020.

Ishii was in the top five for both main events and semi-main events. Not traditional, but still a decent opponent for Jay White on the final night. Easy. Of course, being pandemic era New Japan, they had to overthink something. In this case, they balanced the sensibility of White vs. Ishii by offering a heedlessly elaborate result. Instead of Jay White just winning the match to win the block, White lost. Because of that, Kota Ibushi passively won the block on tiebreakers.

Gedo and the Bald Junior Tag Team Specialist Booking Consortium had two paths to choose going into the 2021 G1 Climax: treat 2020 as a novel concept amidst a pandemic and return to the security of the 2015-2019 booking patterns, or treat 2021 as a less dignified, unbearable version of 2020. They chose the second option, the one that life itself chose for us in 2021.

2021: The Excruciating Bonus Track to 2020

Now that I’ve thoroughly buried my lede, here’s the Card Placement Average Rankings for 2021 (with 2020 alongside for comparison). Remember, the first G1 match is assigned a 1, and the main event is assigned a 5. The closer one is to a 5, the more of a sustainable main eventer they are. The closer they are to a 1, the more likely they join House of Torture by Night 15:

 

And here are the charts for main events and semi-main events:

Based on 2015-2019 logic, the Block Final main events for 2021 should look like this:

Your Logical G1 Climax 31 A Block Final Night Main Event

Shingo Takagi vs. Great-O-Khan, Kota Ibushi, Tomohiro Ishii, or Zack Sabre Jr.

Your Logical G1 Climax 31 A Block Final Night Main Event

Kazuchika Okada vs. HIROOKI FUCKING GOTO

Hirooki Goto, the Japanese equivalent of a Ren Faire geek, organizing HEMA tournaments between lamb leg spits and the people waving the fucking ribbons around or whatever the fuck, is not only the wrestler with the most semi-main events in G1 Climax 31… he’s not even tied for the lead. He alone at the top.

Semi-main events. The most robust signals of a wrestler’s significance to a G1, as shown above. Essentially, a blatant clue from Gedo to you that showed who was literally going straight to the fucking G1 Climax Final. That’s the spot Hirooki Goto, who was pinned by famous mini wrestler  Taiji Ishimori just a few months ago.

Of course, that’s not how things look this year.

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The 2021 Situation

The final night of G1 Climax 31 has yet to be decided. Even compared to last year, it is baffling. At least with G1 Climax 30, we had an idea of which matches would headline the Block Finals. At the very least, there was debate over which matches would main event Nights 17 and 18. The debate for G1 Climax 31 isn’t which matches could headline a Block Final, it’s which matches even could.

The venerable Chris Samsa has floated the theory that this might be a bit of COVID-proofing. Without question, the evidence suggests that this could be partially responsible. Besides Okada vs. Cobb, everyone is spread out, like the main events and prelim guys engaged in some wretched courtship dance. I still come back to the idea of 2021 following 2020’s lead… if this is COVID proofing, were they COVID proofing last year as well? Or, perhaps, did they overthink things last year, as one of many overreactive responses to the enforced banality of COVID conditions, and then in 2021 the virus finally did catch up to them (multiple times, in fact) and… this was the result?

Let’s look at the Block Final Nights to see how they align more with 2020’s strategy much more so than the one established between 2015-2019.

A Block Final Night

  • Kota Ibushi vs. KENTA
    • Ibushi: Main events – tied for 3rd in A Block, tied for 5th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 1st in A Block and tied for 2nd overall
    • KENTA: Main events – tied for 3rd in A Block, tied for 5th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 8th in A Block and tied for 17th overall
  • Tomohiro Ishii vs. Toru Yano
    • Ishii: Main events – tied for 3rd in A Block, tied for 5th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 1st in A Block and tied for 2nd overall
    • Yano: Main events – tied for 7th in A Block, tied for 15th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 8th in A Block and tied for 17th overall
  • Shingo Takagi vs. Yujiro Takahashi
    • Shingo: Main events – 1st in A Block, 2nd overall; Semi-main events – tied for 6th in A Block and tied for 10th overall
    • Yujiro: Main events – tied for 7th in A Block, tied for 15th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 6th in A Block and tied for 10th overall
  • Tetsuya Naito vs. Great-O-Khan
    • Naito: Main events – tied for 2nd in A Block, tied for 3rd overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in A Block and tied for 7th overall
    • GOK: Main events – tied for 7th in A Block, tied for 15th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 1st in A Block and tied for 2nd overall
  • Zack Sabre Jr. (6, T9/T1, T2) vs. Tanga Loa (T7, T15/T8, T17)
    • Sabre: Main events – 6th in A Block, tied for 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 1st in A Block and tied for 2nd overall
    • Loa: Main events – tied for 7th in A Block, tied for 15th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 8th in A Block and tied for 17th overall

B Block Final Night

  • Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Taichi
    • Tanahashi: Main events – 2nd in B Block, 4th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 3rd in B Block and tied for 7th overall
    • Taichi: Main events – Tied for 4th in B Block, tied for 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 3rd in B Block and tied for 7th overall
  • Kazuchika Okada vs. Jeff Cobb
    • Okada: Main events – 1st in B Block, 1st overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in B Block and tied for 10th
    • Cobb: Main events – Tied for 4th in B Block, tied for 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in B Block and tied for 10th
  • Hirooki Goto vs. Tama Tonga
    • Goto: Main events – Tied for 9th in B Block, tied for 15th overall; Semi-main events – 1st in B Block and 1st
    • Tama: Main events – Tied for 4th in B Block, tied for 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in B Block and tied for 10th
  • YOSHI-HASHI vs. Chase Owens
    • YSH: : Main events – Tied for 4th in B Block, 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in B Block and tied for 10th
    • Owens: Main events – Tied for 9th in B Block, ties for 15th overall; Semi-main events – 10th in B Block and tied for 17th
  • SANADA vs. EVIL
    • SANADA: 3rd in B Block, tied for 5th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 5th in B Block and tied for 10th
    • EVIL: Main events – Tied for 4th in B Block, 9th overall; Semi-main events – tied for 2nd in B Block and tied for 2nd overall

The A Block

I mean, what the fuck can you make of the A Block final night? There’s so much parity. Check out Ibushi and Ishii; they have the exact same rankings across the board. The closest thing we have to a main event is Tetsuya Naito vs. Great-O-Khan. O-Khan is not as weird a choice for a Block Final main eventer as you’d think. He has that one big thing going for him: he’s #1 in semi-main events in the A Block. Of course, the whole point of all this is that they tossed those patterns out the goddamn window last year.

Great-O-Khan is 16th in overall average card placement. 2.375 average placement. In part II, we’ll break down why these numbers are a bit more complex than the averages bear out, but the key thing here is that O-Khan is also 1st in his block for semi-main events. If Naito and O-Kahn meet in the A Block Final, it’ll be the wrestler with the second-most main events in the block (Naito) vs. the person with the most semi-main events in the block (O-Khan). Close enough?

Last year, it was strange that SANADA was in a potential block final, being 10th in overall average card placement. SANADA had a perfect 3.0 average; he didn’t even average into the top of the card, he was squarely in the middle. He had three main events, ending up 5th overall; of course, that includes the final night (before that he was much lower). He had zero semi-main events.

SANADA was nonsense subterfuge. His lower booking status on nights 1-17 was a red herring to disguise their goals for him. Red herring booking needs to go in the bin, it’s the last fucking thing we need in a clap-crowd environment. That’s the sort of thing WWE does, and honestly, they probably book their top champions stronger at the moment.

The B Block

B Block is weird.

Frightening and weird.

It has the clearest example of what would be considered a Block Final main event: Okada vs. Cobb, even if Cobb is booked a bit lower than how they used to book these things. At the very least, you’d think Okada would be in the block final, having both the highest card placement and most main events overall. Even with 2020 fucking everything up, it still held that truth: the person with the highest CP average and most main events (those two, obviously, have been connected every year) has always been in their block final.

And, in 5 out of 6 times, they didn’t move on to the G1 Final. More on that in part II.

And so, logically, you’d expect Cobb vs. Okada to headline Night 18. But then, EVIL vs. SANADA really sears itself into the recesses of your brain, the one where all your fears are stored. EVIL’s essentially moved into those recesses. He’s gone through the post office for the address change and everything.

SANADA’s not much better off than last year; he’s 7th in overall card placement (up from 10th), he has one less main event (2) than last year, and he has one more semi-main event than last year, a entire ONE. He’s troubling, considering how they basically broke the code with him, but, as always, SANADA is innocuous.

EVIL… well, EVIL’s dropped significantly. We’ll touch on this in part II, but EVIL’s dropped from 2nd fucking place last year in card placement average to 11th. Hilarious, right? Except… why does he scare us, even more, this year? Well, he’s 2nd in semi-main events, for one. He has his fuckface prelim junior rear guard assembled, for another. If Dick Togo was more eloquent in backroom meetings, he’d be wearing the goddamn world title right now, for third.

These are pernicious times. The best we can hope for is that, if EVIL-SANADA once again main events a Block Final night, someone had the decency to negotiate consolations from Togo. As in, “Sure EVIL can main event the block final again, DT, but the two of them are going broadway and someone outside the main event is going to win the block.”

My God, our best bet in that scenario is a 30-minute draw between EVIL and SANADA. How much would it cost to book Donald Glover to do a run-in with a pizza box?

In Malaise of Folly

I’m reminded of a particular Dutch word: vergankelijkheid. In English, we could call this any number of related concepts and notions: impermanence, transience, ephemerality… the idea that things fade, corrode, and decay over time. Based on conversations with my Groninger wife, I’ve gotten the sense that vergankelijkheid is one of those Dutch words. Words that reveal the deep intricacies of a cultural psyche (or the one they want to present to the world, don’t underestimate the Dutch’s ability in that regard). Their cleanliness, their tolerance, their engineering, their gross national detached ambitiousness, etc.

Vergankelijkheid is a melancholic concept, the bittersweet recognition and acceptance of deterioration. Of things, of us.

The great, irreverent genius Dutch biologist Midas Dekkers wrote a brilliant monograph titled De Vergankelijkheid. In it, he extols the virtues of ruins, of aging, of waning being a fulfillment. It’s full of Dekkers magnetic nonsense, like how babies are lame and we should call them larva, or how “the mouth is the death of teeth,” or how “human beings or no better off than whales, and whales are no better off than the lice on our heads,” or how humans have tricked themselves into thinking they are meat-eaters when really they are carrion eaters. It’s awesome.

The English translation of the book translates De Vergankelijkheid to The Way of All Flesh. If Dekkers is right, and he usually is, then this adjustment, this procession of New Japan G1 Climax booking should be a welcome shift.

Is the impermanence of New Japan being flaunted in front of us, sped along by dreadful pandemic conditions? Gedo has been booking this place for a decade. He’s like the animal at the zoo that is supposed to have a life span of 35-40, yet is somehow in its late ’80s. When changes in his established routine develop, am I wrong to feel disconcerted? Dekkers advocates a return to olden days, when people were macabre as fuck and acknowledged the downward side of the stairway of life with moribund aplomb.

Or even, is there a reason to be disconcerted about this? I don’t think anyone noticed it. Who gives a fuck about underlying booking patterns. They may explain what worked, but is it really worth anything? For all I know, do people prefer the variability and unpredictability of this current trend? When I noticed the 2015-2019 pattern in the data, I went looking for other references to it. I found none. So, either the wrestling fandom and journalists have better things to do with their life than notice this hogwash, or some did notice it and didn’t find it worthwhile enough to publish.

Are there implications if Gedo even did this purposely, or if it was all happenstance. If he did it intentionally, that means he is doing this intentionally. We already have strong suspicion that much of what happened last year, up to and including EVIL’s title reign, were inviolable written into the booking chromosomes of 2020 New Japan. It was going to happen. Perhaps a new kind of G1 Climax was in the books as well. 2021 isn’t just part of a two-year pandemic stopgap measure; it’s the new way G1’s work: parity and unforeseen conclusions.

Perhaps it wasn’t intentional. Perhaps it was something integral, a natural state of things when a contrived environment is running smoothly. Of course, the strongest booked wrestlers meet in the most consequential match. That’s the catalyst for the entire enterprise: to fake and control the whole goddamn thing so that outcome is ensured.

Playing around with that formula, even if it was a formula that no one actively considered or realized in the moment, is this something to lament? Does it vitiate the G1 Climax? Or does it matter?

Having the G1 Climax title shot materialized as a prop that could be defended, that undermined the entire concept. Fine while it was defended, but an inevitable disaster, as evidence by last year’s fiasco with Ibushi and Jay White.

Having a multiple-night Wrestle Kingdom was a delightful novelty, for one year. The second year, it absolutely corroded the prestige of the G1 Climax, at a conceptual level, though one could explain that as part of a longer booking story. The briefcase itself was a terrible, destructive idea. Ibushi losing the briefcase was an even more abysmal idea. The way they squirmed their way out of it, with Naito bequeathing a Wrestle Kingdom main event to Ibushi because…?

Well, because they are overthinking the fuck out of things, that’s why. And so, a three-night Wrestle Kingdom is proportionally worse than the two-night Wrestle Kingdoms before it. Does it matter who wins the G1 Climax, when it conceivably it could be the preliminary round of a New Japan King of the Ring?

A G1 Climax Is Always Worth the Squeeze

Ruins are majestic; unnecessarily byzantine booking is just the sort of thing that seems fun at first, and eventually, you find yourself lying in a hospital bed and Pops smeared colorful paint all over your logo.

I think Midas Dekkers would find this all amusing. This might all be an unfortunate byproduct of the pandemic. That it’s happening during a pandemic might also be a coincidence. Dekkers would advise embracing this, which may or may not be the downward side of the stairway of life.

The problem there, which Dekkers highlights: we know the other side of the stairway of life is coming, we just ignore and vilify it. It’s always been this way, without change, yet we hope that by apotheosizing youth and vitality, we can somehow change the natural order of things.

We don’t know what New Japan is thinking here. Sometimes that’s the thing that sparks wrestling. In this context, I’m not so sure.

In part II, we’ll look at specific wrestlers and how they’re booked in this G1 Climax. They deserve the focus because, the last 5000 words aside, this G1 Climax is going to be outstanding in the ring.