New Japan’s iconic G1 Climax tournament will have a first-time winner

Over the past couple nights, New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrapped up the round-robin portion of its annual G1 Climax tournament. Each G1 field is broken up into Blocks, within which each wrestler faces every other wrestler with the winner getting 2 points and the loser none, or each getting 1 point in th

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Over the past couple nights, New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrapped up the round-robin portion of its annual G1 Climax tournament. Each G1 field is broken up into Blocks, within which each wrestler faces every other wrestler with the winner getting 2 points and the loser none, or each getting 1 point in the event of a draw.

This year’s G1 36 initially had two Blocks of ten men, but Shota Umino had to withdraw from B Block due to injury. Mr Ares, who does a much better job covering NJPW than anyone has around

these parts since demand for Claire’s live blogging made her drop her puroresu habit a few years back, caught us all up heading into the always eventful final days of action:

Those final days produced four semi-finalists for the G1 36 knockout rounds, and none has ever won the tournament before. For three of them, it will mean a shot at New Japan’s top prize, the IWGP Heavyweight championship. One of the semi-finalists already wears that belt; he’ll get to name his challenger should he win. The title matches usually happen on New Japan’s Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome show — but not always.

Current champ Yota Tsuji emerged from A Block along with Ryohei Oiwa. AEW’s Konosuke Takeshita finished with the same point/win total, but lost head-to-head with Oiwa Wednesday (Aug. 12). Oleg Boltin was in the mix, but lost his final match to Great-O-Khan.

A Block

Yota Tsuji (12)
Ryohei Oiwa (12)
Konosuke Takeshita (12)
Boltin Oleg (10)
Hirooki Goto (8)
Shingo Takagi (8)
SANADA (8)
Yuto-Ice (8)
Jake Lee (6)
Great-O-Khan (6)

Thursday in B Block, Yuya Uemura and Callum Newman emerged as semi-finalists. Each won on the final day of round-robin action to finish with 12 points apiece. Gabe Kidd had the same total, but lost his matches with the other two leaders.

B Block