NJPW: 5 Takeaways from G1 Special Event in San Francisco

3. Jay White & Juice Robinson Had the Match of Their Lives

The last time Jay White defended his IWGP US Heavyweight Championship, he followed a match that featured Kazuchika Okada and Minoru Suzuki in a tag against each other. The star power of Suzuki and Okada essentially killed the crowd before the match, and White and Hangman Page were able to deliver a good match, but with a dead crowd.

White and Juice Robinson were determined to make sure that didn’t happen here. They succeeded, probably more than their wildest imagination. The amount of heat that Jay White got in this match was absolutely incredible.

Juice Robinson spent the majority of the match selling and taking a brutal beating at the hands of White. White sent Juice into the guardrails at ringside several times, going through them entirely and crashing to the floor. White suplexed Robinson into another guardrail and knocked Jim Ross over. This caused Josh Barnett to stand up, declare that White “****ed up,” and stormed the ring looking for a fight.

When White ran away, the crowd booed him even more, anticipating that Juice would eventually make a comeback. A good portion of the match also saw white working over Juice’s hand, which he broke at the NJPW Kizuna Road shows by slamming Juice’s hand with a chair.

By the time that Juice finally scored the rollup pinfall to get the win, the crowd was begging for White to lose. Juice also, in a promo at the press conference, told everyone that he beat Kenny Omega with a rollup at last year’s G1, and he could do the same here. He did, and it was brilliant. I also thought this match was 5 stars, which is saying how great I thought those two men did. This was a big match for the two.