NJPW G1 Climax 28 Night 6: Results, Review, Standings, Grades

Night 6 of G1 28 featured a stacked card including the second ever singles match between Tetsuya Naito and Juice Robinson, Kenny Omega vs Tama Tonga- the first chapter in the latest Bullet Club civil war saga, and a clash of NJPW’s hardest hitting bulls in Hirooki Goto vs Tomohiro Ishii. Was the show able to live up to the high bar set by the first five nights? Or did it come up short?…

Ren Narita & Michael Elgin vs Yoshi-Hashi & SHO

Everytime I watch SHO wrestle, I can’t help but get excited about his future. He really has it all- a great look, loads of charisma, and undeniable wrestling ability. For now he’ll work hard on the undercard, but soon I’m sure we’ll be seeing him in a main event or two… or fifty.

Anyways, this was a standard G1 tag match. Big Mike and Yoshi-Hashi got into it a bit on the outside while SHO and Narita started the match. Eventually, Hashi tagged in and started working over the young lion (and looking way too proud of himself while doing it). Narita hit a drop kick and tagged in Elgin, who pretty much had his way with both of his opponents. The match ended up how it began, and SHO pinned Narita with a bridging german.

This was fine… It didn’t get me overwhelmingly excited for Elgin vs Hashi, but I don’t know if anything could have.

Rating: **1/4

EVIL & BUSHI vs Bad Luck Fale & Tanga Loa

Loa and Bushi started the match. The former made fun of the latter for being small. Classic… Bushi clearly hasn’t forgotten about his beef with Fale, as he hit him with a suicide dive the first chance he got. (Hot take: Bushi has the best suicide dive in all of wrestling.)

Fale and EVIL fought into the stands while Loa took care of poor, tiny Bushi. Loa’s finishing move: “Apes**t”, yes I believe Romero said “Apes**t”, allowed him to get the pin on Bushi. Not a big fan of how easily lil’ Boosh went down, but whatever. No one’s going to remember this in a week.

EVIL pulled a chair on Fale after the match, but Mr. Bad Luck retreated. Their match tomorrow should be a fun brawl.

Rating: **1/4

Jay White & YOH vs Minoru Suzuki & El Desperado

KAZE NI NARE!!!

The heavyweights started the match. White talked trash to Suzuki. Suzuki responded by kicking him very hard in the leg cause duh… The juniors tagged in briefly. Then White got right back in to bully Despy… then he tagged YOH… then he called for himself to be tagged seconds later… then he tagged Yoh again as soon as Suzuki stepped into the ring… White got heat by incessantly tagging in and out. What an evil villain. Lol.

The finish came when Suzuki hit the GSP on YOH, and Jay refused to make the save.

Switchblade vs Suzuki is a sleeper for match of the tournament. I’m extremely excited for it and you should be too

Rating: **1/2

Hiroshi Tanahashi & David Finlay vs Hangman Page & Chase Owens

Page is over in a big way in Korakuen Hall, which is awesome. He started the match against Tanahashi. They had a nice little back and forth. Then Tana threw Page his air guitar. Hangman caught it and gave it to Owens who put it safely under the ring. Tanahashi asked for it back and, of course, he got it… If Page refused to give it back it would’ve been the most despicable heel act in all of history.

Finlay and Owens tagged in for a bit and did the wrestling. Eventually Owens tagged Hangman back in. Rite of passage to Finlay and that was it.

I like that they’re building Page and Owens as a strong team. They jive well together, so hopefully we’ll see more of them post G1. Hangman will look to continue his strong G1 performance against Tanahashi tomorrow. Should be a good match.

Rating: ***

Togi Makabe & Toa Henare vs PARTYTIME Kazuchika Okada & Gedo

Henare and Gedo started off. Gedo yelled some expletives at his opponent after hitting a shoulder tackle. Henare fired up and made a comeback. Makabe and Okada were tagged in and went at it a bit. An air raid crash allowed a tag to Gedo. He quickly lost momentum, cause that’s what Gedo does. The finish came when Makabe hit the King Kong knee drop as Henare held Okada back at ringside.

Makabe and Okada mostly avoided each other here, so we’ll have to wait for their Night 7 match to see them really go at it. I think it will be solid, but still the weakest G1 main event we’ve seen thus far. We’ll see what they bring to the table though.

Rating: **1/2