NJPW G1 Supercard

Saturday April 6th 2019

7:30pm (EST)

Madison Square Garden, New York

Pre-Show Match

Honor Rumble

Participants: Jushin Thunder Liger is the only superstar confirmed thus far

Match #1

NEVER OPENWEIGHT & ROH TV Championship Match

Will Ospreay (c) vs. Jeff Cobb (c)

Match #2

Dalton Castle vs. RUSH

Match #3

WOH Championship Match

Mayu Iwitami (c) vs. Kelly Klein

Match #4

NYC Street Fight Open Challenge

Bully Ray vs. TBA

Match #5

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship Match

Dragon Lee vs. Bandido vs. Taiji Ishimori (c)

Match #6

IWGP & ROH World Tag Team Championship Match

Guerillas of Destiny (c) vs. Villains Enterprise (PCO & Brody King) (c) vs. The Briscoes vs. Los Ingobernables de Japn (Evil and Sanada)

Match #7

British Heavyweight Championship Match

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Zack Sabre Jr (c)

Match #8

IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match

Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito (c)

Match #9

ROH Ladder Championship Match

Matt Taven vs. Marty Scurll vs. Jay Lethal (c)

Match #10

IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match

Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White (c)

It's good to see NJPW get the card so right for this show. It would have been so easy for them to do so many exhibition style undercard matches with a couple marquee matches but from top to bottom, they've really done a good job of combining ROH into their presentation while giving fans a WrestleKingdom calibre card. I'm only ho-hum on this year's Wrestlemania, but this show may have pushed NXT TakeOver aside as my Sunday afternoon's worth of entertainment.

Okada getting the belt is meh, but pretty cool to see a title change on US soil so...

Pre-Show Match
Honor Rumble
Participants: Jushin Thunder Liger is the only superstar confirmed thus far
Winner: Juice Robinson

Match #1
NEVER OPENWEIGHT & ROH TV Championship Match
Will Ospreay (c) vs. Jeff Cobb (c)

Match #2
Dalton Castle vs. RUSH

Match #3
WOH Championship Match
Mayu Iwitami (c) vs. Kelly Klein

Match #4
NYC Street Fight Open Challenge
Bully Ray vs. TBA
Tomohiro Ishii answers the challenge and the STONE PITBULL BITES THE BULLY.

Match #5
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship Match
Dragon Lee vs. Bandido vs. Taiji Ishimori (c)

Match #6
IWGP & ROH World Tag Team Championship Match
Guerillas of Destiny (c) vs. Villains Enterprise (PCO & Brody King) (c) vs. The Briscoes vs. Los Ingobernables de Japn (Evil and Sanada)

Match #7
British Heavyweight Championship Match
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Zack Sabre Jr (c)

Match #8
IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match
Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito (c)

Match #9
ROH Ladder Championship Match
Matt Taven vs. Marty Scurll vs. Jay Lethal (c)

Match #10
IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match
Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White (c)

...

There's my picks. Can't wait to see how I get most of them wrong because Gedo.

Very solid card, and this show is a big deal for New Japan. The weight of having a good MSG show on Wrestlemania weekend is not lost on them, I'm sure, so they're going to go as all out as they can and make sure the fans go home happy.

I'm unsure of most of my picks, which is great. Do they close the show with The Rainmaker showered in gold, or do they keep the title on Jay White longer? Do they put the ROH title on Marty Scurll (like they should) or do they hold off since he's probably going to AEW as soon as his contract is up? Does NJPW's Ace win the British Heavyweight Championship? Do they start Will Ospreay's major push now, or does Jeff Cobb continue to be undefeated?

Between this and Takeover I don't even know why I care at all about Wrestlemania. :lol:

Who else is tuning in?

Predictions?

I'm going with...

No idea who's winning the Honor Rumble and I don't really care. Maybe Suzuki?
Ospreay
Castle
Iwatani
Juice
Ishimori
EVIL & SANADA
ZSJ
Ibushi
Lethal
Okada

Match #1
NEVER OPENWEIGHT & ROH TV Championship Match
Will Ospreay (c) vs. Jeff Cobb (c)

Match #2
Dalton Castle vs. RUSH

Match #3
WOH Championship Match
Mayu Iwitami (c) vs. Kelly Klein

Match #4
NYC Street Fight Open Challenge
Bully Ray vs. TBA

Match #5
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship Match
Dragon Lee vs. Bandido vs. Taiji Ishimori (c)

Match #6
IWGP & ROH World Tag Team Championship Match
Guerillas of Destiny (c) vs. Villains Enterprise (PCO & Brody King) (c) vs. The Briscoes vs. Los Ingobernables de Japn (Evil and Sanada)

Match #7
British Heavyweight Championship Match
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Zack Sabre Jr (c)

Match #8
IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match
Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito (c)

Match #9
ROH Ladder Championship Match
Matt Taven vs. Marty Scurll vs. Jay Lethal (c)

Match #10
IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match
Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White (c)

HAKU AND MUTA?

WHAT

I was really looking forward to Cobb/Ospreay but its been pretty dull so far.

How do I get this to stop looking like a 2006 Youtube video? Clicking HQ on or off doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Not my connection.

Allegedly it’s Enzo & Cass. Definitely Looks like Enzo 🤦🏻‍♀️

Apparently WM weekend security is super lax lmao.

I missed most of the tag match so I don't know what that looked like on stream. What the fuck is going on?

Actually never mind the cameras just did a good job of hiding it. I saw Bully Ray run down and jump somebody but they cut away. Never explained why he was there so I figured it was just a fan or something.

This weekend, man.

IBUSHIIIIIII

Wish Omega was there to celebrate.

Naito vs. Okada @ Dominion please.

Apr 7, 2019 1:36:47 GMT System said:

Allegedly it’s Enzo & Cass. Definitely Looks like Enzo 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hahaha, that's fucking wild. This pro rasslin shit done got out of hand.

New ROH Champion! I feel like Jay Lethal has been ROH Champion every time I watch it, so glad to see a change.

That gash on the hip of Okada looks nasty.

Okada new Champion! Match seemed very slow in parts but got better toward the end, maybe it’s just the amount of wrestling I’ve watched this week.

Well that was a great show if you ignore all the ROH stuff and the fact the production value was complete ass.

Apr 7, 2019 4:04:16 GMT System said:

Okada new Champion! Match seemed very slow in parts but got better toward the end, maybe it’s just the amount of wrestling I’ve watched this week.

Standard Okada match?

Hopefully this leads to Naito dethroning him. But I remember having that same feeling at their WK match, so ya know.

I sort of regret watching the whole show. The card was definitely well-rounded in the variety of match types and talent, but the only matches I really enjoyed were the top three NJPW matches.

ZSJ vs Tanahashi was great, but a little disappointing because my expectations of both wrestlers are so high. I liked their New Japan Cup match more. Sick finish, though. The crowd went crazy for that finishing hold, and both guys worked it extremely well.

Naito vs Ibushi: ditto. They didn't go as crazy as they did in their recent New Japan Cup match, but they wrestled an exciting match. But I still left the match feeling they could have done a lot better. My expectations are probably way too high. The finish was kinda lame, it felt like Naito went down at the end without much of a fight.

White vs Okada was phenomenal. They paced themselves really well and had some awesome moments. White kicking out of the Rainmaker shocked everyone and was sold appropriately. Then White hit the Blade Runner. Somehow after that they kept the match going for another 10-15 minutes in a realistic and compelling way. White barely hanging on, just like he did against Omega, but Okada escaped all the surprise Blade Runner attempts and overwhelmed him with strong offense.

Apr 7, 2019 4:12:01 GMT RT said:

Well that was a great show if you ignore all the ROH stuff and the fact the production value was complete ass.

The production started off horrible. It got a lot better for the last four matches. Maybe they swapped ROH's camera crow for NJPW's, because the top three NJPW matches (I skipped the ladder match) were shot exactly like they are in NJPW in general.

It really was a tale of two promotions. Most of the New Japan stuff in terms of booking and matches presented was excellent. But ROH...

R O fucking H

Imagine being Ring Of Honor. You've sold out the most famous arena in the world, with more eyes on your product than there ever have been or likely ever will be again. So what do you do?

You put your World title on the blandest man to ever be bland, and apparently, you've decided that the best business decision is to put him against the blandest black man to ever be bland.

You take your Women's championship off of arguably the best women's wrestlers in the world and put it on one of your not-over Dojo talents to continue the scam of an illusion that your Dojo is anything but a joke. Then you turn her face just so she can feud with the booker's main squeeze and decide that you're going to run THE GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE IN 2019 in a gimmick that goes way to goddamn long and kills the crowd stone cold.

And you decide you're going to sign the biggest nothingburgers in wrestling at the moment, Mr. Consenual Penis Himself, Enzo and Big Casserole, because apparently a feud between THEM and the Briscoes is going to be your next big hot feud.

Jesus Christ on a Chipwich. Just let this company die.

Do the right thing, Harold.

Can I just point out that squashing Dalton Castle was one of the worst booking decisions I’ve ever seen? Like literally ever.

He’s got to be the most over talent ROH has, and they job him out like that. His entrance should have been a thousand times bigger than it was (it’s fucking MSG for crying out loud), and then they punk him out just for a bullshit heel turn. And it’s not even much of a heel turn. He beat up his boys. I’m fairly certain he’s taken anger out on them before.

Someone needs to buy out ROH, give Jay Lethal a nice retirement package, sign Dalton Castle, repackage The Kingdom into something with a direction, and fire everyone else.

If I was ROH, I would have burned every reminder of 2018 to the ground and would have pushed the new generation of talent. Guys like Jeff Cobb, Juice Robinson, Bandido, Rush, Mark Haskins and Tracy Williams, Jonathan Gresham, Flip Gordon etc. would be pushed at the forefront of the company and would be in prominent roles. Of course guys like Dalton Castle, Silas Young and The Briscoes would remain to help sell the ROH brand but they would be used sparingly.

I just can't understand why you would push a guy like Taven at the forefront of your company. I'm sure Taven is an upstanding professional behind the scenes and is the one guy Delirious trusts to go out there and deliver what he wants, but he's been pushed for six years now and nobody is clamoring for him.

What sucks is that the ROH stuff really brought the show down. NJPW delivered and gave everybody what they wanted to see. While a lot of these guys have had better matches with each other, they didn't dial it in like they're known to do and the matches were booked to actually mean something. We should be talking about NJPW stealing Wrestlemania weekend, instead we're questioning why they're still with this burnt out promotion.

Apr 10, 2019 6:46:54 GMT KITN said:

And you decide you're going to sign the biggest nothingburgers in wrestling at the moment, Mr. Consenual Penis Himself, Enzo and Big Casserole, because apparently a feud between THEM and the Briscoes is going to be your next big hot feud.

Agreed with all of your post except this point. No matter your opinion of the guy, Enzo was a big star in WWE, and Big Cass became a semi-hot commodity due to the way he exited WWE and his association with Enzo. They'll be huge in any small time American promotion. A good get for ROH.

Apr 10, 2019 17:13:03 GMT Big Pete said:

What sucks is that the ROH stuff really brought the show down. NJPW delivered and gave everybody what they wanted to see. While a lot of these guys have had better matches with each other, they didn't dial it in like they're known to do and the matches were booked to actually mean something. We should be talking about NJPW stealing Wrestlemania weekend, instead we're questioning why they're still with this burnt out promotion.

Everyone knows how much of a NJPW diehard I am, but Wrestlemania won Wrestlemania weekend. Put the G1 supercard, or the NJPW portion of it, against any of the previous few Wrestlemanias and I'd be with you, but Wrestlemania 35 was really special. The average match quality wasn't as high as NJPW-G1 Supercard, but there was something for everyone and the show paced itself about as well as it could have done for a 6 hour show or however long it is. And it had a MOTY contender in Bryan vs Kofi.

I just assume Taven is their Justin Credible. He's a safe pick as it's unlikely he'll get signed.

Apr 10, 2019 18:11:59 GMT @ness said:

I just assume Taven is their Justin Credible. He's a safe pick as it's unlikely he'll get signed.

That is a really good analogy.

I forgot about The Briscoes and Jeff Cobb. The Briscoes can still hang, so in my previous post whoever buys out ROH should keep them around for a year or two as well.

Jeff Cobb is going to be in NXT within two years so whatever. 

Did not realize how rough the ROH roster is. Scurll will no doubt be on his way out soon. That leaves a real derth of top level talent, or anything near it. I like Brody King, Bandido, Tracy Williams, but there's not a whole lot else.

But what's the point in caring or investing when it's obvious what direction the company is going, and how hamstrung it is by its booking?

The fact reports are the higher up's pushed for Enzo and Cass as a big talking point at The Garden rings alarm bells for me. That's quite disturbing and not a good sign. The best case is it's not true and was Lizard Man's idea, and as bad a booker as he has proven himself to be, even that is beyond him, or at least I hope it is.

Enzo and Cass in ROH is odd.