Final G1 thoughts:
Higher over all quality since there were actually two blocks and most of the filler guys were cut this year, however nothing reached the heights that Ishii vs Kenny/Ibushi, and Ibushi/Tanahashi got to.
Jon Moxley started the G1 looking like the biggest star in the world, so much energy, so hyped to be there, crowd hyped to see him...but the end he was full on wacky Dean Ambrose looking like he wanted to die and making no attempt to lay his shit in. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a WACKY LINE in those last few match. The crowd reaction was a total 180 from the first day to last day as well, as they were pretty over the novelty of seeing him and after 4 straight losses his aura was gone and it was clear he was just there to swap the US title before AEW TV starts.
A similar thing happened with KENTA, who had a couple of really strong matches, and a couple of real duds, and by the end it was pretty clear the NJ crowd doesn't give shit about him at all and English commentary were all but apologizing for him being a washed up bum. So him joining Bullet Club made perfect sense since NJ crowds don't give a fuck about any of the remaining guys, either. Shibata possibly returning
the reaction from the crowd when he came down was magical.
Jay White is such a non-entity, the only way to get reactions for him is to intentionally invoke X-Pac/Roman Reigns heat, which is terrible. And it's especially ill-fitting in NJPW, since all of his heat is fan trolling based which doesn't fit in with the sports based NJ style and presentation.
Tanahashi is officially part of the NJPW Dads group now
My favorite matches: Tanahashi vs Kenta, Kenta vs ZSJ, Shingo vs Goto, Shingo vs Ishii, Ishii vs Moxley, Shingo vs Moxley, Okada vs Ibushi, Tanahashi vs Ibushi
