The History of the G1 Climax Tournament: Part I

Credit: Superluchas.net

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a professional wrestler booked to compete in New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Gl (abbreviation for Grade One) Climax Tournament.  The event, in its entirety, has prestige on par with WWE’s Wrestlemania.  Many of the wrestlers who have won the tournament have gone on to become mega stars who keyed New Japan’s most successful years, making your home promotion hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was with the 1991 Gl Climax Tournament that New Japan created the legacy of the Three Musketeers: Keiji Muto (aka The Great Muta), Masahiro Chono, and Shinya Hashimoto.  The Three Musketeers became the driving force behind New Japan’s most successful years, thanks to both the Musketeers’ brilliant in ring work, and New Japan’s equally brilliant promotion and booking of the first ever G1 Climax tournament.  The night of the Three Musketeers’ ascension to greatness effectively established the G1 Climax Tournament as New Japan Pro Wrestling’s most prestigious annual event.

The G1 Climax is a summer staple in the land of the rising sun; the week long tournament draws standing room only crowds on each night and routinely provides the promotion with record breaking receipt gates.  Coverage of the G1 frequents the front pages of various sports sections within newspapers across Japan, particularly Tokyo, where the finals of the tournament are traditionally held.

The inaugural G1 Climax laid out the blueprint for future G1’s to follow, and that blueprint has been closely followed by the promotion known as “The King of Sports” ever since.  The G1 is widely famous for its clean finishes that almost always spark an enormous response from the crowd, fantastic demonstrations of in ring psychology, a high quality in ring product, and masterful storytelling that makes every match in the typically round robin formatted tournament a meaningful one.

New Japan books the tournament so that the previous year’s rivalries and story lines are woven into the fabric of the tournament.  New Japan goes to great lengths to run a compelling and highly detailed story line through each and every tournament match over the course of the week long event.  There is no wasted motion in the G1 Climax; everything has a purpose.

The G1 is unchallenged by any other event in terms of its ability to create stars and elevate wrestlers struggling in mid card doldrums to the upper echelon of the roster.  When it comes to creating stars on the G1 stage, New Japan has a very simple philosophy: have aging, well established and even legendary veteran stars of the promotion put over younger stars struggling to rise out of the mid card. This might seem strange to fans of mainstream American professional wrestling who are likely jaded by the politics of their homeland promotions, but this concept has been executed brilliantly throughout the long and rich history of the G1 Climax tournament.  The most recent installation of the tournament, which occurred earlier this month, is no exception.

Imagine, once again, that you are the wrestler mentioned in the first paragraph. You have been historically labeled as an underachiever, despite your company’s best efforts to turn you into a star.  You’ve previously been booked to overthrow the leader of the faction you were once a member of.  The wrestler you overthrew has won the very tournament you will be competing in three times, and was, in his prime, one of the top heavyweights in your promotion.  Still, you failed to really make a huge dent in the promotion, and you have never managed to get hot enough to warrant being given a regular spot on the main event scene.

You remained stuck on the mid card until your company booked one of its stars to turn your faction against you, forming a new faction that was, and still is to this day, hell bent on your destruction.  You then were booked to lose in two singles matches to the man responsible for turning you into a lone wolf on the New Japan landscape.  To make matters worse, you were dominated by this man in the series tag team matches that followed.

Despite all of this, you are invited to participate in the G1 Climax tournament, and New Japan tells you that they are booking you to win the tournament; they will tell the world the story of your character overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, including a meteoric rise from last place in your group after three matches, to somehow qualifying for the semifinals.  In the process, you will be bloodied and battered, but you will never quit and you will scrap your way to victory.

In the semis you will take a stiff beating from a hungry wrestler from an outside promotion, but once again you will rebound, with your face drenched in blood and sweat, to win your semifinal match and qualify for the finals to face your arch nemesis, the man that turned your faction against you.

Oh, and your arch nemesis will be undefeated in the tournament heading into the finals and is looking to be the first man to complete a perfect G1, not to mention finish you off for good.

Finally, you will score a victory over your arch nemesis on New Japan’s grandest stage, where it counts the most, and this will mean you will finally be elevated to a main event spot on the roster.  Given the G1’s history, you don’t have much reason to doubt this will happen.  The only thing you need to do is make sure you do your part to make your main event dreams a reality.

On August 16, 2009, Togi Makabe defeated Shinsuke Nakamura to win the 2009 G1 Climax Tournament, earning a shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and putting himself in a position to be elevated to the main event status that he, historically, has had trouble reaching.  If Makabe does become a major superstar for New Japan in the coming years, you can partly thank the prestige of New Japan’s G1 Climax tournament.

In 2009’s installment of the G1 Climax, which was subtitled “New Lords, New Laws”, “The Unchained Gorilla” found himself in the situations described above and persevered to make it to the finals to face Shinsuke Nakamura, the man behind the coup d’etat of Makabe’s GBH (Great Bash Heel) faction.  Nakamura took most of Makabe’s allies and formed CHAOS, leaving Makabe alone without a friend in the world, save for Tomoaki Honma, a man no one considers to be any sort of real threat.

Nakamura dominated Makabe in the ensuing feud, defeating him in two singles matches over a month’s time this past spring.  Nakamura then dominated Makabe in the proceeding series of tag team matches.

It seemed on the night of the finals, the G1 was all Nakamura’s.  During the semifinals, which are held on the same night as the championship match of the tournament, Makabe was bloodied by Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Takashi Sugiura, a hungry and highly aggressive invader looking to build up his reputation and prove NOAH’s superiority over New Japan.

Makabe mounted a gutsy come back and defeated Sugiura, just as he managed to come back from being in last place in his block after three matches in the round robin portion of the tournament to qualify for the semis.  The damage was done though, and it seemed that his opponent in the finals was in much better shape than he was, given that Makabe had taken a number of stiff beatings throughout the tournament.

Nakamura, fresh off of his semifinal victory earlier in the night over New Japan ace Hiroshi Tanahashi (during which he broke the IWGP Heavyweight Champion’s orbital bone), entered the contest undefeated and had a chance to do what no one else in the history of the G1 had ever done: complete a perfect G1.

Nakamura relished the opportunity to achieve perfection and win the G1 by finishing off Makabe.  Nakamura ordered his CHAOS stable mates to stay in the locker room so that he could finish off his hated rival on his own, permanently.  It sounds like something you’d see in a good action film, doesn’t it?

The crowd was on Makabe’s side; they cheered as the rugged anti-hero, whose style is inspired by the late Bruiser Brody, marched to the ring to his theme music, a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song.”  The crowd chanted Makabe’s name repeatedly and urged him to continue bouncing back and keep on fighting.  Makabe did just that to reach the finals, but could he pull off yet another improbable comeback?

It looked for awhile like Makabe would fall, as the brooding Nakamura, standing at the gates of history, was unmerciful in decimating Makabe with violent kicks, knees, and elbows.  Nakamura even ripped the protective bandage from Makabe’s forehead and re-opened a wound that had repeatedly been opened by others during the G1.  Makabe’s blood stained the New Japan mat for the second time on the night, just as it did during several of Makabe’s previous tournament matches.   Nakamura even nearly made Makabe tap out to a cross arm breaker submission.

Unfortunately for Nakamura, it would not be his night to make history.

Makabe, to the delight of the crowd, mounted yet another heroic comeback by blocking Nakamura’s dreaded finisher, the Boma Ye (a knee kick delivered to the opponent’s head), a move Nakamura had won every of one of his tournament matches with.  Makabe then hit his own trademark moves: the Spider German Suplex and a King King Knee drop.

Makabe, his visage blanketed with a thick crimson mask, dove on top of Nakamura for the pin fall victory.  The win was Makabe’s first over Nakamura since the formation of CHAOS.  Makabe became the first man to win the G1 Climax after going winless in his first three matches.

The pin fall was a blend of both storytelling and real life; Makabe appeared to be doing everything he could to hold Nakamura’s shoulders down for the pin fall, but to someone knowledgeable of the business, it almost looked like a hug between two workers who had just executed a beautiful piece of storytelling in the ring, one that may lead to Makabe’s rise to super stardom.

The tournament drove the stock of Shinsuke Nakamura skyward as well.  Nakamura’s new, aggressive approach really got over with the fans during this tournament.  By narrowly missing out on G1 perfection, Nakamura earned a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes of the puro faithful.  Nakamura was also the most outstanding performer in the tournament, producing great matches with the likes of Hirooki Goto, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Togi Makabe.  Nakamura also produced solid matches working with the likes Takashi Sugiura, Manabu Nakanishi, Yuji Nagata, and Takashi Iizuka.  The former IWGP Heavyweight Champion will surely be a fixture on the main event scene in New Japan for years to come.

Makabe joins an elite club of G1 Climax winners that includes the likes of such greats as Masahiro Chono, Keiji Muto, Shinya Hashimoto, Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Kensuke Sasaki and Yuji Nagata.

In what might be a surprising fact for fans of mainstream American pro wrestling, from 1991-1996, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and not the World Wrestling Federation, was the most financially successful promotion in the world.  New Japan’s business model and structure served as a sort of blueprint for other wrestling promotions striving for their level of financial viability, and the G1 Climax Tournament was the epicenter of New Japan’s success.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the History of the G1 Climax Tournament…