RADICAN’S TAKE: Did NJPW get it right? A look at the first two NJPW Climax 35 qualifying matches

NJPW Soul on June 23 took place at the world famous Korakuen Hall where the first two wrestlers to advance to the G1 Climax out of play-in matches were determined.

NJPW announced that four play-in matches would take place before the G1 Climax 35 tournament begins next month. The first two matches announced were Tomohiro Ishii vs. Drilla Maloney and Taichi vs. Callum Newman. The July 4 NJPW Soul event will see the final two matches to fill out the entire 20 man field with Ryohei Oiwa vs. Bad Luck Fale in A Block play-in match and Yoshi-Hashi vs. Chase Owens in a B Block play-in match.

NJPW pointed to the wrestlers in the play-in matches having a low number of singles wins this year and that is why they were placed in the matches to earn their way into G1 Climax 35. It makes sense, but the case for Tomohiro Ishii not being in the tournament from a kayfabe standpoint is a big stretch.

Ishii is the current Strong Openweight Champion having beaten Gabe Kidd for the title in May. He also recently captured the IWGP Hvt. Tag Team Championship with his new partner Taichi at Dominion earlier this month. It is hard to believe that someone holding two titles in NJPW would have to earn their way into the tournament and yet here we are with Mr. Ishii having to earn his way in against Drilla Maloney.

Maloney hasn’t shown a lot of progression in the last year as a wrestler, but he is good at the hard-hitting style that is favored in NJPW and he needs the rep in G1 Climax, so I figured that with Ishii not making the G1 Climax field last year, he wouldn’t make it in this year either.

Although Ishii is still capable of putting on excellent matches, it seems wise to space out his appearances rather than expecting him to wrestle a large amount of matches in a short amount of time at this stage of his career. I thought going into the match that Maloney would advance, but I wasn’t expecting a match quite this good.

This match was on the high-end of all of the Maloney matches I’ve seen. He brought a lot of intensity to this match and he needed it going strike-for-strike with Ishii for over 17 minutes. They had some memorable sequences in this match with one of them being a stiff exchange of slaps to the face. Another great sequence saw Maloney hit an avalanche falcon arrow for a believable near fall.

Maloney pulled off one of the best counters I’ve seen, as Ishii had him up for his Vertical Drop Brain Buster finish and at the very last second right when Ishii was going to drop him on his head, he switched momentum and hit a Vertical Drop Brain Buster of his own. Maloney eventually won the match with a pair of Drilla Killa finishers.

I rated this match at ****1/4 and although I would love to see Ishii in G1, Maloney is the better choice at this time being a younger wrestler that needs the reps in the ring to grow as a performer. If Maloney can raise his game to the level of some of his opponents in the B block, he could very well have a really good run in the tournament.

The second match between Callum Newman and Taichi was relatively easy to predict. Taichi has had a miserable go at it as a singles wrestlers and Newman is just starting to break out having challenged Hirooki Goto for the IWGP World Hvt. Championship in a loss to Hirooki Goto at Wrestling Dontaku in May.

He’s also a two-time IWGP World Hvt. Tag Team Champion, although from a storyline standpoint that shouldn’t help his case for the tournament, it is a feather in his cap worth mentioning. Newman doesn’t have a good record as a singles wrestler this year, but he is on the rise overall as a performer having stepped to the forefront of The United Empire after Jeff Cobb left for WWE.

Newman has had a lot thrown at him at a young age and he’s done an admirable job of handling the pressure of being put in such a big spot by NJPW recently. Taichi gave an awful lot to Newman in this match and both men looked good by the time their hard-hitting war was over.

This was a very physical hard-hitting match that saw Callum bring the physicality against the most physically imposing Taichi. Taichi can be up and down in singles matches, but he was on his A game for this play-in match to determine the ninth entrant in the A Block.

They eventually transitioned from strikes to kicks and Newman got the better of Taichi. Newman then got on track hitting some big moves against Taichi, but he could not put him away. The crowd was red hot down the stretch and Newman finally put Taichi away with Prince’s Curse to win the match. Newman and Taichi had great chemistry and although Newman is smaller than Taichi, Taichi sold for Newman so well and made his strikes and power offense look devastating. Check out Taichi’s sell of Newman’s turnbuckle dropkick early in the match to see a good example of this. I rated this match at ****1/4.

NJPW got this matchup right as well. Much like Maloney, Newman is a young talent that needs the reps. I can see Newman having a high-ceiling in terms of having the ability to grab the attention of some people with his in-ring performance even if I don’t see him being competitive to advance to the semi-final and final rounds of G1 Climax this year, although he certainly could be a dark horse contender to be in the mix to advance until the very end of the tournament.

Overall, NJPW got it right advancing Maloney and Newman. The other qualifying matches are a little more difficult to predict. Ryohei Oiwa vs. Bad Luck Fale in A Block play-in match and Yoshi-Hashi vs. Chase Owens in a B Block play-in match each has the scary prospect of the A and B blocks adding a House of Torture member to the field.

Looking ahead to the final set of G1 Glimax 35 qualifying matches, I don’t want to see Fale or Owens advance into the field, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them does advance. Fale does not appear to be moving well at all these days, so the prospect of him wrestling at least 9 matches in the span of around a month seems like something NJPW is unlikely to green light. Three House of Torture members in one block would also likely generate a downturn in interest in the tournament as a whole around the world. Oiwa has been on the rise as a performer even though his storyline credentials aren’t all that great, it would be almost unfathomable for him not to advance here.

Hashi vs. Owens is the toughest match to pick. Hashi has a history of putting on great matches during G1, but has a history of falling short in most of them. My guess is that Owens advances into the  giving House of Torture two members in each block to wreak havoc on the field.

Sean Radican recently passed 22 years of covering wrestling for Pro Wrestling Torch. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Bluesky @SeanRadican.