NJPW G1 Attendance Better Than Last Year, Tickets Still Available For Some Shows

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that attendance for this year’s NJPW G1 Climax tournament is up 12.9 percent from last year after only eleven shows, making it the most successful G1 ever, as it beats last year’s record. However, that could change, as last year had two sellouts at Budokan Hall and right now, this year has only one.

Last year had a show in Nagoya (5,735 in attendance) which featured Kenny Omega vs. Sanada and Tetsuya Naito vs. Hirooki Goto. This year, Nagoya played host to Kazuchika Okada vs. KENTA and Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Sanada (6,142) and Naito vs. Jon Moxley and Shingo Takagi vs. Jay White (5,278). Last year’s event in Takamatsu had Okada vs. Michael Elgin and Tanahashi vs. Yoshi-Hashi and drew 2,555, while this year’s event had Tanahashi vs. EVIL and KENTA vs. Sanada and drew 2,820.

Tickets are available for both Budokan Hall shows on August 10-11, although the finals on August 12 is sold out. However, it didn’t sell out as fast as last year. That event will be closed-circuited to movie theaters in Japan.