Pantoja’s NJPW G1 Climax 35 Finals Review

NJPW G1 Climax 35 Finals

August 17^th, 2025 | Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan

I saw a lot of hardcore New Japan fans are mad at the idea of Takeshita winning because he’s an outsider. Maybe be more mad at the booker for not creating any new stars.

G1 Climax Finals: EVIL vs. Konosuke Takeshita

Red Shoes looked to make sure this was a fair fight, telling the members of House of Torture to stand behind the guardrail. Of course, that didn’t last long and we got our usual shenanigans very soon after. Thankfully, Takeshita worked hard to stop it and got help from Red Shoes, a group of Young Lions, and even Zack Sabre Jr. Once that was over, we actually got a solid match with EVIL remembering that he knew how to wrestle in his pre-House of Torture days. Interestingly, the crowd became kind of 50/50. Apparently they’re rather a homegrown guy who has sucked for five years win than an outsider. Gatekeeping is weird. EVIL did bust out stuff like Darkness Falls and even paid homage to former greats like Masahiro Chono and his old stable leader Tetsuya Naito. Okay, that’s one way to get a crowd on your side. Takeshita hitting a modified German where he lifted EVIL basically by his crotch was weird but actually really impressive. Takeshita had several counters for Everything is EVIL and hit a Last Ride down the stretch. When that wasn’t enough, he delivered Raging Fire to win the G1 in 26:26. Better than I expected and the best EVIL match in years. Not a great match but a good one. It’s almost like, if you were a competent booker, you’d let EVIL just wrestle without any of this overbooked nonsense. [*** ¼]

6.5

The final score: review Average

The 411

I thought this would be an absolute disaster. It instead wound up being a good match with the right winner.