Katsuyori Shibata vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW G1 Climax 23 Night Two (8/2/2013)

This was an A Block match in the 2013 G1 Climax.

It rules. Another shorter G1 match, although not quite a true sprint. Another of these Kojima matches where he comes in hypermotivated For Some Reason too. It’s a great Kojima performance in general, as he once again shows up to one of these shows intent on reminding you that not only is he still here after feeling like a part of the background set for the last year and change, but that he’s still really great.

I have a more casual fan friend, the sort of fan who was sort of into New Japan through the first two thirds or so of the 2010s peak, but kind of dwindled off after AJ and Nakamura left, only tuning in for big and highly acclaimed stuff like the Kenny/Naito matches or big Shingo epics, and then just kind of stopped watching wrestling in general over the last few years. Hard to blame him. We still talk, but virtually never about wrestling. Anyways, he was one of a few guys in a group chat in the middle of the 2010s and when these G1 shows were available on streaming, we all watched most of them. It was a wonderful communal experience that I now largely share with another group, the oft spoken of ex-WWW Slack chat. There was a certain sort of match in these G1s, the sort of match that is largely the province of the NEVER Title, but without the stakes of any of those matches. Nagata, Ishii, Kojima, sometimes Goto, sometimes Tenzan, and sometimes Shibata. The beauty of them was that the weren’t for anything besides G1 points and almost exclusively contested between people who we knew were never going to be series contenders to win, especially as the tournament began to change. At one point in a Kojima/Ishii match from the 2014 tournament, he imagined a scenario where Kojima shouted “THIS IS MY WRESTLE” before hitting an apron DDT like two minutes into a lower card match. I think about it a lot whenever a match like this comes across my plate again.

Shibata doesn’t entirely fit in because this is 2013, and it being Shibata’s first G1 back and the G1 still having some element of unpredictability to it (i.e. a huge star doesn’t have to be in the finals, look at Karl in 2012 or Naito in 2011), he’s still someone who feels like a genuine candidate. So something is on the line. It’s not entirely that way because Shibata feels like a Block A frontrunner really only behind Tanahashi and Okada (and maybe Naito?) at this point, but the spirit is still there. It’s short, it’s mean, it’s stuffed full of gross shots and cool head drops.

In short, this is Kojima’s wrestle.

In the end, Shibata pays in the same way Tanahashi did the day before. He takes the old man a little too lightly, fucks around, and winds up getting his head knocked off. Kojima goes on a big flurry in the last thirty seconds after dodging a PK. Shibata has no real recourse, because he’s caught so off guard and Kojima is so ferocious about taking the win at this immediate moment right now. Kojima takes his head off with a Lariat and gets two gigantic wins to start the tournament.

A wonderful wonderful little match.

***