The Alternate Wrestling Universe of New Japan’s G1 Climax in 2020
As soon as the bell rang for his main event match on the third night of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax 30 tournament¹ on September 23 at the Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center, Bullet Club faction leader and all-around bad guy “Switchblade” Jay White immediately turned began mocking the lack of cheers for his opponent. The lack of noise was noteworthy as he was facing off against the fan-favorite babyface—and defending G1 champion — Kota Ibushi. While typically a crowd would be reigning down an enthusiastic chant of “I-bu-shi! I-bu-shi!,” there was not a single cheer to be heard on the broadcast.
But it wasn’t because the stands were empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, over 1,900 fans were were in the arena. Instead, the crowd simply began clapping to the rhythm of the “I-bu-shi” chant. “That’s just clapping though!” White proclaimed in a mocking huff. But not a single voice was raised, in the face of White’s heelish goading. “Why aren’t you chanting his name?” The Switchblade deviously tried starting the “I-bu-shi” chant himself, even going as far as picking up the ringside microphone to chide them for not saying their “favorite guy’s name.” But not a single voice was raised, despite all of White’s heelish goading.
Because New Japan told the fans not to cheer
Because there’s a pandemic.
And the universally-masked fans in attendance actually followed this public health protocol.
Because there’s a pandemic.
Sitting in the United States and watching the action of this year’s G1 Climax has felt like being transported to some alternate dimension. While stateside pro wrestling promotions have struggled mightily in an attempt to cope in a COVID-19 world, New Japan is able to carry on almost in a business-as-usual mode (the G1 heads towards its finale this Sunday, October 18; streaming with subscription via NJPWWorld.com).
The circumstances of 2020 have underscored the importance of fans to the pro wrestling experience. Unlike real sporting contests, pro wrestling is inherently a performance to elicit a reaction from those in attendance. Every high-flying areal flip is designed to draw cheers, while every dastardly cheap shot needs to get booed. The wrestlers themselves rely on that real-time feedback to gauge their own performances and determine what the next in-ring move should be. Without the noise of the crowd, they’re essentially flying blind and the art form suddenly morphs from immersive live theater to a TV show on a cavernous sound stage.
It’s worth noting that crowd interaction has become even more integrated into the pro wrestling product in a post-kayfabe world, where the vast majority of fans (at least those over the age of 12) are fully aware that pro wrestling is scripted entertainment. (For all the flack that wrestling fans get, a far greater percentage of its viewers recognize the inherent unreal facade compared to reality TV show viewers.) In the past decade, fans have become an active participant in the pro wrestling’s entertainment formula by leaning into communal chants to support their favs (even if they’re supposed to be the bad guys), chide the performers they hate (even if they’re supposed to be the good guys), and amuse themselves. Much of the time this phenomenon is electric (see: Daniel Bryan’s “Yes!” chant or any NXT TakeOver), and occasionally it’s a detriment to the product (when fans care more about their “clever” chants than the in-ring action), but regardless it has fundamentally shifted the wrestling industry to a true fans-first medium.
And then 2020 happened.
The cavernous sound stage area has unfortunate reality for both World Wrestling Entertainment (the undisputed Goliath of the global wrestling landscape) and All Elite Wrestling (the one-year-old upstart promotion with a weekly show on TNT). As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit hard in March, both Florida-based promotions were forced to scramble and come up with a plan to satisfy their weekly TV contracts without their usual business model touring and broadcasting live from filled arenas across the country.
AEW started off pandemic programing by pre-taping a month’s worth of episodes from a gym in Georgia. Rather than have the building be empty, they sanctioned the heel and babyface wrestlers who weren’t competing in a given match into opposing cheering sections. Eventually AEW moved to live broadcast emanating from Daily’s Place, the amphitheater connected to the Jacksonville Jaguars TIAA Bank Field (AEW owner Tony Khan is the son of Jaguars owner Shad Khan). They kept the heel and face cheering sections to provide some ambiance, and in August they began allowing distanced fans into the venue (at 15 percent of maximum capacity).
WWE’s first effort was converting their Performance Center (i.e. training facility) into a TV-ready wrestling set. After a couple months of doing essentially empty arena shows with an eerie silence (including WrestleMania), they took a page from AEW and had the wrestlers who would normally be training act as the cheering audience (though WWE’s attempt at this felt much more stilted because the crowd basically acted as one company-approved hive mind when it came to cheering). Feeling the Performance Center wasn’t grandiose enough, in August the WWE’s main brands uprooted to Orlando’s Amway Center where the production team built the WWE ThunderDome, which consists of a typical arena ring setup but with the stands filled with walls of video screens featuring fans watching from home on their computers and reacting in near real-time (unfortunately with piped-in sound).
And yet even after all the strain and creativity (and allowing some fans in despite Florida spiking COVID rates, in AEW’s case), these American wrestling shows still feel inherently… off.
New Japan’s fans might not be cheering, but the product’s atmosphere still feels like typical NJPW action. In part this can be attributed to cultural differences inherent in Japanese wrestling fans. They’ve always been a more reserved lot, where rhythmic clapping along is more ingrained into the experience and doing silly chants that distract from the in-ring action is near sacrilegious. New Japan’s style also leans much more on in-ring storytelling compared to American wrestling, where much of the narrative is told through the wrestlers cutting promos or acting in backstage segments. Since NJPW stories are told in the squared circle and the crowd noise is almost never overwhelming, there were less monkey wrenches to be thrown into the system by COVID-19.
Whatever intensity is lost from a cheer-free NJPW crowd is subconsciously made up for by the unusual comfort of witnessing the packed crowd’s communal harmony. It may be strange to think about, but there haven’t really been calm crowd on U.S. television since the pandemic hit. The only large gatherings we’ve seen on our TVs have been rowdy crowds for Trump rallies, potential super-spreader events like Spring Break throngs, Sturgis bikers, and SEC football crowds, or various groups of protestors. It’s basically been wall-to-wall chaos.
But there is no one in these G1 crowds making a fuss about their personal freedoms being more important the science-backed public health procedures. There’s an understanding that as part of the societal contract, if they want to experience the live entertainment that they love, the least they could do is follow non-obtrusive rules to help prevent the spread of an infectious virus. Seeing the calm acceptance of the communal good brings a very strange air of calm set against two sweating guys chopping each others’ chests and dropping each other on their heads.
But there’s one more key factor that makes the G1 seem like a blissful Bizzaro World: NJPW’s English-language announcers.
Kevin Kelly and Rocky Romero are the best pro wrestling commentary team in the world right now… and it’s not even close.
I fell in love with the duo while watching them call matches during 2019's G1 Climax, but it took me over a year to pinpoint exactly what factor made them stand out. But after watching the first few nights of the tournament this year it became glaringly obvious:
They don’t gaslight the viewers.
For non-wrestling fans, that may seem like an odd thing to laud, but since Vince McMahon took the WWE (then WWF) national in the 1980s, the standard formula for announcing pro wrestling is to have at least one announcer call the action straight-up (favoring the babyface) while a second color commentator supports the heel. As a result, usually one member of the commentary team is actively lying to viewers, telling them what they’re seeing on the screen is not actually what’s really happening. It’s like throwing an unreliable narrator into a story that already had a truthful narrator. If the bad guy is using a steel chair illegally, the heel announcer will justify the action. While gaslighting is typically employed to make the victim question their reality about past events, heel announcing is essentially real-time gaslighting, where viewers are told that their eyes are lying to them as events transpire.
While this framing might seem a bit extreme considering the viewer is fully aware of the heel announcer’s deception (and it’s often used for great comedic effect by top-level announcers like WWE’s Corey Graves), it’s subconsciously taxing. Perhaps it’s the fact that gaslighting has become an increasingly common occurrence in daily life in 2020 (it is, after all, WWE Hall of Famer² Donald Trump’s preferred means of communication), but the charm of being lied to by the evil-leaning commentator has totally worn off. And it took a steady dose of Kelly and Romero to realize that.
As basic as it sounds, the key to Kelly and Romero’s magic is that they’re on the same page. Typically of a play-by-play announcer, Kelly supports the babyface wrestlers and Romero is an active member of Chaos, NJPW’s babyface stable. Thus, their rapport is symbiotic.³ They both loath the cheating ways of Bullet Club’s heels, revel in the hard-hitting toughness of Tomohiro Ishii and Minoru Suzuki, and pay reverence to top babyfaces Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi. But they’re also willing to reluctantly give credit to someone like Jay White for using brilliant heel strategies to win, which is rare for American face announcers.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s much easier to tell a story when the people calling the action have a coherent shared narrative. (It also helps that unlike WWE and AEW, the duo doesn’t have to spend anytime plugging merch, sponsors, or upcoming shows.) Both Kelly and Romero agree that there’s a fundamental truth to what they’re seeing happen in the ring³ rather then spending time taking opposing positions and arguing. This gives the matches a certain space to breath without attempting to grind down viewers, allowing the wrestlers to fully tell the stories in a straightforward manner with their physical feats.
In addition to the best in-ring action on the planet, New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax offers environment where objective reality exists in both via its announce booth and its health-conscious fans. Goddammit if that isn’t comforting.
¹ For the initiated, the annual month-long tournament features 20 of New Japan’s top wrestlers, divided into two blocks of 10 competitors. Every wrestler battles the other members of their block in a round robin tournament. The two wrestlers who emerge with the most victories in each block then square off in the G1 Final, with the winner earning the right to challenge for NJPW’s main prize — the IWGP Heavyweight Championship — at Wrestle Kingdom (New Japan’s version of WrestleMania, which takes place every January).
² No really, he’s in the WWE Hall of Fame.
³ Unfortunately, Kelly and Romero are not the full-time English-language New Japan announce team beyond the G1. Because Romero is an active wrestler and manager of the tag team Roppongi 3K, many other NJPW shows feature Kelly calling matches with Gino Gambino. As a pro-Bullet Club heel announcer, Gambino completely flips things for the worse to an American-style contradictory commentary dynamic.
⁴ It should be noted that Kelly and Romero come close to gaslighting when it comes to calling the matches of Toru Yano, NJPW’s resident comic relief. Yano’s character is essentially that of the sort of chubby, goofy lovable cheater: a rapscallion, not an evil guy.⁵ He basically only wins matches by funny shenanigans, like taping his opponent to stationary objects so they get counted out or a low-blow followed by a quick roll up. When Yano gets caught cheating, Kelly and Romero get elaborate with their excuses to remain pro-Yano (like claiming Yano’s hidden tape must be for a business selling tape to wrestlers who need it or saying that their monitors cut out when he attempts a low blow), but they do so by switching to a completely over-the-top tone that emphasizes that it’s 100 percent a joke and clearly not meant to be gaslighting deception.
⁵ The “evil guy” on NJPW’s roster is… Evil. That’s his name. This many come as a shock, but Evil is a cheating heel who betrayed his long time friends earlier this year.
