NEW JAPAN G1 CLIMAX 36 RESULTS – NIGHT 17 (8/13): Alan4L’s results and analysis of a high stakes night in Korakuen.

NJPW G1 CLIMAX 36 NIGHT 17 REPORT
AUGUST 13, 2026
KORAKUEN HALL
TOKYO, JAPAN
AIRED LIVE ON NJPW WORLDREPORT BY ALAN4L, PWTORCH CONTRIBUTOR

Commentators: Walker Stewart, Chris Charlton

Note: Thanks to Sean for accommodating my switch request a few weeks ago! 8/8 ended up being my least favorite show of the tour so I was delighted to have dodged that bullet. Instead, I got a wild summer’s night in Korakuen and there’s few things in wrestling I love more than that!

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OPENER

(1) DRILLA MOLONEY beat SHOTA UMINO

PREVIEW TAG MATCHES

(1) HIROOKI GOTO & TATSUYA MATSUMOTO beat OLEG BOLTIN & MASATORA YASUDA

(2) HOUSE OF TORTURE (Sanada & Sho & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) beat KONOSUKE TAKESHITA & TORU YANO & TAISEI NAKAHARA

(3) UNBOUND COMPANY (Shingo Takagi & Yuto-Ice & Taiji Ishimori) beat UNITED EMPIRE (Great-o-Khan & Jakob Austin Young & Zane Jay)

(4) TMDK (Ryohei Oiwa 7 Hartley Jackson) beat UNBOUND COMPANY (Yota Tsuji & Daiki Nagai)

The last session of undercard tags for the main part of the tour ended in the most fitting way possible – Big Jag putting Small Fry through the mat with a powerbomb! In all seriousness, this was a great tour for Daiki Nagai who continues to show great personality and chemistry with his stable-mates. A real star of the future he is. It will be interesting to see what sorts of undercards we get this weekend in Ryogoku and who will be rewarded for their efforts during the tour.

G1 TOURNAMENT MATCHES

(6) AARON WOLF (8) vs. ZACK SABRE JR (8) – B Block match

With a succulent Chinese meal on the line in this otherwise low stakes bout, both men were all business when they emerged into the middle of Korakuen. Wolf set the tone for what style of match this would be as he remove his wrestling shoes before the bell and went barefoot to suggest that this would be Judo vs. Catch Wrestling in the purest way possible. Zack, clearly a believer in good foot hygiene, didn’t reciprocate by ditching his footwear but he was absolutely up for having a good ol’ grapple with the Olympic gold medalist.

The expected hold for hold mat wrestling was a treat to begin the contest as the pair flowed in a way that was so natural and more like two high level martial artists sparring rather than a co-operative pro wrestling match. Sabre, who had had a frustrating tournament, was showing signs of frustration at just how comfortable Wolf was in Zack’s world. A world that normally leads to his opponents being tied in knots. As a result it was the Brit who threw the first strikes that was met with just as much enthusiasm from Wolf.

They did a nice build to Aaron hitting his now signature elbow drop (which looks meaty as hell) with Zack avoiding it at all costs and then selling it like death when it was eventually successful, landing right in the lower back. A flying octopus was the first time Wolf seemed in real jeopardy and he was forced to get a ropebreak as the pressure began to mount. But it was one of his most trusted moves in his young career, the high angle powerslam, which turned the tables back in his favour as he used it to power out of a Sabre triangle choke in really impressive fashion.

The last few minutes saw the former IWGP kingpin tossed around like a ragdoll with beautiful judo throws until a desperation Zack Driver set up a jujigatame as Korakuen really got into the match. Wolf fought out and looked to be proving too resilient for Zack’s submission. However the quick thinking of Sabre proved the difference when he used the momentum of Wolf’s landslide attempt against him and sunk in a picture perfect crucifix hold to get the three and emerge from a disappointing G1 with a winning record.

WINNER: ZSJ (10 pts) in 15:44. (****1/4)

(Alan’s Analysis: Saving this for the final night was a stroke of genius. Aaron Wolf has improved so much over the course of the last month, and Zack was always going to be his perfect opponent. Holding the match off until today allowed the rookie to really have his sea legs going and deliver a match that I don’t think he had in him a month ago. This was a brilliant match. One to put the phone down and bask in the class and details on display. This G1 has been a roaring success on the Aaron Wolf front. It really couldn’t have gone much better for him. If he keeps improving at the rate he is, look out.)

(7) GABE KIDD (10) vs. REN NARITA (10) – B Block match

Is it heel heat when you are vehemently rooting against someone to lose because you don’t want them ruining your G1 finals weekend by being crap? Well if it is then credit to Ren Narita he was getting all time nuclear heat in my house. Forget the Tokyo Dome last year, I’ve never loved Gabe Kidd more than I did tonight as I rooted him on to put Narita out to pasture. Oddly enough as this match went on, the commentators (and crowd) were treating Ren as the babyface so the story of the match didn’t exactly match my feelings watching it.

There was only 2 minutes of actual match time after they spent far more than that brawling around the orange seats before the bell. Dick Togo and Sho of course interfered and the HOT guys tried to triple team Gabe. An attempt to put him through a table was foiled by the Nottingham man, and it was Narita who ended up getting blasted though it at the top of the stairs.

A low blow and a his terrible Double Cross finisher gave Ren a chance for a win seconds after they got in the ring and the bell rang, but Gabe kicked out at 2.99999 and I woke up the neighbours. Because there’s a God in heaven, Kidd was able to turn things back in his favour moments later and laid out his former dojo mate with two piledrivers for the surprisingly decisive win.

WINNER: Gabe Kidd (12 pts) in 2:11. (No Rating)

(Alan’s Analysis: Phew what a relief! If they did back to back years of HOT G1 finals I don’t know what I’d have done. I know this, Gabe has certainly spared you dear readers as you’d be succumbing to an obnoxious amount of vitriol if this went the other way. As a match it was nothing but we got the right result.)

(8) OSKAR (8) vs. YUYA UEMURA (10) – B Block match

As we got to our semi-main, the story had gotten pretty simple in terms of qualification scenarios. Yuya and Callum Newman were both in control of their own destinies. Win and in.

Oskar jumped Uemura before the bell and controlled a large portion of the match from there. His offence is starting to really come together, and we saw the versatility of it throughout this contest. The big German hit the ropes at speed before delivering a great looking big boot, he was bending Yuya in half with a devastating camel clutch showing off his submissions and he soared hit into the skies for his incredible standing leg drop on a couple of occasions.

Yuya showed his typical “Heat Storm” fire though and kept channeling that energy to get the crowd behind him. He hit and over the rope plancha to the floor which looked desperate and reckless in all the right ways.

The hold Oskar has gotten over best in this tournament though is his Alptraum sleeper and they built up to him locking that in but Yuya escaping due to work he had done on the arm. Then, like a pitbull, Uemura seized on Oskar’s injured limb and sought to make it worse with a series of escalating keylock predicaments.

Oskar survived and managed to get the Alptraum back on. He opted to turn it into a sleeper slam (the One & Only?) and looked to have Yuya dead to rights with an attempted Tree Slam. However a Muto-esque frankensteiner reversal gave Yuya an opening to get back to the arm and force Oskar to tap to a Cross Armbreaker.

WINNER: Yuya Uemura (12 pts) in 17:22. (***1/2)

(Alan’s Analysis: A really solid win for Uemura to set him up for Saturday and his first G1 semi-final. I would suggest though that this was like his G1 as a whole – very good but didn’t quite get over the line to great. Hopefully he’s been keeping something in reserve and he brings the goods in a major way in Ryogoku. At 31 years old, it’s time.)

(9) CALLUM NEWMAN (10) vs. HENARE (8) – B Block match

This raised some eyebrows when it was announced for the main event slot, but both men and the commentators did a good job in the days leading up to the match getting across a simple but effective story.

Newman, had to get through his stable mate to prove several things. His toughness, his leadership value to the United Empire, and his ability to not just survive but thrive in the toughest event of the pro wrestling calendar. This story, and the body language of both men at the outset gave the match all it needed to be a worthy main event.

Initially Callum was much more reserved than he had been in previous matches on the tour. The trash talking was limited and his cockiness was only coming through in the occasional wry smile. His opponent was sterness personified. Providing the physical embodiment of the wall that he was set up to be, Henare did everything right here.

The respect between the competitors didn’t stop Callum taking things to the floor and there was a happy accident when a flying dropkick into the chairs ended up crushing Henare’s balls. This looks very accidental (but very real) and worked out nicely considering Newman has made low blows a big part of his game. Here he had plausible deniability delivering one one of his mentors. A table was introduced after this and we’ll come back to that in a moment.

Henare started to turn up the heat back in the ring with his Berserker Bomb, but a Callum flurry showed that when it came to quickness he had the better of the New Zealander. Inevitably they found themselves on the apron right in front of the table. The strikes as the danger mounted were great. Callum hit a super looking high kick which Henare took well, and then sold like it had woken up the spirit of Afa, Sika, King Curtis and every other bad man islander that found their way inside him. Henare delivered a sick liver punch (one of his best moves) and then gave him a running slam (Rampage) off the apron through the tables. Yes at some point a second table appeared.

And that is when the tone of the match changed, or should I say it got more intense. The way Callum hit the tables looked gross, and sure enough when he rose up he had a nasty gash or welt on the right hand side of his back. The almost immediately another welt appeared in his lower back and grew instantaneously to the point it consumed the other welt and became a quarter of the man’s back. It grew so fast I thought he had ruptured a kidney or punctured a lung (God forbid). This just amplified the story they were trying to tell in the match. Talk about happy accidents! Although I’m not sure how happy Newman could have been after the adrenaline wore off. He had to have had some internal bleeding going on. At time of writing there has been no news of any serious injury (it’s just gone morning in Japan).

There was nothing cocky about the youngest ever IWGP Heavyweight champ at this point. Newman was 100% in survival mode. The deep waters that he’d have drowned in 18 months ago were filling up his lungs and Henare didn’t ease up in the slightest.

Unfortunately they weren’t able to get the reaction from the crowd this all warranted. It wasn’t dead, don’t get me wrong, but there were moments where things just went quiet. It might have been the UE vs. UE element of it or it might have been that those in attendance were genuinely stunned and concerned for the 23 year old who looked like he had been flung off his motorbike at 150kmph.

It became Henare’s hammer head vs. Callum’s Kiss The Crown lariat, with a dusting of Hidden Blade thrown in as a call out to their stablemate. Callum ultimately proved himself, winning out with his Make Way finisher and closing out the show with a confident promo. He looked genuinely excited when they announced it would be him vs. Oiwa on Saturday. He might not feel so great about that when he wakes up this morning. Adrenaline’s a hell of a drug.

WINNER: Callum Newman (12 pts) in 23:04. (****1/4)

(Alan’s Analysis: Callum’s G1 has been a mixed bag, but this really put him on track. I can’t wait to see what he does this weekend. Credit to Henare for a really solid G1, his first back after missing last year through injury. He’s come through some tough stuff but he proved tonight that he’s a worthy member of the New Japan Pro Wrestling roster. More than worthy actually, he’s valuable.)

FINAL THOUGHTS: A key ingredient to a great G1 is great Korakuen shows and they produced two of them on this tour. This show didn’t have any matches that were as good as Takagi/Takeshita or Tsuji/Oleg from last week, but it had more drama and very satisfying booking. I’m as excited as I could be for a tantalising set of semi finals in Sumo Hall! ON TO RYOGOKU!