It came down to the final night of block matches as it so often does, but the final four were set for G1 Climax 32 after a full card of block matches in the the Nippon Budokan on Aug. 16.
Kazuchika Okada, no stranger to success in this particular tournament, emerged as the A Block winner with a victory over Lance Archer. The win put the Rainmaker clear of everyone else in his group with 10 points, meaning no tiebreakers were needed to settle things.
That wasn’t the case in B Block, where Tama Tonga got some payback against the man responsible for running him out of Bullet Club, Jay White. Tonga was able to stun the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion — figuratively and literally — to leave them tied with 10 points atop the group, advancing due to the head-to-head win.
C Block also featured a tie at the end between Tetsuya Naito and Zack Sabre Jr. with eight points each. Yet those two also squared off on Night 18, with Naito surprisingly pulling off an inside cradle less than two minutes in to take both the match and the group.
His quarterfinal opponent will be Will Ospreay, who ended up the only man in D Block with eight points. Ospreay took care of Juice Robinson on Tuesday night to take his record to 4-2, while no one else in his group ended at better than 3-3.
The Night 18 results create interesting dynamics for both semifinals. This will be the first time that Okada and Tonga meet while both are fan favorites, and the crowd will likely be showing love for each of them in turn. Okada has the upper hand in terms of prior G1 Climax history, but Tama won their most recent tournament meeting last year.
Meanwhile, Naito and Ospreay have never met in a singles match, a somewhat surprising fact until one recalls that the Commonwealth Kingpin hasn’t been a heavyweight all that long. They have been in the ring together on the opposite side of tag team bouts any number of times, including three occasions to date in 2022.
While the whole card for Night 19 of G1 Climax 32 hasn’t been revealed, it will feature both semifinal matches, with the final taking place the following night. Start time for the card on Wednesday, Aug. 17 is 6:00 p.m. Tokyo time, which is 5:00 a.m. ET and 2:00 a.m. PT for NJPW fans in the Unites States.