NJPW News: NJPW announces competitors for the G1 Climax 27 tournament (2017)

What’s the story?

New Japan Pro Wrestling has officially announced the competitors for the G1 Climax 27 tournament. The announcement took place during the Kizuna Road Show on 20^th June 2017.

In case you didn’t know...

The G1 Climax tournament is a yearly affair organised by New Japan Pro Wrestling. The tournament is held in a round-robin style, which features the winners of two blocks going up against each other. There is a points system that decides the winner of each block, with 2 points being awarded for a victory, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a loss.

Also read: 10 things you didn’t know about New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW)

The winner of the finals of the tournament gets to face off against the IWGP Heavyweight Champion at the annual Wrestle Kingdom for the Championship. The last three winners of the G1 Climax tournament are Kazuchika Okada (2014), Hiroshi Tanahashi (2015) and Kenny Omega (2016).

The heart of the matter

The full list of participants in the G1 Climax 27 tournament (2017) is as follows:

Hiroshi Tanahashi

Togi Makabe

Michael Elgin

Kazuchika Okada

Hirooki Goto

Tomohiro Ishii

Toru Yano

YOSHI-HASHI

Kenny Omega

Bad Luck Fale

Tama Tonga

Tetsuya Naito

SANADA

EVIL

Satoshi Kojima

Yuji Nagata

Juice Robinson

Minoru Suzuki

Zack Sabre Jr.

Kota Ibushi

This will be Yuji Nagata’s 19^th G1 Climax tournament and is said to be his final appearance at one. Zack Sabre Jr. and Minoru Suzuki will be making their G1 Climax debuts, while Kota Ibushi will be participating as a freelance “outsider”.

What’s next?

The blocks and match cards for the G1 Climax 27 Tournament will be announced during the Kizuna Roadshows in the upcoming weeks. Further, NJPW will be organising two "G1 Special" events in Long Beach, California on 1^st and 2^nd July 2017, in the build up to the event.

The G1 Special itself will take place on two separate dates, 17^th July 2017 as well as 13^th August 2017. All the aforementioned shows will be airing live on NJPW World.

Author’s take

The tournament seems to have some very interesting participants. There are plenty of choices to root for as there are quite a few competitors in the list released by NJPW that could very well go on to win it all.

Anyone who wins the G1 Climax gets a rocket towards stardom strapped on their back by NJPW. It would, therefore, be really interesting to see who gets to call themselves the champion this time.

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