It feels like a long time coming for those who have followed the hard-hitting British technician that is Zack Sabre Jr. through his days working the British Indies to WCPW to his early NJPW days all the way to Wrestle Kingdom. His talent and energy are hard to ignore, it’s contagious.
Even people whose taste is not usually of Sabre’s technical submission-based style struggle to keep their eyes off the screen when the Brit gets going. From a debut year New Japan Cup win, through the tag division and years of placeholder G1 Climax runs, fans have been crying out for Sabre Jr. to finally be given the ball.
And now it looks like it may be finally coming together in this year’s G1, his seventh since joining the company in 2017. With a personal record of 14 points, just two losses, and seven victories, Sabre Jr. has had one hell of a block, outscoring everyone across both blocks.
But this isn’t the first time fans have begun to believe that his time had come. In 2022, he placed first in his block but was eliminated by Tetsuya Naito in the semifinals.
So it seems only right that there may be some reservations on whether we could see a similar situation again. This is only exacerbated when you consider how rare a G1 winner being a ‘gaijin’ (a foreigner) is, with Kenny Omega being the only one ever to do it back in 2016.
However, I believe that now is his time, and I finally believe the company understands that too. It’s time for Sabre to ‘bring it home’.
But this decision will undoubtedly not be taken lightly, I hate the term but the G1 has to maintain an ‘aura’ around it.
A special feeling. It is a tournament steeped in history, from The Great Muta to Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada to Naito, it is a tournament with almost no ‘dud’ winners in over 30 years.
That is for a multitude of reasons but mainly due to the huge amount of respect owed to it and the attention paid every single time. However, this tournament has seen the boat slightly pushed out.
We have a whole selection of participants who are competing in their first-ever G1, I feel this finally shows an intent to wave in a new era and, at the front of this, has to be Sabre.
ZSJ’s Impressive G1 So Far
There is no man better for the job, we have seen the potential for stars like Yuya Uemura and Yota Tsuji but it has proved it just may be too soon for them. At this stage, the 37-year-old Brit deserves to be handed the reigns, and he has only proved that once again in this tournament.
I think you’d find it hard to find someone who would argue against the fact that everyone in A block’s best match has come against either Shingo Takagi or Sabre. He has delivered night in and night out.
Elevated the younger guys handing them each some of their best matches of the tournament; Gabe Kidd, Callum Newman, Shota Umino. And there is no doubt the company is beginning to see his value handing him huge wins over the bigger stars including Great-O-Khan, SANADA, and even current champion Naito.
He’s easily put on Match of the Tournament contenders with Takagi and Kidd already, and I would trust nobody more than him to walk into the semifinals, and a potential final and not deliver absolute classics.
But, as I mentioned, many fans of the Brit will be feeling a slight unease with such momentum swinging his way. It feels like, almost every year, he has been touted as a potential winner, even in 2017 when the possibility of back-to-back foreign G1 winners seemed a real possibility.
His Past G1 Grievances
He was a breakout star in the G1 that year putting on clinics with Japan’s biggest stars including Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, and Tomohiro Ishii. It was expected he would go deep but, despite a fairly strong showing, he failed to progress from the block.
It seemed he was prepared for another push in 2018 with a New Japan Cup win to his name already but it was another rough tournament in the G1 and this kicked off a run of years where he often felt like filler. From 2018 to 2021, he didn’t make a huge impact, with Okada and Ospreay dominating the top of the card while stars like Sabre Jr. landed lower down.
His prominent tag team run as Dangerous Tekkers with Taichi, and his commitments to splitting time between Japan and the UK holding the RevPro British Heavyweight Championship held him back from being built around at this time. But, when 2022 came around, talk began again as Sabre entered his 5th G1 and, this time, seemingly free of commitments to anything outside of New Japan.
He reached the playoff stages for the very first time but Naito and Okada still remained dominant, putting him out of contention, and still lacking that top-level star power.
Clearly, they had other plans for him that year instead as he went on to become the inaugural NJPW World TV Champion at Wrestle Kingdom instead in January 2023. This would surely set him up to be elevated to main event level status in 2023 and many thought we would begin to see a push by the time the G1 came about.
He topped a block for the first time with 12 points but was knocked out brutally by Okada in the quarter-finals. I didn’t hate this G1 run however, it all felt like steps in the right direction but an understanding that maybe it was still too early.
He wasn’t even back a full year in the singles division, he was still TV champion at this point and he just wasn’t best placed for it. But, just as it was important for him not to win last year, I feel it is now even more important he must win this year.
2024 is the year of ZSJ.
Why now is the right time
Sabre has elevated himself to new heights over the last two years, playing a pivotal role at all three Forbidden Door events. He has shown that he has international appeal and pedigree with classic matches against some of America’s biggest stars including Bryan Danielson.
He has become the complete in-ring worker, he has TMDK and Kosei Fujita to play henchmen for him. And he’s ready now to fulfill his main event destiny.
But where does he fit in?
What’s also important to consider is, beyond my desire for him to be the winner, does he fit into a plan for the eventual main event inside a packed-out Tokyo Dome at Wrestle Kingdom?
Currently, with Naito as champion, there could be a very linear path to the main event – Naito vs Sabre. Simple.
They competed on the second night of the G1 in Osaka and put on a well-received match, rated 4.25 stars by WON. They also have a history of good chemistry in the ring getting a 4.75-star review from WON after their nearly 25-minute long classic in the New Japan Cup final in 2022.
Take that and elevate it for a Tokyo Dome main event and it could be something special with a story where history can be pulled on. But this isn’t the only direction that could work.
We know that Naito has slowed down in the last year or so and, in the four months until Wrestle Kingdom, a lot can change. We could see the title defended a good few times to set up something different with my prospective G1 winner ZSJ.
I’m sure many would appreciate another match between Takagi and Sabre. But that would require Takagi to take the title from his Los Igobernables stablemate.
It could even be SANADA or Bullet Club leader David Finlay. However, it seems very unlikely that NJPW would pitch two non-Japanese wrestlers to face off in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom.
My pick (of course) would be for Takagi, with the coming months being a great time, to tell a story between Naito and Takagi. Maybe a mutual respect title match or a more dramatic situation where Takagi leaves LIJ, turns on Naito, and takes the title.
However, he would need to find a way to almost double-turn and ensure he is able to create a dynamic where he is a face champion defending in a raucous home crowd Wrestle Kingdom main event against a heel Sabre.
Sabre can play the ghastly heel to perfection and could be the perfect antithesis to an underdog Naito or Shingo defending New Japan’s honor come Wrestle Kingdom. The path is laid out, it is time New Japan takes a leap of faith, and has someone with the passion and drive for Japanese wrestling ready in waiting.
They must be hasty to unleash this new force. Sabre made history by becoming the first ‘gaijin’ to win the New Japan Cup, and now there is no better time to make history once again and crown him as the second-ever ‘gaijin’ to win the G1 Climax.
More From LWOS Pro Wrestling
Header photo – NJPW – Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can rewatch all 2021 NJPW events and plenty more tremendous wrestling content from New Japan Pro-Wrestling on NJPWWorld.com; The King of Sports Streaming.
