G1 Climax Results: Who Had The Best Score?

It’s finally done and the G1 is in the rear view mirror until July next year. Kota Ibushi walked away the winner and will now look toward his upcoming title challenge on January 4 at Wrestle Kingdom.

The big question that everyone now wants answered is…

Who won within The Wrestling Estate?

Let’s keep a few things in mind. The points you see for the names are all point differentials. The staff picked the points for the wrestlers and they scored based off of how far off they were. So, if I picked Okada to score 12 points but he scored 14, I earned 2 points. When added together to get your final score, you would want to have the least amount of points possible because it’ll show how much more accurate you were. Just like golf, the lower the score, the better your game.

Let’s look first at who did the best at predicting the head-to-head matchups:

Final tally comes down to Neal Wagner winning with a 62% prediction rate going 56-34 in match predictions. He would be followed by Sam Gladen at 60% (54-36), John Corrigan at 59% (53-73), Juan Bautista at 55% (50-40) and Steven Jackson coming last at 53% (48-42). Hey, in basketball and hockey most teams would kill for that record. In all, it looks like the staff did a damn good job predicting this wonderful sport we call wrestling.

But did Neal winning the head to head mean he won overall in points predictions?

SPOILER ALERT: NO!!!

He finished middle of the pack with 43 points. He had a 53-point differential with the wrestlers, but had 10 points deducted from his score because he accurately predicted that Ibushi would win his block and he was the only person to accurately predict the overall winner of the tournament. Good job sir! He did 100% correctly predict the points totals for four men including Jay White, Juice Robinson, Zach Sabre Jr. and the shocking story of 8 points that was Hiroshi Tanahashi. The creator of the game can try his luck again next year.

However, the creator of The Wrestling Estate – John Corrigan – had the worst luck of the bunch, accumulating 73 points in the tournament and that includes a 5-point deduction for predicting a Jay White B-Block win. He would post correct predictions on both Shingo Takagi and Sabre in their points. He was smart in the beginning to predict low to 0 points for the likes of Yano, Lance Archer and Bad Luck Fale, but each man surprised everyone in the tournament posting better numbers than expected with Yano and Fale scoring 8 and Archer securing 6 points. John just got caught in his own bad luck with New Japan’s booking to help raise some talent up the roster. In his defense, it would have been very hard to predict any of that because each of those three men have been non-factors on the NJPW roster for a while now. Thanks to the man that has given wrestling fans like me a platform to express their opinions and if not for him, this contest wouldn’t be a thing.

Sam would score 28 points on both blocks for 56 total and was the only one to not receive any deductions for picking block winners. He would take Okada and Naito to win their respective blocks and they were both great picks as both men fell in their final matches; otherwise, Sam would be a genius among men. He would accurately predict the 8 points scored for Evil, Shingo and Sabre in the tournament (I’m noticing a weird trend here involving ZSJ). Sam being a New Japan fan himself I know is going to have much better luck next year and could be a favorite to win when time rolls around again.

Steven had a very impressive showing despite coming in last in the head-to-head match prediction. He accumulated 39 points overall with a 5-point deduction for picking Jay White in the B-Block. He would accurately predict the totals for five men including Naito, Sanada, Juice, Goto and surprisingly Jeff Cobb (maybe he had some small insight on Cobb because he’s a big Ring of Honor fan?). It’s very interesting to see how the stats line up, but regardless, good job, Steven.

NOW THE WINNER

Juan would outlast Steven by 10 points and a 5-point deduction for the Ibushi block pick to win and claim bragging rights. We will never hear the end of this! He would score 22 points in the A-Block which is good, but not as impressive as the 12 points he got in the B-Block, totaling 29 points overall. He predicted nine wrestlers’ totals: Ibushi, Archer, Kenta, Evil, Juice, White, Cobb, Shingo and Moxley. It stands out so much because he accurately picked the guys who are mostly in their first G1 like Kenta, Cobb, Shingo and Moxley. The only high-profile names on there are White and Ibushi. He was second to last in the head-to-head predictions, but much like Steven, he made up his points in other matches. Excellent job, Juan! That score will be very hard to replicate and break for that matter. Let’s see if he can become not only the first defending champion, but also the first multi-time champion next year.

This game/experiment was a big success. It made us even more intrigued for the matches, where every single one meant something. A few people went undefeated on some nights and there were a few that didn’t win at all, but as luck would have it, it’s all about how much faith you have in trusting this sport of wrestling.