Callum Newman vs. SANADA

[5.0] "This was just an odd match and the crowd reaction it got was equally odd. It never really flowed well. It's strange to see SANADA in this position, although in fairness -- it feels life there's an overarching reason for that. SINGLES RECORD: 1-1"

[6.0] "Well the pace wasn't there. The match was good but did n othing special. I expected a bit more from this encounter."

[5.0] "A fine match but nothing particularly special. Some good back and forth and striking towards the end but overall a pretty mediocre encounter."

[5.0] "(Grade:D/**) Its a mediocre match, while I enjoy some the offense on displayed it want down once the ref bump occurred and fizzled out."

[6.0] "Both guys looked solid here and the match felt pretty crisp, Sanada teased the guitar and low blows but Callum avoided them and won."

[7.0] "Newman continues to develop and I've noticed he does a fantastic job selling every match. The future looks bright for him."

[5.0] "A fairly bland match between these two. Sanada dominates early on, employing a few shenanigans to maintain the advantage until Callum is able to comeback and win. Pretty average. **1/2"

[5.0] "A good but not particularly memorable match in my opinion, Newman and SANADA have some fun exchanges with some decent grappling. SANADA kept the HoT shenanigans to a relative minimum and yet again he failed to get the win when prioritising his actual wrestling. Newman scores the win with his arm-clutch brainbuster in a pretty fun 10 minutes, not an amazing match but not a bad one by any stretch."

[6.0] "Fine match, SANADA kept the shenigans at minimum therefore he actually wrestled and the action was solid. ***1/4"

[2.0] "Did not care for this at all. They were moving the whole match at what felt like half speed and they didn't do anything special in the match to help elevate it at all. Newman didn't get to show much of what makes him fun to watch and SANADA worked his typical HoT nonsense match."

[5.0] "Acceptable enough showcase match for Newman against a very tuned out but at least not sloppy SANADA."

[4.0] "It's normal bland SANADA HoT heel work, so the match already has an uphill battle, and Callum Newman isn't good enough to be able to bring anything out of it, so it's just a dull match. Not super bad or anything, but at no point interesting or inspiring of any emotion."

[6.0] "This was fine. Nothing to go out of your way to watch, but it was a nice little sprint that had some good knee selling from Newman, good heel work from SANADA and it played its role well. Other than that nothing super special."

"Newmans best performance in the G1 so far, finally showing why he was picked for this tournament. SANADA continues to show he's not as washed as people first assumed post-injury. Solid stuff. 3.75/5"

[3.0] "**1/4 very meh match, nothing relevant and the crowd was too quiet during the match, Sanada is not very entertaining, and Newman doesn't run, so the little that Newman did helped make it not a bad match, but it lasted too long, it lasted 6-7 minutes, not 10, meh ending, nothing remarkable"

[6.0] "This was fine but nothing more really. Newman sold well and continues to show improvement, while SANADA was just SANADA, some solid work with the obligatory HoT shenanigans like ref bumps and low blow attempts. Thankfully we had no interference so this ended up just being a solid opener. ***"

[6.0] "A pretty solid opening match for the nights block action. Mainly thanks to Callum who had some great high pace offence as usual and sold the damage to his knee very well. Sanada was a bit meh in this match just a lot of him trying to cheat and it not really coming off. I was not a big fan of how long the ref bump lasted for either to be honest. The finishing stretch after Callum blocked the low blow was good with some nice counters and some brutal knees from Callum to set up a Brainbuster for the feel good win. Yeah all round solid TV bout and was nice to see H.o.T cheating not work. (***1/4)"

[7.0] "Really enjoyable match with Callum getting the "Feelgood" win over the cheating Sanada. But the cheating was held to a small amount and the interactions besides that were really fun"