NJPW G1 Climax 36 Tournament Lineup Announced: AEW Stars Konosuke Takeshita & Gabe Kidd To Compete

AEW/NJPW

The lineup for this summer’s NJPW G1 Climax 36 tournament has been revealed, with two AEW stars confirmed for the tour.

NJPW’s prestigious heavyweight tournament is set to kick off on July 11, with the opening night of the tournament set to emanate from Illinois, USA.

NJPW has now announced 14 of the 20 competitors set to compete in the tournament, with some familiar faces to AEW fans set to be involved.

Seven stars were announced for the A and B blocks respectively, with spots in each block up for grabs in play-in matches.

Among the names announced for the tournament are Konosuke Takeshita – who holds contracts with AEW, NJPW and DDT-Pro simultaneously – and Gabe Kidd – who officially joined AEW with his Dogs stablemates David Finlay and Clark Connors in March, following their respective NJPW departures.

The announced lineups for the A and B blocks are as follows:

A block

Konosuke Takeshita

Hirooki Goto

Boltin Oleg

Yota Tsuji

Shingo Takagi

Jake Lee

SANADA

Either Great-O-Khan or HENARE

Play-in winner A

Play-in winner B

B block

Shota Umino

Yuya Uemura

Ren Narita

Drilla Moloney

Zack Sabre Jr.

Callum Newman

Gabe Kidd

Either Great-O-Khan or HENARE

Play-in winner C

Play-in winner D

The play-in matches will take place during the Road To G1 Climax tour, which kicks off on June 19.

The G1 Climax tournament stars with round-robin block action, where each competitor faces every other competitor in their respective blocks to determine points leaders and runners-up for both the A and B blocks.

These four stars will face off in semifinal playoff matches, before the final two stars battle it out in the G1 Climax grand final on August 16.

With the grueling nature of the G1 Climax – which stars wrestling competitive matches on most days of the tour – and with majority of the tournament taking place in Japan, this would indicate that Takeshita and Kidd will be off AEW TV between July 11 and August 16.

If this is the case, both stars will miss AEW’s new pay-per-view, Redemption, which will emanate from Montreal, QC, Canada on July 26, and the Grand Slam Mexico special, which will air live from Arena Mexico on August 5.

The tournament concludes ahead of AEW All In London which is set for August 30, meaning that both stars should be available to be at Wembley Stadium, should plans require them.

This all comes after Nick Wayne’s stint in NJPW for the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, which saw him finish block action with 10 points.

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• gabe kidd
• AEW
• NJPW
• G1 Climax
• Konosuke Takeshita

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