Current IWGP Global Heavyweight Champion Gabe Kidd was a lot of people’s favorite heading into this year’s NJPW G1 Climax tournament, but after suffering an injury, he has been forced to withdraw from the tournament all together. The tournament will continue without the Englishman, with all of the men he was supposed to face receiving two points as a result of Kidd forfeiting his matches, and in a new report from Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, details on how NJPW have adjusted the tournament have now been revealed.
NJPW sources told Fightful that Kidd was already hurt heading into the tournament, and that it wasn’t 100% clear if he was going be medically ready for his opening match against Konosuke Takeshita on July 19, but Kidd was in good enough health to march on with the competition. However, Kidd ended up hyperextending his knee, and even though NJPW sources thought that Kidd had torn his MCL, which would have been much worse, the company thought it would be much safer if Kidd sat out the rest of the competition instead of wrestling more matches, and potentially injuring himself even further.
With Kidd now out of action, parts of the tournament have had to be shifted as some of the wrestlers who have since been given points as a result of Kidd’s injury were supposed to lose to the Englishman. However, NJPW sources told Fightful that this was likely the extent of adjusting the tournament as Kidd wasn’t slated to reach the semi-finals anyway, making the changes to the competition relatively simple. It’s currently unclear how long Kidd will be out of action for, but it is likely that he will end up missing NJPW’s first big event after the G1 Climax, their joint Forbidden Door pay-per-view with AEW in London, England on August 24.
