Tom Lawlor is headed to Japan.
During NJPW Dominion, New Japan Pro-Wrestling announced the participants for the G1 Climax 32 tournament. Among the participants is Tom Lawlor, the first-ever NJPW STRONG Openweight Champion, making his first appearance in the G1 Climax tournament.
Appearing on Figure Four Daily, Lawlor discussed the upcoming tournament.
"How about that? Filthy Tom Lawlor in the G1 Tournament 2022, the 50th anniversary of New Japan. Who embodies strong style more than me? I don't know if you can find many more people. If you think about it, it's based upon is legitimate martial arts fighting skill. Everybody thinks strong style is beating each other up and head dropping each other and nailing each other unprotected. No, no, no. Strong style is about legitimate martial arts techniques, fighting spirit," he said.
The field will be divided into four blocks with seven wrestlers in each block. Blocks are scheduled to be announced on the June 20 New Japan Road show.
Even if Lawlor knew the blocks, he wouldn't be so sure that the information is reliable.
"I have an idea, but I wouldn't even consider that information to be reliable because the information I had going in wasn't necessarily 100%. I wasn't surprised to see my name, these things do take time and has been in the works for a while. I just got my visa back recently, very recently. I had information that ended up being what was not provided on the broadcast. The number of people, stuff like that," he said.
Lawlor said that he thought there would be less people in the tournament and then joked that he thought it would be the four best in the world, which included himself.
The G1 Climax 32 is set to begin on July 16 in Hokkaido and conclude on August 18 at Nippon Budokan.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
