Ga<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> power diodes with high voltage/current ratings, superior dynamic performance, robust reliability, and potentially easy-to-implement are a vital milestone on the Ga<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> power electronics roadmap. In this letter, a better tradeoff between fast reverse-recovery and rugged surge-current capability has been demonstrated in NiO/Ga<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> p-n heterojunction diodes (HJDs). With the double-layered p-NiO design, the HJD exhibits superior electrostatic performances, including a high breakdown voltage of 1.37 kV, a forward current of 12.0 A with a low on-state resistance of 0.26 Ω, yielding a static Baliga's figure of merit (FOM) of 0.72 GW/cm<sup>2</sup>. Meanwhile, the fast switching performance has been observed with a short reverse recovery time in nanosecond timescale (11 ns) under extreme switching conditions of d<italic>i</italic>/d<italic>t</italic> up to 500 A/μs<sub>.</sub> In particular, for a 9-mm<sup>2</sup> HJD, a large surge current of 45 A has also been obtained in a 10-ms surge transient, thanks to the conductivity modulation effect. These results are comparable with those of the advanced commercial SiC SBDs and have significantly outperformed the past reported Ga<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> HJDs, fulfilling the enormous potential of Ga<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> in power applications.