10 Cult Wrestling Matches To See Before You Die

10. Kenta Kobashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi Vs. Doug Furnas & Dan Koffat - AJPW, May 25, 1992

This, it could be easily argued, is the perfect professional wrestling match - and almost certainly the loudest.

It's a match that grabs a weirdly timeless take and smashes it with a Burning Hammer in minutes. "Japanese crowds are quiet" or "They're hot...for a Japanese crowd" is this bizarre ignorance of the rhythms of a puro match - a misinterpretation of the initial, expectant, respectful hush before the storm of noise. But this is different: it's an instant cauldron set ablaze by a perfect dynamic perfectly worked.

It's a match pitting two spirited and distinct Japanese babyfaces - the smaller speedball Tsuyoshi Kikuchi and the formidable destroyer Kenta Kobashi - against two flexing, colossal American d*ckheads in Doug Furnas and Dan Koffat who, in borrowing three of the most killer double-team finishers of the era, use this heavy artillery in an attempt to crush the sprit of their opponents. That spirit, however, is indomitable, no matter how brutal the assault on Kikuchi's back. The selling, the fire, the timing, the lava atmosphere, the incandescent comeback - it's all total babyface perfection taken in by a cup final crowd.

The dynamic is the very premise on which puro was built - a cathartic backlash against the oppressor - fused with the perfected, advanced in-ring art form that it became.