10 Harrowing Wrestling Matches That Are Incredibly Difficult To Watch
Time will show the wiser.
Discussion surrounding the modern mode of professional wrestling has overtaken social media in recent weeks.
The #...dive debate has receded. Will Ospreay is using it to sell t-shirts and Randy Orton is using it to go viral by catching his own kid with a catch RKO. Incidentally, Orton should be happy that his more compact and spectacular peers have taken to flying more than ever before. If they hadn't, the outta nowhere meme cache wouldn't have prolonged his shelf life.
The question still and probably always will remain: how much content is too much content? At which point does wrestling cease being a spectacle and instead betray the essence of itself? The purpose of pro wrestling is to simulate combat and make it look believable. Or at least, it used to be. In 2017, the demand for great matches is such that a top rope dragon suplex isn't even the finish.
Wrestling, even in the mainstream, has become a sort of Yngwie Malmsteen to the arena rock of old; so unbelievable in its technicality that it can't not be appreciated on some level, but a colder and less resonant style than the casual music fan can stomach.
In five years' time, we might look back with deep regret at something like Hiromu Takahashi's diving sunset flip powerbomb. In a morbid way, the new generation is upholding at least one dubious wrestling tradition.
10. Kazuchika Okada Vs. Katsuyori Shibata - NJPW Sakura Genesis 2017
Kazuchika Okada Vs. Katsuyori Shibata would have easily bagged Match Of The Year honours on any calendar year in which Okada Vs. Omega didn't happen. It has now become impossible to revisit.
Paul Heyman once stated that, in the perfect wrestling match, one guy goes over and the other gets over. This was the perfect example of that. Okada emerged victorious, thereby retaining both his IWGP Heavyweight Championship and his status as the best main event wrestler on the planet. Shibata's losing performance was so good that, had he used just one less move, he might have lobbied for the Wrestle Kingdom XII main event. He looked phenomenal; in a killer spot, he set Okada up for his own version of a Rainmaker before delivering a pithy slap to Okada's face. The profound irony is that he got himself over huge as a personality, in that moment, without using anything in the way of force. Later in the match, he dusted off his trademark controversial spot in planting Okada with a full-force headbutt. The force was such that he split his own skull open, incurring a life-threatening subdural haematoma.
The image of blood raining down Katsuyori Shibata acts as cracked funhouse mirror version of WrestleMania 13. When Steve Austin bled like a stuck pig, heroically refusing to quit in the grip of Bret Hart's Sharpshooter, it symbolised his permanent ascension to the headliner ranks.
The blood on Shibata's head was visual evidence that his career was all but over.