10 Harrowing Wrestling Matches That Are Incredibly Difficult To Watch

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.