10 Best Matches From WrestleMania 35 Weekend

NJPW and ROH brought a stacked card to Madison Square Garden on 6 April, but no match was more hotly anticipated than Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito.

A rematch of their career-shortening New Japan Cup war, it exceeded every lofty expectation by taking the previous clash to the next level in terms of drama, excitement, and danger. Yes, there were head-drops, and yes, they enhanced the action despite their inherent ghoulishness. This will make the bout a tough watch even for those with strong stomachs for such violence, though your writer would argue that this is what makes these bouts so special.

Wrestlers like Naito and Ibushi work on the edge of control. They succeed by creating an unparalleled sense of jeopardy, and the feeling that the brutality could reach unfathomable levels by the end. These guys want you to think that one of them is leaving with a broken neck, basically. It generates the kind of peril we don't often get from a sport exposed as "fake" decades ago, and the margin for error is as thin as the skill level is high.

Big bombs were dropped, sick bumps were taken, and fans were wowed. Naito was the most over wrestler your writer saw live all weekend. He lost as Ibushi scored his first major NJPW singles title, but his popularity is bulletproof. New Japan must push him harder than ever in 2019.