10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2018
4. Kazuchika Okada Vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - NJPW Wrestling Dontaku 2018
This was incredible, in and of itself. Every match between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada always was. But this was different; enriched by a company-defining changing of the guard storyline with six full years of heft driving it, it was as much a victory for booker Gedo as it was Kazuchika Okada.
Across those six years, Gedo told a story of Okada replacing the irreplaceable. This was the final act. Okada needed a win over Tanahashi to break the Ace's record of IWGP Heavyweight Title defences and formalise his reign, the most critically acclaimed of all time, as the most storyline effective. This was so objectively colossal that mathematics supported it.
Okada and Tanahashi enacted that story to perfection. Tana used his expansive ring awareness to counter Okada's arsenal, the weapons of which dealt a death blow to his Ace status. Where Okada always removed him from turnbuckle to concrete with his awesome corner dropkick, Tanahashi skinned the cat. Where Okada's vicious Tombstone set the events of this multi-year epic in motion, Tanahashi slipped out of it to deliver a basement dropkick.
In the end, it was all bittersweet: Tanahashi couldn't even defeat Okada with what, even by his storytelling standards, was a studious approach. Resorting to slaps, he couldn't even remonstrate with the cocky young punk. Okada was the cocky young punk no longer: he was the Ace.
Only, it wasn't the final act; Okada's broken psyche, in part, allowed Tanahashi to win a trilogy renewed later in the year. To underscore Gedo's genius, he has somehow contrived to make plural the singular aura of puroresu's 'Ace'.
To underscore Okada and Tanahashi's genius, both wrestled here as if worthy of it.