10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2020
3. Kazuchika Okada Vs. Kota Ibushi - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14
Kazuchika Okada doesn't do nothing in those first five to ten minutes in which it might appear that he's doing nothing. He very slowly exerts his control so that, by the time his trademark epic explodes into a crescendo, the fight of the challenger resonates as if the master has been taken to his absolute limit.
It is dark arts pacing magic, and he deployed it to an unbelievable standard on January 4.
He always locates an extra gear. That's part of the magic. Deeper into the match, Ibushi popped immediately back up after a shoulder barge. Sensing it, Okada broke his arrogant pose and turned to meet Ibushi in the eye. He couldn't f*ck around, and putting his opponent over with a single facial expression, sensed this with a wry smile.
This was especially true when Ibushi descended into his terrifying alter-ego. He wore that sickly, dead-eyed expression and belted Okada in the mouth. He even rolled through a wicked Okada dropkick, standing up as if he hadn't yet taken a lick. To blast Ibushi out of this headspace, Okada channeled the 2012 Rainmaker and dropped him right on his skull with an apron Tombstone.
He had to locate yet another gear late in the match, after Ibushi rocked him with a Kamigoye, by countering a second attempt - somehow - with a dropkick delivered from his knees. This was a near-impossible athletic feat and a moment of astonishing white-hot drama. You can't defeat that, and Ibushi didn't. He fell to the master's Rainmaker at the 40 minute mark.
A seminal Tokyo Dome main event, looking at NJPW's 2020, it might represent the end of an era.