10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2023 (So Far)
1. Will Ospreay Vs. Kenny Omega - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17
A masterpiece of a match better than every cock-a-hoop expectation, Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay somehow delivered the Match of the Year and kept something behind.
Premised on the idea that Omega was no longer on Ospreay's athletic level, but was capable of using his brilliant, diamond-sharp mind to best him, this theme was articulated within moments. Ospreay, incensed by Omega throughout 2022 and at the Wrestle Kingdom press conference, sprinted into a mistake immediately. Omega used sharp, open-palm strikes between Ospreay's shoulder blades to literally get his back up.
The match turned when Omega drilled Ospreay via DDT onto an exposed turnbuckle, and after an all-time gruesome bump, Omega started to kill him. Relentlessly. The match was brutal, disturbing, but it was worked - after they had established an unhinged tone of psychotic animosity. Omega blasting Ospreay's head through a table, while not pleasant, only looked horrific. It safely advanced the story of a mauling when the awestruck fans had already firmly suspended their disbelief.
This was an incredible babyface performance from Will Ospreay when that should, by rights, be an oxymoron. His selling was earned by Omega's brutality, as best exemplified by a sickening avalanche Croyt's Wrath. The core strength required to execute this, and the timing required to merely make it look like Ospreay had broken his neck, was incredible: one of the most impressive physical feats in wrestling history.
Omega has long explored the idea of video game psychology in his work; here, he wrestled like the Final Boss of New Japan Pro Wrestling. It wasn't simply an inch-perfect performance. Omega was in seminal form across every second. Look at his face in that pictured shot of the Terminator dive; even a millisecond before rotation, in the intent behind his facials, Omega played the role of a man possessed to surpass his apparent successor.
The finish was majestic; Omega used a straitjacket suplex to transition into Kota Ibushi's Kamigoye. There was no way for Ospreay to unlock him.
The Tokyo Dome crowd spent the entirety of the match wondering what Omega and Ospreay were about to do, denying that it was possible to do, not wanting to see it because it was so terrifying, and then exploding when they executed it.
The match, for which they held things back (!), was the perfect intersection between tone and spectacle.