10 Most Ambitious Wrestling Matches Of All Time
1. Kazuchika Okada Vs. Kenny Omega - NJPW Dominion 2019
Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega, ahead of June 9, 2019, faced a daunting—insurmountable—task.
Under the weighty expectation of their jaw-dropping trilogy of classics in 2017, a resulting reputation that pronounced its quality all the more, and a stipulation promising a definitive conclusion to this generation’s—any generation’s—greatest in-ring rivalry, to many, anything less than the greatest pro wrestling match of all time would have underwhelmed.
They surmounted it by performing the greatest pro wrestling match of all time.
The chemistry the two men share yielded both unreal, cool-as-f*ck action and an unbearable sense of dramatic tension. The physical control and agility required of Okada to remove himself, agonisingly, from the One-Winged Angel, the stamina required to build to it again and again, the psychology required to put it over as such a guaranteed deathblow of a finish: every single criteria of the in-ring art was both perfected and advanced on the night.
That night ended, in parallel with the perfect end to the greatest Championship reign of all time, with an iconic facial expression etched, in an inspired final twist, by the stoic Okada. He looked like his brains were scrambling behind his eyes.
He put this over, impeccably, as the greatest wrestling match ever. He almost didn’t have to.