10 Most Important Matches In Modern Wrestling History
6. Kenny Omega Vs. Kazuchika Okada - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11
On January 4, 2017, Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada generated a sort of noise that hasn't been heard before nor since, even in their superior fourth singles match.
Every individual member of the crowd, about five minutes before the finish, was in a completely different state of wonder. The effect of the match was so potent that you could everybody's deeply-felt personal reaction to it. There was nothing performative about the response, the most earnest atmosphere in years. What you heard was a complete, overdubbed abandonment of inhibition.
46 minutes of extraordinary drama; aerial manoeuvres that were taken in as if some natural beauty had presented itself; work so electrifyingly impossible that you could only tell, for example, that Omega nudged Okada to complete his front flip escape from the One-Winged Angel after the eight or ninth rewind: Omega Vs. Okada was, until Omega Vs. Okada IV, the very best match of all-time.
It was an absolute game-changer, the match that truly set into motion the events that ultimately led to the formation of AEW. AEW does not exist if that match doesn't happen. It was so phenomenal that it altered people's conception of how good wrestling could be again. People after it simply demanded more.
On an altogether more bleak note, through no fault of the performers, this match may well have ruined or at least made exponentially worse the online fandom experience.
Tribalism predates X - you may be shocked to learn that many WWF fans did not like WCW - but it really ramped up and evolved into the definitive way in which all discussion seems to happen now. The sarcastic humour of Being The Elite did not help, obviously, but "six stars in the Tokyo Dome" basically caused people to lose their minds, act defensive, and lash out.
Some haven't stopped crying yet.