10 Most Improved Wrestlers On The Planet Today
8. Kazuchika Okada
Kazuchika Okada wasn't always the ultra-flamboyant Rainmaker.
In TNA - where he was sent for seasoning - he was almost a clone of Hirooki Goto in both stoic personality and samurai attire. He was subsequently repackaged as Okato, an anachronistic character modelled after the Green Hornet's Kato because Vince Russo. New Japan were so incensed by this, and Okada's Xplosion demotion, that they severed their burgeoning business relationship with them.
Upon Okada's return to New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2012, bookers Gedo and Jado strapped a rocket to his back, booking him to dethrone IWGP Heavyweight champion Hiroshi Tanahashi in a huge upset at the appropriately-named New Beginning event.
TNA's shocking treatment of the man might have worked by accident, rather than design; the newly-bleached Okada appeared and behaved like an entirely different person. It was as if he'd become one of the best and most magnetic wrestlers on the planet overnight.
Okada in the ensuing years has even usurped Tanahashi as the Ace of New Japan, with whom he contested the feud of the century. He has also amassed four ***** match ratings from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, in the process propelling NJPW's current golden era to the top of the G.O.A.T. conversation.