10 Most Unforgettable Exhibition Matches In Wrestling History

The interpromotional matches of the sixties and seventies tended to be plagued by the kind of stagey old school carny politicking that‘s haunted the worst excesses of Hulk Hogan and Triple H’s careers in the decades to follow. It was champion versus champion, for bragging rights and pride! Except that it wasn’t, and everything was cynically geared to ‘getting the win back’ and maximising revenue for a one-off ‘extravaganza’ with no story and less chemistry.

Anyway. Welcome to an interpromotional match that doesn’t suck. In October 1997, the WWF allowed the Undertaker to hop across the Pacific to Michinoku Pro Wrestling to work with Jinsei Shinzaki, one of the promotion’s founders (he’s still president of the promotion today).

Jinsei, of course, had played Hakushi in the World Wrestling Federation a year or so before: far, far ahead of his time, he’d not been used properly (of course), but his feud with Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart had yielded some classic matches of any time period. This theatrical, stylish storytelling was something rarely seen in the pre-Attitude Era WWF.

That’s the reason he works so perfectly against the Undertaker. One of the biggest criticisms about exhibition matches in pro wrestling is that they lack any kind of story to hang the match on. By rights, this match should be one of those - it’s not like the Undertaker was planning on sticking around to hand Hakushi back his win and offer a rubber match - but they dovetail it in beautifully with the last match Hakushi was in, in which he was buried alive by Muta.

What you don't see in the above video is the Japanese mortuary attendants wheeling out Hakushi's corpse and unceremoniously dumping it in the ring. That's why Hakushi doesn’t move until the bell rings - he’s a dead man, brought back to life to face the Dead Man himself. His sluggish movements at first, his selling like a thing out of Night Of The Living Dead… Hakushi isn’t just playing some supernatural monster, but a genuine zombie version of himself. His commitment to character throughout is a thing of beauty.

And it’s great. It benefits from being wrestler vs. wrestler compared with many of the car crashes on this list, of course: but that isn’t the point. The point is that, since wrestling is a work, and collaboration is key, when that doesn’t happen the match will, if you’re really lucky, completely fail to work. And if you’re really unlucky, it’ll melt down harder and faster than Tila Tequila’s Twitter.

Undertaker/Hakushi is testament to how two men can work together with a simple, evocative one-match storyline to get an interpromotional exhibition match like this over like clover.