10 Times A Wrestler Went On An Insane Streak Of Matches
1. Kazuchika Okada's Record-Breaking IWGP Title Reign
The greatest title reign ever must by definition position this as the greatest streak of matches ever.
Every World Champion, every Ace, must strike a perfect balance. They must resonate as an insurmountable challenge while, in parallel, making it appear that every challenger stands a chance of doing precisely that. What is essentially a con holds a vast potential to unravel, the longer the card is played. Nobody played it for as long or to as such stunning effect as Kazuchika Okada in his seminal, record-breaking fourth IWGP Heavyweight Title reign, in which he worked a legendary streak of matches that garnered unprecedented critical acclaim and very strong and very consistent business.
That impossibly great story, distilled to a single spot, saw him front flip out of Kenny Omega's One-Winged Angel at Wrestle Kingdom 11's greatest wrestling match ever.
This was an unreal feat of modern athleticism and storytelling ingenuity; Okada used his prodigious skill to cast himself as that unsurpassable Ace without compromising Omega's finish. It doesn't matter how familiar one is with the spot; it's so sudden and breathtaking and perfectly timed that it gets you every time.
Okada worked incredible matches with Zack Sabre, Jr., who contorted his body to gruesome angles. With Katsuyori Shibata, who kicked the absolute f*ck out of him. With Hiroshi Tanahashi, in which the awesome thrust of their legacy rivalry took on, by the finish, a bittersweet pathos wrestling as a medium has very rarely engineered.
Okada managed to work the three greatest wrestling matches ever between 2017 and 2018, all of which were threatened by an unfathomable degree of expectation.