10 Wrestling Matches You Won't Believe Happened In 2019

Perhaps the most inexplicable mainstream match ever is set to take place on January 4.

The legendary Jushin 'Thunder' Liger is set to finally retire from the industry he revolutionised with the sort of jaw-dropping aerial work that remains astonishing to this day, in spite of such advancements in athleticism. A day later, Liger will, you'd expect, go out in the time-honoured tradition: on his back to put over a rising star of the Junior Heavyweight division.

But NJPW, with Liger's input, has booked something decidedly less traditional as the first phase in a two-part celebration: an impossible eight-tag team bout that traces Liger's storied history throughout the promotion. Liger (54) will team with Tiger Mask IV (49), The Great Sasuke (50), and Tatsumi Fujinami (65) to take on Naoki Sano (54), Shinjiro Otani (47), Tatsuhito Takaiwa (47) and Ryusuke Taguchi (40).

And it will be brilliant: an ultra-heated, emotional, sentimental and fun match worked with the keen, building intelligence of a field of beloved masters. It's NJPW's endearingly earnest approach to the recent "banter match" trend; as the wrestling world expands in imagination and shrinks in inaccessibility, it collides and pings chaotic scenarios directly into our incredulous eyeballs.

That's 2020's #1 sewn up.

But what of 2019...?

The nostalgic irony market has served Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson well in recent years - the former's winsome use of the Canadian Destroyer is the perfect distillation of it - but that sells the Rock N' Roll Express short. Somehow, through the dark arts of old school psychology, they can go when the audience most wants them to go.

But it's a different thing entirely to pull off a match in New Japan Pro Wrestling, with its stratospheric demands for supreme technicality.

Hiroshi Tanahashi performed the Ricky Morton role in a neat and effective tribute, before engineering his typically great comeback spot to build to the triple team, and, with a mere high knee-lift and air guitar strum, this inexplicable, wonderful trio - wrestling's version of Iron Maiden rocking out on the amps - popped the crowd huge. This was wonderful space-between-moves stuff; Robert Gibson was barely capable of physically jumping up for the triple dropkick spot, but Shingo Takagi was so desperate in clinging to the ropes that he made you believe he could.

Simple, timeless, perfect: when this trio did pull of that spot later in the match, the crowd went into meltdown.