10 Wrestling Moments That Made You Mark Out
1. Kenny Omega Collapses
It's difficult to pen this entry if you haven't seen the match. Everything prior is a shock, a victory, or some other carefully planned emotional payoff designed to play precisely into what wrestling companies believe their audiences want. To get an entire arena (and however many watching all over the world) to "mark out" for something small, something confusing, something they don't quite understand, is something else entirely.
In the third of their critically peerless series of matches, Kazuchika Okada sets Kenny Omega up for his patented Rainmaker finisher. As he pulls him towards him, ready to cleave him across the chest with his forearm, Omega drops to his knees. Not in a brilliant athletic counter, but in complete and total exhaustion. The emotions this elicited those watching were unlike anything they would previously had felt at a wrestling match.
They bought, unquestionably, that he was in serious trouble. They bought, unquestionably, that he had physically given his all in a physical contest that he might never ever recover from. Despite the graceful timing of the move and it's obvious role in the finish of the match, they bought that Kenny Omega had fallen to his knees in a pro wrestling match and might not get back up, unquestionably.
In hindsight it's ludicrous, but such was the beauty in the brutality of this match.