20 Absolute Best Wrestlers In The World Right Now
1. Kazuchika Okada
The wrestler of the decade, the absolute best wrestler in the world right now, 'The Rainmaker,' the most successful IWGP Heavyweight Champion of all time: Kazuchika Okada is all these things and more.
There isn't a single hole in Okada's armour. Not one. The only time he has ever felt like anything less than the best in the world over the past few years was when NJPW purposefully booked him that way in 2018, dishevelling their headliner after Kenny Omega knocked him from the mountaintop. Even then, with his character's mid-career crisis in full effect, he was still delivering between the ropes - albeit not quite to the standards he has already hit in 2020.
Okada's slow-burning main event epics are the most dramatic in the game. He builds lengthy, theatrical closing stretches from exploratory opening acts that gently reveal their fruits gently and with the utmost care, culminating, inevitably, in pure heart-in-mouth brilliance. That he's often so aloof in those early exchanges make his bursts of teeth-grinding emotion all the more memorable, as the immaculate 'Rain Maker' veneer breaks for raw, gut-bursting outpourings.
Major injury may be the only way Okada is toppled from his Best in the World throne by this time next year.