8 Reasons New Japan's Wrestle Kingdom 9 Is Must-Watch

6. The Physicality Of Tomohiro Ishii VS Togi Makabe

Incredibly enough, with a card that featured what was basically an MMA fight disguised as a wrestling match, it was Ishii defending his NEVER Openweight Title against Togi Makabe that ended up being the stiffest, most brutal match of the night. It also featured two of the coolest nicknames in all of wrestling, with Ishii being the "Stone Pitbull" and Makabe being the "Unchained Gorilla". This was an ugly, ugly match, but that is meant with the highest of compliments. You aren't going to get any sort of technical mastery here, ladies and gentlemen. What you are going to get is two freight trains colliding with each other at full speed, then backing up and colliding at full speed again, and then doing it again. They weren't interested in hitting the prettiest, flashiest moves. All they wanted to do was go out and prove why experts look at them as two of the baddest, toughest men in the business, and they achieved that right away. "Hoss" wrestlers in Japan differ from their counterparts in North America because, while they're still bigger than the average performer, they're still very technically sound. If you were to get a Roman Reigns VS Rusev match in WWE, many fans would groan and not look forward to the lack of in-ring skills that might be coming their way, but when it's two skilled, underrated performers like Ishii and Makabe, people are excited about it. They were dropping bombs left and right, but it's not like their work was sloppy or anything, and that helped to make the match all the more enjoyable.