Kazuchika Okada’s IWGP Title Reign - Every Match Ranked from Worst To Best
8. Vs. SANADA (New Beginning In Osaka 2018)
A victory for Kazuchika Okada's incredible storytelling skill as much as 'The Rainmaker' himself, Okada's fabulous selling of a damaged neck and back with the looming shadow of SANADA's devastating Skull End finisher made for exceptional pro wrestling drama.
As with EVIL, Fale and others on this list, the trick in this match was not in fooling people that the Challenger could win beforehand, but crafting the disbelief during the clash.
To this end, Okada took an ungodly beating, assuming something of an unfamiliar plucky babyface role after fighting back from a piledriver on the entrance way and a forceful fistfight with the Los Ingobernables de Japon that left him floored.
SANADA's last gasp was arguably his best. Reversing the Rainmaker clothesline with a Destino set-up into the Skull End (just several weeks after LIJ leader Tetsuya Naito's shattering collapse in the Tokyo Dome), the challenger had the champion potentially beat but risked it all in releasing it, hitting a rapid fire moonsault that would ultimately cost him.
Clinging on as the crowd grew molten for the most unexpected of title changes, Okada hit two desperation Rainmakers, having weakened SANADA's neck with a dropkick and tombstone earlier in the clash. One more of each on the closing stretch did the necessary for the Champion.