Kazuchika Okada's 10 Best Wrestling Matches

7. Vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - G1 Climax 2016

NJPW Tanahashi Okada
NJPW

I dare say this is Hirooki Goto's favourite Kazuchika Okada match. Going into the final round of matches in the A Block of last year's G1 Climax, it seemed for all the world as though the winner of Okada/Tanahashi was going to head to the finals. The winner would truly win, the loser would truly lose. Black, white.

Somehow Tanahashi and Okada managed to confound expectations once again by going to a 30-minute time limit draw, somehow introducing new tropes into a rivalry that seemed to have covered all possible ground. Tanahashi even went all out in the hope of picking up the count-out win, but Okada managed to stay alive.

The closing stretch is absolutely essential viewing. Tanahashi's desperation was clearer than it ever had been, the great man going for one High Fly Flow after another as the champion somehow managed to keep his head above water. This was Okada playing defence, something The Rainmaker does better than anyone else.

Okada kicked out of one last High Fly Flow as the time expired, and against all the odds, Hirooki Goto found himself in the G1 Climax finals once again.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.