Michael Sidgwick's 10 Favourite Wrestling Matches

Wrestling matches don't necessarily need a convoluted storyline to elevate them to greatness; the joy of Stan Hansen's AJPW work, in contrast, was in just how closely he was able to simulate the basic realism of a bar brawl.

But this, which many consider not just the greatest tag team but the best match ever, period, was almost unfathomably rich in its various subplots. Misawa was All Japan's Ace - the leader of the New Generation Army who comprised the bout, and the Standard Bearer of Future Generations. Kobashi was the sentimental underdog - a man who, by losing his first 63 singles matches, developed the vulnerable sheen with which he related to AJPW audiences on a human level.

Kawada was the third wheel - a man whose marginalisation galvanised his erratic, fearsome, pseudo-heel schtick. Taue, meanwhile, was the Ringo Starr - the most replaceable of the four, but one whose absence would have affected the landscape, regardless.

All four men wielded the respective powers of their characters to construct this masterpiece. Tawada acted as a dangerous imp, kicking Misawa and Kobashi from the apron in the early exchanges. In battering Kobashi's injured leg - another transgression of AJPW's strict tenets of sportsmanship - Taue equalised his inferiority with nuclear heat-generating heeldom. Kobashi, in heroically protecting Misawa while himself incapacitated, emerged as the hero of the piece, even in defeat.

Misawa's ultra rare pinfall loss, meanwhile, created scope for future storylines in a match which, by rights, should have exhausted them.