I had decided to take a 13+ hour train ride from New York City to Toledo (and then jump on a bus from Toledo to Detroit but that stint is less relevant) and during my time on the rails I watched all four Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega singles matches from 2017 and 2018. I’m going to cut to the chase; I think everyone jumped the gun a bit calling them the greatest of all time. I don’t know how unpopular that opinion is, or if some people are on the same page, but here’s my take regardless.
Kazuchika Okada def. Kenny Omega in 46:45 {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match – Wrestle Kingdom 11 – Tokyo Japan}
The first ten or so minutes of this match set the tone nicely for what should have been a stellar thirty-minute match. But then Omega and Okada got cute with a bunch of gaga on the floor. Now you can tell me all day that it was meant to show the lengths to which Omega was ready to go to win the title, but you can’t make me feel like it didn’t disrupt the flow of the match. Frankly, that disruption had my mind wandering quite a bit. The final twenty minutes were indeed as insane as advertised. If we lived in a world where the gimmicks on the floor were skipped over and this was a 30-35 minute match, you’d have yourself a bonafide five-star situation. As is, I wouldn’t go that high and I’m shocked that anyone who watched this more than once would call it the best match ever to that point. ****½
A note on the train. It’s an Amtrak, and as you can probably guess it’s not the most popular form of long-distance transportation. I think that’s kind of crazy, because while it does take six times as long to get from New York to Michigan this way, the process is a lot more pleasant. There’s tons of leg room, free WiFi that kind of works, nobody sitting in the seat next to you (and often nobody else sitting in your row at all), and the freedom to move about whenever you like.
Kazuchika Okada dr. Kenny Omega in 60:00 {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match – Dominion 2017 – Osaka, Japan}
This match is a contradiction for me, because on the one hand I found it to be a league or two better than the match from Wrestle Kingdom, but on the other, the Wrestle Kingdom match informed this one quite a bit. Is it one of the best of all time? I could see the argument here, where I couldn’t at Wrestle Kingdom. It’s certainly one of the best hour-long draws I’ve ever seen. Omega was just brilliant in how he sold his exhaustion. I was initially annoyed when the Bullet Club came out and Cody tried to throw in the towel, but the way the Young Bucks and Omega, and then even Okada, reacted to the whole bit was really entertaining. In that moment, which was about 40 or so minutes in, I felt that more flavor from third parties would probably help carry this along through the next 20 minutes. It was definitely unnecessary. I also really liked that Okada was dying to pin Omega, even though he knew he could just run out the clock, because it would show that he was becoming less capable of putting Omega down. Does this work on the same level without the Wrestle Kingdom match? I don’t know, probably not, and I can’t say because I just watched that match so that’s an experiment for someone else to try. *****
At this point near me, a large, older woman with a cane gets on in Syracuse. There are dozens of empty seats, but she plops down next to another older woman when it becomes clear that she won’t be able to keep her balance while the train is moving to find an empty row. The woman who’d been on the train since its origin in New York City clearly didn’t want to have someone encroaching on her space like this, so she got up. This is only notable because of the remarkable lengths she went to to explain to the large woman that it wasn’t because of her size. I haven’t cringed at something so hard in quite some time.
Kenny Omega def. Kazuchika Okada in 24:40 {Round Robin Tournament Match – G1 Climax 2017, Night 18 – Tokyo, Japan}
With a win here, Omega would advance to the finals of the G1 tournament and get a title shot against (presumably) Okada at Wrestle Kingdom in a few months. Okada only needs a draw to keep Omega out of the finals and enter them himself, and these matches have a 30-minute time-limit. Based on their history, it’s not looking good for Omega. But Okada’s pride was hurt by the draw in June, (he’s also coming into this match hurt) and he goes for the early win. The match took off shortly after that, which was what I really wanted from their Wrestle Kingdom match. That said, it wasn’t quite the dramatic epic that their second match was, and there were a few moments in the middle that felt more goofy than intense. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few brilliant details. One that I liked in particular was Omega going for the One Winged Angel the whole match (and the last two matches) and never being able to hit it, so instead when he’s got Okada on the ropes he goes for a Tiger Driver ‘98 instead. When that god-killer move doesn’t put Okada down, Omega at least knows he has the champ dazed enough to finally hit the One Winged Angel for the win. Things like that are what stick in someone’s mind long after they’ve seen a match. ****½
Right around this time I needed a drink, so I walked over to the dining car. I’ve battled with claustrophobia, though it’s usually much worse on the subway than in above ground trains, cars, or planes; probably because being able to see outside helps. But I have to say walking from car to car to get to the dining car had me feeling like I was in that neverending part of the Legend of Zelda where you can’t get out unless you know the right direction to go in. In any event, it was worth it because the credit card machine was down and this weird old cowboy bought me a ginger ale when I realized i didn’t have enough cash on me. I’m guessing he’s going home to Ohio or Indiana, and not on vacation from New York. We don’t have a lot of cowboys.
Kenny Omega def. Kazuchika Okada in 64;50 {IWGP Heavyweight Championship 2 Out Of 3 Falls Match – Dominion 2018 – Osaka, Japan}
Omega lost in the G1 Climax finals to Tetsuya Naito. Luckily for him, Naito failed to beat Okada for the title. On the anniversary of their time-limit title match draw, Okada wanted to prove he could beat Omega again and offered him a title shot in a no-time limit match, which Omega agreed to on the grounds that it be 2 Out of 3 Falls. There’s a cute Infinity War reference in Omega’s intro video.
Okay, the match. First, I like that Okada’s first fall came from a surprise reversal and not from something absurd, because that was the fastest he’s ever been able to pin Omega and it wouldn’t make sense for that pin to come from some powerful move that had never pinned Omega as quickly before. I also like that Omega’s first fall came in the same fashion as his G1 Climax victory. I continue to be impressed with how Omega sells exhaustion. There were also some surprising counters and near-falls in this thing. It totally worked for me that they’d be throwing huge bombs at each other (a cradle tombstone piledriver is called the Cradle to the Grave, right? I can’t find any evidence of anyone calling it that so far, which is crazy to me, so I’m coining it here).
But if I’m being honest, I didn’t get really draw into this match until the Okada hit the wall and he hit the weak Rainmaker. That was in the third fall and wasn’t terribly far away from the finish. I also found it frustrating that they spent so much time on the table spots. The first one, the double stomp, was frustrating because the spot doesn’t make sense if Omega doesn’t penetrate the table with his feet. That’s why the spot worked a year ago and didn’t work here. Here the table looks like more of a shield than a weapon. The second one was frustrating because the crowd wasn’t feeling it, no matter how hard the wrestlers hyped it, and they didn’t work around the crowd’s energy; they just forced the spot on them as they’d planned it. The saving grace was that the table didn’t end up getting used a second time in the end, which made this feel more real to me. I said in my review of the Tommaso Ciampa vs. Johnny Gargano title match that had their table not broken, I’d give them points for being subversive, and I do feel the same way here. So that’s a silver lining. So what does it all mean as one piece? It means a very fitting end to the rivalry (presumably) a nice way to end Okada’s title reign, and an excellent match, but I don’t think it’s in the running for greatest match of all time as so many others have suggested. ****¾
So what are we left with at the end of this train ride / wrestling binge? This is undoubtedly an amazing rivalry. You don’t often get four matches rated as highly as these, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice to dismiss them. The Dominion 2017 match is the best match I’ve seen from that year. I don’t begrudge the people who think these are the best matches to ever be recorded, but i don’t think they’re really in that conversation. The story that was told over four matches was stellar, even if you don’t know about all the Bullet Club drama that accompanied it. But the average english-speaking wrestling fan isn’t going to be as emotionally drawn to this as they are to the top western rivalries (Gargano/Ciampa, Undisputed Era/Mustache Mountain to name two that I’ve seen in NXT alone). That’s good to know going in.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
