June 27, 1998 – Tokyo, Japan

Kiyoshi Tamura tld. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka
Starting Position 97; Peak Position 97; Latest Position 232. From RINGS Fighting Integration IV. This one has since fallen out of the top 100, as low as 255 after I added my review to the system. This was the first RINGS match I’d seen. It’s from the ‘90s, so it’s from before RINGS became an MMA company and was still a fake MMA company. I kid, but this style is a little one-dimensional for me. The first 13 minutes (!) were spent fighting over a heel hook. That’s almost half the match. While it’s impressive that the crowd had been trained well enough to be captivated by this style, I am far too ADD for it. It’s possible I knew at one time that Ring of Honor had been influenced by RINGS in the way it structured its Pure Title, but if I ever knew I’d forgotten. Here, it looks like you get nine rope breaks before the ropes become grounds for disqualification. Kohsaka forces Tamura to use three rope breaks, but then Tamura catches him with a front kick that knocks him flat until the count reaches 9. That’s the same as using two rope breaks. From there the tide turns and Tamura is able to force Kohsaka to the ropes with a guillotine choke and a leglock. Kohsaka returns the favor with an armbar and a choke of his own. Tamura grabs a rear naked choke and tries to finish Kohsaka with a Fujiwara Armbar, but the 30-minute time limit runs out. This was convincing as a shoot-style match, but MMA stopped being appealing to me over a decade ago, so I was bored. If you like a shoot-style that adheres more closely to an MMA bout than to a pro wrestling match then check this out. It’s easy to find. Personally, I’m more into a more bombastic take on this style, as seen in Ilja Dragunov vs. WALTER or Low Ki vs. Samoa Joe. ***¼ 

December 4, 1995 – Tokyo, Japan 

Manami Toyota def. Dynamite Kansai {WWWA World Championship Match}
Starting Position 123; Peak Position 98; Latest Position 141. From AJW Monday Night Sensation. Dear North American wrestlers, sweep the leg! Kansai did a legsweep after avoiding the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex and it was dope as hell. Also dope, the finish saw Toyota counter an avalanche Splash Mountain to a Frankensteiner for the win over a stunned champion at 22:37. Kansai controlled most of this, as she should have, but Toyota’s fire in response was great. This wasn’t epic at the level of the ‘95 Kong title changes, and it’s been a bit overrated over time, but it was a hell of a match and I kind of can’t believe the run on top this company had that year. ****

January 17, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Io Shirai def. Kairi Hojo {World of Stardom Championship Match}
Starting Position 90; Peak Position 90; Latest Position 168. From Stardom 5th Anniversary. I quite liked their match from the year before, during which Hojo captured Shirai’s championship. Hojo had since lost the title to Meiko Satomura, and Shirai had won the title from her. I liked this match about as much as their previous one, and with the exception of Shirai’s insane rolling German suplexes, I’m not sure what others saw in this that made them like it so much more. It was longer, but longer definitely doesn’t always equal better. I’m glad in this case that longer didn’t mean it felt artificially stretched out. I suppose I could see a little more love for this based on Shirai’s overall performance, which included a face plant fall from the second rope that was rather stunning. But then she was back up and in control just a moment later. It’s a great match, but I’m not sure I understand why until very recently it was ranked the best Stardom match ever. Shirai hit a tiger suplex and the moonsault for the win at 29:31. ****

February 2, 2004 – Essen, North Rhine Westphalia

Chris Hero def. CM Punk {Iron Man Match}
Starting Position 99; Peak Position 99; Latest Position 139. From wXw Back to the Roots 3: When Hero Met Punk in Germany. I think the marathons between these two are insanely overrated, so I didn’t have high hopes going into this one. Luckily, this was made much more interesting than their IWA-Mid South matches thanks entirely to the fact that there were a lot of very loud fans in attendance. Punk working dirtbag heel helped a lot too. Just when I was getting annoyed that Hero wasn’t selling his arm at all despite Punk working it over for the first 25 minutes, Punk hit a low blow and shifted my attention. Then he ripped off Hero’s boot, hit him with it, and played hide-and-seek with the referee. Hero tried to fight dirty in response, but he didn’t fight dirty enough. He did fight the entire rest of the match with just one boot on. Punk hit a Shining Wizard to win the first fall about 38 minutes in. From there, Hero started his comeback, though a couple of really weird things happened during it. First, the crowd died for like five minutes. Not sure what that was about. I mean, the action during those minutes wasn’t great, but it wasn’t noticeably slower than much of the rest of the match. Then, Hero hit one of his funky suplexes off of the turnbuckle, but Punk recovered first. Why? That kind of thing happened a lot in their 90-minute match and is the kind of thing that really takes me out of a match. Moments later, Hero got a roll up to tie the score. Then came the final ten minutes, which were good. They both fought hard, looking for the winning fall. Hero got it with the Hangman’s Clutch with 20 seconds left on the clock. That would have been cool had the ring announcer not said there were only seconds left in the match. Why wouldn’t Punk just hold on? You could convince me that the Shining Wizard he hit shortly after was his plan, but it’s not like he popped up right after tapping to hit it. Hero kicked out before the time limit expired, which I like because it left no doubt that Hero was meant to win. But that tap out struck me as odd. I’ve seen that trope used a few times and it never works for me. Overall, I’d say you can skip the first 20 minutes of the match and miss nothing important, and the rest of the match is pretty fun. It’s not a classic by any stretch, but the slower work early on made sense in the context of this being an Iron Man Match at least. So it beats their 90-minute clunker by a mile. ***½ 

December 29, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan 

Syuri def. Utami Hayashita {World of Stardom Championship vs. SWA World Championship Match}
Starting Position 114; Peak Position 100; Latest Position 113. From Stardom Ryogoku Dream Queendom. The balls on Stardom for using My Way by Limp Bizkit in the match hype video and suggesting that this is as big of a deal as Rock vs. Steve Austin from WrestleMania XVII. And what a testament to the power of nostalgia that such a terrible song gets such a strong reaction from my guts. The SWA title is basically an intercontinental title that Stardom established during a European tour in conjunction with a few European companies and a women’s lucha company in Mexico. Syuri came into this with that title. These two wrestled for 45 minutes to a double KO a few months back, and then a 20-minute draw after that. I would like the wrestling world to watch this as a great example of how to work a headlock. Do I, a person with no combat experience, know if these two used proper technique? No, but what I do know is that it looked like they were trying to hurt each other with headlocks. I liked it. Judging by the response I’ve seen to this match, I’d probably like it more if I was more familiar with their previous matches. That said, it was pretty dope even taken out of context. There wasn’t a single boring minute in this match, or anything particularly silly. They just beat the hell out of each other for the length of one-and-a-half episodes of New Girl. Nothing to complain about there. Syuri caught Hayashishita with two spinning backfists and the Red World for the win at 36:33. ****½

June 6, 1997 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Toshiaki Kawada {Triple Crown Championship Match}
Starting Position 102; Peak Position 96; Latest Position 116. From AJPW Super Power Series. Kawada had just gotten his first win over Misawa in the Champion Carnival about two months before this. Misawa now led him in their singles series 9-1-4, but he was still 4-0 in Triple Crown matches. This is not the super famous match between these two you may have heard of. That came three years earlier, and I’ll be reviewing it much closer to the end of this list. There’s no such thing, in my experience, as a bad match between these two. This came in somewhere in the middle of the matches I’ve seen. It had one stretch that totally captivated me, where Kawada was unrelenting and Misawa’s concerned face had me believing that he knew he was in trouble. But at this stage in the rivalry, Misawa’s belligerent comeback at the end didn’t feel like the right mood. Kawada was seven months away from getting his first win over Misawa. The only match they had between this one and that one was another Champion Carnival draw. To me it would have made more sense for Misawa to win out of desperation. Rather, he put Kawada down with an emphatic, screw-you elbow at 31:22. If I were to put a second Misawa vs. Kawada match in the top 100 list, it’d be their 1/22/99 match, not this one. ****

November 22, 2008 – Chicago Ridge, Illinois

Nigel McGuinness def. Bryan Danielson {ROH World Championship Match}
Starting Position 107; Peak Position 98; Latest Position 105. From ROH Rising Above. I had been an ROH fan from the beginning, but this match occurred just a couple months after I stopped watching ROH regularly. Because of that, it’s a rare classic ROH match on this list that gets a fresh review. This is the lowest ranked of three Danielson vs. McGuinness matches to appear on this list. It’s also the ninth of ten matches they wrestled in ROH. Here’s what I thought of most of their matches , not including the three that appear on this list or their matches from Battle of the Best and Glory by Honor VIII because those two also happened after I stopped reviewing ROH. I like the mullet Danielson was rocking here. This had a hint of an ECW vibe to it, as in the middle of the match we got interference from Claudio Castagnoli and Alex Payne, furthering Danielson’s issues with Castagnoli in addition to adding a layer of drama to this match. I didn’t hate it, especially as Castagnoli’s attack bloodied Danielson, which played into the finish. I also quite liked McGuinness’s laser focus on Danielson’s knee. In fact, my only gripe with the match is that the commentators completely spaced on pointing out how Danielson had trouble holding pinning bridges and the Cattle Mutilation near the end because of the damage to the knee. But these two fellas cranked the energy up to 11 by the end of the match. It’s close, but I think if I were to rank the top three Danielson vs. McGuinness matches, this one would be knocked out of the list by their Unified match by just a hair. Yes, I like the Sixth Anniversary Show match and Driven matches more than Unified, which I’ll get into more later. Regardless, it’s a hell of a watch. McGuinness hit a headbutt to the back of Danielson’s head and followed it up with the Jawbreaker Lariat for the win at 28:08. ****½

June 3, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan

KUSHIDA def. Will Ospreay {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 105; Peak Position 99; Latest Position 102. From NJPW Best of the Super Junior XXIV. This was the tournament finals. KUSHIDA came into this wearing the ROH Television Championship belt. By the looks of things, that reign was pretty solid. It’s a little weird to look back at skinny Ospreay given how gassed up he’s gotten. Jushin Liger and Milano Collection AT are both on commentary. That’s too much cool for one booth. They only ever had one singles match against each other, in this very tournament ten years earlier almost to the day. Ospreay is only mildly annoying with his pose after the opening exhibition, thankfully keeping a watchful eye on KUSHIDA. Of course, KUSHIDA makes him look silly by simply standing like a normal person afterwards. Ospreay’s bad habits came out more and more as the match wore on though. Blatantly getting into position for KUSHIDA’s offense and doing stupid anime hand gestures, I can’t stand it. I liked him much better in the moments when he was trash talking and losing his temper. KUSHIDA’s hyper-focused work on Ospreay’s arm was cool, it’s just a shame that Ospreay completely refused to sell it or have it factor into the outcome of the match at all. The athleticism on display here was wild, but the internal logic of the match doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny.  KUSHIDA recovered from a million kicks to the face and hit the Back to the Future for the win at 27:59. The following week, KUSHIDA defeated Hiromu Takahashi to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship at Dominion. ****

October 10, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Naomichi Marufuji {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 104; Peak Position 100; Latest Position 101. From NJPW King of Pro Wrestling. Because I’m a dork who keeps track of these things, I know that this match is the 1,000th match I’ve rated four stars or higher. This was Marufuji’s second attempt at this title, though it’s my first time watching him in a high-profile New Japan match. Looks weird and I love it. He beat Okada in a G1 Climax tournament match to earn this title shot. In that match, Marufuji made sure the Rainmaker never connected while Okada came up with no answer for Marufuji’s serpentine kicks. Marufuji’s defense was just as on point here, as he kept Okada from hitting any of his signature moves except for the dropkick until the waning moments of the match. Okada tried his damndest, but couldn’t avoid the Shiranui or any of Marufuji’s defensive superkicks. But he did counter an instance of the Shiranui to a short-arm lariat, and then he surprised Marufuji by hitting him with the Emerald Frosion. What an absolutely prickish move. The shock allowed Okada to hit the Rainmaker for the win at 28:00. Invoking Marufuji’s deceased mentor to get the win wasn’t something I was expecting to see at all, but it certainly made this dope match even more memorable. ****½

August 1, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

AJ Styles def. Minoru Suzuki {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 108; Peak Position 97; Latest Position 98. From NJPW G1 Climax 24. Styles was wrestling through the tournament as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Since the G1 winner’s briefcase era began, the IWGP champ has never won the tournament, and I’m not totally clear on what is meant to happen if he ever does. This match is the perfect example of mid ‘10s NJPW derangement syndrome. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and it even has a little goofy interlude from Suzuki-Gun and the Bullet Club when the ref gets bumped in the middle. But that interlude didn’t affect the rest of the match at all. And while I certainly appreciate that this is shorter than most NJPW matches that are considered classics, this didn’t stand out as anything you couldn’t see in more epic matches from either guy. I do like watching Styles get his ass kicked, and this match did have that. It also had a very fun last couple of minutes, even if a lot of it seemed ripped from a Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels match. Styles countered an armbar to a one-armed Styles Clash and then hit the move full-on for the win at 16:20. Credit where it’s due, this match is pretty dope, but it should not be flirting with the caboose of any top 100 matches of all time list. ****

June 5, 1989 – Tokyo, Japan

Genichiro Tenryu def. Jumbo Tsuruta {Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 106; Peak Position 96; Latest Position 97. From AJPW Super Power Series. Tsuruta cemented his title reign two days after winning it by pinning Tenryu with a disgusting powerbomb. Over the next month, Tenryu squashed Dan Spivey in a singles match and won a six-man tag match against a team featuring Tsuruta and got this title shot. First Toshiaki Kawada sighting, in Tenryu’s corner as part of his Revolution stable. This match is crazy famous, so let’s see if it holds up. They start out firing at each other like crazy, which goes well for Tenryu. Because of that, Tsuruta takes every opportunity to get a little distance and then slow things down with headlocks. It’s really terrific how quickly Tenryu picks up on what’s working and tries every time he gets an opening to pick up the pace. Then we got 15 minutes of Tsuruta beating Tenryu up so badly that I got uncomfortable. Tenryu slowly started gaining momentum back, fighting through lariats that knocked the sweat off of both guys. In the end he won with a pair of powerbombs for a bit of poetic justice at 24:05. Hansen running in to congratulate him was cute. Tsuruta tried to shake his hand, but Tenryu wasn’t having it. So there you have it, the first title change in the style that All Japan in the ‘90s is really known for. ****½

August 14, 2015 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. AJ Styles {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 103; Peak Position 94; Latest Position 99. From NJPW G1 Climax 25. This one popped into the top 100 on the same week as Styles vs. Suzuki, which made me worried that this would be another overrated New Japan G1 Climax match. It was not that. It was excellent. Both guys were at the top of their game, hitting precision offense at incredible speed. What made this match so compelling was that the tide would only turn when one of the guys got out over his skis. Styles would get frustrated and accost the referee, so Tanahashi would be able to surprise him from behind. Tanahashi would try to show off and hit the Styles Clash, so Styles showed him how the move was done. Styles thought he had to time do a flip and hit the Pele Kick, so Tanahashi showed him the error of his ways by locking him in an anklelock. Things escalated in that fashion until Tanahshi was able to string together the High Fly Flow crossbody and splash for the win at 27:56. I think this is my favorite AJ Styles match, at least tied with his match against Paul London in ROH. ****¾

April 15, 1995 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Akira Taue {Tournament Finals}
Starting Position 101; Peak Position 93; Latest Position 94. From AJPW Champion Carnival. Neither guy had ever won the tournament before, though this was Misawa’s third time in the finals. Taue had never beaten Misawa, though three days earlier they fought to a draw in their round robin tournament match. As such, Misawa led Taue 6-0-1 going into this match. The thing I love most about Taue is he knew exactly what he looked like and what a guy who looked like him should do in the ring. He didn’t trade strikes with Misawa, he used his big lanky appendages to frustrate him. He didn’t hit bit suplexes, he lifted Misawa up and dropped him awkwardly onto parts of the ring that hurt more than the mat. He mostly let gravity and momentum do the work for him. I love it. He’s so underappreciated. If Paul Wight had done nothing but watch Taue matches and let them inform his career, his legacy would be that of a better wrestler. When Misawa got rolling, Taue’s last act of desperation was to gouge his eyes. Misawa shrugged it off, knowing he had it in the bag, and hit two tiger suplexes for the win at 27:03. Cagematch has this ranked as Taue’s best singles match, but I prefer the match that saw him lose the Triple Crown to Kobashi by a bit. ****½

August 14, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenny Omega def. Hirooki Goto {Tournament Finals}
Starting Position 96; Peak Position 90; Latest Position 100. From NJPW G1 Climax 26. My memory of Goto was that he has always been one of the top guys in Japan, but I think it’s a false memory. And I think the false memory is because I conflate one amazing match against Hiroshi Tanahashi that I loved with Go Shiozaki’s entire career. Why? Because Goto and Shiozaki both made American excursions in 2006 at the height of my American indie wrestling fandom. Like Shiozaki, Goto only makes one appearance on this list. Unlike Shiozaki, Goto never got the chance to be the top guy in his company (or in two companies, like Shiozaki did with NOAH and AJPW). About five minutes into the match I got annoyed with the English commentary and moved over to the Japanese. Omega’s knees are wrecked right at the start of the match. It never stops him from hitting knee strikes or moonsaults, but it does stop him from capitalizing on those attacks. This match featured the gnarliest sleeper reversal out of the corner spot I’ve ever seen, as Omega climbed to the top of the turnbuckle before dropping back. Very scary. I think one of the reasons people liked this match so much is that both Goto and Omega used their ally’s moves to regain control; Goto used Katsuyori Shibata’s sleeper and Omega used Kota Ibushi’s powerbomb, Prince Devitt’s Bloody Sunday, and the Styles Clash. I personally didn’t love how Omega used those moves in such quick succession. Felt like cosplay. He followed that series of moves up immediately with the One Winged Angel for the win at 26:49. That ending kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, and made me think that this is high on the list not because of the action throughout (all of the knee work wound up going nowhere) but because wrestling geeks like seeing other wrestlers be referenced. A good match to be sure, but hardly a classic. It’s probably rated higher than it deserves because it signaled that Omega would be a main eventer in NJPW, and it saw Omega become the first westerner to win the tournament. ****

December 29, 2007 – Manhattan, New York

Nigel McGuinness def. Austin Aries {ROH World Championship Match}
Starting Position 94; Peak Position 89; Latest Position 91. From ROH Rising Above. When I saw this match back in 2008, I said that it was the most intense ROH title match since the previous September, as if three months was some crazy long amount of time to wait for a great title match. I was very spoiled by ROH and Dragon Gate at the time. Whereas in their 2006 match felt artificially epic, nothing felt forced here and the atmosphere was perfect. That said, I think it’s worth nothing that I had no lasting memory of this match or rivalry until I revisited it for this project. In the intervening 15 years, the period between Aries’ two title reigns has been pretty much wiped from historical consciousness outside of his rivalry with Jimmy Jacobs. And that feud didn’t start until a few months after this. I mean, does anyone remember the Resilience? So, this match was great, but I think the only reason it has this spot on Cagematch’s list of all time great matches (which I feel is way too high) is because it happened on one of ROH’s early PPVs. McGuinness hit the Jawbreaker Lariat for the win at 22:17. ****½

December 15, 2021 – Garland, Texas

Adam Page tld. Bryan Danielson {AEW World Championship Match}
Starting Position 98; Peak Position 83; Latest Position 88. From AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming. Based on the fact that this opened the show and the way they started out, I predicted this was going to go very long. Given that assumption, I was very impressed when they turned things way up about 20 minutes in. The crowd had been with them through the early stage, but they started buying into near-falls in a big way after the first commercial. It wasn’t long after that when I began wondering how they’d keep the same pace to round out the Broadway. Thirty minutes in, Danielson shoved Page from the top rope to the floor and then began zeroing in on his shoulder. It seemed like they were teasing Page doing the Nigel McGuinness head bump to the post. I’m thankful they made it a shoulder bump instead. Page was busted open by it anyway. That doesn’t really make sense. Apparently, dealing with Page’s cut is how they spent the entire second commercial break. Given that, watching the non-live version of this match on TNT’s app might be the more rewarding viewing experience. Anyway, at this point Page is bloody and his shoulder is screwed. But Page came back by baiting Danielson into kicking the same post. The commentators bring up Silver’s attack on Danielson’s leg the week before, something Danielson sold in an interview earlier in the day, and by wearing tape under his knee pad. As the time limit drew near, I started thinking about the fact that while I was very engaged for the entire hour, nothing had gotten me out of my seat. But as I was mulling that thought over, I noticed my heart was beating pretty fast and it was clear that I’d become very invested in whether or not either of these guys could grab a win before the clock ran out. Page almost snuck one in by countering the Busaiku Knee Kick to the Dead Eye. Danielson almost won by countering the Buckshot Lariat to the LaBell Lock. Page attacked the leg to escape that. He finally connected with the Buckshot, but it was too late and the time limit ran out at 48:43 (shown of 60:00). I’m impressed with the way they’ve set it up so that no one can beat Danielson, but at the same time Danielson can’t beat the tippy top guys, so we get draws. That made it pretty satisfying once Page turned up the heat and beat him a few weeks later. ****½

April 2, 1989 – New Orleans, Louisiana

Ricky Steamboat def. Ric Flair {NWA World Heavyweight Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
Starting Position 85; Peak Position 84; Latest Position 96. From NWA Clash of the Champions 6: Ragin’ Cajun. I actually haven’t seen this match since high school (about 20 years ago if you must know), so I remember basically nothing about it. The WrestleWar match I’ve seen dozens of times and I’ve seen the Chi-Town Rumble match twice (and recently), but I often bump up against longer matches so I’ve never been drawn to a match that I assumed this wouldn’t hold up for me as much as the other two renowned classics. They worked about two-thirds the speed they’d normally work throughout the first fall, but two-thirds from these two is still pretty entertaining. Jim Ross did an amazing job on commentary calling out a missed dropkick from Steamboat as his first mistake of the match. It cost him, as Flair went for the Figure Four Leglock, and then countered Steamboat’s roll up counter to one of his own to win the first fall. Steamboat then baited Flair into missing a kneedrop and relentlessly attacked Flair’s knee. Flair used some dirty tricks to stay alive, so Steamboat attacked his back and put on the Double Chickenwing to win the second fall. The third fall saw Steamboat miss a dive and wreck his knee. Later, when he went for the Double Chicken wing, he collapsed. He won the fall anyway by leaning back and pinning Flair, but he couldn’t bridge enough to keep Flair from getting to the ropes. The referee didn’t see it, so Steamboat got the win at 55:32, but a rematch was necessary. I think it’s odd that the WresteWar match is the only match from their ‘89 trilogy to rank outside of the top 100. The Chi-Town Rumble match will appear a little bit farther down, but I don’t think it’s as strong as the WrestleWar match. Of all their matches, this feels the most aged. The big moments in this very long match only happen close to the end of each fall. The rest of the match isn’t at all boring, but the momentum often feels like it’s restarting. It’s better than their Spring Stampede match from five years later, but I think it’s a good step below the other two matches from the ‘89 trilogy. ****¼

August 17, 2008 – Tokyo, Japan

Katsuhiko Nakajima, Kensuke Sasaki, Kento Miyahara & Takashi Okita def. Akihiko Ito, Atsushi Aoki, KENTA & Kenta Kobashi {Survival Elimination Match}
Starting Position 100; Peak Position 82; Latest Position 82. From SEM/Kensuke Office SEMex in Korakuen Hall: Take The Dream Vol. 6. For lack of a better comparison, SEM was to NOAH what NXT is to WWE. Kensuke Office was Sasaki’s indie company, and this match is a KO vs. NOAH match. The stipulation means that it’s a two-on-two tag match at all times, but when a team suffers an elimination they get two substitutes. Technically it’s a series of tag matches, as the match timer starts over each time a new person enters. Eventually, only two members from each team will remain and it becomes more or less a standard tag match to finish things off. A nice twist on the traditional elimination match rules. KENTA & Aoki started out against Okita & Miyahara. The tempo of the match leading up to the first elimination was insane. It was like a Dragon Gate pace but with strong style grit. I was digging the way Okita bullied KENTA around the ring with shoulder tackles. But it was Aoki that proved to me the most dangerous, tapping out future Triple Crown champ Miyahara to arm armbar. Sasaki stepped in for Miyahara, so the balance of the match changed drastically. KENTA & Aoki wisely concentrated on putting the big man down, but it was no use. Sasaki just shrugged off Aoki’s arm attacks and then folded him in half with a Boston Crab to eliminate him. Ito subbed in for Aoki, showing the NOAH team had a different strategy by saving Kobashi for last. That turns out to be another mistake, as Sasaki shrugs off the barrage of elbows from Ito and casually hits a lariat to eliminate him. Kobashi finally enters and makes short work of Okita, making him pass out to a sleeper hold. 

And now Nakajima enters, giving us the rematch from the straight tag match in June that blew people away. This part of the match is nearly twice as long as everything that came before it. First we got a chunk of Kobashi slowly dismantling Nakajima, which was a little boring until Nakajima’s survival became more of the story than Kobashi’s attack. That was followed by KENTA getting the same treatment from Sasaki, so the question became which veteran could put out the other’s proteje first. When the answer was revealed to be neither, we got dramatic exchanges between Sasaki and Kobashi, followed by very exciting displays of teamwork from both sides. The finish saw Sasaki help Nakajima hit a gnarly German suplex on KENTA. It only got two. Another German suplex only got two. But a third German suplex, followed by the Death Roll, was enough to win the day for team Kensuke Office at 55:30. What an amazing relic this is. The fact that Miyahara and Nakajima were 19 and 20 years old here makes the parallels between their careers such a mind rattler, and makes this match such an interesting bit of wrestling trivia. It makes me want to watch their run as a tag team in NOAH’s 2009 Nippon TV Cup, especially since their singles match against each other in Kensuke Office/Diamond Ring don’t appear to have been filmed. I think this is one of my favorite matches now, and it replaces Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness as my Match of the Year for 2008. And while we’re at it, RIP Aoki, who died tragically a few years ago in a motorcycle accident. *****

February 11, 2009 – Tokyo, Japan

Katsuhiko Nakajima def. KENTA {GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 84; Peak Position 93; Latest Position 84. From Kensuke Office Take the Dream Vol. 7. KENTA had defeated Nakajima in a match eight months prior to this in a Kensuke Office co-main event. From what I can gather, Nakajima earned this title shot on the strength of a tag match win over KENTA at a SEMSuke Office show a few weeks earlier. These guys had four non-tournament matches, three of which were for this title or the GHC Heavyweight title, and every one of them is very highly regarded. But this one is ranked at the tippy top of the list. There is a lot of this match, though it was never boring. The first half saw KENTA bully Nakajima around ringside, dropping him neck-first on the barricade a couple of times. Every time Nakajima would start to build back his confidence and get a little steam, KENTA would aggressively cut him down. The second half centered around Nakajima desperately clinging to life, and finding little moments to inflict major damage, even when he was in trouble. Case in point, KENTA hit him with a Falcon Arrow from the apron to the floor, then tried to roll back into the ring to win by count out. Nakajima grabbed him to keep him on the floor, and then used his positioning to hit a German suplex there. It’s also cute that both early and late in the match, Nakajima stole a couple of KENTA’s moves to try to get in his head. After nearly 40 minutes of non-stop brutality at a pace that really shouldn’t be possible, KENTA appears to have it in the bag. He hits the Go2Sleep for 2, but then obliterates Nakajima with kicks to the head. But his arrogance costs him when he chooses to go for another G2S rather than pin Nakajima. Nakajima counters to a hurricanrana, and then hits a high kick, his leg-hook German suplex, and the Death Roll for the win at 38:53. As far as I’m concerned, that this match isn’t talked about more is a crime that wrestling fandom is consistently perpetrating. It’s my Match of the Year for 2009. *****

April 26, 1988 – Chattanooga, Tennessee

Bobby Fulton & Tommy Rogers def. Bobby Eaton & Stan Lane {NWA United States Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 88; Peak Position 76; Latest Position 95. From NWA Worldwide. Last year I watched the Clash of the Champions version of this match, thinking it was this version, and while I liked it quite a bit I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. This is my first time seeing the Worldwide version. Can you imagine a time that tag team wrestling was so popular that you could support a second tier tag team title? Damn, if only. People who are annoyed by modern wrestling commercial interruptions should watch this match to see how good we have it now in comparison. They’d just suddenly cut to an ad in the middle of an important spot, and they’d do it quite often! There were five commercial breaks. That’s too many! So it was hard to get invested in the match when the flow kept getting disrupted by the production. That said, thanks to the crowd, what we did get to see had a ton of energy. The Midnight Express was dastardly when they could but, but were bumbling enough that the Fantastics got to do several hero spots. In the end, a bloodied Fulton was being hovered over by Eaton, but Rogers came off the top with a dropkick, tripping Eaton and giving the Fantastics the win at 23:38 (shown of 40:00). This crowd of 2,500 people was as loud as any crowd you’ll see in a football arena. I think a good number of babies were born nine months later because of how excited the fans got at seeing the Fantastics win the titles. I can’t go higher than I did here because I found it impossible to focus through the ad breaks, and I’m kind of surprised so many others don’t seem to have that problem. ***¾

September 19, 2011 – Kobe, Hyogo 

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Shinsuke Nakamura {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 89; Peak Position 81; Latest Position 89. From NJPW G1 Climax Special. This was the 12th singles match between the two. Nakamura led 6-4-1 going into this, though they were 3-3 in IWGP Heavyweight Championship matches. Tanahashi had won the title nine months earlier from Satoshi Kojima, and had already defended the title once successfully against Nakamura in May. Nakamura won the G1 Climax tournament to earn this shot and in doing so became the last man to get an immediate title shot from the tournament rather than getting the shot at the following Wrestle Kingdom. The first few minutes had me scratching my head as to how this would be different from the other matches I’d seen between these two. Not that it needed to be, I liked their Wrestle Kingdom II match and very much liked their New Dimension match from the same year. But this is on the all time top 100 list. But then Nakamura knocked out Tanahashi’s front tooth. Yikes. He began targeting Tanahashi’s arm in a way that drew me in. His mistake was in abandoning that gameplan in favor of kicking the crap out of Tanahashi and hoping for a win with the Boma Ye. Tanahashi stuck to his gameplan, which was do all the flashy things that had been successful for him recently, and came out on top. He countered the Landslide to a Sling Blade and then picked up the win with a pair of High Fly Flows at 26:07. ****½

January 4, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Shinsuke Nakamura def. AJ Styles {IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match}
Starting Position 86; Peak Position 85; Latest Position 87. From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10. Wrestle Kingdom 10 and 11 both have two matches on this list. Wrestle Kingdom 14 does as well, but they’re both Okada matches from different shows the same weekend. The first half of this match had me thinking that this was the most I’ve ever been impressed with Styles, outside of his ROH match against Paul London (which currently sits at #203 on the all time Cagematch list). Nakamura bodied his back early on, so he spent the rest of the match finding ways to keep Nakamura on the mat. To do this, he’d hit a snap suplex instead of a regular one, or he’d punch his way out of an armbar attempt instead of countering by lifting Nakamura. And once he got Nakamura on the mat, he tried to ensure he stayed there by zealously attacking his leg. But that was true only in the first half of the match; they more or less abandoned it in favor of flashy movez as the match wore on. Case in point, after countering a triangle choke to the Styles Clash, Styles hit a headlock suplex. I guess the thing I liked most about the match was fleeting. The final minutes were impressive, but I found myself disappointed that they gave up on a more memorable story in favor of the same old bombastic run to the finish. Nakamura came back with an avalanche Landslide and a pair of Boma Yes for the win at 24:18. The next time these two faced each other was at WrestleMania 34. I believe this is the only matchup in history to happen at a Wrestle Kingdom and a WrestleMania. Potentially hot take: I don’t think this is that much better than the WrestleMania match. The Mania match is, in my opinion, a decent sequel to this that makes good use of the WWE main event style. The reason this is better is because of a more engaged crowd and more interesting counters, and because the Mania match suffers from the same selling amnesia (except it’s Nakamura dropping it out of nowhere in the WWE match). ****

August 31, 1993 – Toyohashi, Aichi

Steve Williams def. Kenta Kobashi {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 92; Peak Position 83; Latest Position 83. From AJPW Summer Action Series II. Williams was 4-0-1 against Kobashi going into this match. In the first half of this match, Kobashi didn’t even really seem like he was in Williams’ league. He’d get control, but Williams would be so casual (and mean) about the way he’d counter. So Kobashi got more tenacious, jumping onto the barricade to hit a DDT on the floor, and holding onto a sleeper hold despite Williams dropping all his body weight onto him. He looked devastated when his moonsault only got a two count, but it didn’t stop him from blocking the Doctor Bomb. The crowd loved him for his effort, and even cheered when, after kicking out of the Oklahoma Stampede and a lariat, he rolled up Williams with a handful of tights. But it wasn’t enough. Kobashi tried to counter the Three Point Stance shoulder tackle to a sleeper, but Williams countered that to a back suplex and then hit two more for the win at 27:19. I loved this the first time I watched it a couple years ago but I loved it even more this time around. I can’t think of a better display of a guy having the heart to win but not quite having the skill yet. Both men played their roles to near perfection. Williams went on to get dunked on by Misawa a few days later. *****

June 30, 2015 – Sapporo, Hokkaido

Daisuke Sekimoto, Masato Tanaka & Takashi Sugiura tld. HARASHIMA, Yuji Hino & Yuji Okabayashi
Starting Position 76; Peak Position 76; Latest Position 103. From BJW Sapporo Limelight. I have no idea how these teams were chosen, but it seems that BJW wrestlers Sekimoto and Okabayashi each grabbed a pair of outsiders for battle. Tanaka is from ZERO1, Sugiura is from NOAH, Hino is from K-DOJO, and HARASHIMA is from DDT. That makes sense, as a few weeks later Sekimoto was set to defend his BJW Strong title against Okabayashi. Everyone shakes hands with everyone else except Hino and Okabayashi won’t touch Sekimoto. This match is a blast. It’s interesting that Sekimoto’s team tried to target HARASHIMA, their smallest opponent, to get the win, while Okabayashi’s team targeted Sekimoto because he was the champion. At least that’s how the first ten minutes played out. After that this turned into a beefy boy version of a Dragon Gate six man tag. I had the biggest smile on my face watching them move a mile a minute while hitting each other crazy hard. When the time limit ran out at thirty minutes, I was genuinely disappointed. If they had the energy, I’d watch this for another half hour. In addition to the match being bonkers, I’m also glad that it was on this list because it reminded me that when I reviewed the history of the BJW Strong Championship, I couldn’t find the Sekimoto vs Okabayashi match. But I’m a bit more seasoned now, so I found it and added my review to that post. ****½

August 8, 2019 – Yokohama, Kanagawa

Shingo Takagi def. Tomohiro Ishii {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 83; Peak Position 79; Latest Position 92. From NJPW G1 Climax 29. Takagi was already statistically eliminated from the tournament, so the stakes of this match were solely in Ishii needing this win to stay tied with the other leaders of his block. It’s a shame that they felt they had to give Takagi a bunch of false starts as a new heavyweight, because by the time they got around to really pushing him they were deep into the pandemic era and the brand had grown cold. This would have made for a terrific BJW Strong World Heavyweight Championship match. The entire story was that no matter how hard Takagi hit Ishii, Ishii either didn’t budge or immediately got back up. Takagi was undeterred and spoiled the little tuna can’s chances at winning the tournament. I like that Takagi’s motivation wasn’t just about being a spoiler, but was about proving that he had the strength to pin a long time New Japan heavyweight. Takagi hit the Last of the Dragon for the win at 22:41. Sadly, I have to complain a bit. That this is in the top 100 kind of baffles me, and that it’s one of Dave Meltzer’s top 30 matches of all time I find very confusing. Like, it’s great, but it’s not as good as his matches against Bryan Danielson or Davey Richards in DGUSA (408 and 444 on the Cagematch all-time list, respectively), or his hair vs. hair match against BxB Hulk (359), or the final match in his UK trilogy against Susumu Yokosuka (I’m the first and only person on Cagematch to ever rate the match), or his 2015 Dream Gate defense against Masaaki Mochizuki (285). And those are just singles matches. He’s had a bunch of tag/multi-man matches that are off the charts good. I guess what I’m getting at here is that Dragon Gate is historically underrepresented in the conversation of the best matches ever and it’s a bummer. ****¼

December 11, 2014 – Winter Park, Florida

Sami Zayn def. Adrian Neville {NXT Championship Match}
Starting Position 82; Peak Position 79; Latest Position 86. From NXT Takeover: R Evolution. Zayn’s career was on the line if he didn’t win the title, but it was self-imposed and could only be enforced by him. I don’t know what I would have thought of this one if it wasn’t for the crowd. In today’s “shades of gray” atmosphere, you really don’t get crowd support for one guy like this, and heat for his opponent just because he’s the obstacle in their hero’s way. The match told a great story too, with Zayn feeling like he should be more ruthless because his scruples had been holding him back, but then it was sticking to his moral ways that won him the match in the end. However, I think this was a few minutes too long and thus not as good as their title match on NXT TV. I like both matches a ton, but neither deserves a spot on this list over so many other NXT matches. But in the end it was a beautiful conclusion to a wonderful feud. Zayn hit the Helluva Kick for the win at 23:18. ****

June 16, 2012 – Osaka, Osaka

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Kazuchika Okada {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 81; Peak Position 78; Latest Position 85. From NJPW Dominion. These two were 1-1 going into this match, though Okada had just a few months earlier beaten Tanahashi for the title at New Beginning. This lifted heavily from the first title match, which it should have. That said, much like at New Beginning it took some time to really draw me in. But once it did, the action was more compelling here than there. Okada still wrestled like a dick and acted like a jerk on the floor. He still tried to overwhelm Tanahashi. But here, Tanahashi didn’t lose a tooth (not sure why that tooth was so prone to falling out), countered or blocked a lot of Okada’s offense, and was able to more consistently connect with his own offense. I feel like the Cloverleaf just doesn’t work for him and I was curious at the time to see if he dropped it from his repertoire (he did not). Tanahashi countered the Rainmaker to the Sling Blade and hit the High Fly Flow for the win at 28:06. ****¼

February 20, 1989 – Chicago Illinois

Ricky Steamboat def. Ric Flair {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 91; Peak Position 73; Latest Position 77. From NWA Chi-Town Rumble. I originally wrote this in 2020 and at that point there really wasn’t anything new to say about this trilogy, nor is there now. I will say that Jim Ross on commentary just gushing over the NWA as if he was selling Jesus at a megachurch started to feel a little overblown after a while. And so did Dave Meltzer’s reaction (sitting in the front row) to Flair’s chops. I can’t stand fans who try to get themselves over on camera. Anyway, it’s less interesting for me to talk about universally praised matches like this than it is to talk about under-represented matches like the title change in Detroit (when I wrote this in 2020 I was referring to Flair vs. Ron Garvin from an episode of Worldwide that is very good.), but this is an incredible match worthy of the plaudits it gets. But man, Jim Ross, his constant NWA pushing got really distracting, and I didn’t think the ref bump added anything to this. Steamboat counters the Figure 4 Leglock to a roll up for the win at 23:18 when a second referee rushes in to count the pin. It’s a bummer to me that the WrestleWar match, which I think is the best of the trilogy by kind of a lot, isn’t in the top 100. ****¾

July 15, 2007 – Tokyo, Japan

KENTA & Taiji Ishimori def. Kota Ibushi & Naomichi Marufuji {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 79; Peak Position 76; Latest Position 84. From NOAH Summer Navigation. This was part of the Nippon Television Cup Tournament. It was a round robin style tournament between six teams of junior heavyweights from both Japan and the United States. Marufuji & Ibushi won this match, they would have clinched the tournament. By winning, KENTA & Ishimori did not have enough points to surpass the winner of the next match, the Briscoe Brothers vs. Ricky Marvin & Kataro Suzuki. Luckily for them, those teams fought to a time limit draw, and thus KENTA & Ishimori became the inaugural tournament winners. KENTA hit the falcon arrow on Marufuji and Ishimori followed that with the Superstar Elbow. Ibushi came back with a crucifix pin and some kicks, but KENTA caught one and hit the Go2Sleep for the win at 21:43. This was an absolutely insane match and the best of the tournament, though I like the Briscoes vs. Marvin & Suzuki match more than most. It was a terrific example of hard-fought, junior action without devolving into complete absurdity. When I originally watched and reviewed this tournament back in 2008, I was dying for Ibushi to come to the States. Now I could take him or leave him. But he did outshine everyone else in this match. ****½

July 10, 2004 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenta Kobashi def. Jun Akiyama {GHC Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 93; Peak Position 72; Latest Position 72. From NOAH Departure. This was the main event of NOAH’s second biggest show ever. In 2004 and 2005 they outdrew New Japan in the Tokyo Dome. A match from their biggest show ever the following year will pop up closer to the top of this list. In All Japan, Kobashi had never lost to Akiyama, beating him nine times and fighting to a draw twice. Akiyama defeated Kobashi in their first match against each other in NOAH in 2000, but then Kobashi beat him again later that year. This was in the middle of Kobashi’s monster two-year run with the title. Guys today just don’t dare do the wild stuff that went on in NOAH main events. Later, I’ll talk about Kobashi & Misawa hitting each other with the wildest moves from the ramp to the floor. Here, Kobashi makes a vertical suplex look like the deadliest move ever when he hits Akiyama with one from the apron to the floor. I don’t get how Akiyama could breathe after that. Later, Akiyama returned the favor with an Exploder from the same position and almost won by count out. He’d spent the first chunk of the match working over Kobashi’s neck, so following up his first Exploder with a super Exploder seemed like it might put the champ down. It didn’t. He stayed focused on the neck from then on, putting on guillotine chokes and hitting more Exploders. Kobashi put a stop to that with one of the most sickening brainbusters I’ve ever seen. Akiyama returned fire, but never really got his legs back after that. Kobashi put him down with two lariats, a moonsault, and the Burning Hammer at 35:34. This was a brutal fight between a clever challenger and an unstoppable champion. ****½

August 31, 2019 – Cardiff, Wales

WALTER def. Tyler Bate {WWE United Kingdom Championship Match}
Starting Position 87; Peak Position 75; Latest Position 75. From NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff. I was very scared that Bate had gotten his bell rung when his head hit the post thanks to a WALTER powerbomb, but you can’t wrestle a match this good with a concussion. I love that they did a long main event that was rather one-sided towards the champion. It made all of Bate’s comebacks much more meaningful, and allowed it to really sink in as Bate slowly but surely started to swing the momentum towards the end. After watching this, I can’t think of a better underdog than Bate. The little fella sold his back so well, and WALTER took advantage every time. The most over spot in the match was probably when Bate snapped WALTER’s fingers in honor of his buddy Pete Dunne, but Bate’s powerbomb reversal, well-earned giant swing, Birminghammer, and super exploder all came really close. I personally loved WALTER’s ode to sumo and the way he found every little opening to retake control and cut off Bate’s momentum. In the end it took a chop to the back, a sleeper suplex on the apron, a Superfly Splash, another sleeper suplex, a powerbomb and a lariat to finally put Bate down at 42:12. To this point, this was the best match in this brand’s short history. ****¾

March 28, 2010 – Glendale, Arizona

The Undertaker def. Shawn Michaels {No Disqualification Match}
Starting Position 80; Peak Position 77; Latest Position 79. From WWE WrestleMania XXVI. Michaels had to put his career on the line to get this rematch against the Undertaker after losing to him the year before at WrestleMania. Michaels’ entrance has no angelic features or pomp of any circumstance. He’s stripped down to the bare essentials and serious about preserving his career. It’s funny, over a decade later I remembered Michaels’ entrances in reverse order, thinking they upped the camp for the retirement match. But this actually makes a lot more sense. Given the way Michaels had to goad Undertaker into giving him this match, Taker starts the match off pissed off and moving faster than usual. I watched this match immediately after watching their classic from the year before, and it played out differently than I remembered and differently than I expected. Michaels didn’t wrestle so much like he had everything to lose, but more like he expected to lose everything. It was Taker who worked the match with more urgency than he did the year before, because he was angry and because he busted one of his wheels very early in the match jumping off of the top rope. But because of Michaels’ fatalist attitude, I wasn’t quite as drawn in as I was by their 2009 match. That would have been a tall order even if the match had played out how I thought it would, as the WrestleMania 25 match deserves its place high on this list. There’s just something a little sad, and more than the kind of sad I think they were hoping I’d feel, in watching HBK wrestle his last match (almost ever) putting out a vibe that he knew he couldn’t win. In the end, he flashed Undertaker his own cutthroat taunt and then ate the Tombstone Piledriver at 24:00. ****½

December 4, 2004 – Elizabeth, New Jersey

Samoa Joe def. CM Punk {ROH World Championship Match}
Starting Position 70; Peak Position 70; Latest Position 90. From ROH All Star Extravaganza II. This match has no time limit because the first two title matches between these two ended in time limit draws. This was the only match in the trilogy that I didn’t see live. The crowd was HEAVILY into both guys’ entrances, banging along to the beat of Punk’s music as usual and rapping along with Joe’s. Giving the match an even more special feel was both Punk and Joe bringing out seconds to the ring. They took the form of Jay Lethal for Joe and the ROH school students for Punk. Near the end of the match Joe got frustrated and rolled Punk up in the corner and tried to use the ropes for leverage and the crowd completely turned on him. Awesome. Punk had the support of the crowd but kept getting caught in Joe’s rear naked choke. A German suplex and a dragon suplex on top of that softened up the challenger and gave the match to Joe’s choke at 31:33. Given that this match was built entirely around being the answer to the problem posed by the other two matches in the trilogy, I think it’s fair to rate this match with respect to those other two matches. The focus in this match was better than in the first. The first match saw problems like sloppiness and obvious spot calling. This match did not have those problems. The second match was pretty much flawless. It had great focus, amazing energy and non-stop action for 60 minutes. This had the same great focus and non-stop action, but lacked the energy in the first half of the match. As a match until itself, this works perfectly. The shorter match time made sense because of Punk’s inability to work his sleeper strategy from the earlier matches due to Joe’s knowledge of it and Punk’s own blood loss. Joe’s desperation, and sometimes dirty tactics, also helped him dominate Punk in this match more so than in the previous matches. There is one black eye on the match for me; Ricky Steamboat got involved in a false finish, and that goofiness knocks this down a bit. For one thing, the referee’s decision is final, and thus Punk lost when the referee made the call that Punk couldn’t continue. For another, Steamboat was basically interfering on Punk’s behalf, which of course should be a disqualification, and thus Punk lost. Punk lost anyway so at least we didn’t get a tainted title win, but it was still completely unnecessary to the match. But most of the match didn’t involve Steamboat and was wonderful. ****½

September 23, 2018 – Kobe, Hyogo

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Kazuchika Okada {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 74; Peak Position 74; Latest Position 81. From NJPW Destruction in Kobe. Tanahashi was defending his newly won Tokyo Dome certificate briefcase. Okada has red hair, so he’s a heel. The commentators actually say this without an ironic tone in their voices. Oy. They also said that the match would definitely go at least thirty minutes because it had been six years since they’d fought in a match under a half hour. Why must that be the case? What if something gnarly happens early on? It just saps the room for versatility right out of the matchup. It also leads to the crowd being more quiet than they could be for the first two-thirds of the match. And the commentators totally bury the interesting lede, which is that Tanahashi hadn’t beaten Okada in four years. I should just always listen to Japanese commentary. Commentary aside, this match is good, but its defining characteristic is executed to varying degrees of success. The big story here is Tanahashi’s leg getting obliterated and the way he fights back from the injury. At one very dramatic point near the end, he hits the High Fly Flow, but checks on his leg rather than go for the pin. That’s awesome in theory, but he performed it like an afterthought. And for all the lip service paid to Okada being a heel, the most dastardly thing he did was focus on Tanahashi’s leg. Which is, you know, his job as a wrestler. I’m making these quibbles not to say that this match isn’t great. This match is great. But it’s great in the way you’d be excited to see it as the main event of an ROH event in 2010 rather than a match you’d argue for as being one of the top 100 of all time. Tanahashi hit three High Fly Flows for the win at 35:43. This is the most recent match between the two on this list. It set their rivalry and 6-5-2 in favor of Tanahashi. As of this writing, they’ve wrestled twice since, with Okada winning both bringing their record to 7-6-2 in favor of Okada. ****¼

December 6, 1993 – Tokyo, Japan

Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada def. Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki {WWWA Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 95; Peak Position 59; Latest Position 73. From AJW St. Battle Final. No one kicks out of a near fall quite like Toyota. You sense the desperation and will to survive more from her than from anyone else in wrestling history I think. While I believe that part of the reason this match is rated so highly is because people got a kick out of Yamada suplex spamming Kansai and Kansai dumping Yamada straight on top of her head in response, it’s impossible to ignore how wild this match got at various times throughout. It’s frustrating to watch Ozaki’s gimmicky heel stuff today knowing that this was what she was doing in her prime. And beyond all that, this was FAST. For more than the length of a standard sitcom, they went ladyballs to the wall and never let up or slowed down. The finish was great too. Ozaki kept kicking out, with a bit of help from Kansai, of Toyota’s big moves. So Toyota dove off the top onto Kansai on the floor before hitting Ozaki with a double hammerlock Alabama Slam for the win at 25:32. That finisher was weird enough that the crowd didn’t react much to it, but it gave the 1987 Team Gold Combo their second (and final as a team) tag team championships. The other reason people love this match is because it was the last of a trilogy. I watched them in reverse order (whoops) so my rating reflects how it stands on its own. ****½

March 20, 1994 – Manhattan, New York

Owen Hart def. Bret Hart
Starting Position 77; Peak Position 72; Latest Position 76. From WWF WrestleMania X. A little remarked-upon step on the path to this match was that Shawn Michaels pinning Owen at Survivor Series was what kicked off the younger Hart’s resentment of his older brother. Two months later, Owent turned on Bret after an attempt at the Tag Team Championship went bad. Later that night, Bret and Lex Luger co-won the Royal Rumble and earned a shot at Yokozuna’s title at WrestleMania. So they set up a mini-tournament of sorts, where at the end of the night the person who walked out of WrestleMania with the title will have wrestled two matches. They played up the brother vs. brother familiarity with each other very well, and Owen played up his petulant dipshittery very well too. In fact, my only gripe with this match is that it didn’t build to a dramatic finish. It ended with a finish that made sense, which was Owen cutting back on a victory roll for the win at 20:21. But it wasn’t breathtaking. At the time it may have been, just through the novelty of Owen winning. But it’s 28 years later and a lot of matches have come since. Still, this stands up as a terrific first ever match between them. Bret won the title later in the evening, setting up a Steel Cage rematch for the title at SummerSlam (#302 on Cagematch’s all time list on the day that I checked). This storyline was booked tremendously. ****½

October 5, 1997 – St. Louis, Missouri

Shawn Michaels def. The Undertaker {Number One Contender Hell in a Cell Match}
Starting Position 78; Peak Position 71; Latest Position 71. From WWF Badd Blood: In Your House. This was the first ever Hell in a Cell match and second of five matches these two would have in their career. The first ended in a no contest a month before. This rivalry kicked off because Michaels accidentally hit Undertaker with a chair when he was refereeing the Dead Man’s title match against Bret Hart, costing him the championship. D-X kept getting involved, so the Cell stipulation was invented to keep them from interfering. Commissioner Sergeant Slaughter made sure that nobody was hiding under the ring before the match. That’s awesome. The first ten minutes saw the Undertaker beating Michaels around ringside, and then Michaels gaining control by hitting a big move, then getting a ton of space, then hitting another. Michaels did that over and over until Undertaker was dazed, and then he capitalized on that by using the steps to beat Taker up. But eventually his luck ran out and the Undertaker retook control with a boot. A frustrated Michaels then beat up a cameraman, causing the production team to open the cell so help could arrive. Michaels tried to use the opportunity to escape, so Undertaker beat the crap out of him outside and on top of the cell. The subsequent announce table bump was nuts, as Michaels pretty much overshot it. Michaels was bleeding like crazy at this point. Undertaker got him back into the ring where he hit an avalanche chokeslam and finally got his title match revenge by hitting Michaels square in the face with a chair. But then, the lights went out and Kane debuted. Kane ripped the cell door off the hinges, terrified Undertaker by setting the ring posts on fire with his mind, and then hit him with the Tombstone Piledriver before walking away. And then Michaels covered Undertaker for the win at 29:59 to set up one of the most famous matches in wrestling history. This is the rare (perhaps only? At least in WWE? Maybe Shane McMahon vs. Kurt Angle as well) case of the brawling on the floor being just as good, if not better, as the action in the ring. It’s also the best embodiment of the popular culture’s perception of professional wrestling that exists. It’s bloody, it’s violent, it’s in a cage, it’s loose with its own rules. The giant, unstoppable, but somehow heroic monster finally gets the arrogant, smarmy villain alone in the ring. He gets revenge for having his championship stolen from him and is inches away from earning a shot at reclaiming it. But then his equally monstrous and mysterious brother debuts and robs him of it. The fact that this match set up both the Kane vs. Undertaker and Michaels vs. Hart matches is kind of insane. Without this match, wrestling doesn’t follow quite the path that it took to get to WWF’s triumph over WCW. Is it the best match ever? No, it’s not even the best match between these two. But it’s probably the most pro-wrestling match of all time. *****

December 17, 2005 – Edison, New Jersey

KENTA def. Low Ki {GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 71; Peak Position 67; Latest Position 78. From ROH Final Battle. The Forbidden Door, over a decade before Tanahashi cursed us with an official term for it. This match flew by in no time and was just insane action from start to finish. When I watched this back in 2006, I couldn’t help but compare it to Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi, in large part because ROH pushed it as the next match to rival that one in quality and notoriety. It was missing some of the aura that was present in Joe vs. Kobashi, but then KENTA never did become the legend that Kobashi did (or come close). And Ki isn’t even close to as talented as Joe. So it’s an unfair comparison. The Kobashi match was all atmosphere, with great wrestling as the icing on the cake. This one was all faux martial arts action, and drew in the crowd by force of will (and ROHbot excitement over KENTA). But it was still very good and totally worth going out of your way to see. I recommend it especially because Joe vs. Kobashi has become one of the cornerstone classics in ROH’s catalog, and there’s a chance you might not have even have heard of this one even though it was for a title. ****½

July 28, 2018 – Nagoya, Aichi

Kota Ibushi def. Tomohiro Ishii {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 68; Peak Position 68; Latest Position 74. From NJPW G1 Climax 28. These guys were 1-1 going into this match, Ishii having successfully defended the NEVER Openweight Championship against Ibushi in 2014 and Ibushi beating Ishii in this tournament the year before this. This war of dolphin vs. tuna (can) was a lot of fun. Ibushi seemed dead set on fighting off Ishii using Ishii’s own stiff offensive style, and he looked down right elated when it started working. This match was filled with awesome counters and flowed nicely into a finisher theft chunk. It reminded me a lot of Samoa Joe vs. Low Ki from ROH. It started at an intense pace, never let up, and wrapped things up before it could overstay its welcome. If a match could be wild-eyed, this one certainly was. Both guys were ferocious. It ended similar to Joe vs. Ki as well. Both guys were kicking out of each other’s big moves, homegrown and stolen, so Ibushi changed course and unloaded with kicks from every angle before a Kamigoye put Ishii down at 16:13. Joe vs. Ki definitely deserves to be higher on Cagematch’s all time list (it’s as good as this was), but it’s at 1,371, frustratingly even lower than their less good PWG match (which is at 887). ****½

August 6, 2016 – Osaka, Osaka

Tomohiro Ishii def. Kazuchika Okada {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 73; Peak Position 68; Latest Position 69. From NJPW G1 Climax 26. Okada and Ishii are teammates in CHAOS, so they’ve wrestled against each other far fewer times than most combinations of NJPW main eventers. Going into this match, Okada was 2-0 over Ishii, having beaten him in the 2013 and 2015 G1 Climax tournaments. I wanted to see if they’d ever been tag champs together and learned that the only title Okada has ever won in his career is the IWGP Heavyweight Championship six times over. The way that Ishii takes DDT bumps is always kind of gnarly, but he took a draping DDT on the floor in this match that gave me the hiccups. He also interrupted Okada’s zoom-out Rainmaker taunt, which put the biggest smile on my face. That was just before the halfway point in this match, and I was thinking to myself, “Self, this is a fun match, but how is this going to turn into one of the top 100 matches of all time?” And I held onto that thought as the match progressed. But as the match began to draw to a close, I realize that through my skepticism, it was convincing me of its greatness. Every time I thought Okada was getting ready to put Ishii away, Ishii stubbornly stomped on the former champ’s foot and heatbutted him off of his feet. I found myself leaning farther and farther forward, smiling bigger and bigger, more engaged with each passing exchange. I had forgotten that Ishii won the match, and started jumping a little bit out of my seat each time he successfully got distance from the Rainmaker. And when he hit that final brainbuster for the win at 18:43, I felt so satisfied. I wish more NJPW matches could do as much in around 20 minutes as these two did. Was it the best NJPW has to offer? No, but it’s probably the best NJPW match that I’d rate just a hair under the full five. It’s also my 2016 Match of the Year unless something I’ve yet to see that’s farther up on this list is better from that year. But this will be hard to top. To this day, this is Ishii’s only win over Okada. They wrestled twice more after this in the New Japan Cup and another G1 Climax tournament, and Okada won both of those matches. ****¾

April 2, 1993 – Yokohama, Kanagawa

Akira Hokuto def. Shinobu Kandori
Starting Position 72; Peak Position 68; Latest Position 67. From AJW Dream Slam. Hey so listen, you should watch this match. Hokuto came into this as the All Pacific Champion (AJW’s secondary title), and I thought Kandori came into this as LLPW Champion (she was repping the rival LLPW here), but that title didn’t exist until later in the year. Hokuto’s title was not on the line, though in hindsight maybe it should have been. Hokuto almost knocked Kandori out at the opening bell, so Kandori, when she got her wits back about her, pulled Hokuto’s arm out of the socket. The fight got pretty wild from there. After a few minutes, Kandori walloped Hokuto on the floor and made her face a bloody mess. Then comes the only gripe I have with the match, which is an extended walk n’ brawl that was kind of boring. It didn’t last forever and it did lead to Kandori also bleeding, so it served a purpose. But I could have done with it not straying so far from the ring and the camera’s line of sight. But that’s not going to stop me from giving this match top marks, because when they got back to the ring, these two beat each other up in a bloody, brutal scrap. By the end of the half hour they’re both exhausted. They’ve traded dives and suplexes, but never deviated far from the intense close physical contact. They never got too cute with reversals; rather they focused on what would hurt their opponent the most. And in the end that was returning back to what started the match, gnarly elbows. Kandori hit one that looked like it might be the yang to Hokuto’s match-opening yin. But Hokuto got up. They both hit one final elbow, and Hokuto was able to gather her strength first and pin Kandori at 30:39. I wish that had been the finish to the Steve Austin vs. Triple H 2001 match, rather than Triple H randomly falling on top after the double weapon strike. Anyway, five stars for this, the best women’s match I’ve ever seen. Between this and the JWP Iron Woman match, ’93 was the wildest year for women’s wretling. *****

July 15, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenny Omega def. Tetsuya Naito {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 67; Peak Position 67; Latest Position 70. From NJPW G1 Climax 28. Omega is flabbergasted at how long it takes Naito to remove his suit for the match. I’m flabbergasted at how long it takes Omega to mug for the crowd before he hits his movez. This match had a better story than their 2017 match, but couldn’t measure up to the intensity of the 2016 match. Part of the issue with watching successive Omega matches (which I did here, watching all three Omega vs. Naito matches at once) is that Omega’s cheesy flaws start showing up in spades. Here, it was clear that Omega’s idea of selling devastating maneuvers is putting on a slack jawed facial expression while continuing to do everything he’d do had he not just been dropped on his head. On the bright side, this had a strong narrative to carry it through and distract me from Omega’s stupid face. Naito had not adapted to Omega’s offensive arsenal nearly as much as Omega had to Naito’s, giving us a match that saw Omega block almost all of Naito’s signature offense and counter it to a head drop of a knee kick. I can dig Omega winning in shorter order against Naito than he ever had before given those circumstances. I just wish he’d, you know, sell what offense Naito did connect with. Omega hit the One Winged Angel for the win at 23:19. ****¼

September 22, 2021 – Queens, New York

Bryan Danielson tld. Kenny Omega
Starting Position 75; Peak Position 63; Latest Position 63. From AEW Dynamite 103: Grand Slam. Okay so the first thing to love about this match is that they wrestled what would have been, had the title been on the line and the time limit been longer, a match that would have logically led to an actual finish a few minutes after the bell rang here. Specifically, what I liked is that the match was cut off at a place that felt realistic, and not like one that was manufactured for the sake of a thirty-minute time limit. Also, kudos to TNT for not going to a commercial during this very long match. It escalated in a way befitting of its place on the card, its non-title status, and the two men involved. This was the most fun I’ve had watching an Omega singles match in some time. His selling felt realistic and not totally goofy as it often can. Serious Omega is A-OK in my book. ****¼

August 2, 2013 – Tokyo, Japan

Tomohiro Ishii def. Hiroshi Tanahashi {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 60; Peak Position 60; Latest Position 80. From NJPW G1 Climax 23. Like while watching most Ishii matches that have appeared on this list, I spent the first few minutes here wondering what all the hype was about. As the match wore on, the promise of an Ishii big match is realized. Ishii has clever blocks for all of his opponents, and then will do something surprising to throw them off their game. In this case it was countering Tanahashi’s offense to la magistral instead of a high impact move. Having said that, I was less into this than the Ishii matches that appear lower on the list. Tanahashi didn’t do anything different than you’d see in any of his other big matches, and his selling was suspect after taking a pounding from his hockey puck of an opponent. Ishii finished Tanahashi off with the Steiner Screwdriver at 17:42, which I believe he called the Ishii Driller but I also believe that this is one of the very very very few times he ever used the move. ****

September 27, 2017 – Los Angeles, California

Killshot def. Dante Fox {Hell of War Match}
Starting Position 64; Peak Position 61; Latest Position 66. From Lucha Underground Ultima Lucha Tres. Hell of War is LU speak for Three Stages of Hell. The first fall was a Primera Sangre Match. The commentators didn’t make a ton of the advantage Killshot had because of his mask, so it was nice to see the referee checking to see if blood was behind it. The spots in this fall were wild, as was Fox bringing out a pane of glass because making Killshot’s body bleed would be undeniable. Fox backdrops Killshot off the top through the glass and that’s enough to win the first fall at 10:31. The second fall was a No DQ match, which was dumb after all the plunder in the first fall. Yeah, it was different in that it ended in a pin instead of bloodshed, but it wasn’t an escalation. Well, it wasn’t an escalation in terms of being a more dangerous stipulation, but in reality there was broken glass everywhere. And then there was a barbed wire board. Fox got powerbombed into it, and right before that Killshot ran through glass and then kicked Fox multiple times in the head, presumably with glass on his boots judging by the bloody ear. Killshot followed the powerbomb with the JML Driver onto glass to win the second fall at 16:45.

The third fall was a Medical Evac Match, or an ambulance match with a different vehicle. We got some cool spots involving the stretcher, on top of the scary gross-out bloody biz. The final spot, with Fox going through a pane of glass after falling from the stage, felt a bit forced. Weirdly, little else in this match did, despite it having to be carefully planned (I hope!). Killshot then dumped Fox’s shredded body into the medevac truck for the win at 25:23. Oof, the crowd really fell off for that final moment. If you can stomach Fox’s back bleeding like crazy for fifteen minutes (and can wrap your head around Killshot’s back healing after bleeding for a couple of minutes) then I recommend checking out the wacky violence in this one. It was very much in line with Killshot’s great match against Marty Martinez (1,583 on the all-time list), but more gory and with a more athletic opponent. Also, the Martinez match peaked at the end, whereas this match peaked with the stomp spot on the stretcher, and then petered out a bit despite the big fall to finish it. Still, this was a brutal match for 22 minutes, and that’s plenty to be thankful for. ****½

August 18, 2012 – Tokyo, Japan

Kota Ibushi def. Kenny Omega {KO-D Openweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 63; Peak Position 63; Latest Position 65. From DDT Peter Pan. I wish I knew if this match was loved and renowned at the time or if it’s boosted in hindsight because these two became NJPW darlings a few years later. But I don’t know, because I’d just begun a six-year hiatus from watching wrestling the year before. Well, I sort of knew, because I half watched this in preparation for reviewing the KO-D title changes that happened later in the year, but I was dismissive and not paying close enough attention. Now, it’s my 2012 Match of the Year. Omega’s irritating mugging is used to great heel effect here. He was cocky and he taunted because he knew he was better. And by and large, he was better. At just about every turn he was three steps ahead of Ibushi. He’d hit a suplex, float into a submission, and without any hesitation he’d bat Ibushi’s hands away in order to get the best leverage for the hold. Ibushi could only get the advantage by breaking out something devastating and dangerous, like a Frankensteiner from the top to the floor. Omega looked like he was out after that, unable to sustain offense or, when he was able, only able to meekly hit a move. But he persistently went for the One Winged Angel and eventually connected with it. Ibushi kicked out of it here, in this famous match that is ignored by New Japan commentators when talking about the omnipotence of the One Winged Angel. Omega tried to hit an avalanche version, but that left him vulnerable. Ibushi hit him with a Phoenix Superplex and the Phoenix Splash for the win at 37:26. *****

September 3, 1994 – Tokyo, Japan

Steve Williams def. Kenta Kobashi {Triple Crown Championship Match}
Starting Position 65; Peak Position 61; Latest Position 61. From AJPW Summer Action Series II. Going into this match, I fear that the reason it’s higher on the list than their incredible match from the previous year is because it’s longer. There’s an extreme long match bias from the Cagematch voters. The last time Williams beat Kobashi it was in a contender match that led to Williams losing to Misawa. But Williams recuperated, and a few months after that he beat Misawa to end the green man’s nearly two-year reign as champion. Kobashi came out of the gate full of confidence and fire. For ten minutes, it looked like that would work for him. But then, Williams dropped his throat on the barricade and Kobashi didn’t look like such a runaway train anymore. Ten minutes of Williams’ dominance ended when Kobashi blocked the shoulder tackle with a lariat. At this point, the crowd was dying for Kobashi to take the title. But there was still a lot of match to be had, and Williams made a Kobashi win seem a lot less likely with a press slam to the floor and a shoulder tackle from the apron. At this point they were almost thirty minutes into the match. Williams hit a belly to belly superplex and the Dotro Bomb, but couldn’t get the win. There’s still ten minutes left in this match?! Kobashi blocked the Oklahoma Stampede and retook control. Thus began Kobashi’s final attempt to do enough damage and grab the win. Problem was he started going for too many successive moves between pins, and Williams avoided a moonsault. One thing Williams seemed unable to avoid was dropkicks to his knee, which finally started to take their toll. This provided an amazing tease for the crowd, though satisfaction would be elusive. Williams limped his way to hitting three gnarly backdrop drivers, the second of which went into the turnbuckle for the win at 41:23. I prefer their ‘93 match, but this was amazing too. It had peak Hulk Hogan levels of heat and crowd investment, but saw the monster heel win over the home-country babyface. ****½

March 14, 2007 – Tokyo, Japan

Takashi Sasaki def. Yuko Miyamoto {BJW Deathmatch Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 62; Peak Position 58; Latest Position 64. From a BJW on Samurai TV taping. I did not expect to see a Big Japan deathmatch this high up on the list, and it’s not even the highest rated one! There are light tubes against the ropes (per usual for this title) and a scaffold situation in the corner. As always, the light tubes are used to get a pop but don’t give anyone an advantage. They do make both guys bleed within the first ten minutes. After they get the tube smashing out of their systems, they start to do wrestling moves, which actually get sold. Then they go up the scaffold, and to their credit they fight rather fearlessly on top of it. Miyamoto hits a diving double stomp off of it but that doesn’t give him the win. And then a moment later, Sasaki takes control with a back suplex… after falling off the scaffold… and after taking that double stomp. In the second half of the match, Miyamoto baits Sasaki into taking risks and then nails him with an Island Driver onto some light tubes. At that point I started rooting for Miyamoto to win, and got annoyed when I remembered that he didn’t win the title until the following year. Miyamoto is great in these matches in general, getting good performances even out of Abdullah Kobayashi. So his comeback in the second half was the highlight and that was unsurprising. He hit a beautiful moonsault off of the scaffold, but it also didn’t end Sasaki’s reign. What is the point of the scaffold if moves off of it don’t end the match and don’t give the guy who did them a sustained advantage. I complain because after the moonsault, Sasaki woke up and had enough time to climb the scaffold with Miyamoto. And then he hit the D-Geist off of the scaffold, through a table, and THAT DIDN’T END THE MATCH EITHER! I’m sure there are a lot of people who loved this escalating violence, and the spectacle of it wasn’t lost on me either; but I could have used a little restraint. Like, at least take longer to make the cover if your opponent is going to kick out. Sasaki followed that with the light tube Migi-ashi he was looking for earlier, but that only got two. And then another D-Geist onto light tubes got him the win at 24:07. So like I said, the spectacle of the match and Miyamoto’s comeback performance made this worth watching. But if you’re like me, you’ll be frustrated by the de-escalating intensity of the moves leading up to the finish. Sasaki lost the title five months later to Jaki Numazawa in a match that was shockingly good, given Numazawa was involved. ****

November 5, 2005 – Tokyo, Japan

Katsuhiko Nakajima & Kensuke Sasaki def. Go Shiozaki & Kenta Kobashi
Starting Position 59; Peak Position 67; Latest Position 56. From NOAH 3rd Great Voyage. The Kensuke Office team had the All Asia Tag Team Championships here, but they were not on the line. And why not? They won the match anyway! Pretty wild that Nakajima and Shiozaki are still fighting on the top of NOAH shows over 16 years later. You know how reviews of a lot of big, marquee matches often say that it took the wrestlers a while to get going but once they did it was a pedal to the metal situation? This was a pedal to the metal situation from the opening bell, and it never slowed down. At first it was a bit of a mixed tag situation, with the heavyweight veterans mostly squaring off against each other and their proteges doing the same. But then we got quite a bit of the young guys seeing if they could take down their legendary opponents. And in many cases, they could. Sasaki & Nakajima were the more cohesive team, and the only one to use any tandem moves. Sasaki wound up alone in the end with Shiozaki, and Nakajima was able to keep Kobashi on the floor while Sasaki hit the Tornado Bomb and a lariat for the win at 24:58. ****½ 

August 11, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Kota Ibushi def. Kenny Omega {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 61; Peak Position 58; Latest Position 59. From NJPW G1 Climax 28. Going into this, Ibushi was 3-0 over Omega, all in matches in DDT (a couple of which were goofy gimmicks, one of which was an incredible match I reviewed higher up in this post). Omega didn’t have any wins over Ibushi coming into this, but he did have the IWGP Heavyweight Championship belt. This was the finals of the B Block. Ibushi went on to lose to Tanahashi in the finals the following night, in a match that I’ll review closer to the top of this list. The commentators recognize that Ibushi has kicked out of the One Winged Angel (true, as noted earlier in this post), which is weird considering I’ve heard them say multiple times (lying) that no one has ever survived it. This felt rather sterile compared to their DDT match, despite the supposed story being that there was so much emotion between these two. I started to feel the intensity toward the end, thanks to the grunting and shouting that came along with their latter stage moves. That plus some of the innovations on display during the finish were amazing. Ibushi hit the wildest double stomp on top of the turnbuckle (as in, both guys were on top of the turnbuckle), and followed it up with an avalanche tiger driver and the Kamigoye for the win at 23:13. If this version of this matchup had gone as long as the DDT version, I’d have been upset. But to their credit, they knew how this could take them and the match was about half as long. This was the last time these two ever wrestled each other one on one. Ibushi did get a title shot based on his win here, but Cody Rhodes was also in that match, making it a triple threat. Rhodes loves being in places that no one asked him to be. ****½

November 19, 2016 – Toronto, Ontario

Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano def. Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson {NXT Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
Starting Position 55; Peak Position 55; Latest Position 62. From NXT Takeover: Toronto. It’s kind of a miracle that WWE didn’t give DIY a stereotypical Italian gimmick. They’d almost certainly be Tony D’Angelo’s mob buddy lackeys if they debuted today. I had potentially unreasonable expectations for this match. Luckily, these were four of the most creative guys in wrestling and they put on a hell of a match. I might have gone even higher if the second fall wasn’t a little on the inconsequential side, especially because the finish was both something I’d never seen before and also hilarious. The end of the match saw DIY put on stereo submissions, and despite the Revival’s attempts to stop each other from tapping, they gave up at the same time at 22:16. Had they taken a page out of the 2/3 Falls Match that the Revival had with American Alpha, this would have been one of the tippy top best matches ever for the brand. On my personal list of top NXT matches, this comes in at 18, though the Cagematch community clearly disagrees because only three NXT matches are ranked above it. ****½

April 1, 2001 – Houston, Texas

Edge & Christian def. Jeff Hardy & Matt Hardy and Bubba Ray Dudley & D-Von Dudley {WWE Tag Team Championship TLC Match}
Starting Position 56; Peak Position 56; Latest Position 60. From WWF WrestleMania X-7. I know people love ladder matches and that this match was, along with the other similar matches these teams put on around this time, very influential. But I think it influenced wrestling in a mostly negative way and I’m annoyed that this is the fourth highest rated WWF/E match on the list. This is the third version of this exact match, after they did it at WrestleMania and SummerSlam the previous year. There was also a Hardys vs. Edge & Christian ladder match at the end of 1999. And they did it again and added another team after this! I don’t know why I’m pearl-clutching so much about this series when the Money in the Bank and TLC PPVs have totally destroyed the ladder match concept since. But I’ll give this match the credit that it does deserve. There was only one instance of something being set up too long before it paid off, that being the table stack near the ramp. Other than that, spots were set up and paid off quickly, so you didn’t have a lot of plunder around waiting to be used, cluing you into the fact that the match wasn’t going to end before that. This also saw people almost always prioritizing climbing rather than grabbing a new ladder or setting up a new table for the sake of it. It also featured Spike Dudley, Lita, and Rhino helping their respective allies. So while this helped to inspire a lot of crap, it was executed a lot better than almost all of the chaotic ladder matches that have come since. Is this the match in which Jeff broke his tailbone? His face after hitting the Swanton Bomb off the ladder makes me think so. This is the dangling D-Von match, which is very funny to see knowing now how terrified he was. Edge’s spear on Hardy is still impressive all these decades later, though Jeff’s botched ladder walk just before it was a bummer. Matt and Bubba’s fall through the table stack has also lost some luster over the years. Rhino boosted Christian up the ladder to the belts for the win at 15:50. So I’m not surprised to see this here, but I don’t think it deserves to be here while WWF/E matches like Three Stages of Hell and the Rock vs. Triple H Iron Man match are not. ****½ 

September 4, 2009 – Reseda, California

Bryan Danielson def. Chris Hero {PWG World Championship Match}
Starting Position 69; Peak Position 49; Latest Position 51. From PWG Guerre Sans Fronteires. This one climbed the ranks quite a bit in the weeks I spent on this project. Hero came into this one as champion. I think at this point we were well aware that Danielson was getting ready to go to WWE, so the result was a surprise. By his standards (and my own standards, frankly), Hero was in incredible shape here. This turned into something really terrific, and had they dumped most of the first 15 minutes of the match I’d be warmer to the idea of it being on this list. But the first fifteen minutes were Hero’s typical (and sometimes Danielson’s typical) mat work that leads to not a whole hell of a lot. That alone made this not as good as several other PWG matches I’ve seen. In the second half of the match, Danielson had Hero outclassed. Even after being bloodied by a chairshot while missing a dive to the floor, Danielson had Hero’s number. The finish was brilliant. Danielson hit the stomps and put on a triangle choke. Hero countered to a powerbomb, but Danielson held on. Hero went to the eyes so Danielson pivoted into a modified LeBell Lock for the win at 43:06. The crowd went insane. After the match, Paul London congratulates Danielson with a dolphin balloon. Danielson vacates the title because he won’t be able to defend it consistently (or ever). ****¼

August 4, 2013 – Osaka, Osaka

Tomohiro Ishii def. Katsuyori Shibata {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 54; Peak Position 54; Latest Position 58. From NJPW G1 Climax 23. I’m fairly certain this is the shortest match on Cagematch’s top 100 list. I knew that going in, so I wasn’t surprised to see that from the opening bell, this was already running at full speed. They jammed a lot of crazy, snug action into this match. But I’m not seeing in this anything that screams greatest match of all time. It reminded me of a Roderick Strong vs. Tyler Bate match I loved from NXT TV in 2018, and I’m sure many would disagree with the four-star rating I gave that match. But if you’re curious at the extent to which Shibata and Ishii have runaway fandoms (and the unwarranted weight they put behind doing a lot in a small amount of time), check this match out and then look at its Cagematch entry. Ishii escaped Shibata’s choke and put him down with a quick brainbuster at 12:17. ****

December 3, 1993 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa def. Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada {AJPW World Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 58; Peak Position 50; Latest Position 53. From AJPW Real World Tag League. Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase had beaten the Holy Demon Army to win the titles and then beat them again in defense of those titles. But AJPW stripped them of the belts so that they could be put on the line in the Real World Tag League tournament. Taue & Kawada had a successful defense against Misawa & Kobashi during their reign, so presumably they’d have the advantage here. Despite being for the tag titles, there was a thirty-minute time limit on this match because it was part of the tournament. Kobashi spent a lot of the first half of this match getting his ass kicked. But then he caught Kawada with a leg kick and gave him a charley horse. From that point on, the complexion of the match completely changed. Though Kawada was dangerous in the ring, he was also totally vulnerable. Kobashi and Misawa were able to neutralize him easily and often. Taue wasn’t as easy to turn away, but Kawada, perhaps in his pride, kept tagging in. Misawa obliterated Kawada with elbows and suplexes, and left him to be ragdolled by a Kobashi backdrop driver for the win at 23:34. ****½

October 16, 2004 – Chicago Ridge, Illinois

Samoa Joe tld. CM Punk {ROH World Championship Match}
Starting Position 57; Peak Position 52; Latest Position 52. From ROH Joe vs. Punk II. I covered the third match in this trilogy a bit higher up on the list. As the title of the show it’s on suggests, this is the second in the series and it’s the best. Their first bout took place in Dayton (number 365 on Cagematch’s all time list), was also an hour long, and was probably the best live wrestling experience I’ve ever had. I was also at this match live, and it wasn’t too far behind. And from a home viewing standpoint, this is the better watch. I can’t for the life of me understand why the ROH production would show the black entrance curtain during the intro to Punk’s music instead of the RABID Punk fans. Joe got some heel heat during his entrance, but I mean, who wouldn’t against Punk in Chicago. Both men started the match using what worked for them in their previous encounter. Joe used his power and Punk used his speed and wit. Whenever Punk changed his strategy, hitting a power move, he quickly backed away. When Joe changed his strategy, putting Punk on the mat, he used his strength to make sure that his risk paid off. As the opening moments of the match came to an end however, it was Punk once again going to a headlock to prolong the match and get the wind out of Joe. Joe did his best to try to get away from the headlock, but Punk knew what worked and did everything he could to keep it on. Punk let go of the headlock and tried to outwit Joe with a series of shoulder blocks, but wound up getting smacked around before getting a rollup for a near fall. Joe freaked and bailed, possibly for the first time in his ROH career. This was a great example of how Punk was getting into his head.

Punk tried to match Joe at his own game and got knocked to the floor. Punk targeted Joe’s arm in response. Things cranked up about twelve notches as the crowd went insane and Punk and Joe laid into each other with strikes on the floor. Everything began to hit perfectly on point and HARD, including a suicide forearm by Joe through the ropes so beautiful that it caused the commentators to leave their positions and go down to the stands to watch as fans. In the end, Joe and Punk fought on the turnbuckle for the Pepsi Plunge and Muscle Buster, respectively, but the time limit ran out just as Joe hit his finisher. This match is just phenomenal, and completely puts to shame every other match that ROH had ever produced to that point. It took all the great things about their first encounter and either expounded upon them or made them tighter. I also loved that it didn’t feel like the time limit robbed one man or the other (even though Joe had the advantage), but rather that the two men were still going hard as it ended. This was my Match of the Year for 2004. *****

October 9, 1994 – Kawasaki Kanegawa

Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue def. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada {WWWA Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
Starting Position 66; Peak Position 45; Latest Position 49. From AJW Wrestlemarinepiad. These teams were 1-1 against one another going into this, but this is the only match where the titles were on the line. The first fall was a fun blitz that saw Toyota put away Kyoko with the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex. Double Inoue got their groove back in the second fall. There were some miscommunications between them, but they were tight enough that they were able to tie things up. Kyoko hit a crazy avalanche bodyslam and the Niagara Driver on Yamata to win the second fall. Double Inoue remained largely unstoppable into the third fall. They abuse the crap out of Toyota, hit her with a crazy variety of tandem moves, and finisher off with a diving knee/Niagara Driver combo at 33:47. It was weird to see Yamada be less of a principle factor in this match than she had been in her ‘92 and ‘93 matches against Kansai & Ozaki. It almost felt like she’d been defanged, with no stunning strike offense here like in those matches. It was also wild to watch this match after seeing Kyoko’s WWWA World World Championship runs that happened a few years later, after she’d put on some size. She was totally formidable here (the Niagara Driver made me gasp every time she hit it), but she was much quicker and less physically imposing than she’d become. Anyway, this match is wild and well worth a look. ****¼

November 20, 1994 – Tokyo, Japan

Aja Kong def. Manami Toyota {Quarterfinal Match}
Starting Position 53; Peak Position 49; Latest Position 57. From AJW Big Egg Wrestling Universe, the biggest women’s wrestling show of all time. This show drew, by some estimates, 42,000 people to the Tokyo Dome. It was ten hours long, featured wrestlers from multiple joshi companies, and saw the WWF Women’s Championship change hands in the semi-main event. This match was in the first round of a one-night tournament. Over the course of their career, these two wrestled each other eight times in singles matches, and this was the first. Kong was WWWA World Champion here, but her title was not on the line in this tournament. This didn’t age well only in the sense that Dave Meltzer rated it five stars when it happened. That made it an internet legend for some time because it was hard to get your hands on a tape before joshing on YouTube became common. It’s a sick match, but by now you’ve seen other big wrestlers dominating plucky underdogs for an extended period of time, the underdogs make a miraculous comeback, and then the monster be forced to use a bit of desperation to get the win. What sets this apart some is that when Toyota is making her comeback, she drops Kong with a pair of just gnarly head drop moves. I’ve seen this described as, “unlike anything else I’ve seen in wrestling,” but to me that just means that Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena/Daniel Bryan, WALTER vs. Tommaso Ciampa, or any number of Sting vs. Vader matches have somehow eluded you. Kong hit a lucky spinning backfist and the Steiner Screwdriver for the win at 17:17. Kong made it to the finals of the tournament and lost to Akira Hokuto. ****¼

December 6, 1996 – Tokyo, Japan

Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada def. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama {Number One Contenders Match}
Starting Position 50; Peak Position 50; Latest Position 54. From the finals of the AJPW Real World Tag League tournament. I’m curious to see how this attempted to recapture the magic of the Misawa & Kobashi vs. Taue & Kawada matches without my favorite wrestler from those matches. Akiyama moved fast is how. That works for me. He also gets his ass kicked. A lot. Misawa gets his ass kicked a lot too. That’s not to say they don’t put up a hell of a fight, but they’re not presented as the killers that Misawa & Kobashi were together. I love that. I also love watching Kawada hit Misawa with the gamengiri. It’s the perfect executor hitting the perfect target. Misawa is able to kick out of the subsequent powerbomb here, which is kind of surprising, but a second powerbomb moments later does the trick for the Holy Demon Army at 31:37. I think this one might not work as well if you haven’t seen at least some of the HDA vs. SGA matches that came before, but then again it might because the action is pretty goddamn wild the whole way through. The Holy Demon Army used this win to get a match against Johnny Ace & Steve Williams a few week later and beat them for the tag titles. ****¼

March 14, 2004 – Manhattan, New York

Chris Benoit def. Triple H and Shawn Michaels {World Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match}
Starting Position 52; Peak Position 47; Latest Position 55. From WWE WrestleMania XX. You know Benoit had a lasting impact on wrestling fans of the time because I can still watch this and get emotional while compartmentalizing the events of three years later. This match still rules, and while it probably didn’t need the copious amounts of blood that it had (it’s not like it was some crazy brawl), it’s hard to complain about anything else. Triple H and Michaels wanted to fight each other, but the crowd and the momentum of WrestleMania season were propelling Benoit. That made the last ten minutes of this match, where Benoit ran the table on both opponents, a wild ride. It was especially cool because it was the mirror reflection of the way Triple H controlled both opponents early on. Benoit made Triple H tap to the Crippler Crossface at 24:47. I have a vague memory of the Backlash rematch being a little better, though Cagematch disagrees and has it down at 895. ****½

September 16, 2006 – Manhattan, New York

Brian Danielson def. KENTA {ROH World Championship Match}
Starting Position 49; Peak Position 49; Latest Position 56. From ROH Glory by Honor V. KENTA tore a path through the ROH roster to get this title shot, beating Low Ki, Samoa Joe, Roderick Strong, Austin Aries, Davey Richards, and the Briscoes, and pinning Danielson twice in the process. Danielson 23n5 into this match with a badly injured shoulder and a massive amount of fatigue. His reign had taken such a toll on him that half of his last six title defenses had gone to sixty-minute draws. His last title defense saw him come within sixty seconds of losing the title and forced him to postpone his title defense against Aries. KENTA had the NOAH contingent as well as Davey Richards in his corner. The build to this match was reminiscent of when CM Punk took on Aries for the ROH title, using a neck injury and grueling defense schedule against Aries to win the match. Danielson’s schedule in August definitely added to the speculation that KENTA would win the belt here. KENTA had an answer for everything Danielson did in the first part of the match, usually exploiting the injury. The second half of the match was just great back and forth action and the home stretch was extremely intense and hard fought. KENTA hit a big boot and went for the Go 2 Sleep, but Danileson countered to a crucifix pin. He held on and hit the unprotected elbows, but KENTA muscled his way up. Danielson slipped on the Cattle Mutilation, but KENTA rolled him over for a pin attempt. Danielson hit a tiger suplex, floats into the Cattle Mutilation for a while, hit a few more elbows, and then locked in the Cattle Mutilation one final time for the win. I hate to sound like a nitpicker, but had Danielson sold the very real injury more this probably would have rated even higher. This was easily KENTA’s best match in ROH and one of the best matches of 2006 (the only match I liked more was Danielson vs. Strong, which is 203 on Cagematch’s all time list). ****¾

November 26, 1992 – Kawasaki, Kanegawa

Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada def. Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki {WWWA Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
Starting Position 51; Peak Position 47; Latest Position 47. From AJW Dream Rush. This is the first match in the aforementioned trilogy between these two teams. The second is rated (last time I checked) at 185 on the list, so I won’t be reviewing it here. But yeah, it’s also good and it’s also 2/3 falls. And I’d forgotten the stipulation as I was watching it, but remembered that it was meant to be a long match. So 15 minutes in, when things started ramping up in a way that didn’t feel like it could be sustained, I was kind of shocked when Kansai hit the Splash Mountain on Toyota to win the first fall. That is to say, the first fall was a perfectly solid match all on its own, which isn’t something you can say about most 2/3 falls matches. Can’t say the same about the second fall, which was very short and just saw Yamada beat the crap out of Kansai and hit a Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex to tie things up. The third fall featured a lot of mat work that honestly lost my attention. But then Kansai started kicking Yamada so hard that I had to google to confirm that she indeed survived this match and wrestled for another decade after this before a spine injury forced her retirement. I mentioned this in my review of their other match on this list, but it bears repeating how amazing it is that Ozaki’s biggest heel shtick here is adding an armbar while Kansai has Toyota in the figure four leglock. You know, rather than what she does now, which is to have a million people interfere on her behalf in every match. The consistency of the action ebbed and flowed until the end. I’m surprised this didn’t lead to a famous Kansai vs. Yamada match. They wrestled at Wrestlemarinepiad a year after this, but vanishingly few people seem to have anything to say about it. I’m also kind of surprised this is as high up on the list as it is. I’m sure it was mind-blowing in 1992, but modern fans have seen matches like this countless times, some that have gone this long without the same lifeless moments in the third fall. I much prefer their three match to this original. Toyota hit Ozaki with the Japanese Ocean Suplex for the win at 40:24. ****

June 7, 2015 – Tokyo, Japan

KUSHIDA def. Kyle O’Reilly {Number One Contender Match}

Starting Position 46; Peak Position 46; Latest Position 50. From NJPW Best of the Super Junior XXII. This is the finals of the tournament. I love that once O’Reilly started working over the arm, every one of his pin attempts were positioned in a way that he could put on an armbar to counter KUSHIDA’s kick outs. There was a moment that I loved late in the match. KUSHIDA was beating up O’Reilly but he took a break to rest on the ropes for just a second. When he engaged again, O’Reilly grabbed him by the hair. For an instant, I was annoyed that O’Reilly would have the upper hand after getting hit with strikes just seconds earlier. but just as the thought entered my head, KUSHIDA grabbed O;Reilly’s hair right back. Not long after that, KUSHIDA hit O’Reilly with a Shiranui, a wild phoenix splash, and then put on the Hoverboard Lock for the win at 30:45. I think this could have stood to lose five minutes in the middle, but I was never bored. I was a bit less engaged in the middle, but I appreciate how hard they were fighting throughout the 30 minutes. That said, both of these guys have had better matches that are more deserving to be on this list than this match. KUSHIDA went on to beat Omega for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship a month later. ****¼ 

June 20, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan 

Masashi Takeda def. Isami Kodaka {BJW Deathmatch Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 48; Peak Position 46; Latest Position 46. From BJW on Samurai TV. This is really high on the list for a deathmatch. In the past, I’ve enjoyed Takeda’s deathmatches against Jun Kasai in FREEDOMS, but been lukewarm on him beyond that. Kodaka has left me feeling pretty cold in general. He’s been in a pair of matches I’ve liked, but one was against HARASHIMA, who can be counted on like half the time to really bring it, and the other one was against Naoki Tanizaki, with whom I have a parasocial relationship. We’ve got light tubes, glass boards, and ladders are the stated weapons for this match, while a pair of scissors and a board covered in nails are the weapons of choice. They break the light tubes over themselves right out of the gate to prove their toughness, but to me that just no-sells the tubes. Whatever, tubes are meaningless in BJW anyway. I’d prefer they stop using them. Both guys took the nail board to the chest in the gnarliest spots of the match. After that the weapon work was toned down (a little) and they had a strong style match… on top of a ton of broken glass. Imagine Ospreay and Takagi taking bombs from each other and then popping up to no sell them, but each time with more tiny cuts on their body because of the shards they’re wrestling on. That’s what we got here, and it was admittedly a lot of fun. The escalating violence ended when Takeda hit Kodaka with the U Crash Kai, a wrist clutch inverted brainbuster, perhaps the most dangerous move I’ve ever seen, at 20:20. On the sliding deathmatch scale, I can see why folks think this is the best ever. On the real life scale, it’s not even close. But it’s certainly one of if not the best deathmatches I’ve ever seen. ****¼ 

June 4, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiromu Takahashi def. Taiji Ishimori {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 47; Peak Position 45; Latest Position 45. From the finals of the NJPW Super Junior XXV tournament. I know that the fans do it, but it’s weird that the New Japan English commentators called Takahashi by his first name and don’t do that for anyone else on the roster. These guys did a lot of moves that I’ve never seen before (this is my first Takahashi match, and the first Ishimori match from NJPW that I’ve really paid attention to), and while they were all very cool, some of them don’t really seem replicable. That arm-butterfly piledriver, for example, didn’t look like Takahashi was able to hook it the way he intended to. Has he tried that in other matches? Did it look better? I’ll have to investigate. Regardless, they worked a wild pace for the entire length of this match. I was especially impressed with the intensity of the submission stuff they did later on. Takahashi was able to put Ishimori away with the Time Bomb at 34:01. Takahashi beat Will Ospreay for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship five days later. ****½

March 31, 2006 – Chicago Ridge, Illinois

Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito def. CIMA, Masato Yoshino & Naruki Doi
Starting Position 44; Peak Position 42; Latest Position 48. From ROH Supercard of Honor. When I first reviewed this back in 2006, I dared anyone to find a more smooth and innovative match than this. I had not yet seen the match that this lifted almost completely, their Kobe World 2005 match, which is criminally not in the Cagematch all time rankings at all due to too few people having reviewed it in the system. The Kobe match is better than this, by the way, and worth seeking out. But at the time I felt that this was good enough for me to confidently feel that nobody could find such a match. What a fool I was. It was a complete spotfest, but that didn’t stop me from assuming nothing would top it as Match of the Year in 2004. Samoa Joe and CM Punk hadn’t started wrestling each other yet. I was a little put off at how the match rules sort of made Do Fixer look stupid, and it was too much of an exhibition to go higher in my rating. That’s something I’ve since stopped being such a baby about. Most importantly though, this was a very influential match, introducing American indie wrestling fans to a new cast of characters and encouraging high flyers to incorporate the lucha style into their repertoire more. There have been pros and cons to this movement in the 16 years since, but to me it was a net positive. As for the end of the match, just as the crowd started chanting “please don’t stop” (back when that was still kind of novel and I could agree with them), Kid hit a top rope Ace Crusher and a dragonrana on Doi for the win at 20:34. ****½

January 4, 2015 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Kazuchika Okada {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 45; Peak Position 39; Latest Position 44. From Wrestle Kingdom 9, a show that featured two matches that are on this list. I’d say that’s insane, but the following year’s Wrestle Kingdom does as well so I’m more inclined to chalk it up to NJ bias on the part of Cagematch users. Specifically, Tanahashi vs. Okada bias, because this matchup headlined both shows, with a Nakamura match in the second-from-top spot also making Cagematch’s top 100 list. Okada won the G1 Climax to earn this title shot. It looks so strange to me that the ringside area is so big and the closest fans to the ring must be at least 20 feet away. This is very pre-pandemic, mind you. I was digging this at the start, as the aggressive striking they were doing was very different from their King of Pro Wrestling match that I’d watched just before it. I’m not suggesting the KOPW match is bad. It’s better than this and farther down in this post. I saw that because later on they started hitting big moves without going for pins afterwards and I started to lose interest. If Okada was good enough to counter the High Fly Flow to a Tombstone Piledriver (which looked pretty unconvincing), isn’t he good enough that Tanahashi shouldn’t chill in the ropes rather than go for the pin after a big move? Those kinds of things really bugged me here. Tanahashi spammed Okada with three dragon screws and three High Fly Flows for the win at 30:57. God forbid either of these guys gets the win with something surprising in any of their matches. ***¾ 

May 21, 1994 – Sapporo, Hokkaido

Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa def. Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada {AJPW World Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 42; Peak Position 36; Latest Position 43. From AJPW Super Power Series. This was the Super Generation Army’s first title defense since beating Taue & Kawada in the finals of the Real World Tag League and winning the belts five months earlier (as noted higher up in this post). I love Taue in this. He adds a totally different flavor than the other three brought to the match. His whole gimmick here is just making Kobashi & Misawa feel small by throwing them wherever he wants them. The crowd was pretty into him too, as even though they wanted Kobashi to escape his half crab, they booed Misawa for breaking it up. Then, they boo Kawada for knocking Misawa off of the apron, so it could be that they’re just a very by-the-book crowd. Kobashi’s late-stage German suplex on Taue made me scared for Taue’s life, which is funny since he’s probably currently the healthiest of this group of guys. Everyone gets super desperate, hitting huge moves with no room for a pin until Misawa gets Kawada on the mat and Kobashi hits Taue with a second moonsault for the win at 40:25. The level of violence here was kicked up a notch from their RWTL match, but the length left my mind wandering a bit here and there. I’d say they’re about on the same level, overall. Kobashi & Misawa continued to hold the titles until November, when they vacated them so they could be fought for in the Real World Tag League tournament. And then they won the tournament to become champs again. ****½ 

October 8, 2012 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Minoru Suzuki {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 43; Peak Position 38; Latest Position 38. From NJPW King of Pro Wrestling. Tanahashi had defended the title against Suzuki earlier in the year at Wrestle Kingdom, but then lost a match to him in the G1 Climax tournament. So we get this threematch. It’s nice to go back and watch a New Japan match from a decade ago, before all of their main events became glorified spotfests. Don’t like that description of the current style? Go back and check out this match. The wrestlers aren’t just out there throwing spamming their finishers at each other. Suzuki spends the entire match targeting Tanahashi’s arm, and he’s a massive asshole about it, and he makes sure that everyone sees him being a massive asshole about it. The minute that Tanahashi gets some daylight between them, he targets Suzuki’s leg. When Suzuki closed the gap, Tanahashi would try to get away from him so desperately that you’d think the vein in his forehead might burst. He’s scared and upset and you can feel it. When Suzuki counters Tanahashi’s moves, he’s not doing it in an overwrought, fanciful way. It’s direct and dangerous, and usually puts him back in control with the sleeper hold. When he’s forced to use his leg to block the High Fly Flow he, get this, sells the damage that’s already been done. Tanahashi catches Suzuki in the ropes with a dragon screw, and then hits the High Fly Flow Crossbody and the real High Fly Flow for the win at 29:22. ****¾ 

January 4, 2020 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Kota Ibushi {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 37; Peak Position 37; Latest Position 41. From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14. Ibushi won the G1 Climax to earn this shot (beating Jay White in a match currently ranked at 170 on this list). He was on an 11-match winning streak coming into the match. This match and Okada’s match against Naito on the following night often appear back to back on this list (though they’re a few spots apart thanks to the way I aggregate scores), which is the weirdest statistical quirk. Ibushi’s haircut looks like Moe from the Three Stooges. There’s some stuff in this match that has me thinking that people who rated it this high are just Wrestling Observer lemmings (Meltzer has it as one of his top 30 matches of all time). For one thing, the spot in which Okada is meant to catch Ibushi going for the backflip kick sees him fall short and Ibushi land on top of his head like a goof. Just a couple moments later, Okada helpfully lays down so Ibushi can double stomp him. Looked so dumb. I started enjoying this more when Ibushi went into killer android mode. But in a 40-minute match, that wasn’t a huge chunk. This is the kind of match that makes me feel very distant from the rest of my fellow Cagematch users. It’s sprawling, long, and doesn’t feel properly filled in. Worst of all, there’s little about this particular combination of wrestlers that stands out. For the most part, each guy just methodically got his stuff in over the course of the match, with the exception of Okada countering the Kamigoye to his dropkick. The finish was solid though, I guess. Ibushi kicked out of the Rainmaker, so Okada hit three more. It looked like Ibushi might no-sell all of them, but it was false hope for his fans as he fell to one seconds later at 39:16. ***½

June 9, 2007 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bryan Danielson def. Nigel McGuinness {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 41; Peak Position 35; Latest Position 36. From ROH Driven, sort of. This aired on the Driven PPV in September, but it was taped at the Domination show in June. The Driven DVD got a Danielson vs. Jay Lethal match from FIP instead. ROH was getting a little weird by ‘07.  There was nothing traditional about this match, which I loved. The feeling out process was unique, and everything after that was epic. McGuinness’s selling was great, and the fact that he was only able to hit the moves that needed support from his injured back was by countering Danielson’s was brilliant. He had to use Danielson’s momentum against him, you see! For the first fifteen minutes, this was on par with their amazing match from <i>Unified</i> and then in the final ten McGuinness brought it to an entirely different level. As I mentioned, it’s on par with the Sixth Anniversary Show match for me, and I’m happy it’s so high up on this list. Danielson hit the unprotected elbows and and put on the Cattle Mutilation for the win at 24:31. ****¾

August 12, 2006 – Liverpool, Merseyside

Bryan Danielson def. Nigel McGuinness {ROH World Championship vs. ROH Pure Championship Match}
Starting Position 34; Peak Position 34; Latest Position 42. From ROH Unified. A video is shown of Nigel winning the Pure Title back at Dragon Gate Invasion and Danielson winning the ROH World Championship at Glory by Honor IV. Clips of Danielson’s dominance are shown as well as clips of Nigel’s reign over the Pure division. The rules of the match are explained in a voiceover by Adam Pearce where he puts in plain words that there’s no way one title won’t change hands tonight as both titles can change hands by disqualification and count out. If there is a double decision the match will be restarted so that the titles will be unified no matter what. Really good video here. Danielson won by floating into the Cattle Mutilation after kicking out of the Rebound Lariat, then causally getting into position for his elbows to the head until McGuinness passed out at 26:24. This was the second match on the card that was a threematch, and like the one that came before it (Generation Next vs. the Briscoes), this completely blew away the first two matches in the series (at Weekend of Champions and Generation Now), and for that matter this blew away most ROH matches from 2006 to this point. There wasn’t a single moment when this match wasn’t fantastic. That said, I do think it’s a shame that their Sixth Anniversary Show match isn’t as intensely loved by wrestling fandom as it is by me. I think it’s better than all three McGuinness vs. Danielson matches on this list. ****½

January 5, 2020 – Tokyo, Japan

Tetsuya Naito def. Kazuchika Okada {IWGP Heavyweight Championship vs. IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match}
Starting Position 38; Peak Position 33; Latest Position 39. From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14. On the previous night, Okada defended his title against Kota Ibushi and Naito did the same against White. This is now my favorite New Japan pairing ever, which is good because they revisited it two years after this. These two play perfectly off of each other. The way Okada worked over Naito’s leg on the floor made my sinuses hurt. Naito’s selling after that was a little suspect, but goddamn the reverse Frankensteiner he hit Okada with was like none other I’ve ever seen. Okada went back to the leg near the end and it cost Naito a pin because of the pain, but it would have worked better had Naito been consistently selling or if the plan was for Okada to win because Naito wasn’t caring enough for his leg. It’s a minor quibble on an otherwise killer match, but it could have been about perfect. Naito won at 35:37 thanks to the Destino. Shots of the crowd showed a good portion of fans wearing masks. It was a sign of a growing problem, as shortly after this, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the whole world to shut down. Naito made one title defense against KENTA before New Japan went on hiatus for four months, and then the company came back and the division took at dive when EVIL was elevated to the top of it. I feel like NJPW really hasn’t recovered and this was the best thing they’ve done in years. ****¾

April 20, 1991 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi & Toshiaki Kawada def. Jumbo Tsuruta, Masanobu Fuchi & Akira Taue
Starting Position 35; Peak Position 35; Latest Position 40. From AJPW Fan Appreciation Day. This is the follow up to the previous year’s six man tag featuring the same guys. When I first watched these matches a few years ago, I liked the 1990 version better. This one is just so long. But time around the match flew by. Maybe this was improved by the fact that I wasn’t watching it on a city bus to kill time during my commute. Going into this match, Taue had been getting slaughtered by his former teammates for leaving the group, while Misawa was struggling, but inching closer, to showing that he could repeat his upset victory over Tsuruta. Bit it was Tsuruta and Kawada that were the charisma supernovas here. I never knew I wanted to see a match between them so much, but watching this taught me that I did. Luckily, Tsuruta defended the Triple Crown against Kawada later in the year, so there’s something very relevant for me to watch. This match featured something I haven’t seen much in All Japan main event tags from around this time: tandem offense. Misawa helped Kobashi hit a Rocket Launcher onto Taue on the floor. It also had plenty of something that I have seen in main event tags from around this time: tandem defense. Tsuruta got most of his heat by saving his partners in dickish ways when the Super Generation Army had them in submission holds. The finish played off of the previous match’s finish, though here Kobashi successfully got off his moonsault on Taue. Things started breaking down and it looked like Taue might be able to rally, but Kawada nailed him with a northern lariat from behind. Misawa hit a tiger suplex on Taue, and before Tsuruta could stop the pin, Kawada held him back and his team won at 51:32. There were a couple moments where I wasn’t super engaged, but between the various rivalries woven together, the new hotness brewing between Tsuruta and Kawada, and the general intensity and consistency in the action throughout, it’s pretty much impossible to deny the greatness of this match. *****

October 29, 2020 – Newham, London

WALTER def. Ilja Dragunov {NXT UK Championship Match}
Starting Position 40; Peak Position 33; Latest Position 34. From NXT UK 120. The Thunderdome fan windows are back. Why? They give up on it after a few minutes. They started this at the end, with Dragunov coming out firing missiles, going for the Torpedo Moskau, and getting hit with a sleeper suplex. And from there they never let up on each other at all. Nigel McGuinness calls out legends of All Japan to express how he feels about this match and it couldn’t be more appropriate. From the brutal strikes throughout to Dragunov’s channeling of Mitsuharu Misawa with consecutive enziguiris, this was as good an ode to the style as I’ve seen from non-Japanese wrestlers. I was jumping out of my seat so many times hoping that Dragunov would win this thing, and so many near-falls were incredible. In the end, WALTER put Dragunov down with a crazy, bloody sleeper hold at 25:09. I’m only upset because I now wonder what this could have been in front of the Dublin crowd for which it was meant. Earlier I said that Dragunov almost had to win here with Dunne gone for the States, but now I’m just hoping, praying, begging for a rematch. This was easily the best match in NXT UK’s short history, the best match in WWE in 2020, and in my opinion the easy Match of the Year for 2020 overall. *****

February 29, 2020 – Chicago, Illinois

Adam Page & Kenny Omega def. Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson {AEW Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 39; Peak Position 29; Latest Position 31. From AEW Revolution. I had no interest in AEW whatsoever before I saw this match. I’m not saying this match made me a diehard AEW fan, but I am saying that it made me open to the suggestion that AEW was interested in producing the kind of wrestling show I was interested in. The story here is that the champions aren’t totally on the same page because of Omega’s tight friendship with the Young Bucks. Page is also friends with the Bucks, but he didn’t like that Omega was closer with their opponents than he was with his own partner. Page isn’t subtle when it comes to selling the story. The Bucks are as cohesive as ever, buxt they have a very hard time dealing with Page’s aggressive offense. Late in the match, he powerbombs Nick through a table and hits Matt with Omega’s One Winged Angel. Then he hits both opponents with Buckshot Lariats and gets the win at 30:06. The way Page dominated put this over the top for me, and made me a fan where I hadn’t been much into him before. For my taste, this is still the best match in AEW’s short history. ****¾

July 17, 2011 – Rosemont, Illinois

CM Punk def. John Cena {WWE Championship Match}
Starting Position 30; Peak Position 29; Latest Position 37. From the second WWE Money in the Bank. If this isn’t the most famous match of the ’10s, it’s in the top five. Cena and Punk, who were a heel and babyface respectively, played their roles perfectly here given that the Chicago crowd was almost entirely, and passionately, pro-Punk. Punk ate up the cheers while Cena simply stoically walked to the ring for his entrance. Crowd aside, Punk and Cena did an amazing job making every single move and hold feel important. It had serious Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat vibes in that way. Cute sidenote: Colt Cabana was sitting in the front row, and on the other side of the ring a fan wearing a Cabana t-shirt makes eye contact with him and smiles at realizing he’s been seen by his guy. Also, Booker T on commentary admitting that the WWE Championship is so important that it’s the only one he couldn’t win, followed by Lawler being a little salty because he also never won it, those remarks made this feel bigger. Even when Punk came in too low on a crossbody, Cena sold the knee to incorporate the goof into the story of the match. The finish was terrific too, as Vince McMahon, who wanted to protect the title from the departing Punk (whose contract was up at midnight that night) and told John Laurenitus to screw Punk, wound up being more of a distraction for Cena than a help and led directly to Punk winning the title at 33:44. This was my Match of the Year for 2011. *****

August 22, 2021 – Orlando, Florida

Ilja Dragunov def. WALTER {NXT UK Championship Match}
Starting Position 33; Peak Position 28; Latest Position 35. From NXT Takeover 36. God damn did this deliver. They worked a less horrifying style than they did last October, spending the first five minutes trading gnarly holds on the mat before any bombs were thrown. Then, they threw bombs. But not as many as they did when they were fighting in front of no crowd. I appreciate that. Here, they had fans cheering on everything they did, so there wasn’t a need to lay it in as stiff. That’s not to say they strayed from that completely, as Dragunov still left the ring covered in blisters. But they were able to incorporate Dragunov’s triggered rage storyline and believably have him break down and tap out WALTER. There are few pairs of guys who have delivered as consistently at the high level these two have against each other . Dragunov locked WALTER in a sleeper hold and viciously wore him down until WALTER tapped at 22:04. Dragunov standing with his foot over WALTER in celebration was a perfect way to end the big man’s reign. Apropos of everything, WALTER was in the best physical shape I’ve ever seen him in here. This was my Match of the Year for 2021. *****

August 16, 2015 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Shinsuke Nakamura {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 31; Peak Position 30; Latest Position 33. From the finals of NJPW G1 Climax 25. There was a moment about 20 minutes into the match when Tanahashi hit the High Fly Flow for a near fall and I was worried that they were close to wrapping things up. I got to wondering how this match could have possibly made it onto this list when it was, while entertaining, not special and felt like it was about to end abruptly. Turns out there were 12 action-packed minutes left. Nakamura spent that time wrestling like a rabid weasel, lashing out with strikes from whatever direction was available to him regardless of how little daylight there was between him and Tanahashi. It was dope. Tanahashi returned the favor, hitting the High Fly Flow from close up when they were fighting on the turnbuckle, and then hitting a dragon suplex and two more High Fly Flows for the win at 32:15. Tanahashi beat Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at the following Wrestle Kingdom thanks to this win. ****¼

January 27, 2018 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Andrade Cien Almas def. Johnny Gargano {NXT Championship Match}
Starting Position 32; Peak Position 29; Latest Position 30. From NXT Takeover: Philadelphia. Okay, that was amazing. The match that preceded this, a Street Fight between Aleister Black and Adam Cole, was a massive disappointment to me based on how good I’d heard it was. This was the opposite. There were moments when it looked like Almas was about to botch a spot, but they incorporated those moments into the match to move control back to Gargano. Everything played out perfectly here, Gargano always outmatched with the exception of those Almas mistakes, but Celina Vega’s interference giving Almas the advantage again. Candice La Rae’s involvement had me freaking out too. And while the finish was a bummer, it cemented Almas as a killer champion and made Gargano a permanent crowd favorite (even through his Gargano Way heel turn). After the match, Tommaso Ciampa attacked Gargano with a crutch, setting off that feud. Until Gargano’s feud with Adam Cole, I felt this was the best match in NXT history. I think the second WALTER vs. Dragunov match also eclipsed this one. Still, we’re talking the cream of the crop in terms of NXT history and this was my overall Match of the Year for 2018. *****

April 5, 2009 – Houston, Texas

The Undertaker def. Shawn Michaels
Starting Position 29; Peak Position 28; Latest Position 32. From WWE WrestleMania XXV. This show was annoyingly subtitled the 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania, which isn’t how anniversaries work. However, the theme did give us a bunch of wrestlers talking sentimentally about their favorite WrestleMania memories at the top of the show in a video that I liked very much. Michaels came into this match 2-0-1 against the Undertaker, but the Undertaker was 16-0 at WrestleMania. But Michaels considered himself Mr. WrestleMania thanks to his historically significant matches at the event. They also set this up as Michaels’ born-again Christianity against Undertaker’s demonic whatever-it-was at the time. Now granted, this is the first match these two had put on together in a decade, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it was so different from their ‘90s matches. But it still felt impressive that these two put on a match so completely unlike their previous bouts. It felt even more impressive at the time when two 44-year-old wrestlers putting on a classic felt like a novelty, whereas now it feels like a lot of the tippy top guys in the US and Japan are that age or close to it. What felt less impressive at the time and still feels kind of weird in hindsight was Michaels using the Crippler Crossface two years after Benoit’s death. I could easily see people (Michaels and Taker included) justifying it by saying that the match was so important for HBK to win that he’d pull out even a taboo move, but that doesn’t make it feel less yucky. In what I assume is a nod to their Hell in a Cell match, Michaels pulled a cameraman into the way of Undertaker’s dive. In that same moment, Michaels begged the referee not to use a count when he was on the floor, and then told the ref to count Undertaker out when the roles immediately reversed. It’s funny, I also didn’t remember Michaels being a heel in this match, but here we are. The match became a situation in which any wrong move would lead to ruin, and it ended as such. Michaels blocked an Undertaker charge with his boot and thought he had Taker dazed, but the Dead Man recovered his wits and waited for Michaels to attempt a moonsault press. He countered it to the Tombstone Piledriver for the win at 30:42. As I said, totally different than their Hell in a Cell match and yet just as much of a perfect example of professional wrestling. It was two titanic figures throwing everything they had at each other in their home state, one thinking he had the match well in hand until his smaller opponent surprised him with a bit of duplicity and a lot of resilience. But Undertaker stayed the course and kept his streak intact. A brilliant piece of business here that didn’t feel half as long as it was. *****

April 25, 2004 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenta Kobashi def. Yoshihiro Takayama {GHC Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 28; Peak Position 28; Latest Position 29. From NOAH Encountering Navigation. This was the third match between the two. Kobashi had previously defeated Takayama in the 1999 Champion Carnival, and a year later in defense of the Triple Crown Championship. The former happened on a house show, so it has no digital footprint, and the latter is ranked at number 314 on this list. Takayama had Minoru Suzuki in his corner, while Kobashi had Go Shiozaki in his. This match started peaking about ten minutes in, when Takayama’s strikes knocked Kobashi off of his game. The desperation was obvious no more clearly than when Kobashi held on for dear life to the bottom rope as Takayama tugged at him, going for a German suplex from the apron to the floor. Takayama hit that suplex and my butt fell out. Kobashi spent the rest of the match in trouble. He was dwarfed by Takayama, so his most successful moments came when he was able to get Takayama hunched over in the corner and unload his chop offense. He’d also bait Takayama into the corner so that the referee would pull the big man away, only to take advantage of the distraction to regain control with a lariat or a sneaky suplex. From there, he built his confidence up enough to hit one of the nuttiest looking brainbusters I’ve ever seen, and then to attempt the Burning Hammer. That didn’t work, so he quickly hit the moonsault TO TAKAYAMA’S HEAD for the win at 28:47. This was a titanic battle with a foamed up crowd of that feels like something out of the final act of a movie. Four months later, Takayama had a stroke after a match against Kensuke Sasaki. He recovered and returned two years later, continuing to wrestle at an astonishingly high level for over a decade. Sadly, he was paralyzed during a match in 2017. *****

October 1, 2005 – Manhattan, New York

Kenta Kobashi def. Samoa Joe
Starting Position 27; Peak Position 27; Latest Position 28. From ROH Joe vs. Kobashi. I’d always thought that this was Kobashi’s first American match, but the week before he had a shorty main event for Harley Race’s WLW. It was his second of only three matches ever wrestled in the States. The crowd was insane for him. When I reviewed this match for the first time 17 years ago, I wrote a bunch of play by play and then sidestepped writing anything critical in lieu of saying that almost everything everyone had heard in favor of this match was true. But then I didn’t give it a full five-star rating. Rewatching it, I understand why I felt that way. The match is astounding thanks in large part to the heat, but it’s a bit one-dimensional. That said, since then I’ve seen a shoot interview during which Joe talked about Kobashi’s lack of confidence going into the match, his desire to do a typical foreign heel gimmick, and his belief that the crowd wouldn’t know him. Hearing Joe explain the way Kobashi’s demeanor changed after hearing the crowd go crazy for him makes me love this match so much more. Is it fair to rate this based on supplemental material when I don’t have the same kind of insight into other matches on this list? Who cares? *****

August 20, 1997 – Tokyo, Japan

Aja Kong tld. Manami Toyota
Starting Position 36; Peak Position 23; Latest Position 23. From AJW Budokan Queens. This was their fifth match against each other, and they were 2-2 going into this. This went from being a fast-paced assault from Toyota to a war of attrition between Toyota’s Japanese Ocean Suplex and Kong’s spinning backfist. Toyota was only able to successfully connect with her move twice, but Kong was able to do so many more times. I loved the way Kong would collapse into a pin after hitting the backfist in the closing minutes of the match. It looked like she might have had the match won had it been a minutes, or even seconds, longer. But it was not to be and the time limit ra out 30 minutes in, 18:42 of which is shown, just as Kong was going for a pin. As of 2017, Aja Kong leads the series at 4-3-1. GIven that Toyota retired shortly after their 2017 match, that’s probably where the series will stand. ****½

March 23, 1997 – Rosemont, Illinois

Bret Hart def. Steve Austin {Submission Match}
Starting Position 25; Peak Position 25; Latest Position 27. From WrestleMania 13. I don’t think it’s crazy that this is the second highest ranked North American match on this list. I do think it’s crazy that the highest ranked North American matches on this list don’t show up until the 20s. And that this is ranked lower than a TNA match is dumb. Give me a break, Cagematch users. Anyway, Ken Shamrock is the guest referee for reasons I can’t remember, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t get involved in a significant way until the match is over. Austin’s aura here is undeniable. I think to this day no one has had the energy in the ring that Austin had. Jerry Lawler joking on commentary about how crazy it would be to see Hart tap out to the Sharpshooter (when Austin tries to put it on him) is pretty wild given, well, you know. What’s great about this match is how simple it is. Austin is wild, almost feral. He attacks Hart like a swarm of bees. But Hart has had enough, and rather than take Austin’s crap and fight fair, he slams his face into the guardrail and hits him with the bell when Austin tries choking him with a cable. Austin bleeds and screams, but eventually passes out and loses the match at 22:05. That bit is a little annoying, only because early in the match Lawler said on commentary that Austin shouldn’t use the Stunner because if Hart passes out, he can’t submit. Well Austin passed out, and that was enough to give Hart the win. Lawler saying something stupid aside, the commentary was a huge part using this match to turn Austin babyface and Hart heel. Yes, both guys wrestled like pricks, but it was the commentators constantly bemoaning Hart’s attitude and praising Austin’s tenacity that got this over. That and Austin’s battle against bloodloss and the Sharpshooter. And that’s all they needed. ****¾

June 5, 2019 – Tokyo, Japan

Will Ospreay def. Shingo Takagi {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 26; Peak Position 25; Latest Position 26. From the finals of the NJPW Super Junior XXVI tournament. My records tell me I’ve seen this before and liked it quite a bit, but I have no memory of it. I’ve seen enough matches in the last three years that it doesn’t shock me, but it also isn’t the greatest sign. This match starts with a moment that very clearly shows why Takagi is better than Ospreay. They do their kung fu movie dodging moves dance, and they end it with Ospreay doing a superhero pose. Meanwhile, Takagi actually moves away from him, showing that he has a real human reaction to what just happened and not some anime fetish response like Ospreay. If it wasn’t for all his absurd posing, which at times buries Takagi by forcing him to stay in impractical positions for too long, then things like countering the Pumping Bomber to a wild powerbomb would count for more in my book. That said, Takagi worked his ass off to make Ospreay look like a million bucks here. That was very entertaining, to the point that I’d say I slightly underrated this match the first time I watched it. Ospreay ate a bunch of lariats near the end, but then recovered rather miraculously (eye roll) and hit the Hidden Blade, the Os Cutter, and the Storm Breaker for the win at 33:36. Ospreay beat Dragon Lee for the junior title a few days later. ****½

June 11, 2017 – Osaka, Osaka

Kazuchika Okada tld. Kenny Omega {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 24; Peak Position 23; Latest Position 25. From NJPW Dominion. 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 to go to a draw 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 watched these in order. So that’s an experiment for someone else to try. For my money, this is the best match between the two. *****

September 11, 2005 – Orlando, Florida

AJ Styles def. Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe {TNA X-Division Championship Triple Threat Match}
Starting Position 22; Peak Position 22; Latest Position 24. From TNA Unbreakable. Does anything sum up TNA’s legacy than this match being the top ranked North American match on this list and also being the match that ended Joe’s undefeated streak in the company as an afterthought? Joe won the Super X Cup to earn this title shot against Daniels… and then Styles was also put in the match because of overbooking in the buildup. That’s also very TNA. At least they had the good sense to make this the main event of the PPV. This match is dope as hell, but to call it the best match in American history is downright insane. I’m not sure anyone is actually making that claim, it’s just wild to see that the high ratings it has received has earned it that spot on this list in the aggregate. Like Hero vs. Danielson in PWG, I’d be surprised if this is even the best match in TNA history. Though having said that, I have way less first hand experience seeing better TNA/Impact matches than this, where I’ve seen quite a few PWG matches that are better than Hero vs. Danielson. There are two things about this match that held me back from super gushing about it. The first is that there isn’t a lot more to this than dives and quick spots. Everything is hit with incredible precision, and seeing Joe fly the way he does here is wild. But Daniels barely heels it up at all, and his most heelish moment is really quite awkwardly executed (the bit with the belt and the distracted referee in the middle of the match). The second is that to have Styles win, it was unavoidable that the finish would be unsatisfying in one way or another. Either Daniels loses the title without getting pinned or Joe loses his streak without getting pinned. They went with the latter, and it was a bummer. Styles countered the Angel’s Wings to a backdrop to win the title at 22:50. The bright side is that this led to Joe beating Styles for the title in the second highest ranked TNA match ever (sitting at number 140 as of this writing), so maybe the booking wasn’t that bad in hindsight. ****½

October 29, 2006 – Tokyo, Japan

Naomichi Marufuji def. KENTA {GHC Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 23; Peak Position 19; Latest Position 22. From NOAH Autumn Navigation. KENTA was on a weird losing streak around this time, making his viability as a challenger to Marufuji questionable. The real reason he got the shot is that he was Marufuji’s generational rival, so it made sense to see if they could draw against each other in the top spot (sort of but not really). But in 2016, he lost most of his big matches, including losing the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship to Takashi Sugiura, as well as marquee matches against Danielson (on this list) and Kobashi. This spent 15 minutes in first gear, leaving the crowd almost completely silent. Not a great start. Then, Marufuji hits a moonsault press to the floor, smacking his leg against KENTA’s face and busting him open. Then, he bashes KENTA’s head against the top of the post for good measure. After a struggle, KENTA responded with a Falcon Arrow from the apron to the floor and a double stomp from the top rope to the floor. The rest of the match felt like a template for what would become the New Japan main event style. There’d be big bursts of signature moves and counters to signature moves, and maneuvering around the ring to set up a series of counters to signature moves. But it lacked the drama I expected from these two, and as a result the crowd never got properly foamed up. Marufuji hit a Spanish Fly and the Pole Shift to put KENTA down at 35:34. I’m not a proponent of longer matches for the sake of it, but I wonder if their 60-minute unification match draw is better than this. One day I’ll check it out and see. ***¾ 

August 4, 2018 – Osaka, Osaka

Tomohiro Ishii def. Kenny Omega {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 21; Peak Position 19; Latest Position 19. From NJPW G1 Climax 28. Omega was up 2-1 in singles matches over Ishii to this point. All three of their matches until now were really well-received by the Cagematch contingent, sitting at 758, 181, and 180, respectively on the all time list. Ishii looks so much cooler with a grey beard than he ever did with a black one. I don’t think there’s anything Omega does that I dislike more than his, “you can’t escape,” shtick. Just shut up and hit the move. It’s too long of a line to get over, and he said it all the time in New Japan. What was over was Ishii trying to hit Omega with the One Winged Angel. I could have used more of that. What we got instead was Omega hitting a dozen V-Triggers and Ishii just kicking out of them. I didn’t get a lot out of it. But Omega got a cut inside his mouth that got progressively worse as the match went on, and I got a certain level of perverse enjoyment out of that. Especially so after Ishii hit a pair of gnarly headbutts in a row. He finished Omega off with a brainbuster at 22:42. If Omega won here, he’d qualify for the finals, but Ishii stopped that from happening. He had two more chances after this, but lost to Toru Yano and to Ibushi (in a match I reviewed a bit higher up in this post) and got shut out. Overall, this was an easy, breezy watch that made twenty minutes feel like a lot less, but I’m not sure where people watch this and see a five-star classic, and at this point I feel like that’s the case for a lot of post-2015 New Japan marquee matches. ****

July 18, 2005 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenta Kobashi def. Kensuke Sasaki
Starting Position 20; Peak Position 19; Latest Position 20. From NOAH Destiny. Kobashi had lost the GHC Heavyweight Championship a few months earlier. On this mega show, Takeshi Rikio, the new champ, defended the title in the fourth match from the top against a still a year away from winning the IWGP Heavyweight title Tanahashi. This match went second from the top, under the final Misawa vs. Kawada match ever (far from their peak, that match sits at 2,265 on the all time list. If you know this match, it’s probably for its chops. I mentioned earlier that Takayama had a stroke in 2004. So he wasn’t wrestling during this period, but was on commentary for this match and providing a memorable, “I hope this never ends,” line during the very famous chop exchange. But there’s more to the match than that. As the card I laid out should suggest, this was NOAH’s biggest show ever. Kobashi and Sasaki do a perfect job of letting the fans know right out of the gate that this is meant to be seen as the most epic match to ever happen in Japan. They puff their chests, take time between spots to size each other up again, shout at each other from opposite sides of the ring on the floor, and channel Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior’s WrestleMania VI knuckle lock. All of these things have the fans going insane from the get go. The chops are like a match within a match. For four and a half minutes, they take turns whipping each other with chops until eventually, Sasaki falls. I recently heard Jim Cornette bemoaning these strong style moments in which a wrestler invites his opponent to attack. If he’s seen this and still doesn’t understand the psychology at play behind showing your opponent that you are definitely better with the same weapon, then he’s dumber than I thought. Immediately after the chop battle goes badly for him, Sasaki hits a quick suplex to change the terrain. Kobashi has none of it and hits a superplex and a German suplex in response. That’s perfect; if Sasaki wants to try to dictate new terms for this match, Kobashi will embarrass him on those new terms. Desperate, Sasaki hits the Northern Lights Bomb on the floor and teases a count out win. He encouraged Kobashi to get back in the ring, but he didn’t make sure Kobashi didn’t lose by count out. Kobashi has to play defense for a bit now, which is also great because we get to see him slowly get back to an even level with his opponent. And I don’t want to undersell Sasaki’s contribution here, as Kobashi was wrestling at a mythic tier here and Sasaki had to do a lot to appear believably competitive. But he can only stay competitive for so long. Kobashi catches him with the sleeper suplex and a lariat. It’s not enough. He hits the moonsault. It’s not enough. Sasaki blocks a lariat, so Kobashi hits five spinning chops and a lariat for the win at 23:38. This should be the first match referenced whenever anyone uses the phrase Big Match Feel. *****

July 31, 1993 – Yokohama, Kanagawa

Cutie Suzuki, Dynamite Kansai, Hikari Fukuoka & Mayumi Ozaki def. Aja Kong, Kyoko Inoue, Sakie Hasegawa & Takako Inoue {Iron Woman First Attack Match}
Starting Position 18; Peak Position 18; Latest Position 21. From JWP Thunder Queen Battle. It’s 60-minute Iron Man rules, but in an eight-woman tag. Everyone but the legal woman waits on the floor. Fukuoka pinned Hasegawa after just a couple minutes to put the JWP team up a point. After five minutes, everyone was allowed up on the apron for a tag. Once new women tag in, everyone has to go back on the floor for five minutes. It’s just shy of too complicated, but I like that it keeps the match from becoming a free for all. Kong is leading the AJW team against Kansai’s JWP team. Inoue dominated Ozaki, but couldn’t put her away in the First Attack time period. Same goes for Takako and Suzuki. It’s interesting that the women always opt to tag out after five minutes and never press on. When Kong and Kansai come in, the crowd erupts. Kong quickly earns a point by knocking out Kansai with a spinning back fist. I spoke too soon about things not becoming a free for all, because at the end of this First Attack Period, everyone brawls all over the building. Kong held Suzuki for an all out assault from her teammates, and then hit a second rope elbowdrop to get a point for AJW. And that’s it for First Attack periods, as everyone is on the apron all the time now. I’d have liked to see it for 30 minutes instead of 20, but I get that they’d want to get the action moving faster for more of the match. I don’t know how she did it, but in the middle of the match, Kong hit Ozaki with suplexes that sounded like gunshots. Then, we got twenty minutes of everyone being really mean to one another and brutally kicking one another’s asses. Kyoko gets busted open, blood rushing down over her facepaint. A giant mouse forms over Ozaki’s eye. After an absolutely insane stretch, Kansai pins Kyoko with the Splash Mountain. As the time limit nears, Kong abuses Ozaki for a good stretch. Kansai saves the day and gets the first significant offense anyone has gotten on Kong the entire match. Things start moving crazy fast from there, and the crowd turns on the AJW team. Makes sense as it’s a JWP show. Ozaki hits Takako with a dragon suplex five seconds before the 60-minute time limit runs out, winning the match for her team. The AEW “party match” crew wishes they could pull off something that had this level of fast action along with brutality and emotion. I felt like I was watching the battle scene in Avengers: Endgame. *****

October 31, 1998 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Kenta Kobashi {Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 19; Peak Position 18; Latest Position 18. From AJPW October Giant Series. In my chronological experience of watching Kobashi vs. Misawa matches, this was the first time I’d seen one in which Misawa came in healthy. I think this is the kind of match people think about when they imagine All Japan main events from this era, or really even when vaguely thinking about Japanese main events in general. They started with a good long feeling out process and then spent thirty minutes escalating the violence. I really liked the way they were both clearly fighting through exhaustion at the end, and that the move Misawa used to beat Kobashi for the title here was the same move he used to beat him for the title the last time he challenged him. But here, where one elbow didn’t work,  he peppered Kobashi with many elbows for the win at 43:29. I prefer the nuances in their first title match more, but this is a wild fight. ****½ 

August 12, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenny Omega def. Kazuchika Okada {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 17; Peak Position 16; Latest Position 17. From NJPW G1 Climax 27. With a win here, Omega advanced to the finals of the G1 tournament and get a title shot against (presumably) Okada at Wrestle Kingdom in a few months. Okada only needed a draw to keep Omega out of the finals and enter them himself, and these matches had a 30-minute time-limit. Based on their history, it was 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 went for the early win. The match took off shortly after that, which was what I really wanted from their longer Wrestle Kingdom match (more on that below). That said, it wasn’t quite the dramatic epic that their second match was (more on that below as well), 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 at 24:40. Things like that are what stick in someone’s mind long after they’ve seen a match. ****½

January 4, 2015 – Tokyo, Japan

Shinsuke Nakamura def. Kota Ibushi {IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match}
Starting Position 16; Peak Position 16; Latest Position 16. From Wrestle Kingdom 9. Here’s the second match from this show that made this list. The crown Nakamura wears to the ring here puts his King Nakamura crown to shame. I’m watching this immediately after watching Ibushi’s match against Okada at Wrestle Kingdom five years later, and it’s wild how much thinner he is here. His transformation later on is cartoonish. But here he moves around comfortable and plays an entertaining foil to Nakamura’s MMA style. Near the end, I started thinking they might do something interesting for the finish because Nakamura and Ibushi’s legs collided and appeared to be injured. Nakamura changed his gameplan and hit a Landslide instead of the Boma Ye. But then he just hit a Boma Ye right after that for the win at 20:12. So that was a bit disappointing, but the match was brisk and interesting. It wasn’t one of the best matches of all time and those saying so are suffering from New Japan madness, but it was brisk and interesting. ****

June 11, 1999 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Kenta Kobashi {Triple Crown Championship Match}
Starting Position 15; Peak Position 15; Latest Position 15. From AJPW Super Power Series. This title reign was an interesting one for Misawa, as it saw him beat Vader and then defend only against Kobashi and Kawada, before dropping it back to Vader in what was more or less a squash. You can tell we’re close to the end of Misawa and Co.’s tenure in AJPW because Naomichi Marufuji is in Misawa’s corner. Yoshinobu Kanemaru is with Kobashi, but that doesn’t give us the same clarity of time. After 15 minutes or so of “we know each other really well” stuff, Kobashi started working over Misawa’s arm in a pretty nasty way. But Misawa is nasty too, and he boots Kobashi in the face, busting open his nose. That did little to deter Kobashi, who dominated most of this very long match with very aggressive offense. A lariat send Misawa from the second rope to the mat, and Misawa could do to stay in the game was get his foot on the ropes. He got a little bit of daylight by countering a powerbomb on the floor to a hurricanrana into the barricade. But it wasn’t until Kobashi tweaked his arm on a lariat that Misawa was able to really retake control. Misawa’s strikes had Kobashi on wobbly legs. A few well placed elbows in between Kobashi’s strikes gave Misawa an opening to hit the Emerald Frosion for the win at 43:40. This was the longest match these two ever had against each other, though only a few seconds longer than their October Giant Series match reviewed higher up in this post. They used the time very well, telling an incredible comeback story for Misawa. This match puts the Vader squash that happened a few months later in better context. It’s my Match of the Year for 1999. I’m pretty sure this was their last televised match before Kobashi’s GHC title win over Misawa in NOAH. More on that later. ****¾

January 4, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Hiroshi Tanahashi {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}  
Starting Position 14; Peak Position 14; Latest Position 14. From Wrestle Kingdom 10. In a mirror of the previous year’s main event, Tanahashi won the G1 Climax to earn this title shot. Matt Striker is on commentary, so this starts at a disadvantage to other matches between these two. He stereotypes the Japanese crowd by saying they’re historically subdued, when it’s been shown countless times that they get as rabid as any crowd. He is one of the worst commentators of all time. What gave this a huge advantage over the previous year’s match however, is that in this match when they take a break from the action, they’re sure to be selling injuries rather than just resting arbitrarily. I wasn’t wild about Okada’s inconsistent selling. Like, why don’t dropkicks hurt his leg while other moves involving his leg do? On the bright side, they never abandoned the injured leg story (well, until the finish). The requisite counters in the home stretch were pretty to look at, moreso even than usual. They didn’t make me feel more invested in the match, but they did get the crowd all foamed up. Okada takes control with a dropkick (unfazed) and hits a German suplex and a bunch of Rainmakers for the win at 36:01. Exciting, but not close to their best match. ****

October 14, 2013 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Hiroshi Tanahashi {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 13; Peak Position 13; Latest Position 13. From King of Pro Wrestling. The hype video for this match ignores their first bout in 2010, and suggests that their record going into this was 2-2-1 when Tanahashi actually led by one win. But since we’re pretending they were at a stalemate, Tanahashi vowed to leave the Heavyweight Championship division if he lost here. Tanahashi fakes a leg injury early on, seemingly just to embarrass Okada. It’s a very Eddie Guerrero moment and I like it. In response, Okada hit a dragon screw. Fake a leg injury? I attack your leg. I like that too. Personally, I would have been even more stoked had he kept up the pressure on Tanahashi’s leg, but instead he went about what I suppose we’re to imagine was his original gameplan. Tanahashi’s gameplan was to neutralize the Rainmaker, and that worked insofar as when Okada hit it, his arm was too hurt to pin Tanahashi immediately. It was also too hurt to effectively put on submission holds or hit the Tombstone Piledriver. Of course, this is an NJPW main event, so when Tanahashi is running away with multiple High Fly Flows, Okada is magically able to hit the piledriver on the floor. At least that leads to a nice moment when the champ tries to win by count out. Also, his legs are fine, so he’s able to block a High Fly Flow with his knees. Sadly, Okada matches always end with the Rainmaker, and this one is no different. Silver lining, they very effectively teased Tanahashi having an answer for Okada’s Rainmaker attempts before the champ snuck it in at 35:17 for the win. So Tanahashi left this title picture, but he stayed in the main event. At Wrestle Kingdom 10, his IWGP Intercontinental Championship win over Nakamura headlined over Okada’s Heavyweight Championship match against Naito. But don’t worry too much, he was back challenging for the Heavyweight Championship exactly one year after this match. ****½

August 13, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan

Tetsuya Naito def. Kenny Omega {Tournament Finals}
Starting Position 10; Peak Position 10; Latest Position 12. From NJPW G1 Climax 27. Omega has four matches in this list’s top 10, two against Naito and two against Okada. Misawa and Kobashi also have two in the top 10, and all of those rivalries also have at least one other match in the top 100. I’m not making a value judgment on that fact, but it’s a fact. Naito came to the ring in a whole ass suit, so he deserved to win. There’s no thirty-minute time limit on tournament finals, so nobody has to rush their offense to beat the bell this time around like they did in their 2016 match. I didn’t get a ton from this that I didn’t get from their first match, and what was new here was followed up by things that irritated me. I like when a wrestler learns from a previous encounter, but that by itself isn’t necessarily enough to make a match an improvement upon the last. For instance, here, we saw Naito rather than Omega get the upper hand on the floor early on, but then he hit a ridiculous piledriver on the floor that was forgotten about minutes later. Seriously, Omega got dropped on his head on the floor off of a table and not two minutes later was able to act as if it never happened. The head trauma never came back. Later, Omega hit Naito with a wild DDT from the turnbuckle to the post, but then Naito IMMEDIATELY countered a superbomb to a hurricanrana. No ill effects for that innovative DDT. This is probably the most overrated match near the top of this list. It’s just two guys doing a bunch of (admittedly exciting) stuff to each other without consequence. A fun time at the matches, but not a classic. Naito hit two Destinos for the win at 34:35. ****

August 12, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Kota Ibushi {Number One Contender Match}
Starting Position 11; Peak Position 9; Latest Position 10. From the finals of NJPW G1 Climax 28. As Kevin Kelly helpfully runs down the history between these two on commentary, he points out how myopically focused New Japan main events are on finishing moves. He doesn’t deliver his speech in a way that admits it’s a problem because it doesn’t seem to be a problem for anyone but me. But I hate it. I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think Tanahashi is a better wrestler than Okada. Take this match vs. Ibushi’s match against Okada earlier in this review. Whereas that felt like two guys essentially wrestling a match against themselves, Tanahashi engaged with all of Ibushi’s offense in a desperately defensive way. He’s so much more charismatic (I don’t think that’s arguable), which directly correlates with how much fun I have watching his matches vs. Okada’s. Anyway, this match was great. Unlike about a dozen matches on this list that had tough guy strike exchanges, the one here put an end to Ibushi’s spurt of cocky, heartless offense and showed him that the Ace was still gritty and crazy. That went on for quite a while, and Ibushi never recovered his confidence. Things escalated until Tanahashi hit a dragon suplex and three High Fly Flows for the win at 35:00. Tanahashi went on to wrestle and beat Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 13 on the strength of this tournament win. ****¾

April 7, 2013 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Hiroshi Tanahashi {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 8; Peak Position 7; Latest Position 11. From NJPW Invasion Attack. Tanahashi’s 10-month reign saw him successfully defend the title against Okada at Wrestle Kingdom in a match that didn’t make this list. You’ll notice that a whopping six Okada vs. Tanahashi matches did make this list. That’s out of 15 total singles matches they wrestled over the course of 11 years. That’s way more frequent than any other matchup on this list. Okada won the G1 Climax to get the Wrestle Kingdom shot, and he won the New Japan Cup to earn this one. I don’t understand how people have the stamina to put on matches like this one. A full half of the match, 15 minutes, was paced the way the final two minutes of a modern PPV main event would be. Tanahashi’s arm work kept him alive for a while, but Okada was a step ahead of him and was able to hit his piledriver and the Rainmaker for the win at 31:41 anyway. I was rather floored by this. I don’t know if they rehearse some of the spots over and over ahead of time or not but they’re so wonderfully constructed it’s hard for me to believe they can pull them off. After this, Okada and Tanahashi never met again in a match where the title changed hands, but one of them was involved in every single IWGP title change for the next seven years. ****¾ 

January 20, 1997 – Osaka, Osaka

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Kenta Kobashi {Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 12; Peak Position 7; Latest Position 7. From AJPW New Year Giant Series. To this point, Kobashi had never beaten either Kawada or Misawa one-on-one. I love storylines like that and wish we could see more of them now, but 50-50 booking makes it impossible. That WALTER vs. Voldemort… I mean David Starr feud in which Starr had lost dozens of matches to WALTER was awesome. And given the way Starr cratered out, he’s truly never beating WALTER. Anyway, this match; you can’t say Kobashi didn’t make Misawa fight for it. Between Misawa’s mullet and Kobashi’s douchebag ski bro quaff, I don’t think there’s ever been a more ‘90s match. Follically speaking, I mean. I’m seriously burying the lede here because this is regarded by some as the best match of all time. The first seventeen minutes of the match are pretty good, but then Misawa misses a dive and bangs his elbow against the barricade and things take on a whole new color. Kobashi obliterates Misawa’s arm. Eventually, Misawa realizes he’s going to lose without a big gambit, so he hits an elbow to Kobashi’s lariat, sacrificing what’s left of his arm to hurt Kobashi. So dope. After that, even when he hits the Tiger Driver, he’s too hurt to cover. The bright side for him is that Kobashi now needs time to recover after hitting lariats. Both guys’ selling was off the charts. Misawa gutted out a roaring elbow for the win at 42:06. Greatest match ever? Probably not, but it did offer a level of cerebral satisfaction that I don’t think I’ve seen in another match. It also had a midair counter from a powerbomb to a hurricanrana off the apron. In a heavyweight match. In 1997. This is the Match of the Year for 1997 and, shockingly, only the third longest match between these two. ****¾

August 13, 2016 – Tokyo, Japan

Kenny Omega def. Tetsuya Naito {Round Robin Tournament Match}
Starting Position 9; Peak Position 7; Latest Position 8. From NJPW G1 Climax 26. This was the a block final match. The commentators talked about Omega’s journey as one setting out to prove that the junior heavyweights could hang in this tournament. As I mentioned earlier, after this match Omega went on to beat Goto in the finals and establish himself as a main eventer. This was better than that match, so I understand it being ranked higher. I also understand that for the same reasons (this being part of Omega’s ascent to the top of NJPW and a step on his path to being the most successful (kayfabe) westerner in the company’s history) this is ranked higher than I think it deserves. Now, it’s good. Omega pretty much railroaded Naito. He knocked him off of the apron into the barricade early on and controlled the bulk of the match from there. He would have won the match in short order had Naito not gotten to his leg. Because of the leg injury, Omega had a hard time hitting the One Winged Angel, stretching out the match. That was a major problem for him, as a thirty-minute draw would have put Naito into the finals instead of Omega. But Omega gutted it out and eventually hit a bunch of knee kicks and the One Winged Angel for the win at 28:12. The reason this doesn’t strike me as a GOAT match is there wasn’t really anything to signal that Omega’s leg could suddenly handle the weight of Naito’s whole body on his shoulders. In fact, I don’t understand the logic of his leg suddenly being well enough to hit all the knee strikes he hit in the run up to the finish. I could see someone saying that the kicks gave him the confidence to hit the One Winged Angel, but it’s not like he wasn’t earnestly trying and failing to hit the move just moments earlier. But the rest of the match is a blast. ****½

June 9, 2018 – Osaka, Osaka

Kenny Omega def. Kazuchika Okada {IWGP Heavyweight Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
Starting Position 6; Peak Position 6; Latest Position 9. From NJPW Dominion. Omega won the G1 Climax in 2016, but lost to Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 11 (more on that match in a bit). A few months later, he beat Ishii in a main event and was granted another title shot. That match, exactly one year before this one, went to a time limit draw (which as I noted is the best match in their series in my opinion). Omega lost in the G1 Climax 2017 finals to Naito, but luckily for him Naito failed to beat Okada for the title at Wrestle Kingdom 12. 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 2/3 falls. There’s a cute Infinity War reference in Omega’s intro video. 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). But if I’m being honest, I didn’t start marking out until Okada hit the wall and he could connect with a 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 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, a nice way to end Okada’s title reign, and an excellent match. I just don’t think it’s in the running for the greatest match of all time, or even greatest match between these two. Omega won the third fall by countering the Rainmaker to the One Winged Angel, hitting a running knee, and then hitting the One Winged Angel again at 64:50. ****¾

June 3, 1994 – Tokyo, Japan

Mitsuharu Misawa def. Toshiaki Kawada {Triple Crown Championship Match}
Starting Position 7; Peak Position 6; Latest Position 6. From AJPW Super Power Series. It should come as no surprise given how close to the end of the list we are that this is the famous match between these two. Dave Meltzer called it the best match of all time until the Okada vs. Omega series 23 years later. And since he has an outsized influence on what is considered good in wrestling, it was taken as fact. Fortunately for me, his taste back then aligned with mine and this is truly a tremendous match. Misawa was 7-0-1 over Kawada at this point in singles matches, and 2-0 in Triple Crown matches. But Kawada had earned his first draw against Misawa in the Champion Carnival two months before this. I’ve seen this match a couple times before, but this is my first time reviewing it. For context regarding my state of mind, I’m reviewing this right after watching the Miyahara Triple Crown win over Ryuki Honda, and it’s depressing me how far All Japan has fallen. I suppose it should be of some comfort that the company still exists at all. Anyway, this match. The reason it works for me is just how much it looks like Kawada finally has Misawa’s number. He busts open Misawa’s ear early on, making it hard for the champ to regain control for any considerable length of time. Even when Misawa counters or blocks Kawada’s offense, Kawada is quick to regain control. 

But then as the match wore on, Misawa’s frustration bubbled up. That’s when this started clicking for me emotionally. Seeing Misawa block a strike from Kawada and nail him with an elbow while shooting him a glare as if to say, “are you serious right now?” was very satisfying. Also satisfying was the way they built up Kawada’s powerbomb to the point that everyone in attendance was sure that it would give him the win. It did not, but Misawa’s kickout after taking it got an insane pop. And when Kawada hit a second powerbomb, you could tell that the crowd had lost their faith in his ability to win with it. As if taking his cues from them, Kawada changed his gameplan up and locked in the Stretch Plum. That didn’t work either. The final few minutes saw Kawada bet his kicks against Misawa’s elbows. It was a losing bet, allowing the champion to hit his dazed challenger with the Tiger Driver ‘91 for the win at 35:50. It was an incredible war, worthy of a ton of praise. There were matches I’ve liked more that have happened since, but this one is a blast. Some will tell you that you need a lot of Kings Road context to enjoy it, but I think that’s nonsense. This is my Match of the Year for 1994. *****

May 25, 1992 – Sendai, Miyagi

Kenta Kobashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi def. Danny Kroffat & Doug Furnas {All Asia Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 4; Peak Position 2; Latest Position 5. From AJPW Super Power Series. The Can-Am Express were coming into this as champions. I believe this is the only All Asia title match on this list, which is interesting as this is the oldest active title in Japan. I was surprised to see this so high on the list, because while I liked it the first time I watched it, I hardly thought it would be anyone’s favorite of all time. Or rather that such a large majority of the people who have seen and reviewed it thought it was a five-star match. I wonder if people are reacting to how rabidly the crowd responds to Kikuchi in this. Because of that, the match is a bop. Who doesn’t love watching the crowd get foamed up at the mouth for someone. But there isn’t a ton to it. It’s just Kobashi making the save and brutalizing the two North American muscle men when after Kikuchi makes a fun escape from their clutches. Rinse and repeat for 20 fun minutes. Kobashi finished off Kroffat with a double arm DDT and the moonsault at 22:11. ****

January 4, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Kenny Omega {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 3; Peak Position 3; Latest Position 4. From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11. 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. Okada countered the One Winged Angel to a Tombstone Piledriver and then hit the Rainmaker for the win at 46:45. ****½

June 9, 1995 – Tokyo, Japan

Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada def. Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa {AJPW World Tag Team Championship Match}
Starting Position 5; Peak Position 2; Latest Position 2. From AJPW Super Power Series. This is a fun little tradition, giving the Holy Demon Army a shot at the tag titles every year at the Super Power Series. This is considered by many to be the best tag team match of all time. The Super Generation Army dominated early on, flustering their challengers by having Misawa distract with rope tricks before Kobashi dove off of the apron. Kobashi came into this with a taped up leg, so the Holy Demon Army responded by going hard after it. For me the highlight was Taue chokeslamming Misawa on the back of Kobashi’s leg. Kobashi then endured leg kicks from Kawada as bait so he could pull Kawada in close and hit a dozen quick chops. That’s dope. Then, Kobashi had surprising success using Taue’s own moves against him. Like in their previous matches, this started breaking down towards the end. Unlike in previous matches, that spelled bad news for the champs this time around. It got to the point where Misawa was getting beaten so badly that all he could do was try as much as he could to stay out of the ring. Barely able to walk, Kobashi tried to crawl over to Misawa and keep him planted so as to not be powerbombed. For his trouble he took a back suplex/chokeslam combo to the back of his head. Kawada then turned his attention to Misawa, hitting a gamengiri and a powerbomb for the win and the titles at 42:37. I don’t know if I’d rank this above Benoit & Angle vs. Edge & Rey Mysterio or Steamboat & Dustin Rhodes vs. the Enforcers, but it’s for sure one of the best tag matches I’ve seen. Damn. This is my Match of the Year for 1995. *****

April 9, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan

Kazuchika Okada def. Katsuyori Shibata {IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 2; Peak Position 2; Latest Position 3. From NJPW Sakura Genesis. Shibata won the New Japan Cup to earn this title shot. It’s important to note that after this match, Shibata collapsed backstage. He’d suffered a subdural hematoma, reportedly from a combination of head trauma (he’d been using gnarly headbutts for about a year) and dehydration. It seemed like his career was over, but he’s had two (short) matches since the end of 2021. So the story has, for now, a more happy ending. The first fifteen minutes were spent almost entirely on the mat, though Shibata was such an athlete that he was able to make it feel like the action was always moving forward. The following ten minutes were tough to watch knowing what happened after this match ended. Shibata and Okada hit each other so hard that you could hear both the smack of the impact and pained groans coming from both guys. There’s an insane moment toward the end of the match when Shibata absorbs a short-arm lariat, headbutts Okada, and then smirks as a stream of blood starts pouring down his own face. That image is terrifying in hindsight. The different ways that Shibata would pop up off of the mat made him look superhuman. And clearly frustrated and frightened the champ. Even knowing that Shibata has never been IWGP Champion, it was hard to see Okada in that octopus stretch and believe he could escape. I’m having a hard time understanding why they had this match knowing that Shibata wasn’t going to win the title, because it felt like this was building to a big crowning moment for him. Obviously it worked out better that Okada won (hitting what felt like a lucky Rainmaker at 38:09 to pick off Shibata), but it didn’t feel like the match was going that way until the very end. This was my Match of the Year for 2017. *****

March 1, 2003 – Tokyo Japan

Kenta Kobashi def. Mitsuharu Misawa {GHC Heavyweight Championship Match}
Starting Position 1; Peak Position 1; Latest Position 1. From NOAH Navigate for Evolution. Kobashi had defeated Misawa in a series of tag matches in the build to this. Misawa’s lip got busted open pretty early on here, an issue he’d been having in the lead up to this match. That made both guys pissed enough to go ahead and do a greatest match of all time. It’s arguably not THE greatest match of all time, but it’s A greatest match of all time. 

A few years after this, it was said that Misawa was torn between a desperate desire to retire and the need to keep wrestling because he was NOAH’s only draw during a down period (Kobashi was out of action with an injury to both arms). Misawa felt he had to stay and personally get Go Shiozaki over as a main eventer before taking a rest. He said in an interview a few days before he died that he also felt that he couldn’t take on a light schedule because, “if he rested just once, he would be unable to return.” He said he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace for another year, but he had to keep going to keep the company alive. 

It’s morbid to compare the words of a man lamenting the state of his body just days before his tragic death to his performance in a match, but I can’t help but make a connection here. Misawa is outmatched by Kobashi. His spirit was beaten in the lead up to the match because of the tag losses and he was bloodied early in the bout. And while he’s able to hit his signature moves without much trouble, Kobashi is kicking out of them with relative ease. Meanwhile, Kobashi is spry, having been able to take a year off to fix both his knees and then another year to build himself up to take down Misawa. Misawa knows he’s in trouble, and he also knows that if he lets up for even a second here he’s finished. So when Kobashi starts dropping him on his head, he gets up as quickly as he can to retaliate even as he sells the trauma he’s just endured. 

There’s an amazing moment when Misawa suplexes Kobashi on the ramp and rolls back in, hoping to win by count out. The look on his face when he sees over his shoulder that Kobashi is getting up says everything. But rather than sit in his fear, he has to get right back up and dive through the ropes with an elbow. Then he hits a tiger suplex from the ramp to the floor. A tiger suplex… from the ramp… to the floor. But Kobashi still beats the count back inside AND kicks out at two. Kobashi’s selling at this point is incredible. He barely has his legs, but he knows that Misawa’s spirit is fading. So he hits his chops and uses the ropes to steady himself. He kicks out of the Emerald Frosion and blocks a Tiger Driver. Misawa is screwed. Even though he’s exhausted and dazed, Kobashi is still stronger than Misawa and takes him down when they hit lariats at the same time. One brainbuster and one Burning Hammer later and Misawa stays down at 33:28. This probably is the greatest match of all time, so it goes without saying that it was my Match of the Year for 2003. *****

• I mentioned when a match on this list was my Match of the Year, so here are a few shout outs to my Matches of the Year that didn’t appear on this list: 
  • 2019: Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole – NXT Takeover XXV
  • 2015: Finn Balor vs. Kevin Owens – NXT Takeover: Brooklyn
  • 2014: Eita & T-Hawk vs. Shingo Takagi & Akira Tozawa – Dragon Gate Kobe World Pro Wrestling Festival
  • 2013: John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan – WWE SummerSlam
  • 2010: Shingo Takagi vs. Bryan Danielson – DGUSA Enter the Dragon
  • 2007: Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin – ROH Good Times Great Memories
  • 2006: Bryan Danielson vs. Roderick Strong – ROH Supercard of Honor
  • 2002: Chris Benoit & Kurt Angle vs. Edge & Rey Mysterio – WWE No Mercy
  • 2001: Steve Austin vs. Triple H – WWE No Way Out
  • 2000: The Rock vs. Triple H – WWE Judgment Day
  • 1998: Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels – WrestleMania XIV
  • 1992: Ric Flair vs. Randy Savage – WrestleMania VIII
  • 1991: Ricky Steamboat & Dustin Rhodes vs. Arn Anderson & Larry Zbyszko – WCW Clash of the Champions 17
  • 1990: Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masanobu Fuchi – AJPW October Giant Series
  • 1989: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat – NWA WrestleWar
  • 1988: Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada – AJPW Real World Tag League
  • 1987: Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat – WrestleMania III
  • 1984: Stan Hansen vs. Giant Baba – AJPW Grand Champion Carnival III
  • 1977: Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Billy Robinson – AJPW Excite Series
• The average match time of the bouts on this list was 31.6 minutes. Cagematch fans love a longboi match.
• Only two events featured more than one match on this list. They were Wrestle Kingdom 9 and Wrestle Kingdom 10. Wrestle Kingdom 14 also had two matches on this list, but both were Okada matches that happened on different nights of a two-night event. 
• 110 matches broke into the top 100 list during the designated time period.
• No matches prior to 1988 appear on the list.
  • No matches from 1990, 2000, or 2002 appear on the list.
  • Ten matches from 2018 appear on the list, far and away the most of any year.
    • Eight of those matches happened in New Japan. New Japan derangement syndrome was at its height in 2018.
• Kensuke Sasaki & Akira Hokuto are the only husband/wife combo that both appear in the list. Their love is strong as is their wrestling ability. 
• MANY matchups made it onto this list more than once:
  • Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi – 6
  • Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega – 4
  • Kenta Kobashi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa – 4
  • Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue – 3
  • Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker – 3
  • Kenny Omega vs. Tetsuya Naito – 3
  • Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness – 3
  • Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura – 2
  • Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat – 2
  • Ilja Dragunov vs. WALTER – 2
  • Kenny Omega vs. Kota Ibushi – 2
  • Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa – 2
  • Kenta Kobashi vs. SteveWilliams – 2
  • Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Manami Toyota & Tetsuya Yamada – 2
  • Manami Toyota vs. Aja Kong – 2
• The most featured wrestlers:
  • Kobashi (17)
  • Okada (14)
  • Omega (13)
  • Tanahashi & Misawa (12)
  • Kawada & Ibushi (7)
  • Honorable Mention: Manami Toyota, Bryan Danielson, Akira Taue, Tomohiro Ishii and KENTA (6)
• Most Featured Promotions:
  • NJPW – 37
  • AJPW – 15
  • WWE/F – 14
  • ROH – 10
  • NOAH/Kensuke Office – 9
  • AJW – 7
  • AEW – 3
  • BJW – 3
  • WCW/JCP – 3
  • Stardom – 2
• Japan made up 69.1% of the matches, North America made up 29.1%, and Europe had about 1.8%.