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Post by stunninggrover on Jan 18, 2018 2:00:22 GMT -5
Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega (NJPW - IWGP HW Championship - 1/4/2017)
This match was part of the New Japan Wrestle Kingdom 11 event at the Tokyo Dome. It was the first in the 2017 Okada vs. Omega trilogy. Okada defended the IWGP Heavyweight Title. The match was well paced. They teased each other's finishers early in the match. About halfway through the match, Omega executed an impressive springboard moonsault to the outside over the guardrail onto Okada. A little while after that, Omega took a huge bump from a backdrop, which sent him over the top rope to the outside through a table. I thought the selling was really good throughout this match. It would take Okada several Rainmakers before he was able to beat Omega. It was a great 46-minute match.
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Post by bossrock on Jan 18, 2018 10:05:34 GMT -5
Second.
I actually have the second and third Okada-Omega matches higher, but this was still fantastic. The beginning was definitely padded and worked at a rather deliberate pace, but the second two thirds of this match feature some pretty incredible offensive sequences. Excellent selling and arguably one of the best finishing stretches in history give this a good shot of making my list.
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Post by thepumalives on Jan 18, 2018 22:33:40 GMT -5
Third.
Another match that was in my beginning Top 10, but it has since been knocked out by the following two matches in the trilogy. Phenomenal match, and I dug the way they worked the big spots into the story instead of just forcing them in. I bit on more than one of the near falls and was near marking out every time Omega went for the one winged angel.
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Post by fxnj on Jan 20, 2018 3:37:57 GMT -5
Need to rewatch it, but this blew me away when I saw it a few months back. The opening was good feeling out process stuff and set the stage for the rest of the match with the teases and the dueling limb work psychology. The match built really well with some big spots that were treated as a big deal helping move things along. The finishing stretch was one of the best I've ever seen with some fantastic struggle for their respective finishers. That said, most of the 2017 Okada I've seen since has left me pretty cold, so a rewatch is in order as I'm really not sure how much of that initial love might just be from these guys' stuff being new to me at the time.
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Post by joeg on Jan 21, 2018 13:49:52 GMT -5
Fourth.
This will be on my list. I'll probably have it somewhere in the middle. Before I saw the match, I had no invested interest in Kenny Omega, he'd always just kinda been a guy who was just there that I had little interest in. Somewhere midway through the match I became a fan.
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Post by twfi on Jan 22, 2018 2:22:39 GMT -5
I'll fifth this. Only watched each match of the trilogy the once but when I did, I felt this was the best. I seem to differ on that here.
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Post by kas on Aug 14, 2019 16:13:02 GMT -5
A total epic. While the first twenty minutes were slow, it did a really good job at establishing the narrative of the match, reigning the crowd in after the hype of Naito/Tanahashi, and teasing spots that would come later in the match. Once it got going, it got crazy. Everything from Okada's first rainmaker onwards is some of the craziest and most dramatic pro wrestling you will ever see. Also, one of the few matches to make me think 'This is the greatest match I've ever seen' immediately after it finished.
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Post by elliott on Oct 12, 2023 12:47:06 GMT -5
I watched this shortly after it happened. It is very long & they are very athletic.
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Post by microstatistics on Apr 27, 2024 22:11:31 GMT -5
Ah, the infamous match that started it all. I remember liking it a lot more than the folks over at PWO when it happened but never felt the need to revisit it until now.
The first 35 minutes were fantastic. The biggest compliment I can give is that the match construct resembled a big mid-2000s NOAH match a lot more than it did the NJPW/AEW "epics" of the following years. Compelling build and escalation, robust fundamentals, strong selling on transitions, surprisingly consistent work on Okada's core/kidney area (that was sold fairly well). Omega as the underdog heel set-up his growth in the rest of the series and Okada here really did look like the ace.
However, the last 10 minutes dragged it down a bit as they inevitably fell into the dreaded back-and-forth trap. There was enough good stuff to not completely tank the quality (the impact of the first Rainmaker being treated like a big deal, decent amount of struggle, Omega's desperation flurries) but the constant reversals were getting tiresome. The lead-up to the execution of third Rainmaker was a terrific sequence but they failed to capitalize on that as the finish, leading to another overkill reversal stretch before the final Rainmaker. All things considered, a great match that, despite the imperfections, likely deserves its reputation (breaking the WON scale, being #1 on Cagematch presently).
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