NJPW News: Kenny Omega & Kazuchika Okada reach the top of prestigious wrestling ranking
What’s the story?
Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, the IWGP United States Heavyweight Champion and IWGP Heavyweight Champion, respectively, have both set yet another milestone in professional wrestling.
Specifically, they have now become the #1 and #2 highest-rated wrestlers for singles matches on profightdb.com, a database affiliated with the Wrestling Observer.
This makes them – statistically-speaking – the two greatest singles wrestlers alive.
In case you didn’t know…
The Wrestling Observer assigns a star rating for each match, with the general range being between one and five stars, with the latter signifying a perfect or must-watch match. Conversely, exceptionally-bad matches have also been rated negative stars, with a handful of matches actually being rated minus five stars due to their abysmal quality.
In even rarer cases, Dave Meltzer and the Observer have gone beyond the standard 5-stars and awarded a few matches 6-stars or higher.
Okada and Omega had an astonishing series of matches in 2017 that were rated 6-stars or higher. This, in turn, influenced their overall rating as wrestlers.
The heart of the matter
Profightdb.com has a simple formula when it comes to rating wrestlers: take that wrestler’s number of recorded matches and look at the ratings for those matches to determine an average star rating for that wrestler.
If one were to only rank their singles matches (and thus exclude tag and multi-man matches), then both Omega and Okada stand head-and-shoulders above everyone else. Kazuchika’s average singles match rating is an astonishing 4.45 stars, while Omega’s is an even more impressive 4.65 average star rating.
The other wrestlers that round up the top ten are Tomohiro Ishii (4.36), Kota Ibushi (4.31), Will Ospreay (4.30), Mitsuharu Misawa (4.28), The Greak Sasuke (4.25), Hiroshi Tanahashi (4.23), Kenta Kobashi (4.20) and Toshiaki Kawada (4.18).
By comparison, the highest-rated WWE wrestlers on this list are Daniel Bryan at #28 (3.93), Shinsuke Nakamura at #29 (3.93), Seth Rollins at #34 (3.86) and Kevin Owens at #36 (3.85).
Keep in mind, however, that this is specifically for singles matches only, and doesn’t include tag matches and other special stipulations. When combined to look at a wrestler’s overall ranking, Okada is at #7 with a 4.0 average, while Omega is at #33 with a 3.78 rating.
What’s next?
Okada is set to make his tenth consecutive IWGP Heavyweight Championship defence at The New Beginning in Sapporo on February 10th against SANADA. Omega, meanwhile, will defend his IWGP United States Championship against “Switchblade” Jay White the night before at The New Beginning in Sapporo.
On a more long-term basis, Okada is likely to remain a fixture of the main-event scene in NJPW for the time being, while Omega appears to be in the midst of a budding feud with fellow Bullet Club member Cody, with whom he appeared to have a heated confrontation after Cody attempted to attack Omega’s erstwhile friend/rival Kota Ibushi.
Author’s take
Omega and Okada are easily two of the best wrestlers on the planet. Now, there is a degree of statistical proof to back up that claim. Although the match ratings themselves are open to interpretation and have been interpreted as biased, one cannot deny that Omega and Okada wrestle at an exceptionally high standard these days.
Even if every fan has their own opinion of whom they consider to be the very best in pro wrestling, both Omega and Okada have some impressive numbers to back up their respective contentions for the title of best wrestler in the world.
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