20 AJPW Matches you must see before you die

11. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama – October 23, 1999

Now, THIS is how you make tag team titles feel important: take some of your best singles stars, put them together, and have them wrestle as if they were fighting for the world title itself.

Interestingly, both Kobashi and Akiyama were former tag team partners of Misawa in this match, and now both of them were challenging the AJPW ace. Yet while the two of them show some outstanding tag team psychology, they were still no match for Misawa and his bottomless bag of tricks and technical reversals.

This match is must faster-paced and shorter than most on this list (going barely over twenty minutes), and included some awesome double-team moves that for some reason don’t get used much anywhere else.

Finally, the last three minutes are especially fun to watch, as it’s filled with some awesome near-falls, which causes Kobashi to bring out his ultimate finisher, the Burning Hammer, for only the second time ever.

Truly a 5-star tag team match if there ever was one.