20 AJPW Matches you must see before you die

17. Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbso Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masanobu Fuchi – October 19, 1990; April 20, 1991; & May 22, 1992

Okay, so this one is cheating a bit, but there’s a reason to include three matches under this entry instead of one.

Between 1990 and 1992, the biggest rivalry in AJPW was between Misawa and Jumbo Tsuruta. Misawa and his group represented the younger generation of stars, while Tsuruta and company represented the established old guard.

These factions clashed several times throughout the early 1990s, including in three identical six-man tag team matches. These matches were not only enormous draws for AJPW, but they each told their own individual stories and made stars out of the wrestlers involved.

If you were to look at which wrestling matches keep getting the most praise these days, the majority of those matches tend to be singles matches. There are a few tag team matches that have been praised as some of the greatest ever, but most of those were 2-on-2 tag team matches.

In fact, there have only been five 6-man tag team matches in history to have ever been awarded a 5-star rating, and these are three of them.