This week on Wrestling Omakase we talk two early 10s Shinsuke Nakamura matches, a 2016 DDT mat classic, an Aztec Warfare match and maybe the last good ladder match of all time. If you haven't listened to a 5 Matches episode yet, every week John and the guest each choose 2 matches to watch and talk about on the episode. Then we each choose a third match, which is put up to a vote on the @wrestleomakase Twitter account, letting the listeners choose our fifth and final match of the week. It's a fun retro format featuring all sorts of different wrestling!

John is joined by Joel Abraham (@joeljabraham) of VOW's New Japan Pro Wrestling podcast the Super J-Cast (@thesuperjcast), and though we do talk some NJPW we also give Joel a chance to spread his wings a bit. Here's the full list of five matches that are discussed this week, along with the easiest place to find them:

1. Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit, WWE 1/21/01 (WWE Network: https://watch.wwe.com/episode/Royal-Rumble-2001-11802, match starts at 22:51)

2. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hirooki Goto, NJPW 4/4/10 (NJPW World: https://njpwworld.com/p/s_series_00300_1_1 or https://njpwworld.com/p/s_series_00300_2_01)

3. Aztec Warfare 2, LU 12/12/15 (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6uc0ou)

4. Isami Kodaka vs. Masa Takanashi, DDT 1/30/16 (DDT Universe: https://www.ddtpro.com/universe/videos/3170)

5. Tetsuya Naito vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, NJPW 8/14/11 (NJPW World: https://njpwworld.com/p/s_series_00183_2_5)

Topics that come up along the way include: a review of the Hi-Score Girl anime John recommended to Joel and some character discussion, Joel's starting point in wrestling fandom, spots that should absolutely never be done again, when exactly Goto started getting viewed as a geek (and many different ways he was done dirty by the booking), dropping into Lucha Underground and trying to make sense of it all, matches that build internally being better than just endless references to past matches, Stardust Genius Naito was Good Actually, what a Nakamura return to NJPW run might look like and whether or not he could actually pull it off, yet another "Nakamura-Zayn is just Nakamura-Ibushi reskinned" discussion, and much more.

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Wrestling Omakase has dedicated channels on TWO Discords! Come join either one where you can chat with John and show guests and submit questions for future episodes!

Super J-Cast Discord: https://discord.gg/zWEgNK5

VOW Network Discord: https://discord.gg/rGTXwXd

Missed any of the 5 Matches episodes or just want to revisit one of the matches discussed previously but aren't sure what episode it took place on? Here's a handy Google Doc with links to every single match we've discussed on this series so far, which will continue to be updated every week: https://bit.ly/3dv3BjF

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