This review was commissioned by Baz over on my Ko-fi account.
Approaching the ten year anniversary of this match, one can feel the distance of all that time. Chief among them, for both younger fans and those following pro wrestling at the time, is the state of Shinsuke Nakamura. Famous in 2025 for cashing checks and surfing before showing up in a wrestling ring with the effort and reluctance of a preschooler at church, Shinsuke Nakamura at one point in time was one of the most charismatic and electrifying pro wrestlers anywhere in the world.
The 2010s are an especially grand time for Nakamura. After weathering the tumultuous 2000s, Shinsuke found his unique style of swagger that allowed him to revel in the success and critical acclaim of the Bushiroad boom. Synonymous with the company’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship, Nakamura’s one of the key players of this era and has a catalogue of beloved Tokyo Dome classics to back him up.
This is the last of those, and one of the best remembered too.
In hindsight, the finality of this match lends it a little more grandeur. It would be the last Wrestle Kingdom match for both competitors before they signed up with the WWE. And really, it does act like a fairly clear demarcation for Shinsuke’s career in particular. Goddamn, do you remember when Shinsuke used to hit people? I mean, really hit people. That feels so far behind us that it’s almost like watching a totally different wrestler.
The match functions really well as this big clash between two workers that had been kept apart for so long. It’s a first time singles bout and the little frictions and dynamics they create from bell-to-bell are such a delight. One gets it on a personality front, as with the famous moment where Shinsuke mimes catching and swallowing a bullet in response to an AJ taunt. One also gets it on a tactical front as the more heelish Bullet Club leader in AJ exaggerates a back injury early on to open up Nakamura for control, only for Nakamura to make him pay for that by attacking the back to break up AJ’s heat segment.
Chief among these elements though is the physicality of it. I mentioned Nakamura already, but it really is worth remembering how great he was before taking up surfing full-time. Most famous for his crushing knee strikes, his elbows in this match are resounding as well. And those knees and Boma Ye set ups are a delight all throughout. There’s so many fun, interesting variations here like how he hits the corner knee to AJ’s back early in the match as opposed as to the gut, and that’s even before hitting the Boma Ye proper deeper into the match in such cathartic ways like off the ropes or those sudden sliding variations to cut off AJ.
The match also very intentionally evokes Nakamura’s past Tokyo Dome epics, perhaps most notably when Styles cuts off a rushing Nakamura with a flash knee to the face. It’s grotesque and sudden, creating a great sense of desperation for Nakamura that leads into the bigger bombs of the finishing stretch.
To the match’s credit to, the escalation to those big bombs works so well, moving from the attempted strategies of the opening (back work vs. leg work) towards the urgency to just drive an opponent into the dirt. It’s not the most complex match in the world in that sense though, relying more on a bombastic super fight feel for much of the back half. The occasion and the performances make it work, even if I’d call the structure of the match itself a little more uninteresting than it first appears on the surface. The back work begins to fade into the background, those Calf Crushers don’t do much to Shinsuke’s legs, and at the end of the day it’s more of a gunfight to hit that one conclusive blow.
The end of an era, in a lot of ways, but there’s few better ways to go than with a pair of Boma Yes to the Dome.
Rating: ****1/4
