Battle of the Feuds: Comparing Reigns/Lesnar and Okada/Omega

For all the current day problems with Professional Wrestling, most notably its seemingly consistent failure to live up to the high standards of previous eras, 2018 is an interesting time to be a fan. There is a certain buzz of anticipation in the air for what might come, and a large part of that has been the growth of the non-WWE wrestling world.

Over in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada have just concluded the latest chapter of a rivalry that has caught the imagination of fans across the world. Their epic encounters have already formed part of wrestling folklore and is taking NJPW into unchartered territory as far as their Western appeal is concerned.

Over in WWE, however, the company has been struggling to keep fans engaged. Despite some very lucrative TV deals struck recently, the in-ring action and overall booking appear to still be on a downward trend. Their main rivalry over the WWE Universal Title, contested by Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar has only served to throw more fans towards New Japan as once loyal members of the WWE Universe are craving something new and exciting.

The following article takes a look at the two signature rivalries that have dominated both WWE and NJPW over recent years, assessing the success of each and how they ultimately measure up when pitted against each other:

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#1 Match quality

Those who have witnessed every individual match these four have put on together will probably be of the opinion that the Reigns vs Lesnar feud cannot hold a candle to Omega vs Okada in terms of sheer match quality. For most, deciding on this one is a mere formality.

Whatever your thoughts on Dave Meltzer and the Wrestling Observer, you have to admit that when a feud consistently breaks the 5-star rating system, designed to grade wrestling matches from across the world, you know you have something fairly special on your hands.

Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada have given wrestling fans a series of classics they are not likely to ever forget. Their first meeting at Wrestling Kingdom 11 was nothing short of sensational and drew in many first-time Western viewers to the New Japan product.

And just when we thought nothing could top it, the pair well and truly surpassed their first effort at Dominion later that same year. Not even 6 stars were enough to contain the classic time-limit draw that once again saw Omega fall short of his dream to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.

The jury is still out on where their latest chapter will ultimately feature, but even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of those that came before it, one would expect the 5-star rating system to be under serious threat all the same.

So, in light of this, is there anything that can be said for Lesnar vs Reigns?

Once you accept that the WWE Superstars are currently no match for Okada and Omega in the ring, you start to appreciate what Reigns and Lesnar did manage to give us in terms of match quality. True, it's not exactly promising when the best thing you can say about something is that it surpassed quite low expectations, but the fact of the matter is that these two did put on some entertaining stuff, which was a lot better than many of us originally thought.

Their meeting at WrestleMania 31, for example, was hard-hitting and fun. Lesnar managed to make us feel every inch of punishment he dished out to The Big Dog, and when Reigns did finally get the momentum back on his side, it felt like we were right there with them, chopping down the seemingly unbeatable Beast.

Their WrestleMania 34 meeting was a lot less impressive, however, with the two of them relying far too heavily on the 'shoot-fight' element. It was sluggish and clumsy, and at least as far as Brock was concerned, it felt very half-baked. And by the time the Greatest Royal Rumble came around, the pair couldn't really give us anything more, despite the added stipulation of the steel cage.

If you searched hard enough, you might find one or two that would claim Lesnar and Reigns put on the better series of matches, but any wrestling fan worth their salt really ought to know better. Omega and Okada easily win this round.

#2 Character development

New viewers of the NJPW product will probably realise that character development means a lot as far as that particular promotion is concerned. It might be difficult for non-Japanese speaking fans to fully appreciate how the New Japan stars grow themselves as characters, at least on the surface, but by watching the shows over a long period of time, it soon becomes very apparent just how hard the bookers work to make their wrestlers believable, sympathetic and human.

The rise of Kenny Omega, from his early days in the Bullet Club to his conquest of the New Japan main event scene, has probably been one of the best-told stories of Pro Wrestling since the days of the Monday Night Wars.

Once a semi-comedic understudy to names like AJ Styles and Bad Luck Fale, the Omega brand has grown into an off-shoot of wrestling itself with armies of fans buying his merchandise and propelling him to superstardom. This was all perfectly encapsulated in the opening video package before his match with Okada last weekend.

Okada, for his part, has become the greatest IWGP Champion the business has ever known. He was already a well-established leader by the time his first match with Kenny came about at Wrestle Kingdom 11, but after seeing off opponent after opponent it became genuinely unthinkable that The Rainmaker might actually eat a pinfall in a title match at all.

After defeating Hiroshi Tanahashi to break the all-time title defence record, there was really only one man left to conquer. Okada had a 1-1-1 record against the Bullet Club leader and the stage was well and truly set for the ultimate showdown. If Okada could defeat Omega and end the feud, there would literally be nobody left to seriously challenge him.

On the flip side of all this lay Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, both quite well-established characters in their own way. We generally know what we are going to get from Lesnar, and in many ways, he is the Kazuchika Okada of the WWE.

Following his defeat of The Undertaker a year before his meeting with Reigns, the Beast had a special aura about him which only grew stronger as the years went on. Despite a mini wobble against Goldberg, Lesnar has been booked as a genuine monster, rarely showing any signs of vulnerability. Say what you will about his commitment to the business, but the way Vince has booked Brock is nothing short of impressive.

The only real weak link in this is Roman Reigns and this is not entirely his fault. Due to resistance from the audience and the WWE's lack of effective forward planning, the Reigns character has gone on quite the rollercoaster over the past 3 years.

At one point he was struggling to see off the challenge of The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship, and the next we were meant to believe him as a serious challenger to the Beast Incarnate.

It is even hard to tell whether Reigns is in a better or worse position now compared with his first meeting with Lesnar at Mania 31. The crowd has certainly not warmed to him and it seems WWE management are still trying to figure out how best to promote him - not great when you are talking about the man earmarked to replace John Cena at the top of the wrestling world!

#3 Storytelling

Even if it is not the main reason you watch Pro Wrestling, storytelling is a vital part of the product overall. During the Hogan Era of the 80s and the later Austin years of the late 90s, Vince McMahon's ability to tell a story was second to none. True, the WWE have always tended to concentrate their best storytelling around a small select few, but when they are good, they are very good indeed.

Was Reigns vs Lesnar an example of the WWE's better storytelling work? One would have to argue that all things being equal, it probably wasn't.

The biggest problem was that the fans have never really been that invested in it. The lion share of the WWE Universe was always more willing to see somebody else in Reigns' position. At WrestleMania 31 most people would have preferred to see Daniel Bryan take on Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship, and the list of people deemed more worthy of the WrestleMania 34 main event pretty much covers most of the active male roster.

WrestleMania 31 was probably the highpoint of the storytelling with this feud. Lesnar was still riding the waves of his conquering of John Cena and The Undertaker and it was genuinely exciting to see if somebody would ultimately topple him. But coming off the back of Reigns' dismal Royal Rumble 2015 victory, that saw fans actually booing The Rock for daring to stick up for his cousin, nobody was really interested in seeing Reigns become the man to do it.

Instead, the WWE decided to draw back from their initial plan and have Seth Rollins cash in to take the title away from the Beast.

If WrestleMania 31 was less than sufficient, WrestleMania 34 was worse still. Lesnar had become more of a hindrance to the wrestling scene than anything else, failing to show up and defend his title on an annoyingly regular basis. With fans more invested in the likes of Braun Strowman and Seth Rollins, Lesnar vs Reigns in the main event felt like a largely skippable affair - hardly the basis for a storyline that captures your imagination.

In almost perfect contrast to this, Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada have just concluded one of the best-told stories of the modern era of Pro Wrestling. It had every story arc one could have needed - a seemingly unstoppable, cocky champion a brash, hungry upstart on the rise, jealousy, desperation, frustration and ultimate payoff. That is not to mention the subtleties of the Bullet Club's demise that saw Omega take on his stablemate Cody and fall out of favour with his best friends The Young Bucks.

The fact that Omega's victory prompted such dramatic post-match scenes with Ibushi and The Young Bucks holding him high above the ring tells you all you need to know about the emotional journey the Canadian has been on to reach this point. People cared about Omega achieving the seemingly impossible in a way that Roman, sadly, could only dream about.

#4 Impact on the business

If there is one category you might expect Reigns and Lesnar to shine in it is this one. After all, they wrestle for the WWE and despite the growing popularity of New Japan amongst the Western audience, the McMahon-led promotion is still the epicentre of the world's professional wrestling intake.

The mere fact that these two have been fighting over both the WWE Championship and Universal Championship means their feud mattered. Forget match quality and the likability of the men involved, when you're defending or challenging for the biggest title in WWE, you are fighting for the biggest title in the entire industry.

Whether Omega and Okada managed to strike a bigger impact on the wrestling business has a lot to do with how wide you cast the net. In the short-term, they were not able to draw as much money and probably reached quite a small audience with their matches compared to the WWE's main eventers.

It might be tempting to exaggerate the impact these two made, but when you seriously look at the numbers, that fact is that more people cared about the outcome of WrestleMania 31 and 34 than they did about any Wrestle Kingdom, G1 or Dominion show the Japanese could muster.

That being said, if we are thinking more long-term, Okada and Omega most certainly has the ability to change the wrestling landscape going forward, especially when compared to the Lesnar/Reigns rivalry.

If, as many people are hoping, Omega can ride the waves of this sensational spotlight Okada has given him, NJPW could genuinely fulfil its dream of becoming a globally recognised brand with the ability to go head to head with WWE. Should that happen, we will be looking back at this rivalry as the place where it all began.

For better or worse, Lesnar and Reigns is still the go-to feud for professional wrestling in 2018 and whoever comes out on top of it will be placed firmly in the driving seat when it comes to directing the next 5-10 years of Sports Entertainment. Okada and Omega can only dream of having this level of impact, but what the future holds for them, only time will tell.

#5 Overall enjoyability

Perhaps the greatest criteria for judging Professional Wrestling is basic enjoyability factor. Wrestling is unlike other sports in the sense that we don't tend to just measure superstars on their win/loss record or the number of titles they have won.

Similarly we don't just judge how good a feud was based on the quality of matches or whether somebody put together a perfect promo. Underneath it all, we are allowed to just enjoy what we enjoy and nobody can really tell us any different.

Therefore this fifth criteria is largely subjective and as the one writing this, I am naturally influenced by my own opinion. The fact that I enjoyed Omega and Okada's feud more than the one between Reigns and Lesnar might mean very little to some people.

That being said, there are certain ways we can attempt to measure enjoyability objectively. First and foremost there is the internet and the general direction of conversation that took place online and across social media. Yes, there might be echo chambers within the IWC, but wrestling fans do tend to be quite sheep-like in their following of the herd.

Generally speaking, it does seem like the Reigns and Lesnar feud, when taking it in its entirety, was fairly negatively received. Whether it's the problems we have with Reigns as the top guy in WWE, or the fact that Lesnar has seemingly brought nothing but disdain to the Universal Championship by not turning up every week, fans always had something to moan about.

So much so, that when it came time for the matches, most of us felt rather fatigued and unable to actually enjoy the action. Never before in recent memory of Pro Wrestling has a feud come with such negative emotional baggage.

Omega and Okada's feud, at least on the surface, appears to have been received rather differently. Whether that is due to the influence of Meltzer is certainly a factor here, but like the Wrestling Observer, it seems that most fans didn't really have anything bad to say about the four matches these two competed in. Indeed, people are talking about it as the most important and impactful feud of modern Pro Wrestling - outside of WWE, at least.

But one cannot ignore the fact that the Western part of the audience for Omega/Okada was smaller in number. It is a little like the NXT/WWE Main Roster dynamic. It is easier to please the NXT audience because things are a lot more concentrated on a particular type of fan and you will naturally find more people around you that agree with your opinion, giving the illusion that everyone loves the product.

Imagine if the Okada/Omega feud was played out to a typical WWE main roster audience. Would New Japan have done enough to cater for everybody - adults, children, men, women etc? What would have happened to the feud if the promoters realised that large parts of their audience were not going for it? Would it have been made more 'family friendly' and generic like most current day WWE feuds?

Measuring enjoyability of wrestling is no easy task and we cannot just rely on the opinions of those we agree with. That being said, if you came looking for my personal take, Omega and Okada win this one too.

Which feud do you think is better out of the two? Tell us in the comments below!

Edited by Raunak J