[1994-04-16-AJPW-Championship Carnival] Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Stan Hansen & Giant Baba & Takao Omori

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Great match! Of all the Baba matches to make yearbooks, this is the one that I think has had the best performance from him. He works so well with Kobashi. Really cool to see the differing crowd reactions based on who is in the ring. Feels like something from a couple of years earlier, but maybe a little bit better than your run-of-the-mill 1992 six-man because the action level is a notch better. Kobashi finishes off Omori with a vertical suplex into a Tiger Driver, which I'm sure has a name I don't know. I enjoyed this more than anything in the Carnival (having not yet seen the final).

[Ditch]

The finisher is the Orange Crush.

 

I vividly recall the confusion someone had when I asked them to upload this. Essentially a knee-jerk "but it's a match with '94 Baba and Omori!". Well, it's GOOD, darn it!

[jdw]

Thoughts from the 94 Carny recommendation posts:

 

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Here were my comments in the 1995 Carny Pimping Post:

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The six-man is a pretty good match. Strange to re-read Dave's comment that they worked over Omori for the first 10 minutes since that isn't really the case. Hansen's all fired especially at Kobashi. There are a few times in here where Omori is sloppy, and he doesn't really work as well with Misawa or Kobashi as he does with Jun in this one. Misawa's level of interest is extremely low relative to the others. That looks to change when Omori nails a really good looking backdrop on him, and you think we're going to get some Misawa In Peril. That... doesn't last long. I love Misawa, but he's just not feeling it in this series. []

The finish is one of those Great-Bad things. Kobashi hits a Super Cool New Dangerous Move: the Organge Bomb. It's awesome... it's cool... it looks like he damn near kills Omori with it. But... rewind five minutes. Listen to the heat when Kobashi and Hansen are going at it, and it looks like Hansen might get his payback win for the two jobs. It's quite loud, and there seem to be a fair number of fans wanting Stan to win (along with the large number of fans pulling for Kenta). Then Omori tags in... and heat gets sucked out of the building because fans know he's not going to stay on top, and we're going to have The Expected Finish. Sure enough, someone pins Omori. It's not like Kenta needs this win, despite losing to Doc the night before. This really was a time where they could have crossed things up on the Big Card and had Stan chop his head off. Hell, at the last Budokan:

Misawa & Kobashi over Baba & Hansen when Misawa pinned Baba

If *Baba* can clean job to Misawa, then Kobashi could sure as hell clean job to Hansen a few days after Stan gave Kenta the biggest singles win of his career. And I think the fans would have rocked for it, since they really were on edge when it looked like it was going to happen.

Anyway, it's a keeper.

 

 

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Newer comments: I like the match, and it had a lot of Cool Stuff in it. But I'm not close to as high on it as Loss, and would rate it behind quite a bit of the Carny stuff... including stuff left off like Kawada-Jun and Doc-Jun. Those may be lesser matches in Cool Stuff, but had tighter storylines in showing Jun's growth. This... it's a pretty standard six-man tag, just dropped in a big setting of Budokan.

 

Looking at the individuals:

 

While Hansen and Kenta are fired up, you usually get at least two guys in a standard six-man who are working fired up (and in the better ones *most* of the six are working that way). I wouldn't say this is either Stan or Kenta at their best In This Series. Stan was better in the singles against Kenta and Taue, and frankly better in the six mans that were (deservedly) left on the cutting room floor where he was really carry a massive amount of the load for his teams in making them watchable. Kenta... he was better in the match against Stan, and probably against Doc and Taue (including the one properly left off). I don't think he worked well with Omori in it, which is on Omori to a degree... but they worked well enough in the six-man earlier in the year. Here... it seemed that Kenta was intent on putting on the Kenta Show, more so that he had been at any point this year so far. Which Misawa was fine with (more below), and Jun *never* in the decade tried to outshine Kenta when partnering with him. A great "Hey! Cool Shit!" performance out of Kenta, but compared to some of the more substantial stuff we saw out of AJPW in the Carny, not really a great all around performance.

 

Misawa... phoned it in. A perfect capper to a Carny series where he just wasn't there, whether it was due to legit injuries (which caused them to work the injury angle) or mental strain or both. Perhaps that another thing to add to the Kawada-Misawa match in the series: they were able to work a Really Good Flair Match in a series where Misawa looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but in the ring. Whether that's a sign of just how good Misawa-Kawada worked together in this first year plus of their rivalry (yes) or just how great Kawada was at this period of his very peak (yes!) or a combo of both (that one), it's a really stunning contrast to what anyone else got out of Misawa in this series. In this match... just not too interesting.

 

On Baba, I liked him here, but as one of the bigger supporters of Good Baba in this period, it's kind of odd looking at those comments above and seeing nothing aimed at the quality of Baba's performance. I spent more time on earlier six-mans that I didn't pimp for inclusion than this. I just don't think his performance in this match has ever struck me as being at the level of his one on 11/30/93 opposite Misawa & Kobashi when he was really, really, really Good Baba.

 

On Jun, he wasn't as good in this as he was against Doc and Kawada in the two matches mentioned. While he worked fine with Omori, there are a number of matches on the cutting room floor where he worked better, not just the six-man that was pimped, but also the young guns tourney final which was really pretty entertaining and solid. Not sure I'd say it was a Jun carry job, but he probably was the senior guy leading things, Jun looked very good, and actually looked really good in making Omori look good.

 

Omori... this wasn't one of his better performances. Just didn't click as well with Misawa and Kobashi as he had in the earlier six-man. At times didn't click well with Stan and Baba as partners, despite working with them the entire series. Then got sucked into the finish run, which the crowd just knew what was going to happen and checked themselves down.

 

Then there was the finish run as talked about above. If this was going to be the Kobashi Show, it really needed him to have his head chopped off by Stan rather than the expected finish. The only thing that really saved the finish was the Cool Move, and I'm a little nonplussed on that one.

 

I like the match. But toss it in Korakuen Hall and comp it to the 01/20/94 Misawa & Kobashi & Akiyama vs. Kawada & Taue & Omori (which isn't even a GREAT~! AJPW Six-Man) and I think it ends up being just another good AJPW six-man rather than a really good one.

 

John

[Kevin Ridge]

Commentary is a mess. The live crowd gives this match a boost. Kobashi and Baba are great. Love seeing Baba get up for these matches as just looks like he is having a lot of fun in there. Pretty cool chop exchange between Kobashi and Baba. Hansen and Kobashi have their moments also. Misawa seems to be just there and going through the motions. One of the few times I have seen the Orange Crush from Kobashi. There was better stuff in the Carnival but this did have it's fun moments.

[Exposer]

I thought this was a lot of fun and a very good match. Baba was watchable in this and I enjoyed the Hansen-Kobashi exchanges. The finish was insane and I couldn't believe the shit when I saw it. However, there were parts in this that dragged and Misawa, Jun, and Omori could have had better nights. This was still an exciting and very good match though.

[soup23]

Good six man. Hansens work on the apron was very good here with giving instruction to Omori early on and his staredown with Kenta. The nearfall of the moonsault on Baba with Kobashi was excellent. The orange Crush looked really awesome in its debut.

[PeteF3]

Really good 6-man--honestly I liked it about as much as any AJPW 6-man from '93. Poor Omori gets to be a punching bag again, and predictably does the job. Kobashi busts out the Orange Crush for the first time and while it looks great, you can see why Kobashi didn't really keep it around for long. It would have been better on Kenta's knees but a lot worse for everyone else on the roster.