[1994-06-03-AJPW-Super Power Series] Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Akira Taue & Tamon Honda

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Good match, but what I couldn't help but notice was how the crowd was fairly quiet for most of it. Considering that Misawa/Kawada has such an incredibly hot crowd, it just shows how they took the heat in the building to a new level. This picks up in the final few minutes. You'll see way better All Japan obviously, but I like having this on the yearbook anyway, to show what was happening on the undercard that night.

[Kevin Ridge]

Honda looks so different here from what I remember him looking like in NOAH. Kobashi and Taue in the ring provide some good stuff. Honda just feels like he don’t belong in this match. Would be fine with a smaller crowd. Though there is a nice segment of him making the ropes after being in a submission. Last few minutes do pick up and it’s a fine undercard match but still not sure why yearbook worthy.

[Loss]

**** in the WON.

[Exposer]

This was very good. It had it's not so great moments early on but like most AJPW matches it picked up towards the end. I did enjoy Kobashi and Taue's exchanges.

[soup23]

I think I will be higher on this than everyone else because I really enjoyed. Honda looked dare I say young here and it was nice to see Kobashi as the big dog on his team. Kobashi/Taue had spirited exchanges and overall Taue looked extra fired up getting more intensity on his nodowa's and hurling Akiyama with the powerbomb. I also bit on a couple of the false finished which is also refreshing. I could see this sneaking into my top 100 for the year.

[PeteF3]

I liked this a lot, too. Honda is raw but he was already carrying himself like a star and was way over from the start thanks to his Olympic background. One thing that I think has come through on these '93 and '94 Yearbooks is that between Akiyama, Omori, and Honda so far, AJPW had building blocks for a post-Four Corners world that simply never materialized. Jun was thought to be a future legend, and maybe Omori and Honda weren't quite at the level of Kawada and Kobashi--but it's hard to hold it against them that they weren't once-a-generation talents. They've shown enough to me so far that they should have gone farther in All-Japan than they did. Instead, they were mired in the mid-card even into NOAH, while Jun became just another guy. Tracking these guys' development or lack thereof will be an interesting part of the late-'90s Yearbooks.