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[1997-06-06-AJPW] Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada


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  • 1 month later...

Wow, this was the worst Misawa vs Kawada match I've ever seen. It's not a great match, but I didn't even really think it was that good. It has tons of down time. I'm all for slower paced matches built around selling, but these guys don't engage anyone the way they are doing it here. And that's probably because a lot of the downtime isn't selling, it's just aimless. Of course, an off night for these two is still going to have some redeeming value, but I was shocked at how mediocre I thought this match was. And on top of all of that, this match didn't really add anything new to the rivalry. Misawa beat Kawada again first of all, but also, it's not like the way the match was worked revealed anything new about either guy, except that Misawa is now doing the pop-up/delayed selling thing, which I pretty much despise in my wrestling. The end was just a bunch of headdrops to pop the crowd with not too much meaning beyond that and no structure to the spots. Just when I was going to at least give them credit for the KO finish, putting Misawa on a knockout streak in 1997, Kawada kicked out and Misawa half-assed him through a suplex to take this home. This match never really pulled me in, despite that I hoped to really like it. Anti-climatic in just about every way.

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I actually really like the match where Kawada breaks his arm that comes after this chronologically so it's not like they never had a great match again. Agreed that of their major bouts, this isn't one I'd have anywhere near the top.

 

I'd still take it over a billion other things, but I'm an All Japan mark so take that how you will.

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I feel it's worth pointing out that they were fucked from the start: they had nowhere to go. They'd done the "Kawada is hot off winning the Carnival, but Misawa fights him off" in '94, "Kawada is hot off pinning Misawa for the first time, but Misawa fights him off" in '95... this was only ever going to be a "marking time" match. There was nothing else they could do but "do stuff", lay in their strikes more than I ever remember them doing, and tack on a finish.

 

Where this has always fell apart to me is not with the backdrop drivers, but with the triangle choke. Had Kawada finally hit the powerbomb there, it might have been the most ludicrous "near fall" ever, but also a brilliant one and, whilst they'd still have detractors, make the backdrop drivers "make sense". Cue the trademark drawn-out comeback -> finish. I get that the reality was Kawada wanting to keep his "rule of three" for the powerbombs... but if the kayfabe idea is that he wanted to make a statement by submitting Misawa (or having him pass out), it was too early in the feud for that. In their second '99 match that would've made sense (talk about a bleh match between them), but here when he hasn't pinned Misawa decisively in a singles match? The excuse doesn't wash.

 

They weren't working as smart as they had before (it's most notable in the transitions, including that final one), and they didn't have the comparative arsenals to do the "equals" mirrored match that Misawa and Kobashi did in October, though relative to the development of the feuds it would've made more sense here... I mean, it's worth pointing out that their version of "just doing stuff" is better than almost anyone, there're some wonderful "collapse" spots here (an even better one in the Taue match a month later*), they really lay in the strikes (especially early to build strong heat from the off - though the "silent for the first twenty" is slightly misnomic anyway)... but as a whole (particularly relative to their previous three TC matches) it's just... there.

 

*As for the Taue match, I'll re-watch it either tonight or tomorrow as I remember, until the botched finish, it being their second best match together, with the strongest story amongst their later matches (which were, almost as a rule, sprints) and two of my favourite/best ever AJ spots... though, yeah, the finish is urgh.

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There was so much time in this match where they weren't doing anything at all. Kawada walked around the ringside area for what seemed like an eternity while Misawa stood there. So many idle moments like that where nothing AT ALL was happening. They also seemed to be working in slow motion for a lot of this match, to a point where I'm guessing one or both of them was working severely injured.

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Was the 1996 Carny poorly represented on tape? I know the only stuff on the yearbook came from the 3/31 and 4/20 shows. And I don't think I've even seen a clip of the Misawa-Kawada draw.

Wasn't taped as far as I recall. The shots in the mags made it look hot, and it's the match where Misawa had his chin split open with (I think) a rolling kick from the photos. It's the point at which the scar showed up. Anyway... it's just photos, so who knows. But it did look hot.

 

On this one at the time... yeah... they didn't have much place to go. At this point they either needed Kawada to beat him at a Budokan or Misawa to win the title back from Kawada holding it. The booking allowed for neither.

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You're right. Actually aired on TV:

 

5/12/96 - All Japan (Taped 4/20 Tokyo):

Haruka Eigen/Ryukaku Izumida vs. Rusher Kimura/Mitsuo Momota

Masa Fuchi/Yoshinari Ogawa/Masao Inoue vs. Giant Baba/Satoru Asako/Kentaro Shiga

Champion Carnival Highlights: Akira Taue vs. Stan Hansen; Steve Williams vs. Toshiaki Kawada; Kenta Kobashi vs. Gary Albright; Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada; Akira Taue vs. Steve Williams

 

There also was this:

 

4/14/96 - All Japan (Taped 3/31 Nagoya) Highlights:

Steve Williams vs. Tamon Honda

Gary Albright vs. Jun Akiyama

Stan Hansen vs. Gary Albright (4/10 Kobe)

Kenta Kobashi vs. Steve Williams (4/10 Kobe)

 

So 3/31 had full commercial releases of Kawada-Taue and Misawa-Kobashi if I recall correctly?

 

Assuming Akira Taue vs. Steve Williams on there is the Final (which it has to be given the placement), breaking the rest up into dates:

 

04/08/96 Akira Taue vs. Stan Hansen (15:08)

04/08/96 Steve Williams vs. Toshiaki Kawada (17:30)

04/14/96 Kenta Kobashi vs. Gary Albright (14:09)

04/14/96 Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada (30:00)

04/10/96 Stan Hansen vs. Gary Albright (11:26)

04/10/96 Kenta Kobashi vs. Steve Williams (27:53)

 

As my brain was fuzzy on the 4/14/96 Misawa vs Kawada, was 4/8 a similar multi-camera pro-shoots? My recollection of 4/10, which was Kobashi's first win over Doc, was that it was a single ring-side camera, basically just sent there to capture the moment.

 

04/08/96 also has Misawa vs Honda (10:10)... morbidly interesting. Albright & Ace & Patriot vs Kobashi & Akiyama & Omori (17:51) is the six-man... eh.

 

04/14/96 has a Taue vs Patriot (15:38) that would be interesting as this is pretty much Peak Taue, so it would be interesting to see what they can do. Given all of the Four Corners are in singles, we're not likely to have an interesting six-man on the card.

 

The other things that are strange from that series:

 

* Neither of the opening two nights at Korakuen Hall made TV:

 

03/22/96:

http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=24707

Carnival: Jun Akiyama defeats Takao Omori (3:15)

Carnival: Stan Hansen defeats Tamon Honda (4:59)

Carnival: Akira Taue drew Kenta Kobashi (30:00)

 

That feels almost like it's booked for TV in the AJPW 30 slot: two quick matches, then they can JIP Taue-Kobashi to fill out the balance since it's yet another one of their draws.

 

03/23/96

http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=24708

 

Carnival:Gary Albright defeats Tamon Honda (8:26)

Carnival: Steve Williams defeats Jun Akiyama (8:15)

Carnival: Toshiaki Kawada defeats The Patriot (7:51)

Carnival: Mitsuharu Misawa draws Johnny Ace (30:00)

 

That again feels like it could be booked for TV: under 10 minutes for Doc-Jun and Kawada-Patriot, while they could JIP the last 5 or so minutes of Misawa-Ace.

 

Instead, here's what TV got on 3/24/96:

 

3/24/96 - All Japan (Taped 3/2 Tokyo):

Johnny Ace/The Patriot vs. Takao Omori/Maunakea Mossman

Stan Hansen vs. Tamon Honda

Abdullah The Butcher/Kamala II vs. Giant Baba/Haruka Eigan

 

A 4th week of the first Budokan of the year, and totally scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

Fucking strange.

 

3/31 got major air time on TV, plus the commercial release. 4/14 looks like it's not just "cheap pro shoot" like the 1994 & 1995 Carny sets with studio voice over, but TV level "live commentary". So where in the hell was that stuff intended to air? They did 4 weeks off the Finals at Budokan, with the 3rd week useless and a big chunk of the 4th week these highlights. Had they originally planned for 4/21/96 TV to be Misawa-Kawada, pushing the Final back a week?

 

Really fucking strange.

 

I've long thought the did a shitty job with the 30 (actually about 22-25 minutes) of TV that they had each week... but have ignored trying to put into words just how badly the botched it / wasted valuable air time because it would make my head hurt. Here's a fine example.

 

I'll have to see if I've got that 5/12/96 TV show laying around at home to check whether 04/08/96 was a similar pro shoot with live commentary.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hadn't watched this in a long time and went in hoping to find something redeeming. But no, the criticism is merited. Misawa gave a tuned-out performance and Kawada a nonsensical one. The armwork from Kawada was fine in theory, but they pushed it too long for it to be meaningless, yet not far enough for it to carry real weight. We didn't get any kind of great, layered comeback from Misawa. He was either on or off. And Kawada made some really strange decisions, like following a string of head drops with a submission attempt on the arm he hadn't worked. The crowd even shit on that one. Anyway, despite all the punishment to his neck, Misawa never seemed in danger of losing. The finishing stretch, with Kawada, trying to survive, was pretty good. But even that felt like a lower-quality version of something they'd already done. Definite low point in their great rivalry.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Misawa hits loads of forearms and roaring elbows before topping things off with a Tiger Driver on the floor. They keep doing the same thing of having one dodge/block move, your turn to dodge/block move and then headrop/head shot before which leads to a moment of nothing happening. This is repeated a bunch. I don’t recall seeing Kawada do so much head dropping suplexes in a match. He is also doing a bunch of laying around. The finish looks terrible and Misawa wins with a forearm smash but the match continues? Misawa puts Kawada away with a German after. They have set such a high level of quality of matches between themselves that getting a poorly laid out match and awful looking finish was just sad to watch. I could accept one of both guys being legit banged up going in.

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  • 1 month later...

Disappointing match indeed. Although, I'm still confused by the finish to this day. Does Kawada really kick out of the elbow? Does Kyohei mess up and think it's not the finish? I just don't see any movement from Kawada on the count, and it seems like the crowd itself is confused on why it wasn't three.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would say this was good but did feel a lot like a treading water match. No new ground was broke and this was hurt in the yearbook concept. When I watched this through my big AJPW watch, I knew it wasn't as high quality as what came before it, but it does seem kind of sad that almost every other promotion in the world is on this big hot streak, and stuff feels really stunted here. I think Kawada was legit loopy for the final elbow exchange as the german felt really tacked on. The final sequence was very high impact but nothing that led to it really resonated. Probably up there with 7/99 and Carnival 98 as their worst matches.

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  • 1 month later...

I've read a lot of criticism for this match and each time I watch it I expect to be horribly disappointed, yet each time I always end up amazed at what these guys did. I'll admit that I first watched this around 2010ish when all that stuff about concussions was coming out and I got a massively perverse enjoyment just from seeing the crazy shit these guys were doing to each other, but I still contend that there's a beautiful story under all that and I discover a little more of it every time I see it. This time, I was really struck by the ways that Kawada was able to project this incredible desire to win while still finding ways to get the crowd into Misawa's comeback. I love that moment early on when Misawa shows a slight expression of pain after elbowing Kawada and Kawada viciously goes after it immediately thereafter like a shark who sees blood. The way that Misawa then makes a comeback using that same elbow works great as a "fuck you" spot, but it doesn't feel like a waste of time when Kawada briefly goes back to it to cut off Misawa.

 

The transition towards the second half comes when Misawa sells his neck after a strike exchange as if it aggravated some old injury from the Kobashi matches, and again Kawada goes after it with all he can. The spot with 3 consecutive backdrop drivers is absolutely insane and I have no idea how people can criticize them for selling too much when they're doing shit like that to each other. I can kind of see that spawning the claims of this being the point the point where King's Road had nowhere else to go and became a more a spot-oriented style, but I think the resulting "Thrilla in Manilla" vibe, where it feels like it's two old rivals pushing each other within an inch of death, only adds to the match. I'd also say that if you compare the usage of those moves to even something like their 7/95 match, this one was actually farther from the myth of the style degenerating into spotfests built around head drops.

 

Also, I think it's pretty clear the triangle choke Kawada did later was not meant as a "submission attempt on the arm he hadn't worked" what with the referee checking if Misawa was still conscious and the camera being focused on his facials. The crowd did seem caught off-guard but they definitely didn't shit on it when they soon started chanting Misawa's name and were stomping their feet when he reached the ropes. If you think about it, it's actually a pretty brilliant spot both from the working perspective of giving the audience an opportunity to appreciate Misawa's tenacity and from the kayfabe perspective of Kawada just trying whatever he can to keep Misawa down when he couldn't even get him up for a powerbomb after the aforementioned 3 backdrop drivers and a stretch plum.

 

I also don't think the "delayed selling" should be counted against the match purely for its presence. It worked excellently to get across how deep both guys were digging and to get across their history where they both knew a single string of big moves could end the match. I love how they play up the finish to their 92 and 93 TC matches when Misawa starts pulling out the tiger suplexes and Kawada is just desperate to not stay down because he knows the doom that would spell for him. My favorite moment of the match is when Misawa hits a tiger suplex and Kawada immediately pops up, tries to support himself with the ropes, but still slowly slumps down like a tree that's been chopped down. His desire to win continued to burn but his body couldn't keep up. Right there is the central theme of the match, as anyone who saw their prior matches knows that Kawada didn't seem able to keep up with Misawa's classical perseverance in a long match, and this was him trying to overcome it with his sheer will to win.

 

The only criticism in here I can agree with somewhat is the referee botching the finish, but even that, knowing what we do now about taking shots after getting concussed, just adds to the sense of of primal brutality that they had created throughout the match. That visual of a groggy Kawada being hoisted up for a sloppy german after he had already been KO'd by Misawa's elbows almost transcends merely being apart of the match and becomes its own philosophical statement. It is like an exclamation point to Kawada and Misawa having pushed the concept of pro wrestling pushed to its limit. When I watch matches like this there is a slight sense of guilt knowing the ill effects that this style has on the body, but when I see these guys being forced into that finish by a veteran referee in front of hardcore fans who had been screaming madly from the opening bell, I am overcome with a calm resignation in understanding that it simply is what it is.

 

Edit: Also just remembered this quote from Misawa's Japanese Wikipedia page. Though it would be worth putting here, especially with someone implying before that this match's rep is just Meltzer craziness

 

"三沢が川田と対戦した1997年6月6日の三冠統一ヘビー級王座のタイトルマッチは、馬場が「あまりにもすごい」と涙したほど激しい試合として知られる," which Google Translate says the match is known for being so violent it had Baba crying and saying how great it was.

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  • 11 months later...

I thought this was really great. Kawada gave an amazing performance. I think most of the criticism posted in this thread could also be applied to many of their other matches, so I don't see how this is their "worst". Kawada mixing in shooty offense, including some nifty judo trips and a great deadlift german to get Misawa was different and Misawa's selling was flawless. As usual, they got huge reactions with really simple stuff like the corner position switch at the beginning or Misawa countering the submission attempts by almost crushing Kawada's face with a knee drop. There were lots of nifty little things like that - the arm work being set up by Misawa blocking a kick, Kawada hurting himself countering a flying attack, Kawada not quite being the same after eating the Tiger Driver on the floor and tanking, etc. Also, the match never felt repititive. I've noticed that in other matches, it would seem like Kawada would hit a dozen Yakuza kicks and then another dozen gamengiris, here everything was varied with both guys figuring out how to get past eachothers guard, and each big blow being extremely well timed. Too bad about the finish, but aside from that I thought this was tremendous, and easily better than their match earlier in the year or their 2000s matches.

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  • 9 months later...

You know, the frustrating thing about this is that I think there IS a kernel of a very good match waiting to be unearthed here...but those damned head-drops get in the way. Not only are they wince-inducing in the bad kind of way in a post-Benoit, post-Misawa world, but the way they're sold is so horribly inconsistent. For the first chunk of the match they serve as Randy Savage's reviving elbow--each one that hits seemingly only serves to fire the opponent up so they can make a quick comeback. Then in the middle they're tossed off without a second thought, one after the other--I don't think a single pin attempt was made after any of them. Then at the end they go back to it and Misawa Hulks Up again, knocking Kawada out with an elbow before collapsing and then going to a few head-drops of his own. I don't think a single one of those suplexes did a thing to add to the match, and none of them are treated with any consequence in their own right. I also agree with the earlier posts that going to the triangle choke was a baffling decision--one thing that continues to stand out is an observation I've made earlier: AJPW has gotten so far away from submissions that Misawa's facelock, the hold that tapped Jumbo, is applied in the first 10-ish minutes of the match and draws no reaction whatsoever. Kawada's Stretch Plum *did* get a pop, because he was still pinning guys after applying it at this point. But the triangle choke? Nothing--confusion at best, and was applied at a time when Misawa looked "out" and ripe for a pin. In New Japan that spot might have worked. Here it just sticks out like a sore thumb. It's almost the equivalent of Bret pinning Austin after a rolling elbow. Then we get the botched finish with somebody--I don't know who for sure but I'm inclined to blame Kyohei Wada for not officiating it like a shoot--blowing the last near-fall horribly. I wasn't all that invested in the match by then anyway but that completely took me out of it.

 

(Also, forget the rule of 3's for a minute...did Kawada hit *one* power bomb here? I don't recall seeing one--I only remember him trying one and Misawa huracanrana'ing him.)

 

All those criticisms just have me shaking my head, because the counter-wrestling spots they did were nice--I got more enjoyment out of Misawa doubling Kawada over and then dropkicking him, or Kawada's wobbly dazed sell of an elbow or kick against the ropes. They still had enough in them to tell a compelling story if they wanted, but every time things got going another damned head-drop suplex served to get in the way. I didn't even think about the booking, but I agree that in the end nothing was added to the ongoing story here. If Kawada can't pin Misawa *now* when it really counts, when is he? Looking at this feud as one match, we've reached the "self-conscious epic" stage where we're having near-falls for the sake of near-falls and the audience is in danger of being taken out of the story. Kawada's eventual victory now feels like it'll be an arbitrary booking decision rather than the culmination of a years-long story.

 

In the end, I didn't dislike this as much as Loss, because most of the between-headdrop stuff was pretty good and the downtime wasn't one of the things that bothered me, but it sure isn't anything resembling the great matches of '92-'96.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1997-06-06-AJPW] Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada

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