Timbo Slice Posted April 26, 2014 Report Share Posted April 26, 2014 I think if you look closely in the Kawada/Kobashi TC match, you can see the leash Kawada uses to carry him. God, what a horrible booking decision that was by Baba. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 26, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 26, 2014 Honestly, I think Kawada was done by that point as a serious threat to hang onto the TC for any amount of time. They killed it by waiting too long for the big singles win over Misawa. And I would agree that Kawada made that match what it was. Kobashi as the main guy in a match tended to go way overboard, and Misawa never seemed to reel him in. Kawada and Taue were the only ones who looked like they could keep some of Kobashi's more annoying tendencies in check. Holy Demon Army vs. Kakihara/Takayama 7/19/98 Really liking the new faces in 97/98. Kakihara vs. Kawada is all sorts of fun. Kawada sells a left hand palmstrike by kakihara as a flash KO then gets his revenge later, the Kawada way. Takayama has a pretty small role in this. We all know how this turns out. Kobashi/Mossman(or Kea) vs. Akiyama/Hase 7/19/98 Have I mentioned my love of watching Hiroshi Hase wrestle? If I haven't, I probably should. He does an incredible job especially with Mossman here. Akiyama has a title match with Kobashi in a week, so he decides to tear up the injured knee as much as possible. Kobashi does some of his annoying stuff but mostly stays with the rest of the match. Hase pins Mossman, which makes sense given the upcoming title match. Taue/Izumida vs. Albright/Takayama 7/24/98 Izumida takes on Takayama and looks like he's going to be able to put him away, then that big Albright guy decides that's not happening. They tease Taue making it happen anyway a couple of times, Taue gets claps (GASP) for breking up pins. Izumida kicks out of the running legdrop from Takayama that looks to be his finisher. A second puts the plucky undercard guy that the crowd loves away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2014 Kawada/Omori vs. Hase/Mossman(Kea) 7/24/98 Clips to the Kawada vs. Hase parts, which are gold. Big finishing sequence while Omori and Mossman mess around on the floor. Very short and very worth it. Akiyama vs. Kobashi 7/24/98 Triple Crown You know how I pointed out last post that when Kobashi is the senior guy in the ring he lets his bad habits get out of control? Yeah, watch this match and tell me I'm wrong. Anyway, Akiyama has tons of great stuff for Kobashi's injured knee. And he starts prickishly early. Kobashi's nonsense starts about the ten minute mark, is broken up by the legwork, then starts to get really irritating. Bleh. Kobashi/Ace vs. Taue/Honda 8/23/98 Kobashi and Taue have a triple crown match coming up, so we clip to their stuff. Which is brilliant. Finish is unexpected for the nature of the match. Misawa/Akiyama/Asako vs. Kobashi/Omori/Ogawa 8/23/98 JIP, but we get 13 minutes of awesome. Asako is spunky and won't be intimidated by Kawada. Akiyama wants a piece of Ogawa. Ogawa shows lots of fire in giving him more than he bargains for. Ogawa also avoids being Misawa's bitch! Kawada kicks people in the face. Omori is hit and miss, but some of his hit is really good. Misawa takes an Omori missile dropkick for Asako, what a nice guy. Finish is completely out of the blue but awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2014 Holy Demon Army vs. Kobashi/Mossman 8/29/98 More Kobashi vs. Taue, with some Kobashi vs. Kawada thrown in. Good tag match, Mossman takes the fall to a Dynamic Bomb. Kawada vs. Kakihara 9/11/98 Kawada gives Kakihara the early part of the match. The best part of this is how steam starts rising off of Kawada as he does a (sort of) slow boil to the point where he's done playing nice. Then Kakihara should probably have run away. Akiyama vs. Ogawa 9/11/98 Odd matchup to be as good as this was. Ogawa starts out hot, looks like he's gonna take a beating for sure, then moves and Akiyama does the ring post shoulder bump. Ogawa takes full advantage, cutting off Akiyama until he gets royally pissed. Akiyama destroys the skinny little runt until Ogawa starts this huge run of nearfalls. Seriously epic stuff for an 11 minute match. Then we get to the inevitable, but Ogawa struggles all the way until the end against it. About halfway through, they cut to Misawa watching nervously from the back and keep going back. And the crowd is so fucking behind Ogawa. If I had to put any kind of label on this, it's the best WCW cruiserweight underdog match of all time. In front of a Korakuen crowd that loves underdogs. Featuring Akiyama as your ass-kicker big man. Fuck, for an undercard match this is hugely awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 '98 All Japan is not going to make anyone forget '93, but they still produced plenty of very good matches at a time when most wrestling was cruddy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 Taue vs. Kobashi 9/11/98 Triple Crown Holy crap this was an amazing wrestling match. Probably the defining Taue vs. Kobashi for me. Very little noselling shenanigans and head drops. Just a slow build to a really heated finish between two guys who know how to do that very well. Kobashi is so Jekyl and Hyde, but when he's not bad he's fucking amazing. Holy Demon Army vs. Burning 10/11/98 Tag Titles So the good Kobashi shows up again here. Along with Akiyama, Kawada and Taue. Kawada and Taue dominate early, but Akiyama and Kobashi give them a run for their money when they get their turn. There is so much awesome here. Akiyama gets his foot caught in the open gate when Taue boots him over the guard rail outside. Ouch. Think the Holy Demon Army has any kind of mercy on that? Taue ends up in a cloverleaf and Kawada decides that working over the legit injury isn't enough and knee drops the back of his head. Oh how I love Toshiaki Kawada. Kobashi fights off both members of the Holy Demon Army right away, appears to be going down to the numbers game when Akiyama comes storming back in! Burning has some really sweet double teams. Kawada gets worked over huge and Taue has to carry the team for a while. And does. There is a portion of this match called "The Akira Taue Show" I swear. Finish is all kinds of All Japan tag atch goodness. That's 3 great All Japan matches today, all in late 1998. And one of them had Yoshinari Ogawa as it's main focus. Finding stuff like that is awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fxnj Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USi_l4Okkbg When you get to it, watch this version of Misawa/Kobashi 10/98. Great quality and crazy post-match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 29, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2014 Kobashi/Shinzaki vs. Misawa/Omori 10/24/98 Misawa vs. Kobashi a week before the big one. Clipped to Hell, but given that it was Shinzaki and Omori I'm thankful. Kobashi uses the burning hammer to *gasp* pin Misawa, Must have been the first time he used it, since whatever the awesome play-by-play guy's name is calls it a backbreaker. Holy Demon Army vs. Takayama/Kakihara 10/31/98 Okay, whoever's entrance theme that plays for the UWFi guys has a kickass theme. Muddy Waters baby! And then the Kawada theme comes on, trying to decide which song is cooler. Takayama is so very not over going into this. kakihara is, and the match has a lot to say about why. Tak really doesn't have the confidence in his kicks yet. And his chops and elbows are less stiff than Taue's. When you are in matches with guys like Kakihara and Kawada, weak kicks stand out (see: Akira Taue). His knees are big, but all he is are knees and suplexes at this point, and being able to take damage like a tank. Kakihara is great as the cocky, quick shootstyle guy playing tag with Kawada. Kawada plays his game a while, while Taue tires of it very quickly and gets in close enough to do his power stuff. Kawada doing his slow burn on Kakihara is always fun to watch. Holy Demon Army isolates Takayama and really throw a beating on him to set up the nodowa for 3. Tomorrow is that one match. Between these two kind of well-known guys. I think it goes kind of long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted April 29, 2014 Report Share Posted April 29, 2014 I'd bet that's Takayama's song, he's a big America-phile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted April 30, 2014 Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 When you get to it, watch this version of Misawa/Kobashi 10/98. Great quality and crazy post-match. That backstage is depressing to watch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted April 30, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 Misawa vs. Kobashi 10/31/98 Triple Crown I loved this match. In fact, I liked it better than either 1997 match. Less senseless head drops, only a couple of really questionable nosells, and a slow build to a nuclear hot finish. Kobashi working the arm early for as long as he does was pretty pointless, I'll take that away from it. Misawa, oddly enough, blows a couple of spots. We find out after the match why when he has 6 or 7 other wrestlers decompress his fucking spine. I think the thing to take away from that is that every one of the Four Corners, Misawa more than the rest, put a terrible amount of wear and tear on themselves to work this way in the usually very controlled manner that they did. I can only hope that the wrestlers who work in puro today and deal with a far more head-drop centric style understand how to do it a little safer. Otherwise you're going to see a lot of real problems for big names in puroresu as time goes on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 1, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2014 Hansen/Vader vs. Misawa/Ogawa 11/14/98 RWTL Immediately upon seeing the matchup I thought of a Frank Caliendo joke about odd actor pairings in movies. "Robert Deniro, Al Pacino and Richard Dreyfuss in, "Guess Who Got His Ass Kicked." And oh boy, does Ogawa ever get the beatdown thrown on him for every second he is in the ring. Misawa tries to fight off the monster gaijin team after Ogawa has been elft for dead, but Vader squashes him like a bug too. Holy Demon Army vs. Misawa/Shinzaki 1/15/99 There is a tag title match before this one I will watch, but tonight I am in short match mode. Kawada and Misawa have some truly great, intense exchanges that are freaking amazing. Shinzaki...well, let's not talk about him too much because he was passable here. Misawa lays into Kawada late to set up the Misawa/Shinzaki control segment and avenge himself for a few earlier thrashings. Taue decides that he's seen enough and clears out both members of the opposite team with nodowas. Kawada finishes Shinzaki with a powerbomb, without that stupid praying shit beforehand. 1998 was pretty sweet. Kobashi did really well except for the Akiyama match for not giving in to his bad tendencies. Kakihara got a little more confident and his stuff with Kawada was great. Ogawa had a knock-your-socks-off great match with Akiyama. Vader showed up and kicked the crap out of Ogawa and Misawa. All very good things. Wish I had more complete RWTL stuff given the teams involved, but 1998 was actually better than 1997 for the pre-RWTL tours as far as I'm concerned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 2, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 2, 2014 Holy Demon Army vs. Burning 1/7/99 Tag Titles Kawada is getting his leg worked over after a big clip. Kobashi, taped up head and all (his left eye) is recovering from something. Kawada finally gets the tag and the Holy Demon Army work over Kobashi for a while, then Akiyama. Burning gets their big run of stuff, we end up with Taue vs. Kobashi. Kobashi and Taue hit lariats at the same time, Kobashi follows with a second to take the titles away. Good tag match, but too much Kobashi fighting spirit crap. Also, when a wrestler tapes an injury, they ought to put a big red target on the tape. Kobashi vs. Vader 1/15/99 Vader's entrance is pretty sweet, menacing the crowd with a chair. Kobashi tries playing Vader's game throughout, brawling rather than doing his thing. Kobashi does hit a sweet vertical suplex on Vader. Vader crushes Kobashi like a bug with a splash and Kobashi looks like he's gonna puke. More Kobashi fighting spirit and the match kind of loses me. The Vader moonsault brings me back as Vader hits that for a nearfall, then two of those vaulting body splashes off the first rope for a nearfall, then a jumping splash off the second rope for three. I think vader just took inches off of Kobashi's stomach. A concerned Akiyama tells reporters how Kobashi is kind of fucked up after the match (I think, I don't know Japanese), and Vader complains that gaijin don't get chances at the Triple Crown in a somewhat confused manner. Match had a little unfamiliarity at certain points, but was definitely a fun brawl. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted May 2, 2014 Report Share Posted May 2, 2014 I'm still working my way through RWTL '98 footage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 Misawa vs. Kawada 1/22/99 Triple Crown Great exchange early, looks like it was supposed to be sprint-y build. Then Kawada breaks his arm doing some kind of spinning back chop/fist to the back of Misawa's head. Misawa reacts pretty damn good, getting some elbows and a quick tigerdriver nearfall in place of whatever it is they had in mind. Kawada eventually gets himself back into the match after Misawa leads him through some stuff. They don't blow any of their previous matches out of the water, but it's like the match where Kawada breaks Misawa's face. It's impressive they worked their way to the finish with what happened. Now, I do have several burning questions. #1 WHY THE FUCK did Misawa not call off the ganso bomb spot? Letting a one-armed man drop you vertically on your head has got to be one of the crazier things I've ever seen. #2 Given that the spot happens, why did they not just go with the 3 on that? I get the idea they wanted the brainbuster to be considered dangerous for the future, but really? You're going to tempt fate twice? Crazy, crazy dude Misawa was. That's not to take anything away from the amazing effort put forth by both, just...couldn't they have hacked off the last minute or so and called it on that? Anyway, after the match Misawa needs a little help getting to the back, probably to get his spine decompressed again. Kawada has an ice pack tied to his arm while he's still in the ring. I get this feeling the Kobashi eye injury has something to do with the finish of the Triple Crown match with Misawa last year. Something tells me the way they wrestle is getting a little out of hand and could maybe have been dialed back a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 4, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2014 Burning vs. the Untouchables (Misawa/Ogawa) 3/6/99 Tag Titles The early parts of this match belong to Ogawa. He proves he can go with both Akiyama and Kobashi. Then he becomes the in-peril guy to set up a hot Misawa tag until Kobashi hits a sleeper suplex to kill off the big comeback. Big finishing sequence is really hot, Ogawa even gets in a few really nice nearfalls and the other 3, well, you know they cre pretty capable in those finishing stretches. Taue vs. Vader 3/6/99 Triple Crown Taue actually matches up pretty well with Vader. Until he gets squashed with a splash from the apron after a failed apron nodowa attempt. Then Vader senses blood and kills the midsection with a few running splashes before finishing with a powerbomb. Loving Vader in AJPW, he brings this complete sense of something different to the main event. And he tends to make everything look very, very hurtful without really overdoing it. Short TC match, but very good. I liked Vader putting over Taue after the match. Vader was the first person to hold both the TC and the IWGP Heavyweight title, did not know that. Up next is the Champions' Carnival, featuring that Vader dude. Oh yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 4, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2014 Misawa vs. Vader 3/28/99 CC Man does Vader ever beat the shit out of Misawa. Like Misawa gets maybe two minutes of offense in. Vader lays in a brutal beatdown of the Ace, but ends up taking a running elbow for a flash KO and a 3 out of nowhere. Crowd goes nuts, and if that had been Stan Hansen, Kyohei Wada would be a dead man. Kobashi vs. Akiyama 99 CC For being Kobashi's tag partner, Akiyama sure isn't shy about going after the injured knee. Kobashi overdoes the head drops a little, but I'm willing to look past that as the finish is all kinds of hot. Vader at ringside is pretty funny. He's wearing sunglasses, and I really hope that's not an attempt to blend in with the crowd. Kobashi vs. Vader 4/16/99 Okay, this is match of the last 2 years right here. It's only 19 minutes, but it is 19 minutes of fucking awesome. Kobashi plays his role perfect, so does Vader and the crowd eats it all up. This match is ridiculously great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 5, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 5, 2014 Hase vs. Kawada 5/2/99 Tokyo Dome show! Kawada's arm is in a cast. Nasty early uranage. Hase attacks the injured arm from so many different angles, but some of it is really awkward, could be Kawada's ring rust. Looks like an unplanned (and ungodly evil-looking) bump from an uranage, Kawada needs a few to recover. Crowd was dead the whole match up until the brainbuster finish...even for the powerbombs. Did the finish get out or did the fans just figure that out on their own? Vader vs. Misawa 5/2/99 Triple Crown Oh man, this is all kidns of awesome. I'd put it right on the level of the last Kobashi vs. Vader match. Both have this tremendous narrative of the native wrestler continuously chipping away at Vader's defenses until they find a big opening, then exploiting the Hell out of it. Both are great "how they get there" type matches against a monster Vader who is so great in that role. Several of the nearfalls towards the end have an echo to the crowd reaction...holy fuck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted May 5, 2014 Report Share Posted May 5, 2014 I bet Vader was just so happy to be doing physical matches and getting a push after how his WWF run went. He tried in WWF but clearly lost motivation over time (can't blame him). In All Japan it was like flipping a switch. Boom, world-class worker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 6, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 6, 2014 Kawada/Kobashi vs. Misawa/Taue 6/4/99 Really fun oddball matchup between the Four Pillars. Kobashi vs. Misawa is coming up, so there's that. Watching Kobashi and Kawada alternate leg drops and knee drops on Misawa is pretty friggin sweet. Taue and Kawada having a kick exchange is always fun. Taue setting Misawa up for a frog splash and Kawada setting Kobashi up for a lariat is just odd. Hot crowd for the finish, but why wouldn't they be? Kawada helps Taue up after the match and all four have a little show of unity. Also, if I read right it was All Japan's final farewell to a building they ran in a lot, so this was the special match for that purpose. Fans seemed happy with the send-off, so way to go Baba. Tried to watch the No Fear vs. Team FMW match from earlier on the card. Really, really hard actually. But 15 minutes of pointless back and forth matwork (the only purpose of it was to add time it looked like) killed my desire to watch. As well as my complete lack of motivation to watch Omori or Shinzaki. I can deal with hayabusa and Takayama, especially with a quality opponent. Shinzaki in 99 is well past the point where he should be way better than he is given his athleticism. Omori at least has the future to do something with himself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Misawa vs. Kobashi 6/11/99 Triple Crown So the first 10-12 minutes were mostly filer matwork. That's weird right there. It's certainly not BAD wrestling, but it doesn't serve any real purpose. So they go into some strike exchange-y stuff pretty quickly off of that, then Kobashi starts targeting Misawa's elbow arm. Some good "nearfalls" come out of that. Then they go back to your regularly scheduled All japan style stuff for the finishing run, but with a pretty good transition. You'd think this would all not work together real well, but it does. Then they do a ridiculously long finishing sequence that involves throwing every big move in the arsenal at the other guy and them kicking out of it. It gets to be too much if you ask me. Sleeper suplex leading to a lariat, nope, can't get a 3. Tigerdriver 91? You guessed it, just a nearfall. Tiger suplex 85 you ask? Not so much a finishing move as a lead-in. Half nelson? Okay, I'm joking there. When has that ever been more of a midmatch move really? I think you get the idea. Matches like this are why AJPW got the bad rap it did. Too much trying for epic finishing runs, not enough common sense in what was used in them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fxnj Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 I think that Misawa and Kobashi were trying to capitalize in fan interest coming off the Tokyo Dome show. It's easy for casual fans to get into big moves and near falls, so I'd imagine that's who they had in mind when they were laying things out rather than giving spots the same level of thought as in 1/97 or 10/98. Like you said, it's completely unfair that it seems to have become the stereotype for how they were wrestling at this time. As you saw with Misawa getting his spine decompressed, their bodies were too broken at this point to be wrestling like that with any regularity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJH Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 John would know better than I re: any renewed interest in the company following Baba's death -> Dome, etc (I haven't heard that point raised before, personally)... but what killed the 6/99 match more than anything was they had nowhere to go with the feud other than Kobashi going over; they'd done "Kobashi dominates and pushes Misawa right to the edge but Misawa is able to pull a trump card and survive/win" eight months previously. They wouldn't get to do that next match (on a suitably big stage - i.e. for the title at Budokan) until 2003. Hence them just repeating spots and elongating the finishing sequence even more, and with a "new" finish, to project the idea of developing the feud. If they did the '03 match in 6/99, sure, there'd be the usual complaints re: head-drops and whatever, but you'd have a nice four-match story from 1/97 (Kobashi is inferior and loses) -> 10/97 (they're equal, Kobashi loses) -> 10/98 (Kobashi is dominant and loses) -> 6/99 (Kobashi is dominant, Misawa's trump card [ramp Tiger Suplex] almost wins it, but Kobashi perseveres and pulls Misawa's own long comeback to win). Of course... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 9, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2014 Burning vs. Ace/Bart Gunn 6/9/99 So Bart Gunn turns out to be pretty serviceable. Turns out Kobashi has the most off night ever in terms of hitting his spots. Also, he feels the need to half nelson Gunn just to welcome him to AJPW. Why he wanted to destroy his own head drop suplexes credibility so badly I'll never know. No Fear vs. Kobashi/Shiga 7/4/99 So No Fear targets Kobashi's busted up nose for 80% of the match. Omori is 95% cheap heat. God I hope he gets better. Shiga finally gets tagged, gets his hope spots in, and Omori pins him. The Kobashi fighting back against a dickish No Fear was good. The rest was...mostly passable. If Omori keeps this up somebody is going to have to explain how the Hell he got big to me. Kobashi vs. Kakihara 7/16/99 Okay, so Kakihara is starting to look like a pro wrestler with a shootstyle base instead of a shootstyle guy taking on a pro wrestler. And he's pretty damn good at it too. Kobashi gives Kakihara just enough to get the fans behind him, then crushes him like a bug. Kawada vs. Takayama 7/17/99 Fun little shootstyle brawl. Takayama looks the best he has so far. Kawada finishes him in a particularly nasty way. Fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted May 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2014 Burning vs. Vader/Albright 7/23/99 Vader and Albright giving each other short lariats before the match is great. The big gaijin dominate, Kobashi catches Albright with a surprise lariat while Vader is beating up Akiyama outside. Akiyama holds Vader up just long enough for the 3. Fun tag with lots of big Vader/Albright offense and some nice hope spots. Misawa vs. Kawada 7/23/99 Triple Crown Strike exchanges somehow got way more basic. Longer, but more basic. They bullshit around with some matwork that goes nowhere for a minute or two. Kawada has somehow packed more vicious kicks and knees into his style than before the injury. Some completely heatless pinfall attempts by both off of big stuff (tigerdriver, gamengiri). Ending picks up, but is lacking compared to every other Misawa v. Kawada match I've seen. I'm really starting to miss Baba's match layouts between the Four Pillars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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