[2004-10-24-NOAH-Navigation Against The Current Line] Kenta Kobashi vs Akitoshi Saito

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Graham Crackers]

Solid Kobashi title defense with one of the nastiest apron spots of his career. I do like Saito but he's not at the level of Kobashi's best opponents. Probably not a match that'd make my ballot.

[fxnj]

I think an argument could be made that was the nastiest spot of Kobashi's career. As crazy as they look at times, at least we know there are nuances to protect yourself during head drops while maintaining the visual impact. How do you protect yourself while getting your spine crushed against the apron?

 

It's not a ***** classic like some of Kobashi's other defenses but I still think this is right below that level. I took it as Kobashi basically doing his take on Misawa's old formula of spending most of match trying to get over the challenger by selling before making a big comeback at the end. With how amazing he is at getting sympathy and with how willing both guys were at brutalizing themselves, I have this as better than most actual prime Misawa formula matches, let alone stuff like the Misawa/Sano 2007 match getting more attention.

[fxnj]

On 11/15/2014 at 5:37 PM, fxnj said:

I think an argument could be made that was the nastiest spot of Kobashi's career. As crazy as they look at times, at least we know there are nuances to protect yourself during head drops while maintaining the visual impact. How do you protect yourself while getting your spine crushed against the apron?

 

It's not a ***** classic like some of Kobashi's other defenses but I still think this is right below that level. I took it as Kobashi basically doing his take on Misawa's old formula of spending most of match trying to get over the challenger by selling before making a big comeback at the end. With how amazing he is at getting sympathy and with how willing both guys were at brutalizing themselves, I have this as better than most actual prime Misawa formula matches, let alone stuff like the Misawa/Sano 2007 match getting more attention.

I don't think I agree with anything in that 2nd paragraph. Rewatching Kobashi's reign, I'd have either this or the Takayama match as his best defense and a big reason for that is how the match deviates from tired Epic Match formulas and goes a more personal route. Saito acts like he's get a massive chip on his shoulder and he backs it up by not only how he dominates Kobashi from the start but manages to maintain control even while playing to the crowd and giving Kobashi time to recover. It's surreal to see this guy who spent most of his career before and after this getting lost in the midcard shuffle hang with Kobashi like this, and I could feel real emotion driving his performance here. Of course, it helps tremendously that Kobashi sells his ass off for most of the match and is willing to put his body through absolute hell. That apron bump doesn't lose any impact on rewatches. In fact, it just comes across even nastier because of how this time around I noticed the part of his back that hit the apron turn a sickening red/purple later in the match. It's a bit hard to make out on lower quality encodes of this, but it's there if you look for it. Then there's also that insane German suplex bump. Besides a somewhat underwhelming Kobashi control segment around the mid-point, all of Kobashi's stuff on his comebacks looks fittingly brutal and the end sequence is absolutely perfect.

I also wouldn't really say that Kobashi does Misawa formula better than Misawa here just because he's nowhere near as good at nuanced type selling as Misawa is in those types of matches, but there's enough unique stuff here that this matches stands out fine regardless. I would still put it a smidge above Misawa/Sano 2007, but that's another match I've come around to big recently.