Toshiaki Kawada

[Childs]

I just rewatched the 1/19/95 Kawada-Kobashi, and I have to disagree strongly that they struggled to fill the hour or ran out of ideas. If you break the match into segments, each one had a distinct idea and purpose behind it, and the intensity built from one to the next. The first 15 minutes were slower, sure, but the test of strength was a classic All Japan opening gambit. And they used it to establish that Kobashi was more powerful straight up but Kawada would fight dirtier. The last 15 minutes, when they were allegedly out of ideas, featured both guys digging deep in their arsenals and hitting bombs they hadn't hit in the first 45 minutes. All while selling the hell out of their exhaustion. The crowd bit on every nearfall and gasped in appreciation whenever the match time was called. The fans loved the drama of Kobashi realizing he could no longer win and crawling along the ropes in a desperate attempt to survive. Then the bell rang as Kobashi struggled bitterly to block Kawada's elusive third power bomb. I'm not a big fan of hour draws in general and I'm not trying to argue this was the greatest All Japan match of the decade. But fuck, I'm not sure what else they could have done. I would list the performance as a solid mark in each man's favor, especially given that neither had worked this type of match before.

[MJH]

Whilst I can understand John's point about "no reason not to take it home at 57:00", I think the only real mark against the 1/95 60:00 is that their Carnival draw was so similar to essentially be a truncated, streamlined version and ultimately better for it.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm glad that people have been willing to come out and say they are high on that match and why. Didn't do anything for me, but that's all you can ask for.

[jdw]

Whilst I can understand John's point about "no reason not to take it home at 57:00", I think the only real mark against the 1/95 60:00 is that their Carnival draw was so similar to essentially be a truncated, streamlined version and ultimately better for it.

 

I think it's a mark both that the match didn't have a finish, and also that Kawada couldn't get a succeful defense. Doc got one right before Kawada's reign, against Kobashi.

[ohtani's jacket]

He may have had the misfortune of being born as Toshiaki Kawada and not Ric Flair or Jumbo Tsuruta (he says tongue in cheek), but I felt inclined to watch some Kawada.

 

I started with the 1/26/93 match with Akiyama. The quality of Akiyama's rookie work seems overstated to me. I'm not gonna come on here and say it was bad or anything, but when people say he looked like a seasoned pro I have to raise my eyebrow a bit. I thought he looked as green and nervous as any other rookie in this. Like most rookies, he was comfortable on the defensive role and sold with a fair amount of conviction, but offensively he was still finding his way and you could see the clogs working over time trying to keep up with the play. It must be hard being exposed for all the world to see on offence and he clung to the dropkick like a security blanket. Kawada was a bit too passive for my liking. It was only really when Akiyama messed with Kawada's shoulder that he felt the full brunt of Kawada's kicks. Otherwise it seemed like Kawada was working smart rather than hard. I liked him trying to grind Akiyama's mush into the canvas, but there wasn't much to write home about. Meltzer's rating felt spot on (*** 1/4) I think I'll watch the July match next.

[jdw]

Who said he worked like a seasoned pro?

 

What people have said for decades is that he looked really good for a rookie.

 

You'll also run into some problems with the July match: there are identical matches online that are listed as the January and July match. It's probably best to find the July match at Ditch's joint, if he put it up.

[ohtani's jacket]

Ditch made the same mistake.

[ohtani's jacket]

Watched the '92 Hansen vs. Kawada match. Pretty much what you'd want and expect from those two. A very simple and direct bout, but it built well, Hansen's selling was top drawer, and Kawada looked like he had a shot at winning until Stan got mad. The most interesting part of it was the structured build and how Hansen adapted to the apparent change in the house style around this time. Whereas the Tenryu bouts were aimless a lot of the time, Hansen really stuck to the script here. If you watch enough of this stuff it starts to get formulaic as you see the patterns emerge, but Hansen's selling keep this organic and reasonably free flowing despite an almost layer by layer approach to building the bout. It looked like a fight and felt like a contest and that's enough to satisfy most folks I'd say. Kawada was good without being great. I don't know how far I'll go with this, but I'd be interested in finding the point where he becomes undeniably great.

[El-P]

The King of the 90's. I really haven't re-watched much of him in the last 10 years, but still. You can't deny his greatness. #4 or 5.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 1994 Hansen match isn't as well known or famous as their '92 and '93 bouts, and probably not as good, but it's a nice companion piece. It may be my imagination, but Kawada seemed a more assured worker in '94 than in '93, though he didn't really stamp his authority on the bout and was still deferring to Hansen too much. The Carnival match against Akiyama is a fun bout, but pretty much a redux of whichever bout of theirs I saw from '93. They even ran through the same sequences. Kawada actually has a pretty standard match pattern and it was interesting that he did similar dropkick sequences with Hansen that he did with Akiyama.

[ohtani's jacket]

I liked the 3/94 Williams vs. Kawada Carnival bout a lot. In fact, it's probably the best Kawada bout I've seen since I started dabbling in his stuff. There were a couple of All Japan tropes that annoyed me like going to the outside early on and the even stevens, not quite my turn, your turn, flow to the bouts. But this was meant to be a bigger deal than the other Carnival bouts I've watched and Kawada's selling was several notches above his standard performance. That lift in selling seems to be a determining factor in how good a Kawada bout is going to be. A lot of back and forth in the finish, but I was hooked and I think if it wasn't a draw and had a definitive finish it would be remembered as more than just an extra in the build to the Carnival final.

[ohtani's jacket]

I watched the 4/94 Kawada bout and it's amazing the step up in intensity from anything else I've watched. Suddenly, every hold matters and the attention to detail is tenfold over anything else, and it's not even that good a match. The whole Kawada's a heel thing is all while and good except for the fact that he seldom works the same heel role against other opponents. And even against Misawa, I had a hard time buying him as the straight up heel he's meant to be. Maybe it's a mental block on my side, but the history between the two seems like it has more bearing on the match dynamic than heel/face structures.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 1994 Carnival final is a great match. I don't know if I've fully appreciated it up until now. Again, there's a noticeable lift in intensity from Kawada. Every move is sold as though as it means something, and not in a self-conscious way, but because the stakes are so high and the jeopardy increases as the match progresses. I realise he was working against a bigger American, but again I was surprised by how much Kawada worked from underneath. He's nowhere near as aggressive as I imagined, or recollected, even when he's working from the top. Not compared with Tenryu. He was working as a total babyface, which is to be expected under the circumstances, but he strikes me as a bit more cerebral than the likes of Hashimoto or Tenryu whereas before I would have paired them as naturally aggressive workers. Williams also sold well. He had good chemistry with Kawada despite, or perhaps because of, them not getting along outside the ring, but something clicked with him in '94 and he realised how he could use his size and strength to full effect. It reminds me of watching a football player (whether it be rugby or American football) who's a pretty good player and then finally discovers beast mode.

[ohtani's jacket]

Watched the 11/94 Misawa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue match, which I'm not sure I'd seen before. Kawada and Taue certainly did work as heels here and Kawada was much more aggressive and niggly. I wonder how many of my perceptions of Kawada are based on this tag feud. As for the match, I kind of drifted in and out of it. It was good, but I say that as more of an acknowledgement than with any real conviction. I wouldn't say they were going through the motions, but it was a standard All Japan tag and that involves a lot of the same old stuff. As usual my interest was piqued during the finishing stretch, but they weren't up for a big run home on this particular night and were booked into a corner anyway w/ the draw. I haven't watched All Japan for a while and Kobashi and Taue seemed foreign to me. Misawa didn't look anywhere near as good as the last time I watched him either. Personally, I need to be in the groove to watch individual styles of wrestling otherwise I zone out a bit, but nobody really struck me as delivering a world class performance on this night.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 3/96 Taue bout is a decent watch. It's a bit like watching two tag partners try to prove who the better wrestler is without trying to maim one another. Kawada works from the top a lot as Taue sustains an early arm injury, which in itself is a bit too cutesy since the guy's big move is a chokeslam. I wouldn't really call it an aggressive performance from Kawada, but again I liked the way he's able to give his submission attempts a shoot like quality by making them seem like it's a fight to keep them locked. Taue sells a lot, and is okay in that role, but naturally when he tries to work his way back into the bout it's through the chokeslam. Loss described the Hansen/Taue fight as academic, but to me the shifts in momentum from Taue selling a lot to Kawada being stunned by a chokeslam are far more academic. It's not that the wrestling is bad; it's just that you know it's going to swing back and forth down the stretch despite Taue being injured for two thirds of the bout. They do a decent job of evening things up, and it's more staggered than in a lot of wrestling bouts, but it's kind of predictable in the way it unfolds.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 6/92 Hansen match has a strong performance from Kawada. Hansen took an interesting route of trying to work Kawada's leg over, which led to a lot of sustained leg selling (obviously a strength of Kawada's.) He let Hansen throw him around like a rag doll on a big gutwrench suplex and a high release power bomb. Hansen was licking his chops out there by the end of the bout. I wasn't crazy in love in the theatrical bump Kawada took off the final lariat, but one of the better pre-1994 singles matches from Kawada.

[ohtani's jacket]

Yip.

[JerryvonKramer]

Wrong thread?

[ohtani's jacket]

The 2/93 Hansen match is one I've never been as high on as others and that continued to be the case this time. The match is too evenly weighted between the pair, and I just don't care about the transitions to and from offense, especially after watching so many other Hansen matches lately. It also bugs me that he works Kawada's leg over yet the entire stretch run is Kawada throwing kicks. That wouldn't bother me ordinarily but other workers get called on that all the time. I preferred Kawada's work with Williams to this.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 1994 Champion Carnival bout against Hansen is a pretty good watch, but I can't help but feel something is missing from their rivalry much like with the Hansen/Tenryu series, Not sure why it doesn't grab me as it seems like the perfect match-up on paper, but I think it's because it doesn't really progress over the four or five year period it was run.

[ohtani's jacket]

So, I re-watched the 1991 Kawada vs. Jumbo match and remembered why I never liked it. I understand why they felt the need to show some kind of growth in Kawada that he could control Jumbo with a side headlock, abdominal stretch or half Boston, but does anybody really believe that Jumbo couldn't beat the shit out of Kawada if he wanted to? If you're gonna treat a guy as special make it Misawa not Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi and everybody. I know you can't keep squashing everybody competitively, but when you go heat seeking on your post-match turnbuckle celebrations it sure seems like you still want to be top dog. I didn't really see any meaning in the bout. The best thing about it was the pre-match anticipation.

[JerryvonKramer]

Through to mid-97 and, Biglav ratings aside, if I was doing my list just purely on personal preference, I have Kawada #3 out of the three pillars currently.

 

I think he has a capacity to stink up the joint on his off nights that I haven't seen from the other two (or indeed from the other top 10 contenders during their peak runs, save perhaps Bock in Japan, who was boring on occasion).

 

Been trying to put my finger on why, and I think it comes down to the fact that he, more than the others, tries to have more 70s-style matches or segments of matches. He takes things to the mat more and therefore creates more downtime. While the focus of the Holy Demon Army is amazing in many of their great matches, in singles matches, I've seen Kawada do things that really make no logical sense. He's not able to build a match from a slow start to a hot finish, which is what the 70s guys he's trying to emulate really excel at. Stuff like the two hour-long matches with Kobashi and 6/6/97 with Misawa hurt him from that point of view because to me they demonstrate that he just can't do it. And I put all three matches down to him more than the opponent.

 

My system can't factor in negatives, so all that is not going to affect his score and there's a chance he'll finish higher than Misawa.

 

But if I was doing my list more like some other people are, just on my own hunches without any numbers, I'd have him third behind the other two for these reasons.

[Tim Cooke]

He's not able to build a match from a slow start to a hot finish, which is what the 70s guys he's trying to emulate really excel at.

 

10/24/91 vs Jumbo

10/21/92 vs Misawa

05/21/94 w Taue (and a not very good Taue in this match) vs Misawa/Kobashi

6/3/94 vs Misawa

2/22/04 vs Shinya Hashimoto

 

 

Like EVERY wrestler, he certainly has off nights and bad performances but that's a blanket style statement that just isn't true

[JerryvonKramer]

Yeah, I didn't like the Jumbo match much and I'm a Jumbo mark. Had it at ***1/2

 

I was also lower than the average on 10/21/92 which I have at ***3/4

 

I just don't think he was very good at that style of match, and we know Jumbo was a master at it.

 

6/3/94 is obviously a masterpiece but wouldn't be my go to example for the sort of thing I'm describing.

[JerryvonKramer]

Also, Tim, I should point out that context plays into things a bit too.

 

I have a habit of being down on 70s-throwback matches in the 90s, because they pale next to the real thing, and don't feel very special to me. I mean we can look at Bret vs. Austin, 11/17/96, which I gave *** to and don't think is anything at all. Others think it's a top 100 match of all-time contender.

 

My general view is, if you want 70s-style matches and want to see them done as well as they can be done ... just watch 70s matches between great workers of that era, they knew what they were doing.