Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

The AJPW/Noah Spilt - Online fans perspective from that time


SPS

Recommended Posts

 

Hashimoto vs Arashi in 2003 sold out, and I don't even know who Arashi is.

LOL. They did manage to carry on for a few years after that.

 

I think like any wrestling company that dies a slow death, it wasn't just one thing. The loss of the roster, the loss of TV on a major network. Ending up 8 months later on a GOARA TV . The dozens of changes in ownership. The MMA boom. There was a yakuza scandal at some point as well. Kawada becoming a freelancer, Hansen retiring, Hashimoto walking out, the title being forfeited 3 times and 2 and a half years, etc, etc. It was like losing the roster just sent out this domino effect of bad things happening to the company over the next 6 years or so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

NOAH dug their own grave and that started back a few years before the split. Misawa and Kobashi would still be on top today if Misawa was alive and Kobashi was healthy.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that wasn't necessarily NOAH's fault. I think Misawa knew that both he and Kobashi couldn't stay on top forever, and tried on a couple of occasions to get the fans to accept other faces as the company ace. Let's not forget the failed Takeshi Rikio experiment. Kobashi put Rikio over huge when he lost the GHC Heavyweight Title to him after his 2 year run, in 2005. The fans wouldn't buy Rikio as the #1 guy, and I don't know what else Misawa and Kobashi could have done to make him seem like a big name. That didn't work, so they put it on Taue and eventually Misawa ended up with the title again, only to end up putting it on Morishima in 2008.

 

From what I recall, die hard NOAH fans refused to buy anybody not named Misawa, Kobashi, Akiyama or Sasaki as the #1 guy. I always thought NOAH were way too slow to pull the trigger on Go Shiozaki, but I remind myself that this is Japan, and Misawa did come from the Baba school, which wasn't known for rushing...anything.

 

At the time, I remember speaking to a friend of mine via email about this very issue. He lived in Japan and taught English and had plenty of friends who were fans. He actually used to use Pro Wrestling as a teaching tool and it helped him learn Japanese and his students learn English. Anyhow, from what I remember him telling me, the consensus of those in the know seemed to be that Misawa knew as early as 2004 that he was living on borrowed time (not literally) only that he was so banged up he was a shadow of his former self physically and if it was up to him, he would have been exclusively wrestling much lower on the card in tag matches with Ogawa.

 

I really never saw Misawa as one of those guys who didn't want to relinquish his spot on top and held on at the expense of younger, up and coming talent. I think that narrative gained a lot of traction online among people who were upset that Kawada never seemed to get ahead in the Misawa rivalry in AJPW, and somehow they assumed Misawa was holding him back and was like a Japanese Triple H, or something. That rep among some American "Puro" fans dogged Misawa online, but I don't think that's true at all, and if you go and look at the history of the GHC Heavyweight Championship, if you check out Green Destiny and look at the cards from the first 8 years of NOAH, you can see Misawa trying to push himself down the card. I am not sure he ever felt that the Jr. Heavyweight guys like KENTA and Marufuji could carry the company, but I don't think it was so cut and dried as his not wanting to try.

 

I have always felt that Misawa basically worked himself to death, trying to keep NOAH afloat, and if he had been able to take more time off and heal up, or even better - retire, then he'd still be alive. You'd have to check the attendance figures to bear this theory out, but I always got the impression that if Misawa or Kobashi weren't on top, the fans stopped coming out, so Misawa felt trapped and obligated to keep wrestling when it was unsafe for him to do so.

 

I could be wrong, of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, it's also obvious that Misawa was better than Kawada and Kawada really shouldn't have ever been pushed ahead of him for any more than a few matches at a time. But with Rikio, they gave him that position way too early. Two years into his career to be ending Kobashi's legendary title reign was bound to ruffle feathers. After he dropped the title, you'll notice that anyone fresh had short reigns while established stars like Taue, Akiyama, and Sasaki had far longer reigns. NOAH did a poor job of making the younger guys look like they were dominant champions who should have long reigns.

 

How the fuck Go got a reign before KENTA is beyond me. But even so, Go's reign(s) were dwarfed by guys a generation or two before him both before and after. And by that time, the bottom was already falling out so it didn't matter much anyway. NOAH seemed to be very skittish with post Four Corners guys getting title reigns if they didn't immediately improve business. You know, until the Four Corners were dead or retired.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To add to everything already said. NOAH didn't help matters when they didn't have tryouts for like a decade. And when they finally had one it was already too late. The roster was way too thin in terms of up and comers, and the midcard was filled with people that didn't really matter or Jr Heavyweights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I didn't see it in real time, but to me Rikio felt like a midcarder right up until he won the belt. I don't think they did a good job building him at all.

Saw it in real time... felt like a somewhat promising young mid carder even after even after beating Kobashi. The thing is that there was always at least one or two young mid carders who seemed more promising than Rikio at any given point in time. Morishima, Sugiura, Shibata, Shiozaki, etc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...