DVD #2: Tiger Mask vs Kuniaki Kobayashi

[Loss]

Talk about it when you get it here.

[JHawk]

This version of Tiger Mask is Misawa, right?

 

This match is actually a good example of how out of touch Americans are with the cruiserweight division. Fans have been trained in the States to think the lighter wrestlers are supposed to fly around for 10 minutes. While there is some of that (this is Tiger Mask, after all), much of the match is spent working on the mat...and the crowd is eating the action up. There are a lot of great false finishes before the finish. If anything, the match wasn't long enough to be considered a classic, but a fantastic display of wrestling from two great junior heavyweights.

[Loss]

I do think this match has been a bit overrated through time (top 20 of the 80s? No way ...), but it's still very good. Kobayashi is sort of the lost junior for me, better than the majority of his peers that get more credit. Way better than Koshinaka, and almost on par with Liger and Takada.

 

Yes, this is Misawa.

[tim]

Really wasn't too impressed with this match. It wasn't bad or anything, but didn't Meltzer give it *****? I know it's Meltzer and all, but I've seen plenty of Juniors matches that weren't notably a level lower than it in quality. Tiger Mask flattening the guard rail is not something you see everyday in Japanese Irish Whips, so, as meaningless as it was, it kinda got me into the match right away. Most of the stuff after that was pretty standard, with a pretty great sequence towards the end leading to a fantastic dive from Tiger Mask. Misawa doing a full front flip over Kobayashi's criss cross attempt would still be visually impressive if done today in Dragon Gate or something. Maybe I need to watch it again but on first viewing I really don't get what the fuss is over, although the match is very enjoyable at times.

[Guest Real Man's Man]

I agree with what was said above. I've seen this match a few times now, and bell to bell it's never really grabbed me. Not bad, but nothing hugely impressive in it's own right, let alone for a match rated as highly as this initially was.

 

Even though this wasn't the first time they had faced each other (and I like this more than their first meeting), I think the biggest problem here was the general awkwardness/indeciveness between the two wrestlers, which affected various parts of the match, especially since this was more a high-profile "wow factor" match than anything else. In addition to that, both wrestlers at different times unfortunately just didn't execute what they were trying as well as they would have ideally liked. In fact, during the middle of the match, it struck me that they seemed to lose/be losing the crowd, which isn't very good when you consider how obviously hot the crowd appeared to be for the introductions, and how much impact the opening part of the match (with Misawa going through the guard rail) had on them.

 

Even though I haven't gotten round to watching all that much of Kobayashi (which is no surprise since I suck at making time to watch wrestling), I can't imagine this would feature too highly in terms of my favourite Kobayashi matches. Off the top of my head, there is a match with the original Tiger Mask I remember liking considerably more, there is the match with Takada from 1987, and even in terms of his AJPW work I think his match with Fuchi from April 1986 is a good bit better than this. I suspect that if I kept watching, I would find a lot of Kobayashi matches I like a good deal more than this.

 

That said, the end stretch here was tremendously enjoyable, to the point where if I saw a hugely clipped version of it (basically the last 2 minutes), I could easily believe that this was indeed a great match, and would definitely want to watch it in full.