[1996-06-29-AJPW Summer Action Series] Brian Dyette & Kenta Kobashi vs Jun Akiyama & Mitsuharu Misawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

Clipped entrances, but shown in full beyond that. The obvious factor here, as you can obviously tell, is this Brian Dyette character: he's a really green talent, comes from American football, and was fairly hyped up given his size and youth at the time as well as being personally scouted and trained by Steve Williams; apparently according to Meltzer he was also in contention to be Kobashi's brand new tag-partner as the young gun Gaijin rookie (which would've made them essentially GET 2.0, or even the original Burning?) This unfortunately wouldn't come to much as he'd basically stop working after two months (apparently due to health issues/not liking the constant travel) so it's a bit awkward seeing him with guys who are clearly far beyond his capabilities, feels really ham-fisted. Kobashi and Misawa obviously have some solid exchanges here and turn up the workrate right at the start: each have their number already and dodge multiple attempts at offence in a surprisingly fast sequence between the two for such a match. 

Dyette is the odd one out and quite green by his basic offence and clunky notions at times but I think he looked alright here, especially for a guy who'd done maybe a month of actual practical ring work at this point. Akiyama is great: he pulls out the fire from Kobashi in fierce strike exchanges but he also sells some leg work and has a good dynamic with Dyette, which they work into the match rather nicely; despite Akiyama himself not being a vet, he really looks after Dyette like one. There's some good moments here like a reverse lariat into a Half Nelson Suplex which Misawa super-sells for, basically does a full blown rotation in the air lol.

Dyette also hits a really sharp lariat of his own that's rather stiff and looked convincingly rough with these three. The finish is pretty badly botched however as Dyette is too gassed to get Akiyama up for basically a Razor's Edge-like powerbomb and they fall down flat on their ass mid move. He gets it off the second time with some help from Akiyama but that doesn't get the pin. Akiyama eventually recovers and nails two Exploder Suplexes to win the match.

This slows down a LOT when Dyette is in the ring but never gets bad: he holds his own (or maybe that's just everyone else taking care of him) and it's obvious why they were so high on him given his performance and look, he had good atheticism and had clearly something that could've been drawn out with some more development. Everyone else is great and there's some excellent action between Akiyama/Kobashi as well as Misawa; basically Kobashi is the GOAT, we kinda know that though. Underrated overall, definitely worth checking out if you want something a bit exotic and out there for a Misawa/Kobashi pairing. 

[paul sosnowski]

Brian Dyette appears to have had 25 matches in his entire career.   All in AJPW from May 27, 1996 to July 24, 1996. 

[Ma Stump Puller]

On 12/30/2022 at 7:46 PM, paul sosnowski said:

Brian Dyette appears to have had 25 matches in his entire career.   All in AJPW from May 27, 1996 to July 24, 1996. 

Yeah it's a really fascinating case of someone who just showed up out of the blue, basically showed up on a bunch of shows (including a 30 minute draw with him and Kobashi vs Taue and Honda that sadly was never filmed) and then vanished. This is to my knowledge his ONLY TV appearance as most if not all of his showings weren't filmed. Even the AJPW TV tapings at the time (which were usually fairly generous with heavyweight showings) were mostly occupied with the bigger shows, hell this only got shown because it was a Korakuen main event, if you could believe it. Maybe something will show up down the line with more and more rare footage showing up like with the GAORA archive series and the like.