[1992-01-18-AJPW New Year Giant Series] Mitsuharu Misawa vs Yoshinari Ogawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

Unaired, but a fancam exists of the full thing. Now this is definitely a curiosity: these two will become legitimate tag champs and best bros in the future, for now Misawa is one of the hottest acts in the company and Ogawa is a 7-year (yes, seven year) undercarder who was only now really getting any buzz as a underlining in Tsuruta-gun, though he's mostly just there to bump and eat pins. The two don't do anything radically crazy, but you can tell they already had some solid chemistry with each other and Misawa thought highly of the guy, because this was not only a fairly evenly spread out match, but instead Ogawa actually controls things for a decent portion of it via working the arm in holds. This is definitely a bit slow in places given that fact, the crowd are nevertheless pretty invested. It's cool seeing Misawa actually not be in control here as Ogawa keeps outpacing him with faster stuff and quick snappy counters, using his speed to blindside him over and over.

His mistake is then trying to out-strike Misawa, because, you know, elbow. Misawa adopts a more power-based style with the far lighter Ogawa, throwing him up for backbreakers or belly to belly suplexes, pulling from more of a Jumbo-style of power moves than his usual flashy stuff. Ogawa pulls out his usual cheap tricks and the classic punches as Misawa has him completely scouted, escaping his swinging neckbreaker to land a few stiff elbows into his patented facelock for the quick and easy tap-out. Nothing great for this super squash however these two had a great pace going out here and really got over the other despite said squash: Ogawa tries his hardest but he just can't get the job done against someone *this* good yet, at least not without all of the roll-ups in the world at least. Good outing for what it was, Ogawa even this early seemed extremely confident as a act.