Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs. Holy Demon Army, AJPW Super Power Series 1995 Day 15 (6/9/1995)

This was for Misawa and Kobashi’s AJPW World Tag Team Titles.

You may have heard of this one! One of the matches identified by date alone, and one of a handful of matches ever to have at least somewhat of a strong following for being the greatest match of all time. I think it’s totally wrong and that it’s an opinion left over from like 2004. I’m not even sure this is a top ten All Japan match of the 1990s, but it’s also worth re-posting this on the blog for its quarter century anniversary.

This is hardly a match without problems, but what it gets right, it gets perfectly. The tone is set very early on, as Kawada isn’t taken his recent title loss to Hansen and Champions Carnival failure well. Misawa having the Triple Crown back ALREADY (having beaten Hansen weeks before this) hasn’t helped. He is not in a good place. Kawada is the angriest man who may have ever wrestled, but it all feels so totally earned. Especially against this God King figure who he’s been in the shadow in his whole life, and especially against this dead eyed lump who everyone already wants to give the world to, despite not accomplishing anything yet. So when Kobashi tries to be a big guy, following Misawa handling everything with ease, and Misawa chills on the apron, Kawada dills him and unloads one of the more hateful looks ever at both his former friend and the dickless wunderkind he’s adopted in his place.

He also gets Kobashi sleeping, but they pay for it when Misawa catches him trying it again. Their luck runs out though as Kobashi tries to be real active on one leg, and Kawada eventually attacks it, and he does it with glee. It feels incredibly good, following something like 12/3/1993 especially and by now, two full years of Misawa and Kobashi exploiting Kawada’s bad leg. Some people talk about this match in terms of the sympathetic performance of Kenta Kobashi. Fuck him. I don’t feel sorry for him at this point, after all Misawa’s handed him. The best beatings are the beatings you know are overdue and deserved, and this is one of the best beatings in wrestling history because of it. It doesn’t totally work because 1990s Kenta Kobashi is not someone I could ever muster sympathy towards, but every time they cut him off, I’m pumping my fists at home and cheering. Fucking get him, boys.

Misawa is Misawa though, and with his magical elbow, he can fight through it and bail Kobashi out, yet again. However, Taue has one of the greatest transition and cut off spots of all time BY THROWING HIM DOWN ONTO HIS PARTNER’S BAD LEG.

Kobashi is effectively taken out, and the match becomes so much more interesting now.

I wrote last week about how my favorite trope in wrestling is a hero knowing he’s probably beaten and getting up to keep fighting, because if nothing else, he’s not a coward. This is, perhaps, the best ever version of that trope (the only other true contender may be the actual greatest match of all time, eighteen months later). Misawa isn’t a guy you get a lot of expression from, and I love him for it because you learn to recognize little tics here and there, and it gives something like this so much more weight to see that he’s actually concerned and not working from this place of total confidence for the first time in years.

It’s still far too long though. It’s a nearly forty three minute match and while that never becomes this major drag, it’s also very clearly a match that doesn’t have forty three minutes worth of material. Either keep it under thirty or go an hour. Their sixty minute draw in October is probably not a better match (only by a hair, but I can admit the fact of it), but it’s a far more interesting match and one that I’m far more likely to rewatch as a result.

They elongate the major point so that Kobashi can keep trying to make saves, because whenever Kenta Kobashi is not on screen, all other characters should be asking “where’s Kobashi?”. He’s thwarted every time, and is an entirely useless person, simply delaying the inevitable to artificially stretch this matches runtime. This match is all about revenge for two years of working Kawada’s bad knee, and it feels great, but the comparison does not help Kenta Kobashi. The famous Kawada leg selling performances are all grit and determination. Dragging himself up and struggling to do things the first time or two before succeeding. Coming up short, and selling not just that his leg is hindering him, but that he’s embarrassed about it. He isn’t so much selling a knee as he is selling a man being humiliated by his body not being as strong as his mind is. Kawada selling a knee is some of the most human work in the history of professional wrestling. In the match where that all comes around, Kenta Kobashi does pretty much everything he always does, except that he’ll then roll around holding his leg and start crying about it like a child. He’s hindered, to be sure, but not in a way that I can relate to in any way. I won’t criticize his selling too much, because it’s very good, but it’s all incredibly showy. This is certainly colored by a strong distaste for 1990s Kobashi, but at times, it feels like he’s trying less to get over the injury and more like he’s trying to show you how good his own performance is.

In this way, this match may be the birth of vanity selling.

It’s supposed to be this big sympathetic thing, but it’s SUCH a production and so over the top that my real thought here is that I feel bad for Misawa that his partner is such a whiny little milksop. He holds the match back, and it is no surprise that when they trade in Kobashi for a better wrestler in 1996, the matches improve and the conclusion of that series is the greatest wrestling match ever. In spite of a useless partner, Misawa trucks on as best he can.

After two years of Misawa not caring if he beat Taue or Kawada himself in those tags and trying to gift it to an undeserving Kobashi, it’s another taste of justice that Misawa is now the one trapped, and they BADLY care about defeating him, and him alone. Kobashi is kept away, and Misawa’s comebacks become less and less fearsome. The mystical elbow retains its magic, but the body behind it starts to fail. Misawa’s been caught and beaten a few times, but this is the first time it’s happened against his generational peers. Something is Happening, and it matters. There’s these great moments too where Taue and Kawada have learned from failures against Misawa in big moments over the last year. After the Nodowa Otoshi off the apron, Taue doesn’t let him rest like he did in the 1995 Champions Carnival, and he brings him back inside by force. They both stop him from rolling out, and when Misawa survives the first Powerbomb, Kawada sticks right with it, AND WITH THE SECOND, HE FINALLY PINS MISAWA YES.

Kawada looks even happier here than when he won the Triple Crown. It’s heartwarming. After a million years, Kawada finally has something on this guy, and it comes off as so much more than a hard won personal success. He has fought God and knocked him down, even if he hasn’t dethroned him. It’s hardly the greatest match ever as there’s time issues and Kobashi is incredibly annoying, but it is a classic match, and it’s a big moment.  It’s one of my least favorite all time classic pantheon matches ever, but the most upsetting thing about it might be that it’s impossible to deny its place there, in spite of all the tiresome parts of the match.

One of these big 1990s epics that gets weighed down by ambition, but one that achieves what it does because of that ambition in the first place. Please take this off of a pedestal though.

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