It’s another quarter century anniversary on the blog, this time for my pick for the most underrated peak All Japan match ever!
This was for Misawa’s Triple Crown Title.
The best singles match up in wrestling in the 1990s is great once again. For the first time, Kawada is challenging Misawa with real confidence behind him. It’s a big change and it matters a lot. Kawada’s won the Triple Crown once now, and the last time they shared the ring with a title on the line, Kawada finally pinned Misawa. It’s a big hurdle to get over, and he finally did, so he’s working here with at least the knowledge that he has the capability within himself to pin this man.
The match itself is, of course, incredible.
I think it’s better than the famous tag match the month before that goes into it as it’s much more efficient and nasty and doesn’t have a certain someone cry selling to ruin it for me. There’s a tease of the 10/21/92 beginning with the immediate backdrop, but Misawa blocks it and there’s this great feint sequence. It’s a great little thing because ever since that failed in 1992, Kawada’s began these title matches very cautiously, but now that he knows he can pin this guy, it’s not really how he is anymore. He attacks immediately and targets the face that’s still a little damaged. He’s meaner and nastier than ever and so much more self assured too, even going to the “fuck you” release Powerbomb on the floor very early on. They get into a few especially nasty scrapes as it goes on, trading elbows and kicks a few times, and it’s all very hateful. At the end of the famous June 1994 match, Misawa dug deep and discovered that hate, but this is their first big match that begins at that sort of level. For the first time, Misawa has something to prove too.
Misawa keeps using elbows to buy time so he can recover and hurl Kawada onto his head and neck. While he always banked on surviving before, he’s also much more violent. In a lot of ways, this is their first match where there’s not even a shadow of friendship. If this was the first match of theirs that you saw, you’d assume they’d just always been enemies. There was always some kind of a lingering respect, but there’s a complete absence of that. It’s two guys who VERY badly want to win, and the violent means of Kawada as he wants to not just win, but win with a certain emphasis only makes Misawa mad, and he gets VERY petty to reaffirm that the tag win was a fluke. Kawada keeps his cool as Misawa comes back, and while the Powerbombs fail, it doesn’t feel like he’s failed until Misawa begins throwing face kicks back at Kawada and knocks him out with the Rolling Elbow. Usual terrific wide eyed and wobbling selling of a knock out from Kawada. Misawa keeps dumping him on his head and he has to go further than ever with it. Kawada survives a lot and throws one real nasty closed fist in desperation at the end in a callback to how Misawa stopped Kawada’s run a year prior. But Misawa hangs on with the elbows, and eventually a real gross Running Elbow knocks Kawada out long enough for the three count.
Kawada really gave into himself here. After the incredible satisfaction of finally pinning the guy whose shadow he’s existed in since high school, he gave into how good it felt to go right after him and beat the shit out of him. And while it felt good and felt good to watch, he maybe had the right idea initially with the plan to grind Misawa down years prior. He wasn’t aggressive enough there like he was here, and it’s probably going to take a smarter combination of those plans of attack. This is a cautionary tale about giving in too much to revenge mindlessly, because without a plan, he didn’t have an answer for the firepower of Misawa’s elbows.
Kawada, at his best, is a mortal man running up against someone with a gift, and he did nothing to take that gift away or to give himself some kind of an anchor. He let it slip away from him again, and while he CAN pin Misawa, he certainly can’t go in just thinking that he WILL. It was always a hard defeat for Kawada, but it feels even harder for it to happen now that he knows he can beat Misawa. It’s much worse to fail at something you know you can do, and Kawada looks absolutely heartbroken.
It’s a continuation of the best character arc of all time, and the best match of 1995.
****1/2
HANDWERK 