Manami Toyota vs. Mima Shimoda, AJW Japan Grand Prix 1995 Day Eight (7/23/1995)

A commission (obviously) coming from Ko-fi user Christopher. You can be like them and pay me to watch and write about any sorts of wrestling matches, regardless of whether or not one could reasonably think I would like them. You can do that first by making sure I haven’t already written about it before on this particular site, and then heading to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current market price is $5 per match, and if you have an aim more complex than simply multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was a Red Zone match in the 1995 Japan Grand Prix.

I’m never going to lie to you.

As such, I won’t tell you this isn’t a great match. It is.

The story of the thing is especially appealing, as fresh off losing the WWWA Title to Aja Kong (in a better match than this), she is pretty mad and takes it out on young Shimoda. Not that Manami Toyota has ever been one for starting slow, but there’s a meanness to her rampage at the start, a near immediate dive after a slam off of the apron, and there’s a hostility in general to the way she behaves in control that I find far more interesting than her usual fare (yes, this is because it gives me permission to root against her, instead of trying to make me go against my natural instinct).

As with the majority of joshi wrestling featuring Manami Toyota in the 90s and that Manami Toyota in the 90s inspired, these are elements that fade away in time, window dressing to allow fans to say a match is about something, brief moments of a more interesting sort of wrestling before a reversion to form.

However, it is more interesting window dressing than usual, and it makes for a more interesting Toyota singles match than usual when not against an all-timer like Kong.

It is also a half hour of Toyotaism, an emphasis on activity and movement above all else, and that is not the sort of thing I am ever going to LOVE. Often times, I do not enjoy watching Toyota matches from this era at all, even when they’re still objectively borderline great in the way that this was. That’s not to say Toyota didn’t have her gems, it’s not to say she isn’t a magnetic figure at her best. It’s also not to say this is some totally useless thing, as the match avoids the central mistake of many longer Toyota matches and never even tries to fill space with leg work. It’s true that, despite that, so much of this still doesn’t matter, and that it paves the way for so many worse matches like this, matches long for the sake of being long without the material to get there in any way that feels even half organic, but where this just barely succeeds is that maniac spirit.

That is to say that if it is not all going to be worthwhile, the high points have to be insane enough to make up for it.

One of the better versions of a thing I don’t care all that much for.

***

Cactus Jack/Headhunter A/Headhunter B vs Terry Funk/Leatherface/Shoji Nakamaki, WPW Bridge of Dreams ~ DOME SPRING FULL BLOOM (4/2/1995)

We have another piece of commission work, this one from repeat customer and part-time vessel for Oregano requests, Ando Commando. You too have the ability to pay me to watch and write about wrestling matches of your choosing, or other things I guess, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The going rate is $5 per match, unless you really just want to read me hate something, and than it’s and extra $3 for the emotional labor as well. If you have some other weird request like a odd little list or a season of TV or something, hit the DMs, capitalism is wild and I could always use money. 

This was a Barbed Wire Board & Barbed Wire Baseball Bat Bunkhouse Deathmatch.

 

It’s the IWA Japan offer match on the famous Weekly Pro Wrestling BRIDGE OF DREAMS show. The famous pro wrestling magazine organized a gigantic Dome show with all the notable promotions of the era throwing a match in. Most were great, but I imagine if you’re reading this, you know that the NJPW guys didn’t quite produce their greatest outing and also that it’s never been released in any sort of official format.

Luckily, you’re reading this in the 2020s and unofficial video of it has been widely available for quite some time now.

It’s pretty great.

There are like ten or twenty different things here worth capturing in GIFs, but I think you should just watch the match for yourself instead.

Really, the match is just packed nearly full of real cool stuff. Terry Funk bleeding up a storm, the classic Foley vs. Funk stuff, Headhunters diving off the top onto Nakamaki lying on the Big Ramp, all sorts of stuff off the top or the apron to the floor near the end, Headhunter dives, a few real sick barbed wire board spots, all sorts of other assorted lunacy. Cactus Jack and The Headhunters getting to team up in a match based around sheer lunacy in the mid 1990s feels a little bit unfair, like Gary Busey and John C. McGinley sharing the screen as different types of psychopaths in SURVIVING THE GAME (1994) and constantly outdoing each other. It’s a wonderful type of thing to see, different sorts of freaks at the peaks of their powers going insane in front of the world.

You can criticize some things, it’s disorganized as hell, there are definitely a few real down portions of this that do hinder them somewhat when they start to build a lot of momentum, but I like that. I don’t want a match like this to really have a flow or to follow a formula. With people like this, stumbling upon any real sense of normalcy would feel deeply wrong. While it holds the match back somewhat, and while it could maybe be tighter, it’s otherwise just about perfect as is.

If you’re going to run a big sort of chaotic mess, this is how you do it. If you’re going to have a match that is simply a compilation of cool shit, it helps to do shit this cool. Not exactly some secret artifact, a road map to a land forgotten by time, but the sort of wild, violent, and reckless mess that I miss seeing performed with the sort of skill and charm that was on display here.

Big, dumb, and wonderful.

***

Diesel/The Undertaker/Shawn Michaels vs. Camp Cornette (Yokozuna/Owen Hart/The British Bulldog), WWF Raw (10/9/1995)

A commission here from old friend and spiritual advisor Big E. Vil. You too can pay me to watch any wrestling match you’d like and write a few hundred words about it if you head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. That’s $5 per match and if you would be so kind, make sure I haven’t already written about it and, if you want to be very cool, include a link. 

A famous piece of wrestling TV amongst a certain sect of us, the famous brief Bill Watts era of Raw.

Before discussing the match, there are two things before and around the match that strike my interest in particular.

The highlight of the entire segment and show might have came before the bell even rings, with this absurd video of Shawn Michaels talking to kids and then being interviewed about it. He’s a stammering wreck, constantly talking instead about how cool it is that kids think he’s important and how good it feels for him, just total maniac shit, unable to talk about anything but himself and doubly as inept at portraying himself as a good human being. Shawn obviously can talk, but he’s not a very good liar. There’s an old Patton Oswalt bit from the early 2000s that I’m sure is nowhere near as funny now as it was then about how George W. Bush was only a dummy when he had to talk about normal stuff, but could talk when he was talking about war and vengeance. That came to mind again watching this, this total dullard at a loss for words when asked to convey any sense of sympathy or humanity, revealing this dead eyed husk going through motions because he’s supposed to care about kids or something. Shawn isn’t exactly W, but they are both cokeheads from Texas who got positions far beyond their skills or talents based entirely on personal relationships, so one can’t help but see that also.

The other, of course, is how great Vince McMahon is on commentary.

You can say he’s bad. Talk about him enthusiastically shouting “KICK SOME BUTT” when Diesel comes out or the perverse groans of sexual elation that escape his lips when Shawn Michaels comes down the aisle, or when the big guys are fighting. None of this is incorrect, and it’s one of those situations in which I 100% see the other side and acknowledge it as equally correct. Much like with points of view on Davey Richards’ wrestling, I don’t think there’s a wrong opinion.

Is Vince bad on commentary? Yeah, maybe. He certainly undercuts his top acts by being so lame and over the top in his obvious cheering. At the same time, I love it. That’s not just because he’s one of the voices I grew up with as a result of constantly renting these tapes from video stores when I ran out of 1998/1999 WWF and WCW pay-per-views to rent, but I get a real thrill out of it years later too. Not only is he wildly entertaining and very funny on accident, but I always really like it when you get a booker or the head of the company behind the announce desk.

Not only is usually it a sign of a true control freak like a Vince McMahon or a Gabe Sapolsky (Ian Rotten may be the exception here, as always), which is always fun, but it’s a chance to get the true unfiltered vision of what something is supposed to be. As direct a presentation of someone’s ideas, in this medium, as there possibly can be.

Honestly, any booker who doesn’t also do commentary on their shows is kind of a coward.

Anyways, there’s also a match here, apparently?

The match itself isn’t some bell to bell marvel exactly, but it’s exactly what it needs to be. If I was reviewing 1995 as a whole, it’s the sort of a match I would put on a preliminary list, but not feel too shaken up about cutting if I wanted to hit a certain deadline or if I just wasn’t feeling it. It’s good and I like it a lot, but as a match itself, hey whatever.

Shawn and Owen work really well together for most of this. I like Shawn with all three of these guys, honestly, and Taker and Yokozuna is a great match up that emphasizes the best qualities of each man. There’s guys here that I think people might expect me to be mean towards and that I usually love to be mean towards, but this is not a match that inspires any sort of meanness. Shawn does nothing offensive, Kev and Taker are utilized in short bursts, and everyone on Camp Cornette is so much fun to watch. It’s pure formula, but one executed well. Offense that mostly looks good, big personalities, not a lot of waste. Certainly there are better versions of a WWF/WWE TV main event tag over the years (one of them being perhaps my single favorite match ever), but this is all fine enough.

The meat comes after the match, in a classic Wattsian finish and post-match.

Bulldog benefits from the Camp being a much more polished unit, hitting Diesel with his slam and getting the pin when Yokozuna follows it with one of those big boy 600 lb legdrops, getting a mostly clean win going into his title match on pay-per-view. It’s sort of wasted on a nothing challenge like Bulldog as nobody believe he would beat Diesel anyways, but it’s a nice sentiment with Diesel’s first loss in a real long time and it coming in a perfect sort of a way, clean but still just a little bit unfair.

After the match, both King Mabel and Dean Douglas come down and help the Camp beat up the good guys (certainly not Our Heroes, but the protagonists of the story all the same). Shawn gets the piss beaten out of him by Shane Douglas on the outside in perhaps the best non-Yokozuna bit of action in this entire thing, ending with a Gourdbuster on the steps. Mabel and Yokozuna gang up to hit like a thousand splashes and leg drops on the dead guy, eventually breaking his face.

A more prolonged, effective, and brutal beating than you usually get from the heels in the WWF, resulting in them (briefly) feeling like actual threats instead of just villain of the month tackle dummies as they so often did in the mid 1990s.

Less great as a match than I remembered, but a lovely angle and a wonderful chunk of pro wrestling television. A real classical sort of a thing, and different from so much WWF TV. First in having them still down in the ring after the break, giving you the feeling this is something a little more than a TV show about wrestling as something goes wrong like they do in real athletics. Couple it with a classic territory style promo at the end of the show, and it’s no surprise people have remembered it for all this time. Not a reinvention of the wheel, but a hell of a wheel on display all the same.

Something to be watched and studied, and something that still stands out over a quarter century later.

Blacktop Bully vs. Dustin Rhodes, WCW Uncensored 1995 (3/19/1995)

This was part of a commission over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon from reader Bren, who just requested five of the worst matches I’d ever seen. Given that many of them have already been covered (every HHH/Shawn match, the 2015 Royal Rumble), or will be covered (there are many in 2016!) in the future, I wanted to try and make it a little interesting. So while not exactly the five WORST, I chose five matches that I really really hate, dropping over the next several days.

First up, it’s the only ever KING OF THE ROAD match, conducted on the bed(s) of a moving truck. The winner is the first man to ring a bell near the back of the truck.

Obviously, this fucking sucks.

It’s one of the stupidest ideas in the history of wrestling, and a clear waste of an all-time talent in one of his peaks in Dustin Rhodes. Beyond that, it’s also a perfect representation of one of the more frustrating and upsetting things in wrestling history, which is the advent of Hoganism in WCW in 1994 and 1995.

I can’t tell you how it felt to experience it in real time. I was four and five years old.

However, I have watched it all of the way through. When I graduated college at the end of 2015, I was kind of adrift, as many are. To fill time while trying to find a real (“real”) job, I undertook a gigantic project to watch as much WCW as possible from start to finish, with start being January 1985 on (as 1985 was when they got the Saturday Night spot, and it largely became what people think of when saying “WCW/NWA”). As I write this in late November 2021, I’m close to finishing 1998. You can follow that entire journey here, as I think a forum is the ideal place for such a project, but I say all of that to say that I’ve come as close to experiencing it in real time as one could nearly twenty years after the fact. By watching everything, I not only gave myself context for so many things that happened, but also largely immersed myself in the company during the years I was covering.

Which is to say that, having built up quite the affection for WCW and what it was and what it could be and what it was on the border of being in early to mid 1994, it is one of the great heartbreakers in wrestling history what Hulk Hogan and his pals all did in the back half of 1994 and through mid 1996 before the company finally turned itself entirely around.

One of the best rosters ever assembled (Flair, Steamboat, Arn, Foley, Austin, Pillman, Rude, Regal, Sting, Vader, Dustin, etc.) got slowly torn apart and replaced with absolute duds. It’s the most brutal and nasty hostile takeover I’ve ever seen in wrestling. The stuff that makes 2010 TNA look almost subtle. The ascents of virtually everyone WCW had spent the previous three years building from the ground up into near main eventers were all cut off in different ways, and while Dustin never had to lose in a minute to Jim Duggan or got ran out because of a Dave Sullivan feud or anything like that, what happened to him over the previous six months and here is one of the shittier things in wrestling history.

Hot off of the great 1994 War Games that, while imperfect (Dusty Rhodes wins WG, and not Dustin, who the feud was about), also gave Dustin Rhodes the win in a twelve month long program, Dustin was ready to go. The dictionary definition of a guy just waiting to get pay-per-view main events and a World title shot and maybe reign, even having one of the great WCW matches ever against WCW’s top heel at the end of the year. Only, then WCW gave poor Barry Darsow this gimmick of a heckling fan truck driver who Col. Parker gave money to get trained, and he was then booked to come out on the positive side of a feud with Dustin in an all-time loser piece of booking.

The culmination is here, with not only a match that is a truly unwinnable scenario, but one that also costs both men their jobs through no fault of their own.

Firstly, the match.

At one point, Tony Schiavone states that the truck is going 55 miles an hour, but says this in a way that sort of implies that it’s like a SPEED situation where it always has to be going 55 miles per hour. Also, as one can see, it’s a livestock style truck, with bales of hay and the cage fencing. That might at least lead to some nasty bumps, but the hay is also on the floor of the truck bed, so while the match seems like the set up for some action movie shit, it doesn’t even get to be properly violent. The match was taped five days before the pay-per-view aired and according to the Wrestling Observer at the time, was twenty minutes. Reportedly, it was good. However, this is cut down to thirteen minutes and shown with some horrible camera angles and editing choices to try and not show either man bleeding, and the entire production is a true god damned disaster. The camera work combined with the match set up makes it impossible for anything in the match to even stand out as especially brutal, interesting, or cool.

They have no shortcuts in there except for one bucket, so they’re wobbling around and trying to walk forward and throwing each other lightly into a cage on a moving truck for thirteen goddamned minutes before Bully rings the bell to win.

The match is also infuriating because of everything around it.

When it was being taped, agent Mike Graham told them both that bleeding was okay despite WCW’s rules against it, and even reportedly brought them blades to use beforehand. Both men were then fired for bleeding, despite a.) it being taped days in advance, so they could have NOT done that & b.) someone in management not only explicitly telling them it was okay, but bringing them the tools. All happening at a time when not only was WCW trying to drive away older fans in favor of those theoretical newer casuals that Hogan was bringing in, but also under pressure to cut costs.

It’s genuinely unbelievable, even from WCW, and one of the bigger examples of guys just blatantly being fucked over in wrestling history.

Forget Dustin being minimized for months before this. What I can’t get away from is that bit about TBS wanting to cut costs a lot around this point, and how anyone in management really should have known better, and how the guys themselves even had questions about it. Darsow was on a short term deal, but Dustin…man. I know that I am prone to conspiracy theories, but this is a hard one to shake, especially with Dustin Rhodes as a well liked young babyface very emblematic of a previous regime, and without the greatest relationship with his dad that might have saved his ass otherwise. Mike Graham is a KNOWN Dusty Rhodes stooge and found his way back to WCW eventually, which fits right in with how a patsy ass fall guy would be treated here. The other guy of the three who gets fired is an old guy whose contract was already a short term one due to expire soon.

I don’t know, it’s a whole lot too convenient.

WCW enforces a rule that Hulk Hogan had already broken on the last pay per view, and does it at the expense of someone they already had been trying to phase out for the last six months. It also happens after Dustin’s second loss in a row to this failing gimmick, in a match he loses cleanly, and it’s such an obviously bad idea that nobody could have ever thought this would actually be good. So the firing is obviously known to be insane, but nobody’s TOO mad because of how awful this entire production actually was.

The only counterweight is that WCW is too disorganized to believably pull off a political hit this well, but I don’t know, man. Again, looking at it and reading about it sends about a hundred different alarm bells firing off. It’s all a little too fortuitous for the company for me to believe this wasn’t always a set up. If it smells like shit and looks like shit, it’s probably shit.

One of the more disgusting and worst things in WCW history, match and all, and that’s some very fertile ground.

At least if it was a plot, it wouldn’t be the first time Dusty Rhodes used a vehicle to sabotage a hot young babyface!

Holy Demon Army vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi, AJPW Real World Tag League 1995 Final (12/9/1995)

This was the finals of the 1995 Real World Tag League.

It is what it is.

Of course, it’s not ideal that this is happening again. It’s a completed story being thrown back out there so that Misawa and Kobashi can win the final time that it ever takes place.

God forbid one of them ever taste defeat in any lasting manner, right?

To get it out of the way, dessert before veggies, this is a great match in spite of all booking problems. It feels brisker than any of their 1995 matches and while it’s certainly no 6/9/95 or 12/3/93, on this go around, it’s one I gained a lot of esteem for. The strengths of this stand out especially clearly when compared to their two sixty minute draws in 1995. The attack of Kawada and Taue is especially great, losing some nastiness and making up for it in raw hustle. Real go and get it attitude from two absolute firecrackers in the bullpen (all four here are inscrutable, obv.). Kobashi’s selling is fine, but Misawa actually beats him here with the way he sells the early beating he takes all match, and a general exhaustion. A few of Misawa’s better hot tags in recent memory (in 1995, obviously. he has not had an especially great hot tag in at least twelve years in real time.) come here, and the finishing run is also a delight.

In spite of the failing of the match on deeper levels, and the failure of the company in booking it again, it’s a really great match.

However, I repeatedly backed up and deleted the phrase “great little match” when writing this, and that’s sort of a thing. Having to fight my immediate natural instinct to call it a “great little match” when it is the finals of a big tournament is real embelematic of the problem with the match and AJPW as a whole in 1995.

While a great match for the obvious reasons, this falls short of what the pairing is capable of not for the usual reasons that some of these matches underachieved. Instead of being overlong, it’s a nice and tight twenty seven minutes that I have no real issues with in terms of pacing or efficiency. Instead of any performance issues, like Kobashi spending half the match weeping and crying like a wounded animal or anyone not being up to par, it takes the cue from their previous meeting in October and targets Kobashi’s arm in a similarly great change of pace.

The biggest problem with this is that we’ve been here before.

Not so much in the sense of how many times this match has happened, but in the sense that we have seen this story told before, from start to finish. It is not new, and on the eighth meeting total and fourth of the year (with two having gone an hour each), there really needs to be something new. Barring that, as a riff session is hardly the end of the world, it should at least be not such an obvious re-run.

It’s a match in which Kobashi needs Misawa to bail him out in key moments, and then manages to pin Taue with a second Moonsault, only once Misawa has helped him out.

A more well read Reader may recognize that this is also the plot of the May 1994 match, right down to the finish.

While I certainly appreciate that this is thirteen minutes shorter than that match, there’s no real narrative point to it happening again. There are slight changes like the arm or focusing a lot on Kawada now not being able to save Taue at the end, but it’s pretty much the same thing. Kawada pinning Misawa six months earlier is the narrative culmination of this feud. For whatever issues I have with it, it’s the payoff to every story told in their previous meetings from the Kawada/Kobashi knee work, to Misawa always bailing Kobashi out in the end. This is a regression in the story, going back to things that have already happen and that you would think everyone knew they had moved past. Not only does it feel old, but because the story’s moved on past that in a lot of ways, it’s also kind of jarring in its own way. Because of the regression in the long story being told, the triumph of Misawa and Kobashi at the end also winds up feeling lesser. Part of that is that I don’t root for them in the way that I root for Kawada and Taue as they rarely feel like actual human beings, but part of that is that there’s no reason to take joy in someone doing something they’ve already done before. It just is what it is, that’s all.

The thing that really does the match in is the transparency of it all. With nothing new offered up as a story and the action itself feeling sort of warmed over from what worked in the past, it’s very clear that this is only really happening so that Misawa and Kobashi can win and THEN the feud can be over, only once the precious golden boys have finally reclaimed their victory.

It’s an indignity suffered once again by Kawada and Taue, as if the individual title losses to Misawa following the hallmark June 9th win weren’t enough. However, it’s one I’m not quite apoplectic over, given the beautiful and wonderful payoff to all of these small insults and indignities a year later.

***

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Gary Albright, AJPW Giant Series 1995 Day Eighteen (10/25/1995)

Kawada gets loose from the other Pillars for a moment, and gets to have the sort of more interesting Different Style Fight that Baba’s 1990s isolationism largely prevented otherwise, despite Kawada’s own protestations at the time. This isn’t exactly what he wanted, but as Albright has jumped to All Japan on this tour, he still feels fresh and different enough from everyone else, and it creates that same sort of feeling.

It’s not the only ever take from Kawada on what his version of a wrestler vs. a more shoot-style guy would be like, nor his only ever meeting against Albright, but it is his first one, his best one, and probably his most famous one.

Beyond that, it’s one of the better matches of its kind period.

This match often gets talked up in terms of the optics of the thing, as Kawada fights someone with a shoot-style background and had spent the last half decade in UWFi. Pro style vs. shoot style! It’s an easy match to lump in with the NJPW vs. UWFi stuff also happening around this time in Japan, but I would avoid that temptation. There’s not much of a struggle over any of that here, instead feeling more like Kawada just going for it and doing his best to simply have a shoot-style match instead.

It’s that choice and the performance of Kawada that makes this such a special thing.

Toshiaki Kawada very quickly reveals himself to not only have a keen sense for the pacing and more unique real fighting rhythms of matches like these despite it being one of his first ever attempts, but to have a complete and total understanding of the style. When to pick up the pace, when to try for a big hold, flurries, even the selling of the thing. You’d think he’d been having matches like this for years, the way he has one of the genuine feeling fights in the history of the style. While not having as much of a submission game as most practitioners, what works so well for Kawada is that he always feels on edge or in danger at every moment. If lacking in other areas, he’s an expert at the elemental parts of this style of wrestling, getting the most important thing correct for years before this already, which is to feel genuine at all moments.

The match isn’t just great because of Kawada though.

I think it does the match and Albright an injustice to just blow past him, because he really did whip a lot of ass in this match. Gary Albright is tremendous in this match. Both as a mountain for Kawada to climb as this big hideous looking American and as a real crusher to push him physically, he turns in a stellar performance. Everything the match asks of him, he lives up to and then some. It’s a great enough performance that he’s not totally dwarfed by one of the great Kawada performances ever, and I think the proof of that greatness is that for every positive quality, just about every other thing he does in the match speaks to how well he fits in. It’s great that he’s big and imposing and it leads to these truly horrific throws that he gets on Kawada. He can also be brutal in ways beyond that, as displayed with some of his grounded elbow and punch flurries on Our Hero. They combine perfectly in these moments on the ground where he grabs a heel hook or a cross armbreaker on Kawada and the moments of power and brutality can make him feel unstoppable in what’s more of his element. It’s a beautiful performance from one of the greats, and one of the more unheralded great foreigners in the history of Japanese wrestling.

Ultimately, he’s a mountain that Kawada is able to scale and a challenge that Our Hero is able to stand up to and overcome. It’s a beautiful process, as always. Kawada has such a hard time getting the big man down, but when Albright brings himself to the mat to try an armbar, Kawada is finally able to pounce. He transitions out, kicks some ass, and hen goes into his own to just barely get it done.

Kawada is my favorite of all of his peers, and one of my favorites ever, not just because he’s the most violently and constantly pissed off, but because very few wrestlers ever are able to convey struggle better than Kawada. It’s as much his great selling as it is his furious energy. It’s as much the fiery flurries of striking late in the match as it is parts in the middle where he tries fighting spirit spots, but can’t quite do it and winds up collapsing. Kawada, moreso than his contemporaries and moreso than many wrestlers ever, is not afraid to look bad. Because it’s always done in the service of something, and so importantly, because it always seems to come with an opposite moment of triumph, it never matters. Because of moments like Kawada’s failed fighting spirit attempts or other small failures, the successes — both big and little — always have a way of coming across as victories themselves. Fail spectacularly once or twice, and the ultimate success at the end feels so much better than it does had there never been that same struggle. It’s what many of his contemporaries fail to realize, and more than anything, that’s the Kawada difference.

While not the best illustration of that idea ever, it’s another great example. Kawada already is so gifted at making more normal matches feel like a real struggle, so when given someone like Gary Albright, it all works even better than usual.

It’s a different feeling match not only because of the style or the pairing, but also because it often just isn’t anywhere near as good as this. It’s not performed as well, it’s not constructed as carefully, and it rarely ever feels this good in the end.

***3/4

Holy Demon Army vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi, AJPW Giant Series 1995 Day Twelve (10/15/1995)

This was for Kawada and Taue’s AJPW Unified World Tag Team Titles.

In 1995 and 1996, All Japan Pro Wrestling began experimenting with hour-long draws, as if big matches hadn’t already begin overplaying their hand as it came to length. Two of the four major All Japan time limit draws of this two year period came out of this match up and two in Kawada/Kobashi title matches. The success rate was roughly fifty percent, with one of each pairing actually working out. The first Kawada/Kobashi draw from January 1995 did a much better job than their October 1996 draw would of coming together to create something close to a great sixty minute wrestling match, whereas the January 1995 tag didn’t quite do as well of a job of getting there as this did. The weakness of each of the four matches is the weakness not only of many post-1980s sixty minute draws in the first place (feeling like a match is going an hour as an attempt to garner praise more than anything else), although this is the best of the bunch for at least trying to do something to differentiate it from the others.

(of course none of them come close to the most soulless and frustrating hour of the 1990s — the Manami Toyota vs. Kyoko Inoue hour from May 1995 that I absolutely hate)

More than any other non-mandated hour long match in the 1990s — as the Bret Hart fancam iron man matches against Ric Flair and Owen Hart respectively are matches I hold in high esteem —  this match does a great job of trying to answer the big question that all of these matches have to face, if they’re worth anything. It’s one that not only feels asked of every hour long match past a certain point, but also that I find myself asking of just about every long match ever. It’s a question that longer All Japan matches often fail to answer adequately (6/9/95 could have been just as great with fifteen less minutes!), making the ones that did (4/20/91) stand out all the more.

That question is simply, “Why is this match so long?”.

The answer to that question can be a story they tell that’s larger than what moves happen at what time, it can be entirely about strategy, it can really be anything. So often, there is no real answer but shouting “MORE!” or “LONGER!”, so when a match like this gives it an honest shot, it’s impressive.

Of course, like any good question, the answer is never just one thing.

In this match, there are a few answers that they proffer, and that’s to their benefit.

The first is that Misawa is feeling himself a lot too much after his recent Triple Crown defenses and gets himself Nodowa Otoshi’d off the apron within five minutes, putting him down on the floor for fifteen to twenty minutes. The second and third answers come when Kobashi’s left arm becomes a target and when Kawada’s historically bad knee comes into play. None of these really come close to answering that question in a satisfying way, you can do all these things in half of the time, but they are better ways to fill space and make the time feel properly utilized and not wasted for the sake of publicity.

Of all responses to the question, the first response here is by far the most interesting. It’s a fascinating consequence of Misawa’s growing invulnerability, and it’s why I find the second half of the 1990s to be his most interesting work. That’s not quite to say Misawa ever feels human in the way others do, but there’s something approaching that. It’s fun to see him screw up in the way the others do in matches like these. Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi are all dumb in different ways, and the way Misawa is dumb is that he never really considers much of everything. He has that flaw for the same reason he doesn’t suffer the consequences in the same way that others do, because he always has the elbow to bail him out. Or in the case of going against Kawada, he can rely both on that and/or Kawada psyching himself out against this guy who has and will live inside his head until the day that too goes in the ground.

What I don’t love about that is what that answer brings to the match, which is fifteen minutes of Kobashi alone. Because of the pace, it’s never as interesting as that could be, so it’s not really even Kobashi playing hero ball. That being said, the attack on the arm of Kobashi is especially good and mean spirited and a much needed change of pace from a Kobashi control segment in one of these matches. It’s one of the better pieces of control on Kobashi in any of these matches, as it doesn’t lead to him crawling around on his belly and weeping while selling it like his knee selling often can. My problem with so much 90s Kobashi is that it feels at many times like the point of his big dramatic selling performances is less to help with the match and the story and more to leave everyone talking about how great he is at selling. With the arm, that’s not really the case. He’s hurt and even gets taped up, but he’s capable of fighting back and kicking ass, even if he does occasionally border on the overly theatrical. Above all, what I don’t like about Kobashi in the early and mid 1990s compared to the late 90s and his NOAH work is that there’s no reason to root for him in the former period, whereas he kicks a lot of ass in the latter. While troublesome, his work in this match is a show of real progress.

The last of the three elements here is sadly the element of the match that is given the least focus, which is a shame in particular because Toshiaki Kawada is the best knee seller of all time. The transition to that is especially nice, as Misawa makes his comeback into the match, catches a kick from Kawada, and has time to really think about it before driving an elbow down into the knee of Kawada. There’s intent to it now before the strike that adds so much and while they never get to really attack it like in the past, Kawada does a remarkable job of selling it anyways. Stutter steps, rolling in pain, trouble with a few things. Even when it’s not a focus, he makes it a focus, and that’s the difference between Kawada and everyone else. Selfish in the way all great wrestlers are, but without it ever becoming overbearing.

It’s the last fifteen or twenty minutes when this really loses something, and it’s really not the fault of any of the four wrestlers in the match.

By this point in history, they’ve had their big classic in June. They’ve had the 1993 Real World Tag League final. Shit, they’ve already even had one sixty minute time limit draw already, nine months earlier. When they’re just trading bombs again, it’s fun and cool, but not new, and the sort of thing that loses its thrill easier and faster than the more substantive work in the match. It’s a hard thing to do to keep this interesting, especially as Kobashi’s arm and Kawada’s knee fall into the background (to the credit of both, neither is forgotten), and it becomes the same match as always. This sort of an end run is also a big ask given that nothing is really new about it in a story sense. So not only is this sort of tired as a match up, having reached the climax in June, but it’s also not a story that has anything new to offer.

In every sense, the last ten or fifteen minutes is the problem more than anything else, with everyone just running out of interesting things to do on every level.

Even if it means less than in the decades before or after it, it’s still one of the better hours of the decade, and one of the better matches in this series. It falls short for me in the way that many matches out of this particular pairing do, but still of a certain undeniable quality and with an admirable approach to a very boring situation. It’s a match that I admire more than a match that I love.

More than anything, it’s a hard effort not to respect, even if they do fall short.

***1/4

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue, AJPW Summer Action Series II 1995 Day Seventeen (9/10/1995)

This was for Misawa’s Triple Crown Title.

It’s the second of two title matches for the Holy Demon Army coming off of their Tag Title win over Misawa and Kobashi, with Kawada falling short in July and experiencing a debilitating letdown after finally managing to pin Misawa the month prior. It’s Taue’s third shot at Misawa in 1995, going to a draw in the Champion Carnival and then losing the finals to Misawa, with Taue feeling closer than ever in each match, and very arguably being the actual key to the 6/9/95 win with his Nodowa Otoshi off of the apron. The latter saw Misawa as beatable as ever with a broken orbital bone, so in the build up to this match specifically, Taue and Kawada specifically targeted Misawa’s knee to try and hobble Misawa in a new way.

Unfortunately, none of the possible ideas (third time in a year as Taue has come closer each time, previously broken face, hurt knee) this match could play with are given full and proper attention. Instead, they try to handle all of them at moments and receive the full benefit of none of them. It’s a shame, to some extent, that they take the approach that they do as Misawa’s knee is a particularly good and newer story for them, but it’s minimized into being an anchor Taue occasionally pulls on more so than it is any real crucial piece of the match.

While frustrating, it’s still a little too much to ever properly dislike, and that’s sort of the thing with 1990s Misawa, and a lot of 1990s All Japan in general. While approaches to many things can make me roll my eyes, more often than not, things whip too much ass to ever really hate.

Despite an infuriating bit where it’s Misawa’s bridge on a suplex that REALLY hurts his knee moreso than Taue’s earlier attack, the knee attack is also handled pretty well. Misawa’s selling, for what the match asks of him, is good. Particularly effective is a good little piece of nerd bait where Misawa fails to roll fast enough on a Rolling Elbow because of the plant leg, so Taue is able to cut him off. He also walks for much of the match with a hobble, never seeming unaffected by the work. Taue doesn’t devote all that much time to it, and so it lives up to what I’m looking for in a setting like this. Which is to say that despite some issues, the knee still does always feel like it matters, and the match seems to react to the work itself.

Misawa’s hot start is both an interesting change of pace, and also thematically appropriate. Taue can only really get going when he first kicks the knee out and meets Misawa on those same terms, but Taue’s most major error occurs at the very start. As previously stated, the knee is less a focal point and more something that tethers Taue in place at certain moments. He seems intent on trying to bomb Misawa out with power moves, and it’s a shame because Misawa is much more ready to and capable of countering Taue’s major offense than he is prepared to deal with a knee attack. The major point here at which Taue loses is that he keeps going for the Nodowa Otoshi off the apron from June, but Misawa is more ready for that than anything. Taue can knock him off the apron by hurling him back into the railing or by kicking his knee out, but Misawa avoids the one big improvement that Taue’s made all year.

That’s really the other major thing in play here, that Taue is better at countering Misawa than anybody else when he can run in. You can put it down to having a longer reach than anyone, but you can also put it down to Taue just being smarter than everyone else (really the only SMART Pillar, as Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi are all dumb in unique ways). The great thing is that you can put it down to either or both, it’s the sort of thing that makes sense from a few different angles. Every time Misawa charges or runs or needs to go up to something, Taue can grab him or avoid him. It’s only when Misawa begins forcing Taue to get up close or he can dump Taue on his head that Misawa has any real chance at it, and Taue eventually stops using the knee as an anchor entirely, giving Misawa more of a runway in the end than he had for most of the match up to that point.

In the end, Taue can’t fight in a phone booth with Misawa. He also can’t hit any of the moves he needs to hit to win the match, and didn’t do nearly enough to force the match to become one he might actually be able to win. It’s a matter of time, as Misawa once again beats someone by making them do it his way. Misawa finally sends Taue flying backwards to the mat with a Rolling Elbow from close range, following another series of right and left elbows, and that’s that.

When Misawa beat Kawada six weeks before this, it felt demoralizing and cruel, but the big difference here is that it feels like he JUST got by Akira Taue.

The knee, while not the issue I would have liked it to have been, was just enough to slow Misawa for a key portion. Had Taue stuck with that, he really maybe had it. And had he not gotten drawn into Misawa’s game, he still might have won anyways. Despite his victory in the end, Misawa makes mistakes against Taue that he never does or would against Kawada. It’s a clear sign of some level of disrespect, but he’s still exactly talented enough to constantly bail himself out with the magic elbow. Taue winds up baited into a bomb throwing contest when he’s not as aggressive on the leg as Kawada would been and is the least able of all the Pillars and other major players of fighting in a phone booth with Misawa. It’s no coincidence that Misawa relies entirely on elbows at the end more so than other bombs, and that it’s an up close Rolling Elbow instead of a running one or a simple running elbow that gives him the win in the end.

Misawa once again barely survives Akira Taue, but if he doesn’t change up one of these times, Taue’s really gonna catch him.

***1/2

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW Summer Action Series 1995 Day 18 (7/24/1995)

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

 

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.

****