Holy Demon Army vs. Jun Akiyama/KENTA, NOAH Great Voyage 2009 in Osaka ~Mitsuharu Misawa, Always In Our Hearts~ (10/3/2009)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from one of my favorite old MV Zone guys, ddevil. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

After writing about one of my favorite old MV Zone videos, the “Wild World” finale with these two, when talking about the final Misawa vs. Kawada match, it was a genuine pleasure to hear from one of my all-time favorite wrestling music video creators in ddevil, offering up this match. Genuinely, outside of the fact that I can actually make money talking about professional wrestling, hearing from people whose work I have admired for years and that seemingly being a two way street is one of the coolest things about this entire endeavor.

Fittingly, this is also one of my favorite matches of all time.

Very little of that has to do with the physical content of this as a wrestling match.

That isn’t to say this is bad, because I think just about anyone can watch this and see the greatness in it.

All four are tremendous.

KENTA and Kawada are probably the story here, as the only pairing with true antagonistic feelings between them. KENTA, being the only one in this match with no real sentimental tie to anything happening outside of professional respect for the portrait hanging over the entrance, cannot help but take shots at the only one he hasn’t fought a million times and who he most resembles, stylistically. Kawada, in the other best performance of the match next to KENTA’s ultra spirited showing, looks as offended as possible, and they spend the match running at each other whenever possible, elevating the match above mere emotion and feel-good sentient into being super super interesting on another level. Akiyama and Taue are asked to do less — Taue as the sympathetic old man of the bunch and Akiyama kind of just as this control group, the one of the bunch in his prime and semi-dignified in a match that feels always on the border of losing that — but they are also both fantastic, and give the match all that it asks of them and then some.

The match is also as well put together as you might imagine from four all-time talents. The early sparks, dueling control work, hot tags, the escalation of both the offense and the anger between KENTA and Kawada, all of that. Even on a micro level, things the younger KENTA avoids before later falling victim to when Our Heroes really commit themselves to it.

It is not a match that succeeds entirely because of these things, but it is clearly a match put together with some level of intelligence.

What works about this match is, fucking OF COURSE, everything else.

In the first week of October 2009, I moved from Chicagoland to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not at all by choice, however much I love it now. I had moved out of my mom’s a few months earlier to live with a cousin in Chicago proper, then a windowless basement apartment of my own after that, but when that wasn’t working out anymore, I found out my mother had moved back, and my uncle had a small apartment ready for me. I took an Amtrak over, got there later in the night and found what I believed to be the door to my apartment locked with no key waiting as I had been told of, and spent the night sleeping in the second floor landing of a staircase before I moved in the next day, using a duffel bag full of clothes as a pillow.

This was not the first wrestling I watched in that new home — it was a bullshit Smackdown eight main event that night, the go home to Hell in a Cell 2009 that I think was Cena/Undertaker/DX vs. Orton/Punk/Cody/Ted Jr. — but it was the first really great and/or affecting match I watched in my new home, and I guess, at least with a match like this, that is the sort of thing one remembers.

At least it is when a match so clearly revolves around the mental state of one of your all-time favorites.

For whatever reason, when I first laid eyes on Toshiaki Kawada in the summer of 2006, hunting down the All Japan classics and finding 6/9/95 first, there was something about Dangerous K that drew me in. The meanness and brutality are exciting, but what got me was the way he looked at people and carried himself, and how even in moments where he was objectively being cruel and unfair, you could always see his side of it all. Many wrestlers have gone crazier with them, but few have gotten as much out of facial expressions and eye movements and body language like Kawada has. I personally believe that Kawada is the greatest facial seller in pro wrestling history. This is maybe not the absolute best example of that, in the way that his 1993-6 work, when he was at the peak of his powers as the greatest wrestler alive, was, but it works in the same way.

Truly, I have never seen a wrestler wrestle with the feeling of a weight on them like I do here with Toshiaki Kawada.

Spending the last twenty years, minimum, measuring himself against his childhood friend, to both great emotional turmoil and complex suffering and even occasionally real victory, Kawada suddenly finds himself without any of that. There’s a weight to every single thing he does in this match, from the spirited cut-offs to his explosive moments against KENTA. He always feels like the most put-upon wrestler of all time, especially in the moments where they cut to the Misawa portrait, with Kawada now literally wrestling in the shadow that he did escape, but also never quite let out of his sight. With few exceptions, such as Mark Briscoe following the passing of his brother or Eddie Kingston’s famous “the best man at my wedding” promo, grief has never poured through the screen in quite the same way, in large part because it is treated entirely as a purely professional thing. I immediately recognize it. Not so much in the same way I did at the time, seeing Kawada holding his face tighter than usual, but in a way I understand more nearly fifteen years later, and having suffered some loss and having to work through it.

Almost impossibly, on the fourth or fifth time I watch this, the first in at least a decade, I somehow leave this match thinking more of Toshiaki Kawada than ever before. It is not one of the greatest performances of all time, as this match is not quite so ambitious, but it is one of the more affecting matches of all time.

It doesn’t make the match better mechanically.

Taue pins KENTA with the Ore Ga Taue to win, and the match is a kind of classic NOAH young vs. old sort of thing, one of the enduring formulas for a reason.

In some small part, I like it more like this. Kawada gains nothing from a win, and more simply from the moment itself, going through it with Taue, in sight of Akiyama in the match to be stopped yet again and Kenta Kobashi on commentary. Kawada, even as tampered down and buttoned up as this match seems to be at times, cannot entirely hide from what is obviously there, and in as much as what was real enhanced the work of one of the greatest stories in the history of professional wrestling, what is here now makes the aftermath into one of the more unforgettable matches ever.

Like the feud that this is an epilogue for, some of the most powerful and affecting pro wrestling possible.

***3/4

Holy Demon Army vs. Jinsei Shinzaki/Hayabusa, AJPW Real World Tag League 1997 Day Seven (11/23/1997)

This was a commissioned review from frequent contributor Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was part of the 1997 Real World Tag League tournament.

It is not a match with especially huge tournament ramifications. It’s day seven of a fourteen show (plus the finals) tournament, and so while Holy Demon Army only have six points and the FMW team two, it is clearly not a match that the tournament is going to hinge on. It is too soon to count the HDA out, and exactly long enough to know that the FMW boys do not have a prayer of winning this thing, brought in as one of many guest star fixes used by All Japan to briefly make things more interesting, as they would continue to do until the schism in 2000 to patch over creative malaise.

What this relies on is how cool it is to see this match up, and luckily, it is really god damned cool to see this match up.

First of all, and arguably most importantly of all, this is a match that is wrestled big. These are four wrestlers who are very good, at least in this moment, at not wasting movement, moving with energy and feeling, and who react and deliver everything with such emphasis. Hayabusa goes on a run in the first minute of this match that has a real kind of fuck you undercurrent to it. Shinzaki and Kawada are always making faces at each other. Taue is maybe the odd man out here, as he carries on throughout the match in the way Akira Taue always does, rarely bothered by something like a mid-tour semi main event tag, but as the sort of wrestler who has always displayed such a stellar economy of movement, he’s so great in a match like this at simply continuing that feeling, and adding the bombs where he can.

The thing that really works about this is that they combine this feeling of grandeur with a classic kind of interpromotional tension, albeit not in the most obvious way.

As with any match with even the potential for great tension, for one reason or another, Toshiaki Kawada takes that and cranks the dial as far as it will go, creating a much tenser and far more interesting atmosphere than you might get otherwise, and a more interesting one than we otherwise saw from Hayabusa and Shinzaki on this tour, taking what could be yet another of their many dream matches against AJPW stars and making it into something that feels genuinely hostile.

Largely, that’s mostly on Kawada himself. It’s easy to just look at the mean way he delivers his offense, which is once again a delight. Few wrestlers ever have been so great at displaying a level of unbridled contempt with just one move or strike like Kawada, but it is more than just that. The way he immediately communicates Hayabusa’s elbows to start the match as this great insult, or the way he reacts to Shinzaki ALMOST getting him on the rope walk spot is so great. No other wrestler ever has been able to combine so many different emotional reactions into a few seconds like Kawada does, communicating annoyance, frustration, a general anger, and then that classic rage turned inwards, all in a few seconds. I don’t know if this is a top fifty Kawada performance ever, but it is the exact sort of performance that illustrates why Kawada is one of a few locks near the top of any list I might ever compile of the greatest wrestlers ever.

The feeling in this match is not just Kawada’s doing though.

As previously mentioned, Hayabusa is right there with him whenever he gets to throw out the fireworks in this match. Based on how few people in wrestling history have ever done it, adding that kind of intensity and hostility to a more aerial attack is not the easiest thing to do, and this is one of my favorite examples of it. Every Hayabusa dive or leaping attack or move off the top has a little extra on it. Maybe just as much as the meanness of the HDA or specifically Kawada’s facial expressions, the way in which Hayabusa does his offense is real vital to the feeling this is able to put out.

Beyond just feelings and general hostilities in the air, it’s also a match that makes a ton of sense and works on a regular ass wrestling level, mechanically and narratively.

Smaller guys hurl their bodies at the bigger ones until they’re worn out enough to feel beatable. Bullying works until it doesn’t. In the end, it comes down to the ability of the smaller wrestlers to capitalize on the small window they’re able to create. Kawada and Taue are always there for saves when it counts though, and it just doesn’t happen. Hayabusa and Shinzaki never really feel lesser for it, but it comes down to a kind of undeniable physical reality of it. It isn’t an impossibility, but Kawada and Taue are too good individually and too good as a team for that window to stay open for more than a half a second, and that’s that.

Not one of the best matches of all time or anything, but something just as respectable, a dream match that completely lives up to that status, while delivering in ways that are far far more interesting than pure fantasy.

***1/4

Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama vs. Holy Demon Army, AJPW Real World Tag League 1996 Final (12/6/1996)

This was the finals of the 1996 Real World Tag League.

I can’t speak to how this felt a quarter century ago, as I write this on that anniversary. However, it’s been fifteen or sixteen years since I first saw it. The ultimate testimony to this match isn’t that it’s as good now as it was when it happened, or as it was the first time I saw it. Those things may be true, but the real truth is that all these years later, it’s even better than I remember it whenever I watch it, and always in such different ways too.

It’s one of those matches, the All Japan Pantheon, matches known in many respects by date alone. Arguably, it’s the last one. Some might say 1/20/97 but I’m not sure that lands with quite the same punch as this or a 6/9/95, 6/3/94, 12/3/93, etc.

Beyond just name value, there are very few matches in All Japan history or wrestling history period that land with the same kind of punch that this does.

Mechanically, it’s stellar. Execution, construction, all of those sorts of things. Everyone’s pasting each other, there are at least three or four or five bumps off of suplexes in this that are absolute god damned screamers. All-time disgusting landings on a neck, a shoulder, or in a few cases, right on the top of the bean. It’s also pretty immaculately assembled. Everything feels like it happens at the right time, there’s a slow escalation to the finish, but without even a shred of wasted time. They begin the match hot and hold that pace, energy, and sort of furious feeling for the next half hour plus with very little surcease.

In a story sense, it’s one of the best ever told.

After Misawa and Akiyama have gone 3-0 against this team in 1996, in three different situations, there’s not really any fear here. Doubly so as Misawa’s already stopped the Army from winning the RWTL in two of the previous three years. They try for a rush job in the same way that the HDA did in July, only to get a little farther with it. The big thing in the first half of this match is what the meeting a week prior set out to establish, which is that Jun Akiyama is even better now. Far from only succeeding in May because of Kawada’s slump or needing Misawa’s help, Akiyama handles Kawada and Taue here at different points entirely on his own. While perhaps not quite the wrestler Kenta Kobashi is, Akiyama feels like a much better compliment to Misawa because he’s a smarter and less hotheaded wrestler, and they feel at many points in the foundational moments of this match like a better team, entirely capable of denying the Holy Demon Army the RWTL for a fourth year in a row, and beating them definitively in their fourth meeting.

What this match also does especially well in a story sense is the payoff.

“But Simon, Kawada already beat Misawa in June 1995! This is an inferior remake!”, one might say, exposing themselves in front of the entire world without revealing themselves. The payoffs in this match are not only better, but they are more plentiful and far more interesting. 6/9/95 already gave you Kawada’s first win over Misawa (a mistake, wasted on a match that already had so much against it from Kobashi’s glory boy cry selling to being 43 minutes long), but there’s so much to this beyond just that.

After Taue bailing Kawada out for so much of the year during the big Kawada Slump and being the stronger of the two, it’s now Taue who isn’t in the best place. He’s the one largely getting beaten around in the first half of the match, and it’s his stuff that’s always countered now. He’s still unable to hit the Nodowa Otoshi off the apron to Misawa like he wants, and pays for it each time he tries. Taue tries to dig back to the face work on Misawa that brought him close in 1995 (as Misawa is making none of the mistakes that let Taue win the title), only to fall short in that regard too.

Following a year of Taue being his keeper, Kawada now has the opportunity to return the favor, and it feels as good as any victory when he’s able to do that for Taue.

It’s also a match with so many of these great minor payoffs, just related to little moves or sequences. Akiyama is finally able to block Taue’s throw into the top rope in the exact way that Misawa learned to, before then stealing the move and hurting Taue with it. Akiyama managing to fight off the double team on his own at one point, not even needing Misawa this time. The double Tiger Driver spot from a week earlier not working on Kawada this time, and in general, the way that Kawada carries himself in the back half of this, like someone who has simply made up his mind to not lose. Game Six Kawada, whether that means glowering at the camera after shoving the monster in green off of him or a lights out shooting performance when it matters most to complete a heroic comeback. It’s the sort of performance that every great sports parallel feels applicable towards. An all time performance on every level, equal parts violent and endearing as the greatest loser of a generation finally gets his feel good win.

The big single move payoff comes when after trying for it and failing in every other match in the series, Taue is finally able to hit Akiyama with the Nodowa Otoshi off of the apron to the floor.

It’s the immediate game changer the match requires, and it’s the thing that FINALLY breaks right for Taue and Kawada. After struggling all match, it’s Taue’s big contribution, as well as the payoff of their struggles to figure something out all year. Instead of removing Misawa so that he can’t save Akiyama or trying to just isolate Akiyama as the legal man to do the opposite, it’s something else. Remove Akiyama so that he can’t save Misawa. Once again, Kawada and Taue are able to get Misawa in a two on one, but it feels so much different now. The sense of impending doom in a similar situation a year and a half earlier isn’t quite here, but it’s replaced by something even better, a sense that it still might not be enough, and that there’s a.) so much still to be done & b.) so much that can still go wrong.

The result is something even more satisfying when nothing goes wrong, Kawada keeps his head on straight in a crisis for once, and they inch closer and closer.

Akiyama manages back in, only to be dumped on his brain in increasingly horrifying ways. Misawa’s comebacks get cut off easier and easier as Kawada and Taue FEEL IT, the wind at their backs, the universe pushing them forward, something special and undefinable in the air. Taue helps out at a point and really might be able to beat Misawa again after a Nodowa Otoshi kickout, but instead opts to bring Kawada back in. It’s a truly beautiful turn from Akira Taue here, leaving it entirely in Kawada’s hands and just standing guard. 1996 would be the Year of Taue with a win here to give him the second of All Japan’s two big tournaments, in addition to a Triple Crown reign and win over Misawa. It’s one of the more selfless and perfect little moments in wrestling history, as Akira Taue puts it entirely into Kawada’s hands. Kawada saved him earlier, and the receipt is Taue tagging him back in at the end when they can both feel it. A tear to the eye.

Toshiaki Kawada feels the hand of history upon his shoulder, and hits a second Powerbomb in a row to beat Misawa again, this time in a far more emphatic and important feeling way and in a bigger match as well.

As heartwarming as any payoff in this match or at the very end of it is the way Taue and Kawada react. Taue is hugging Kawada and Kawada lets him do it, before looking like the most enormous weight in the world has been lifted off of his chest. Kawada looks like he’s been through actual Hell, ready to collapse, and being held up by Taue as the physical and emotional toll begins to reveal itself. It’s not beating Misawa for the first time, but it’s something he communicates as even heavier, being able to do it again in addition to shaking off every problem he’s had internally and externally since his initial failure to repeat that success. Taue and Kawada both speak to the crowd, and they die laughing when Taue speaks and pump their fists uproariously when Kawada says something.

You don’t need to speak the language to feel the moment, and this is one of the better feeling ones in the history of the medium.

Not only just because of the victory, but of what it represents moving forward.

The result of this match isn’t an immediate revenge for Misawa. Baba will make mistakes in 1997 and draw it out until May 1998, but there is something different about AJPW after this match, at least to me.

At the end of this match, the Holy Demon Army largely snaps the Misawa/Akiyama war machine over their knees. It’s a solved equation for them, having not only faced this unit all year and come out on top when it mattered, but faced the worst parts of themselves with the same result. Misawa and Akiyama never quite gel as a team like the teams either man had with Kenta Kobashi before and after. They never touch the World Tag Team Titles again, and following Misawa becoming more and more detached from reality and the idea of helping out the kids throughout 1997, split up a year later after a RWTL finals rematch in which Misawa largely just abandons Akiyama to take the loss. Misawa still has another yearlong plus Triple Crown reign in 1997-98, but there’s more of a desperation in his wrestling in those matches after this, as if he’s finally in jeopardy and aware of his tenuous grip on his position after this match, and as Kobashi starts to become an adult and a proper main event presence. Misawa will never again regularly team up with anyone near his level or who could ever surpass him. The Holy Demon Army will repeat their RWTL win in 1997, and spend much of the rest of the decade dominating the division and holding the titles, before ceding that ground to the Kobashi/Akiyama superteam at the end of the decade.

You can’t rightly say that 6/9/95 was inconsequential, but time revealed that not all that much actually changed. It’s one area where this match has it beat, because it really does feel like the end of something and a definitive sort of victory. If not for Kawada himself, then certainly for the Holy Demon Army, finally toppling one of these teams and securing their signature victory as the best tag team of the decade.

Is this the greatest professional wrestling match of all time?

I don’t know.

That’s a big question.

Absolutely though, this is the best All Japan match of the decade.

Certainly the best tag team match.

The question is always this or 6/9/95, but as an astute Reader may have caught onto, I don’t think it’s a question at all. I think it’s insulting to this match to even suggest that. But sure, for the sake of argument, why is it better than 6/9/95?

For starters, it’s ten minutes shorter. So much of that match felt like it was filling space so as to have a Long Match at nearly forty three minutes. A match conducted by four all-time greats, absolutely, but a match that always felt as though an eye was on the clock, and drawing things out as far as possible. While this is no short match, at thirty one minutes and change, that always feels like the natural result of the match wrestled and the story told. In short, a match that happens to be long instead of a Long Match. The rare example of a match over half an hour that genuinely felt as though they needed almost every second of that.

Another part is that, again, while Jun Akiyama may not be better than Kenta Kobashi at this point, he’s better for this story and these kinds of tag team matches. There’s a complete and total absence of this look-at-me leg dragging vanity selling, there’s not a spilled tear to be found on Akiyama’s behalf. It gives him an edge here that Kobashi never had, and allows the matches to feel like more than exercises in how to benefit only one man out of the four. Akiyama sticks to his role, and I find him more interesting here as a young killer trying to supplant Taue and Kawada than I find Kobashi as — theoretically — a sympathetic young guy. You’re not going to get me to feel sorry for Kobashi at this point and I’m never going to root for Misawa to get past Kawada for the nth time.

That’s the main reason I like this so much better, I suppose.

Primarily, the reason this is better than its chief competition is that it more freely allows me to react the way that I naturally always would.

While Kawada and Taue are still the aggressors, it’s a much more even thing. The history is also more on their side here, as instead of parity, it’s a total domination by Misawa and Akiyama up until this point. There’s real odds to overcome, a significant mountain to climb, and a pair of more grounded and realistic performances that inspire me to want to see them achieve those things. In addition to that, this also lacks the Kobashi leg excuse, forcing Kawada and Taue to have a much harder fight to the same goal. That’s both in the match itself, but also in the last year plus of the story leading up to it, with every little failure, setback, and stutter step. Naturally, it has the effect of making it all the more satisfying, not only seeing the Army finally beat this Misawa/Akiyama team, but also doing it to win the Real World Tag League for the first time, and it being the culmination of Taue and Kawada’s individual stories in an out of the team. Following the all-time great slump story and the performances in it by Kawada, it’s his masterpiece as a theoretical babyface. While the 1995 match suggested a tragedy that never quite landed with me, this match instead projects a sense of triumph that’s unmatched throughout most of wrestling history before and after this match.

For all the head drops and gross shots and huge moves, what works most about this match and the best matches from this time period is everything else. Characters and little facial sells. Everything in between those moments, the build up and the after effects. The ways in which little moments feel like major victories because of all the work put in to get there. Everyone’s copied, stolen, photocopied, and mimicked everything about this match and matches like this, but it’s the raw gut feeling of the thing that really makes this so special and enduring in the end.

Few results have ever felt as good as this one does, and that’s the secret.

A transcendent piece of work, the defining wrestling match of a time and place, and one of the great payoffs in wrestling history. Save perhaps one (1) match so inexorably linked with my own live experience, this is as good as wrestling gets.

*****

Holy Demon Army vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama, AJPW Real World Tag League 1996 Day Eleven (11/29/1996)

This was part of the 1996 Real World Tag League tournament.

It’s not the famous one, but it is once again really really great.

Unlike May or July, Kawada and Taue now face off against this team as the best version of themselves.

That primarily means Kawada is back at his best, but that extends to that it no longer affects Taue like it did in July. Misawa and Akiyama try to go after just Taue early on, but keeping Kawada at bay isn’t quite as easy as it was in July and in May before that. For their part, the HDA approaches the match in a more productive way instead of getting bogged down in some petulant rage when a thing doesn’t go well. They also choose to focus less on that anger against Akiyama, as they instead spend the match trying to bomb out Misawa. It stands to reason that if a Misawa hot tag is always what turns things and if he’s always so capable of breaking up double teams, it’s sort of a waste to go after the other guy. Misawa teams lose when Misawa can’t make a difference. Get Misawa beat up and he won’t be so able to do that, and force some distance. Misawa and Akiyama win when Misawa can help Akiyama and set him up. It’s how Doc and Ace got the titles off of them in September, it’s how the Army beat Misawa and Kobashi whenever they beat them. It’s still a really hard fight, as the past has shown, but it makes a lot of sense.

Kawada and Taue are better and more insistent in the attack on Misawa than they’ve been in over a year too. As soon as they get the distance, it starts with the Doomsday Nodowa Otoshi to the floor, a Powerbomb on the floor minutes later from Kawada, and an attack that’s clearly working. They’re able to totally keep Akiyama out of the match for the first time ever, and it very much feels for the first two-thirds of this like this is a match that the Holy Demon Army win.

Unfortunately the one thing they don’t seem to account for is that Misawa also bothered doing some homework.

He debuts new backflip counters to the classic Backdrop Driver/Nodowa Otoshi double team, gets out before they can do real damage, and they turn it back around. It’s not the drumming that it felt like in July and Kawada doesn’t totally blow it for the team like he did in May, but there’s a big enough momentum shift that you can really feel it when watching for once.

Beyond just Misawa improving, Akiyama makes a big stride in this match too. Akiyama now is able to completely hold Taue at bay. After the year Taue’s had, it feels like a bigger victory than holding Kawada at bay in July or even beating Kawada in May. The classic strategy works once again then, although it’s on Kawada this time. He fights everything, he’s defiant in fun and meaningless ways because he can’t not be, but Taue is cut off from the match entirely. It’s a handicap match in the last several minutes, creating a really sort of casually cruel thing where Kawada has to now find out what it was like for Taue when Kawada was going through his shit in the spring and summer.

Kawada survives the Tiger Suplex, before Misawa gets real matter of fact about this and hits two (2) Tiger Drivers in a row to give them the win.

Even with everything going right, they can’t do it. It feels particularly mean spirited, even if Misawa and Akiyama did absolutely nothing wrong. A very casual dismantling in the back half, after a year of the Holy Demon Army struggling, adjusting, and getting back to where they were. After spending half or more of the match doing seemingly everything right, only for it not to matter at all. Kawada shook off the slump and came here more motivated than ever, only for Misawa to finally put himself in against him and painfully knock Kawada back down to Earth one more time. As much as the HDA have grown and re-unified, Misawa and Akiyama have now started to gel as an actual team instead of just getting by on the strength of Misawa as a solo force, and the mistakes other wrestlers were making against Jun Akiyama.

It’s as if a Warriors Third was conducted by a James Harden team instead, the same dominance out of nowhere but removed of any joy or fun.

A genuine heartbreaker. Kawada and Taue came into this off of a major non-title win, spent the first half seeming unstoppable, only for it to all fall apart. This time, without any real reason for doing so. For the last year, they’d been able to point to some reason for a loss, a why of it all that they can go and fix. Without any of that this time, it feels like they just might never beat this team.

***1/2

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace vs. Holy Demon Army, AJPW Real World Tag League 1996 Day Six (11/22/1996)

This was part of the 1996 Real World Tag League tournament.

While the Holy Demon Army has come out of the other side of Kawada’s slump, they’ve largely still been left in the dust by this Doc and Ace team. Despite their loss to Misawa and Akiyama in June, it’s the team that did in September what the HDA failed to do all year, and that’s take the titles off of Misawa and Akiyama.

This isn’t the epic that they probably could have had, as a mid-tournament match and not being for anything, but it’s another wonderful AJPW tag. More about furthering and establishing stories than delivering a Great Match, but the result of having two to three all-timers (I could take or leave Doc here, really not worth arguing about as long as nobody is getting wild and calling him a top 30-40 level guy) and a hyper-competent hand like Johnny Ace in there is that even that will wind up delivering a great match as I see it. A tight sub twenty focusing on one of All Japan’s great stories ever and breaking it up with a lot of great action in a less stale pairing means it’s a real easy undertaking for these four on this night, no matter what the circumstances may be.

Delightfully, this is a return to form for Kawada in a two on two environment as the first semi-major tag team match of 1996 in which Taue isn’t constantly saving his ass and the clear driving force behind the team.

It’s not to say that Taue is the weaker man or anything, but it’s a fascinating little approach that they take. Doc and Ace come as correctly as possible, as one would expect from reigning champions. After a year of Slump Kawada, Williams and Ace seem to come into this match expecting that. They go to the same attack Misawa and Akiyama have, which is beating up Kawada and trying to end with Kawada in the ring. They’re even able to shut down Taue’s hot tag following a brief attack on Kawada’s notoriously bad leg, forcing a Kawada hot tag situation at the end, should the match even get that far. The old approach of getting the weaker member in there at the end and double team him, separate him from the partner, and hope that eventually something breaks.

A great thing about 1990s All Japan is that, more often than not, hope on its own never really works out.

Kawada isn’t just back as a solo act, as this match shows, and without a real plan against that, the champions have little to offer.

They lean on Doc vs. Kawada at the end again while Taue is able to keep Mr. Excitement at bay, and it almost works. The problem there is twofold. Firstly, Ace can’t keep Taue at bay nearly as well as Taue can do to him. Doc and Johnny did well against Misawa and Akiyama because they focused on the Akiyama/Ace match up that was pretty even, as well as the Misawa/Doc one. They rarely allowed the uneven matchups to work in the way that this match does. That leads to the second problem, which is that while Doc has Misawa pretty well figured out, he never really had that against Kawada. He lost to him in two major singles matches in 1994, and while Kawada had the slump, he doesn’t anymore. Doc can’t hang with Kawada in the same way, doubly so when Taue is able to break free and help out, it’s not so hard. That is to say, in late 1996 and with the slump shaken off, when Taue and Kawada can gang up on Dr. Death, it becomes less a matter of if and more of a matter of when.

He survives the Powerbomb, but Kawada cuts off his attempt at a last ditch comeback with a rolling kick. A Gamenguri follows that, and as with Kawada using to fell fellow big man Gary Albright six weeks earlier, it’s now a reliable finish for Kawada. The Holy Demon Army not only puts themselves over the top with an emphatic win in the tournament, but they beat the champions, and Kawada continues his way back to where he was by pinning his principle gaijin rival to do it.

An important step not only in establishing that the Slump is over, but that the HDA as a unit are Back as well.

***

Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama/Satoru Asako vs. Holy Demon Army/Yoshinari Ogawa, AJPW Giant Series 1996 Day One (9/28/1996)

It’s a great little K-Hall six man tag match that’s rightfully forgotten given the quality of so many of these matches in the 1990s, but such a weird and fun little thing.

Once again, an example of just how great the Kawada Slump story really was.

Here, we have a match that seems innocuous. Another early tour build up six man tag that could easily mean nothing, or come down to the lowest ranked men in Asako and Ogawa. Barring that, it could leave one in there for the most obvious finish, as All Japan tended to do a lot of the time throughout their history.

Weirdly though, this is the match in which the slump finally breaks.

I love that.

Because, truly, it’s never the most obvious thing or the most grandiose moment in which someone fixes themselves. It’s the moment after everything else. Sometimes, one hangover is just especially rough and you need to ease up just a little bit, you know? Sometimes you get up and feel a certain way and sometimes it’s some small interaction you have throughout the day. Failure isn’t so much the act of falling down as it is the act of staying down, and in this match, Toshiaki Kawada finally decides to get up.

It’s made all the more satisfying by the way the match unfolds prior to that point.

Kawada doesn’t even enter the match for the first two-thirds of the match. Not only do Taue and Ogawa sort of just decide to try this on their own, but Kawada’s occasional save attempts get immediately and wholly stuffed by Misawa. Taue even seems affected by the slump in the first two-thirds of the match at points, not able to really get moving at all. Akiyama even helps little Satoru Asako do a double chokeslam on Taue, which is absolutely some kind of mockery. In his control work on poor little Asako, it’s actually Yoshinari Ogawa that feels like the most successful member of the team in the first half, and he’s a delight in all the ways he always is.

Those little segments between the two and with Asako in general are a real blast too. Satoru Asako is one of my favorite weird little wrestlers of the era, this short pudgy junior in lime green trunks who has the classic ability of never knowing all of the many many many ways in which he’s deficient to the others around him. He’ll never be more than this, but it is always so much fun to watch characters like these. In another decade with more cultivation beyond just being in matches like these and fun in spurts, he could have been Makoto Hashi.

In this match and in this moment though, he is the fulcrum upon which Toshiaki Kawada turns and finally snaps back into place.

When Toshiaki Kawada finally does come in, it’s a try at a slap flurry from the kid that finally seems to unlock something in Kawada again. Fucking Satoru Asako is trying to make a reputation off of him now, and he totally loses it and never once really eats shit again in the match. He kicks and slaps the dog shit out of Asako, takes his cheap shots, and never looks back. Kawada comes back in at the end, and Misawa and Akiyama run the playbook that’s worked all year, except that it just finally doesn’t anymore. When Taue keeps Misawa at bay, Kawada isn’t beaten by Akiyama. The double teams start to fall again for the Holy Demon Army, and when Akiyama survives, Kawada manages to not lose his head in the face of adversity for the first time all year.

The second powerbomb allows Kawada to finally pin Jun Akiyama again, as he always should have been able to, and something feels correct in the universe again.

All Japan can rightfully be criticized for taking forever to do things and being hamfisted in a lot of respects, but this being their greatest post-Jumbo storyline, it was lovely to see a return to form with a more natural approach here regarding self improvement and when and how those decisions are made.

A great match, but above all, a testament to how great the story was and has been for the last year or so that Kawada simply beating Jun Akiyama in a Korakuen Hall six man tag feels like the semi-major victory that it does. It’s on the patient and incisive decisions that All Japan’s made to sell the slump almost as much as it’s been on the ways Toshiaki Kawada has sold and communicated the idea, but both working in concert allow a return to form in accomplishing the routine feel like such a shift.

Wrestling is so cool.

***

 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama vs. Holy Demon Army, AJPW Summer Action Series 1996 Day Nine (7/9/1996)

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

It’s not new, the way in which they approach this, but it works. It’s also very clearly a match that aims to extend the story more than to start or to finish it, and that’s never as fun to watch. Honestly though, they’re all just so great together and the Kawada Slump story is so fascinating to me that I’m pretty much going to be interested in anything that comes out of this match up or that story. It’s treading water here, to some degree, but there are slight changes and a development at the end that I think does exactly enough to move things forward in an interesting way.

After what happened in May, the approach of Taue and Kawada is obvious.

Jun Akiyama has to pay.

Thankfully, All Japan once again takes the scenic route to a familiar destination.

The Holy Demon Army rushes Akiyama and they try to make this QUICK. It’s a hell of a swing, the exact thing you’d expect from a guy obviously in a slump like Toshiaki Kawada is, which always adds so much to these matches. Misawa bails him out so it falls short, but in now trying to take out Akiyama to leave Misawa alone, it’s a return to what famously worked so well for them against a Misawa team thirteen months prior. Taking out the partner and focusing on slowly bombing out Misawa, and importantly, avoiding the scenario where Misawa constantly disrupts and breaks up double teams, and practically hands the win to his partner.

It’s the way in which Misawa always beats the Holy Demon Army, no matter the partner, and every time they’ve blocked it, they’ve won.

There’s a first time for everything though!

Taue and Kawada have their way with Misawa for a while and the match goes as it does, but Akiyama doesn’t vanish like Kobashi did at points, and he’s actually able to save Misawa and prevent the match from ever becoming like that. Akiyama constantly being able to save Misawa and actually return the favor means that the HDA are just stuck in between worlds. Eschewing the chance to isolate Akiyama means he’s there to help Misawa, and that means Misawa also can never got totally taken out either. When they try and return to the attack solely on Akiyama in the back half of the contest, they both make the mistake of getting tunnel vision, once again allowing Misawa to recover just in time to again save Akiyama from the Nodowa Otoshi off of the apron.

Without anything working, they’re forced into a pure bomb throwing contest against Misawa and Akiyama.

For his part, Taue does very well. He and Misawa are once again even, and Taue is able to handle Akiyama in a way Kawada isn’t this go around.

Again, it’s that pesky slump of Kawada that hurts them in the end, even when Taue makes sure to install himself as the legal man when it’s time to try and close the match out. Because of his own constant charging in and the mistakes that come from Kawada now being 1000% aware of his slump, Kawada winds up entirely boxed out at the end. When Akiyama can, he keeps Kawada away from making the save, and throws him almost at will. When he can get past Uncle Jun and he tries to stop Misawa, Misawa keeps knocking him back with elbows. More often than not, it’s a combination of the two. In effect, Kawada is rendered as useless in this match as Kenta Kobashi was in March, wholly powerless to do a single thing about the champions’ attack on his partner.

Taue survives one Tiger Suplex, but a second in a row pins him.

It’s not the emphatic and important win that Akiyama over Kawada in May felt like, but it’s a killer in its own specific way. Following finally getting past Misawa for the Triple Crown six weeks prior, there’s a revanchist sort of feeling to how this goes for Misawa and Taue. He has the Triple Crown (for another few weeks, before losing it to Kobashi in a long awaited payoff to that story), but Misawa’s able to best him once again here. It’s hard to really trace it to Taue losing the title fifteen days later, but there’s something especially rude and disheartening about Misawa just so easily beating him yet again.

Kawada’s slump now affects Taue as well, and it’s becoming a real problem.

***1/4

Akira Taue vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW Super Power Series 1996 Day Fifteen (6/7/1996)

This was for Taue’s Triple Crown Title.

Once again, this is a beautiful match.

Mechanically, it’s a delight. Kawada and Taue make for a perfect pairing, even if they’re never as hostile to each other at this point as they are to everyone else. Both are real efficient guys when left to their own devices, so matches like these are not only hard hitting and full of cool stuff, but also pretty much airtight.

It’s all I can really ask for from a major title match. Violent, efficient, and with story to tell that is both interesting and deeply charming.

Before the match even begins, there’s a wonderful element that Toshiaki Kawada brings to the proceedings with his facial expressions and body language, and that brings up the sensational story that this match decides to tell. He seems completely unenthused and almost sad to be here, like he thinks he’s going to ruin his friend’s good time after only two weeks. Slightly newer fans or more U.S. centric fans may recognize the story from the famous Davey Richards vs. Eddie Edwards match, and it’s a great one. Thankfully, this match is not only significantly better on levels of pure mechanics and the construction of the thing, but also sees them take the far far more interesting and rewarding approach to that story, which is a resounding “No, Actually” from the less appreciated of the two.

Almost immediately, Taue shows his old friend how things are now, and how wrong he truly is.

Kawada begins the match with one of his classic intimidation leg kicks, only to be nearly immediately rocked in return with a boot.

For the rest of the match after that, Kawada is put on rollerskates and can never quite have the match he wants to have. The match itself remains fairly back and forth, but Taue totally keeps Kawada at bay. It’s a wonderful contrast to their match in the Carnival two months earlier, as Kawada never comes close to that same level of control. It’s still hard for Taue, but from the first minute on, it feels like a match that Kawada is trying desperately to make something out of, while Taue moves forward moment by moment without a care in the world, wholly unbothered by any of this.

My favorite part of the match is once again a quiet moment from Toshiaki Kawada, instead of any big exchange or great nearfall. Early on, when absolutely nothing is working, Kawada retreats outside and takes his time. While not unusual for a guy like Kawada or really anyone in All Japan in the 1990s, Kawada carries himself in a certain way that feels already so defeated. It’s in the expressions he makes as much as it is how he walks around outside and gets back into the ring. I’ve talked at length about the Kawada Slump being one of my favorite stories in wrestling history because of the way they tell it and how Kawada himself approaches communicating that idea, and this is the crown jewel so far.

For the first time, in this moment, Toshiaki Kawada seems to recognize himself that he is in a slump.

The entire match feels different after that, seeing Kawada still clearly try hard, but colored by a desperation that constantly undoes him. It feels like the sort of thing, once again, that comes out of real athletics. A team being down by a lot and trying riskier and riskier things or unexpected things to try and catch up. Sometimes they work for pockets of time, but it becomes clear that one side of the match is setting the tempo and one side is playing catch-up. It’s hard for that other side to win, especially when the other side is as smart as Akira Taue is, and knows how to interpret these signals.

Kawada’s hope briefly comes when he does what’s worked for him recently, and he goes to the arm just a little but to open Taue up for bigger pieces of offense.

In the short term, it works.

The result is one of my favorite little spots of the year (the highlight of the match in any other match beyond a Dangerous K character showcase), and a great little show of why these two are so great:

in love with this great little sequence from the June '96 Taue/Kawada match pic.twitter.com/uCD82uqjEb

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) December 2, 2021

 

After that though, Kawada can’t really do anything with the arm.

It’s a strategy he already employed on Taue in their match at the end of March, used simply to avoid defeat. Akira Taue smartly reads the decision for what it is, just like Kawada read Kobashi’s sleeper defense two weeks earlier. Similarly, the sign of desperation turns into a signal of mental surrender, and Kawada is never quite right again.

The two trade bombs and big nearfalls, but Kawada never does what he needs to do. He avoids Taue’s new big leaping Dynamic Kicks and again fights off the Nodowa Otoshi off the apron, but preparation doesn’t matter when you can’t utilize your own offense. It’s a recurring theme of mid 1990s All Japan, and it’s displayed beautifully once again in this match. Kawada has fight, despite the slump, but that’s it. After Taue finally lands one Nodowa Otoshi, Kawada does his absolute best to get up and just tackle Taue down to stop another. Again, like a tag partner and career rival might, Taue knows and completely gets Kawada’s thought process. Taue hauls him right up, and a second Nodowa Otoshi gets him the win.

One of the more fascinating Triple Crown matches of the decade, as a match in which nothing goes right for Kawada. Instead of aiming for the big five star epic, it’s a character story about their series over 1995-1996 and about Kawada’s slump. The lower stakes and more tangible story ground it in a way that so many other TC matches aren’t tethered to Earth. So while it lacks those famous ambitions, it’s a match with much greater replay value to me than the four or five different Misawa/Kobashi title matches from the 90s that all go at least half an hour and rarely have goals or things to say that are as interesting and focused as those in this match.

The greatest expression yet of Kawada’s slump, if only because it’s the moment at which it becomes undeniable.

***1/4

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue, AJPW Super Power Series 1996 Day Six (5/24/1996)

This was for Misawa’s Triple Crown Title.

Once again, it’s a true delight to watch these two go at it.

Misawa vs. Taue lacks the emotional punch of Misawa vs. Kawada or the unrivaled bombast of the Kobashi pairings, but there’s something simple and clear about this pairing that I really do love. Instead of years of history and this move leading to that move and so on, you tend to get more matches like these, down around twenty minutes and largely just displays of two hyperconfident wrestlers unloading on each other.

That’s not to say there’s NO story though.

The last time Misawa had to turn back Taue, it was by a closer margin than ever before. Taue had him scouted in every way, but was only felled by Misawa avoiding the big stuff and always giving himself just barely enough space with those elbows until something broke. While Taue wrestled an incredible match, Misawa wrestled one of the more airtight matches of his career or anyone’s career, perfectly synthesizing his own attack with a total avoidance of the biggest bombs that the opposition had to offer. It’s a road map not only against Taue, but against any opponent, ever.

Like Taue’s Carnival final against Steve Williams, there isn’t a whole lot to this beyond the immediate moments. It’s a straightforward display of offense, and I absolutely love it.

Fascinatingly, both men enter this match and conduct themselves as the more surefooted men alive at this moment, and it is a delight.

The immediate thought is that each man has a valid reason for trepidation after their last match. Akira Taue lost, and Mitsuharu Misawa almost lost. Despite the quality of Taue’s attack in September, he was never able to hit his biggest move. Despite Misawa keeping the title, Taue put up a stronger fight than ever before, and one theoretically ought not to rely on the stopping power of an elbow alone and the sheer quality of their offensive arsenal. However, Taue is coming off the biggest singles win of his career the month before and Mitsuharu Misawa hasn’t tasted defeat in any meaningful way since the famous June 1995 tag team match, and not as a singles act since July 1994. As much as they have reasons to display caution, both also have equal reasons to believe themselves immune to consequence, and it makes for a wonderful meeting.

They charge at each other from the start and spend the match like that.

While Taue’s confidence is charming, this match is largely about that of the champion. Misawa blocks the big bombs with elbows early on, and meets all of Taue’s newer offense (his new leaping Dynamic Kick and a freer flowing use of German Suplexes) with a looser style of offense than usual. Not in execution, as this is in fact Misawa’s stiffest elbow performance in quite some time, but certainly in the choices he makes. Misawa flies more than usual, feels more confident than usual, and in general, seems to think less and react more. There’s an ease to it that isn’t always present in the matches where Misawa has a plan or something in his head that he has to avoid. He’s not mocking Taue or slapping the big man around, but there’s a complete and total confidence in Misawa here that I absolutely love. It’s one of his more human performances of the era, not only wrestling it like a man who cannot suffer consequences, but then ultimately suffering those consequences in a sudden and humbling manner.

Finally, Misawa’s unbelievable confidence leads to a mistake.

In the end, despite pummeling Taue over and over with elbows once again to escape the doom that comes with distance, Misawa goes back up top for no real reason. He’s winning the stand up battle but wants to feel the breeze upon his back.

The air is not on his side tonight, however.

As Misawa goes about in pity for himself, a great wind pushes at his back and sends him flying out of the air and into the waiting and loving arms of Akira Taue, who catches him into a mid-air Nodowa Otoshi, and that is it.

Akira Taue wins his first Triple Crown, in the exact way befitting of his slow progress against Mitsuharu Misawa for the past year and change. Despite being stopped by elbows and speed, Taue’s friend against Misawa was always distance and the longer reach he had than anyone. The trick, it turns out, was not figuring out how to disarm or combat Misawa’s elbows, but to catch him in a way where they did not matter. To catch Misawa literally out of thin air is the most natural extension and climax of the story about distance being Taue’s friend. Running in is one thing, but the moment Misawa gets so confident he no longer believes his actions have consequences and leaves his feet so Taue doesn’t even have to do THAT for himself is fittingly the moment in which he finally loses to Taue.

Not only does Taue come through and finally win his Triple Crown, but he beats everyone else to Misawa. Despite it coming in the form of the success of his best friend, it’s as much of a blow to Kawada as anything else, shaking off his slump somewhat in the previous match, only for unassuming Akira Taue to beat Misawa when it actually matters and take the Triple Crown off of him before Kawada ever could, in a convincing fashion that it feels like Kawada could never manage.

The Year of Taue was a joke from 1995, but in 1996, it is an undisputed reality.

***1/2

Holy Demon Army vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama, AJPW Super Power Series 1996 Day Five (5/23/1996)

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

On paper, it’s a day before Taue’s shot at the Triple Crown after winning the Champion Carnival the month before. On paper, it’s an obvious build up match. Everyone knows about Misawa and Taue at this point. They’ve been fighting for almost six years since Taue betrayed his generation. Taue is smarter than everyone else but Misawa always has the big elbow to bail him out no matter how much Taue seems to see him coming in an offensive sense, while also having a deeper arsenal to pull from and never needing to rely on one thing in the way Taue sometimes seemed to in the past. It’s a great story and one still with a lot of road to run on, but it’s not a new one. Most importantly, it’s one better saved for the next night.

Thankfully, one of the best things about 1990s All Japan is that they rarely ever treat tag matches, Tag Title matches especially, as just exercises in the purely obvious. Instead of going to that old well, this one is way more about Jun Akiyama. Two and a half months earlier, Jun challenged with big brother Kobashi as his partner, and did really well. Unfortunately, Kobashi wasn’t ever really able to make a stop and get in there himself, so Akiyama got stuck alone and was slowly just run down until the end came.

In this match, Jun Akiyama learns from the failure in March and comes not only more prepared, but with a much better tag team partner.

Just having Misawa doesn’t make it immediately easier though, and I really really appreciate that, and how they approached this.

First off, mechanically (as can often get lost when discussing these stories and approaches they take to tell them), this is lovely once again. Kawada is obviously pristine, but everyone else does so well. Akiyama walks the line perfectly between being sympathetic but having the energy and force needed to bring it when the match asks for him to do that as well. Taue and Misawa aren’t asked to do quite as much, but each does it so well. Taue portrays an indignation at Akiyama’s survival that pairs perfectly with Kawada’s anger. Misawa is in his element, asked only to dish out offense and serve as a measuring stick for everyone else. His offense rocks, he’s fiery and energetic, and the quiet calm has a way of naturally highlighting how everyone else in the match is not like that at all, each for their own wildly different and interesting reasons.

In March, Akiyama humiliated Kawada. He still got pinned by Taue in the end, but it was a harder win for the HDA than it should have been given the inexperience and failings of the Kobashi/Akiyama duo. It’s the sort of thing that nobody REALLY remembers given the ending, but that a maniac like Kawada has clearly been thinking about non-stop since then. Every time he’s in the ring with Jun Akiyama, Kawada is out not only for blood, but also out to put the entire process on display. It’s not only kicking and slapping around Akiyama whenever possible to try and punish the kid for having a breakout at his expense, but wanting to put it in front of the world and being a little showier than usual. Kawada isn’t usually the sort of wrestler to make such a show of things, but he is here, and it is a DELIGHT.

the most pissed off boy of all time pic.twitter.com/Wet4yI4CO4

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) December 1, 2021

 

The great part about the performance isn’t just how angry and mean it is, but also in how it doesn’t actually matter much as a result of a.) how good Akiyama is & b.) the different that Misawa makes.

Early on, Kawada tries to get Akiyama into his kind of a match, but instead of slapping and kicking with Kawada when pressed, he steals both from Misawa’s playbook against Kawada and Kawada’s playbook against everyone else by hauling off and just punching Kawada as hard as he can right in the jaw. Poor Toshiaki just CRUMBLES down, and gets out of there, once again humiliated against Akiyama. Similarly, Taue tries to get in on the act like he did in March to help his buddy out, only for Akiyama to almost immediately beat him in the same way he almost got Kawada at the start in March. When they take control of the kid, it’s very obviously the work of guys who have felt deeply emasculated by this rookie, and it’s such a different display from the kind of quiet confidence and more assured aggression they’ve displayed for the last three years. It’s also the kind of work that opens them up much moreso than they’d been before, and allows these pockets for Akiyama.

Had that not happened though, one still gets the sense that Misawa would have opened them up anyways.

As soon as Misawa makes his first saves and runs in the match, it’s very clear that he’s a better partner for Akiyama in this moment than Kobashi was. Beyond that he has a greater stopping power than Kobashi did, he’s also infinitely better about separating Taue and Kawada. He removes the double team that Akiyama was constantly faced with in March, and also gives him much more room to breathe when saving. Without even mentioning the hot tags and how they’re both effective and exciting, he’s just a much better helper.

Even when they can shut down Misawa and bring it back to Akiyama, it takes them so much more of an effort to do that, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Akiyama goes to Kawada’s historically bad knee to open him up at the end. In these moments, with Kawada already hindered, Misawa can help set Akiyama up for the big win in the exact same ways that he did it for Kobashi in the famous 1993 Real World Tag League final under very similar circumstances. Taue and Misawa cancel each other out, and with Misawa softening him up and a hurt knee, Kawada gets humiliated yet again. Akiyama drops two Exploders in a row on him, the famous big knee, and with a third Exploder, Akiyama not only wins his first major title, but gives Kawada one of the more humiliating moments of his career in the process.

It’s a beautiful end to the story, not only getting Akiyama this major win, but making it feel as good as possible and as legitimate as possible without going overboard. This match displays a perfect kind of balance, making it not only feel great as Akiyama gets revenge for the bullying all match, but also uses all of that to craft the big win in a way that feels genuine. Kawada and Taue make the mistake of trying to make a show of it. It’s not Akiyama’s win alone, but when the idea of “Akiyama’s win” is still such a big deal, that doesn’t matter much at all.

An incredible match, and improvement on the match from March in every way. 

***1/2