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.

***

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.

***

Burning Wild vs. Go Shiozaki/Kento Miyahara, AJPW Real World Tag League 2014 Final (12/6/2014)

This was the finals of the 2014 Real World Tag League and for the AJPW World Tag Team Titles.

I’ve never been all that high on this one, at least not to the level that it’s always felt like I was supposed to be. A lot about this appeals to me. I like three out of the four here generally, and love two of them. The match also doesn’t really do anything all that wrong mechanically, and the construction is fine. It’s not too long, and while it could have used a white hot Korakuen crowd instead of a far less packed-in Osaka Bodymaker Coliseum, the crowd is far from bad. It’s just normal great though, the sort of match you watch, go “ah yeah, that ruled” about, and then don’t think about much again in any sort of lasting way. At the time, it was this super highly praised match and while I think a lot of that has died down, I’m not sure how much of that is because people like it less or talk about it less now that time has passed and how much of it is just because the generation of All Japan Perverts that’s cropped up in recent years just hasn’t seen it.

Still, it is great.

Most of that is down to Uncle Jun turning up in a big way here. He’s spent most of the last year holding back for one reason or another, but he turns the dial past ten here in a way that he hasn’t since the 2013 Champions Carnival final, and the match is a lot better for it. He and Go are magic together in what little sections they get here (more on that later), and the big end run against Miyahara is again some of the best Akiyama work of the last ten years.

Where the match suffers a lot is basing the last half of it around the slow elevation of Kento Miyahara. It’s not the worst idea in the world. They’ve obviously just decided Shiozaki is never going to be the guy and there’s nobody else there otherwise around that age but Miyahara. You might as well. Doering’s good, but he’s white, and Suwama sure isn’t getting younger. I get it. The thing is that while Miyahara is mechanically competent, he’s not especially interesting or especially great at anything. You get the sense that you could grow a handful of guys like this in a lab, and given similar dead eyed and lifeless but mechanically sound young would-be Aces coming out of DDT and NOAH in the years since, you also get the sense that they might have actually all done that. So, while Akiyama is able to elevate him near his level in the prolonged final run, he sure isn’t Go Shiozaki, and the match is less great than it could have been as a result of the decision. But that’s All Japan in 2014 for you, refusing to play the hot hands that did so much for them in 2013, and having a far less interesting year and tournament final as a result.

In fact, the best part of this might not even be the big epic run at the end, but actually the first half, where Go and Kento are tearing up Omori’s ribs and when when Akiyama snaps and about tries to kill Miyahara outside and in the crowd in response. It’s all vicious and mean and tightly focused, and at this point, it’s something I’m far more interested in than yet another great finishing run.

Part of that is that there’s really only one way this ends. Kento scored an upset on Akiyama a few times throughout the year, and he’s still clearly a year (and change) off from beating him in a big time setting or winning in a big time setting like this. So for as well as he does — and outside of his typically poor elbows, he does WELL — it’s a little hard to believe it in the way that you can believe almost any other 1v1 pairing in this match going either way.

Ultimately though, Akiyama is great enough for it not to matter. You might not get a whole lot of drama off of Kento’s nearfalls, but Akiyama’s offense is vicious enough that a simple bare knee is a believable finish from Uncle Jun. At a certain point, great is just great, and one of the best of all time turns in another gem. The last five minutes of this features some of his meanest knees ever, an extra little snap on all the big offense, before the predictable end comes with the Wrist-Clutch Exploder.

All said, while the company and/or match makes a decision that limits how great it can be, it’s still the best All Japan match of the year, and a must-see Akiyama performance if nothing else. All Japan wouldn’t be All Japan if they didn’t constantly find ways to trip over their own feet, and Jun Akiyama wouldn’t be Jun Akiyama if he didn’t make everything this watchable in spite of that.

***1/4

Go Shiozaki/Kento Miyahara vs. Atsushi Aoki/Hikaru Sato, AJPW Real World Tag League 2014 Day One (11/16/2014)

This was part of the 2014 Real World Tag League.

It’s not a great match. Not because it’s obvious the entire time who takes this, but because the juniors fucked up a little and tried to do a Kento leg work match. It’s late 2014, people don’t have stacks of evidence at this point as to how that never works and why it never works, so I don’t really blame them for not knowing any better. All the same, that puts a lower ceiling on this match than it might have had otherwise.

However, the juniors repeatedly owning Go by knocking him off the apron and being spiteful little shits before Go then had a killer hot tag and absolutely fucked them up was awesome. Coming off his career year in 2013, it’s criminal what All Japan’s gone with Go in 2014, but this was a great performance.

XCEED (Go Shiozaki & Kento Miyahara) vs. Evolution (Suwama & Joe Doering), AJPW Real World Tag League 2013 Final (12/8/2013)

This was the finals of the 2013 Real World Tag League.

This needed a way better or more interested crowd to live up to being as long as it was. It isn’t without great work from Shiozaki and Suwama, especially together, but yeah, this didn’t really come together like I would have hoped for. Fun control on Kento in the first half, but then it kept on going and going and going without ever seeming to jump out of that low gear. And then again, Suwama and Doering go over. Too long, wrong result, lack of energy in a big match when it needs it the most. It’s All Japan.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride” doesn’t just apply to the WWE, you know.