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.
HANDWERK 