[1992-12-04-AJPW-Real World Tag League] Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue & Jun Akiyama

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Here's Akiyama, who barely has his feet wet in wrestling, competing in the tag league finals with the biggest stars in the company. The way he interacts with Misawa and Kawada reminds me in some ways of Hansen and Destroyer working the headscissors in '75, although it's not as focused as that was. Misawa and Kawada sell quite a bit for him. This isn't a bad match, but as tag league finals go, it's obviously the worst from a yearbook so far. (Consider the competition.) In spite of that, it's an interesting look at all four of these guys finding their way post-Jumbo and I'm glad it made the set.

[jdw]

There are no "tag finals" until 1995. This is simply a League Match, the last one of the league. Same as 1993.

 

And yes... it was a bit underwhelming relative to other matches in that spot. Bad break with Jumbo out, and like we were discussing in the other thread, Baba wasn't creative enough in dealing with Jumbo's withdrawl.

 

John

[Tim Evans]

For a rookie, Aikyama is pretty damn good. The match was ok but nothing special. Liked the ceremony at the end.

[shoe]

It seems I liked this a lot more than the rest of you. I thought the finishing run was really exciting with the young lion trying to upset the established stars.

[Zenjo]

Such a poor way to end the year. AJ certainly had a dip in the 2nd half of 92 with Jumbo's illness. I'm quietly confident that they will recover in 93. Even at this time Tosh was starting to look a bit jealous of his partner.

[Kevin Ridge]

I kept thinking this was the actual final match on a tournament basis. Akiyama does a pretty solid job for a rookie but this was missing Jumbo in here as in the end it felt like the finish was really obvious on who was going to win.

[PeteF3]

This is sort of an anticlimax before it even starts. The Super Generation Army #2 man just pinned Dr. Death, are we really expecting either one of them to do a job here? I know this isn't a true "final" but it seems like they didn't want to change up the booking too much after Jumbo went down, because a Generation Army/MVC "final" seems to be the only logical option. The match itself is still quite good and Akiyama acquits himself amazingly well considering his talent level. Having Taue level Misawa with the nodowa and then the nodowa/backdrop double-team was a great way to get Jun some credible hot near-falls on Misawa, but of course we get the inevitable (and correct) result.

[WingedEagle]

It sounds like I may have enjoyed this more than most. Akiyama gets his moments to shine, often aided by Taue being his typical self and stepping in when necessary to land a hand (or foot). You've got Kawada tagging in to brutalize Akiyama and staring down Taue before doing so. It felt similar to the joshi tag a couple days earlier with the youngster teaming with a star against a more established team. Really great big match debut for Akiyama as they even let Taue save him on the first tiger driver before a second put him away.

 

***3/4

[garretta]

Akiyama's the star here without a doubt, even in defeat. He's not only good at being the plucky youngster who's tough to pin, but he shows early on that he can hold his own in exchanges not only with Kawada (which is something special in its own right), but with Misawa as well. It's far too early in his career to be talking about Triple Crown challenges and such, but going toe-to-toe with the champ (and getting several nearfalls on him) in a setting like this is a definite feather in his cap. The fact that it took two Misawa powerbombs to finally put Akiyama down is icing on the cake. As of now, Akiyama definitely seems to be the future of AJPW.

 

Kawada and Taue seem more concerned with their own private business than the tag match at hand from time to time. I wonder if they were supposed to be the new leaders of the armies going forward, with Jumbo out of action and Misawa concentrating on defending the Triple Crown.

 

There was surprising continuity between Taue and Akiyama for a first-time team; usually in substitution situations like this there's a certain level of awkwardness, especially when compared to an established team such as Misawa and Kawada. Speaking of whom, I didn't see any signs of jealousy between them at all, at least in this match. Kawada seemed more than a bit grumpy, but that's par for the course where he's concerned. I'll see if I can spot any dissension between them in the two November bouts we have from the tournament, which I have yet to watch.

 

This would have been a perfect time and place for Jumbo to show up and wave to the crowd, but I guess he was still too sick and/or contagious.

[GOTNW]

I liked the opening between Taue and Kawada and how Kawada made Taue struggle over trivial stuff like irish whipping him and reversing a headlock. I find the body of the match not particularly interesting, some nice moments of violence when Kawada was beating on Akiyama but the match seemed to lack direction when that wasn't the case. They seemed to be building up to a Kawada/Taue showdown with Taue breaking up so many of his pin attempts and the crowd pop when we got that match up again but it ended up being very disappointing. It was pretty shocking how many moments of miscommunication there were here, you wouldn't expect an All Japan match to have like 10 botches but this one did, most of them starring Taue. Speaking of him-I think some of the All Japan revision may favour him simply due to the role he played. Kawada getting up after a taking a move without even selling it for a little bit on more than one occasion was weird. You could excuse it when he did it against Akiyama due to the difference in the pecking order but he did it against Taue too. Finish wasn't overly dramatic but I did like the match once all hell broke loose. ***