Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

[1994-01-07-AJPW-New Year's Giant Series] Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi


Loss

Recommended Posts

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

After seeing Kobashi in great match after great match in '93 and really only winning one of them that I can recall (although it was a big victory), it's great to see him start off '94 with another win. Ditch is right that this is a master's class in tag team strategy from Kawada and Fuchi. In fact, as great as it is to see Kobashi get a win, because of the way the match is worked, you really want Kawada and Fuchi to pull it off because they seem like the smarter, more cohesive team. That's not to criticize the booking, that's just that the way the match was worked made me want to see a different result.

 

Kobashi briefly tries going after Kawada's knee out of frustration and it doesn't get him very far, since Fuchi saves. Kawada and Fuchi are basically keeping Kobashi isolated and trying to get the win on Misawa. Based on their standing, you might think keeping Misawa isolated while working over Kobashi would be the better strategy, but a Misawa who is beaten down and can't make saves helps the winning cause, even if he's more difficult to pin.

 

Anyway, I know a few Kobashi results in '94, so while I'm sure he eats a few losses, I expect him to fare better in yearbook matches than he did in '93.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After seeing Kobashi in great match after great match in '93 and really only winning one of them that I can recall (although it was a big victory), it's great to see him start off '94 with another win.

?

 

Might have been the editing of what made the set.

 

He beat Spivey at the 2/29/92 Budokan, which was his first singles win over a gaijin of note.

 

Pinned Furnas in the Carny, ignoring non-TV stuff like the win over Ace during Carny.

 

Got the pin over Spivey again in the 5/20/93 Misawa & Kobashi vs Hansen & Spivey that was the semi to Kawada & Taue beating Doc & Gordy for the tag titles, essentially putting the natives over the top two gaijin teams of the past 3 years leading into the first Budokan showdown.

 

Got the pin the next night over Gordy in a singles match, his biggest win to date. Essentially it was Natives vs Gaijin on the Sapporo Double Shot that year, and the natives kicked ass:

 

Night 1

Kawada & Taue over Gordy & Williams (win WTT)

Misawa & Kobashi over Hansen & Spivey

 

Night 2

Misawa over Hansen (TC)

Kawada over Doc

Kobashi over Gordy

Taue over Spivey

 

With Kobashi getting pins both nights.

 

He pinned Ogawa in the 7/2/93 six man.

 

He pinned Patriot singles match at the 9/3/93 Budokan.

 

He beat Bossman in the 10/13/93 singles match.

 

He got the pin over Ace in the opening night win over Spivey & Ace.

 

Obviously got the pin your referring to in the Last Match of the Year.

 

There may have been more six mans or less tags like the 7/2/93 match that I'm forgetting. It's kind of the thing with six-mans and lesser tags like this: the pins get passed around a fair amount, and when you have something like Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Fuchi, pretty much everyone know who is taking the fall. They weren't even very good about having Kawada take the fall much in a match like this, or Kawada get the "surprise" pin on Kobashi. One of the reasons I mentioned some other six man that had a nice surprise finish... I want to day a pairing that had the four corners along with Akiyama and Omori in it.

 

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of those, the Gordy match and the six-man were the only ones that made the yearbook.

 

That's not to say based on Kobashi's spot on the card that he was being buried or should have won more or anything like that. And I know he eventually had his big wins over pretty much everyone his biggest fans would want him to beat, some of which are on this set. But one of my biggest takeaways from watching these yearbooks so far has been my surprise in how Kobashi stayed so over and his nearfalls had so much heat when he didn't really beat big guns (Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Hansen, Doc) very often. I'm not even sure if he ever beat Doc.

 

It's a credit to him that fans were still behind him after losing so often and in such a memorable way so much of the time. When I mention that point, it's not always something I'm mentioning to criticize All Japan booking. It's more that some wrestlers who ate that many losses would be typecast at a certain level and never be able to overcome it. Kikuchi, for example, wasn't going to get the same heat wrestling top guys that Kobashi would. And Kikuchi at his best was a great wrestler. Kobashi had an "it factor", or whatever you want to call it, that Kikuchi didn't, and it's not just Kobashi's size that gives him the advantage.

 

Is it fair to say that fans always saw Kobashi above his standing in the promotion during these years? Would "more over than his push" be an accurate description of his ability to connect with the All Japan audience? I should be careful in how I phrase that question, because I'm not saying that All Japan didn't see his value. Baba obviously thought a lot of his talent, or he wouldn't have been put in a position to have great matches so often. But the heat Kobashi gets is far beyond the heat midcarders have typically gotten in any promotion in history.

 

Before I really dived into All Japan like I have in these yearbooks, I just assumed that the Four Corners were also the four top guys, and based on matchlists alone, always assumed Kawada and Kobashi were challenging each other for #2 all the time while Misawa held the top spot. Obviously that's not accurate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kobashi was clearly a future star as a rookie in '89 and crowds responded that way. He didn't win much before '93, but was steadily pushed more with each year, and the crowd saw that progress. By '93 they were going nuts at the prospect of him beating the likes of Hansen and Williams; his win to cap off the year was HUGE, and set the stage for yet more pushing in '94.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of those, the Gordy match and the six-man were the only ones that made the yearbook.

The pin over Kawada made it.

 

There were others: he beat Jun again on Fan Appreciation Night in September, and Omori the week before in another Fan Appreciation card in a Kobashi & Akiyama vs Kawada & Omori match. I don't recall if one of those is out there on commercial tape... think the match with Jun is. Nothing unexpected in those wins, though.

 

In the annual 4 vs 4 survival tag match, he got the final pin... over Taue. One might technically be able to consider that the "10th" Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue match, which would make the series 4-3-3 overall for Misawa & Kobashi... and give Kobashi pins over both Kawada and Taue that year in "Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue" tag, while eating the pin from Taue in the June Budokan match. I don't recall if that's out on commercial... I'm still filling in my commercial collection from that period.

 

There are others out there like that.

 

 

I'm not even sure if he ever beat Doc.

Beat Doc in the 1996 Carny. Single camera clips of it appeared on AJPW 30. Crowd went nuts. Kind of dumb booking if the Babas at the time were considering the Misawa --> Taue --> Kobashi run since it wastes what could have been a good Kobashi vs Doc title defense.

 

 

When I mention that point, it's not always something I'm mentioning to criticize All Japan booking.

AJPW booking was hardly great shakes, so it's okay to criticize it.

 

On the other hand, they were *at times* good in slowly peeling back the layers.

 

Kobashi's win over Hansen in the 1994 Carny is pretty damn cool because we'd just seen him come so close in 1993. If Baba had thought back in 1991 that Kobashi was super over and "WTF, let's just give the fans what they want and have Kobashi get a singles win over him..." then 1994 wouldn't have been quite so special. It took nothing away from the 7/93 match that Kobashi *hadn't* yet pinned Stan, and frankly added a good deal to it: we were watching to see if Kobashi could do it, or how close he could come. In the end... damn close.

 

 

It's more that some wrestlers who ate that many losses would be typecast at a certain level and never be able to overcome it. Kikuchi, for example, wasn't going to get the same heat wrestling top guys that Kobashi would. And Kikuchi at his best was a great wrestler. Kobashi had an "it factor", or whatever you want to call it, that Kikuchi didn't, and it's not just Kobashi's size that gives him the advantage.

Kikuchi was a tiny guy. I'm not sold that AJPW fans wanted to see Kikuchi pinning Jumbo and Taue in those six-mans... so he's not a great comp for Kobashi.

 

On the other hand, did we want to see Kobashi taking several six-man pins on Jumbo in 1991 and 1992 when Kobashi was "hot" and "over"?

 

I didn't. I can see that over in New Japan, and AJW had plenty of times the higher ranked wrestler lost to a person a bit below them in a tag. I kind of liked All Japan as a contrast rather than the same. The 80s saw AJPW and NJPW booked somewhat similar in results and who took pins, often frustrating in the similar non-finish-o-ramas. I liked that there was a very different style of booking pins between Choshu-style (which bled down to Yamada) and Baba-style.

 

There are times where there are things in Choshu booking like Hase getting the "upset" on Hash at the G1. It's cool. Except... if you watched it all... there are a lot of them. Choshu lost three straight matches in the first G1, and he was the biggest star fulltime in the promotion. After a while it's "cool", but they mean... well... at the time our general comment as either:

 

* it's Wrestler A's turn

* Wrestler A needed to win for the booking

 

On the first, at times to could predict them. I predicted all the results for the J Crown tourney based on one obvious starting point: it was Dragon's "turn" to win over Liger. They were against each other in the first round. Okay, with that obvious to me, then what else could happen? Which led to the second thing that should have been obvious: Liger wasn't putting over a Wrestler, he was putting over a Title. And the Choshu/Yamada booking flowed easily from there.

 

Baba booking was usually pretty easy to predict, at least until 1996. So when Kobashi pinned Kawada at the end of 1993... it wasn't just "cool", it wasn't just an "upset", it had some pretty good meaning. Of course the company didn't/couldn't come up with a lot of those because there are only so many you can give out.

 

 

Is it fair to say that fans always saw Kobashi above his standing in the promotion during these years?

No. In 1993 they knew the rankings were along these lines:

 

Misawa

Hansen

Kawada

Gordy

Williams

Taue

Kobashi

 

Kobashi getting a win over Gordy was a pretty big positive.

 

 

Would "more over than his push" be an accurate description of his ability to connect with the All Japan audience?

Maybe... except that he was pushed. Semifinal singles matches against Hansen (July) and Kawada (Oct) at Budokan, which were really his first "big" Budokan singles matches in that slot. Main event tag matches at the Jun and Dec Budokans. First big win over a gaijin at the first Budokan of the year (Feb against Spivey). That's five out of the seven where he was a part of the big storylines at AJPW's "PPV Equiv". At the other two:

 

* April was Carny and that tends to be one-shot: Kawada vs Williams in this case

 

Nothing they could do there, though when you watch the Carny semifinal six-man, Kobashi is a big part of the match.

 

* Sep was Misawa vs Williams

 

Who did Doc go over to get the title shot? Kobashi, dropping him on his head. To a degree, Kobashi was also a storyline for that Budokan.

 

That's... a pretty damn good push for a guy who 7th on the pecking order. It's a better push than Doc, a better one than Gordy (though the OD impacted that), and overall a better push than Taue... even though Taue got a Budokan challenge of Misawa for the TC (going through Kobashi to get it).

 

 

I should be careful in how I phrase that question, because I'm not saying that All Japan didn't see his value. Baba obviously thought a lot of his talent, or he wouldn't have been put in a position to have great matches so often. But the heat Kobashi gets is far beyond the heat midcarders have typically gotten in any promotion in history.

Kobashi wasn't a "midcarder". Two main events and four semis in the seven Budokan's of the year, with the seventh (i.e. the first of the year) showing he was "growing up" by beating Spivey (the #4 gaijin in the company from 1990-92).

 

Kroffat & Furnas were midcarders. :)

 

Before I really dived into All Japan like I have in these yearbooks, I just assumed that the Four Corners were also the four top guys, and based on matchlists alone, always assumed Kawada and Kobashi were challenging each other for #2 all the time while Misawa held the top spot. Obviously that's not accurate.

When Jumbo was active, it was this:

 

1. Jumbo

2. Hansen

3. Misawa

4. Gordy

5. Kawada

6. Williams

7. Spivey / Taue

8. Kobashi

 

When Jumbo went out, there wasn't really a #1 until Misawa beat Hansen in 5/93. Spivey was out as the year went on. Gordy OD. By the end of the 1993 it was:

 

1. Misawa

2. Hansen

3. Kawada

4. Williams

5. Taue

6. Kobashi

 

Kobashi didn't really "pass" Taue until he won the TC from him in 1996, and the passing wasn't really very clear until 1997.

 

Kobashi wasn't really fighting Kawada for #2 until 1997, perhaps 10/96 at the earliest. Before that he was Misawa's side kick, and you don't fight for being #2 to Misawa by being Misawa's wingman.

 

Kawada probably moved up into a more clear #2 in that 1-6 in 1994 with the Carny and winning the TC from Doc when Doc was getting the significant push. But Hansen did lift the TC from Kawada in 1995, so Baba had his ways of making that a little less explicit.

 

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Kawada and Fuchi know tag team wrestling. The elimination of Kobashi following the German suplex goes right into the efforts of trying to keep Misawa a one man team and beat him. They work on Misawa's chest and sternum which he sells brilliantly. Kobashi attempts to get back into the match but Kawada makes sure he doesn't with a kick to the floor. Kobashi does get back in but has to deal with Fuchi and several back drop suplexes. Kobashi does get the tag to Misawa who takes out both Fuchi and Kawada. Kobashi gets the win with the top rope leg drop. This is a big win for Kobashi and a hell of a tag performance from Kawada and Fuchi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is easy in this mature state of most of our wrestling watching around here to take 1990's AJPW for granted. We have likely seen the big matches at least a couple of times and know the big storylines and pins. That is why this match was so refreshing to me. I am not sure if I have ever watched it before and if I had it was likely in 2002 when I was first getting into puro. It is not an all time classic and might even struggle to make the top 150 if an 1990's AJPW vote ever occurs like the 80's project. That being said, the work and story of the match were pretty great. The heat segment on Misawa I especially thought created great tension. The ending with Kobashi winning felt like a nice progression on his push coming off the 1993 RWTL. I am not sure if this will even crack my top ten All Japan for the year when all is said and done but as a starting off point for 1994 AJ, this got me really excited for what is in store.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Big callback to last year's Kobashi/Hansen. Kawada rather casually murders Kobashi with a backdrop driver and we get a borderline-uncomfortable shoot angle or shoot situation. Even Fuchi, whose heart is as black as the ace of spades, has an "Oh, shit, Toshiaki...oh SHIT" reaction as Kobashi feebly rolls to the outside. Another quasi-stoppage, though this one a little more efficient and less over-the-top than Tenryu dying at the hands of Inoki. That leaves Misawa to fend for himself for awhile and he's quickly targeted at a shoulder or chest injury until Kobashi can recover. Kobashi is wobbly all the way through, to the point where you wonder why Misawa would tag him in at all, but comes back to moonsault and then legdrop Fuchi for a victory--essentially Kenta had to make a comeback against himself while his aging junior heavyweight opponent wasn't doing anything to him. Fun, unique story, and it's always great to see Fuchi pop up again in a big role, even if it's obvious that he's doing the job. We've reached the point in AJPW where I've only seen the big, major matches and not even all of those--and the ones I've seen, it's been long enough ago that I may as well not have. Great start, and sometimes it's the "little," mid-card-type or semi-main event matches out of All-Japan that I enjoy watching the most.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Back when AJ still had a one hour TV slot, so they made an effort with B show main events like this. After a few minutes Kawada nailed Kobashi with a dangerous backdrop-errr, which he sold on the floor for ages. Misawa then got dominated in the ring 1 vs 2. Fuchi underperformed at this stage. He should've shown more urgency whilst his team held such an advantage. Kobashi eventually came back into it and there was a decent stretch. I should think this will finish low end top 100 for the year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

This has to be the most physical feud in wrestling right now. The only one who didn't look to be seriously hurt at the end of this was Fuchi. Kawada's knee went out again, Misawa's sternum was at least bruised, and Kobashi thought he was in Cleveland, where he almost certainly has never been in his life. Just another night in AJPW.

 

No disrespect to Taue, but Kawada and Fuchi make a much nastier team. Fuchi may not be able to go move for move with too many people anymore, but he can certianly still give beatdowns with the best of them.

 

The Misawa-in-peril section was briefer than I thought it would be, but it was still great. Given the injury Kenta was selling, I thought he was moving a bit too fluidly at the end; he seemed too together to have a moderate-to-severe concussion. Then again, plenty of athletes have looked fine while they were competing only to not remember a blessed thing later. I liked the fact that he was too messed up to tag at one point when he could have reached out and touched Misawa by sheer accident, so the next time he was in range Misawa raced down the apron to make sure he was in can't-miss position. We seldom see that kind of attention to detail at any time in wrestling history.

 

Nice history lesson from John about the AJPW hierarchy around this time. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence that the top six spots most of the time went native-gaijin-native-gaijin-native-gaijin, but it serves to remind us that up-and-coming native workers had a tougher hill to climb than they would have if the American guys hadn't been there.

 

Where was ​Taue anyway? He wouldn't have had a Triple Crown match, since Misawa was in the match we saw. Was he working with Stan or Doc, or did he just have the night off for some reason?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • GSR changed the title to [1994-01-07-AJPW-New Year's Giant Series] Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...