Best of Japan 2000-2009: Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 2/27/00

Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 2/27/00

Wearing tons of rib tape into your match against Vader seems about as smart as letting your friend with a gambling addiction hold onto your giant money pile for the weekend. Vader is going to go after those ribs like he had an expiring gift certificate to Tony Roma's, and the rib injury you were trying to heal will only be made worse. Unless, of course, it doesn't get made worse, which is the main problem with this match.

It was still a good match, and a lot of the work within was good. But for the main event of a big show, and a Triple Crown title change, it was lacking. Vader looked awesome, picking apart Kobashi's ribs and also picking apart Kobashi's face with punches. Vader closing in on a slumped Kobashi in the corner was a scary, abusive visual. Kobashi cowered, Vader hunkered over him throwing lefts and rights, stopping to adjust his knee pad, and then smacking Kobashi again like he hadn't already learned his lesson. I loved the nasty elbow drops to the ribs and the stiff Vader bombs, getting full body extension on each one. What gets lost a lot in Vader's last big AJPW/NOAH run, is that he was 45 years old at this point. Most gigantic 400+ lb. men in their mid 40s don't often get athletic compliments tossed their way. "That mammoth middle aged man just hit a beautiful splash." More often than not that sentence would instead read, "That mammoth middle aged man suffers from sleep apnea." But gigantic 45 year old Vader hits all these awesome elbow drops and then takes all these ridiculous suplexes that men his size and certainly of his age shouldn't be able to take. And I'm not sure what side I fall on with the "Vader shouldn't bump so early and often" as I get it, but at the same time when you're dropping the title in the main event to the physically largest native worker in the promotion, that seems as good a time as any to go up for a few extra suplexes.

My main gripe with this match and the thing holding it back from being better, is that Kobashi wraps them ribs, Vader crushes them ribs, but then Kobashi gotta Kobashi. He still hits a moonsault with no ill effects, still tosses around a 400 lb. behemoth, still seems like he's inevitably going to win. I noticed this in the earlier Kobashi/Kawada match, where even though Kawada took 70% of that match, there was always an underlying feeling that Kobashi was generously letting him get his shit in, before the inevitable conclusion. It seems odd to be whining that a winner lets his loser look good in defeat, and he does indeed allow them to do a bunch of offense and control large segments. But there is something he does in these matches, whether it be brushing off offense too quickly or peppering in his comebacks at the wrong time, that makes it seem like his victory is just a matter of time.


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