1995 Match of the Year

Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi AJPW 6/9/95

PAS: I think my main strength as a wrestling writer is excavating greatness. Finding a match like Tony Oliver vs. Bert Royal or writing about a NWA Anarchy Wargames. While working on my book I have been revisiting canon stuff and finding it much harder to write about things which have already been broken down so much. This match has been analyzed as much as any match I can remember; it's Bob Dylan, and I am not a Dylanologist. It certainly deserves the opening belt for 1995, but I can't promise I won't be searching for a WAR Handheld to take it down.

One of the consistent flaws of pillars era All Japan is how the total abandonment of matwork leads to a bit of time killer vibe for the opening section, it's a big problem in a lot of NJ Juniors stuff too. A lot of this 90s stuff I got first from clipped TV tapes from a Japanese video store in Hayward CA, so I initially only saw the insanely hot last 15 minutes. The OCD completist in me always needs to see it all, and when I got my hands on unclipped versions of All Japan they would frequently be letdowns.

All of that preface is to say that this match has some awesome opening stuff. Kawada heatseeking by punting both Misawa and Kobashi off the apron, and both Kawada and Taue teeing off on Kobashi's taped leg, all of the set up really worked. The story of the match is Kawada and Taue's willingness to trim around the edges of the rules and norms to win the match, and those early corner kicks set the table. Taue chokeslamming Misawa right on Kobashi's bad thigh is also an incredible moment of total dedication, Holy Demon Army is getting this done and they don't care who is left laying.

Kobashi's OTT stuff is very strong in this match, his consistent attempts at the moonsault, the dramatic shielding of Misawa after Misawa got chokeslammed off of the apron. I am not sure why Kobashi or Shawn Micheals or Johnny Gargano bug me so much when they do stuff like that, yet I love Atsushi Onita or Dusty Rhodes. There is a Theatre Kid feeling to some of Kobashi's stuff, like he is about to start singing "One Day More" after a kickout, while Onita's stuff feels more like the desperation of a truly broken man. Despite that I thought Kobashi's stuff kind of worked here, Misawa is always going to die quiet, like an old horse who just can't stand up again, Kobashi is there to cry over the corpse and his emotion serves as a nice balance.

I loved how the bodypart work in this match was basically there to set up the KO. They ripped up Kobashi's legs so he couldn't get in the way of them beating in Misawa's brains, he was the head of the dragon and they weren't going to stop until they beat him down. Violent Kawada is at the upper ends of violent wrestling and each kick and chop felt especially meaningful, and when he got the win it felt like a dominant win, almost a passing of the guard. It obviously didn't end up being that, but for this match it felt like a change had come.


ER: I really love this match. I have a feeling we took so long to officially write up our 1995 Champ because it was more of a foregone conclusion. When a champ feels like more of an obligation than anything, it's probably going to sit for awhile. But just because obvious answer is obvious doesn't make it undeserving. If it's well trodden ground, it is undeniably more exciting to bring what might be considered a fresh opinion into the discussion. When I've gone through 1995 WWF or any old WWF PPV, those things have been reviewed online hundreds of times and were among the very first reviews most of us ever read online. But my opinion is usually different enough that I feel that my reviews are at least bringing some kind of different discussion to that familiar ground. But reviewing a match like this is kind of like reviewing Vertigo or Citizen Kane; what new insight could I possibly bring to a confirmed classic that has already been hashed inside and out in depth by people who also loved it, before I even had access to the internet? This will not be a post where either of us convince somebody to give 6/9/95 a chance, because I assume any of you reading this have already given this match a chance. This match was on one of the first All Japan tapes I traded for. I didn't purposely seek it out, it was just there, and I loved it on sight. The themes and story of this match are so easy to follow that while I was unfamiliar with all of these men (outside of reading about them in PWI) that it erased any potential language barrier, which in turn probably lead to my everlasting love of Kings Road. So I figured I would just highlight some of my very favorite things about this match, knowing that they are probably some of *our collective* favorite things about it.

The thing that really drew me in the first time and still captivates me today, is that nearly every single piece of offense in this match is sold exactly as much and as properly as that piece of offense should be sold. It is an impeccably sold match, and it's impossible not to notice. Kobashi is definitely a theater kid, but he is hitting every single note and making you enjoy musical theater. Every time he took a shot to his bandaged thigh I flinched, because everything in this sold match was treated exactly as it felt. This is the match that made Taue an early favorite of mine, because his selling looked different from everyone else but no less perfect. I love the way Taue falls, and I love how he falls in this match. He hit the mat with a heft that the others didn't, made it look like he was falling on concrete after every rolling elbow. But his falling reigned supreme. He gets the flat of Kobashi's boot run into the side of his face, and he stumbles backwards into the ropes in exactly the way that boot deserved. Later, Misawa grazes him with a spinkick, aiming for head but getting shoulder and body, and it's as it Taue anticipates this kick not hitting the way it was supposed to hit and it merely stumbles him to the side. It's amazing how well the bumps matched up with the delivered moves here, as you can't always predict how your opponent will hit the move. You have to be planning how to bump before contact, and yet it always feels like reaction is perfectly appropriate to the action.

I love the simple way the match introduces all of the combatants, giving us a straight run through of all the possible pairings before building to double teams and building to tornado. The match was filled with great moments based just around guys getting knocked from the apron. Kawada essentially leads the Holy Demon Army's charge by booting Misawa and Kobashi from the aprons during the opening singles pairings, and the payoffs come in waves down the stretch, peaking with Kawada getting blown off the apron by Misawa like he walked into an explosion. Kobashi and Misawa hit the first double team, and as if reacting to the first sign of the match ramping up, Taue kicks Kobashi's bandaged leg for the first time. I felt every strike thrown at Kobashi's leg, all of Kawada's kicks, Taue's scorpion deathlock, that kneedrop that looked only like Kawada jumping as high as possible before landing that knee flush into Kobashi's hamstring muscle. Taue was downright cruel down the stretch, aiming nearly all his offense at Kobashi's leg, slapping the cards down one shot at a time. Taue threw straight kicks at that leg, a pair of awesome low dropkicks to save Kawada, and arguably the spot of the match where he hits a nodowa otoshi on Misawa, directly onto Kobashi's leg. That's the kind of asshole move that makes challengers into champions.

Kawada and Misawa's battle felt really personal. I knew these two were feuding the first time I saw this match, but had no idea the extent. It didn't matter. If you can't tell from listening to this crowd that there is something important happening between Kawada and Misawa, then you have never been in the middle of a pro wrestling crowd. I love how their sounds dictated everything I needed to know about it. Thy treat Taue like an endearing odd man out during the introductions and feeling out portions of the match, and immediately turn on him the first time he kicks Kobashi's leg. Taue doesn't shrug to the crowd, but he makes a face. Misawa always ends up with the loudest reactions in his matches, but the crowd is always a slow starter with him after the intros. Part of that is his early match stoicism builds to bigger reactions when he brings out the real dynamite. And even though Kawada was clearly the most underhanded man in the match, there was a large and loud contingent who wanted to see him beat Misawa. At one point a Misawa chant is quickly overwhelmed by a Kawada chant.

Kobashi's chops sang while his leg screamed, Taue was grabbing guys by the face and facepalming them to the mat (and his big chokeslam off the top and chokeslam to the floor on Misawa looked great); Misawa and Kawada threw at each other like they were inspiring BattlArts, each one dialing up the notch of how hard you can hit a man in a fake fight. When I first saw Kawada teeing off on Misawa's face in the corner, knees and shins thrown at every part of Misawa's face, I had never seen anything like it. Every time they came into contact with each other felt like they were aiming to one-up the other, see who would fold first, see who could absorb worse punishment. They hit each other the exact way the fans wanted to see them hit each other, with everything hitting impossibly flush. Misawa's corkscrew flying lariat looked decapitating, his elbow suicide looked deadly, and Kawada's gamengiri's looked like the hardest part of his shin was catching Misawa right between the eyes. All of these big moments felt big, but when the execution and selling of the entire match runs this high, every moment feels like a big moment of a larger whole. Matches don't come much more whole than this.


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