[Remedial Wrestling] #1: Misawa/Kawada and Friends

[Goodear]

I just finished up the tag match...

 

Well shit.

 

Its a masterpiece.

 

I didn't write any notes down for this watch so I will have to go through it again at some point (hopefully tomorrow) and do a write up.

 

Now I get to write nice things!

[Jiji]

The tag match is my favourite of all matches. Just shows how great of a story you can tell with the extra dimension of a teammate. Ridiculous drama. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Matt D]

3.6.94

Misawa vs Kawada

 

This is not the best match of all time.

 

This might be the first draft for that match, though. Jingus or John could talk more about this, but I think I read of the idea that in any novel or screenplay or whatever else, the first draft is always 30% overwritten. That is incredibly true for this match and it's such a damn shame. Unsurprisingly, most of the bloat comes towards the end and I just wish there was someone out there with a cosmic editor's pen who could have made a red line through a few of Kawada's jumping kicks and one of the rolling ones and that god damn second powerbomb before the stretch plum and Misawa's spinning clothesline and his late match crossface and them rolling out of the ring and one of the Germans in the match.

 

The first twenty minutes was almost picture perfect to me. The only thing I would have changed would be to give Misawa a few more hope spots that got harshly cut off by Kawada to make the switch to the leg by Misawa all the more meaningful. Hope spots are, again, one of those primal tools of pro wrestling and they make everything mean all the more and it was pretty much all one-sided without them for that otherwise excellently worked first chunk. The way they built to blocks and some of the reversals was just awesome. The build to the first Kawada powerbomb was downright legendary. 

 

That's the thing that kills me about this match. They didn't need that particular finishing stretch. It wasn't even a case of them going home earlier like in other matches where if they just ended it after a certain move the match would have been so much better. It was just a case of them compressing and removing some things. It wasn't about earlier here, it was about tighter, about extracting a lot of the waste that didn't necessarily build to bigger moments. I really, truly think they could have gotten away with a block on a second rolling kick instead of a third and it would have helped the match, not hurt it. They could have gotten by with the brilliant moments and the amazing execution and the incredible selling, but instead, they just tacked on all of this other stuff in the last fifteen minutes and it kills me. Not enough that i want to try to video edit the match (but i bet someone could make another studio "Cut" of this and it'd be the best damn thing ever, and i'm not sure I've ever felt that way about a wrestling match before). What an incredible pair of performances and what a damn shame of a match. They had art there and they squandered it. 

 

-I kind of like Kawada's stretching. 

-I've been watching too much lucha. Kawada's hair is different and I half wonder if he didn't lose a hair match.

-They really do a hell of a job getting those streamers out.

-Do you think Jimmy Hart could get over huge in Japan? Like 1983 Jimmy? He'd be running around the ring and you'd take three months before someone like Misawa just got his hands on him and they'd just delay satisfaction and delay satisfaction and then he'd just KILL him and... oh hey, they're starting.

-I'm a little worried about how this is going to go without Kobashi to sell. 

-Spin kick. Backdrop driver. Symmetry. Fairly fun open.

-I like this. They each throw a bomb and then we slow it down to matwork.

-And then Misawa potatoes him after getting out with athlicisim. Oh god, he just flipped. Run! Oh wait, he flipped back. Clever stuff. Ha! he caught him on the way down with the hyperelbowofdoom. Good for Kawada.

-There's like 30 camera guys there and none of them caught Kawada charging off the guard rail with that clothesline.

-This has been a very high end opening stretch.

-I want Kawada to start grinding him down again,and he does just that. This is how you build a match. They're really working the hold too.

-Now I hope they build to another hope spot.

-Those are just killer chops to the neck, and the crazy crab stretch thing is nice too. Kawada's methodologoical pace is spot on. Misawa's hope spot is one elbow but at least it's something. I'd like to see a little more but this is a long match and maybe they're pacing it (more likely they're building to a 15 minute finishing sequence).

-Another hold. Okay. Misawa getting to the outside and catching his breath wasn't exactly a hope spot, but that's ok. now they get to build to him getting out of this Cobra Clutch hold thing.

-He's out and he starts kicking back, going right to the hurt leg. I can kind of see the desperation there and how it makes Kawada look good. He didn't have any choice maybe? MAYBE. It's a stretch but I kind of buy it? They could have been more dramatic about the damn thing, especially as it's a full on comeback. A few hope spots when he tried to get out and had no chance would have been better to build to Misawa going to the leg. 

-Ha! He got super agile kicked in the face.

-I like how he shifted positions when Kawada was kicking him in his hold.

-I'm okay with them going back to the mat here because Misawa is still recovering and he's working on the wounded body part. I can get how even Misawa might want to capitalize and get revenge. Kawada sure kicked him a lot when he was in charge, after all.

-Kawada with a bodyscissors that helps him get to the ropes.

-Very nice selling by Kawada here in the quasi reset. Ha. Misawa faked low and kicked high. 

-Kawada takes the advantage with a go around and desperation forearm to the back of the head. This is worked very differently than what we've seen so far and I like it.

-Kawada tries to grind him back down but he tosses him of the rope and hits a spin kick. First tease of a tiger driver. He went for it too early though and this let Kawada take over. Still selling on offense.

-Tosses him into the turnbuckle and Misawa just clubs him. Then returns the favor with a no-sold dropkick by Kawada. Ehh, I can kind of buy it? Frustration and adrenaline and general toughness. Then he went for his own jumping kick thing and that I have a tougher time with, but it kind of reminds me of his last ditch hope move from the other match and it did work better here than then.

-Powerbomb attempt. Blocked, but then Kawada dropkicks to the back of the head. They're doing a much better job building to the big moves here.

-Knee drop when you have a bad leg. Silly Kawada. You stuborn ass.

-Still not a fan of the hyperchops from tough guy Kawada. It works as part of the wear down to the power bomb though. Misawa still gets out of the attempt though.

-Kawada catches the spin kick but Misawa turns it into ANOTHER kick.

-Why is his ear bleeding? Kawada's leg selling is really dedicated. Ha, and he blocks the jumping kick this time. Finally hits the tiger driver. Kick out. This was all built to very, very well. Misawa deserved to hit the big move first.

-This has basically been twenty minutes of a very good match, even a brilliant match, and if they started a four or five minute finishing segment here, I could really go for it.

-We're back into Misawa going for a hold though. I'm not sure why. Then they go out and n the way back in from the top, Kawada hits a sort of ridiculous hit.

-We still delay his power bomb. This is going to be the biggest pay off for a powerbomb in the history of wrestling. He tries to punch Misawa to set it up. He goes for it again, tries another punch and gets knocked down and then SUDDENLY HE APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE and they hit each other a lot. This ends with a big boot and a lariat. I actually sort of wish he had already hit the powerbomb and they were now seeing which of the two could hit their big move the second time for the finish or something.

-Instead, we get another back drop driver and finally the power bomb. I'm kind of okay with that not being the finish but it definitely should have been a few minutes ago.

-Another jumping kick and let's see if he sells the leg. He does. Another one. We're past the point of stubborn. He had full control there. He could have hit Misawa with anything. Maybe do a clothesline?

-Big German and misawa goes out.

-Second Power Bomb. We're back to diminishing returns. I can't even tell you how much less that meant than the first one. It would have been different if it was the finish. Right into the Stretch Plum. I wish he had just done that instead of the power bomb after the German. This time the rope break and back into it was good.

-Crowd chanting for Misawa. Good use of the hold. If they just compressed this stuff. Man.

-Misawa hits an elbow out of nowhere and both guys are down. Kawada Kick. Both guys down. Misawa elbow. Both guys down. Flying spinning clothesline. Again, the fighting spirit stuff is pretty great. If they just cut 30% out of this, not in the selling but in the amount of moves.

-Misawa hits a German. Tiger suplex. That could have been the finish and this still would have been fairly great.

-German blocked. Rolling kick from Kawada and the announcer is kind of hilarious in losing his voice. Poor guy. Hey! Now they're chanting for Kawada. Turncoats.

-Another rolling kick and that makes so much more sense than the jumping ones. Let's take this thing home already. It's kind of like drumming, though. You can only put a fill in at the end of every four measures or what not. I feel like they sort of lost the moment andow they have to get it back.

-Roaring Elbow block and headbutts and kicks in the corner, and punches back and yeah, the roaring elbow hit again but I'm just sort of past the point of caring again. Throwing bombs. And Kawada falls. And Oh Kawada's fighting back again. A third rolling kick blocked. Another elbow. So about my idea from before... holy crap, there's the Tiger Driver 91. Well that certainly ended.

[JonnyLaw]

So as expected, I'm seriously behind. I've watch half of the first YouTube posted, which is half of the first match, but so far it's pretty good. I do appreciate the "pure sports" feel, which may just come from not understanding the announcers.

[Brian Fowler]

I'm now getting curious about rewatching this stuff.  It's been a long time since I did (and I probably haven't seen all of the matches for this thread, but I'm terrible at remembering matches by date instead of nice easy event titles in English) but for me, when I went through all the AJPW stuff back in the early/mid 00's, I never quite "got" Taue.  To me, he was always the weakest link in the big matches.

 

But my taste in wrestling is a ton different now, so who knows?

[RandomAct]

I'm now getting curious about rewatching this stuff.  It's been a long time since I did (and I probably haven't seen all of the matches for this thread, but I'm terrible at remembering matches by date instead of nice easy event titles in English) but for me, when I went through all the AJPW stuff back in the early/mid 00's, I never quite "got" Taue.  To me, he was always the weakest link in the big matches.

 

But my taste in wrestling is a ton different now, so who knows?

I had a similar mindset about Taue(and to some extent Ogawa) when I first got into this stuff about 12 years ago.  Now, I love going back and watching both guys.  At the time I slept on them because they weren't doing typical King's Road stuff, but Taue in particular is a blast to go back and watch.

[John E. Dynamite]

I remember watching all the hyper-pimped classics when I was but a scrawny pimple-faced high school freshman scrounging footage from Goldenboytapes and Kazaa. Not the stuff that profound nostalgia is made of, but bear with me. I was a young man, and I wanted that. It was some foreign, special thing that I had to research and procure, but it was still pro-freakin'-wrestling. 

 

Going back and watching it now, some of the things that took me awhile to realize - 

 

a.) Taue is God. If there's one thing to gain from a 2014 re-analysis of this era, I hope it's a shift in veneration from Kobashi to Taue. C'mon, man, the AKIRA TAUE MIRACLE RUN. Starting with the 1/24/95 Holy Demon Army/Misawa+Kobashi, peaking during his 95 Carny Run and stupid-underrated title win, ending with the other best tag match ever.

 

b.) 6/3/94 was never the match then, and it isn't now. It's still a top-ten AJPW singles match and a top-five Triple Crown match, though.

 

c.) 6/9/95 was always the match. Tied with that Funk/Cactus match where they almost set half the crowd on fire as my favorite match ever.

 

d.) There's this "show don't tell" advantage gained by watching random AJPW TV blocks and six-man tag matches. Somebody earlier mentioned Misawa's stepover crossface and the heat that it would get as a nearfall. I never actually saw the tag match where it submitted Jumbo until about two years ago, but I always knew it was a big deal because it got a pop in the random six-mans I would watch when I was younger. Watching more of those kinds of matches helped me fill in the blanks more - also, watching those undercard singles matches with an obvious winner. For instance, I never knew Misawa would pin midcarders like crazy with a no-frills Tiger Driver until I watched some Champion's Carnival matches that he was obviously gonna win. Same goes for stuff like the Stretch Plum, Nodawa, Vanilla Exploder, whatever. It puts those "conditioned" nearfall crowd reactions into context.

 

e.) Seriously, fuckin' TAUE. GOD.

[Ryan]

That's right. Taue is God. I hate all of those in this thread whose opinions and views don't exactly match mine!

 

::Drives off in cement truck with Taue::

The shirt on the right.

[Jingus]

b.) 6/3/94 was never the match then, and it isn't now. It's still a top-ten AJPW singles match and a top-five Triple Crown match, though.

Thank god people are finally coming around on that. I never even thought Misawa/Kawada 6/3/94 was even the best match on THAT NIGHT IN TOKYO, considering that just a few miles away you had Liger/Sasuke tearing shit up in the J-Crown semi-finals. (If I were to pick a single Misawa match as a favorite, it'd probably be the one from January of 97 against Kobashi anyway.)

[Ryan]

Personally, I blame Jingus, you were writing for WON back then weren't you? ....

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

Goldenboytapes

christ, THAT's a throwback. Deciding between getting a Nexus VMU for all those Fire Pro D Moves and dumping all that money into Goldenboy for more NOAH tapes was a turning point in my young life. It is astounding I was ever attractive to anyone back then.

 

I'm going to avoid saying much because my opinions on 90s AJ are not popular at all, so I'll keep it to "hey maybe NJ's junior division would be a cool topic?"

 

*i bought the vmu

**i think that was the right choice?

***since i make a bunch of crazy shit now but i started with a bass guitar and fire pro

[Jingus]

Personally, I blame Jingus, you were writing for WON back then weren't you? ....

...huh? Maybe this is a joke I ain't getting. But no, I was in middle school at the time, I'm not that old.

I'm going to avoid saying much because my opinions on 90s AJ are not popular at all, so I'll keep it to "hey maybe NJ's junior division would be a cool topic?"

Why not? Same "limb work that frequently gets does nothing but kill time" and "abusive overuse of finishers, though nowhere near as bad as it'd be a few years later" problems.

[RandomAct]

 

b.) 6/3/94 was never the match then, and it isn't now. It's still a top-ten AJPW singles match and a top-five Triple Crown match, though.

Thank god people are finally coming around on that. I never even thought Misawa/Kawada 6/3/94 was even the best match on THAT NIGHT IN TOKYO, considering that just a few miles away you had Liger/Sasuke tearing shit up in the J-Crown semi-finals. (If I were to pick a single Misawa match as a favorite, it'd probably be the one from January of 97 against Kobashi anyway.)

 

I still say it's THE match.  That and the 97 Kobashi match are two that I can always find time to watch.  I can't think of any AJPW singles matches that I felt like are truly better.  Maybe Jumbo/Misawa II.

[Ryan]

Personally, I blame Jingus, you were writing for WON back then weren't you? ....

...huh? Maybe this is a joke I ain't getting. But no, I was in middle school at the time, I'm not that old.

The joke is you were the user name I was reading at the time and Meltzer is to blame/credit for a lot of the original hype for most of the stuff. Thus, I had to blame someone, you fit the shitty punchline I was going for.

[Matt D]

So as expected, I'm seriously behind. I've watch half of the first YouTube posted, which is half of the first match, but so far it's pretty good. I do appreciate the "pure sports" feel, which may just come from not understanding the announcers.

 

Don't sweat being behind. This note isn't going anywhere and I'd love for as many people as possible to make it through.

[jstout]

I may try some of these. I know I've never seen the tag match. I did see 6-3-94 years ago, and I remember thinking "damn, this match is starting slow. This may be overrated, to hear everybody talk about it," and by the end of it, I was like "HOLY SHIT! OH MY GOD, THAT WAS AWESOME!" 

 

Why has no one ever bothered to dub English commentary over old Japanese matches and to sell them to a new generation of workrate freaks?

[John E. Dynamite]

I may try some of these. I know I've never seen the tag match. I did see 6-3-94 years ago, and I remember thinking "damn, this match is starting slow. This may be overrated, to hear everybody talk about it," and by the end of it, I was like "HOLY SHIT! OH MY GOD, THAT WAS AWESOME!" 

 

Why has no one ever bothered to dub English commentary over old Japanese matches and to sell them to a new generation of workrate freaks?

 

Because I don't know how to do it on a computer. Believe me, it's crossed my mind.

[Jingus]

Why has no one ever bothered to dub English commentary over old Japanese matches and to sell them to a new generation of workrate freaks?

I would LOVE to take a shot at doing that, but I'm not sure if I could do it justice. You'd need pro-quality audio mixing, and I'd probably need to rewatch everything and do SO much research first. Also, I suspect that trying to talk over the original Japanese commentary would make it sound kinda shitty as a final product.

[TimLivingston]

I'm trying to figure out what about the last 15 minutes of 6/3/94 seemed "tacked on" for Matt. If anything, the control segment of the match where Kawada really starts laying it in and doesn't have quite enough to finish is the reason why once Misawa regained control, he never gave it back. Kawada threw everything he could at him and then Misawa remembered what put him down before and went after it. The big parts were Kawada surviving all that (the suplexes and elbow combinations that destroyed him in their two previous title matches) before Misawa went to the TD '91 because he basically had to.

 

None of that felt tacked on at all. If anything, I was surprised that Misawa's final run was basically uninterrupted by Kawada, whereas nowadays you get this back-and-forth stuff that can detract from the finish because it has to be some type of 50-50 thing. It's why I was a huge fan a few months back when Cesaro went over Orton on SmackDown! with that three move combination: You knew that after taking all that in a row, there's nothing Orton could do to fight back, even if he wasn't the better man. It was decisive. That's what happened in this match, just with near falls being used as checkpoints to show how far Kawada had come to almost taking Misawa down AND surviving what had previously taken him down. Kawada didn't have the necessary things to take Misawa down, but Misawa sure as hell did for Kawada.

[Ryan]

They should do a stand there and "trade shitty chops and forearms and no sell exchange" straight into a "quick indy standoff of respect series of chain wrestling and reversals" ending in an "exploder no sell exchange" before both guys headspring and pose. No selling through any of it. Think every US indy match in 2006 meets Malenko/Guerrero meets early BJ Whitmer matches.

[Matt D]

I'm trying to figure out what about the last 15 minutes of 6/3/94 seemed "tacked on" for Matt. If anything, the control segment of the match where Kawada really starts laying it in and doesn't have quite enough to finish is the reason why once Misawa regained control, he never gave it back. Kawada threw everything he could at him and then Misawa remembered what put him down before and went after it. The big parts were Kawada surviving all that (the suplexes and elbow combinations that destroyed him in their two previous title matches) before Misawa went to the TD '91 because he basically had to.

 

None of that felt tacked on at all. If anything, I was surprised that Misawa's final run was basically uninterrupted by Kawada, whereas nowadays you get this back-and-forth stuff that can detract from the finish because it has to be some type of 50-50 thing. It's why I was a huge fan a few months back when Cesaro went over Orton on SmackDown! with that three move combination: You knew that after taking all that in a row, there's nothing Orton could do to fight back, even if he wasn't the better man. It was decisive. That's what happened in this match, just with near falls being used as checkpoints to show how far Kawada had come to almost taking Misawa down AND surviving what had previously taken him down. Kawada didn't have the necessary things to take Misawa down, but Misawa sure as hell did for Kawada.

 

I imagine tacked on might have been a poor choice of words. That was my problem with the tag matches so far. They could have ended them earlier and if they did, it would have worked better. Instead, they tacked on another 5-10 minutes. With the singles match, it's different. It's more a matter of bloat. They do something twice when doing it once would have honed the focus better. They did something three times when two would have actually been smarter and more effective. I actually get the idea that they need to do one move a second time in order to "unlock" another move which could explain things like the second power bomb leading to the stretch plumb, for instance, but I didn't find that concept entirely organic in the execution. It seemed to devalue the fight for the first move the first time more than actually providing me with a sense of execution. It meant that by the time that very final run had happened, they'd already more or less lost me. 

 

It's also important to note that while these were my honest thoughts, I was harsher on the back half of the match because I liked the first twenty minutes so much and also because I could see something really, truly great in the big picture if they had just simplified. I know looking for even a modicum of minimalism in this series is probably a mistake but here it would have improved things. There were so many smart moments but there was a massive lack of working smart. 

[RandomAct]

You'll forget the word "minimalism" even exists after about 1996 or so.

[Matt D]

Hey now, this project ends with the 6/9/95 tag. 

 

NOW, I personally have a lot of other gaps, be it Vader in Japan, or Stan Hansen, or Hashimoto, or what not, so I could see myself doing another Remedial Wrestling project that pushed either back or forward into All Japan later on. I think, were I doing the next one (and I might if no one else steps forward), I might want to focus on Jumbo/Tenryu instead? Or at least some other company or part of the world. 

[RIPPA]

I can easily organize the project but I didn't want to step on toes

 

For me personally I think the next one should be in a different area (something either lucha or joshi related since those are criminally ignored) but that is just me

[Matt D]

Yeah, Joshi. Joshi sounds great. I've seen next to none of that and I spend 86% of my wrestling time watching lucha now. For lucha, how much of the supplementary matches do we have for the Satanico/Dandy hair stuff from 90-91? Would something make more sense than that? I guess more famous would be everything centered around the When Worlds Collide match, no?