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Mitsuharu Misawa Tribute.


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Today is ten years since Mitsuharu Misawa died in ring. I wanted to make a topic dedicated to an all time great, talk about his matches and post photos.

Mitsuharu Misawa is one of my favourites, nobody threw an elbow like him. To this day, when I see elbow/forearm exchanges I think to Misawa. An innovator also with the Tiger Driver and Emerald Flowsion. I may try and watch his best match today teaming with Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue on the 6th of June 1995 in All Japan Pro Wrestling. I love that match.

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A lot of people seem to draw a line in the sand with the Benoit incident RE being a fan, but for me Misawa’s accident in the ring is the day any passion I had for wrestling died. 

There was an element of culpability that I don’t think we as fans ever addressed about his death because we had enjoyed that hard hitting high impact style so much over the years. When I found out what happened I just felt a bit disgusted and dirty about the whole strong style thing and taking enjoyment from it, no problem with clubberings and stiffness but the head and neck drops and going above and beyond the call of duty suddenly left me cold.

Haven’t watched any puro since and with what happened to Shibata and Takayama after I don’t think any lessons were learned. Seeing some recent NJPW gifs of apron moves and high spots to the floor I’d say ditto there too

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I remember reading about Misawa (and Kawada and Tsuruta) in the early DVDVRs before I ever knew what he looked like and I bought a Schneider comp mostly so I could see a Misawa/Kawada match. Their praise was right on the money and I was immediately hooked (although I favored Kawada, in the same way I always took Batman over Superman or Vegeta over Goku). The man could do it all and was one of the absolute best of all time, but it's a shame that aspects of his style and contribution to the art of pro wrestling ultimately became a negative. Who knows, maybe head dropping would've found it's way in no matter what but wincing at Ibushi/Naito from this past weekend I couldn't help think of Misawa and it ceases to become entertaining.

26 minutes ago, CreativeControl said:

There was an element of culpability that I don’t think we as fans ever addressed about his death because we had enjoyed that hard hitting high impact style so much over the years. When I found out what happened I just felt a bit disgusted and dirty about the whole strong style thing and taking enjoyment from it, no problem with clubberings and stiffness but the head and neck drops and going above and beyond the call of duty suddenly left me cold.

I don't think fans can be held accountable for something the performers willingly pursued. Obviously if we'd known any of insane suplexes or chair shots in ECW or flying headbutts from Dynamite Kid would have led to the tragedies that followed we wouldn't have enjoyed them. I was younger and more naive, but I honestly never thought they were putting their lives on the line, I thought they were tough dudes who knew what they were doing and being safe about it. 

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1 hour ago, Godfrey said:

I don't think fans can be held accountable for something the performers willingly pursued.

This is hard to agree with considering wrestlers do these things for the fans, who pay to see them. At the same time Art is Art. If you want to do some fucked-up shit I will probably watch it. Am I complicit? Probably. I didn't hold a gun to your head though. 

...It's complicated. 

Anyway, Misawa was great. 

 

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My first exposure to AJPW was when my friend bought a comp tape from someone that had a bunch of Misawa vs Kawada matches on it and When Worlds Collide, which was also my first exposure to lucha.

Anyway, I was blown away at how awesome Misawa vs Kawada was. Misawa especially. I liked him more than Kawada at first. Maybe it was the green and white tights (his tights became the template for so many CAWs I would make in Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy and other games)? Maybe it was the fact that Misawa just looked like a regular dude, like a banker or something. Watching that comp tape lead to me getting even more AJPW comp tapes. I mean, this was this shit. It was fucking awesome. I loved it way more than NJPW. And then I got into Noah after that because my favorite AJPW dudes (Misawa, Akiyama, Kobashi, and Vader) all left to start Noah. 

However, one question remained...how the fuck was someone like Misawa able to just repeatedly get dropped on his head by a power bomb from Kawada, a lawn dart suplex from Vader, chops from Kobashi, lariats to the neck, other moves to the neck and crown of the head, etc. I couldn't understand how Chris Benoit needed spinal fusion surgery, how Angle needed spinal fusion surgery, how other people in WWE or WCW suffered similar neck injuries when it was the AJPW and Noah guys getting dropped on their head and neck.

And then Misawa suffered the most horrific in ring injury I could ever think of. Internal decapitation. I had no idea anything like that was even possible. By this point, I had stopped watching Noah, and really much of anything from Japan. I didn't have the time for it. All I really knew was that in the time before Misawa died, Noah had come down a lot from the highs they experienced after splitting off from AJPW. I still don't know exactly why that was because the top guys in Noah seemed like bigger stars than anyone else. Anyway, I just didn't know what Misawa was up to except he looked extremely worn and rough in some pictures I saw of him. I caught wind of his death on here first. I was just...numb. I couldn't believe he was dead or how he could die like that, but then I thought back to that question of how could these guys just get dropped on their head and necks like they were.

Eventually, the bill comes due and that's fucking sad. As a wrestling fans these guys seem immortal despite so much evidence to the contrary. At least, that's what it used to seem like. When people like Misawa, Eddy, and Benoit all die for different, but wrestling related reasons, it makes you question what you're watching and why you're watching. It's really fucking sad. Really sad. As a fan, am I supporting this shit by watching it? Did I cause some of this to happen? Why do things need to be this way? If nothing else, those three passing away really made me detest seeing any sort of head and neck dropping, and hard blows to the head, or getting way too gassed up to fit in with WWE.

Despite the price Misawa paid, you still see this utter bullshit where guys, top guys even, are taking these awful head and neck drops. A dragon suplex or straight jacket suplex or half and half suplex or whatever used to be HUGE deals. Like, holy shit, this guy is fucking dead. Now it's just a fucking transition move for Kenny Omega or Sami Zayn or whoever. You see Kenny or Sasha spiking someone on their head with the reverse rana. And then there's everything with Kota Ibushi. I said in the Dominion thread that I really didn't like the match and that was before Alvarez even chimed in on it. When I heard him say the same, I at least felt like I wasn't alone in having a bad taste in my mouth from watching shit like this. It's just unnecessary.

When are these guys and girls going to learn that the bill comes due? Don't let Misawa's death be in vain. Learn a lesson from it. Work smarter.

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I tried watching Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi's Pro Wrestling NOAH match for the GHC Heavyweight Championshp from March 2003 for the first time in ages. I couldn't knowing what happened to Mitsuharu Misawa. I cringe at neck bumps more so again with Misawa's fate. Tetsuya Naito vs. Kota Ibushi was especially bad at NJPW Dominion last week. THAT apron bump was sickening. I hate the Reverse Rana.

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Always think of Misawa around this time, one of the best. Time to fire up some VPW2.

Long shot.. but does anyone have saved/recall a Misawa tribute video set to "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol? It was uploaded before he passed I believe but I always watched it every year since, one of my favorite tribute videos ever, but now it's finally been taken down from youtube.

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It's not my story to tell, but @Cristobal actually met Misawa. As for me, whilst I was always a Kawada guy first, so much of what made Kawada great was because of Misawa. Greatness calls to greatness. Although I've come to love the young and hungry Misawa who struggled to overcome the mountain that was Jumbo Tsuruta, probably more than I love the golden god and Ace of the World Misawa. The head drop epidemic was very much a bad thing, and still is.

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4 hours ago, DreamBroken said:

Always think of Misawa around this time, one of the best. Time to fire up some VPW2.

Long shot.. but does anyone have saved/recall a Misawa tribute video set to "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol? It was uploaded before he passed I believe but I always watched it every year since, one of my favorite tribute videos ever, but now it's finally been taken down from youtube.

@DreamBroken: That's the Mitsuharu Misawa tribute video I spent 30 minutes looking for yesterday. Shame it's gone from YouTube.

Edited by The Natural
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18 hours ago, AxB said:

It's not my story to tell, but @Cristobal actually met Misawa. As for me, whilst I was always a Kawada guy first, so much of what made Kawada great was because of Misawa. Greatness calls to greatness. Although I've come to love the young and hungry Misawa who struggled to overcome the mountain that was Jumbo Tsuruta, probably more than I love the golden god and Ace of the World Misawa. The head drop epidemic was very much a bad thing, and still is.

Well, ran into, more like. I went to the second show that Pro Wrestling Iron (the promotion Michael Modest and Donovan Morgan briefly started after their fallout with APW owner Roland Alexander around King of the Indies) had, got there early to beat I-80 traffic, and as I walked out, passed him and Yoshinari Ogawa on their way in. I did a full double take. Misawa and Ogawa, who were unannounced, teamed against Doug Williams and Vinnie Massaro. (Vinnie couldn't stop smiling even when he was selling)

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, Vinnie still remembers that, too:

 

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This reminds me of Misawa being completely perplexed about how popular he was in the UK when The Wrestling Channel brought him and Ogawa over for their first supercard in Coventry of all places. Strange times haha 

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6 minutes ago, CreativeControl said:

This reminds me of Misawa being completely perplexed about how popular he was in the UK when The Wrestling Channel brought him and Ogawa over for their first supercard in Coventry of all places. Strange times haha 

Samoa Joe tells a similar story about Kobashi, who apparently thought he was being brought to ROH to work a 1980's style foreign heel gimmick, and feared he'd get no reaction otherwise.

Anyway, Misawa was never my favorite guy in my favorite matches; but he was a guy without whom those matches could not have happened, the force to which my favorite performances reacted, or the rock they crashed themselves against. Harold Bloom has written extensively on literary influence, arguing essentially that everything is, to varying degrees, Shakespeare or not; but in either case there is influence, whether attractive or repulsive. I feel like there's a little bit of that with Misawa. So much of modern wrestling aesthetics can be traced back to his style, and so much of what is different is still different in relation to his style. 

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1 hour ago, Beech27 said:

Samoa Joe tells a similar story about Kobashi, who apparently thought he was being brought to ROH to work a 1980's style foreign heel gimmick, and feared he'd get no reaction otherwise.

That is too fucking funny. I haven't watched Joe/Kobashi in years but remember a LOT of streamers and chanting. Him not expecting that... wow haha

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3 hours ago, Cristobal said:

Well, ran into, more like. I went to the second show that Pro Wrestling Iron (the promotion Michael Modest and Donovan Morgan briefly started after their fallout with APW owner Roland Alexander around King of the Indies) had, got there early to beat I-80 traffic, and as I walked out, passed him and Yoshinari Ogawa on their way in. I did a full double take. Misawa and Ogawa, who were unannounced, teamed against Doug Williams and Vinnie Massaro. (Vinnie couldn't stop smiling even when he was selling)

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, Vinnie still remembers that, too:

 

I was at that show too! I also got to see Ogawa and Misawa come back a couple years later and defend the GHC Tag belts against Bart Blaxson and Nigel McGuinness at a PWI show at San Leandro HS. I remember the late 90's and early 2000's very fondly because of how fun a lot of the Northern CA indies were.

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26 minutes ago, grilledcheese said:

Well, ran into, more like. I went to the second show that Pro Wrestling Iron (the promotion Michael Modest and Donovan Morgan briefly started after their fallout with APW owner Roland Alexander around King of the Indies) had, got there early to beat I-80 traffic, and as I walked out, passed him and Yoshinari Ogawa on their way in. I did a full double take. Misawa and Ogawa, who were unannounced, teamed against Doug Williams and Vinnie Massaro. (Vinnie couldn't stop smiling even when he was selling)

Hold up--why would someone book Misawa and Ogawa and not promote their appearance? I don't doubt that it happened, but that's crazy.

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I think it was an angle for Japan, NOAH had just started and they were supposed to be on a scouting mission to look at new Gaijins.

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4 hours ago, grilledcheese said:

I was at that show too! I also got to see Ogawa and Misawa come back a couple years later and defend the GHC Tag belts against Bart Blaxson and Nigel McGuinness at a PWI show at San Leandro HS. I remember the late 90's and early 2000's very fondly because of how fun a lot of the Northern CA indies were.

When the fuck was this and how did i not know about it? Lol i live in San Leandro

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2 hours ago, Morganti said:

When the fuck was this and how did i not know about it? Lol i live in San Leandro

The show at SLHS was in 2004, Misawa / Ogawa won the belts in January 2004 and lost them in January of 2005. The second PWI show would have been like summer of 2002.

Modest and Morgan really made the most out of their NOAH connection, plus there was a hellafied surplus of talented guys around here at the time that worked all over the fucking place. Any show from like King City to the south all the way up to Redding and probably into OR and WA had all kinds of fun matches. 

Modest and Morgan, Massaro, Bison Smith when he was in the States, Sara Del Rey, Tony Jones, the Ballards, the Thomasellis, all the Sacramento and Reno guys that came through. It was cool to watch it all happening, especially since the Midwest and the Northeast was so good at the time, made me proud to see our guys getting some shine too.

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