Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs Stan Hansen
Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship
05/21/1993
Nakajima Sports Center, Sapporo, Japan
(reviewed 04/23/2024) General consensus has this pegged as the best Misawa/Hansen match and, as is often the case with the general consensus, that’s very much incorrect. This one starts hot with Hansen rushing the champ during the intros, popping Misawa in the mouth a few times before—what else?—seguing into some dry submission holds. First he goes after Misawa’s knee before transitioning to the more recent shoulder injury, going so far as smashing a TV monitor on the guy’s arm but otherwise sitting around in the same old holds we’ve seen for years. With eight matches between these two since the start of the decade, half of them being title bouts, I can’t help but feel we’ve been here before. I guess there’s some novelty in seeing Misawa getting his arm worked over in this matchup, something we only got with their title switch last year, but that novelty only goes so far when the work is only so good.
While probably a necessary evil given how that tournament final unfolded, babyfacing Misawa also feels like a step back after last time, both because it’s retreading across familiar territory and because he is simply less sympathetic and engaging in this role (and all others) than Hansen is. By now this just feels like a waste of the big American. He is so much less exciting in this role as a monster heel when he has such a passive opponent. Hansen would otherwise bulldoze right through a lesser wrestler but he can’t do that with Misawa, with whom he has to respectfully walk through all this boring limbwork and cut off with weak slams and pulled punches. I’m not interested in seeing this killer wear kid gloves. I want to see blood run down his fists. That extends the other way too; it never feels right how Misawa’s able to stop a 300 pound slab of Texas beefsteak barreling at him with nothing more than his piddly kicks, which are so much less convincing than his already hit-or-miss elbows. There’s always something off about this matchup as it’s constituted here, something that last Champion Carnival final blessedly avoided.
Speaking of elbows, Hansen ducks out of the way of Misawa’s flying elbow off the apron in a spot that would feel meaningful if Misawa gave half a shit. The champ crashing to the floor is immediately negated when Misawa counters a suplex attempt with one of his own, merely shaking his head a bit to assure everyone he can’t really be harmed by forces so feeble as gravity or concrete. It also allows him to almost entirely shrug off that armwork too, hitting a diving elbow with his bad arm out of nowhere in a move he’s done maybe twice in this entire review series. Gotta love Misawa’s commitment to disregarding any and all stakes in his matches in fresh new ways. Hansen fights his way through a few facelocks but there’s nothing he can do against this disinterested prick. The debuting rolling elbow gives Misawa another successful title defense.
Brock Hates Wrestling 