Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs Kenta Kobashi
Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship
10/25/1995
Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 05/11/2024) After an unprecedented streak of two (2) good Triple Crown title matches in a row, Mitsuharu Misawa comes crashing back down to earth with a dull defense against the most annoying of his chief rivals. This is Kenta Kobashi’s second title match of the year as well as his third in the last thirteen months (Gee Bill!) and it’s hard to argue that he’s ready for such a spotlight. Varying wildly in quality, each of these three challenges have been unnaturally long; at just under 36 minutes this is the shortest and probably the worst. An early Guerrero/Malenko sequence and subsequent standoff illustrate how Kobashi fails to bring anything worthwhile to these bloated epics. As the sort of junior workrate stuff we haven’t seen much in this title scene—but more so in the All Asia division where Kobashi made his name—these two aren’t great at it and the clunky sequence clashes poorly with the heavyweight action that follows. Going back and forth between tired, telegraphed strings of half-hearted reversals and high impact offense like the Orange Crush results in this match feeling disjointed and directionless. That’s a broader problem with Kobashi as he’s got a lot of silly moves that don’t quite work (his flimsy neck chops, his listless sleeper, the weird standing legdrops he does to a doubled-over Misawa, etc.) but which feel especially bad now that he’s a serious main eventer meant to be taking the ace to the limit. I buy it when guys like Toshiaki Kawada or Akira Taue take charge against Misawa because they’re intense and opportunistic, coming across like capable contenders not just in what they do but in how they carry themselves. Kobashi puts in a lot of effort, sure, but at this stage of his career it doesn’t cohere into a well-realized wrestler with a particular style or set of strategies. He’s just doing moves out there.
Another issue is that this is a painfully slow match, rivaled in recent memory only by these interminable sixty minute draws. That pace would dampen the drama of most any match but Kobashi’s approach to selling ensures it’s even harder to get invested in anything. When there’s all this time after every major spot to allow one guy to make faces—while the other very much doesn’t—it shifts the focus from “oh no that was a big move, my guy might lose” to “oh no that was a big move, I feel so bad for him 😥 😥 😥 “. In that sense neither man seems particularly invested in trying to win the match and being that they’re not exactly trying to kill each other either, it means there’s no clear outcome anyone’s working toward. With no forward motion this is just an inert melodrama. Kobashi is especially awful in these moments. With his weepy reactions and empty-headed incredulity that any of this could be happening to him, he is nowhere near as sympathetic in his struggle against the cold indifference of Misawa as Kawada was a few months back, meaning there’s not exactly anyone to root for in this overlong match. That gets even worse when he exploits an apparent weakness. Having tweaked something in Misawa’s traps rushing him into the corner repeatedly, Kobashi once again comes across like an utter psycho throwing headbutts and dropkicks at the neck injury of this longtime partner. Nothing is off limits with this dude. Misawa resorting to the Tiger Driver ‘91 to win seems silly—lacking the symbolic significance it did against Kawada, it feels like this younger rival squealing “Me too! Me too!” until he gets equal treatment—but you can’t say Kobashi didn’t deserve to get dropped on his head.
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