Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs Akira Taue
Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship
09/10/1995
Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 05/11/2024) One of the worst things about AJPW getting its TV timeslot slashed is the fact that it impacted me, personally, thirty years after the fact. Namely it’s made this review series a lot harder. Previously I could rely on a few mid-tour tags to cushion the blow between the longer, more detailed reviews of major matches but now with so little actually making TV and even less of it being worth a review, I’ve got to tackle these title matches all in a row. It can be a lot! Thankfully this is a brief, breezy respite between some much more famous bouts. It’s actually Mitsuharu Misawa’s shortest Triple Crown match to date, outdone in the coming years only by defenses against a few heavyset foreigners and a few more with our big red boy. Wouldn’t call this a sprint exactly but it foregoes the perfunctory pleasantries we see in other title bouts, something Akira Taue avoided enough over the years that I have to imagine it was a deliberate choice on his part. Man ain’t gonna waste your time. This doesn’t equal his efforts earlier in the year but Miracle Run or no, Taue is really on one here. After an early Misawa flurry he brings the champ down with a kick to the knee, an opportunistic attack that shows how easy it is to do occasional limbwork throughout a match without making it hokey and obvious or sacrificing your precious spots. And make no mistake, there are some Spots here. This is basically a bombfest, twenty minutes of finishers and signatures with just enough connective tissue to tie it all together. Taue’s always a ton of fun in this setting: I love how his early Nodowa Otoshi takes as much out of him as it does Misawa, the big guy teetering to the side and sucking wind like a middle-aged IT manager rounding third at a rec league softball game. And, crucially, he never lets this lovable oaf act detract from his babyface opponent. Soon he’s chucking Misawa face-first into the top turnbuckle with both arms trapped at his sides, begging Budokan to boo the most charismatic man on this card.
Getting his bum knee kicked out prevents Misawa’s comebacks from being as effective as they should be while also giving Taue an easy out whenever the champ comes roaring back to life, a tried-and-true story for a title match. That said I like how little Taue targets the leg here. This is only a B-level Budokan show and these guys know it, not pulling out all the stops or stretching the runtime longer than it needs to be. On the other hand this isn’t some half-assed effort; these guys are still hitting some wacky dives and threatening a cliff Nodowa enough to scare the bejeezus out of the girlies in attendance, just not enough to exhaust them between this and all the other big matches over the back half of the year. Easy way to kill a territory—as evidenced well enough later in the decade—is to make every major match a three hour roadshow epic replete with intermission, entr’acte, and souvenir program. I admire the selflessness in letting your first title challenge in two and a half years be the “forgotten” match of the fall. So many people see this sort of runtime as evidence of Taue’s limitations but anyone watching with their eyes open will see it for what it is. If anything it’s a boon to Misawa too. As with that last Toshiaki Kawada title defense, the ace is so much more endearing when he spends most of the match bumping around for big offense instead of dryly asserting his dominance over the entire roster month after month. In choosing to play the unrepentant heel in a fast-paced title bout as opposed to the sympathetic challenger in a more drawn-out defense, Taue helps elevate Misawa immensely. You forget sometimes that the green guy’s meant to be a babyface and it’s only in matches like these that you’re reminded of what could be and ought to have been. Soon you-know-who wins with a rolling you-know-what, Taue delivering a delightful bump to cap off a comeback far less entertaining than what came before it, but we’ll try not to take it personally.
Brock Hates Wrestling 