Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa, Jun Akiyama, & Satoru Asako) vs Gary Albright, Masahito Kakihara, & Yoshihiro Takayama
taped 08/29/1998, aired 09/06/1998
Tokuyama City Gymnasium, Tokuyama, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan
(reviewed 05/26/2024) The final televised Super Generation Army match, coming only a week after Mitsuharu Misawa’s return from his knee injury. This unremarkable end to a historic tag team is both inevitable and a sign of things finally changing in AJPW. While SGA has been all but dead since Kenta Kobashi’s departure, Misawa has been unhappy with the company’s direction for far longer. Taking his complaints public in a bid for power, the ace became primary booker shortly after his return to the ring. Giant Baba retained control over the Triple Crown booking but once he passes suddenly from colon cancer in January 1999, Misawa assumes those duties as well as that of president of AJPW thanks to a power play from old rival Jumbo Tsuruta, who is then ousted from the company by the late legend’s widow Motoko Baba. (The fact that he received no severance package surely plays no small part in Jumbo moving to America.) In any case Misawa taking control has an immediate impact on either side of the curtain: along with the formation of the Untouchables just around the corner and splitting G.E.T. in a memorable breakup with Johnny Ace attacking his partner after an embarrassing loss, Misawa ends the informal creative collaboration with Weekly Pro Wrestling staffers Tarzan Yamamoto and Hidetoshi Ichinose. (Yamamoto hadn’t been involved with AJPW in some time, having left Weekly Pro back in 1996 after various scandals, but Ichinose still attended meetings with Baba up through September 1998.) In some ways this shakeup was sorely needed. On the other hand it did nothing to reverse AJPW’s ever-worsening attendance figures and television viewership, an opinion shared by Toshiaki Kawada that no doubt contributed to his staying behind in the NOAH exodus.
In any case Misawa’s vision of AJPW is quite a bit different from that we’ve seen so far in the decade, which includes a greater emphasis on some of the shooty boys he’s facing here. UWFi transplants (well, Kingdom transplants technically) alongside their big American teammate, Masahito Kakihara and Yoshihiro Takayama enjoyed very different wrestling careers: a well-respected shooter who never fulfilled his potential thanks to a wide variety of injuries, Kakihara doesn’t end up following these guys to NOAH and instead spends much of the remainder of his career in NJPW, while Takayama becomes one of the pillars of the newly-founded promotion as a freelance monster-for-hire after his legendary PRIDE showdown with Don Frye. Both do well in bringing a bare bones, striking + matwork simplicity to the bloated King’s Road style that benefits all involved. Even Misawa’s sparing elbows feel more meaningful employed against guys kicking their way through his team with ease because they’re pointed cutoffs instead of simply being strikes he throws out a dozen times a night like in any other mid-tour tag earlier in the decade. Doing a move less makes it matter more. It’s very simple logic. Misawa doesn’t do multiple Tiger Drivers in every match, does he? Wait no, that’s a bad example. How about tiger suplexes? Wait uh hold on… that facelock maybe? There’s gotta be some move he hasn’t killed off yet…
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