Kenta Kobashi (c) vs Mitsuharu Misawa
Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship
01/20/1997
Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan
(reviewed 05/18/2024) A tale of two matches. Last time these two faced off for the Triple Crown we saw a disjointed, overlong match marred by inconsistent offense and a slow pace that undermined one’s investment in either man. Right off the bat this is a lot faster and they keep that pace up the entire time, even with this match being six minutes longer than its predecessor. That helps it stay punchy compared to other AJPW singles matches of this length, as does Kenta Kobashi rising to the occasion. His strikes are hitting harder and landing more squarely than they have recently, with his rolling neck chops looking particularly deadly in a way they never have before. Early on he goes after Mitsuharu Misawa’s gut with some great punches and other novelties new to his arsenal, none of the awkward workrate stuff that dragged down their last match, and it helps him come across like the main eventer he’s been trying to be for four or five years now. Nothing does that more, though, than Kobashi cutting out the crybaby routine. We still get glimpses of him Making Faces but they’re understated hysterics if that makes any sense, isolated to brief moments of exceptional effort and immediate selling instead of the drawn-out five act passion plays from earlier in the decade. It’s only when Kobashi gets his arm worked over at the end that we start getting weepier reactions from him and by that point I’d say he’s earned it. Granted, I’m not sure that a relative lack of annoyance means he’s especially endearing without the energy of his youth or the injuries that will make him impossibly sympathetic in the aughts but neutrality is a step up for the guy.
Misawa, if you can believe it, is pretty indifferent to the whole thing. As with by far the best AJPW bout of this era and its worthy successor, that indifference actually adds to this match early on. I think Misawa cuts off Kobashi a little too easily but doing so as the guy finally gets his act together functions well enough as a situational heel role, which we haven’t seen the ace play in a while. The problem is that Misawa eventually injures himself—in a great spot in which Kobashi finally subverts the dude’s awful dive feint in a way no one else has been allowed to do—and then we’re halfway to a double turn, mere months before the best instance we’ll ever see of that angle. I’m not against double turns in principle but this one undermines both Kobashi’s ascendance to top guy status and this match’s sense of stakes; who is there to root for in the battle of an increasingly bloodthirsty champion versus the vaguely perturbed ace who hardly acts hurt in the first place? Kobashi isn’t quite as psychotic in going after Misawa’s arm as he has been with previous injuries but it’s enough to deflate the good will he’d built up over the first half of the match. On the other end, Misawa yet again drags a big match down by barely bothering to sell its central angle; he never stops throwing elbows and never pays for it when he does hit them, unlike his opponent when he himself is cut off while going for a lariat. I imagine most people would disagree with me but I think those elbow cutoffs don’t land quite right, adding to how unconvincing this injured underdog act is. (If anything I think there’s a small murmur of boos as Misawa blocks a lariat with both forearms. Osaka doesn’t seem especially pleased with these spots.) This ugly execution extends to Kobashi as well. I’m not sure he ever touches Misawa in attempting to lariat him out of the air, leaving this disconnect between the intended spot and what you saw unfold before you where this guy is suddenly writhing around on the mat from not hitting his opponent with his injured arm. By themselves these flubbed spots don’t ruin anything but they distance the viewer from this increasingly detached match in which one man is ignoring the biggest move of the night and the other is reacting to ones that never happened.
In the back half of the match we get a few reminders of what could have been and what briefly was just a few minutes earlier. Kobashi’s one-armed Orange Crush—which Misawa kicks out of twice—is an excellent nearfall, the sort of thing that actually warrants a weepy response, the champ pleading with referee Kyohei Wada after this desperate supermove failed to put an end to things. But sadly they want it both ways. With Misawa making a dramatic comeback from this series of big moves along with occasional gestures at the elbow he rammed into the guard rail, we’re asked to embrace two heroes instead of one. Those inherently contradictory interests don’t always compromise a match but they do here, ensuring that Kobashi feels less secure in his main event status than he did forty minutes earlier while Misawa has reverted to the inevitable, unfeeling ace role which haunted AJPW for years. In spite of his assault on Misawa’s arm, Kobashi does manage to circle around to being sympathetic again by virtue of all he’s suffered in the end. King’s Road loyalists will tell you that was the intention all along; either way it’s too little coming much too late, babyfacing this beloved figure only when he’s already doomed. Toshiaki Kawada realized that fate back in 1995. We’ll see if Kobashi fares any better here in the coming years.
HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO SHAWN MICHAELS VS THE UNDERTAKER FROM WM25: Real frustrated with this one. The first half of this match was so much better than I’d remembered, winning me over on a wrestler I’ve long since come to dislike during this stage of his career. Then it goes out of its way to tell me not to care about him but rather the least appealing man in the ring, along with blowing some big spots in ways that sour my enjoyment even further. This WrestleMania match is far less compelling on the whole, never swaying me to Shawn’s side before devolving into similar “both these guys!” dramatics, but it never pulls the rug out from under me either. What’s more its biggest spots really land, whereas the ones that swing this match get the runaround in one way or another. Five, ten minutes in, I wanted this to be one heralded AJPW classic that I thought deserved its endless praise; by the end I knew it didn’t.
VERDICT: Barely worse than Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker from WrestleMania 25
Brock Hates Wrestling 