When people that have known me for years bring up pro wrestling to me and ask if I still watch it or not, I usually say that I follow it but rarely watch it.
Usually that brings a puzzled look and a change of the topic and I can hear them thinking-"what the hell does that mean"?
I do get the Wrestling Observer when motivated, usually by someone passing or a history feature, but I rarely watch pro wrestling on television.
The "sport" that I grew up with a passion for no longer exists here and other than watching old tapes and stuff on Youtube from over twenty years ago, I have no real knowledge of the product other than what I read.
But there was one company that interested me and two wrestlers that kept my interest alive.
All Japan Pro Wrestling was the company (later my interest moved to Pro Wrestling NOAH, due to the fact that all the wrestlers that I liked except for one moved to the freshly minted company) and Mitsuharu Misawa along with Kenta Kobashi were the wrestlers.
All Japan/NOAH wasn't quite like 80's American wrestling, there were very few interviews hyping future events and even fewer "angles" to inspire fans to watch a grudge match.
Instead, it was sport with a long storyline that developed through matches that basically presented their company as the best against the best in what they called "kings road" style.
Sure, the ending was predetermined, but for the most part-IF the top six or seven wrestlers were going against each other, they might have known who was going to win, but you sure as hell didn't.
Watching those matches today, they hold up just as strongly as when I saw them.
I actually started getting AJPW every week when I became friends with my good friend Brandon Siefken, who began taping AJPW and later NOAH every week for me.
When I saw that package in the mail every so often, I knew that I was going to have some fun watching for a while.
Misawa, Kobashi, Toshiaki Kawada, and Akira Taue (and later Jun Akiyama) would have tremendous matches no matter the combination and it didn't take understanding Japanese (I don't comprehend a word) to figure out the intensity of the crowd and the quality of the match.
The interesting thing when you watch the company was how simple things were.
Each guy had a base color trunk type and that sold merchandise because if you bought a green Misawa shirt, it would be just as topical three years from the day you bought it, unlike the WWE which changes things constantly to move product.
Misawa was green, Kobashi orange, Kawada black, Taue red, and Akiyama blue, easy to identify and easy to identify with.
Misawa the stoic iceman, Kobashi the fire to Misawa's ice, Kawada the little man that was the most aggressive of the bunch, Taue the seemingly lumbering, but most powerful, and the up-and-coming Akiyama, who the young fans screamed for to assume "their" place in the pantheon that he was groomed for as a true amateur star in Japan.
Those five in addition to the top two Americans Stan Hansen and Steve Williams gave the fans state-of-the-art matches that were incredible to watch but also broke their bodies down.
You always had the feeling that the Triple Crown (the top AJPW title) and the GHC (top NOAH belt) title really meant something and were fiercely battled for, which is not something to be said for American wrestling for well over a decade.
The punishment that was taken (and given) in these matches was not to be sneezed at.
You didn't have the craziness of metal chairs and garbage cans smashed over heads or leaping off cages and ladders (AJPW and NOAH didn't believe in "gimmick matches"), but the elbows, suplexes, and slams were downright vicious and one could see these gentlemen aging before your eyes.
Misawa was the president of NOAH having led the exodus of talent from All Japan and brought a very similar style to the new company and took AJPW television spot with it and for a while, NOAH was a smashing success.
But things had taken a recent downturn, Misawa was reduced to less than a shell of himself, Kobashi suffering from cancer that caused a long hiatus, Taue reduced to a slowed hulk, and Akiyama for all of his brilliance at times, never seeming to quite be the star that was expected of him as the "ace" of the company.
That resulted in a loss of their network television spot and relegating them to cable.
In the US, wrestling is a cable program, but in Japan, network TV is everything(in a country that still has 20-30 % without cable), even if your time slot has become part of the late night/early morning hours.
So the tragedy could not have come at a worse time for the company and the quest for leadership could be the difference in whether or not NOAH is able to be successful over the long term.
Misawa was less than five days from his 47th birthday and one could make an excellent case that he should have no longer been in the ring or at least have transitioned into the opening "comedy" matches that so many of the stars the past finished their careers in including Misawa's mentor Giant Baba.
Instead in he was continuing to be among the top stars of the company even at his reduced abilities, but even then Misawa was on occasion able to dial things up for a glimpse of his past glory.
However, Ryu Nakada the managing director of NOAH is quoted as saying that Misawa had told him as recently as a few days before the incident that he had less than a year in the ring because he wanted to devote more time to other business opportunities.
Japanese culture is very mysterious when it comes to death and no one has officially commented on the cause of death, but it is beginning to leak out that it was spinal cord related and not a heart issue as was originally thought.
This may not bode well for the long-term health of the stars of "kings road", as these grapplers have taken many of the hardest bumps in the business for a very long time.
Misawa owns many awards from the most prestigious awards of those given out by the Wrestling Observer.
Misawa owns the most five-star match awards of any wrestler ever, six times involved in the match of the year, three times the wrestler of the year, and three times being part of the tag team of the year.
Mitsuharu Misawa is (in my opinion) one of the top five wrestlers of all time and a case can be made that he is the best ever.
I think one can make an argument for any of my top five (Misawa, Kobashi, Jumbo Tsuruta, Ric Flair, and Bret Hart), but by the numbers, only Ric Flair has a similar argument and honestly, I have seen them both and Misawa was better on the best day of each.
Flair had many matches vs Tsuruta but never wrestled Misawa or Kobashi, while Bret Hart did wrestle Misawa once when Misawa was still wearing the mask as Tiger Mask II in a surprisingly average match considering the two participants.
The death of Mitsuharu Misawa truly ends a golden age in Japanese wrestling.
Between the growth of mixed martial arts and the smaller television presence, pro wrestling will never be what it once was, but Misawa was one of the wrestlers to cross over into commercials and become a presence to those that were not wrestling fans.
That will be difficult for anyone to truly replace.....
Photo Credit-Rachel Heimberger
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