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As the title suggests, this is a fairly long read. However, if you're into Puro or are wishing to get into Puro, then this is a must read. Misawa vs Kawada is arguably the top feud in Japanese Wrestling history, but as you'll see, their feud isn't strictly confined to the squared circle.
The History Of The Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada feud.
Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa are two of the greatest performing wrestlers the world has ever seen. Their story is one that begins in childhood, is littered with literally hundreds of world-class matches, but ends in resentment.
The long-running pro wrestling, personal and professional feud between Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa – in terms of both great matches and good business – must be remembered as one of the greatest feuds in the history of pro wrestling. Over the eight times Misawa and Kawada competed in the ring with All Japan's coveted Triple Crown on the line, they drew six Tokyo Nippon Budokan sell-outs, one sell-out of the Osaka Furitsu (Prefectural) Gym and a mass of over 50,000 people (though some got in for free) inside the Tokyo Dome. For those eight matches, that would be an estimated total of 153,100 people, paying a total of what must be well over $10 million.
Understanding the professional competitive spirit between Misawa and Kawada in the ring is simple. However, looking deeper and trying to figure out their eventual personal conflict is far more complicated. One of the reasons for this is that the man, Toshiaki Kawada was and is a complicated man.
In Japan – especially Baba's All Japan – wrestlers' characters in the ring were often very similar to themselves. There weren't any outlandish gimmicks in Baba's All Japan in that time period. A great personality was not always necessary to be a star. No example may be better than Toshiaki Kawada. He was always a very stoic and reserved man. Though, this is not to say Kawada didn't have charisma or an ability to connect with the fans. He absolutely did, but connected in ways most unique – ways pro wrestling probably hadn't ever seen up to that point. His most heated moments in the ring seemed to always be based around finally losing his temper and teeing off or trading frightening strikes with his opponent. This happened much more than once when he was in the ring with Mitsuharu Misawa.
It was also rumored that Kawada never cared much for foreigners and rarely even shook hands with them. The only two memorable incidences where Kawada shook hands with a foreigner in the ring was at Stan Hansen's retirement ceremony on January 28, 2001 and after winning the Champion Carnival 1994 over Steve Williams on April 16, 1994 after Lord James Blears gestured for a handshake. "Kawada and me never hit it off. We hated each other," although he and Kawada respected each other after the infamous All Japan split, Williams compared their relationship to that of polarized magnets in a shoot interview with RF Video, "[We] were like a magnet. You could never get [us] stuck. We'd slide right off each other."
From their very beginnings in All Japan, Kawada and Misawa were different wrestlers. In 1984, three years after Misawa's debut, Giant Baba purchased the Tiger Mask gimmick from Antonio Inoki and gave the famous mask to Misawa. Meanwhile, Kawada was still working hard, trying to make his way up the card, often being sent to Canada and the US to gain experience. "I was working for Verne [Gagne], and [Kawada] was still stuck in Canada… He was upset because he was making no money and had no place to go. It was too soon for Baba to let him come back. Or was Baba making it deliberately tough as part of the training? Who knows?" Tom Zenk wrote about Kawada looking back on 1987, "Kawada knew his face was not like Misawa's (handsome) but being Tiger Mask no one would have known under the hood anyway. Yet someone planted the seed of doubt in Kawada about his looks and body," as Zenk told the story of Kawada's curiosity about working out and using steroids.
But if you begin there when examining the relationship between Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa, you're not going back far enough.
It begins in the late 70s as both attended Ashikaga-kodai High School – Misawa enrolling in 1978; Kawada enrolling in 1979. Both were excellent wrestlers as part of the high school wrestling team (Kawada at 75kg; Misawa at 87kg). And both had long desired to become professional wrestlers. Misawa competed at the inter-high school Shiga National Athletic Meet in amateur wrestling and won at 87kg. Misawa, who was a grade ahead of Kawada, then graduated and entered All Japan in March 1981. In his senior year, Kawada too became a champion, winning the championship at 75kg at the same national meet that Misawa had won at the year before. The next year, Kawada followed Misawa, joining All Japan after he left the same high school in March 1982.
In the mid- and early-80s, as great, young, promising wrestlers, Misawa (as Tiger Mask) and Kawada (as everything from a man supposedly from Seoul wrestling in Canada to one-half of the leopard skin-wearing "Footloose" tag team with Hiromichi "Samson" Fuyuki) were battling their ways up the All Japan ranks – particularly Misawa. And by the time the 1990s had begun, Giant Baba realized that the junior heavyweight he had given the famed Tiger Mask name to nearly six years ago was going to become his next heavyweight superstar.
In a match teamed with Toshiaki Kawada against Riki Choshu and Yoshiaki Yatsu, Mitsuharu Misawa dramatically threw down the Tiger Mask gimmick on May 14, 1990. Wearing his long blue tights and white boots, Kawada assisted Misawa in untying his mask as Misawa rifled the mask out of the ring, and with a huge upset victory over Jumbo Tsuruta 24 days later, the "super-generation army" that would rule All Japan for the next 10 years was born.
The Beginning
We begin on July 24, 1991, with the end of the match where, in the still blue and red All Japan ring, Misawa and Kawada upset Terry Gordy and Steve Williams to take the first big step for the super-generation army, becoming World Tag Team Champions.
Fast-forward to a year later, when on August 22, 1992, Mitsuharu Misawa defeats Stan Hansen to become Triple Crown champion. It would be the beginning of the longest title reign in the Triple Crown's history – a record that still stands, a decade later. So to determine Misawa's first challenger, Kawada and Akira Taue are pitted against each other on September 9 in Nippon Budokan. With Misawa quietly watching from the back of the arena, Kawada submits Taue, meaning the two tag team partners would collide at All Japan's 20th anniversary show on October 21, 1992.
Triple Crown: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (Tokyo Nippon Budokan - 10/21/92)
In 1992, in a time when world titles were gradually meaning less and less, All Japan's Triple Crown refused to be tarnished or devalued. As Lord James Blears reads the certificate for the three belts that, together, would soon become (if they weren't already at that point) the most prized and respected title in the game.
While Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (6/8/90) marked the beginning of a new generation for All Japan, this match would set the standard and the example for dozens of classic All Japan main events to come – matches filled with a million high spots, stiff elbows, chops, kicks and lethal suplexes, yet somehow matches that were still careful and strategic. All Japan of course had great, classic matches before this, but those were great wrestling matches; these were great All Japan wrestling matches.
Triple Crown: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (Tokyo Nippon Budokan - 7/29/93)
Still Triple Crown champion, Misawa defends his title against Kawada once again. By this point, Misawa and Kawada had since ended their tag team when their second World Tag Team Title reign was ended by Terry Gordy and Steve Williams on January 30, 1993. Since then, Kawada had won the tag title as the leader of his own team with Akira Taue. On June 1, 1993, Taue and Kawada even defended and defeated Misawa with his new tag team partner, Kenta Kobashi.
This match would be like the match from the previous October, which was more or less a friendly, but competitive match between partners. This would be that – but without the friendly part. Here is where we see some of Kawada's trademark "punking out," somehow using his strikes and kicks in a subtly arrogant manner. Misawa even answers this at one point, where Kawada does his signature step kicks, only for Misawa to stand back up and pull him down for the same thing. At some point in the match, everyone knows Misawa is going to win, but Kawada is so valiant he continues to kickout and tries endlessly to stumble to his feet after getting dumped on his head for the umpteenth time. But it becomes only a question of what will it take to finally put Kawada away..
The History Of The Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada feud.
Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa are two of the greatest performing wrestlers the world has ever seen. Their story is one that begins in childhood, is littered with literally hundreds of world-class matches, but ends in resentment.
The long-running pro wrestling, personal and professional feud between Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa – in terms of both great matches and good business – must be remembered as one of the greatest feuds in the history of pro wrestling. Over the eight times Misawa and Kawada competed in the ring with All Japan's coveted Triple Crown on the line, they drew six Tokyo Nippon Budokan sell-outs, one sell-out of the Osaka Furitsu (Prefectural) Gym and a mass of over 50,000 people (though some got in for free) inside the Tokyo Dome. For those eight matches, that would be an estimated total of 153,100 people, paying a total of what must be well over $10 million.
Understanding the professional competitive spirit between Misawa and Kawada in the ring is simple. However, looking deeper and trying to figure out their eventual personal conflict is far more complicated. One of the reasons for this is that the man, Toshiaki Kawada was and is a complicated man.
In Japan – especially Baba's All Japan – wrestlers' characters in the ring were often very similar to themselves. There weren't any outlandish gimmicks in Baba's All Japan in that time period. A great personality was not always necessary to be a star. No example may be better than Toshiaki Kawada. He was always a very stoic and reserved man. Though, this is not to say Kawada didn't have charisma or an ability to connect with the fans. He absolutely did, but connected in ways most unique – ways pro wrestling probably hadn't ever seen up to that point. His most heated moments in the ring seemed to always be based around finally losing his temper and teeing off or trading frightening strikes with his opponent. This happened much more than once when he was in the ring with Mitsuharu Misawa.
It was also rumored that Kawada never cared much for foreigners and rarely even shook hands with them. The only two memorable incidences where Kawada shook hands with a foreigner in the ring was at Stan Hansen's retirement ceremony on January 28, 2001 and after winning the Champion Carnival 1994 over Steve Williams on April 16, 1994 after Lord James Blears gestured for a handshake. "Kawada and me never hit it off. We hated each other," although he and Kawada respected each other after the infamous All Japan split, Williams compared their relationship to that of polarized magnets in a shoot interview with RF Video, "[We] were like a magnet. You could never get [us] stuck. We'd slide right off each other."
From their very beginnings in All Japan, Kawada and Misawa were different wrestlers. In 1984, three years after Misawa's debut, Giant Baba purchased the Tiger Mask gimmick from Antonio Inoki and gave the famous mask to Misawa. Meanwhile, Kawada was still working hard, trying to make his way up the card, often being sent to Canada and the US to gain experience. "I was working for Verne [Gagne], and [Kawada] was still stuck in Canada… He was upset because he was making no money and had no place to go. It was too soon for Baba to let him come back. Or was Baba making it deliberately tough as part of the training? Who knows?" Tom Zenk wrote about Kawada looking back on 1987, "Kawada knew his face was not like Misawa's (handsome) but being Tiger Mask no one would have known under the hood anyway. Yet someone planted the seed of doubt in Kawada about his looks and body," as Zenk told the story of Kawada's curiosity about working out and using steroids.
But if you begin there when examining the relationship between Toshiaki Kawada and Mitsuharu Misawa, you're not going back far enough.
It begins in the late 70s as both attended Ashikaga-kodai High School – Misawa enrolling in 1978; Kawada enrolling in 1979. Both were excellent wrestlers as part of the high school wrestling team (Kawada at 75kg; Misawa at 87kg). And both had long desired to become professional wrestlers. Misawa competed at the inter-high school Shiga National Athletic Meet in amateur wrestling and won at 87kg. Misawa, who was a grade ahead of Kawada, then graduated and entered All Japan in March 1981. In his senior year, Kawada too became a champion, winning the championship at 75kg at the same national meet that Misawa had won at the year before. The next year, Kawada followed Misawa, joining All Japan after he left the same high school in March 1982.
In the mid- and early-80s, as great, young, promising wrestlers, Misawa (as Tiger Mask) and Kawada (as everything from a man supposedly from Seoul wrestling in Canada to one-half of the leopard skin-wearing "Footloose" tag team with Hiromichi "Samson" Fuyuki) were battling their ways up the All Japan ranks – particularly Misawa. And by the time the 1990s had begun, Giant Baba realized that the junior heavyweight he had given the famed Tiger Mask name to nearly six years ago was going to become his next heavyweight superstar.
In a match teamed with Toshiaki Kawada against Riki Choshu and Yoshiaki Yatsu, Mitsuharu Misawa dramatically threw down the Tiger Mask gimmick on May 14, 1990. Wearing his long blue tights and white boots, Kawada assisted Misawa in untying his mask as Misawa rifled the mask out of the ring, and with a huge upset victory over Jumbo Tsuruta 24 days later, the "super-generation army" that would rule All Japan for the next 10 years was born.
The Beginning
We begin on July 24, 1991, with the end of the match where, in the still blue and red All Japan ring, Misawa and Kawada upset Terry Gordy and Steve Williams to take the first big step for the super-generation army, becoming World Tag Team Champions.
Fast-forward to a year later, when on August 22, 1992, Mitsuharu Misawa defeats Stan Hansen to become Triple Crown champion. It would be the beginning of the longest title reign in the Triple Crown's history – a record that still stands, a decade later. So to determine Misawa's first challenger, Kawada and Akira Taue are pitted against each other on September 9 in Nippon Budokan. With Misawa quietly watching from the back of the arena, Kawada submits Taue, meaning the two tag team partners would collide at All Japan's 20th anniversary show on October 21, 1992.
Triple Crown: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (Tokyo Nippon Budokan - 10/21/92)
In 1992, in a time when world titles were gradually meaning less and less, All Japan's Triple Crown refused to be tarnished or devalued. As Lord James Blears reads the certificate for the three belts that, together, would soon become (if they weren't already at that point) the most prized and respected title in the game.
While Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (6/8/90) marked the beginning of a new generation for All Japan, this match would set the standard and the example for dozens of classic All Japan main events to come – matches filled with a million high spots, stiff elbows, chops, kicks and lethal suplexes, yet somehow matches that were still careful and strategic. All Japan of course had great, classic matches before this, but those were great wrestling matches; these were great All Japan wrestling matches.
Triple Crown: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (Tokyo Nippon Budokan - 7/29/93)
Still Triple Crown champion, Misawa defends his title against Kawada once again. By this point, Misawa and Kawada had since ended their tag team when their second World Tag Team Title reign was ended by Terry Gordy and Steve Williams on January 30, 1993. Since then, Kawada had won the tag title as the leader of his own team with Akira Taue. On June 1, 1993, Taue and Kawada even defended and defeated Misawa with his new tag team partner, Kenta Kobashi.
This match would be like the match from the previous October, which was more or less a friendly, but competitive match between partners. This would be that – but without the friendly part. Here is where we see some of Kawada's trademark "punking out," somehow using his strikes and kicks in a subtly arrogant manner. Misawa even answers this at one point, where Kawada does his signature step kicks, only for Misawa to stand back up and pull him down for the same thing. At some point in the match, everyone knows Misawa is going to win, but Kawada is so valiant he continues to kickout and tries endlessly to stumble to his feet after getting dumped on his head for the umpteenth time. But it becomes only a question of what will it take to finally put Kawada away..