It's been fifteen years since I last watched this. That's not very far off half my stupid life. Fifteen years is a long time and back then I would've called this one of the ten best matches I'd ever seen. I wondered how it would hold up as just about all of the 90s All Japan I've re-watched over the last five/six years has fallen a wee bit short. Not wholly surprising as my tastes have changed and it's not like I think it all sucks, but still, it is what it is. I mean this is the kind of thing where I could pick out a bunch of stuff that I'd objectively say is good and even great, but subjectively it's just not really for me anymore and I'm old and tired and I work with fuckin children and I don't really care about the line between objective and subjective anymore. Leave that to the philosophers like Socrates or Zico or whoever. This had all the hallmarks of your real top end 90s All Japan matches - the structure, the established roles, the struggle, the big offence, the selling, the NARRATIVE~, the extended finishing run. It's kind of amusing how 90s All Japan was lauded for that stuff as if they were the first to do it, or if not the first then the best, when there's enough readily available footage out there now that would at least provide arguments to the contrary. Anyhow, that's by the by and I don't want to start an argument about Kawada being a poor man's Shinobu Kandori. What struck me most about this was Misawa. Just...Misawa in general. This is the match people always point to for Kawada's performance, and of course it's justified because he was good in it and the leg selling is cool, but I think at this point it's really only Misawa out of this group that I would want to watch in large quantities. I thought he was phenomenal here, in that very Misawa-ish way. People actually used to argue that that dude had no charisma and that is just absurd to me. It's obviously a different charisma to Kobashi's and even Kawada's, he was nowhere near as grandiose as the former, didn't really sell using facial expressions like the latter, didn't necessarily EMOTE like either of them, but I don't think there's ever been a better embodiment of The Ace than Misawa. I'd forgotten the gap between him and everyone else at this point in terms of where they stood in the hierarchy. It felt like he could work his way through this with one hand tied behind his back if he needed to, and I suppose that was the case when you consider his partner on the night. Kobashi's trajectory was damn near vertical but he was still the clear whipping boy here, even below the gangly Taue who at least would use his surliness to give himself a leg up. That said, Kawada felt closer to Kobashi than he did Misawa and there was never really a point where it seemed like he could take Misawa down, not even when he and Taue were throwing out double-teams or when Kawada had Misawa in a stretch plum and was rocking back and forth like he was trying to yank his head off. At one point Kawada flat out kicked him in the face and Misawa shot him an amazing look of "who do you think you are?" before crumpling him with a single elbow. That was about the most Kawada managed to move the needle on Misawa the whole match - a show of irritation. I think Kawada actually hurt the leg in the first place by kicking Misawa in the head, which is even more insult to injury. You kick a man in the head and YOU end up coming off worse? No wonder that boy was always so angry. I love that Misawa didn't even acknowledge the leg though. He didn't need to, sure as he was in his dominance. Kobashi obviously went to it again and again, because that was his equalizer. There was a point after he'd been kicked up and down the place for about five minutes where he leapt on Kawada - after Misawa stepped in and dropped him with an elbow - and just started punching the knee over and over. Taue was really fun as the majority of his offence consisted of picking people up and dropping them face- and throat-first across turnbuckles, the ropes and his partner's knee. It's hard to imagine watching this that he'd eventually manage to snuff out Misawa before Kawada, but sometimes the world do be like that. Misawa feeding Kawada's corpse to Kobashi at the end and telling him to finish what was clearly already finished was perfect. You are beneath me, so much so that I don't even need the satisfaction of pinning you, and in fact I'll let my little buddy here do it instead. The disrespect. Three stars.
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