The speed with which All Japan got the ball rolling on Mitsuharu Misawa as company ace is honestly startling. Only three nights after being unmasked, Misawa won the All Asia Tag Team Title with Kobashi. Nine days later came this match, the fourth since Misawa's coming-out to pit him and his shifting tag teams against the forces of Jumbo Tsuruta, laying the building blocks for Misawa's ascension over the aging face of the promotion. This match starts relatively tame, with only a few early highlights like Taue holding Fuchi in place for a missile dropkick from Kobashi.
But the entire match takes a sharp turn when Jumbo tags in and goes to work on Kobashi, culminating in a running hip check that lays out the younger wrestler and which Jumbo bumps off of to retain speed and quickly dump both Taue and Misawa off the apron, visibly infuriating the rising face. Misawa eventually ends up in the ring with Kabuki, dumping him with a dropkick before executing one of his fake-out suicide dives and showing off his acrobatics by rolling the ropes and doing a reverse kip-up handspring just to preen as the crowd whistles and cheers. It's a small but revealing display of showmanship that manages to show his fierce determination in a seeming moment of light-heartedness, proving that he is spry, limber and quick-thinking, and he is ready to beat down these older guys.
Then, Misawa and Kabuki back toward Jumbo's corner, and the old ace makes the mistake of reaching in to grab Misawa to save his partner. Misawa stops in his tracks and looks back at Jumbo with a brief, perfect look of utter disdain, and then he swiftly, dispassionately smashes the man's face in with an elbow. Jumbo sells this like a shotgun blast to the face, falling off the apron and lying on th ground for so long that the crowd begins to completely ignore Kobashi and Fuchi working each other over to stand and crane over to the side to check on him. When he gets back up, he does not wait for a tag, storming the ring, crossing it in what seems like a single step and getting into a nasty pull-apart with Misawa, the kind where both men go for any punch or strike they can as they immediately collapse into a tangle of limbs. It takes all four of the other men in the match to successfully get the two apart, and still they lunge for each other after seemingly calming down.
The heat for this is wild, and both the key players sell their asses off even when not hitting each other. Watch how Jumbo, after being pulled off of Misawa, goes back to nursing the cheek the other man plowed with his elbow, wearing a look less of pain than lingering astonishment. Misawa, meanwhile, looks like a stone-cold killer, his face blank as his body tingles for more fighting. In the span of a few minutes, these two have the crowd rabid for a singles match.
Not to be outdone, everyone else fits his role perfectly. You can see the seeds of Kobashi still being planted, the underdog babyface who never gives up but also gets beaten like a rented mule. I especially liked one exchange where Jumbo beat the poor kid half to death, at one point hitting Kobashi so hard that the guy bounces into the ropes, then comes back and hits a desperate strike out of sheer inertia which succeeds only in making the ace madder. Kobashi, like Misawa, has speed, but the old-timers have resilience, and Jumbo in particular sells fatigue from keeping up with them while also enduring all of their individual and combined attacks. Taue has the least to do here, but even he gets some great stuff in, making several saves and generally working smarter than his two more impassioned teammates.
In fact, Taue has maybe my single favorite moment of psychology in this masterclass, wherein he heads into the ring to save Kobashi from Jumbo's cloverleaf. Placing himself directly in front of the legend, Taue pauses for just a second before, emboldened by Misawa's earlier offense, he proceeds to strike Jumbo in the face with a kind of shocked abandon, as if his hands were on autopilot and he cannot believe that he could be doing such a thing to Jumbo Tsuruta. Watching this match, it's infuriating to think of how frequently WWE puts together random tags with its singles talent just to fill time. Nearly every single person in this trios match comes out with a stronger sense of identity
This is the start of All Japan's '90s, missing only Kawada in how deftly it continued, elaborated upon, and created storylines that would propel the promotion to its peak in the coming years.
Rating: ****1/2
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