This was the first Mitsuharu Misawa match to net a five-star rating from Dave Meltzer, and it even won the Wrestling Observer Match of the Year in 1985. It starts at top gear with both men spilling outside, rolling back in and nailing a series of whips and dropkicks that culminates in a tombstone piledriver from Kobayashi barely at the two-minute mark. Barely pausing to tease a cover, the two men then launch into yet more offense, with Tiger Mask taking control with a powerbomb before the balance largely settles at 50/50. The styles of the wrestlers are swiftly delineated, with Kobayashi getting in close for brutal strikes as Mask attempts to go for acrobatic and flying moves.
This is great stuff, but the match hits a snag when Kobayashi sits in his holds for interminable lengths of time, slowing down the pace to a crawl. Worse, there's no payoff to these handful of extended holds, as Misawa eventually powers out and immediately speeds back up to 100mph and keeps hitting his moves without the slightest show of weakness. The match recovers in the closing stretch, when both men amp back up to their original speed, then past it, hitting power move after power move. One sequence sees Tiger Mask nail a dropkick that Kobayashi takes a huge bump for, stumbling outside in a daze, only to sidestep a suicide dive that Misawa absorbs by landing on his feet. Later, Tiger ducks a dive of his own, only to take advantage of the miss to roll back into the room and launch himself onto Kobayashi. The finale, of Misawa suplexing Kobayashi over the ropes and getting dragged outside along with his opponent until the two brawl to a no-contest, is neat but confusing, and it's another knock on a match that just lacks the enduring heat of Misawa's later work.
Rating: ***1/2
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