Kenta Kobashi vs Mitsuharu Misawa (NOAH - 3/1/2003)

Seconded. I feel like this could end up #1 or at least in the top 5 of a few ballots. But I hate it. Agree with Cap that it should be nominated, but I'm not considering it for my list.

Might be their most excessive match and sees Kobashi in all of his chopping caricature glory. That being said...this is an incredible match. A great culmination of everything they had done to that point and again featured the one big spot that looked like Kobashi could never overcome...and then he finally does. Not only that, but he's finally able to hit the Burning Hammer where his inability in the previous matches were a factor in his defeats.

I love excessive excess and boy does this deliver. The great culmination of a great feud that Misawa/Kawada is missing. Kobashi seizes the torch from Misawa. Easy lock for the list.

GHC Heavyweight Champion Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi - Budokan 3/01/03



This is how you seize the torch. Finally, Kobashi takes the mantle from Misawa as the full-fledged ace and embarks on a magnificent heavyweight title reign. Very rarely in wrestling and sports is a there a "torch passing" moment so when it does happen it truly feels like a special match. So when you take an extraordinary match add this touch of gravitas you have the makings of a Match of the Decade candidate. I would argue that this is the most famous match of the era and thus will come under extra scrutiny. After watching the match for either the fourth or fifth time, I believe it warrants inclusion among the best matches produced in Japan in the 00s.



The story of this match was Kobashi would not be denied on this night. After years and years of proving his mettle, he was ready to defeat Misawa definitively. For Misawa, it was his last stand as The Man of Japan. It was a fitting climax to the story of two great, competitive rivals. The beginning of the match is Misawa establishing control and setting the pace with his elbow. After scoring the first bomb (a backdrop driver), Misawa stymies Kobashi at every turn with the elbow while focusing on Kobashi's arm removing the lariat and chop from the arsenal. Kobashi sells the arm like a champ as he cant apply the sleeper due to the arm work. When Misawa has the opportunity to hit his customary diving elbow, he was not expecting to crash and burn into the railing chin-first coming up with a nasty gash. Much like the chin-first drop toehold in the amazing '00 Akiyama match, Kobashi sees his opening and pounces. Everything is focused on debilitating the neck of Misawa. If you have control of the head & neck, you have control of the body. Kobashi paces his work a little better than Akiyama reserving his bombs for later content for using cravats and DDTs. The best spot of the segment is when Misawa goes for the monkey flip and Kobashi just falls back and eats turnbuckle. Kobashi starts to chop the fuck out of Misawa's neck, but Misawa ain't having any of it. We were one muscle flex away from Misawa doing his best Luger impression. It does not matter if it is Greensboro Coliseum or Budokan Hall, that spot is over like rover. The playing field is levelled after a trading a spinning back chop and a Roaring Elbow,



Misawa is first up, but Kobashi still has fight left in him and Misawa elbows him back in the head. He rattles off his finishing sequence that has culminated in so many victories. He goes for Emerald Flowsion, but Kobashi desperately shoves him into the turnbuckles to save himself and hits a half nelson suplex. Kobashi will not be denied as he fights through elbows to hit a LARIATOOOOOO! The struggle over a suplex and MIsawa suplexes him on the ramp then dives through the ropes to elbow Kobashi on the ramp. After 25 minutes, they are both out on the ramp and I just wondering what is going through their minds knowing what the next spot will be. In the spot of the match, Misawa Tiger Suplexes Kobashi off the ramp onto floor. I still lose my shit when it happens. "KO-BASH-I" chants ring out in the Budokan and they tease the double countout finish to really put over that spot. Misawa only gets a two. To steal a phrase from DDP, this crowd is JAAAAAAAAACCCKED!!! Both men selling the fatigue and battle wear like champs. Kobashi throws wild chops, but Misawa catches him with nasty back elbows. Kobashi is falling over himself on jelly legs and finally Misawa hits it. The end all be all: Emerald Flowsion. 1-2-KICK OUT CROWD LOSES THEIR SHIT~! Delayed brainbuster triggers the MI-SA-WA chant. This crowd does not want it to end. Burning Hammer brings the match and the rivalry to a fitting conclusion. Kobashi grabs the reins from the Misawa in a classic barnburner. *****

For starters, both guys had epic entrances. Kenta looked super focused while Misawa looked way cooler in his green wardrobe. Both guys were super cautious to start off with both looking for openings and testing each other. Misawa's elbows looked surprisingly subpar in the first exchange. Both guys seemed urgent and ready to capitalize on the smallest mistake. The early test of strength and arm twister exchanges I dug, due to the grittiness and struggle conveyed with Kenta screaming while trying to reverse the twister. They really emphasize the familiarity with each other in the start, with Kenta easily catching the faster Misawa and trying to ground him. Both look for the first opening to unleash their neck-based strategy. Misawa gets it early with a sickening backdrop that Kenta sold like it took his head off. Misawa tries to further soften Kenta with flying offense targeting the neck. Then we get an excellent transition. Misawa dives outside head-first and Kenta just smacks his jaw on steel, hurting the arm in process. Then he nukes Misawa with a gnarly sleeper suplex that spikes his neck. Misawa bleeds and it’s a great visual. I dig the armwork he did on Kenta with the hard elbows to the arm, tight bending armlocks, etc. Match gets disgustingly great after the transition to Kenta on offense. It was already good before but became great from that point onwards. Misawa’s arm strategy failed, so all he had was the neck strategy. Kenta shows the smarter strategy doing head drops and grounding Misawa in between. Kenta doing some good elbows of his own on Misawa's head was a neat touch. Misawa trying for his flying shit only to get dropped head-on-post was a unique spot. Him getting chopped down and struggling to not go down but eventually going down was great selling. Misawa stepping up and elbowing the shit outta Kenta was a badass spot. I just love how he struggled not to go down after a head drop and fell on his side like a boxer, only to get dropped again but this time crumbling. Then Misawa makes a comeback and unloads all his offense on Kenta, but Kenta again overwhelms him. Misawa's desperation elbow suicide at Kenta's throat was great. Then we get a spot of the decade candidate as Kenta's body bounces off the outside mat from a sleeper Tiger Suplex off the ramp. It looked deadly and got sold accordingly. We got shots of thousands of people looking in concern and waving up and down. Both sold excellently as boxers on their last legs. Then we get Kenta on his last legs doing a brutal chop only to get elbowed in the throat, like gritty bare knuckles boxing. Kenta sold everything like death after the ramp Tiger Suplex, and him trying to get up by using the rope for assistance but falling was awesome selling. Then we get Misawa busting out a gamengiri(cool spot) and a brutal emerald flowsion. With the feeling that Kenta's dream was over, the kickout was genuinely epic. Then the final exchange. Misawa busted out some brutal knees to the kidney but he looked completely bruised up. Kenta overwhelmed him with a lariat. That final brainbuster was disgustingly brutal, just like Misawa's head got cracked. Kenta busting out his ultimate move in the end was cool and pretty violent. Match had great camerawork and we got a bunch of very good closeups showing how bruised up and sweaty they were. Also amazing was the hot crowd for the stretch run. Kinda hard match to rate, in that the first half had some arm work and holds that didn’t go anywhere so it felt filler, though they were solid. The crowd was quiet for like half of the 1st half. The first half was good but the match got special later. In particular, the ramp Tiger Suplex to the end was all time level. So, long epic heavyweight match and excellent one at that. ****5/8

Just watched this again. For many years this has been my absolute favourite, greatest match of all time. It's been a long time since I watched it last time, and my criteria has changed a lot since, so when I felt I was ready to revisit this one I felt a lot of pressure on me. I didn't want to lose the happiness and overall "out of the body" experience I've always had with this match.

Thankfully, that didn't happen. This is still the best match I've ever seen. By far.

When it comes to pure ringwork, trying to be as objective as possible, I would say the first couple sequences are a bit generic and serve just as a warm up, nothing special to kickoff the match. That means it COULD BE a bit worse than other GOAT contenders I have like Okada/Shibata, Bock/Hennig, or the 20/01/97 Kobashi/Misawa match. BUT. The meaning this match has is (almost) out of range for any other. This is all about the climax of a legendary saga. It's all about Kobashi finally being better than Misawa, and Misawa not wanting to lose his seat at the top of the mountain by any means. Since the very beginning and presentation of the match, with the atmosphere, the epic entrances, the staredowns, you immediately get that you're watching two of the best ever at their ultimate battle. It's 100% a must win scenario for both of them: Kobashi can't aford another lose to Misawa now that his knees aren't at their full and will never be again, and Misawa is starting to get old and fat. Whoever wins now, wins the whole rivalry. The stakes are as high as ever. I don't like to be hyperbolic when talking about wrestling, but stories and matches like these are on such another level that it's simply almost impossible to not sound hyperbolic. This is dramatic as fuck, epic as fuck, brutal as fuck.

They kill each other in the first five minutes, and then manage to build another 25 minutes by going even further beyond! And it totally works, because they make you CARE about them with perfect body language and insane charisma. There's a criminally underrated sequence in this match, at the first half of it, when Misawa is suffering some nasty neck-work courtesy of gool old Chopbashi, and he stops selling his torture and starts to stare FEROCIOUSLY at him, no selling the following chops, starting to come back with elbows. It's like when Kawada pisses him off: the almighty Misawa coming back easily. And Misawa manages to turn the match around for a couple of minutes because, even when he's starting to lose the Ace position, he's still fucking Mitsuharu Misawa and he can destroy you with just a couple of well-timed strikes and a few signature moves... Only this time Kobashi regains control by countering him. People tend to enphasize Kobashi's resilliance by surviving the Tiger Suplex off the ramp and the Emerald Flowsion (and yeah, he's fucking Kenta Kobashi, the most resiliant motherfucker ever in his most important match ever), but to me the key is about Kobashi actually being a better wrestler; not only by being able to survive more stuff, but because he controls most of the match and is able to counter most of Misawa's attempts. He doesn't win at the end because he survives the Suplex and the Flowsion: he does it because he avoids the TD91 attempt and counters the running elbow attempt with his Burning Lariat. He's clearly the better wrestler, kayfabe wise, throughout the whole match, and you can TELL Misawa is pyschologically struggling with that. He has some of the best facial expressions I've ever seen in him, he's desperate as hell, and people have already talked enough about how part of the special feel of this match is the inversion of their dynamic: now Kobashi is the wrestler to beat (even if he hasn't won the title yet), and Misawa is the desperate guy trying whatever he can to win. That fucking Tiger Suplex off the ramp is not only a powerful moment because... well, is crazy as fuck, but because it shows how far he has to go, against his will, to the point that he makes all the other "crazy bomb off the apron" spots at their other matches feel like nothing compared to this one. Only that, again, this time Kobashi comes. Fucking. Back. Those last minutes are PERFECTION, easily the most epic comeback ever.

Even though this match obviously have some of the same appeals their other classics have (you get the elbow vs chop battle, the crazy bombs, the tests of strength, the bomb off the apron spot, finisher kickouts at 2'9999...), the dynamic is different not only character-wise, but structure-wise. This match is shorter and they go all out since almost the very beginning, because there's no point in trying to work a more elaborate match right now. They know each other so much and their rivalry has reached a level of epicness so high, that everyone and their mothers know that both guys have to start throwing bombs as soon as possible. Misawa landing most of his signature spots in the first couple of minutes is fantastic, it's like his great exhibition of dominance at the start of their 20/01/97 match but with a totally different meaning: now he's desperate. I said it before, but seriously, Misawa's character work in this match is unreal. It would be talked about loudly if he didn't have the greatest wrestler ever making a hell of a performance in front of him.

Kenta Kobashi reaches wrestling's heaven in this match. Pro wrestling has a lot of amazing stories to tell, but I can't think of any better story than the underdog chasing and finally winning the main title from a long-time rival. And Kobashi protagonizes the best of those stories, with this fantastic climax that is this match. He's the soul of the match and his final victory is one of the most satisfying moments ever. They worked their asses off for this moment, not only in this match, but throughout, idk, eight or so years of build up. There's no way this scenario can be duplicated, because this is the end of the greatest saga ever in pro wrestling, with two of the best ever, after so many years of build up, giving everything they have. Modern pro wrestling usually fails at epicness because they try to recreate the feeling of this match without caring about working a long-time rivalry with larger-than-life characters and sold out crowds; they want to have a dream, +5* match from out of nowhere, and sorry but it can't be done that way. This match is the Avengers Endgame of pro wrestling. And Kobashi being the protagonist of it is a huge part of why he's my favourite wrestler ever.

I have some other amazing, spectacular, emotional, technically perfect matches that will be near the top spot on my list. But now that I watched this again, I don't think there's a single chance any other match could beat it as number 1. I get not everyone has to feel the exact same thing as I do, not everyone is gonna be invested in Kobashi's journey as much as I am, not everyone is gonna love the Misawa/Kobashi series as much as I do and not everyone is gonna see this match with the same eyes as I do, althought I would say everyone should at least appreciate what they're attaining with this rivalry and this specific match (the same way EVERYONE recognizes what 9/6/95 stands for). This is as perfect as Misawa and Kobash pretended it to be: the ultimate battle between two living legends of the industry, and the decisive victory of the greatest underdog babyface ever built. It has to be my number 1.