Comparisons and Contrasts: Flair vs Misawa

Misawa. Even though I'm not as high on Misawa and 90s AJPW in general as I used to be, the best of the best classics still hold up and Misawa was at the center of all of them. 6/9/1995 + the 3 singles vs. the other corners (6/3/1994, CC95 final, 1/20/1997). Also throw in the 3/1/2003 and that's atleast 5 Misawa matches on my list. He'll be in contention for the wrestler with the most matches.


Flair has actually grown on me since GWE as a wrestler and right now Chi-Town 89 and 7/5/1986 vs. Morton seem like locks. Two matches only but worked in completely different styles so he gets variety points.

Misawa, although I think it's mostly because the 90's AJPW style speaks to me more as a fan.

Had the 1990 Triple Crown match with Hansen! Ha

Felt this one was worth coming back to. I'm shocked to see it is so one sided.

Cap's Categories:
Top Matches - Flair. Top 1, top 3, top 5, top 10, top 50. Whatever the parameters, Flair takes this. They do have some pretty interesting singles rivalry comparisons:

Flair/Steamboat vs Misawa/Kobashi - Classic representations of the style. Sporting, athletic championship matches between similar wrestlers that defined a a style.
Flair/Kerry vs Misawa/Kawada - Classic representation of the style with more defined heel/face work. Something promoter(s) came back to again and again for years & it always did great business & produced great matches even though Kawada Von Erich always lost and their first big wins were in disappointing matches.
Flair/Morton vs Misawa/Taue - The two greatest feuds based on a broken face?
Flair/Jumbo vs Misawa/Jumbo - Jumbo matches!
Flair/Savage vs Misawa/Hansen - Underrated matches vs a fellow All Time Great
Flair/Sting vs Misawa/Akiyama - Match-up between the failed future Aces!
Flair/Luger vs Misawa/Williams - Ace vs Big Roided Up Opponent
Flair/Vader vs Misawa/Vader - Vader matches!
Flair/Tenryu vs Misawa/Takayama - Matchup vs Big Hard Hitting motherfuckers
Flair/Wahoo vs Misawa/Morishima - Matchup vs Big Hard Hitting Motherfuckers
Flair/Windham vs Misawa/Gordy - Ace vs Tall American who never lived up to potential enormous potential

In terms of match quality, I'd probably only give Misawa the advantage in the Hansen & Akiyama match-ups. But objectively, these are all really close. Then you start to look closer and realize I left out the Terry Funk and Ron Garvin rivalries. Two of Flair's 5 best opponents. Imagine if we did this comparison and didn't include Misawa/Kawada and Misawa/Williams, but did include Funk & Garvin? Would it still look close? And then you start to think about Magnum, Butch Reed, Koko, Harley, Nikita, Dusty, Pillman, Dibiase, Lawler, Hack Sawyer, Hawk, Hogan and even more people I'm forgetting. Of course Misawa's rivalries included a ton more tags & multi man matches which changes the nature of the matchups a little, but in terms of singles matches I think these compare pretty nicely.

In the end Flair's sheer volume is going to win out. Even just looking at say the 5 best matches they had (not ranking them here, just throwing them out off the top of my head):

Flair/Steamboat Clash VI vs 6/9/95 Tag
Flair/Funk GAB 89 vs Misawa/Kobashi 1/97
Flair/Morton GAB 86 vs Misawa/Kawada 6/3/94
War Games 87 vs RWTL 96
Flair/Steamboat WrestleWar vs Misawa/Kobashi 03

It's not like Misawa is destroying him at the very top level.

Versatility - Flair. Both of these guys were known for developing a formula and sticking to it. Flair's longevity as traveling champ gave him more opportunities to work different opponents and he definitely has more variety in his work. I guess you could argue Misawa's a better tag worker, but its not like Misawa the tag worker was very different from Misawa the singles worker. Flair's ability to work long, short, classic technical matches, violent brawls and comedy wins out. Not to say Misawa pulling up his pants after every move wasn't hilarious. It was. Perhaps this would have been more interesting if AJPW did interpromotion stuff in the 90s like NJPW. Misawa vs Albright was never good. But I have to imagine Misawa vs Tenryu in 97 would have been the bomb.

Consistency - Flair. Less likely to take a night off in his prime.

Charisma/"It" Factor" - Flair. I get that Misawa's charisma and "It Factor" are probably underrated by many because of his stoicism. But come on. Its Flair.

Promos - I mean.

Elevating Others - Flair. Both in terms of having the best match of his opponent's career and in terms of making them look like a star.

Offense - Misawa. In the early 80s, Flair was an awesome offensive wrestler. You'd get the the figure 4, the great vertical suplex, double-arm suplex, back suplex, atomic drop, inverted atomic drop, the chops, he'd still hit stuff off the top rope, the very hit or miss Flair piledriver, occasionally a side back breaker, the great elbow & knee drops, I saw him do a headbutt recently, extensive legwork to set up the figure 4 like the knee breaker, draping the leg over the bottom rope & dropping on it, stomps/elbow drops to the leg etc and he'd mix in popular submissions like sleepers, ab stretch, boston crab etc. This make no look impressive compared to Tiger Driver 91's and Emerald Fusions, but for a male heavyweight in the early 80s, Flair had as deep and varied a moveset as anyone in wrestling and his execution of everyone (excluding his piledriver) was second to none. Really only Jumbo and Fujinami compares. That said, over time Flair slowly dropped his offense. Not just stuff like the piledriver & back breaker that weren't always great looking. But the suplexes, atomic drops, successful top rope attempts, interesting leg work all disappeared and eventually his offense became extremely limited even by his own standards let alone the rest of the wrestling world.

Misawa on the other hand beats quite possibly all other male wrestler. Kobashi & Jumbo strike me as his only real competition off the top of my head. Maybe absolute peak Dr Death, but that was only like 2 years. Or Harley when adjusting for era.

Selling - Flair. Both would blow some shit off, but Flair was more emotive and more likely to be covered in blood.

Rewatch Valley - Flair. Something like 3/30/86 cage match vs Ron Garvin that no one has ever talked about ever is a like top 25 US match of the 80s. Show me the Misawa MOTDC no one's ever heard of.

Bonus Elliott's Question (Brody vs Nigel or best work associated with a crappy wrestler) - Flair. I mean obviously. Trying to think of the best Misawa match vs a shitty opponent. Is there a Misawa/KENTA match people pimped?

Flair - 8
Misawa - 1
Draw - 0

I think the rivalry breakdown is pretty telling. What is Misawa's version of the Koko match or Hack Sawyer match? Even if we just scrapped the rivalry breakdown because it clearly favors Flair due to his world traveling and did a straight match for match comparison including tags and everything I think Flair easily comes out on top. Its not like there's only one or two great Flair/Steamboat or Flair/Garvin matches. He's got multiple great matches with pretty much everyone I've mentioned.

I also want to do this with Cap's categories in mind. Going through the Horsemen set and watching some of his early 80s babyface run over the last year or so has been as much as I've enjoyed Flair in ages, and I'm higher on him now than I have been in about a decade.

Yeah, Elliott mentioned something similar in the thread already, but watching so much of a wrestler to the point of burnout isn't the fault of the wrestler. But I watched a ton of Flair in a relatively short period of time back about ten years ago for a top 100 WCW matches poll, and after it I never wanted to watch another Flair match again. I've also watched more Flair over the course of my life as a nerd who watches and writes nonsense about pro wrestling on the internet, so it was probably always going to happen at some point. To a lesser extent the same thing sort of happened with Misawa and 90s All Japan at large.