Rasslin is CHA CHA LA..LA,LA,LA,LA,LA

[Ultra Peanut]

RAW. IS. FANDANGO!
#AJALL

[58kcfan89]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

They're definitely booking Punk stronger this time around. That match didn't do much for me early, but the last few minutes were really entertaining. He's gone from not being able to cleanly beat JBL to beating Edge and Jeff on one leg.

I'm still not sold on the heel turn. If they are doing it with him, they're doing it slowly, which isn't something the WWE's done for years. And he wasn't booked like a heel tonight, at least not the way I saw it. He's been talking half like a heel, half like a face, and in the matches he's been the babyface in peril pulling out the win (although he couldn't possibly get that reaction in NC with Jeff in the match, he's getting booed if he wins regardless), so who knows.

Not a bad show tonight. I loved the hell out of the Jericho/Misterio match that opened the show.

What I'm really having a hard time with right now is JR as a color guy. He's almost playing it like heel announcer, and it just seems weird.

I don't know what to think about the Punk "heel" turn, either. If they're going to do it, they need to let him loose on the mic (see: Punk's indy work) instead of having him read all these generic promos that you can tell were written by someone else. I love that they're booking him as a legit champion this year, though. I thought he broke his ankle after he hit the stairs, then remembered how awesome he is at selling injuries. Would love to see an Edge vs. Punk match headline SummerSlam, but am afraid they'll book Orton-Cena as the big feud...

"This" to the rest of the post as well, it could have been better (Trump annoys the sh*t out of me), but could have been a lot worse. I was a little disappointed that they used the 2 big title matches so early and would have liked to see them last a little longer.


Anyone got any clue as to what they'll do at The Bash? These PPV's every 3 weeks are ridiculous.

[BigRock]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

For all the people who bitched about Cena he hasn't held the title in over a year.

Cena was World Heavyweight Champion a month and a half ago.

[BigRock]

I wanted Trump's big announcement to be THE RETURN OF BOBBY LINDSEY.

[big nasty kcnut]

They'll have maryse licking natalya and michelle mccool in the middle of the ring.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Captain Obvious]

Originally Posted by big nasty kcnut

They'll have maryse licking natalya and michelle mccool in the middle of the ring.
Posted via Mobile Device

Nut for owner of Raw.

[Mecca]

This is from Meltzer. Apparently I'm going to have to split it since the forum says it's to long....

MISAWA DIES TRAGICALLY IN THE RING

You could make a great case that the biggest pro wrestling event of all-time took place on April 2, 1995, and it obviously wasn’t Wrestlemania at the Hartford Civic Center.

The last survivor of the old line of Japanese weekly wrestling magazines, Weekly Pro Wrestling, was, like pro wrestling in Japan in general, at a popularity peak. The magazine would sell 300,000 copies every week on newsstands on virtually any street corner in any city of any size in the country. The magazine put together a show at the Tokyo Dome. Because its influence in star making and popularity of wrestling was so strong that only one promotion, WAR, which had bad relations with the magazine, would dare turn down the invitation to appear. At first, many of the 13 different promotions involved in the 13-match show were just going to send some representatives. But it turned into major competition. Once a few companies announced sending their biggest stars and in most cases, matches that were being sent to steal the show, the ante was upped. Every company wanted to shine on the biggest stage that most would ever perform before, or at the very least, not look second-rate.

There were 54 wrestlers appearing on that show, all but a few of whom were major stars. 15 of them ended up as Hall of Famers.

The show drew a sellout of about 50,000 fans and, at the time, the largest live gate in pro wrestling history, hovering in the $5 million range. There have been bigger gates, bigger events and far more publicized shows since that day, but no show in history ever contained that much superstar talent with that kind of variety of matches.

On that day, there was little question that the biggest star in pro wrestling was Mitsuharu Misawa. There were plenty of superstars and superstar reactions on a smorgasbord of types of wrestlers and styles of wrestlers, ranging from the fast-paced heyday of in-ring women’s pro wrestling, Lucha Libre, worked shoot UWFI style, a women’s MMA match, a Pancrase style shoot, a science fiction style Alien death match for the Interplanetary heavyweight title with challengers from other planets, a barbed wire barricade barbed wire baseball bat tornado death match, and an explosive barbed wire match.

After Atsushi Onita used a barbed wire baseball bat and took a full swing to the gut of rival King Pogo (Mr. Pogo), knocking him into the exploding barbed wire and blowing him up, and then pinning him, he waited for his usual huge pop from the biggest crowd he had ever performed before. It never came.

Instead, the people were salivating over what their program said was next.

“Misawa! Misawa! Misawa!” started the loud chant, which built until the first bar of music played for the entrance one of the All Japan wrestlers. The crowd gave one after another the biggest pop up to that point on the show. To that crowd, All Japan was so over that the referee for All Japan got a bigger reaction than legends like Onita and Nobuhiko Takada. It seemed impossible to follow the thunderous reaction of Stan Hansen and Kenta Kobashi moments earlier, but Misawa’s was clearly the biggest of the night.

For the next 30 minutes, Misawa & Kobashi & Hansen battled Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue & Johnny Ace (current WWE Executive Vice President of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis) in a match that was so stiff you could hear every blow 100 yards away, with heat that never let down, and psychology at a level above anything in pro wrestling not only at that time, but likely anytime up to that point in pro wrestling history.

It didn’t matter that the fans had seen every high spot, every gimmick, real fights and a whole slew of some of the biggest stars and most charismatic performers in pro wrestling history for the previous four-and-a-half hours. They had also seen the emotion of Lou Thesz having to fight back tears as the big screen played tapes of his famous battles with Rikidozan, while a wheelchair bound Kintaro Oki got up as he was wheeled out of the ring, kissed the ringpost and broke down and cried as he left the ring for the final time in his life.

Every argument about what you can’t follow and how long you can go and do on a show without burning out the audience early had been violated for the previous few hours. But it didn’t matter. At the time, the top stars of All Japan Pro Wrestling were just that much better than anyone else in the world.

Those days were long gone on Saturday night in Hiroshima, Japan, a city best known on a worldwide basis for having a nuclear bomb dropped on it without warning by the U.S. forces in 1945, that killed 90,000 civilians that day and probably as many as 200,000 within five years directly related to the residual effects of the radiation, and which ended World War II.

Pro Wrestling NOAH, only a few years removed from being the best pro wrestling promotion on the planet, was a struggling entity. They were one of the most publicized casualties of how the worldwide economic crisis had affected television. Nippon Television had broadcast pro wrestling since 1954, with it starting out as a physical morality play where a native North Korean posing as a Japanese national sports hero, gained revenge on the huge Americans (who were actually two giant Canadians) who had destroyed that city and some others, rebuilding the psyche of a nation destroyed by the war. Pro wrestling for decades was a part of the national fabric. Rikidozan is still considered one of the 10 or 15 most influential men in the history of Japanese culture, closer in ranking to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln than to a sports hero. From the mid-60s through the 70s, the four biggest cultural sports stars were baseball legends Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, and wrestlers Shohei “Giant” Baba and Kanji “Antonio” Inoki. More people watched some of the early pro wrestling matches on television, which was in its infancy in Japan, than any matches at any time in the world.

At another time in history, Saturday’s show, a TV taping featuring a tag team title match, would have been viewed by millions on network television. But in March, as part of making economic cutbacks because they had lost so much money due to the decline in advertising, NTV axed wrestling after 55 years, the oldest program in the history of the network. Of course, this was not the wrestling of Rikidozan, Baba and Inoki, or even the heyday of Misawa. It was airing on Sunday nights at about 3 a.m., about 30 minutes of sometimes chopped up matches. The exposure was limited to hardcores who would remember to tape it and assorted insomniacs. The time slot made it next to impossible to create new drawing cards. He had an excellent group of younger wrestlers that his company had trained, following in the footsteps of what he established in his prime. The younger hardcore fans saw them as stars. But they had virtually no casual name identity nor the exposure to get any.

They had 2,300 fans that night, which by today’s standards was a good crowd, at Hiroshima’s Sogo Taiikukan, also known as the Green Arena. It was taped for NTV’s satellite station that only a small percentage of the population can get, and few outside the hardcore wrestling community ever watch.

Just five days before his 47th birthday, Mitsuharu Misawa was a decade removed from the last year when he was the consensus greatest in-ring performer on the planet.

In 1999, Misawa’s mentor, Shohei “Giant” Baba, the legendary Cal Ripken Jr. of Japanese wrestling, who during his career was noted for only missing one match (in the 80s) due to injury, had missed the final shows of 1998, and for the first time, he wasn’t going on the January tour. Instead, he was in the hospital in Tokyo, with the vague reports of why making people fear the worst. On 1/24, Baba watched his television show, featuring a singles match with his two biggest stars battling for his created Triple Crown world title in a match held two nights earlier in Osaka.

Seven minutes into the match, Toshiaki Kawada suffered a legitimate broken arm early in the match when he went to deliver a spinning backfist, but instead his elbow cracked the top of Misawa’s head with such force that both his wrist and forearm were broken. Kawada worked the remainder of the match, with limited use of one arm, used a power bomb where he dropped Misawa on the top of his head, the dreaded ganso bomb spot, and later, a high kick to the face, followed by a brainbuster to win the Triple Crown at 24:15 on a show that drew a phenomenal 5.4 rating airing after midnight on a Sunday night. Given the time it aired with most people asleep, nearly half the television sets that were turned on at that point in Japan were watching the match.

Baba, who started wrestling 39 years earlier and had likely seen as many great matches live during his lifetime as anyone who had ever lived, remarked that night that it was the greatest match he had ever seen. Seven days later he passed away at the age of 61 from renal cancer.

Already the company’s top star since winning the Triple Crown from Stan Hansen for the first time in 1992, after Baba’s death, Misawa found himself in the exhausting position of being company president, booker, and the top wrestler in the world, all at the same time. His career at the top had survived multiple injuries that would have crippled most humans and ended the careers of most wrestlers. He worked through them, and rarely missed a match, because of the mentality instilled in him to be tough and never complain. He could not go all out every night, but remained as good a big show wrestler as there was. He had learned how to work believable enough to bring people into his matches and have them believe the roller coaster rides were really the most exciting athletic competitions around, done well enough that they overcame his own lack of facial expressions, usually the death knell for successful drawing card. He regularly took psychotic bumps, most notably back suplexes where he and his partners in crime would be dropped on their heads. His neck, knees and back ached all the time. He relied on chiropractic help and acupuncture therapy but never used traditional medical treatment, nor in recent years did he take time off from the ring.

Ten years after Baba’s death, Misawa walked to the ring unsteady. He was terribly out of shape because he was injured too badly to train hard. Chain smoking is prevalent in Japan and Misawa was no different. It genuinely hurt to watch him. Still, for economic survival, there were times he had to headline, such as in the recent Global Tag Team tournament, where he felt it necessary to give Go Shiozaki the star and credibility rub of being his tag team partner. Misawa had decided that Shiozaki, and not Takeshi Morishima, because of the latters’ weight problems, would be the superstar counted on to carry the promotion in the future. The talent was there, just not the credibility with the public. The first part of the push was giving Shiozaki several big wins to lead to a title challenge against GHC heavyweight champion Jun Akiyama, which he lost.

To rebound, Shiozaki teamed with Misawa in April and May for the tag team tournament. Shiozaki would win the tournament, and headline Budokan Hall, where hopefully his ability would show that he belonged in the spot.

On 5/6, Misawa headlined Budokan Hall for the record setting 69th time in his career. A far cry from his 53 sellouts at Budokan Hall, there were only 7,300 fans there, one of the two or three smallest crowds he’d ever headlined the building in front of. It was a bad sign as it was the first Budokan Hall show since losing network television.

Misawa’s mark is likely the most sellouts as a headliner of any wrestler in a building of that size in the history of the business. The U.S. record for that sized arena is likely held by Bruno Sammartino, who sold out Madison Square Garden about 45 times in 130 main events.

Misawa & Shiozaki won the Global Tag League tournament, beating Morishima & Kensuke Sasaki in the finals. In the match, the storyline was that Misawa was injured, thus keeping him out of the ring most of the match. Shiozaki, single-handedly, survived and won against the team being marketed as a Japanese modern version of the Road Warriors, complete with the same finishing move.

When Kobashi was out fighting cancer in the second half of 2006, attendance had plummeted at the Budokan Hall shows that carried the company business. After going against tradition and putting the company’s two best workers, Naomichi Marufuji and KENTA, both less than 200 pounds, in the Budokan Hall main event spot, the first-ever match-up of two junior heavyweights battling for the heavyweight title only did about 5,000 paid. For economic survival, Misawa, as the only wrestler on the roster who could consistently draw on top, had to win the title on December 10, 2006, nearly four years after he had decided to retire from the heavyweight title position with his last-ever singles match of the year against Kobashi.

His 15-month title reign wasn’t filled with sellouts or legendary matches. It was a Band-Aid, trying to be able to at least run big shows that would draw decent crowds and keep from bleeding badly until Kobashi’s return would be a temporary cure. The hope was that his opponents, some of whom were among the most talented wrestlers in the business, could carry him enough to where the matches would be decent. Business wasn’t good, but due to usually great undercard matches, the big shows were still well received. After dropping the title to Morishima, Misawa worked almost always in tags, often in the middle of the card, where his partners handled the vast majority of the ring time.

While never publicly acknowledged, the plan had been in place for Misawa to retire, first in 2007, but with Kobashi out, the feeling was he was needed as world champion. Then the plan was for him to retire when Kobashi could return full-time, but with the company struggling, the date had been put off. He had told his wife the prior week that he would retire at the end of the year, and had gone so far as to tell Ryu Nakata, who business head of the company on Tuesday, that he would retire this year but that he didn’t want to have a farewell tour.

But no matter what he thought he should do physically or was thinking at home, the odds were just as good that he would end up like Baba, who wrestled until two months before his death and until the last tour of his career, had gone more than 14 straight years without missing one match. He could work easy trios matches in the middle of the card where his partners would do all the work, for years to come, since his presence on the shows was important for company survival.

On the last night of his life, Misawa & Shiozaki, coming off their tournament win, were to challenge Bison Smith & Akitoshi Saito for the GHC tag team titles.

Misawa’s neck was bothering him during the match, so he must have worsened the damage he’s had for years at a show over the previous week. He had believed he suffered a shoulder injury earlier in the tour. He was having a hard time, because this was a title match, which meant you had to work at that level. After Shiozaki worked most of the way, Misawa made the hot tag on both guys, mostly throwing his standing elbows to Smith, before getting cut off. Smith delivered an Iron Claw slam, one of his finishers, but Misawa kicked out, and Smith tagged to Saito. Saito did a series of moves, one of which was to be a back suplex.

It was described as a seven when it came to the degree of danger on a one-to-ten scale, but his head did hit the mat. Misawa just laid there. He immediately told ref Shuichi Nishinaga, “I can’t move,” and then passed out. Nishinaga immediately stopped the match at the 27:03 mark, at about 8:45 p.m.

At first, the crowd didn’t quite understand what they were seeing. Because Japanese pro wrestling is not regulated, there was not, as would be the case if it was a New Japan show, a doctor at the show.

Misawa wasn’t moving, but to the fans, they had seen people sell that all the time, and had seen plenty of spectacular knockouts in televised kickboxing and MMA matches. The first sign of a big problem was, when over the microphone, they asked if there was a doctor in the arena.

There was a local doctor who was a spectator, and came to the ring and saw there was no pulse, and tried to perform CPR. He used automated external defibrillator pads to try and shock Misawa’s heart into beating, without success. Very quickly, all the wrestlers came to the ring, and were all stunned and very nervous. A lot of women in the crowd were crying and there were chants of his name. Some of the wrestlers, in a panic, were screaming his name as well, begging for him to hear them and for him to respond. Fans watched, and soon sensed the panic as Misawa started turning purple. EMT’s arrived and worked on him for a long time, trying without success. This scene of them working on him aired on a number of national news and sportscasts over the weekend.

He was rushed to Hiroshima College Hospital. Saito went to the hospital to stand by his side. Morishima was told to stay at the arena and address the crowd, as most of them had stayed, waiting for word on what they had just seen. Morishima told the fans that Misawa was at the hospital and his condition was critical, but said, “We don’t know anything new.” He said somberly, “Thank you for caring.”

Misawa was pronounced dead in the hospital at 10:10 p.m. In the history of pro wrestling, there have been probably 100 or more deaths either in the ring, or in the hospital shortly thereafter from circumstances related to a match. But with all due respect to Owen Hart, or a regional legend like Ray Gunkel, none of those people were near Misawa’s level of stature.

The belief was that he died in the ring, but they publicly announced he died at the hospital so those in the arena wouldn’t think that he died in front of them.

His family was called and flew in, and saw the doctor the next morning, who told them the cause of death. The family took the body home to Koshigaya, Saitama, where they live and asked that the cause of death remain confidential. They had a secret funeral right away and he was cremated. Pro Wrestling NOAH is going to arrange a public service for fans to attend on 7/4 at Differ Ariake. Business manager Ryu Nakata said Differ Ariake will be the site because it is the company’s home base, and where the company’s offices are located. He noted that this was where Misawa worked both in and out of the ring, and it was the site of the first show of the promotion.

The next night at the house show, NOAH Vice President Mitsuo Momota said that he could not reveal the cause of death because the family asked it be kept confidential.

However, the Hiroshima Police Department report on the incident released his cause of death as cervical spinal cord trauma, after interviewing the doctors.

[Mecca]

The actual injury was a shattered C-1 and C-2 vertebrae, essentially meaning his head and spine were no longer connected, which led to him suffering cardiopulmonary arrest. It was roughly the same injury that actor Christopher Reeve suffered in 1995 when he was thrown off by a horse he was riding. Reeve would have died in that accident without the immediate medical care he received. Even if Misawa had survived, and it would have taken a miracle for that to happen, he would have likely been a paraplegic.

Most likely, if he had gone to a doctor in the U.S., like Steve Austin or DDP did when they had serious neck injuries, his level of his neck damage would have been discovered. It’s very possible, if not likely, he’d have been told, like Austin, DDP and Ted DiBiase had, that one more bad bump could leave him as a paraplegic. DiBiase retired at that point, although in the last year has talked of coming back for one last match. Austin and DDP wrestled a few times after that diagnosis, but got out for good, in the case of Austin, spurning some huge offers to come back, and at times considering them.

Misawa never got that medical opinion, even though he was diagnosed two years ago with a cervical sprain in a match he suffered a concussion in. Even the Japanese media reported after his death that he should not have been wrestling at this point.

To the shock of many people, the tour continued with a show the next night in Fukuoka, where Akiyama was scheduled to defend the GHC heavyweight title against Takeshi Rikio. Tons of fans came to the NOAH offices in Tokyo leaving flowers. In Fukuoka, a huge walk-up crowd came to the Hakata Star Lanes, a 2,600-seat converted bowling alley that is now, because wrestling is no longer drawing big crowds, the home for most of the promotions in Japan when they come to the city. A large throng was milling around the arena long before the show was scheduled to start, and selling it out.

It was surreal as everyone involved tried to act like it was just another day and another show, almost as if pretending would take everyone’s minds off what obviously everyone was thinking. Going out of your way to do what you would normally do was making it so obvious that it reminded everyone that this was no normal day, and this was no normal show.

And it couldn’t be. All Misawa merchandise that they had brought to last the entire tour sold out before the show started. They opened the show with a ten count for Misawa, as shows did all over the world on that day (of major promotions running around the world the next day, only WWE and TNA failed to acknowledge it at their house shows, although both did post messages on their web site. WWE did not acknowledge it during Raw, but C.M. Punk did manage to sneak a mention in, writing his name in huge letters on the tape on his wrists and forearms). They played his music one last time and fans chanted his name.

The death got the expected huge coverage in Japan, on network news and talk shows, lead stories in sports sections. At least one sports newspaper got the word late Saturday night, and stopped the presses for the Sunday edition to redo its front page. It was the lead story in every sports newspaper in the country, and top story on the Google and Yahoo Japan web sites.

Reaction to the death was worldwide. There was even a loud “Misawa!” chant the next day that started out of nowhere at a major fireworks show in Dusseldorf, Germany, a city with a large Japanese population, where transplanted Japanese talked about seeing his matches with Tsuruta, Kawada and Kobashi on television.

But there were high-brow papers in Japan that gave it very little coverage, limited to a few graphs. NHK television’s news, considered the most authoritative in the country, infuriated wrestling fans by making the decision that the death was not major news, with only one minute of coverage on the prime time newscast. To older editors, wrestling was something huge in the days of Rikidozan, and certainly Baba and Inoki were household names. Tsuruta’s death was covered huge, as were deaths of people like Lou Thesz, Karl Gotch and Fred Blassie. The country practically went into mourning when Baba died, and from a sports standpoint, Bruiser Brody’s death got nearly two months worth of regular coverage, yet Terry Gordy’s death got minimal coverage.

The leading English language newspaper, the Japan Times, had a seven-paragraph Japanese wire service story buried in the “In brief” section. Aside from mentioning him in the lead as one of the most popular wrestlers in Japan, the article talked almost exclusively about the circumstances of his death that night in Sapporo, and coverage of his entire career came down to two sentences: “Making his professional debut in 1981, Misawa became popular partly for wearing his trademark mask designed to look like a tiger’s head. He set up wrestling organization Pro Wrestling NOAH in 2000 and became its president.”

On the NTV morning show hosted by Kazuo Tokumitsu, something of a Japanese version of Walter Cronkite, he devoted 20 minutes the next morning to coverage of Misawa’s death. Tokumitsu, a powerful player in NTV, was friends with Misawa and was said to be one of the key guys at the network arguing against cutting the wrestling show a few months ago. Tokumitsu got his first national exposure as the lead wrestling announcer on the network in the Rikidozan era, and he was a player on the popular 70s network comedy show that The Destroyer was on.

NTV announced that the day after his public funeral, on 7/5, they would air a 90-minute special on his life, replaying his most famous matches. Special commemorative magazines were being rushed to hit the newsstands. It was even a front page story in the U.S. on the ESPN web site and was covered in the sports section in Australia in the Sydney Morning Herald.

After the moment of silence to start the show in Fukuoka, Akiyama, 39, then came out and announced he had a herniated the disc between his L-4 and L-5 vertebrae, and would be out of action indefinitely. He had been working through a lot of pain, with the usual Japanese athlete mentality that you deny pain because admitting it is considered a weakness, really not appreciably different than the attitude of American athletes except that trait is, as a rule, stronger in Japanese because of being taught never to complain. After what happened the night before, he looked at his own situation got himself examined. In fact, this was a wake up call for many in the industry who routinely did their job and ignored their discomfort because that’s what you do in the wrestling business. Akiyama said he would have to vacate the championship and it was announced that Shiozaki would face Rikio for the title.

Akiyama himself is under a lot of pressure, because the company is expecting him to take over Misawa’s front office duties. Vice president Momota said they would be having a meeting on 6/23, the day after the current tour ends, and discuss the direction of the company, and expect to announce a new president within three months.

27-year-old Shiozaki pinned Rikio in 22:37 with the Go flasher to win the championship. Shiozaki has the talent to be the top star of the promotion, but with the television situation as it is, he’s never going to have the exposure to be a major star. The reality of the business today is no matter how talented or charismatic the young talent is, the television vehicle isn’t there to create a new Misawa, Kobashi, Keiji Muto or Riki Choshu.

[Mecca]

Shiozaki was in the role of a guy who had exciting matches against the top and middle guys, but always lost in the end, until going to the U.S. in 2008 to work for ROH. Unlike Morishima, who was a world champion in ROH to prepare for him to come back and be the top guy, Shiozaki was a mid-carder in ROH, and while it was hoped he would eventually get to the top position, it was not scheduled to be any time soon. People aren’t ready for him as a world champion, but at this point, he may have been the best option. The place was very emotional due to the circumstances and they had a decent main event. Shiozaki said nothing after winning the title, which was symbolic, since Misawa rarely did mic work after winning a major championship.

The most vivid scene of the night was Saito, 43, who had to be talked out of announcing his retirement that day, getting on his hands and knees to a large framed photo of Misawa, crying and being apologetic. It was actually at that point when fans realized that Misawa died directly related to the move, as opposed to the possibility it was a heart attack suffered in the heat of battle.

There have been an endless number of high profile pro wrestler deaths over the past 25 years. There were the drug deaths, the accidents in and out of the ring, and even a high profile murder. Many were the result of the lifestyle of being a high profile pro wrestling star and falling to the easy temptations. Some, like Eddy Guerrero, may have been, as Dusty Rhodes said right after his death, that he died trying to be a main eventer, essentially steroids and Growth Hormone to try and overcompensate for his small stature that was the only thing holding him from that status. Misawa was the first to die not from trying to be a champion, nor from the lifestyle of the spoils from that success, but because of being the champion.

In a country that thrives on symbolism, there were plenty here. It was noted in some media reports how the last move of the match, called in Japanese Noten Sakasa Otoshi, or Lou Thesz style Greco-Roman backdrop, was the same move Thesz used to pin Rikidozan in Honolulu when Thesz was world champion. Beating Rikidozan, who never lost in Japan, and being the first world champion when wrestling became huge in Japan made Thesz larger than life. It was why the later Thesz vs. Rikidozan matches in Japan were so big. Something to the effect of him dying from the original great finishing move in Japanese culture. Others used it as a symbolic end of pro wrestling, that began with Thesz doing the move to Rikidozan and ended with Misawa dying after the same move.

In many of the news reports, they aired Misawa’s first-ever match on television, on April 22, 1983, from Sapporo, in the finals of the Lou Thesz trophy, for all the younger wrestlers. Thesz was brought in to referee all the matches, with the idea that the young wrestlers would do their best with the most sacred wrestler in the ring with them watching. Misawa lost that match to Shiro Koshinaka, but it was clear he was the better of the two. The idea was the winner of the tournament would get to go on a foreign tour where they could gain experience to come back as a star. It wasn’t quite Dana White after the Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar fight, but Baba said after the match that he was so impressed with it, that both of them could go to Mexico.

The movie “The Wrestler,” heavily advertised on all the wrestling TV shows, debuted in Japan with essentially the same ending. While Randy the Ram was in no way portrayed as a Misawa level star, he was past his prime, working a smaller show, and in the final scene, at least in theory since the ending of the movie was ambiguous, he passed away. Even more of that symbolism was that Misawa’s final match in the United States, on November 3, 2007, for Ring Of Honor at the Manhattan Center, where he defended the GHC title and pinned KENTA. Despite being run down with the flu, the combination of the crowd that was hot for everything, seeing him as a legend they had grown up watching only on videotape, and KENTA’s ability to carry him, led to his last singles match that was in the **** range. Among the people watching the match were Darren Aronofsky, the producer of the “The Wrestler,” coming with Nicholas Cage, who at the same was scheduled to star in the movie before it ended up with Mickey Rourke in the role.

The problems that led to the end of the All Japan Pro Wrestling organization as people knew it, were due to problems with Misawa and Motoko Baba, the widow and owner of the company, that took place after Giant Baba’s death. Misawa was the company’s biggest star and was the locker room leader. It was a locker room of athletes and he was the star quarterback. The year earlier, Baba had made the decision to have Misawa replace him as booker for the first time in the 26-year history of the company. Her husband hand-picked Misawa, who he and his wife, who had no children of their own, treated as their golden child, to be the top star of the next generation, carefully grooming him, even though Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi were actually more dynamic performers.

She herself, running the business of the company in the 90s when they set a record with more than 200 consecutive Tokyo sellouts, noted that it was the popularity of Misawa and Kobashi that led to the company’s most successful business period. Whenever people would bring up why business was on fire, and there were a lot of big stars in the mix, she would say at the time that it was Misawa and Kobashi that were the reasons for all the sellouts. The record streak started right after Misawa beat Tsuruta on June 8, 1990, at Budokan Hall (the match itself actually came 500 tickets from selling out, the last time such a thing would happen for years), and continued on every show in the city through early 1996, which is almost surely a record that has never been approached by any company in any major city in the history of the business.

[Mecca]

Still, when her husband died, she made the decision to hand the presidency over to Mitsuo Momota, a popular aging prelim wrestler who wasn’t big enough or good enough to make it in spite of royal bloodlines as the son of Rikidozan.

Mitsuharu Misawa came from a broken home, and grew up as a fan of All Japan Pro Wrestling, and in particular, Tomomi “Jumbo” Tsuruta, who was the young star of the company. At the age of 12, he decided he was going to become a pro wrestler for that promotion. A few years later, he wanted to drop out of school and become a pro wrestler. He met Tsuruta at the All Japan dojo wanting to sign up.

Tsuruta told him, “I joined All Japan after I graduated from college and got a degree. I think you should graduate high school. That would be the best thing for your life.”

Tsuruta told him that he had been recruited into pro wrestling after he won several national college wrestling championships, and then gone on to the Olympics. He told Misawa that if he was serious about pro wrestling, he should concentrate on becoming the best amateur wrestler he could be.

It was 13 years later when Tsuruta, at the time the top star in the company, was shocked when Giant Baba asked him a few hours before their match to lose in a Budokan Hall main event to Misawa. That wasn’t how wrestling in Japan worked at that time, but as history has shown pretty clearly, Baba’s instincts in seeing the audience reaction with loud “Misawa” chants coming out of nowhere every few minutes in the hour before the show started in the building, as well as in the hours before outside the ring in the giant line to get in the lone exit, sensed it was the right time to do the unexpected. It was a unique atmosphere that night, something that I’d never experienced before and never experienced live since at any sporting event.

Part of the reason that match became so famous, and turned business around, the Japanese equivalent of the December 25, 1982, Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich cage match in Dallas (which set up The Freebirds vs. Von Erichs feud), or the Steve Austin I Quit match with Bret Hart and title win over Shawn Michaels with Mike Tyson as referee, which led to Austin’s popularity exploding, is because everyone in the arena that night wanted to see Misawa win. And pretty much, nobody really expected that he would. Baba was sitting at the concession stand near the entrance of the building, seeing the huge business for Misawa merchandise almost out of nowhere , hearing the buzz of the crowd, and sent the message to Tsuruta, in the dressing room.

Three weeks before what turned out to be the most pivotal match of his career, All Japan was running at the Tokyo Gym. During a match with Tiger Mask & Kawada vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu & Samson Fuyuki, after Tiger Mask pinned Fuyuki with a German suplex, he told Kawada to untie his mask. After doing so, Misawa pulled his mask off and threw it to the crowd, grabbed the mic, and challenged Tsuruta to a singles match, which headlined the June 8, 1990, show at Budokan Hall.

It was a moment that nobody could have fully expected the reaction to, as Tiger Mask was certainly a star, but he was not at the time, that big of a star. But the crowd exploded in chants of “Misawa,” which started happening at all the house shows over the next few weeks. It was certainly the reaction they wanted, but far better than even the most optimistic expectations.

After being sent to Mexico from his performance in the Lou Thesz Cup, a little over a year later, on August 26, 1984, Misawa returned, with the idea of being a superstar, as the reincarnation of Tiger Mask. Baba had reached a deal with Ikki Kajiwara, who created the Tiger Mask character, a popular comic book and cartoon character. In the original television cartoon, where Tiger Mask feuded with his rival, Black Tiger, an animated version of Baba was one of the characters.

It was New Japan in 1981 who came up with the Tiger Mask concept on a wrestler, Satoru Sayama, who became a sensation who was largely responsible for the success of every smaller wrestler who made it in Japan. Sayama had retired a year earlier, and a series of scandals and unhappy wrestlers had left New Japan with a lot of problems. Baba was in the process of making aggressive moves to turn build his own company at the expense of his rival, and a few months later, came very close to finishing New Japan after a talent raid. One of his moves was buying the rights to the Tiger Mask character, and picking Misawa for the role.

Misawa was only 22 when he had the spotlight put on him, as in his debut, pushed heavily for more than a month on television and magazines, at the Denen Coliseum in Tokyo, a sellout crowd of 13,000 fans saw Tiger Mask pin one of Mexico’s best workers of the era, La Fiera, with Sayama’s trademark Tiger suplex, on a show headlined by Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen retaining the PWF world tag team titles against Dory Funk & Baba. His push was so strong that soon, at the Korakuen Hall main event, Tiger Mask & Tsuruta drew with Baba & Genichiro Tenryu.

Baba brought in a steady stream of top junior heavyweight and high flying talent to face Tiger Mask, including Jerry Estrada, Pirata Morgan, Chavo Guerrero, as well as the two biggest rivals of the original Tiger Mask, Dynamite Kid and Kuniaki Kobayashi, eventually winning the NWA International junior heavyweight championship. But after knee problems, Baba made the call to move him to the heavyweight division in late 1985. It would be unfair to call him a great success as Tiger Mask, nor a failure. His lack of size hurt him, and he didn’t have quite the flashy ability or charisma of the original Tiger Mask that he was being constantly compared with.

The timing was largely because All Japan for the previous few years had been built around Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu feuding over the top position. Tenryu received an unheard of offer at the time of $800,000 per year by Hachiro Tanaka, the billionaire owner of Megane Super Opticals, to head up a new wrestling group, called Super World Sports. The idea was to elevate Misawa and Kawada to be more viable main event headliners against Tsuruta.

After getting the message from Giant Baba, Tsuruta shocked, told the messenger to ask if they could do the finish as a count out. Baba got the message and had a one word message to give to Tsuruta. “No.” That was the end of the discussion. After a spectacular match, which video could simply not capture the emotion in the building that night, Misawa rolled through on a Tsuruta pin in 24:06 to get the win. The vast majority, easily 80% of the audience that night, had tears streaming down their face as they chanted was in tears. Most rushed to the ticket tables to get tickets for the next show at Budokan Hall. There are times when something big happens that leads to great changes that looking back in hindsight you can tell, but wouldn’t be evident that night. This was not one of those times.

19 years later, on the day after his death, it was that match, clips of the finish of which aired all over news and sports shows in Japan all weekend, that was considered the most noteworthy of his career.

But in 1999, it was Tsuruta who went to Motoko Baba and told her that Misawa was the leader of the boys and needed to be the person put in charge. Motoko Baba was convinced by Tsuruta to go with Misawa, but then forced Tsuruta out of his executive position in the company, and he left Japan for a new life as a professor at Portland State University. But Motoko Baba did keep her word, as two days after the Giant Baba Memorial show at the Tokyo Dome, where Misawa pinned Vader to regain the Triple Crown, Motoko Baba announced Misawa as the new president of the company.

But the relationship between the two was an immediate disaster. Motoko Baba went from surrogate mother to a teenager just out of high school from a broken home, to mother-in-law from hell. They had different ideas about everything. He wanted to expand the business, and she wanted to run things carefully and not spend additional money. Her view was the popularity of the company had fallen from its peak and wrestling would never be as popular as it once was due to the television situation. At the time, the company was still very profitable. Issues between the two were both financial and creative. Misawa wanted to increase the pay of the wrestlers as well as give them medical benefits, but Motoko Baba was against those changes, which also led to the wrestlers siding with Misawa. Misawa wanted to use the profits to help build the business, while Motoko Baba was content with keeping things status quo.

Misawa went to NTV and said that he was planning on quitting and starting a new company, and that virtually every wrestler, was also fed up with Motoko Baba, nicknamed “Dragon Lady,” in the business, and would be going with him. Motoko Baba’s role with All Japan as far back as anyone could remember was to play “bad cop,” the bearer of all bad news, allowing Giant Baba to be “good cop.” This enabled Giant Baba to keep almost a pristine reputation both in and out of the business, which they felt was important since Baba was the face and image of the company, and it’s not the easiest thing for a pro wrestling promoter to maintain a great public image.

NTV executives had been through this before. In 1972, when Japan Pro Wrestling, Rikidozan’s original company, was falling apart due to the gambling problems of the major shareholders, Baba, the company’s top star, went to them and said he had to get out and form his own company (Inoki had gotten out earlier). Not only did NTV at that time say they were with him, but they even financed the formation of the new group.

NTV officials told Misawa they were with him, but told him to hold off and keep quiet. The agreement was not to speak of this publicly or do anything about this for one year after the meeting. NTV felt they wanted close to a year-and-a-half after the death of Giant Baba before they were willing to drop the All Japan television show. The network had a 28-year relationship with All Japan Pro Wrestling. NTV. Giant Baba was a top television star on the network dated back to a 1963 match against Killer Kowalski. To much of the population, NTV and Giant Baba were thought of as almost one and the same. In fact, the network itself, the wrestling show, and Baba’s ring entrance music was one and the same.

Tsuruta passed away from complications while undergoing kidney transplant surgery in the Philippines on May 13, 2000, at the age of 49.

Two days after his death, at the 6/15 NOAH show in Kagoshima, before the show they observed a minute of silence for him. It was noted backstage by the veteran wrestlers that it was nine years to the day when they all sent in their resignation letters en masse to All Japan.

[Mecca]

On June 16, 2000, a press conference was held at Differ Ariake, a new 1,800-seat building built specifically for pro wrestling in the Ariake suburb of Tokyo, where Misawa announced for formation of his new promotion, with 26 of the company’s 28 full-time native wrestlers aligning with him. Only Kawada and Masa Fuchi stayed with All Japan. The foreigners had largely been kept in the dark, and all the main veterans who were under contract to All Japan stayed loyal to the group, with the exception of Vader. Johnny Ace, who was practically office, saw the lay of the land better than most and established an escape route, getting a job behind-the-scenes in helping to lay out matches with World Championship Wrestling, which directly led to him being hired as Jim Ross’ assistant in talent relations when WCW went down.

Three days later, NTV announced that the final All Japan TV show on the network would be June 21, 2000, a 45 minute special, where they would announce why they were canceling the show. They announced that starting a week later, they would do a weekly show called “Coliseo,” which largely focused on news about K-1 and clips of Misawa and his wrestlers until they started broadcasting the NOAH matches.

Misawa recognized he was past his prime, and Kobashi, the other top star, was plagued with injuries to his knees and elbows. In the last few years with All Japan, Akiyama had come into his own as a top performer, and the first big move Misawa made in the formation of the new promotion was to have Akiyama beat both Misawa and Kobashi to establish him as the top star to carry the company.

Pro Wrestling NOAH debuted on August 5, 2000, at Differ Ariake, using a trademark green colored ring, based on Misawa as the face of the company, since his trademark were his green long tights. The first night couldn’t have been more of a success. Of course, starting in an 1,800-seat arena instead of Budokan Hall was to create an illusion. Tickets sold out in minutes. Scalpers outside the building on the night of the show were getting $2,700 for the $60 ringside seats and $800 for standing room.

The main event was a two of three falls match, where the winning team would then face each other in a singles match the next night. Kobashi & Akiyama won two straight falls from Misawa & Akira Taue. Akiyama made Misawa pass out in just 2:00 using a guillotine, a move that had not been used for decades as a finisher in pro wrestling. Misawa sold it as if he was out cold from the choke and laid their motionless. To put over the hold, Misawa was given CPR as a work at ringside to revive him, making the weird coincidence of the same scene in his first and last match in the company,

Akiyama then pinned Taue in 17:45 to win the second fall. As the referee held Kobashi & Akiyama’s hands up, Akiyama then laid out Kobashi with a back suplex.

The next night, in a symbolic move, Kobashi, who held the Triple Crown title for All Japan at the time of the split, never losing it, thus having the aura as being the “real” world champion, was pinned by Akiyama in 24:25. Just before they left All Japan, Misawa booked Akiyama to beat him in a high profile singles match at Budokan Hall, the arena he was king in and where he rarely lost.

The first night saw Misawa & Taue observe a gentleman’s agreement not to attack Kobashi’s bad knees, but the second night, the story of the match was Akiyama violating it, working the knees for much of the match, and finishing Kobashi with the guillotine. Kobashi also passed out, and was left selling that he was unconscious for two minutes to get Akiyama and his new move over.

But Pro Wrestling NOAH soon struggled after the original novelty wore off. Misawa became the first GHC heavyweight champion so Akiyama could beat him one more time, and people would see it as Akiyama beating an established world champion to get the title, as opposed to being the first champion. While Akiyama was tremendous in the role of the young wrestler nipping at the heels of the big stars, as the top guy, for whatever reason, it didn’t work. As a young challenger, he possessed the fire to get the crowd behind him, but somehow as champion and as the top star, no matter how strong he was pushed, he never established the level of credibility to thrive in that role.

The company really started taking off with the Misawa title win over Yoshihiro Takayama on September 23, 2002. Takayama was at the peak of his stardom because his match a few months earlier on a Pride show with Don Frye became one of the most famous fights in Japanese history. Off that fight, since every sports fan in the country heard about it and ended up seeing it in one of its million replays, Takayama had become the biggest star in Japanese pro wrestling, and Misawa was an established legend, bringing a full house to Budokan Hall.

This win gave the title the credibility of world titles of the past in pro wrestling. When Misawa dropped the title on March 1, 2003, to Kobashi, it was the final passing of the torch. Fans at that point took Kobashi as the biggest star in the promotion, and in Japanese wrestling, as he had the charisma and ability to bring out emotion as a top guy that Akiyama lacked. His two-year reign as champion was an incredible success, particularly for a guy who looked to be through two years earlier. But the problem was, Kobashi’s body had been ravaged by all those incredible matches. But from that point on, the ups and downs of the company had largely coincided with the health of Kobashi and his ability to be used in the top position.

[Mecca]

The company was in many ways the best pro wrestling company in the world after the Kobashi win, with Budokan Hall matches always selling out unless Kobashi was booked with a weak opponent. The company peaked with two events at the Tokyo Dome, both voted as the best shows in their particular year.

On July 10, 2004, before a sellout of 52,000 fans, Kobashi beat Akiyama in an incredible main event, while Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa beat Keiji Muto & Taiyo Kea. It was the only time Muto and Misawa were ever in a match together. When Muto was the top star in New Japan and Misawa in All Japan, for years he wanted to do a singles match, always saying that the finish, always a problem in those kind of matches due to politics in the era when double count outs were no longer considered acceptable, would not be an issue. Muto always said the right finish would be to put Misawa over clean, a unique admission because of the big star of the country’s two biggest promotions, it was an acknowledgment by the larger promotion that his opposite number was actually better in the role of being a real world champion.

But relations between the companies wouldn’t allow that to happen, and by this time, when the politics had changed and the setting was right, the feeling was it would be better as a tag match, where they could trade doing their best known spots and not be in so long where it would be obvious both were no longer what they were. On July 18, 2005, before 45,000 fans, Misawa beat Kawada in their final singles meeting and Kobashi beat Sasaki. The Misawa vs. Kawada match was still very good as far as storytelling, but nothing close to their matches in the 90s. It had the atmosphere going on last as being a major happening, even though when the show was over, everyone was talking about Kobashi vs. Sasaki as the real dream match of the night.

Misawa and Kawada started as high school wrestling teammates 27 years earlier as Ashikaga Kogyo High School, at the time a high school wrestling power. Misawa was a year older and a year ahead in school. Misawa wrestled at 187 pounds, while Kawada wrestled at 165. When Misawa was a senior in 1980, he won the national high school wrestling championship.

After graduation, he gave Kawada his school jacket, essentially passing the torch to him to follow his lead the next year. Misawa joined All Japan Pro Wrestling the following March when they started their 1981 training camp. At the same time, Kawada followed in his footsteps, winning the national high school wrestling championship.

Kawada actually was more of a fan of New Japan growing up. His dream was to go to New Japan, which was the more popular of the two promotions. But Misawa in high school was like his big brother. He was treated well, getting to shine some in losing undercard matches, particularly when tag teaming with Shiro Koshinaka. Misawa convinced him All Japan was more a family atmosphere. Kawada went to the 1982 All Japan camp instead of the New Japan camp, was the star of the camp, and very quickly into his pro career showed signs of being a great wrestler.

They were tag team partners, tag team champions, singles world champions, and had some of the greatest matches in history against each other. But they had a falling out after both became stars. Exactly what it was about seems to be a secret. Americans who were regulars remember a brutal fist fight the two had after a show. Like one of their matches, neither would quit and it had to be broken up, but Misawa’s face certainly looked the worse for wear when it was over. The story was kept from the public and when Misawa’s face was bruised up the next few days, people just figured it was from a stiff match, because it wasn’t like bruises were foreign to those wrestlers when they worked that style.

Some felt it was frustration, because Kawada was probably the better athlete of the two, and the stronger performer, but Misawa was the chosen one because he was better looking and simply booked to be the bigger star of the two, and Misawa had the internal respect as top guy. In 2000, when Misawa believed all the top wrestlers were going to stick with Misawa, Kawada told him he wasn’t coming, at the time figuring he could finally be the top guy when staying, and word was about that New Japan was going to work with All Japan, so it was natural that Kawada would be the All Japan star to headline Tokyo Dome matches in what was sure to be a huge feud. The original Kawada vs. Sasaki feud of the All Japan top star vs. New Japan top star was tremendous, drawing two sellouts to the Dome, but Kawada in New Japan didn’t have the legs as a draw expected.

But this was five years later at the Tokyo Dome, and billed as the final act of the story. At this point both were Hall of Fame legends who had one of the greatest in-ring rivalries in wrestling history. Performing in front of a huge crowd, in what was expected to be their last match against each other, there was a good chance, and as it turned out it was, the last singles match either man would have on that kind of a stage.

The last of the magic moments was on December 7, 2007. In Kobashi’s return after being out of action for 17 months after having his kidney removed due to cancer, he returned for the final sellout at Budokan Hall. With 2,500 standing room seats sold before they had no choice but to turn people away, and turned away thousands, it was the largest pro wrestling crowd in the 41 years pro wrestling had run in that arena.

Kobashi & Takayama faced Misawa & Akiyama. It was as emotional a match as the four ever had, partly because it was clear watching it, that it would be the last time they would be able to pull something like this off. The style had destroyed three of the four. Kobashi had dozens of surgeries and the cancer had taken a lot out of him physically that he would never get back, although on this night, for 27 minutes, the emotion convinced people they were seeing a miracle, and that the Kobashi of old had returned. Misawa had been physically through for years. Takayama had a stroke a few years earlier after a brutal match with Sasaki, likely an accumulation of all the head poundings he had taken both as a pro wrestler and a fighter, whose claim to fame was his ability and willingness to take all out shots to the head. Still, because of how difficult it is to make new stars without real television, Takayama, who was on the NOAH tour this week, is currently the Triple Crown champion in All Japan. Akiyama was the one of the four still healthy. But he still couldn’t cross that line from being a great wrestler to being the guy who could carry the company.

Days later, there remained a state of uneasiness within the company. With a few exceptions, Misawa was the team leader, and for the younger guys, company owner, for as long as they had been in the business. There was a recognition setting in that it was the end of an era, and complete uncertainty as to what the new era would bring, but with the recognition things would not be the same, and they would never be what they once were.

[Mecca]

MOST FAMOUS IN-RING DEATHS
Note: This is a combination of actual deaths in the ring, injuries that led to deaths in the hospital, and deaths in the dressing rooms or later at the hospital or other places shortly after a match.


Age Date Cause
- Gary Albright 36 1/7/00 Heart attack
- Larry Cameron 41 12/13/93 Heart attack
- Mike DiBiase 45 7/2/69 Heart attack
- Masakazu Fukuda 27 4/19/00 Brain trauma
- Chick Garibaldi 46 2/18/61 Heart attack
- Ray Gunkel 48 8/1/72 Heart trauma
- Jim Hady 38 1/17/69 Heart attack
- Owen Hart 34 5/23/99 Ruptured aorta from fall from ceiling
- Mal “King” Kirk 51 8/24/87 Heart attack
- Luther Lindsay 48 2/21/72 Heart attack
- Plum Mariko 29 8/16/97 Brain trauma
- Michel Martel 33 6/30/78 Heart attack
- Mitsuharu Misawa 46 6/13/09 Cervical spinal cord trauma
- Oro 21 10/26/93 Brain aneurism
- Moondog Spot 51 11/29/03 Heart attack
- Alberto Torres 37 6/17/71 Ruptured pancreas
- Victor the Bodyguard 38 6/20/04 Heart attack
- Jeanette Wolfe 18 7/28/51 ring injury
- Jim Wright 8/2/63 Heart attack

*****



MISAWA’S MATCH OF THE YEAR PLACE WINNERS


- June 12, 1985 Tokyo vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi 1st place
- June 8, 1990 Tokyo vs. Jumbo Tsuruta 2nd place
- April 20, 1991 Tokyo w/Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue & Masa Fuchi 9th place
- June 3, 1994 Tokyo vs. Toshiaki Kawada 2nd place
- May 21, 1994 Sapporo w/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 7th place
- July 28, 1994 Tokyo vs. Steve Williams 13th place
- January 24, 1995 Yamagata w/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 4th place
- June 9, 1995 Tokyo w/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 7th place
- April 2, 1995 Tokyo w/Kenta Kobashi & Stan Hansen vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue & Johnny Ace 14th place
- July 24, 1995 Tokyo vs. Toshiaki Kawada 17th place
- April 15, 1995 Tokyo vs. Akira Taue 18th place
- June 7, 1996 Tokyo w/Jun Akiyama vs. Steve Williams & Johnny Ace 1st place
- May 23, 1996 Sapporo w/Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 4th place
- September 5, 1996 Tokyo w/Jun Akiyama vs. Steve Williams & Johnny Ace 16th place
- January 20, 1997 Osaka vs. Kenta Kobashi 2nd place
- June 6, 1997 Tokyo vs. Toshiaki Kawada 5th place
- December 6, 1996 w/Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 7th place (in 1997 awards)
- October 21, 1997 Tokyo vs. Kenta Kobashi 9th place
- October 31, 1998 Tokyo vs. Kenta Kobashi 1st place
- May 1, 1998 Tokyo vs. Toshiaki Kawada 4th place
- December 5, 1997 Tokyo w/Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 6th place (in 1998 awards)
- June 11, 1999 Tokyo vs. Kenta Kobashi 1st place
- March 6, 1999 Tokyo w/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama 4th place
- January 22, 1999 Osaka vs. Toshiaki Kawada 6th place
- October 23, 1999 Nagoya w/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama 7th place
- May 2, 1999 Tokyo vs. Vader 14th place
- October 30, 1999 Tokyo vs. Vader 15th place
- April 11, 2000 Kanazawa vs Kenta Kobashi 10th place
- March 2, 2001 Tokyo w/Jun Akiyama vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Yuji Nagata 20th place
- February 17, 2002 Tokyo w/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama &Yuji Nagata 6th place
- September 23, 2002 Tokyo vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 19th place
- March 1, 2003 Tokyo vs. Kenta Kobashi 1st place
- April 25, 2004 Tokyo w/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. KENTA & Naomichi Marufuji 11th place

[BryanBusby]

Originally Posted by Farzin

No commercials next week?

They will still need some filler time, so I'd imagine some of that commercial time will be packed with promos and more shoots. I'm interested in seeing how this works out.

[BigRock]

Originally Posted by BryanBusby

They will still need some filler time, so I'd imagine some of that commercial time will be packed with promos and more shoots. I'm interested in seeing how this works out.

Even PPVs technically have commercials, they're just WWE's own ads for DVDs and the next PPV and whatever. So there will probably still be some of those, especially with a PPV that Sunday that they've hardly advertised at all.

[Ultra Peanut]

I missed one week, and I have no ****ing clue what is going on.

Okay, that Santino thing was great. I mean, redundant, but...