[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.