Talk about it here.

I'm not sure how Dave got enough out of this 10 minutes or so of wrestling to call these two the new Flair and Steamboat, but this is an excellent (and brutal) 10 minutes of action, and both do look like stars ready to break through to the next level.

One of a few random thoughts as I'm upto 5/21 on the AJ set...

 

I haven't seen a closing stretch done this well in years. You can't judge the match too much on it, given how little aired, but their selling, execution and the believability/etc of what they were doing, even by the standards of AJ at the time rather than from a month of watching something completely different, was incredible.

Yep, my thing here is wishing we got to see more. But what we did see was very good.

On one hand it sucks these matches aren't complete, but on the other, my match-based, short-attention-span brain is sort of grateful. That '91 G-1 Climax is one of the best wrestling tournaments ever but all those matches in one huge bunch weren't exactly a breeze to sit through. Maybe JerryVonKramer's "peaks and troughs" philosophy of card-booking really is the soundest one.

 

So, consensus at the time and among others today is that Kobashi was Best in the World™ in '93, but looking at these matches it's hard to see how he's better than Kawada. Not that Kobashi isn't awesome here, but this is so much more coherently laid out than the Misawa match, with longer stretches of each guy working on top and a continuing story of Kawada having a bum knee, which constantly gives Kobashi openings to either kick out of or counter Kawada's big moves. This really feels like Kobashi is in the fight of his life, while the Misawa match came off as a particularly long card opener.

I think come 12/03/93 if one wants to put a finger on who the better "worker" was, it would be Kawada. But on who had the better "year", if you get the whole 1993 season set and supplement it with any oddball extra stuff (or more complete stuff) that's out there, even a Kawada Fan like myself would say that it was Kobashi.

 

John

This was one hell of a 10 minute clip. They're so quick in exchanging strikes. Its almost like a Tenryu match on steroids with higher level offense but with two guys who aren't quite master level communicators just yet. Kobashi is kicked to the floor going for a moonsault. They both have strong runs with lariats, powerbombs and counters for near falls. Loved Kawada kicking Kobashi as he's coming down going for a flying shoulderblock. Kobashi almost takes it with a powerbomb and jacknife for 2, but then misses a moonsault and Kawada, busted mouth and all, takes it with 2 powerbombs and a high kick in between them. Maybe this was Flair/Steamboat in full, but what we got was pretty terrific.

 

****

Another great ten minutes of action and unfortunately no full version exists of this to the best of my knowledge. This did get me to anticipate their singles match at the end of the year because Kobashi really feels like he has a significant chance at beating Kawada and Kawada still believes he can bully Kobashi around which provides a great contrast.

I can't judge the full match by what we saw here, but at the very least this was one hell of a finishing stretch. Kobashi's really grown up a lot, to the point that beating Kawada seems more then possible, especially with Kawada nursing a bloody nose and mouth and an injured knee. Kawada overcomes the challenge with the help of lots of guile and multiple powerbombs.

 

I loved the visual of Kawada kicking Kobashi out of mid-air. Can you imagine what kind of timing it takes to do something like that and have it look good?

 

I see that we have a Misawa-Kobashi match elsewhere on this disc. Since Kawada gave Misawa all he could handle earlier in the tournament, it'll be interesting to see if Kobashi can give Misawa a similar fight, given that he took Kawada to the limit here.