10 Cult Wrestling Matches To See Before You Die
5. Mitsuharu Misawa Vs. Toshiaki Kawada - AJPW June 3, 1994
Considered by many critics as the single greatest professional wrestling match of all time, the Misawa Vs. Kawada classic is informed by a rich, real and combative backstory adapted so elegantly to the match that it can be inferred without knowledge of it.
Misawa enrolled in Ashikaga-kodai High School in 1978; Kawada in 1979. Misawa joined AJPW in 1981; Kawada in 1982. In 1990, it was Kawada who set free Misawa from his Tiger Mask guise, thus propelling him to the status of Ace. Kawada was as talented as his genius rival - some hardcores rate him higher, owing to his total mastery of nuanced heel work and creative selling - but he was always one step behind. This seemed to inform his ornery in-ring persona. Kawada was a guy who stared holes through Misawa in pure resentment for having the temerity to evade his lunging big boot. This drive to equal the man he chased forever fuelled him - it shaped him - and the dynamic manifested perfectly in this brutally stiff and unbearably dramatic match of constantly oscillating parity.
Splitting the crowd and amplifying the reaction, Misawa catches Kawada with a gruesomely-angled suplex before almost playing with Kawada with his "last-second" reversals. It's incredible storytelling; Misawa here is the overbearing d*ckhead - he's either defensive or tactical or both - and it's Kawada who has to fight harder, not dirtier, to surmount the Ace.
In the end, Misawa dispatches Kawada with a disgusting variation on the Tiger Driver, a dangerous move he hadn't used in years.
One step ahead - in the match, and indeed, of his entire generation.