10 Most Effective Wrestling Babyfaces Of The 21st Century
4. Kenta Kobashi
Kenta Kobashi was booked to lose his first sixty-three singles matches in All Japan Pro Wrestling in a conscious effort to position him as a sentimental crowd favourite. The ploy worked; Kobashi showed more fire, more ability, more courage every time he stepped foot in the ring. He was received as he was promoted. He made wrestling look easy.
He spent much of the nineties as the bridesmaid of All Japan. He won the company's top prize, the Triple Crown, on three occasions, but he was a distant second to company Ace Mitsuharu Misawa. His in-ring body of work was incredible and career-shortening. He popularised the sickening neck-first suplex bumps with which All Japan became the most dangerous and critically-acclaimed league on the planet, in a seminal 1993 match opposite Steve Williams - but his offence was cathartic enough to strike the requisite balance. His beautiful moonsault hastened his reduced schedule, but crowds in his Budokan Hall home went crazy for it.
Misawa endured even more damage by 2003 - so much so that Kobashi supplanted him as Ace in their new mutinous home of Pro Wrestling NOAH. After finally vanquishing the man he just couldn't beat, Kobashi embarked on one of the greatest World title runs in history, drawing massive gates and yet more acclaim over an epic two-year stint as GHC Champion. He wrestled a procession of different, classic matches against main event talents and midcard acts who became main event talents, even if just for one glorious half hour.
In that respect, he was a true Ace.