10 Uplifting Wrestling Moments To Cure Your 'Mania Hangover
2. Kenta Kobashi's Retirement Ceremony
Kenta Kobashi helped pave the infamously brutal King's Road style, but destroyed himself doing it.
He popularised the scary neck-first bump festivals that followed his seminal 1993 match with Steve Williams, but his desire to become the best wrestler on the planet spared no part of his body. Kobashi in the ensuing two decades ravaged his arms and knees in the pursuit of greatness. The man even suffered from kidney cancer, but he kept coming back against the advice of doctors. Almost mercifully, his career was ended for him; Pro Wrestling NOAH were unable to keep him on even in an ambassadorial role due to critical financial difficulties.
The circumstances behind his departure were disheartening, but the departure itself was joyful. He was so physically ravaged that he couldn't do much else in the four man tag team main event of Final Burning beyond perform a brief highlight reel of his truncated repertoire - but the presentation was so epic and stirring that it hardly mattered. Kobashi was filmed emerging from the backstage area with an honorary version of the GHC World Title he made prestigious, before settling in a backstage chair, battling away a solitary tear.
When his time came, he performed his moonsault one last time. The move which hastened the end of his career put the full stop on it.
It was especially uplifting in contrast to the fate suffered by career-long rival and partner Mitsuharu Misawa, who tragically died in the middle of the ring four years earlier. Even those who begrudged the nature of Kobashi's exit must have taken solace in it, regardless.