10 Wrestlers Who Became Successful Bookers
4. Mitsuharu Misawa
After All Japan Pro Wrestling owner Shohei 'Giant' Baba's death in 2000, his wife and chief hatchet lady Motoko Baba took over. She soon instigated a string of directional changes, drawing widespread ire from a locker room already preconditioned to resent her as the company's disciplinarian - a role she relished to maintain her well-loved husband's face.
It proved disastrous for Baba. A crew of the company's top talent banded together, and sailed off to form their own venture, Pro Wrestling NOAH. At the helm of the mutiny was AJPW's joint owner and unequivocal star, Mitsuharu Misawa.
Both the rise and fall of All Japan Pro Wrestling hinged on Misawa. The promotion's turning point had came ten years earlier, when Giant Baba, bowled over by the rapturous support for Misawa assembling outside Tokyo's Nippon Budokan, made the decision to promote the youngster as the company's new Ace ahead of a despairing Jumbo Tsuruta. Misawa's ascension kickstarted AJPW's glory years, as he contested a string of classic matches whilst journeying down Baba's famed 'King's Road'.
The end of that road came with Misawa's departure. AJPW soon became a cultural irrelevance, as Misawa's NOAH established itself as the true continuation of Baba's legacy. The critical value of Misawa couldn't be overstated - a fact thrust into sharp and tragic focus when this sudden in-ring death in 2009 heralded the decline of the promotion.