15 Amazing Pro Wrestling NOAH Matches You Must See Before You Die

9. Mitsuharu Misawa Vs. Toshiaki Kawada - July 18th, 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xruhn0mlRrM Imagine if Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels squared off in 2000, while still being in the prime of their respective careers. That is what you get with this match. When Misawa opened NOAH, Kawada was one of the only native AJPW wrestlers not to follow him. This was a huge disappointment for the NOAH staff, as Kawada had a great reputation with the Japanese wrestling audience, and his intense rivalry with Misawa over the years led to many truly outstanding matches over the years. Thankfully, they were able to mend whatever differences they had (at least temporarily), which led to this match. A purely nostalgic match, Misawa and Kawada showcased just how off the charts their chemistry together was. Every strike was brutal and stiff, every Suplex looked like it would cause serious damage, and no matter how much both of them unleashed their most devastating moves (including an unbelievably-dangerous Kawada Driver/Ganso Bomb), neither man would stay down. Once the match reached its last ten minutes, the crowd was white hot, cheering for every single strike, block, and pin fall. Each time one of them went for a pin, the crowd would gasp, and would thus invest more of their energy into this contest. In the end, it took a considerable amount of high spots and head drops before a victor was finally crowned. Sadly, this was the last time these two legends met in the ring, as Misawa would pass away some four years later, ostensibly due to the insane bumps he took in matches like this one.