5 Wrestling Innovations That Did As Much Harm As Good

In the 1990s, All Japan Pro Wrestling booker Giant Baba devised a new in-ring ethos. He crafted a new style fit for the heavenly kings: Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Toshiaki Kawada, and Akira Taue. It was a philosophy which saw the four men ascend to the main event stratosphere in a series of intercorrelated matches, each more brutal than the next.

That these matches took place in Japan obviously meant that they were of a stiffer vintage than anything promoted in North America at the time, but Kenta Kobashi kickstarted a trend which added to the already searing in-ring drama - but subtracted years from his career and the careers of his contemporaries. Misawa, Kawada, and Taue were desperate to out-do the lunatic bumps he took in his classic, stature-enhancing war opposite Steve Williams on 31 August 1993. At the close of that match, Kobashi took three incredibly dangerous backdrop suplexes to the head. Never had he looked more sympathetic. The trend he initiated led to a count of five star classics never bettered by any other promotion to this day - but ended in unspeakable tragedy.

The lunacy was ramped up in the Misawa-led AJPW offshoot Pro Wrestling NOAH - literally, in the case of Kenta Kobashi's incredible and incredibly belated dethroning of two-company Ace Mitsuharu Misawa on 1 March 2003. Misawa suplexed Kobashi from ramp to floor in a gruesome spot. It was no longer enough to drop an opponent on their necks; those suplexes had to be thrown from ramps and ring aprons to satisfy the ceaseless appetite for violence.

Misawa, after enduring years of the reckless style, died in the middle of the ring on 13 June 2009. His neck had disintegrated through wear and tear to such a sickening degree that it separated entirely from his head.