6 Wrestling Moments That Had A Major Long-Term Impact

Though an architecturally flimsy metaphor, there's a reason why Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi were considered two of the lode-bearing pillars supporting AJPW's glittering King's Road. Rather than the big characters and bombastic angles of puroresu's North American cousin, the philosophy of Giant Baba's promotion revolved around the intricate, exquisite details both within the matches themselves and beyond. Every brick along the road mattered - and nobody laid them better than Misawa or Kobashi.

Despite the best efforts of star-sailing cosmonauts Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, the pair's trilogy spanning 1997 to 1999 remains virtually unparalleled today. An entire article could be devoted to the sublime, attention-rewarding callbacks across the three matches, but it's one spot in their concluding encounter which merits particular attention.

Approximately half an hour in, the gruelling blow-off mutated into an attritional re-run of their second clash, with both men employing their hardest-hitting moves in search of the elusive win. Eventually, a desperate Kobashi reaches into the darkest recesses of his arsenal for the dreaded Burning Hammer - a move so dangerous even the proprietor rarely risked it - only for Misawa, straddling the turnbuckle, to cut it off.

So Kobashi reached even further - back in time to 1993.

That year, a less savvy but equally fiery Kobashi eventually succumbed to Stan Hansen when the brilliantly nicknamed Fuchinkan (lit. 'unsunk battleship') smashed him with his patented, brutal lariat from the top rope. In 1999, those painful memories were transposed onto Misawa - a callback six years in the making.

And yet even that wouldn't prove enough. Fittingly, after both men had exhausted their entire histories, it'd take something brand new to keep either of them down. That came in the form of Misawa's devastating, hitherto unseen Emerald Flowsion.