I completely forgot about this match, so I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor and goosebumps all over my body probably just like when I saw it in 2002. ps. This is a few years before my good friend got to tag with Akiyama in Germany and I shook his hand backstage
From what I have heard there are two theories. First one was that misawa despite pushing akiyama to the limits still finds him a tag team wrestlers and that's why have the title drop to ogawa for reasons like ogawa was misawa's partner for a lot of his time. Which is insane considering akiyama main evented NJPW's 4 Jan Tokyo dome defending and retaining the title against then NJPW's ace yuji nagata. Then you have akiyama feeling mentally exhausted and needs time off.
@@dashtoroya2838most likely it was a mix of 1) Misawa getting a timeline for Kobashi to be back (as his intent even upon starting NOAH was to transfer Ace status from himself to Kobashi), and 2) with the choice being “have Akiyama hold the belt until Kobashi is ready to take it off him” or “do a little hot potato with the belt to set up a final Misawa vs Kobashi match to officially pass the torch”, he went with the latter, which also gave him the opportunity to give his close friend Ogawa a cup of coffee with the belt and to also pass it onto Takayama as an “attaboy” for doing business so easily both in moving his freelancing from AJPW to NOAH and losing in the finals of the GHC title tournament in the first place, which then Misawa could take off of him just in time for Kobashi to begin getting built up for his title shot that would then be the focal point of the promotion moving forward from that point. And then somewhere down the line, he still can run Akiyama vs Kobashi for the belt, a still unspoiled, built-from-day-one match at whatever point he felt it was right to pull the trigger on (which turned out to be the 2004 Tokyo Dome show). Akiyama also probably needing a break nearly as badly as Kobashi needed weeks into NOAH’s official start was probably part of it, sure, pretty much everyone high level in the latter half of All Japan in the 90s were the walking wounded, but the business end of things probably played a bigger part.
As a huge Ogawa fan that loved him for years, this was an awesome surprise. As a business decision to put the belt on him, it probably was worse than when Marufuji was heavyweight champion.
I agree with you. Ogawa is one of my all time favorites, but him as the champion was a bad decision. But at least it gave Ogawa vs Takayama which was in my opinion the best performance of his career.
