Throwback Thursday: Kenta vs Mitsuharu Misawa 

Sean Bateman Or you'll get an elbow.

@@williamhowe1 Or a tiger driver

@@RainSennin_ismyAlt Or a Emerald Flowsion.

Rule 4) Misawa’s elbow is *GOD*

One of the best Tiger Masks of all time.

Orion Ake One of the best WRESTLERS of all time

@@HandlebarOrionX nah, not that misawa was a bad tiger mask or anything, but 1 3 and 4 had better performances. Misawa truly excelled after he unmasked

@@zakrowe1301 Tiger Mask III was certainly excellent and kinda the least talked about of the Tiger Masks. Everybody always talks about Sayama who is one of the all time GOATs and of course Misawa who transcended weight classes and is forever missed, but not too many talk about Kanemoto when he was Tiger Mask III comparitively. Shame too.

Rojos524 Vince and Hunter are high on Black. They're not gonna have Him lost like that.

@@elidolo6993 this comment didn’t age well

coolvideos5113 it sucks that his body is in such bad shape now that he's made it to wwe.

Max Walker True

Max Walker He's been injured most of his time in NXT so far.

@Goopy Le Grande Taven sucks man

Wwes relentless talent raides, then there over reliance on bullet club and njpw, that one really shot them in the foot

@@zakrowe1301 ehh sure the talent raids are a problem but you can't deny a change in philosophy on ROH's part.

The Smashing Pumpkins happened

Mitsuharu Misawa vs Bubba Ray Dudley would've went hard tf you mean

And higuchi

Shocked, I was absolutely shocked

Yep. Chain smoker and recently I heard he was walking with a cane and needed his wife’s help to get him in and out of hot baths at home. Really sad stuff.

wasn't emerald flowsion a spacial occasion move like burning hammer or kawada driver

That was the Tiger Driver 91

That was the emerald flowsion kai.

I wouldn't call it a receipt. That's just the way of the Road

I’m late but that emerald flowsion seemed pretty normal. He’s done safer and more risky. I don’t think it was anything personal. King’s Road style at work.

Yeah. He definitely shouldn’t have been working. He looks okay here, but Misawa was busted up besides the chain smoking. I’ve heard stories that he couldn’t get in the bath tub at home without his wife’s help, and that he was walking with a cane. I also think he had to take a ton of pain meds and maybe even cortisol shots before matches to perform. If you watch his match with KENTA before this one, he picks him up fir a regular emerald flowsion and his arms just stop working mid-lift and he drops KENTA on his head. It’s like the spinal injuries were causing nerve damage. Misawa at his quest is better than most at their best, but I agree he should’ve been resting and not trying to carry his company as the ace at that point. Really sad stuff.

@@WhtMike2006What you said at the end of your comment is what makes Misawa’s death so much more sad. He didn’t continue wrestling because he needed the money or loved the spotlight, he kept wrestling because he felt like he had no other choice if he wanted his company to remain stable. Kenta Kobashi, NOAH’s other biggest star, was inactive due to his cancer diagnosis. Taue and Tenryu were too old. Takayama was still recovering from his stroke. Akiyama could’ve been a legitimate ace but had been spurned by poor booking decisions after becoming GHC Champion, and fans weren’t buying Rikio and Marufuji as believable world champions. That left Misawa. For the good of NOAH, he carried the company on his weary shoulders and it ultimately led to his tragic death.

Final Battle is going to be happening this Sunday, which does have some good matches that includes Chris Jericho vs Claudio Castagnoli for the ROH World title, Daniel Garcia vs Wheeler Yuta for the Pure title, Mercedes Martinez vs Athena for the Women's title, and other matches that will also be on the entire PPV as well, anyways.

Agree to a certain extent but the matches agains Roode and End this year were pretty awesome! Can only hope we will see him again in the next Takeovers

ThePhenomenal Angel injuries bro he been fine this year

Lucky

First?

you have to remove the "2nd" of your sentence and its fixed misawa n1 kobashi n2 n3....dunno, undertaker?

​@@tapan97 who is first?😊

Orion Ake Noah and New Japan are no longer working for the time being. Under the new management for Noah, they are rebranding but I wouldn't mind seeing the companies work together in the future.

I think the entire wrestling industry should sign multiple different partnerships and inter-connecting partnerships with each other including the WWE, so that the entire profession around the world can work with each other and so that we can see multiple dream matches and invasions and cross-brand title defenses. So that more promotions can be recognized by the mainstream Hollywood media more often even without having to go mainstream, more wrestlers outside of the WWE can get late night show interviews and become stars in their own right, it would be like the territory days but less cutthroat and not tied down to specific regions.

Orion Ake Don't we wish wrestling was like that again but everyone had connections with everyone with no politics involved.

Orion Ake NJPW and NOAH are not partners anymore since early this year

Aievuog Yra Surprisingly, NJPW & AJPW have been doing low-key deals as of late. Since this year is their 45th Anniversary respectfully but they been doing some planning.

Jose Aguilera Have to take into account how long he had been at it. Still great regardless

Jose Aguilera After about 2003/2004 his injuries got the better of him. Apparently outside of the ring he could hardly walk and I guess he also drank and smoked heavily. Guys like Misawa and Kobashi went 110% and they both paid for it.. RIP Misawa.

iamdb1990 that pretty much is his trademark gear that people remember

iamdb1990 he was from AJPW at that time does roh had talent exchange deal with AJPW

Kobayashi Kenta.

Kenta did. Punk just popularized it in WWE. That's why all the diehard WWE sheep get all pissy when Kenta/Hideo uses it.

Because the wear and tear on his body was starting to take a toll on him physically. He was taking too many head bumps, was a chain smoker for years, and Kobashi kept getting injured and was out with cancer, so they had to put the belt on Misawa again to keep it valuable. He was originally going to retire at the end of 2009 so he could finally heal up, but died in the ring after taking a backdrop driver which put him into cardiac arrest and killed him a few hours later. Unfortunate, but seemed inevitable to be quite honest.

How do you know he was a chain smoker ?

@@Colt2OO2 one last data on misawa: since he got married years ago misawa didn't know he had a daughther so he died whithout knowing now the daughther has about 30 something years old.

@@Colt2OO2 According to the wrestling observer newsletter, Misawa also had the Flu during this match

@@nWoTataDEJVC Various sources have confirmed it since his passing, so that's where I got it from.

No this Kenta is a Lightheavywt, and was supposedly either named after Kobashi or was named by Kobashi. He was named Hideo Otami in NXT/WWE.

Jeffrey Perry his real name is Kenta kobayashi

There are 2 Kenta’s. There’s Kenta Kobashi that was one of Misawa’s peers and one of the 4 pillars of AJPW along with Misawa, Kawada, and Taue. And then there’s KENTA, who is a good deal younger and also a junior heavyweight instead of a heavyweight. KENTA is Misawa’s opponent here. Check out the matches in NOAH between KENTA and Marufuji. Some of the best matches ever, and one of the best feuds of the 2000’s. There’s a 5+ hour RU-vid video of all their matches. KENTA is the guy that invented the Go To Sleep (CM Punk’s finish), and he also pioneered the flying knee strike that Daniel Bryan used. Kenta Kobashi is much bigger than KENTA, and was more famous for the burning hammer, burning lariat, orange crush bomb, half Nelson and sleeper suplexes, brain buster, moonsault, etc. He innovated a ton of moves in the 90’s and 00’s.

Because noah and roh had a partnership

TheGalamoth Not even. Back then, the ROH faithful were respectful, fun and had camaraderie. Nowadays, it's all pops for nothing, insults and trying to get themselves over. ROH fans from 02 till about 10 or 11? Arguably the best fans around in America. No "WHAT" chants. No "Pearl Harbor" chants. Just respect.

Lunacyk This is soo true they came to see a Sport/Art and they treated it with respect

Damn straight, those matches fully made me a fan of his several years ago

The Mime Misawa was 45 at the time of this match.

Yeah, his body was absolutely fucked at this point. He's an absolute legend, worked through incredible amounts of pain.

2 years before he died can you believe!

@@vasilishimself9806 yes

Also, Misawa was a pretty heavy smoker. If you find some of the NOAH fan material out there, he's always got a coffin nail in his hand.

Same with me

Wait how did he die?

@@bennaylor6879 He had spinal stenosis, and was pretty much internally decapitated during a match

@@bennaylor6879 he died from a back injury from a suplex in the ring

@@bennaylor6879 Misawa was trying to keep his organization afloat and shouldn’t have been wrestling. He was walking with a cane, but his other top star had cancer, and they hadn’t put enough young guys over yet. He took a backdrop suplex in 2009 (not long after the match in this video) and it broke his neck, severed his spinal cord, and he died of cardiac arrest in the ring at age 46. Really tragic stuff. Apparently the suplex wasn’t nearly as sketchy as many of the head drops he’d taken, but this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. He has another match with KENTA before this one where you can see his arms just give out in the middle of picking KENTA up. It’s like his arms just went numb from the spine and nerve damage.

This was old, worn down Misawa. For bis prime look for basically any match with him from the 90s, especially those that include Kobashi, Kawada or Taue.

Like nakamura said: i don't speech inglish😂😂😂

nWoTataDEJVC he doesn’t care about anything even in Japan

11:11

Thanks God for the internet and/or tape trading.

That's actually kobashi's fear not misawa's .

Leonardo Beltran Because of how bad Kenta's body is I feel he maybe has two years left in the business before his body breaks down and he can't wrestle anymore so he should probably stay with WWE and make as much money as possible before that happens.

:'(

He's gone to New Japan now, Gonna be in the G-1 this summer!

mrawesome669 His comment hasn’t aged well

They did for a long time since both guys did work together in Pro-Wrestling NOAH, which is one of the top territories that is in Japan along with New Japan, All-Japan, and of course Stardom so yep they had a lot of some good storylines since it did end up being Misawa's last match for the entire business, anyways.

2007