5-Star BOOK Reviews: Toshiaki Kawada’s Autobiography, Part VI

And now we get to the most important part of Toshiaki Kawada’s career: his peak in the Four Pillars era. Though this period is generally defined as spanning from May 1993 to December 1995, this chapter in Kawada’s book goes much longer, going into 1999. With so much happening in this critical timeframe (Kawada’s first world title reign, his first pin over Misawa, Bridge of Dreams, and an absolute litany of outstanding matches), you’d think that Kawada would be open and detailed about his perspective on these things.

Well, you’d be wrong…

You can check out parts 1 & 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here.

Chapter 6: The The Era of the Four Heavenly Kings

Kawada begins with a simple justification for why he stopped teaming with Misawa and started opposing him instead: with Tsuruta gone the Super Generation Army no longer had anything to aim for and being in opposition to Misawa would make things interesting in the ring. But as soon as he starts teaming with Akira Taue (and forms the Holy Demon Army) he learns from Baba that he’ll be working under Taue, meaning with Taue as the senior. Although Taue is older by two years, Kawada has about five years of seniority in All Japan over him, yet Taue is booked as the sempai. (APOD: for anyone who has observed any bit of Japanese media for even five minutes, you’ll know how deeply entrenched the seniority system is in that country. On the surface it might not mean much but it’s a critical detail that, nevertheless, changes the dynamic of who is seen as the bigger star. It changes the flow of matches in relation to the formulas surrounding match structuring: who starts, who shines when and for how long, who builds the heat and, most importantly, who takes the fall at the end. More often than not the “underclassman” is therefore the one more likely to take falls and this means that Kawada would have to take falls more than Taue).

However, some Kawada’s concerns are alleviated as the ring announcer alternates between introducing him and Taue last as to not reinforce one guy or the other as lesser, whereas on the other side Kobashi is very much Misawa’s second. Again Kawada praises Taue for being a reliable partner and notes how Taue’s size and physique made fighting foreigners much easier.

Then Kawada notes that the first thing that made him happy after forming The Holy Demon Army is winning the 1994 Champion Carnival (APOD: I guess debuting the HDA in grand style, winning the World Tag Team Titles, and successfully defending them against Misawa & Kobashi, all in the span of less than 45 days, isn’t worth mentioning). What makes this win so much more important is that Kawada beats “Dr. Death” Steve Williams in his prime, noting that “Winning there was beyond words in terms of emotion”.

However, for some reason Kawada very much glosses over a significant portion of his own career and, indeed, more than half of the Era of the Four Heavenly Kings. He ignores the world tag title win, his first title challenge against Misawa as his rival on July 29, 1993 (a.k.a. the point of no return for Kawada as the #2), the third Four Pillars Tag match on May 21, 1994 and, inexplicably, 6-3-94, the latter being arguably his most famous match (but not his best), if for nothing else than for the Tiger Driver ’91 heard around the world. He also barely gives much mention to his first Triple Crown win against Williams in October 1994, just stating that it happened.

(APOD: I believe it was Kevin Nash who coined the phrase “money and miles” as the only things that really matter to a professional wrestler, that and winning your FIRST world title. If that’s the case then Kawada understating his own accomplishments is very weird. Either he’s going the extra mile to be humble and not brag/be a mark for himself, or he really just doesn’t have that high of an opinion of his own career).

After noting that he doesn’t win the 1993 or 1994 Tag League tournaments, Kawada states, briefly and matter-of-factly, that he wrestled Kobashi to a 60-minute draw in January 1995 after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and notes that Kobashi was a rapidly rising star at the time. He then glosses over another important match, this time it’s 6-9-95, a.k.a. the greatest tag team match of all time, simply noting that he was very happy to have pinned Misawa and that it had “special significance” to him. That win immediately led to Kawada challenging Misawa for the Triple Crown in July 1995 but Kawada doesn’t mention that match at all and instead skips ahead to October…and now this is where things start getting interesting.

Kawada mentions being unusually excited at the prospect of facing “Black Ship” Gary Albright, whom he describes as the top foreigner in UWFi. He notes that during his entrance in Budokan Hall that night he was feeling something “indescribable”. Then it hits him: the audience was seeking more stimulation than he was, which he describes as being borne from Baba’s isolationist policy at the time. Kawada does his best to live up to expectations and decides to give the fans a different style of match than what they were used to from him, one with minimal bouncing off the ropes and more of a shootstyle and mat-based match, which Kawada wins in the end. (APOD: Kawada vs. Albright is one of those incredible matches that just gets better each time you watch it. It’s an absolute instant classic, one that I’d definitely give 5-Stars.

Though he admits that 1995 was a fulfilling year for him, he also notes that he doesn’t win all that much in terms of gold or when it matters most, especially when he and Taue lose to Misawa & Kobashi again in the ’95 Tag League tournament. “The phrase ‘the strongest tag team that can’t win when I want to’ fits me perfectly”, he notes. Then he skips ahead all the way to May 1996 when he loses a big tag match, this time to the newly-formed team of Misawa and Jun Akiyama, taking a fall from the latter in their May 23^rd tag match. Though he describes losing to a junior as “genuinely frustrating”, in retrospect he thinks that this loss elevated Akiyama significantly.

After being unable to win the titles back from Misawa & Akiyama, Kawada starts pondering what he was looking for and reminisces about that special match with Gary Albright. Though not outwardly saying so, the subtext here implies that Kawada is keenly aware of the staleness and repetition of All Japan’s product but is largely powerless to do anything about it.

Kawada: “Around this time, I was strongly driven by the desire to experience the freshness I felt when I fought Albright once again. In a weekly magazine interview, I made a comment that “a bird in a cage cannot flap its wings,” and I was looking outward rather than within All Japan. Until then, I hadn’t been in such a position, standing at the forefront, and even when teaming with Misawa during the Super Generation Army after Tenryu left, new things would emerge at each turning point without me having to say anything. So, even though the wrestlers themselves hadn’t changed, there was always something new. However, I felt that the situation was reaching a considerable limit. I was particularly acutely aware of this at that time. “After all, the quickest way is freshness. It would be better to have a new opponent.””

(APOD: There has long been this narrative circulating online that Kawada found himself “in Baba’s doghouse” after making certain comments to the public criticizing Baba’s isolationism. Though he never outright says so, there is certainly an implication that the above ‘caged bird’ comment might’ve been the one to have started this. At the same time, the doghouse narrative might not be entirely accurate since Kawada did still have a title match against Kobashi in October anyway. Additionally, from some things I’ve read elsewhere, part of the reason for Taue beating Misawa on May 24, 1996 and not Kawada was because Taue purportedly needed more of a direct push to be seen as a main-eventer by the audience while Baba believed that Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi could all get over on their own without such direct management involvement. Additionally, Kawada’s words ‘the situation was reaching a considerable limit’ echoes the metaphor Ichinose used in his Four Pillars Bio: that All Japan was a bus driving on Four Pillars tires and those tires were wearing out quickly and dramatically).

Kawada gets what he’s asking for when Baba lets him appear for a UWFi anniversary show in Meiji Jingu Stadium. However Baba’s initial choice for AJPW representative is Stan Hansen, but since Hansen doesn’t want to do it, Kawada is selected instead. Kawada’s wording here seems to imply that Baba almost pulls a Vince McMahon-style rib on him: he gets to go on another company’s show and experience the freshness he wants but he bites off more than he can chew. Baba tells Kawada he’s facing Yoshihiro Takayama, whom Baba describes as “really tall but pretty skinny”. Then Kawada gets to the show and finds that Takayama is, in fact, NOT skinny at all.

Kawada notes that tickets for this Jingu stadium hadn’t been selling well but once he’s announced for it, sales go up by first 10,000 and then 20,000. Despite the show taking place in an open-air venue and Kawada not hearing the crowd as well as he normally did, and despite the fact that he was worried about “embarrassing himself” for not having the chops to wrestle in the UWFi style, he still manages to win and put on a great performance. He also praises Takayama to the moon, saying, “Takayama’s potential is remarkable, and I even thought he might become like Tsuruta if things went poorly.” (APOD: Yoshihiro Takayama had a pretty impressive wrestling career all things considered and had some astonishingly great matches, despite some less-than-complementary coverage from Meltzer in his early years. His two singles matches with Kobashi, his 1999 tag match with Takao Omori opposite Burning, and his role in Kobashi’s tag match when he returned from cancer, are all outstanding matches worth watching whenever you have time). Kawada is also proud that his match with Takayama, and not the main event of Genichiro Tenryu vs. Nobuhiko Takada, is what was printed on the cover of the wrestling magazines after the show.

After this event Kawada is reunited with Tenryu and then go out to a restaurant here, like old times, Tenryu gets him to drink. After they both “get a bit tipsy”, Tenryu makes Kawada an interesting offer: “There’s a president who wants to make you the ace of a pro wrestling organization. He’s willing to invest this much money and guarantee you this amount annually, asking you to do it.” Kawada has no intentions of leaving All Japan (despite all the shit he had been through and the fact that, creatively, he’s still a DISTANT #2 behind Misawa), and deflects by asking Tenryu why he doesn’t go for it if the offer’s so tempting. They don’t go much further into the subject so then they continue drinking and end up somewhere in Ginza where the two of them plus trainee Kentaro Shiga end up even drunker. The next day Kawada tells Baba that he had met with Tenryu but doesn’t mention anything about the offer to go elsewhere. He also worries for a bit that Tenryu might mention Kawada’s name publicly, which he wants to avoid because, allegedly, Tenryu had been bad-mouthing Baba and All Japan in general publicly in books and magazines. The chapter continues implying that “he” (not sure if it’s Tenryu or Baba) was also writing about New Japan in a negative light and Kawada didn’t want to be associated with that kind of behaviour.

After skipping over another important development (Kawada and Taue winning the 1996 Tag League final for the first time, beating Misawa & Akiyama in a classic in the process), and noting that Takayama had signed with All Japan following his match with Kawada at Jingu, things shift to 1997. Kawada beats Misawa one-on-one after a three-way playoff in the finals of that year’s Champion Carnival. However, some fan heckles him to make quick work of Misawa, given that Misawa & Kobashi had just gone to a 30-minute draw. Though he wins in under seven minutes, he isn’t all that appreciative of these kinds of fan comments.

The book skips again further with no mention of Kawada’s June 6, 1997 title challenge against Misawa and a mere glancing mention of winning both the 96 and 97 Tag League tournaments, and reach All Japan’s first Tokyo Dome show in May 1998.

Kawada: “In the main event, I pinned Misawa-san and was able to win the Triple Crown from him for the first time. The match was an intense culmination of the rivalry between Misawa and Kawada up to that point. Misawa-san was dragging his body in pain, and I fought with all my might against that. The Tokyo Dome venue suited me well.It certainly felt like I was able to exert more power than usual. In a match where the belt was on the line, I achieved my first complete victory over Mr. Misawa, who I had never been able to defeat despite fighting him numerous times, at the historic All Japan Pro Wrestling’s first Tokyo Dome event. Being able to compete in the main event at the Dome, and winning the Triple Crown from Mr. Misawa, made it an absolutely amazing day in every way. As I mentioned in the ring after the match, it was the happiest moment of my life throughout my wrestling career. Matches at the Dome are indeed special, and being able to compete in the main event there, and winning the Triple Crown from Mr. Misawa, was truly the best.”

However, Kawada’s momentum is short-lived as he loses the title to Kobashi about a month-and-a-half later. (APOD: though to be fair, that match is also epic and Eddie Kingston has good reason to call it his favorite). After being so caught up in the moment of winning the world title from Misawa in the Tokyo Dome, Kawada doesn’t realize that he became, up to that point, a five-time champion. Once he loses the title he notes that things start to “stagnate” for him, yet he adopts a wait-and-see mentality as AJPW’s landscape shifts with Akiyama joining Kobashi to form Burning and Misawa taking on Yoshinari Ogawa as his new partner to form The Untouchables.

After noting that he and Taue lost to Kobashi & Akiyama in the finals of the 1998 Tag League, Kawada shifts to his January 22, 1999 title match. As most of you are aware, that match is famous for two things: 1) Kawada breaking his arm and, consequently, 2) the Ganso Bomb/Kawada Driver. Though Kawada publicly states he broke his arm trying to absorb Misawa’s Frankensteiner, the truth was that he used a spinning backfist for the first time and because he hit it badly, he was too embarrassed to say so to the wrestling press. Kawada notes that he could see a bone protruding unnaturally but he still wanted to win the match. He’s happy to have won but it’s a bittersweet moment because he’s already injured…and though he doesn’t know it yet an even bigger shock would overshadow his win and injury entirely.

APOD: Sadly for a chapter that covers such a significant portion of Kawada’s in-ring career and accomplishments this chapter is wholly underwhelming. He doesn’t appear to be one for self-praise or going into detail on specific matches or moments so all we’re left with are brief summaries of some happenings and a few anecdotes on what Kawada thinks is worthy of mentioning from this period. From an outsider/reader/fan’s perspective Kawada leaves A LOT on the table, not just about his big matches and moments but about his relationships with his peers and on key moments. Even if he’s not one to talk drama or gossip about other wrestlers as is often the case stateside, it would’ve been interesting to read his thoughts/memories on the business side of things or about big events like Bridge of Dreams, the Budokan Hall sellout streak, and his “worked shoot” feud with Kobashi in 1993. But I guess it’s up to his peers to describe all of that, which I suppose works out well for me since I have most of their books on my shelf anyway.

Thanks for reading. Next time: The Death of Giant Baba and the Split of All Japan