5-Star BOOK Reviews: Akira Taue’s Autobiography, Part V

Jumbo Tsuruta’s departure leaves Akira Taue in an odd place. With Tsuruta sidelined indefinitely due to hepatitis the last real remnant of AJPW’s old guard disappears without ever cleanly putting the next generation over decisively. This loss of a main event star, coupled with Tenryu’s departure a mere two years earlier, leaves Giant Baba in a desperate booking predicament. How can he keep business steady, much less turn it around? It turns out the answer was a simple but significant team realignment. With Taue now without a regular partner he needs someone experienced and skilled enough to share the load…and it seems like in his mind the best colors to match Taue’s ruby red are black and yellow.

You can read parts one and two here and parts three and four here.

1993-1994

Taue describes early 1993 as a continuation of Tsuruta-gun versus Chosedai-gun though it’s clear that there’s a power imbalance in the teams. In response, Toshiaki Kawada decides to jump ship and align with Taue. However this isn’t an abrupt out-of-nowhere decision but something Kawada had hinted at a few times through comments like, “If I don’t find it interesting to fight, then the audience probably doesn’t find it interesting to watch. If things stay as they are, both I and the company will be doomed.” Then during the 1993 Champion Carnival Taue notes his improving record and highlights beating Terry Gordy in singles competition for the first time and like the other Four Kings he puts Gordy over as a big man with surprising agility. Then he faces Kawada and they go to a 30-minte draw, and afterwards Kawada offers a handshake and Taue accepts. Then Baba makes the formal announcement that Kawada will be joining Taue’s group to make it easier for him to challenge for the Triple Crown.

However, backstage Taue explains that this change was much simpler. He recalls Baba simply telling him to team with Kawada and Taue did exactly that. Taue also brushes off the claim that Kawada would be working under Taue and instead saw the situation as two more or less equal wrestlers without any rigid sense of seniority.

Things progress quickly and dramatically for the duo soon afterwards. They debut in impressive fashion on May 14, 1993, defeating Kobashi and Kikuchi. Six days later they win the World Tag Team Championships from the Miracle Violence Connection (Terry Gordy & Steve Williams). Then the following night is what can be described as The Night Of The Four Kings as each of the AJPW Kings defeats one of the Four Foreign Kings. The press starts using the Four Heavenly Kings nomenclature heavily from then on, and then this new idea goes a step further on June 1^st when we get the first of nine Four Kings two-on-two tag team matches.

Baba would describe this match as “the most amazing match I’ve ever seen” (APOD: which would continue until January 1999 as he would sing the Four Kings’ praises up to his last breath). Soon afterwards this new duo is named “Seiki-gun” which would translate into “Holy Demon Army”, with the name being chosen by fan voting. Taue also notes that Jumbo Tsuruta does return to AJPW later that fall but not in a main event position and never reaches those same heights again.

Both Chosedai-gun (now composed of Misawa & Kobashi) and the Holy Demon Army of Kawada & Taue make it to the finals of the 1993 Tag League. There they put on what is considered the “final form” of Kings Road style wrestling with Misawa & Kobashi pulling off a big win (APOD: It’s an absolute barn-burner worthy of a 5-Star rating without any exaggeration. It has a lot of action but IMO the best thing about it is Kawada’s leg selling throughout the match and how he works a real injury into the match. This kind of wrestling is hard to come by these days so I’d definitely check it out.)

However, backstage these two weren’t as close as, say, Misawa & Kobashi. They weren’t on bad terms by any means but they didn’t hang out. Taue was a smoker while Kawada was not so they wouldn’t interact all that much in the locker room. Plus in a 1997 Four Pillars interview Taue describes Kawada as a bit “annoying” in person which he suspects might stem from loneliness:

“In the dressing room, he’s annoying, so I sit away from him. He tells puns, and they’re stupid puns. It’s surprising, right? Make sure to write that they’re stupid. In our dressing room, there are people like Kimura and Mitsuo Momota, and they say things like “He’s still saying that,” and they’re exasperated.
When I ignore him, he goes, “Hey, did you hear me? Did you hear me?” (laughs). And when we do end up going out for drinks, even though he’s older, he insists on doing shots. Then he makes my drinks really strong, so I can’t tell. In the end, he drinks it himself. It’s foolish (laughs). He’s like a big kid who just grew up. He’s like the leader of the kids. But he’s lonely.”

At the same time Taue does note that Kawada was a great partner because he had the “sense” of a tag wrestler and knew when to interfere and when not to.

“At first, the company seemed to be concerned about the order of entrance and the order of calls, but I didn’t care. Since Kawada was my senior, I tried to show him respect. When I teamed up with Tsuruta-san, I had to be mindful, which was exhausting, but with Kawada, I didn’t have to worry about anything. We both just said whatever we wanted about how to structure the match.

But since Kawada had a longer career, I might have been the one listening and nodding more often. Kawada is a difficult person, so I probably just gave in to him (laughs). Our combination moves were just spontaneous ideas. Since we never went out drinking together after matches, we would come up with things in the locker room before the match or even during the match itself, saying, ‘How about trying this?’”

Taue also thinks that winning against Gordy and Doc was critical because without that win the HDA wouldn’t’ve had the same momentum going into the second half of the year. Amidst all the big changes in All Japan going back to 1989-90, Taue remained focused on the matches by constantly reminding himself “we have to do our best ourselves” since the Four Kings were central to AJPW’s success. At the same time he notes that the shallowness of AJPW’s roster made things tough for undercards.

For example, when Kawada faced Doc for the Triple Crown in October 1994, that arrangement left Taue without a partner for that night and so a thrown-together arrangement was made with Taue & Kobashi teaming up to face Misawa & Stan Hansen. However, despite Hansen being, well, Hansen, Taue doesn’t describe feeling any strong emotion over beating him in that match since he was apparently hurt and not wrestling at 100% that night. And yet Taue does recall how Kobashi, without needing to be told, knew how to pull off combination moves that made this thrown-together arrangement work beyond expectations.

1995

Taue discusses the Four Kings tag matches that take place throughout 1995: one in January, the big one in June, another in October, and their final notable one in December, noting who won and who lost. He isn’t one to talk about them himself but he notes that Baba, on commentary, would often say things like “no commentary is needed” when describing these matches. Though there was a clear uptick in length and depth of these matches, Taue notes that even by 1995 things were starting to get draining for all four of them:

“The 60 minutes in Nagoya were truly exhausting. I thought I was done for, I even thought I might die (laughs). Kawada used to say, “If we keep doing this, it won’t just shorten our careers as wrestlers, it’ll shorten our lifespans as people,” lamenting the situation.

It wasn’t just about winning or losing; keeping the audience entertained for a full hour was an incredibly challenging task. But if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t get paid (laughs).

What kind of matches were we doing back then? I guess it wasn’t something we thought about consciously—our bodies just acted on their own. In almost nonstop exchanges, if you stopped to think, “What should I do next?” you’d already be too late.”

He further notes that these four pushed themselves and each other, both as opponents and as partners, in this strive for continuous improvement. None of them wanted to show weakness or any signs of slowing down. There was this constant game of one-upmanship among them that translated into longer and more intense matches. According to Taue, this incredible and almost logic-defying obsession of not wanting to lose became the mindset behind the Four Heavenly Kings wrestling style.

The Taue Miracle Run

From here Taue shifts to the 1995 Champion Carnival. In his first tournament match he debuts the Cliff Nodowa, then a few days later he debuts his sit-down Dynamic Bomb powerbomb, and then he switches his hands when using the chokeslam to start doing more high-angle variations against smaller guys like Akiyama. He rides this wave of momentum all the way to the final, losing only once to Hansen and drawing with Misawa. The 1995 CC match is famous for a few things: one, it has one of the loudest crowds of that era; even by 1990s AJPW crowds those fans went APESHIT booing Taue for everything he did. Part of that is the second thing which is the story built around Misawa’s fractured eye socket and how Taue targeted it Southern-style. Third, there’s one rolling elbow that Misawa hits about 10-minutes in that looks absolutely lethal which Taue compares to taking an uppercut from a sumo Yokozuna (a real one, not the Samoan one).

Despite that, he loses to Misawa in the final and later in October when he challenges him for the Triple Crown but in both cases Taue comes incredibly close to winning and shows off a much wider variety of moves that show off his power, leading to reporters nicknaming him “Dynamic T” and “The Heisei Monster”. Taue also notes that the one to come up with the Cliff Nodowa was Masanobu Fuchi while another new move, a giant swing-style Nodowa, is something he came up with himself. As for his Dynamic Bomb, no surprise here, that move came from him watching Jushin Liger. “’Since it’s a different promotion, it should be fine,’ so I copied it”, notes Taue. He also started doing various kick variations and, to excite the audience, he made sure these variations were as visually striking as possible.

1996

Then things skip to 1996 where Taue once again makes it to the CC Final. Though this edition isn’t as special for Taue as 1995 it does include some key moments such as him beating Stan Hansen and Gary Albright, the latter having become such a big deal and to foreign star that Taue has to rely on matwork and shoot-style holds to overcome him. Then he faces a returning Dr. Death in the finals and beats him, which prompts Baba to note that the trajectory of All Japan can’t be predicted anymore. As a result, Taue is promptly booked to face Triple Crown champion Misawa in May and, to the shock of many, beats him by countering a diving neckbreaker with a chokeslam out of the corner. But before he can truly savor the moment he learns that his first challenger is Kawada and their match takes place two weeks later and Kobashi’s already nipping at his heels for a possible shot as well.

From here Taue shifts to talking about the other Kings, noting where their strengths lie:

“If I were to describe the differences among the three… Misawa, in one word, is “skilled.” Sometimes his moves get countered, and sometimes he surprises you with a counter move at just the right moment, making you think, “You’re going to do that here!?” That’s the impression I have of him.

Kawada is “mischievous” (laughs). His style leans toward strikes, and surprisingly, he doesn’t use many suplexes—maybe just the Backdrop. He fights with guts. Whether we were opponents or partners, I always thought, “He’s got guts.”

Kobashi is “serious”. He is an all-around wrestler. He can fly, he can do submission holds, he can lock people in holds—he’s a well-rounded wrestler. He trained hard, and his powerful lariat, delivered from his well-built arms, really packed a punch. He puts his all into everything. In interviews, when Kawada and I tease him by saying, “Kobashi is a narcissist,” he gets angry, but it’s actually a compliment. Loving yourself and working hard to become your ideal self is a good thing.”

Though his Triple Crown reign doesn’t last long Taue is still happy with it, comparing it to a ran-and-file sumo wrestler defeating a Yokozuna. But hey, at least he finishes 1996 with a win in that year’s Tag League tournament and a ¥10,000,000 cheque.

APOD: This section doesn’t really provide any big revelations beyond learning who came up with which big move and what how the real dynamic between Taue and Kawada worked. Though it’s again quite nice to see AJPW’s peak period from Taue’s perspective – since, again, he’s approaching this as a job and not as a passionate fan living his dream – it’s nice to see wrestling from that more grounded angle. At the same time he finds himself swept up in the competitive spirit of the Four Kings and soon sees himself showing as much passion to wrestling as the others, even if it’s damaging to his body. Though outsiders and observers can look at what he did with the benefit of hindsight, Taue makes it clear that in the moment it was hard to ignore results and hard to feel the same level of passion and emotion from those around him. And perhaps most interesting is that Kawada and Taue left their match planning and communication to either short conversation in the locker room or, in some cases, none at all and just went through the motions as they happened. And as their awesome matches during the 1990s proved, sometimes leaving things to spontaneity was the better choice. Though we’ll see how awesome things stay for Taue 1997 onwards as damage to his and Kawada’s bodies accumulate and business starts plateauing despite the influx of new talent.

Thanks for reading.