5-Star BOOK Reviews: Mitsuharu Misawa’s Books, Part III

When we last looked at Mitsuharu Misawa’s life he was in his mid-twenties dealing with a lot of uncertainty. His trip to Mexico was somewhat unpleasant all things considered and it was cut short before he could really enjoy himself over there. Upon returning to Japan his boss Giant Baba gave him a furry mask to wear and thus began Misawa’s time as Tiger Mask II. He was not necessarily a happy man and felt the constant comparisons to the original. This, coupled with his youth and a sort of rebellious spirit led to some major developments in both his professional and personal life.

You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

We open with something called the “Kyushu Fight Secret Story” which Misawa describes as a moment he thought he was going to die. This is because he got into a fight with “the other side”, (a.k.a. the fucking YAKUZA) and found himself surrounded and put in a life-or-death situation.

As the story goes, Misawa had gone out to eat with fans and some wrestling people after a signing event in Kyushu (the westernmost part of Japan’s main four islands which has cities like Fukuoka and Nagasaki). Though Misawa was dressed casually some organizers had gone through the effort to put up a sign that said “Tiger Mask and Party” which they shouldn’t’ve because it attracted the attention of “the other side” who were sitting next Misawa and his people. One guy forcibly pushed people away and demanded Misawa sign something for him. Misawa stood up quickly and grabbed the guy by the collar but before he knew what was really going on he was surrounded by “a dozen or so people”. The man he was holding told him to apologize but Misawa said no since he had done nothing wrong. Ultimately, though the matter was resolved peacefully since one of the older gentlemen at the table simply asked “what are you all doing” and the whole thing was resolved (APOD: Though based on other viewpoints this wouldn’t be the last time Misawa would have any dealings with the yakuza).

So how does Misawa pivot from such a stressful and life-altering experience? By getting married at 25.

Misawa met his future wife actress Tomomi Shiina (that was her stage name) about a year-and-a-half before they got married. Apparently she was one of the flower girls who would hand wrestlers bouquets before big matches and she did that for him one night on Osaka. By his account she wasn’t a wrestling fan but she liked him enough to ask for his number (yes, she approached HIM) and asked her to meet him in Tokyo. In LAST BUMP the now-named Mayumi Misawa describes how for her it was love at first sight and through all her initial interactions with him she kept saying “I’m going to marry this person”. She also felt quite at ease with Misawa’s penchant for dirty jokes:

“He was a bright person. Being with him never made me feel down; it felt like we were walking together in a sunflower field, laughing out loud. He made a lot of dirty jokes. In fact, it was a parade of dirty jokes. But they were all funny, so I never felt uncomfortable.”

There’s was a “long-distance relationship” since she worked out of Kyoto and he was out of Tokyo. At the same time Misawa describes there’s as a sort of “shotgun marriage” and, at the time of publication, he still had little idea of how to be a husband. At bars he wouldn’t give off “married guy vibes” and as a matter of self-reflection he had never really given much thought into marriage or having a family. For him it was about having a place to belong, a place where he could feel at ease and relax.

As for Misawa being a father…well he’s quite hard on himself for that. After all, he didn’t have a father figure of his own to look up to and, judging by the lack of mention of the man his mother married later on, doesn’t seem to have learned any useful lessons on how to be a dad from anyone. Misawa describes having a sixth-grade daughter (approx. age 11) and a third-grade son (age 8-9) as of this book and somewhat struggling with the idea of being a paternal figure. He saw them as “friends” more than as children and, not knowing any better, he describes slapping them when they were younger as a form of punishment because he absolutely could not tolerate selfishness, even from children. Misawa had absolutely no tolerance for his children saying “I want this” and moments later stating “no, I want that instead”, and would thus discipline his kids. At the same time Misawa didn’t have any rigid obsession with education or studying (since he hated it himself) and thus didn’t push his kids in one direction or another when they were in school, stating:

I’ve never once said, “Study!” I don’t care at all about appearances or societal expectations. I think it’s the worst to say things like, “It’s embarrassing to do that.” If I could teach my child anything, it would just be what is good and what is bad as a “human.” I just hope they become a person with common sense. After that, they can do what they like.

Now back to the wrestling.

Misawa describes transitioning from junior heavyweight to full-fledged heavyweight about a year into his time as Tiger Mask II. It took him a while to change how he created the sense of impact, like the difference between hitting a dropkick and hitting a scoop slam to create the same energy. Misawa makes an important argument regarding this “evolution” from one style to another as each match was a trail-and-error experience as he had to reteach his own body how to do certain things and adapt to both different styles and different bodies.

“For example, in the case of juniors, it looks better if they land lightly when they jump, right? So even for a simple dropkick, during my junior days, I would kick in a way that allowed for a clean landing. However, for heavyweights, it’s better to slam into the opponent’s chest to create impact. Even though I understand this in my head, I can’t shake off the habits from my junior days. Also, the movements of the opponent are different. When dealing with junior wrestlers, they bounce back quickly when whipped into the ropes. If I try to execute a move with that sense, the heavyweight opponent might still be far away (laughs). It’s easy to say that you just need to adjust the timing, but there are parts that the body remembers”

Shifting back for a moment, I read one comment about someone wanting more about Misawa’s time in Mexico. I did manage to get a few more details about this, courtesy of Kagehiro Osano’s book Supreme Triple Crown Champion Mitsuharu Misawa. Misawa had originally wanted to train overseas, but in Europe and not Mexico. He cited Steve Wright and Horst Hoffman as wrestlers he admired. Misawa was apparently told that where he would be sent would depend on what he wanted to learn or what the office thought he could best benefit from. Two options were floated around for him: send him to America where he would learn how to work a match, or to Mexico where he would learn more techniques. Ultimately AJPW chose the latter. The initial decision is said to have been because obtaining a working visa for the USA was far more difficult in 1983. Misawa also believed that Baba didn’t want to send Misawa to Mexico but ended up being persuaded by someone around him. And in SUPREME there’s an explanation from Akio Sato as to why this decision was made:

“Misawa was a sample of a young wrestler who could be elevated. So I wanted to try it out with Misawa. If you have three years, you can create a star in pro wrestling. When young wrestlers with talent keep rising every time the audience sees them, they will follow. But it still takes three years. However, if they get used to losing or get accustomed to working at the lower levels, even if they start pushing, the audience won’t buy it easily. In any case, they lose too much. So, I sent Misawa to debut in Mexico within three years. But to do that, there was Koshinaka, his brother. So I sent Koshinaka along with him, saying, ‘Do your best!’ to Mexico, but in the end, Misawa was brought back to Japan as Tiger Mask, and Koshinaka ended up going to New Japan…”

Sato is said to have played an integral role in getting Misawa and Koshinaka established in EMLL/CMLL, working with the promotion’s top man Alonso Lutteroth to arrange main-event matches for the Japanese duo. They were tecnicos (babyfaces) and wrestled against heels like Perro Aguayo and Fishman during a time when CMLL was doing an outside invader’s angle with the UWA. They also recall facing a team called Los Farahones, El Pharaoh & El Ehypcio and in one of their first experiences of lucha’s normal three-fall structure. Misawa’s first big singles match was against El Satanico in a title match for the NWA World Middleweight Championship. Despite his best efforts Kamikaze Misawa lost two falls to one and Satanico would become the first person to have defeated both the first and second iterations of Tiger Mask.

Speaking of which, while Misawa was in Mexico Giant Baba was working on a secret plan to buy the rights to the Tiger Mask gimmick. There’s an extended section dedicated to secret meetings, confidential negotiations involving a number of people from AJPW, NJPW, Nippon TV, Sayama himself, and a bunch of others in trying to determine a direction, with Baba showcasing an almost Vince McMahon-level stubbornness in wanting to obtain those rights. Once he got them Baba began considering which wrestler to make into the new Tiger Mask and three names came up: Misawa, Koshinaka, and Kawada. However, Kabuki was the one who quickly proposed Misawa since he was the more gymnastic of the three and thus more in line with the original’s style and aesthetics. There was also talk of bringing someone in from the World Karate Federation to be TM2 but that person barely lasted a few days before quitting. As Kawada noted, his consideration for TM2 became more likely before being dropped completely:

“The person from Shidokan wanted to quit and disappeared from the training camp on the first or second day, so I was chosen as Misawa’s training partner. Shortly after that, Baba told me, ‘We’re going to make you the second Tiger Mask.’ I was told to make the costume and even made the shoes, but before I knew it, the talk disappeared (laughs). But I’m glad that conversation didn’t happen. Being second isn’t appealing. I didn’t want to be the second in line as Tiger Mask.”

After having a phone call with Baba in which Misawa confirmed he could jump off the top rope, Misawa actually got a bit upset when he was told to suddenly return to Japan (Koshinaka suspects that Misawa’s relationship with a Mexican woman at the time was getting serious but this sudden change scuttled their relationship completely). But back in DEPARTURE Misawa recalls another event that tarnished his overall experience in Mexico, albeit from a different experience years later when he was already wrestling under the mask.

Because of their much harder ring and mats and his more acrobatic style he worked hurt a lot and damaged his body much more quickly compared to in Japan. So eventually he hurt his knee so badly that he needed to have surgery…and that surgery left him sidelined for 300 days, causing him to miss most of 1989.

How exactly did this happen? According to Misawa he was in a tag match and his partner lifted an opponent and Misawa, as Tiger Mask II, went for a top-rope elbow drop when suddenly the opponent’s knee came flying at him. Instinct kicked in and Misawa avoided it but in doing so he twisted his own knee on landing. Moments later Misawa felt his knee in a different position and basically popped it back into place but by that point the ligaments were already damaged. His knee would basically dislocate in each and every match thereafter and he’d have to put it back into place himself, gritting his teeth through the pain each time. This ended up being a torn ACL in his left knee and the surgery to fix it lasted seven hours. The original plan was for a protective bolt to be put in temporarily but Misawa never went for that follow-up procedure so bone grew around said bolt, leaving it in place.

Being away for the ring took its toll on Misawa. For the first three months he was more or less able to deal with it and start thinking from a wider perspective. Six months in, however, he started getting anxious over whether he could return to wrestling or not. All the while he very seriously contemplated his wrestling future and knew one thing was for certain: he would get rid of the mask as soon as he could.

That opportunity came in 1990 when Tenryu left in the SWS Exodus and Misawa unmasked in the spring 1990. Misawa also sets the record straight and states that his unmasking was not a direct response to that event, calling this a “retrospective interpretation”. Instead he took it off because he felt genuine tension and things weren’t meshing anymore with the remaining wrestlers following Tenryu’s departure.

On that note, Misawa also compares and contrasts the SWS Exodus and the NOAH Exodus, calling them completely different. Whereas the SWS situation was all planned out by sponsors, Misawa didn’t really have such a clear plan for NOAH. He went into that with the mindset of “it’ll work out” and without any solid guarantees (APOD: We’ll get more into the nitty -gritty of NOAH formation later on but the plan for NOAH was basically all over the place from the start. Allegedly Misawa originally wanted to form NOAH with maybe six or seven other people but he VASTLY underestimated the number of people who wanted to follow him and wrestle under him. Star quarterback of the football team, indeed). Misawa also gives his opinion of Tenryu’s situation specifically and observes that Tenryu seemed to care more about pro-wrestling compared to Tsuruta. But since Tenryu seemed to believe that Baba was favoring Tsuruta more, Tenryu was, to some extent, justified in leaving.

As turmoil gripped All Japan Misawa was also struggling with his future in terms of style. Up to that point he had been following Tiger Mask’s style but once he unmasked he couldn’t rely on the same techniques. Something new was needed, and with his left knee now held together by screws and bolts he couldn’t rely on kicks as much. He needed a new weapon and one day decided that an elbow strike would fit him perfectly. Then in May 1990 a famous six-man tag took place between Misawa’s team on one side and Jumbo Tsuruta on the other. And as I covered before, that match included the first warning shot, and the start of something really special. I know it’s someone else’s shtick but it’s worth repeating:

Misawa’s.

Elbow.

Is.

God.

This would become Misawa’s ultimate equalizer, a weapon that allowed him to go toe-to-toe with much bigger opponents like Tsuruta, Hansen, Gordy, and others while still maintain his credibility.

Misawa would later explain that with this elbow he always had a specific target in mind, that being the neck area or right behind the ear. But since he was almost always hitting a moving target the move didn’t always land in that desired spot. Still in this first case it was enough to ground Tsuruta for about two minutes and when he came back he roared with anger and attacked with Misawa with mounted strikes. That was the intensity needed to catapult this rivalry to the next level and set the stage for something even bigger. Per a 1997 Four Kings interview explaining his logic behind it:

“The initial jabs aim for the neck area. I try not to aim for the temples as much as possible. Even if I aim there, it rarely lands. However, since the opponent is also moving, there are times when it does hit. When I’m thinking of finishing it with this move, I don’t really have the luxury to be that precise. That’s why, on the contrary, if the contact isn’t good, I end up getting injured. If it hits the opponent’s jawline or bone, there are times when my own elbow gets cut. Around the elbow of my right arm, fragmented cartilage is scattered, and I’ve also sustained lasting damage to my shoulder from the impact of my own elbows. Even now, when I rotate my right arm from the shoulder, it doesn’t align properly and makes a grating sound. ”

One last noteworthy quote in relation to this comes from Misawa’s second book IDEALIST which contains all of his philosophies about wrestling. Though Misawa wasn’t obsessed with pro-wrestling to the point of thinking about it 24/7 like, say, Kenta Kobashi, when time came for him to think about what he was going to do he looked at his matches like this:

“In my case, my movements change depending on my mood, physical condition, or opponent on that particular day, so I tend to rely more on intuition or my own sense of judgment when structuring a match.”

(APOD: in other words, Misawa is in many ways like Eddy Guerrero in that he isn’t one to pre-plan matches all that much and relies on in-the-moment spontaneity and intuition to create his matches).

June 8, 1990

We now shift to what is quite possibly the biggest match of Misawa’s life: his singles match with Jumbo Tsuruta in the summer of 1990. In DEPARTURE Misawa makes it clear that this was the most nerve-wracking match of his life, to the point that he was making uncharacteristic outbursts at home to his wife over how worried he was. This was the match that would determine whether he could rise up and become a wrestler who could shoulder AJPW in the future, or lose and fade into obscurity. He could not fail in this match.

And he won. He was so shocked he legitimately couldn’t believe it. Per SUPREME:

“I cried. It was the first time I cried since entering pro wrestling. More than winning, I was moved by myself. The pressure was immense. My legs didn’t move from the moment I left home. So, it’s a sense of satisfaction that I endured it.I was really relieved to finish the big stage safely. It was significant to overcome myself, who felt like I might crumble under the pressure in front of the fans. I promised that I had to win, and I pushed myself into that situation, but I actually didn’t think I could win. I was able to win, but I thought, conversely, that it would be tough from here on out. It was that big of a deal.”

Masanobu Fuchi, who was AJPW’s main matchmaker at the time, also said this:

“I think the fans and the media probably didn’t expect Misawa to win, even though he fought valiantly. I think it was an incredible effort that overturned that expectation, and even as an enemy in the ring, I felt something from Misawa’s tears after the match. But to be honest, watching that match, there was still a gap compared to the Tsuruta-Dragon match. So, for me, I thought, ‘Alright, this is just the beginning!’ If Misawa had won and it had ended happily there, that would have been it.”

Here’s what referee Kyohei Wada said about the match, per another Kagehiro Osano book, Eternal Strongest Champion Jumbo Tsuruta:

“Jumbo Tsuruta is a monster, after all. Even when he loses, he’s still strong. Mitsuharu Misawa didn’t win perfectly. The fact that the audience at Budokan united as one was because Jumbo wasn’t a heel, but he was just too strong. I think the crowd at Nippon Budokan came together to support Misawa. Hearing that support, Jumbo might have felt, ‘Well, I have no choice but to lose.’ But his pride probably couldn’t accept losing to Misawa, who used to be his attendant. Even the great Jumbo shed tears. I think those were tears of ‘Don’t mess with me!'”

With that match AJPW had a new feud to carry the company forward. Tsuruta had a new opponent, Misawa had a mountain to climb, and AJPW’s audience had two more or less equal forces to rally behind. With this began the Tsuruta-gun vs Chosedai-gun feud, and it would continue for just about two years to the day. (APOD: you can watch that full match here. In terms of bell-to-bell quality I’d go ****1/2-****3/4 for this match but in terms of historical significance it’s one of the biggest matches of the past three decades or more. It marked a critical shift in wrestling history and cemented Misawa as a main-event player. It showed that a (relatively) smaller wrestler could hang with the big boys and hold his own. It set the standard for AJPW’s in-ring product going forward. And it led to a sellout streak in Tokyo that, allegedly, would continue unabated until 1996. Misawa was the future and he proved that here.)

APOD: There was a lot covered here, from Misawa’s personal life and struggles as a husband and father, to some interesting stories outside the ring, to the challenges he faced in Mexico and recovering from a devastating injury, to his biggest match to date. The one thing that I think needs to be emphasized here is that Misawa did all of this while still keeping his cool (at least in public) and managed to balance to many stresses and pressures while still pushing his body and mind to incredible and strenuous extremes. He seemed to take a balanced view on many things and despite some stories coming across as either embellished or exaggerated he does still wrap what he writes in a degree of grounded honesty. He keeps things believable which is what makes his story that much more compelling. In an industry filled with bullshitters and snake oil salesmen Misawa, thus far, seems like an honest and decent person. But we’ll see how much that continues as he enters his golden decade and moves up to the position of ace.

Thanks for reading.