20 AJPW Matches you must see before you die

12. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada – July 24, 1995

This 4.75-star match served as the perfect microcosm for the entire AJPW run during the 1990s. It showcased the strengths of both wrestlers involved perfectly. Kawada’s strikes looked so real and painful that you were convinced that he was genuinely trying to hurt his erstwhile archrival. Misawa was just as awesome, moving around the ring and creating sequences so crisp and perfect you’d think he was a literal wrestling machine. One month before this match happened, Kawada had pinned Misawa clean for the first time. That was in a tag team match, but it was a big enough of a win to warrant this Triple Crown Heavyweight Title match.

The match also had a fantastic sense of ‘legitimacy’ and realism that’s so rare these days. After all, how often does a wrestler being Irish-whipped fall to the mat while running to sell pain and exhaustion?

Also, this is the match that proved just how good Kawada was as a performer. He was not only capable of absorbing as much punishment as he dished out, but he also knew how to make every move feel important. He managed to get the crowd to cheer for a drop-toehold, for crying out loud.

Finally, this match marked something of a change in AJPW, in that the matches started to become more and more about ‘head-drops’ and less about traditional wrestling as before. Although head-drops had been widespread in AJPW up to this point, this was the match that started the trend of making those moves more commonplace in each match, which would eventually peak in early 1999.