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DIR Return to: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week
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#Post#: 23146--------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week; Sayonara Kobashi
By: SheriffLonestar Date: January 18, 2014, 1:28 am
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I have looked at part of this card before, and if you would like
my somewhat epic account of Kings Road wrestling you can go and
take a look at it over here;
HTML http://www.tnafanforum.com/sheriff-lonestar's-ppv-of-the-week/sheriff-lonestar's-ppv-of-the-week-special-edition/
However some kind soul has managed to put up the six hour
original TV presentation of Final Burning in Budokan Hall up for
us to peruse at our leisure, its time to look again. Let me just
say that again though, a six hour show about more or less one
guy. Now I know we are blessed in this current day and age of
three hour Raws and two hour Impacts. But six hours on one guy?
He must have been very special indeed. By gum was he.
The shows opening address comes from the tragically retired
Hayabusa. The former FMW headliner whose career was cut short
after an in ring accident left him unable to walk and paralysed
from the waist down. Even if you don't understand the language,
and I don't, you can tell his address, defiant, proud and caring
of his friends career, sets the tone for the whole event. He is
also a timely reminder of what wrestlers go through for us the
fans, and why indeed Kobashi had to take his own medical
predicament very seriously indeed. To show that, intermingled
among the matches we see Kobashi winding down to retirement.
Meetings with Doctors, X-Rays that show the pins in his knee,
which horrifically look like a cross section of the Humber
Bridge and the X rays on his neck, it is easy to see why now is
the time for Kobashi to call it quits. You also see Kobashi's
rather brutal self imposed training regime. Chopping away at
block pads, having a guy stand on his head and use him as a
weight to lift with his neck. Now you see why he lasted so long
as well. Twenty years is a long time for any pro wrestler, for a
guy like Kobashi who never took a backward step, its an
eternity.
The show itself is a NOAH production, but everyone came by from
all over Japan to honour a true master of the art of
professional wrestling. The show opens with a mix of old friends
and young protégés, as the ever youthful Masanobu Fuchi (still
going full bore at 60) takes one NOAH rookie Hitoshi Kumano, in
a fun opener that is their to honour the generations that
Kobashi wrestled through. Next we have the veteran SUWA teaming
with 8 year NOAH graduate Genba Hirayanagi against the duo of
Taiji Ishimori and Atsushi Kotoge in an intense but fun battle
that is far more friendly that anything else. The general
feeling as you go through these opening matches is that it's
Kobashi's night and those involved want to honour the great man,
have fun while they can and put in a performance that reflects
their respects. Especially so when we get to Burning vs Burning.
For those of you who don't know, there has been three
generations of Burning as a wrestling group. The original came
in the All Japan days and was a section of the roster closely
associated with Kenta Kobashi and Jun Akiyama. This group is
represented by the rather aged looking fifty year old wrestling
teacher Tamon Honda and the Afroed up Kentaro Shiga. Shiga being
a Kobashi original. On then other side of the ring is a more
recent iteration of Burning from the days of Kobashi's time in
NOAH; Kotaro Suzuki and Atsushi Aoki then the GHC Junior
Heavyweight Tag Team Champions. The match is a lot of fun and
perhaps pays the greatest respect to Kobashi, his friends and
students having the spotlight.
Then we move on to something entirely different. The Living
Legend of NOAH, freelancer, former Triple Crown Holder, the man
who battled Jumbo Tstura to put All Japan Wrestling once again
on the map in 70's and early 80's, who founded WAR and pretty
much owned the Japanese wrestling world for twenty years
Genichiro Tenryu. The guy has wrestled everywhere from
Wrestlemania to the Tokyo Dome and while as a 39 year veteran he
really can't go any more, he knows when to pick his spots. At
the top of the card when Kobashi started wrestling, he shows no
sign of letting go of the spotlight some twenty odd years later.
His partner the equally spry, but much more able Yoshinari
Ogawa, one of Tenryu's protégés, and a former GHC Champion
himself. Rat Boy as he is known can still go and is there to aid
his old master turn in a crowd pleasing turn of tag team action
against two other long time pros. Masao Inoue a 22 year veteran
of All Japan and NOAH his partner the youngest man of the four
who jumped ship to NOAH with Kobashi all those years ago Takeshi
Morishima. Morishima is one of my Dad's favourite wrestlers, he
describes him as a Japanese Terry Gordy, and you can see the
comparison greatly. He has had great reigns as GHC and ROH
heavyweight champions, something no one has done before or is
likely to again. His matches with Kobahsi had been
breathtakingly stiff up until that point. Their match does what
it says on the tin really, a little stiffer, a little more
serious but still paying homage to The Man.
The man with perhaps the most impressive haircut of the card
Mohammed Yone is up next tagging with his BRAVE partners,
Takashi Sugiura and Akitoshi Saito. Yone, Sugiura and Saito
represent the NOAH old guard not one of them below 35, Sugiura
being the youngest at 43 and he started late, they are the life
blood and beating heart of the NOAH roster. They have been
through thick and thin together, Kobashi's brethren and guys who
have always just been below the main event level, occasionally
getting there but never quite getting over the hill. They where
truly fitting to represent the company in this match up against
three iconic wrestlers from New Japan Pro Wrestling; Hiroshi
Tanahashi, Satoshi Kojima & Yuji Nagata. Tanhashi was just
starting to relinquish his role as NJPW Ace and start taking it
easy for a while, but he is still the most over guy NJPW have,
and he has represented them very well for ten years. Kojima,
though NJPW trained, has been around the circuit for ten or so
years and did his time in All Japan Pro Wrestling, and has free
lanced for NOAH on many an occasion, funnily enough I was
watching some later shows from this year and it is noticeable
that Kojima as a homage uses Kobashi's machine gun chop spot
including in this match to get a huge pop from the crowd. Nagata
would go on to spend a lot of time in NOAH over the year,
winning their year end tournament. Nagata is NJPW's long term
hard man, having a stand out amateur career he really made his
name in the early nineties and through his charisma and realism
really impressed the Japanese crowd. His eventual IWGP
solidifying the fact he is a main event player. This was a fun
break for him from his days of feuding with Chaos in NJPW, and
all six men put on a show, as is usual when two companies meet.
Now we are getting to the business end of the card; All Japan
original Takao Omori and Former All Japan, UWF, Pride shoot
fighter, 47 year old stroke victim Yoshihiro Takayama. Omori is
a pure wrestler who really is the heart beat of this match.
Takayama is just one of the best monsters Japan has ever
produced, even with a steadily advancing paunch that dares to
rest itself over his tights, he is as tough now as the day he
went the distance with Don Frye in 2002 and wouldn't tap out or
quit. His knees and suplexes are still awesomely stiff and he
has “The Look”. Their opponents mix the NOAH tradition of tough
as nails technical mat work and brawling in former GHC champion
Naomichi Marufuji and the charismatic heeldom of another former
shoot stand out Minoru Suzuki, even at 45 years old, he has been
the dominant heel presence in NJPW this year and this match was
just a small example of that. If you read "The Five" I did last
week you will also see that he can have great matches with
anyone no matter what their size or gender. In short this match
is awesome and set the tone back to serious for the main event.
The main event I did talk about in the other article but several
months later its worth looking on with some reflection. Back
then I was still smarting from the news that Kobashi was
retiring, a little sad, but happy that he was leaving on top and
with more or less a complete bill of health. Now I can look back
on it with joy. Jun Akiyama, Keiji Muto, Kensuke Sasaki and of
course the retiring Kenta Kobashi take on Go Shiozaki, KENTA,
Maybach Taniguchi and Yoshinobu Kanemaru in a huge spot fest.
Its hard to explain how these guys, all of whom are known for
straight wrestling and brawling, have a spot fest, but this was
a celebration of pro wrestling in all its forms. This is half
the top end of the NOAH and All Japan rosters together in one
place, this doesn't happen very often where they don't have to
worry about setting up the next big card, they can just go, and
go they did for 40 minutes. They are all clearly having the time
of their lives and are eager to get one last shot in on the old
master. The back and forth fighting spirit chop exchange between
Kobashi and Go Shiozaki is essential viewing, I could just sit
and watch that two minute sequence for hours. Mutoh, always the
man for the big occasion, doesn't do a great deal but what he
does do is perfect as always. This is a match where a bunch of
friends, former tag partners, colleagues and students come out
and take the audience on a roller coaster ride, get their shit
in because that's what the crowd came to see, and generally have
a good old time of it. It helps you have a couple of true tag
team genius' in there carrying the work load in Sasaki and
Akiyama, and it highlights what all of these wrestlers have been
famous for. They have followed Kobashi in spirit, try harder
than everyone else, give more of yourself than anyone else, and
be the best you can be and you will get there. This isn't so
much a dream match as a manifesto for what wrestling could and
should be. What was Kobashi seeing when he looked across the
ring? His past and his future, those who will carry the torch
truly in his image. The title of this match was Kobashi DNA, and
that DNA will hold the King's Road style that he developed along
side Akira Taue, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada and Jun
Akiyama in All Japan and perfected in NOAH. Those epic battles
he will now watch from the sidelines, but for one man who hung
it up in 2013, his legacy is assured.
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asOv6lW6jiQ
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