Kings Road Chronicles

If you’re reading this (and sometimes I question if anyone does) then I want you to take every rating you have for any other tag match and just bin them. This is the Best Tag Match of All Time. A winner of countless awards, including the Tokyo Sports Best Bout Award in 1995, it’s been imitated countless times over the years by some of the best teams of the modern era, it has inspired generations of future wrestlers to enter the squared circle and it is often used as the benchmark for Puroresu. Over 2 years of storylines told over 9 tag matches in front of some of the most fanatical crowds you will ever hear. There will never be enough space in the captions to do this match justice.

Coming into the match Kawada is still yet to pin Misawa and it eats at him like an obsession. Taue continues to be the sadistic executioner of HDA, desperate to take back the titles he believes are his. Misawa still carries his orbital bone injury from April Champion Carnival and Kobashi is carrying a heavily strapped leg. All of this matters, all of this plays a part in the match. With HDA ruthless targeting everything they can to get an advantage, Kobashi establishing himself as the sacrificial hero willing to literally lay his body down to protect Misawa, and the Emerald Warrior - even at near exhaustion, still have the audience believing he could win it on his own. But finally, Kawada redeems himself with the mightiest of powerbombs and gets the three on his biggest rival, as the four greatest wrestlers of their generation set the bar to a supernatural level.

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Was meant to post this yesterday! 18 years ago inside Pennsylvania National Armory in Philadelphia, the ROH faithful were treated to a truly iconic moment. After more than a year of betrayals, title matches and escalating hatred, Stevens & Strong - both student and teacher and two of ROH and Full Impacts greatest rivals, decided to abandon all pretence of wrestling and simply tried to destroy each other.

With nothing on the line except pride, one of the 2000s greatest ever blood feuds reached its climax in the most insane of spots. To this day, Stevens & Strong remains one of the underrated grudge matches during ROH Golden Era.

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A completely random and throwaway show in Yokohama is instead treated to chaos and violence as Marufuji, the Genius of the Ark, is confronted by a f*cking lunatic. Murakami, representing ZERO1 at this point, had come to NOAH in late 2006 and even had a match against Misawa himself. While largely being stuck in tag matches with Otani & Takaiwa, this was his chance to remind everyone of just how insane and unpredictable he could be.

Oh how he delivers, as from the beginning he jumps Fuji, drags him into the crowd and smashes him with a chair. At one point he even licks blood off his gloves. Fuji meanwhile has to bring out an entirely different version of himself and tries to fire back with some hate strikes. But it’s not enough against Kazu, he’s forged in Inokism; promptly trying to decapitate Fuji with a lariat.

Post match we have Mohammed Yone trying to be the defender of the Ark, in a somewhat dream match that sadly never happened. Kazu would return to ZERO1 and the following month was seriously injured by Shinjiro Otani, taking several unprotected chair shots to the head that resulted in him almost dying and losing two years of his career. It would be 14 years later that Fuji & Kazu would share a ring again.

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It’s a match that’s been covered an infinite amount of times by every journalist, commentator, wrestler, creator….you name it, it’s been analysed and discussed by them all. Hell, this is probably the third time in two years that I’ve done it…and for very good reason. It’s more than a classic, it’s more than one of the best matches of all time. It’s a moment in time where an entire generation changed before your eyes.

On June 8th 1990 inside the Nippon Budokan, the seemingly unstoppable Ace of All Japan Jumbo Tsuruta faced the future; the rising challenger Mitsuharu Misawa. To think just 3 weeks before Misawa had shocked the wrestling world by removing the Tiger Mask, in that time his popularity had exploded. So much so that by the day of this match, Giant Baba had Jumbo winning the match…until he reached the arena and saw that all the Misawa merch was flying off the shelves. Baba was nothing if not pragmatic, the changing of the guard was here.

You have to remember that Jumbo wasn’t simply an Ace, he was the top of the mountain. He was the centrepiece of All Japan. He had been the main event for a decade and a Face for the entirety of his career. In the blink of an eye everything was changing, and he resented that. Like a King defending his throne, everything Jumbo throws at Misawa is personal. Every comeback from Misawa generates louder reactions as the crowd changes from curious observers to believers. Even the finish, a desperate reversal, protects Jumbo and establishes what would be the feud for the next year and elevated Misawa to superstardom. The Super Generation was here.

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Somewhat of a forgotten moment this one to be honest. The same night that Nagata defeated Taue, the main event of Navigation With Breeze featured the Tag Champions Sternness; Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito taking on the mega over team of Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda of Burning.

The reason this is forgotten is pretty simple: Kobashi was already 70 days into his legendary 735 day reign as GHC Heavyweight Champion, few of us will remember that at one point he was a double champion too, holding the tag belts with Honda for almost 6 months. Such focus is put on one of the greatest singles title runs of all time that this tag run is overlooked.

Still, it’s a nice moment for Tamon Honda, a largely secondary talent in his All Japan Days who, despite being a former Olympian was doomed to be in the mid card- finally proving to be pivotal and winning a major title in his career in NOAH, using his Rolling Olympic Hell to pin Akiyama. His best match would come a month later against Takayama & Makabe, where he would deadlift The Emperor like he was a piece of paper…but we’ll get to that.

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With the NJPW vs NOAH rivalry in full gear, Yuji Nagata makes his way to a sold out Budokan, cementing his status as a major threat to Kenta Kobashi’s GHC title. Having first appeared in May, Nagata made his way through the tag division, defeating Taue and his student Takashi Sugiura and pi***ng off Dynamic T in the process.

This might not be the Akira Taue of the 90s anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less dangerous. Nagata is completely the underdog in this match, but this is also a Nagata at the peak of his powers, an incredible technical wrestler who will break you down over time.

With Blue Justice utilising the Nagata-lock to target the arm, a prideful Taue does his best of weathering the storm - but in the end, to a chorus of boos from the NOAH faithful, he has no choice but to submit.

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