Misawa — Ten Years Gone

RIP Misawa, ten years gone

Ten years ago today, the world of puroresu lost Mitsuharu Misawa. He died via internal decapitation, when a routine bump off a back suplex went awry. Some people blame years of taking risky bumps on the back of his neck, which is probably only part of the reason he was lost all those years ago. Stress probably had something to do with it, and the sheer bad luck of a one-in-a-million mistake happening to him at that moment. Regardless, his loss still reverberates today, and his legacy is titanic.

For the second generation of tape traders, Misawa was the guy. While his fellow members of the Four Pillars of Heaven — Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Akira Taue — Misawa was always considered the ace. While World Championship Wrestling introduced American viewers on a larger scale to Japanese wrestlers of a smaller stock from Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling, the tape traders, of which Dave Meltzer was one of the most prominent, flocked more to All-Japan Pro Wrestling's heavyweights. Misawa was the clear leader, amassing five-star matches like they were Sonic the Hedgehog picking up coins, back when the full five from Meltzer meant something. He and Kawada wrestled in perhaps the greatest match of all-time on June 3, 1994, the first match for which Meltzer broke his scale and gave six stars. His legend was built in real time to mythic proportions for people who didn't have the luxury that modern viewers have of nearly every important promotion worldwide having the ability to stream events by the people who were grimy and trustful enough to trade VHS cassettes with sometimes grainy footage of these wrestlers doing battle.

Misawa's second act saw him as a promoter and booker along with wrestler. Unhappy with AJPW in the wake of founder Giant Baba's death, he and several other AJPW stalwarts left to found Pro Wrestling NOAH, which became the new co-leader in Japan with NJPW. Granted, the financial success didn't last as long as Misawa would have liked, but not only did the promotion lend the world of wrestling even more stellar matches featuring three of the Four Pillars and a new generation of exciting wrestlers like KENTA (Hideo Itami in WWE), but it ventured over to America for a few dalliances, providing Ring of Honor the opportunity to host Kobashi vs. Samoa Joe and Takeshi Morishima's epic blood feud with Bryan Danielson.

Misawa also had a lot in common with yours truly, at least when it came to dogs and video games. He was partial to English bulldogs, having one as a companion for many years. He was also partial to Pokémon, and his favorite was Venusaur. Outside of wrestling, Misawa had a lot of redeeming qualities.

Misawa remains one of the most important wrestlers in history. His importance to AJPW and NOAH is immeasurable, and even a decade later, he is still terribly missed. If you would like to read some stuff TWB posted at the time of his death, you can read it here.