Welcome back to my wee little column of puroresu sophistry and pretension! Last time I gave you all my thoughts on the Puroresu Spirit 2010 awards (and o! how you people differ from me!), and this week I present you with a revised version of one of the more popular posts from before the site suffered from technical issues… Yes good reader, you can read my part-pillaged, part-mashed overview of all that happened in AJPW during the 90s. Enjoy!
Wrestling Heavenly Road (1990s AJPW)
Many fans refer to ‘Kings Road’. But what do they mean? And how accurately does it describe AJPW in the 1990s? Was King’s Road a style (like strong style, bachi-bachi etc.) or was it actually better described as a project? This article – sourced mostly from comparable articles across the net – aims to give you all the resources to answer those above queries.
Introduction
The wrestling product produced by AJPW during the 1990s is widely regarded as simply the greatest era of professional wrestling anywhere – the absolute pinnacle of the performance art form. It launched the likes of Misawa Mitsuharu, Kawada Toshiaki, Taue Akira and Kobashi Kenta into the history books as arguably four of the greatest performers ever to grace a pro wrestling ring.
That era is known today as the ‘Kings Road’.
Background
To understand the significance of King’s Road, it helps to understand the preceding history of professional wrestling in Japan.
Early attempts were made at the turn of the century and before WWII to introduce pro wrestling to Japan, but they failed to secure any sort of popularity with the Japanese public. This all changed however in 1951, thanks to the legend that is Rikidozan.
Anti-American sentiment was quite high in Japan after WWII and Rikidozan’s success no doubt came on the back on this. The Japanese public – yearning for some sort of national hero – gladly embraced Rikidozan as their triumphant defeater of invading, villainous gaijin (foreigners in Japanese). Ironically, Rikidozan was in fact born as Kim Sin Rak – a Korean in Japanese-occupied Korea.
Rikidozan’s match against Lou Thesz on October 6th 1957 drew an unprecedented – and unmatched – 87.0 tv viewership rating, and thus, ‘professionaru resuringu’ was given life in Japan.
The promotional tactic of exploiting feint remnants of jingoistic attitudes became less affective as years went on, and as more of the Japanese public became aware of the worked nature of pro wrestling, crowds started fading away.
It was at about this time that two of Rikidozan’s students Inoki Kanji (later known as Antonio Inoki) and Baba Shohei (known as Giant Baba) rendered the once monolithic world of puroresu asunder in two parts. In 1972 Inoki founded ‘New Japan Pro-Wrestling’ – after being fired for trying to launch a takeover of JWA a few months earlier. In response, ‘Giant’ Baba launched his own company, ‘All Japan Pr-Wrestling’ (AJPW).
The two men had different ideas of how to bring pro wrestling in Japan back to the forefront of the public’s imagination. Inoki believed in what he called ‘the strongest style of them all’ – a style of pro wrestling that closely emulated traditional European catch wrestling with added elements of the Japanese martial arts like Judo and Karate. Inoki brought in legitimate fighters for ‘worked shoots’ that were aimed at once again convincing the Japanese public that pro wrestling was strong.
While certain big name outsiders helped Inoki’s NJPW draw large crowds, the reworked pro wrestling model of Baba was more consistent and held a solid market share – especially through its broadcasting deal with NTV. Baba believed in continuing the dramatic style of Rikidozan and North American wrestling, and used variations on this to build several wrestlers who would become stars in the 1980s.
Baba phased himself out of the title picture by about 1984, and promoted the likes of Jumbo Tsuruta and Tenryu Genichiro to the main event, and into the public eye. Despite their considerable success, Baba saw that Tenryu (who had also been prone to leaving AJPW for quick paydays) and Tsuruta were nearing the end of their peak. It was apparently after the October 11, 1989 Triple Crown title match, that Baba approached Tsuruta with the concept of the ‘road to the heavenly Kings’.
What’s In A Name?
It is said (featured in Wada Kyohei’s book, ‘Life is good for just one count of 3’) that the meeting was a tense one, because essentially, Baba was planning to phase out Tsuruta as a matter of urgency due to the impending departure of Hara, Great Kabuki and Tenryu. Jumbo stated that he was eventually entirely convinced by the proposition when Baba said: “we want the build a story up to the heavenly kings”. Baba was so confident that his project would not only succeed in replacing the departing talent, but that – by carefully designing the push – he would be able to generate an era of wrestling fit for ‘heavenly kings’.
To achieve that goal, Jumbo selected four young AJPW home-grown and loyal wrestlers to rise and take their seats at the ‘Four Corners of Heaven’: Misawa Mitsuharu, Kobashi Kenta, Taue Akira, and Kawada Toshiaki. From that moment, the ‘road of kings’ had begun.
It is a common misconception that the ‘kings’ part of the name refers to those four wrestlers. Tsuruta confirmed that Baba was in fact referring to an abstract idea of heavenly royalty watching wrestling as though fans. Baba’s project was to ‘build a road to those kings’, to eventually present them with the Four Corners of Heaven.
Paving the Road to the Kings
The ground work for this arguably began towards the end of 1989, most noticeably with a shift in the type of gaikokujin brought in. From 1989, the ‘outlandish cheating outsiders’ style of imports (in the mould of Abdullah the Butcher and Tiger Jeet Singh) were dumped in favour of tough, simpler – yet technically gifted – and spirited wrestlers such as Steve Williams, Terry Gordy, DiBiase a returning Stan Hansen, and Johnny Ace (who also was involved in booking). Several rule changes were also introduced at the turn of the decade, focussing more and more upon the building of a drama of fighting spirit.
The real beginning of the Kings Road began with one of the most memorable moments in puroresu: the unmasking of Tiger Mask II, and the ushering in of Misawa. Although the Japanese public already knew that Misawa was behind the mask courtesy of his wedding hitting the newspapers, they were shocked by the event and increased their love of Misawa as a result.
20 days later, Misawa went face-to-face with Jumbo Tsuruta, who at that time was the biggest star and the top of the roster. In one of the greatest matches of all time, and with one of the most incredible upsets of all time, the young Misawa got a hard earned pinfall victory over Tsuruta (very much still at his peak).
The win sent shockwaves through the entire of puroresu and launched the first of the four ‘corners of heaven’ on his way up the King’s Road.
The Road Reaches To Heaven
Following the upset victory, Jumbo and Misawa feud in 6-man tag matches which also stand out as some of the greatest matches of all time. Tsuruta recruited the up-and-coming Taue Akira to his team along with Fuchi; while Misawa recruited his long-time tag partner Kawada as well as a rookie called Kobashi Kenta (up until May 1989 Kobashi had lost all of his 63 matches).
The crowd reaction to this feud was amazingly positive, and it even helped to increase the overall popularity of pro wrestling in Japan to the point where NTV moved AJPW’s weekly programming onto prime time.
Misawa and Kawada upset Gordy and Williams to claim the tag titles in July 1991, and then roughly a year later in August 1992, Misawa defeated Stan Hansen to become the Triple Crown champion: the audience went wild, and one of the corners of heaven was now established.
Misawa – now the ‘ace’ of AJPW – would then enter into a bitter rivalry with his partner Kawada, which prepared Toshiaki to ascend – eventually – to the top. In October 1994 Kawada’s fighting efforts were finally rewarded when he defeated Williams (who had incidentally earlier dethroned Misawa) to at last claim his first Triple Crown honour. Before too long, Misawa had put over Kawada and Kobashi in singles and tag matches, legging them both up to the pinnacle of pro wrestling alongside him.
How The Road Winds
The main characteristic of King’s Road was the continual building of long-term narrative arcs. Every wrestler in every match is continuing both their own story and the grander narrative of the 4 Corners Of Heaven.
Each of the 4 pillars began with fairly ordinary movesets, with each additional signature move added representing another step along their own road. This interacted with the stories of other wrestlers – particular their fellow ‘Pillars’ – to create a new perpetually aggrandising story that was the Kings Road. The strength of each tier of moves was relative to the ‘strength’ of the fighter. To stop a regular chop from Kobashi, Misawa wouldn’t need more than a simple elbow. Were he to do anything else, it would build up a story of Kobashi getting ahead in the match and a totally different strategy and story would emerge.
For a ‘lower’ pillar to bring down a higher pillar (e.g. Kobashi v Misawa) they would have to bring out their higher offense against lower moves. When it came time for the lower pillars to move up and take the top position, they needed to introduce a new ‘bigger’ move that matched them up to the biggest moves of Misawa. The burning hammer is a great example of this.
That system of evolving the moves sets – often in reference to previous matches – created the constant progression that saw AJPW’s 4 pillars quickly rise to superstardom in Japan.
The End Of The Road
The Road could only go so far however.
Each wrestler has a series of spots and counters which evolved further and further, becoming almost absurd in its drama. Rising to new heights and coming up with new twists on series of moves from years before became the only way to pop the crowd (we can almost see that occurring today with KENTA’s Busaiku Knee kick getting little reaction, because the crowd are waiting for even nastier strikes). This would lead to a constantly heightening drama with long combinations, tons of very close near falls escalating to the pin, all by one wrestler as he steps his game up while weakening the opponent. To add to the realism lost by this highly dramatic style, intense stiffness and head drops became the norm.
Naturally, over time, this devolved into a “who can do more moves” at the end of the match, with regard for the epic individual and King’s Road storyline waning and instead the craziness of moves overtaking it in their balance of importance. The Road had to end and be reset. That moment many believe occurred when Akiyama Jun took out Misawa as equals in the eyes of Kings Road.
By utilising already established arsenal to one-up Misawa, the Road was reset, and the head-long charge for grander things abandoned.
Understanding the Road
At the beginning of the article, I mentioned that King’s Road ought not be thought of in stylistic terms. One of the most important things to take from AJPW in the 1990s was that the style changed continually year on year. The Material in 1990 is a world away from the material in 1999. Consequently, any attempts at referencing 90s All Japan as a style is fraught with nebulosity: does it refer to a Tsuruta singles match or a HDA tag match? The workers themselves worked distinctly different styles to each other and to their own previous body of work as the decade progressed. Kobashi vs Misawa felt nothing like Hansen vs Kawada. Simply put, at the match or worker level, there is no such thing as the King’s Road style.
However, in historical terms, the era had all of the more meta-level signatures mentioned above. That – I contend – is the best and only way to think of and explain 1990s AJPW: as an era; as a project; or as an approach to wrestling at the company level.
Legacy
Wrestling the ‘heavenly road’ became such a popular term in the puroresu media that in 2005 a new company was set up, taking the name ‘King’s Road’. Although the promotion was short-lived due to controversial no-shows and a general feeling that it shows little genuine respect to the Corners of Heaven and Giant Baba, King’s Road the promotion showed just how important the 1990s AJPW was to Japanese Wrestling history. The term has become synonymous with excellence.
Many have questioned whether a second project like King’s Road could be used once again. NOAH’s promising of the Ark Road appears perhaps destined to position new Pillars at the top of wrestling. KENTA, Marufuji, Shiozaki are three possible contenders. Although it remains to be seen whether or not their already intensely stiff and dramatic matches can possibly be taken to another level in the wake of Misawa’s death and increasing investigations into the occupational safety of pro wreslers in Japan.
Whatever the Ark Road holds in store for us, its predecessor, the Road of Kings, remains the most artistically beautiful, athletically impressive and technically breathtaking showcase of simulated human combat in history.
Baba certainly built a story worthy of Kings, and we – the wrestling fans – benefitted.
Arigatou gozaimasu, Baba-sensei.