Champion Carnival 1995 Match: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Jun Akiyama - AJPW Champion Carnival 1995 - Day 1 21/03/1995
I adore this pairing. Tag matches or singles, it doesn’t really matter. This just works. Akiyama is the perfect young wrestler for Kawada to deflect his frustrations of losing the Triple Crown onto. Akiyama isn’t quite good enough to beat Kawada but he’ll put up a hell of a fight which only fuels Kawada’s fury. I love how Kawada’s offence got more petty each time Akiyama would get a run of offence. Almost like it’s a “oh fuck you” for this punk getting something on him. Akiyama continues to improve offensively and looks very good against Kawada despite the beating he took. He didn’t give up to the tight stretch plums easily and made Kawada work for that win. Exactly what this needed. ****
Champion Carnival 1995 Match: Kenta Kobashi vs. Akira Taue - AJPW Champion Carnival 1995 - Day 1 21/03/1995
My money was on a 30 minute draw with the slow start to this match but no, Taue scored the big win, giving him momentum for his finest hours yet. This felt a bit more of a fight unlike most All Japan matches that have a clean, refined structure. Taue was trying to fire off his sumo slap combos but Kobashi would snuff it out enough to make sure Taue doesn’t get clean connections. They constantly throw punches while tripping over each other. It was very scrappy in that regard. Taue eventually came out looking the far better of the two with his barrage of finishing moves (including 3 nodowas and a powerbomb on the outside), giving him the clean and definitive win over a struggling Kobashi. Super match. ****
Champion Carnival 1995 Match: Kenta Kobashi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa - AJPW Champion Carnival 1995 - Day 6 26/03/1995
Not a great match by any stretch. A little too boring and dry for a lot of the build - mostly consisting of strikes without it being fleshed out - until the final 3rd brought the goods. The match set Kobashi up as a real challenger for Misawa with Kobashi dictating most of the match and Misawa having to sneak a win on the defensive. It set out to build Kobashi which it did but the match could’ve been better. ***1/4
Champion Carnival 1995 Match: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa - AJPW Champion Carnival 1995 - Day 14 06/04/1995
Injuries are hard to recover from. And Misawa broke his orbital bone almost immediately from a Kawada kick to the face, so this took a good while to get cooking, naturally. You could argue that Misawa still was struggling towards the end but he was on auto-pilot by then and Kawada was his partner so it was still great wrestling. The match was more slower paced but still had some of the stiff violence that you’d expect, including more kicks to Misawa’s face because Kawada is going to be Kawada. Misawa was always in danger and couldn’t fully execute his spots, like catching Kawada’s chest instead of his jaw on a few elbow strikes, so Kawada was picking him apart. He really felt like the winner even if Misawa squeezed a title limit draw out of him. Awesome match, slowly but surely. ***3/4
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