Joseph and Colette Discuss Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mick Foley

That it happened at all is reward enough, if you're the right kind of wrestling fan.

Hustle

When Mick Foley showed up to Backlash 2004, he was billed as Mick Foley, dressed as Cactus Jack, and wrestled so much like the Cactus Jack of old that Jim Ross didn’t really see the difference. A couple weeks later, he showed up in Japan, billed as Mick Foley and dressed as Cactus Jack to wrestle Toshiaki Kawada, a man whose violent streak was far more pronounced than Randy Orton’s.

This is a Mick Foley match. And not, like, the Mick Foley vs. Terry Funk match from Raw. It’s Mick Foley in WrestleMania 2000 mode, a guy offered a lot of money on short notice to wrestle a match without being physically prepared for it. WrestleMania 2000 would have been a dud even with Foley in shape, but it’s a shame about this one, as neither Joseph nor I really got into it. That said, we do get to have a fun chat about the right time for this match to’ve happened, and the potential of Goldberg in Japan. Read on!

Joseph: Toshiaki Kawada and Cactus Jack Wrestling Is the Least Interesting Thing About This
Colette: Seeking Goldberg Money, Mick Foley Takes His Licks from Toshiaki Kawada

Up Next: This week, on BIG EGG, we tackle a beloved lucha de apuestas! Blue Panther and Villano V put their masks on the line in the famed Arena Mexico. Only one man can come away with their identity intact in the home of lucha libre. It's Aniversario, it's mask vs. mask, it doesn't get much bigger in Mexico!

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Colette Arrand
I feel like both of us had to try pretty hard to find something to say about this match beyond “it was okay,” but something I didn’t get into much detail on is that this was the first Toshiaki Kawada match I ever saw, as some lunatic had it up on Dailymotion soon after the site launched, which was before I started looking into Japanese wrestling outside of my favorite American wrestlers having matches there. It didn’t leave a strong impression, though — I don’t know that it even registered that I’d seen Kawada before, by the time I got to All Japan. Forgettable match, which is a shame because I went into this with some fondness for it.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
It is a novelty of a match. Something that gets passed around just because it happened, instead of for anything that happens within it. Foley wanted to make some money for this as you detailed well, and honestly that's fine. The man's coming off one of his best matches ever against Randy Orton so while we know that he can still have amazing matches at this point, they're happening far less frequently than they might have in the 90s.

Colette Arrand
Which is a trend that started after Hell in a Cell 98, for obvious reasons. He was still up for gruesome spectacle and was a master at engendering sympathy, but those career-legitimizing performances against The Rock and Triple H had a lot of space between them where Foley was doing comedy and light brawling, and that remained more or less consistent whenever he returned. The Orton match and, to a lesser extent, the Edge match are outliers. That’s what made the return of Cactus Jack in 2000 feel dangerous and special, as well as when he found that edge again against Orton. He’s a replacement here, he has no mission to put anybody over, he’s pro enough to know that if fans are left with so much as one image to remember the match by that he’s succeeded, and he manages to do it. That picture of Kawada kicking Foley in the back of the head is iconic.