Toshiaki Kawada and Cactus Jack Wrestling is the Least Interesting Thing About This
Toshiaki Kawada and Cactus Jack Wrestling is the Least Interesting Thing About This
It is what it is.
This match is fine.
A large part of the appeal of seeing this comes from purely novelty. It’s true, Cactus Jack did a few tours for All Japan back in the day. Most notably, he was a participant in the 1991 Champion Carnival where a pretty famous fancam of him wrestling Jumbo Tsuruta has floated about online. General consensus seems to say that Jack never really did any of his best work on those All Japan tours, as he was far from a centerpiece of booking and some of the best work of his career would still be ahead of him.
Still, even in the 2000s, there remains some allure around Mick Foley returning to Japan to battle one of the most beloved heavyweights of the 90s. At this stage of his career, Toshiaki Kawada is the last of the famed Four Pillars to have remained with All Japan after the NOAH split. As such, he’s finally in the middle of the extended, dynastic reign that has been denied him over the years thanks to an unhealthy combination of poorly timed injuries and being second banana to the booker’s favorite.
In that way, Foley and Kawada are similar. They’re two wrestlers who became legends in the 90s, floated about the top of the card in their home promotions, but were never truly the main center of attention throughout their tenure.
These parellelisms and histories are frankly more interesting than what the match itself has to offer.
As the story goes, this comes just a few weeks after Foley’s famous Backlash bout against Randy Orton. A match as great as that, it’s no shock that Foley didn’t have much left for this bout with Kawada. The vast majority of this is just trading strikes, with Kawada using his signature kicks while Cactus Jack tries to break through with his punches. The striking starts a little plain from both, but it does gradually improve especially on Cactus’ side. Kawada’s kicks always land, but one gets the impression that Cactus does have to wake up before this is over and start landing those punches a little better too.
It’s really when Cactus starts tightening up those blows that there’s at least some semblance of spark to this. If nothing else, that climactic kick that finally puts Cactus down rules too. There’s probably just enough here to rescue it from being bad, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend that anyone go out of their way to see it.
It’s the kind of match that just passes one by, allowing the mind to drift to other more inconsequential details. In the middle of this match, when the two start fighting to the floor, I found myself more struck by the beauty of Yokohama Arena. Even if it doesn’t have the same size as the Tokyo Dome nor the distinct architectural features of Osaka-Jo Hall, there’s something striking about the venue all the same. The way it’s filmed with the grand stage looming in the background, striking a balance between grandeur and intimacy. On sight alone, it couldn’t help but recall other famous events in that venue like Dream Slam I.
Hokuto/Kandori this ain’t though.
Rating: **3/4
This was, for the most part, a "storyline" match for Hustle, which doesn't excuse it for being sort of flat, but conceptually makes sense.
During this run, Kawada was a well known curmudgeon and his showing up in HUSTLE was such a shock. A lot of his early run was based off of the idea that he refused to integrate into HUSTLE and found the concept ridiculous, even though his pal/contemporary Hashimoto was fine with it.
There's a clip going around of Taichi (who was his second here and while he's billed as a few of the other pillars' student, he stuck around in AJPW and hung with Kawada the most) backstage while Kawada prepped for this match and starts to do the Hashimoto HUSTLE dance and Kawada turns to him with an angry glare and stiffs him with a low kick that visibly pains him. It's been shared around even within the last year or so as one of those "they're more stiff in Japan/THIS is how you treat a young wrestler" types of things, but it was just a storyline thing. Obviously, if you find later Kawada HUSTLE clips he sings and dances and, effectively, makes enough money to open up his cozy lil ramen shop where he hangs out now.
This match disappointed the hell out of me when it first happened, though. Was really expecting more. This was also when Kawada was going harder on his singles matches ending by ref stoppage, either by rear naked choke or via his running face kick to a seated opponent.
I think what let me down was that the tone of the press conference suggested that this would be awesome, to the extent that I remembered the conference and not the match. It's weird, but this is the concept he'd later adapt to his feud against Flair, and that was a much more satisfying match, even if it also had its problems/featured two guys who were far more broken down than Foley was here.