This review was commissioned by Dan Vacura over on my Ko-fi account.
The impossible become reality.
Joe vs. Kobashi remains the gold standard for the “dream match” in large part because of how unthinkable it seemed at the time. When talking over potential match ups that might even come close to replicating the awe that this match has imparted on generations of fans, nothing one could pitch ever feels even in the same league. The timing of this bout’s occurrence is unlike anything before or since—two men at the respective top of their scenes, still within what many would consider their primes, doing battle.
Even to this day, looking back on it, the match still feels impossible. Just three months before, Kenta Kobashi’s lighting the world on fire with a Tokyo Dome bout that has captured the imaginations of so many to come, and then in October, finding his way to this ballroom in New York City to do it all over again.
It should be no surprise that this one has a larger piece of my heart than the Sasaki one. Joe just means more to me. And how could he not after the two year run he’d been on at this point of his career? The ROH World Championship reign is behind him, but the magnitude of its legacy is still fresh in the minds of the promotion’s fans. On top of that, Joe’s own notoriety had only grown in that time, finally arriving to TNA TV, and racking up even greater classics to his name through 2005—already this year he’s had the famous Necro match, the Unbreakable three-way is less than a month before this, and the AJ Styles classic is only a couple months ahead of him too. “Joe’s gonna kill you” is less a chant and more of an anthem in the hearts of those observing the highest peak that any pro wrestler has ever reached in history.
How astonishing then when Joe finds himself face-to-face with someone who refuses to die?
Kenta Kobashi engenders such awe here. There’s that famous story of Kobashi thinking he needed to play a stereotypically sneaky heel to get over with an American audience, and the crowd packed into this ballroom go the extra mile to prove him wrong. There’s such reverence for him from every angle of this. The production gives him orange lighting, the fans bring a big Korakuen Hall-style banner for him in Japanese, and the streamers rain down like tributes from devoted worshippers. Samoa Joe may be the man in ROH, but for the first time he comes face to face with a god.
And then the bell rings.
They set such a beautiful tone so quickly. Those early probing leg kicks from Joe showing that he has no fear, punctuated by that disrespectful slap once he gets Kobashi on the ropes. And then, that little glance from Kobashi over his shoulder at the hard cam. That expression of stunned indignation, telling everyone watching that Joe may have just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Joe’s always been naturally cocky as a performer, and it works well to give him a bit of an antagonistic edge in the opening moments. He’s younger than Kobashi, hits just as hard, and he’s watched all those King’s Road tapes. He nails Misawa’s elbow suicida, grabs a face lock, goes into the Stretch Plum, all with that shit eating grin on his face like he’s proving a point. It’s almost easy to root against him early on, especially when he costs himself in key moments like going back to the Ole! Kick one time too many, allowing Kobashi to seize control on the floor. Watch the way he bumps out of his chair and over the barricade, it’d be a perfect heel stooge bump if Joe didn’t make the rest of the match feels so much richer and complicated than that.
Kobashi applies punishment to Joe’s arrogance so wonderfully too. He does so by beating the shit out of Joe with those famous thunderous chops, while also applying similar ideas that Joe was using in a more effective way. Note how Kobashi works to soften up Joe with more standard offense like the chops and striking before then going to something like the Misawa facelock—a small lesson in patience and sequencing built into the moment.
And god bless Samoa Joe too. For all the memories you have of him standing tall and trading with legend, you might be overlooking how much he puts into his bumping and selling for Kobashi as well. Everything registers on Joe’s face, especially at this point in his career when he had an almost Fujinami-esque mastery of conveying complex and shifting emotions in a match. It’s so effective, in fact, that a switch flips towards the back half where reality catching up with Joe’s ego makes him a sympathetic figure. Watch the way he struggles to even stay on his feet, a more restrained version even of Kobashi’s stumbling fighting spirit selling of the early 90s. For so much of the back half, he looks like he’s grappling with his own worth and ability in this life or death battle.
All the hope spots for Joe ring so true though. Where he starts the match emulating and smug, he’s able to develop much more vicious strategies down the stretch. He hits hard enough to have some stopping power against an older legend. He ends up on the winning end of several strike exchanges, and later on, is able to wear Kobashi down enough to get him into powerbomb position. Where the Joe at the start of the match might have gone straight for Tenryu-style folding powerbomb, this battered and cornered Joe instead twists around to drive Kobashi into the turnbuckles instead. It’s a nasty little change from the gameplan, one that speaks volumes to Joe realizing that the water is deeper than he expected.
Even with that reality setting in though, it’s amazing how much Joe gets out of this. From the steady, assured way he carries himself to the fight he’s able to put up when the walls start closing in, Samoa Joe never once gets outshined by Kenta Kobashi, and this match leaves them feeling a lot closer to equals than they might have before the bell rang.
And to think, Joe accomplishes all that without some of the standard shorthand used in these contexts. The nearfalls are from egregious, there’s no big one count fire up, if anything Joe stays down for way more than you might remember—often needing rope breaks to just keep the match get going instead of forcing his shoulders up. By the end of it, he looks like he’s on the verge of death while Kobashi stands tall with his victory. All that, and it still brings Joe even closer to the pinnacle than any of those cheaper choices might have.
A classic for a reason, all you’ve heard about is true.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Yes, and probably better than most Misawa/Kobashi matches to boot. A real, honest to God moment in time that can not be recaptured. What a thing.
Rating: ****3/4
