This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the video here: https://youtu.be/IKn2giVOOxw
On April 18th 2004, Mick Foley would wrestle one of his most famous matches, a brutal hardcore brawl with Randy Orton. This match is famous not only for Foley being hell bent on avenging himself for his performance at Wrestlemania 20, but also for making fans see Randy Orton in a new light. This was a a match unlike any he'd had before.
After such a violent affair you might think Foley would go away for a while and heal his woulds, being after all in the twilight of his career, well, one of a few twilights if we're being honest. As it turns out, Foleys next match would take place just 18 days later in Japan, for a promotion known as HUSTLE. This was no preliminary match either, it was the semi-main event for the Triple Crown title against Toshiaki Kawada.
I won't pretend to be an expert on Kawada, but here is his legend in brief. He is known as one of the four pillars of Heaven, four men who raised All Japan pro wrestling to new heights throughout the 1990's. Misuhara Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue and Toshiaki Kawada all had epic battles against each other that in some cases broke the scale. Long before Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada broke Dave Meltzers famous 5 star scale, back in 1994 Dave awarded a match between Kawada and Misawa 6 stars. Kawada would be part of 21 5 star or higher matches, which puts him at in joint 3rd place for the most ever, with Kenny Omega. It's also worth noting that this might have been even harder to do in the 90's with how more difficult it was to access these classic matches.
So before I get into the match, how did it come about? Foley was booked at fairly short notice and for money he didn't feel he could turn down, despite still suffering from a bad knee from the Orton match. Foley was still signed to WWE at the time, but with HUSTLE being in Japan, and them not having any on screen plans for him for now, WWE didn't seem to mind him doing a match or two outside the US. The company that promoted HUSTLE as well as MMA promotion Pride were known as Dream Stage Entertainment, and they had began to draw suspicion after signing not just Foley, but Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Goldberg all to big money deals, at least 75 thousand each according to the Wrestling Observer. They were also apparently in negotiations with Stone Cold Steve Austin, but that never went anywhere. The promotion was a sort of experiment, an attempt to make American style Sports Entertainment work in Japan, which is well known for its more serious style, usually.
The HUSTLE 3 card where the match took place had many other American top level talents too. Steve Corino and Dusty Rhodes had a 6 minute match where both men managed to bleed. Sabu and Mike Awesome were on opposite sides of a tag match, both having competed for years in Japan for various promotions, mainly FMW. Also in the main event, Hall and Nash teamed up in what was said to be a terrible match. This would be one of the final matches Hall and Nash would wrestle as a team, with their final one being in TNA in 2010. Clearly a lot of money was being put into this promotion, but where it was coming from was a mystery that would later be solved. In mid 2006 it would be found that Dream Stage Entertainment may have had some links to the Japanese Mafia, leading to Pride which had become one of the biggest MMA promotions in the world, being sold to their main competitor UFC, and Hustle not. making it past 2009.
For the big match Foley would don the leopard print boots again, going under his Cactus Jack persona. This would have been how most fans in Japan knew him after the tours he did in the 90's. Before even the opening bell the camera catches a shot of the scratches all over his arms from going into barbed wire at Backlash. As you can probably imagine this match wasn't going to be easy for Foley, the very first thing that happens in the match is Kawada kicking him to test Foleys bad knee that he hurt on the Orton match, immediately putting him on the back foot. The early match is fairly slow and is just Foley and Kawada trading punches but also includes a rare Foley attempt at chain wrestling.
Once the action spills to the outside with Kawada throwing Foley over the top it starts to get interesting. Somehow Foley finds a barbed wire baseball bat, and begins throwing chairs into the ring. Foley tries all of his trademark moves, the piledriver, the elbow off the apron, even the corner punches into the running knee, and then ends with a double arm DDT, but none of these are even close to keeping Kawada down. Someone at ringside manages to get Foley's bat to him, but Kawada blocks its use for now. When all else fails, Foley pulls out Socko San, but Kawada reacts by kicking him in the head repeatedly. It's now time for one of Kawadas trademarks, a modified Dragon Sleeper which Foley won't give up from. Foley gets his mandible claw with Socko on, but this only seems to enrage Kawada, who kicks him in the head, and wins the match by pinfall. This was never going to be one of Kawada's five star classics, it was however impressive when you consider everything that Foley went through less than three weeks ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment