Trivia / Mitsuharu Misawa

• Creator Backlash: He viewed his time as Tiger Mask II as this. He hated wearing the mask, didn't think he could embody the gimmick like Satoru Sayama did and also felt that being Tiger Mask II stiffled his moveset and his career.
• What Could Have Been: Several.
  • While the feud successfully built AJPW's next generation of stars, Misawa's feud with Jumbo Tsuruta never really reached its payoff. After that first shock pin in June 1990, Misawa had lost the next two consecutive singles matches against Jumbo, but the two wrestled to a time-limit draw in the 1992 Champion Carnival tournament, which ended up being their final singles meeting. Jumbo would never be the same after what turned out to be hepatitis reared its ugly head in the middle of that year, and while he managed to return for a couple of months and have a few decent tag matches, he needed to leave again after completing the October tour, and was never the same. With how methodical and patient Baba would prove to be during the King's Road era proper, it was probably inevitable that Jumbo's health would make a definitive conclusion to the Misawa feud a moot point, but maybe if he'd had just one more year in good health...
  • Misawa was invited by Union of Wrestling Forces International to compete in their world tournament in February 1994, but he never answered.
  • Keiji Mutoh had wanted to work with Misawa since the early 1990s, and during his 1995 IWGP Heavyweight Championship reign he even wanted Misawa to challenge for the title in an interpromotional match for which he was completely willing to put him over. The NJPW vs. UWF-I feud ended up happening instead, with Mutoh defeating the challenging invader Nobuhiko Takada.
  • After splitting with Jun Akiyama, Misawa wanted Masahito Kakihara to be his next tag partner. Baba shot this down as he did not understand the appeal of shoot style, and while his preferred choice was Maunakea Mossman (who would become better known in post-exodus AJPW as Taiyo Kea), Yoshinari Ogawa was agreed upon as a compromise.

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