(NOAH) Scramble History ~ Toshiaki Kawada vs Akitoshi Saito

The two Misawa generation contemporaries, Toshiaki Kawada and Akitoshi Saito, have had three matches in total including one singles match and one tag match, aside from a championship match (which they never had), they have ticked all boxes. Saito has never beaten Kawada, and as Kawada no longer wrestles, he will never beat him.

Their first match took place in what was then known as Kensuke Office (it later changed its name to "Diamond Ring") at their first anniversary show in 2008. In what was somewhat a monster match with Genichiro Tenryu (who Kawada knew very well from All Japan as he was a senior), Kensuke Sasaki, Minoru Suzuki & Yoshihiro Takayama (who had walked out of All Japan with Misawa) faced off against Akitoshi Saito, Shinjiro Otani, Toshiaki Kawada and Yutaka Yoshie.
The match was won by Kensuke Sasaki's team.

Their last two matches took place in Noah, and both after Misawa's death. The matches took place in 2010 and within a few months of each other. To give you a little background, by 2010, Toshiaki Kawada had been having issues with his old promotion due to issues of pay. To put it bluntly, he hadn't been paid by All Japan for months. Kawada did what the rest of the Four Pillars had done ten years before, he went to Noah. He hadn't been in Noah much before this point, facing Mitsuharu Misawa in 2005 at the Tokyo Dome (this was their last match ever), and then again in October 2009 for the Misawa Memorial show in Osaka when The Holy Demon Army (himself and Akira Taue) reunited to take on Jun Akiyama and KENTA (who said he hadn't forgotten the days in the All Japan dojo). Kawada stayed with Noah from February to July 2010, and appeared in Noah's Global League that year.

The second match the two had was a tag, Kawada teamed with Kazushi Miyamoto against Saito and Atsushi Aoki, with his team getting the victory at "Great Voyage 2010 in Yokohama". Their final match ever was in the inaugural Global League 2010, both were in Block B, which ended with Kawada defeating Akitoshi Saito in 16 minutes and 13 seconds. However, the league was ultimately won by Yoshihiro Takayama.

As an ironic side note, Kawada's final two matches ever were not in All Japan, they were in Noah and New Japan; Noah which of course Misawa had started the rift with All Japan when he walked out and which wouldn't properly be resolved until 2018 after years of bitterness, and New Japan who were All Japan's traditional rivals (Kenta Kobashi said that wrestlers from the two promotions were forbidden to talk to each other at award ceremonies, and this was something that is ingrained in a lot of the veterans from that era). Toshiaki Kawada's last match ever took place on the 15th August 2010, teaming with Tenryu & Tiger Mask against AKIRA, Riki Choshu & Super Strong Machine in New Japan. It's true that Kawada has never officially retired, and neither did he want any kind of last match or ceremony, he just didn't feel he could physically wrestle anymore (although he still looked as if he could kill you if he wanted to), and with Misawa dead his heart was no longer in it. He would rediscover his passion for wrestling, but in a different way in 2018.

Kawada's career which had begun in All Japan in Osaka in October 1982, ended in August 2010 under circumstances that Giant Baba never would have believed.