Kawada Discusses His Impression of His Senior, Misawa (Excerpt from "Mitsuharu Misawa: The Supreme Triple Crown Champion")

In April 1979, Misawa, who was in his second year of high school, had a fateful encounter.    

Toshiaki Kawada, who entered the school that year, joined the wrestling club. Though their personalities were completely different, the two men shared a common thread. Both grew up in single-parent households, Misawa decided he wanted to become a professional wrestler in his second year of junior high. While Kawada, who played on the baseball team at Fujioka Daiichi Junior High School and competed in sumo tournaments, also became interested in professional wrestling in his second year of junior high. He was deeply moved by The Funks (vs Abdullah the Butcher & The Sheik) when he saw them perform on TV in the World Open Tag Team Championship. From then on, Kawada began watching All Japan Pro Wrestling broadcasts every week, and also never missed a single New Japan Pro Wrestling broadcast. By the time he was in his third year of junior high school, he began seriously considering becoming a professional wrestler. He then purchased training equipment with the money he earned from his part-time job delivering newspapers, and began training on his own, successfully increasing his weight from 75kg to 35kg. With no particular desire to join any particular promotion, he sent letters to All Japan and New Japan asking if they were hiring new recruits, and when they responded, he took the entrance test for New Japan. 

In the fall of 1978, Kawada visited the New Japan Dojo in Setagaya, Tokyo, and easily passed the basic physical fitness test, which included 500 squats, 10 sets of 30 push-ups, flexibility, neck exercises, and bridges. But then he got into trouble when he beat a young wrestler in the sparring session that followed.

The man who appeared before him was Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Kawada was brutally beaten to a pulp, but it was Fujiwara who gave him his first taste of professional wrestling. Though Fujiwara left him bloodied, Kawada had passed the test. He passed his interview with Kotetsu Yamamoto at the office, and a few days later, New Japan contacted him, telling him to come after he graduated. However, the gods of professional wrestling didn't let Kawada in so easily. Like Misawa, his middle school teachers persuaded him to at least graduate from high school. "After three years of high school, you can go into professional wrestling. It's not too late," they said, and Kawada decided to attend Aichi University of Technology. Before enrolling, he went shopping at school to buy the supplies he'd need for high school life. That's when Coach Oshima called out to him, took him to the wrestling club room, and introduced him to Mitsuharu Misawa, a year ahead of him. "This guy also wants to become a professional wrestler," he said.

Kawada wasn't initially a scholarship student, but within a few weeks of joining the club, his teacher said to him him, "I'll make you a scholarship student, so why don't you live in the dormitory?" He accepted, expecting his tuition to be cheaper. Kawada recalls, "When I say "dormitory", I don't think it's the kind of dormitory you'd imagine. The volleyball club had a proper prefabricated dormitory, but the wrestling club's dormitory was a really old house, probably built in the early Showa period! It had wooden doors, and even the window frames were made of wood. It was a really old, dirty place. It was more like a storage shed (wry smile). So, Watanabe, me, and one other person lived in a 4.5 tatami mat room. I think Misawa and his group were in a slightly larger room, so there were about four of us"

Kawada also shared his impression of his high school senior, Misawa: "I don't know if Misawa was a decent person, or if the other seniors were decent people, but I feel that he didn't get along with the others. Misawa was the type of person who didn't want to have to do his own things, like doing his own laundry or going shopping. He would make his juniors do his errands, and since he didn't do the things the other seniors did, it made it seem like Misawa was the only one who was trying to look cool. He'd even get into fights with Watanabe, and he and Okawa would beat Misawa up (wry smile). One senior even forced me to eat a booger he'd found on the wall, saying, 'Eat it, I put it there a few days ago!' That's just how the seniors are."

Watanabe also remembers a fight with Misawa, saying, "Okawa and I were messing around with a junior about something, and Misawa jumped on us like, 'Don't talk like that!' and we started arguing... He grabbed me by the collar, so we started fighting, and Okawa and I hit Misawa hard (wry smile). I also got dropkicked by Misawa. We were doing some repetitive tackle practice, but the coach said, 'Finish by a certain time,' and went outside. If the coach was gone, we'd get bored, right? So we all started joking around,  I don't remember what happened, but Misawa and I got into a bit of an argument. So I turned my back like, 'Shut up!' and he actually dropkicked me (wry smile). I was defenceless when he hit me with it, and I went flying. Misawa often did dropkicks jokingly, but I think I was the only one who got seriously hit by one," he laughs. Given this kind of relationship, it's safe to say it was inevitable that Misawa and Kawada, both aspiring professional wrestlers, would become close. 

Kawada recalls, "Misawa was the only one in the dorm who had a TV, so we watched pro wrestling together. Rather than a particular wrestler we liked, both Misawa and I had a strong desire to become like them. Misawa wanted to join All Japan, but I think I was about half-and-half between All Japan and New Japan...but we never played at wrestling". Watanabe says that, "in this way I got to see Misawa and Kawada close up, before they went pro".  

Kawada recalls Misawa as an amateur wrestler, not just someone who was pretending be a pro wrestler, "He did moves that only someone with long arms and legs could do. He was a year older than me, so I felt I couldn't compete with him because he'd started a year earlier, but I don't think he was trying to master amateur wrestling. In Misawa's case, didn't he start wrestling with the goal of becoming a professional wrestler? It's the same for me, but once I started wrestling, I became passionate about it. But I think Misawa was wrestling while looking beyond wrestling."

Misawa and Kawada have a history spanning more than 20 years, from when they first met in the wrestling clubroom of Aichi University of Technology in April 1979 to their final one-on-one match at Pro Wrestling Noah's Tokyo Dome on July 18, 2005. Many things have happened during that long time, but what still comes to mind is the image of Kawada calling out affectionately, "Misawa-san, Misawa-san!" and Misawa yelling, "You shut up!" It's a sweet, senior-junior relationship that's continued since high school.