>>14592390King's Road isn't a style of working in the same way as Strong Style is. Strong Style is working heavy and stiff to give matches a more realistic feeling.
King's Road is a booking philosophy which emphasis an ever increase challenge and escalating stakes. During the Four Pillars era of AJPW that meant increasingly more dangerous spots and people willing to sawdust themselves to make it to the top. Having a one off match that is stiff and heavy alone does not match it a King's Road match.
AJPW has not been King's Road since Mutoh took the books after Baba's death and tried to steer the promotion towards a sports entertainment style of booking. There were a lot of reasons that AJPW began to decline during the Mutoh era, the sports entertainment aspect being one of them, but was primarily driven by the exodus to Noah stripping away a lot of their top talent. For what it is worth Mutoh's attempt to course correct into sports entertainment was the right one, as evidenced by the fact Misawa attempted to continue the King's Road philosophy in Noah and ended up losing his life because of it. In much the way Russo's philosophy of Crash TV was a dead end since you can only ever continue to build up the gonzo stuff until it becomes so ridiculous that it turns off the audience, King's Road was a dead end for the growth and development of professional wrestling. If you can only ever escalate the stakes inevitably you will reach a point where everything becomes too dangerous and deaths will occur.
Ironically enough FMW's switch to sports entertainment was responsible for Hayabusa hayabusaing himself, but I don't have enough characters left in this post to explain it.
