I was all set to come and write about the honeymoon. Then I found out Mitsuharu Misawa was dead, and I don't feel like it anymore.

Misawa was the president of NOAH, Japan's second largest promotion. He was still active in the ring, and while older, still pushing his body in the style he helped popularise in the 1990s - hard hitting, realistic, dramatic and exciting. He died of a cardiac arrest following a standard back bump in a tag match in Hiroshima today.

He was All Japan's top guy - or ace - during those years, and produced many of the decades, and history's, greatest matches. There was never an ace like Misawa. His style was a blend of heavyweight striking, bumping and in-ring storytelling, combined with a heavy influences of junior heavyweights: the high spots, the aerial moves, the incredible pace.

With Misawa at the top, All Japan main events and quality professional wrestling were near synonymous - the increase in intensity and impact that started at the end of the 1980s, combined with the traditional rooting in in-ring story-telling and drama, was carried much further by Misawa and his peers. While I always favoured company number two Toshiaki Kawada for in-ring performance, Misawa was by far more influential and much more of a driving force of this revolution. Their match on June 3rd 1994 is simply the greatest, most perfect singles match ever wrestled in Japan, if not globally.

In recent years, the years of physical abuse clearly taking a toll, his role has shifted towards a tired veteran - still fighting, still great, but constrained by a body that isn't what it was. His final GHC title run, culminating with the loss to Takeshi Morishima last year was typified by this, and he found him almost as compelling to watch then as I did during his physical peak. You always hope that these icons of pro wrestling can finish with dignity, and see out their (hopefully many) days in comfort. That his end came in the ring, at the age of 46, obviously fails to meet that criteria, although there is something tragically inevitable that a man who pushed his body for twenty five years would finally be overcome by it.

I hope NOAH survives this, and although this little corner of the internet isn't going to be seen by those it is intended for, I extend my condolences to his family and friends, to the NOAH roster and to its fans.

Mitsuharu Misawa, 1962-2009.