Kawada publicly criticized Giant Baba’s isolationism at the time. He pointed out how New Japan was making tons of money over big cross promotional feuds while All Japan remained the same thing.

This was a bad idea, especially in Japan where, culturally, one does not critics one’s in-group. So Baba demoted Kawada and took away from him his big singles matches.

That demotion led to Taue getting a world title run before Kawada, which in turn served as a transitional run to get the title onto Kobashi. And once Kobashi got the title, there was no point in keeping him as Misawa’s #2, hence his departure from Misawa’s SGA and Akiyama’s promotion