All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2004: Kawada vs. Hashimoto VS. Necro vs. Klein

Shinya Hashimoto vs. Toshiaki Kawada AJPW 2/22/04 

ER: This is the definition of Dream Match wrestling with actual, real purpose and incredible execution. Beyond being one of the biggest one-off dream matches in wrestling history, the fact that both men worked the exact brutal match that everyone viewing it as a dream match would want to see just cements its legendary status. Hashimoto beat Great Muta for the Triple Crown Title almost exactly a year before this match, but badly injured his shoulder in a July 2003 tag match opposite Kawada, and wound up vacating the Triple Crown due to that ongoing shoulder issue. Kawada never actually beat Hashimoto for the Triple Crown - he beat Mike Awesome and Shinjiro Ohtani in a tournament - so this match was the showdown every single fan wanted to see happen the second Hash won the Triple Crown. Since vacating that title due to his shoulder, Hashimoto continued working through the injury until it got so bad that it inadvertently lead to his death, when the necessary surgery required him to stop taking his heart medication. But now, nearly 8 months after first injuring it and much worse for wear, that shoulder is wrapped up with a trainer's room worth of KT tape, and in classic puro tradition would be targeted in the most sadistic ways. 

Hashimoto takes a logically sound wrestling psychology approach to the match by targeting Kawada's knee, whereas Kawada opts for a straight ahead vicious approach by aiming to destroy Hashimoto's shoulder and set the snowball rolling fast down the hill towards his death. While it's entirely unfair to say that Toshiaki Kawada murdered Shinya Hashimoto, Toshiaki Kawada murdered Shinya Hashimoto. The selling from both is incredible from stoic beginning to white towel finish, starting with Hash selling Kawada's first kick with the same disinterest as a man scrolling his phone while eating a half sandwich in his work break room, and while he's wobbled down to a knee after walking into a Kawada crescent kick, it's not before he cups Kawada's ear with a slap so hard that Kawada's ear starts leaking blood. When someone's ear is bleeding a couple minutes in, you'd think that would be the most violent thing you were going to see, and they spend 15 minutes trying to top it. 

There is a hamstring-knotting kick exchange so hard that after a half dozen of them their plant legs and kicking legs are both stiffening up, and we get one of those unparalleled Kawada leg wobbles, which Hash stops short with a leg sweep that looked like it would explode any mortal man's achilles. Hashimoto's dissection of Kawada's knee is done with the confidence of a man who is not advertising to the world that his shoulder is currently constructed of milk-soaked graham crackers, as he stomps on it, sits on it, jumps on it, and kicks at his tendons. The best part about Hashimoto's stomps is that he's not stomping on Kawada's knee the way a pro wrestler would, he's stomping on that knee like it's the biggest cockroach he's ever seen on his kitchen floor. Except Hashimoto does not fear this cockroach, he loathes this cockroach, and wants nothing more than to splatter its viscera across his tile. Also, he is in somebody else's house acting like a total asshole, and you can only get away with that for so long. 

Hashimoto gets away with it until he tries for an o goshi hip throw, and realizes what he's done when Kawada plants and pulls. Hash is now fighting to not get backdropped onto his shoulder - the way a man with a debilitating shoulder injury who is desperately trying to avoid surgery would - before being deadlifted completely against his will, his shoulder taking the entire brunt of the fall. You know when you try so hard to avoid a pothole that you end up driving right through it? Brother, Hashimoto's shoulder hit that pothole dead on. Kawada is now the mechanic who recognizes how fucked Hashimoto's suspension is, and he's gonna price gouge him hard. Now it's his turn, and he yanks on that shoulder, leaps onto it with his knees, kicks at it like a heavy bag. His knee is still shaky but not perilously so, and he runs the length of the ring to jam a boot as hard as he can into that shoulder, then whips his boot across the back of Hash's head with an enziguiri so strong that it sends Hash into a staggering Sean Salmon plunge, a reference almost as old as this match. 

Kawada's Stretch Plum with Hashimoto's shoulder as the focal point of all the pressure looks like one of the most painful holds ever applied. The wounded, anguished face of Hash as Kawada kicks his shoulder around the ring, is gutting. He looks like a mastodon who knows he's dying but merely attempting to stay on his feet due to animal survival instinct. That flame in his eyes as he finally catches one of those legs and slashes downward on Kawada's knee, and how he takes immense aggrieved pleasure in sizing up a huge roundhouse left to Kawada's chest after, is a reminder that even dying mastodon's have those lethal tusks. His brainbuster has incredible lift and spike, and is capped off by Hashimoto screaming like a railroad spike got driven into his shoulder on landing. That scream is the scream of a mortally wounded man and you can see him hit the pedal from there, going hard with high lefts to Kawada's chest and high rights to the back of his head, Kawada doing a full wobble legged teetering sell, cross-footed across the ring, the vacant expression of a man whose upper torso just weathered the hardest kicks of a 22 year career. 

But when Kawada manages to pull the Stretch Plum again, you know it's over. Hashimoto knows it's over but pride won't allow him to actually say so, a man who stood until he couldn't, towel thrown in as Zero-1's literal meal ticket takes years off his career by refusing to submit. We know one man did irreparable damage to his body in this match, but the selling is so next level that it feels like a match neither man would ever recover from. To that point, this was the last elite performance of either man's career. We didn't know that Hashimoto had only 60 matches left and that his last singles matches would be against King Dabada and UPW owner Rick Bassman. Kawada became more of a 2000s Taue who would turn it up in one big match or two every year, but never endured anything else like he did here. 

PAS: These two spent the 90s on parallel paths, a pair of killers slicing their way through the rosters of their respective promotions with vicious kicks. I was an active fan of Japanese wrestling during the primes of both wrestlers. I started getting video tapes from a local Japanese video store and quickly dove into the world of tape trading. This was the dream match I most wanted to see in 1994, a pair of threshing machines aimed at each other to see who would get chopped up. By the time we finally saw it 10 years later, they had mostly been threshed. Hashimoto's shoulder is cooked, Kawada's knees are toast; they are much closer to the end of it all than the beginning, which is what made this match so compelling. 

These aren't the two baddest dogs in the yard anymore. Their bodies don't work, but in their hearts and minds they can still deliver at that level, and they are going to rip each other into tiny pieces to prove it. The selling in this match is incredible, although I am not sure how much of it is selling. Kawada sells as if his knee is being destroyed, but his knee actually is being destroyed; Hashimoto's stoic demeanor is broken as he howls in pain, but I think he might actually just be howling in pain. One of the things which made the Thrilla in Manila such an iconic fight is that Ali and Frazier weren't at the peak of their powers anymore. Frazier was a year away from retirement, Ali never really reached those heights again. This was wrestling's Thrilla in Manila: two all time greats hanging by a string and falling together into the abyss. 

Necro Butcher vs. Toby Klein

Verdict: 

ER: I think we both knew that Hashimoto/Kawada was going to be our 2004 champ when we started this project a decade ago, but Necro/Klein is so damn good that we got a kick out of seeing it represented among the other All Time Classics. That match deserved its long reign, but the King has returned from battle, taking his rightful place on the throne. 

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