If Shinya Hashimoto Plays With Love it Can Bring Tears My Dear

Shinya Hashimoto vs. The Great Oz NJPW 5/17/92 - GREAT

ER: Hash is one of those guys I love so much, that I love seeing him against weird opponents as much or more than seeing him in legendary matches with legendary performers. Funk, Lawler, Hansen, they all have legendary feuds and opponents, but I love seeing those guys opposite weird guys. Hashimoto vs. early career Kevin Nash is weird, and I am here for it. Nash is a guy who got a bad rap from the Scott Keiths of the world, but time has been kind to him. Here he's raw and, well, green [*reminder to come up with funnier Oz joke before posting*], but brings big presence and an early career willingness to try new things. It's fun to see early career offense that gets abandoned, and the Great Oz of 1992 does a couple things that were already distant memories by the time 1993 Diesel rolled around. You get great stuff like two burly guys slamming into each other with shoulderblocks, but I also loved how Oz didn't let himself get picked apart too much by Hash. Oz obviously had size over him, but Hash was remarkably fast (look how quickly he gets to his feet or rolls to the floor) and hit harder. I've seen a lot of Green Giants get eaten alive on Japan tours, suddenly finding themselves in a place where they don't speak the language opposite a guy who smells blood, and they can wind up looking like real doofuses. Here, when Hash throws some hard chops and kicks, Oz responds with possibly the only high kick of his career. Not a big boot mind you, but Oz throws a sweeping high right kick to the left side of Hashimoto's head, total K-1 legend. We get great leaping elbow drops from both men, Oz breaks out a weird bulldog (not traditional style, done more like the way Kelly Kelly would do a bulldog, which is weird to see from a 7' guy), and I loved the double DDT finish. Hashimoto spikes DDTs like few, and the nearfall off the first DDT was a gem, didn't think Oz would kick out of that one. He does not kick out of the one that follows.


Shinya Hashimoto vs. Hubert Numrich NJPW 11/2/97 - FUN

Numrich is a German K1 guy and this was a mixed fight. Hashimoto is my favorite guy to watch in these kind of matches, as he can usually find something interesting to do with a big MMA lug. Numrich was no Gary Goodrich or Tony Halme though, he was really obviously pulling his shots, and it was tough for Hashimoto to go down to pitter pats. I did really like the nasty Judo throw into the stiff side headlock for the tap, but that barely kept it out of Skippable territory for me.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SHINYA HASHIMOTO

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2009: FUTEN Tag VS. Foley vs. Nash

Kevin Nash vs. Mick Foley TNA Hard Justice 8/16/09

ER: This is a great match. A legitimately great match. Kevin Nash was 50 in this match and I'm doubtful that he has another performance as good at any point in his career. Foley barely had 10 matches left in his career at this point and he turns in easily one of his best performances of the decade. I honestly didn't think either of these two had a match anywhere close to this good in them at this point in their careers. This is a straight up fight, with great selling from both, great blood, and no skipped steps. The selling is great from go, as Nash is throwing super forceful knees in the corner to Foley's gut, and Foley is just stumbling and crumpled after. This whole match is like a super serious version of the Roy Munson/Big Ern showdown, and I mean that in the best way possible. Both men were worn, not 100%, tired, but proud. As the match goes on Nash keeps making all of these hard-breathing "what the hell is wrong with this guy...what the hell is wrong with me!?" faces. Foley takes a hard spill onto the apron, then gets kicked into the guardrail and flies backwards into it, banging off it in sick fashion. Foley amps the crazy by doing his leaping elbow off the apron, with Nash under a chair, and Foley gets his head busted open when Nash shifts the chair.

Foley gets a classic Mick gusher going, and Nash is savage working it over, and still wrecking the rest of Foley's body by ramming the back of his head into the ringpost, the steps, and keeping those knees and elbows coming. Nash's knees and elbows move slow here, but the hit with great impact. His hair keeps getting more fly aways, his eyes keep saying "why isn't this OVER" but there's Foley, getting up after each rough fall, firing back with headbutts and hard fists, and you know Nash gets busted open too. We even get the visual of blood flying onto the camera like I'm watching Hacksaw Ridge. Nash works over Foley's cut with elbows and jabs, and Nash's own cut is dripping pretty good. We don't get a great finish, with Traci Brooks running out and getting on the apron for reasons I don't care about and will never bother to look up, but I liked how the two wrestlers handled the final moments: Foley distracted by Brooks, Nash gives him and eyepoke and boot to the face before Foley can use his barbed wire bat, and Nash pins him by defiantly/desperately pulling that leg WAY back while sitting on his chest. This was an awesome old guy war, the kind of war that's tough for younger wrestlers to have because the added mileage of both men adds in every way to the brutality. This was legitimately great.

PAS: Cactus Jack was at one point my favorite wrestler in the world, one of the first comp tapes I made was a Best of Cactus Jack. I assumed he was completely washed by 2009 but this was a classic Foley performance, basically it was the WCWSN Vader match, with fucking Kevin Nash of all people playing the role of Vader, and doing a pretty solid job of it. The couple of insane bumps Foley takes are legit insane Foley bumps, when Nash kicks him into the guardrail you can see his head snap into the metal and hear the dull thud. The hipbuster elbow into the chair was lunacy, you could see the metal bend, and that eye wound that opened up was truly grizzly. Don't have a ton of nice things to say about TNA over its run, but they would always bring the plasma. Nash landed his stuff with real force, and I enjoyed how frantic he got as Foley kept coming, really good subtle in ring acting. Finish was kind of goofy and unnecessary but otherwise this was a treat. Eddie Marlin vs. Tommy Gilbert with insane bumps, can't ask for more then that

FUTEN Tag Review

Verdict:

PAS: I figured this would be a swamping. FUTEN tags are maybe my favorite thing in wrestling history, but Nash vs. Foley was really awesome. If it had a better ending I could actually see this being a discussion, but that run-in was pretty deflating and the FUTEN retains.

ER: This started when I watched the match a couple months ago on a lark. I'd seen it brought up in various places as a good brawl, and one late night I was in the mood for a short old guy wrestling brawl before bedtime. I never actually considered that the match would be worth writing up, let alone worth writing up as a challenger for our All Time MOTY list. But I was pretty blown away by the performances here, and can honestly say it's one of my 5 favorite matches in TNA history. The ending was stupid, and I would have been furious had I wrecked my body in a physical match only to have it end with an angle that nobody was going to remember. I think this match would have finished really really high if we had a 2009 MOTY List. It's not beating the FUTEN tag, but at several points during the match I loved that my brain was actually thinking "IS THIS MATCH GOING TO BEAT THE FUTEN TAG!?" That's a pretty wild accomplishment on its own, and I would heartily recommend everyone watch this match right now.

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