Ogawa and Hashimoto

[evilclown]

Has anyone written about the weird matches in 1999 between Hashimoto and Ogawa? It seems to me that this was part of Inoki's plan to capitalize on the growing popularity of MMA and worked just about as well as sending Nagata to be massacred. It seems like something John Williams may have written about, but internet searches are letting me down. Any one have thoughts on these matches? I remember them being very exciting, but they kind of destroyed one of New Japan's big draws for little long term benefit.

[El-P]

The matches sucked, Ogawa couldn't work a lick and it killed Hashimoto's aura. It really kicked off the downward spiral of New Japan in the 00's. That's what I remember abot those horrible matches.

[kjh]

Has anyone written about the weird matches in 1999 between Hashimoto and Ogawa?

Meltzer wrote about the feud in his Shinya Hashimoto obituary issue of the Observer in 2005. I could fish it out if that would be helpful. Ogawa going over to blow off the feud was one of the biggest mistakes New Japan made in that era.

[Bix]

On 1Wrestlingtalk way back when, there was a UFO office rep who posted there. IIRC he defended Ogawa and Inoki to some degree and said that Hashimoto was given a small amount of notice that some kind of shooting was going down. No idea of any of this is on Archive.org.

[ohtani's jacket]

The matches sucked, Ogawa couldn't work a lick and it killed Hashimoto's aura. It really kicked off the downward spiral of New Japan in the 00's. That's what I remember abot those horrible matches.

Nothing could have prevented the downward spiral of New Japan. The seeds were there when they were doing bumper business.

[Death From Above]

I remember the Murakami/Ogawa vs. Iizuka/Hashimoto match at the 2000 Dome show being quite good.

 

The singles matches were really awful though, and I agree Ogawa going over to end the feud was never going to do much positive.

[El-P]

The matches sucked, Ogawa couldn't work a lick and it killed Hashimoto's aura. It really kicked off the downward spiral of New Japan in the 00's. That's what I remember abot those horrible matches.

Nothing could have prevented the downward spiral of New Japan. The seeds were there when they were doing bumper business.

 

Yeah, the downward spiral really began in 1997 with the first Sasake-to-the-top push I think. 1997 was the year of the disaster for puro anyway. But still, it really killed Hashimoto, and that was the dumbest move they could have made at this point. Of course they would do even worse in the following years.

[El-P]

I remember the Murakami/Ogawa vs. Iizuka/Hashimoto match at the 2000 Dome show being quite good.

Murakami. That's a shitty name of the past. Never got the appeal this guy seem to have at one point with the IWC.

[jdw]

Has anyone written about the weird matches in 1999 between Hashimoto and Ogawa? It seems to me that this was part of Inoki's plan to capitalize on the growing popularity of MMA and worked just about as well as sending Nagata to be massacred. It seems like something John Williams may have written about, but internet searches are letting me down. Any one have thoughts on these matches? I remember them being very exciting, but they kind of destroyed one of New Japan's big draws for little long term benefit.

WrestlingClassics discussions. One of the first times I *really* pissed Dave off, as we had wildly different views on Hash-Ogawa.

 

Probably could search over there with my User ID and "Ogawa". Might be a couple of threads, but there was one longer, more detailed one that sent him off.

 

John

[Victator]

Were you a fer it or agin it?

[jdw]

Was against it at the time it happened, and that it was trashing Hash. Pretty loudly... which is probably what Jon is remembering. The WC threads were probably a few years after, but captures it.

 

John