[2002-03-02-ZERO-ONE-Truth Century Creation] Shinya Hashimoto vs Masato Tanaka

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Superstar Sleeze]

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Shinya Hashimoto vs Masato Tanaka - Zero-One 3/02/02

I did not understand the appeal of this match as a MOTYC. It was a really great extended squash that saw Hashimoto pretty much fuck up Tanaka's day, but outside of that this match really did not offer much. It was just a follow-up to the Zero-One inaugural tag that established Hashimoto as an unstoppable, invulnerable force of nature. I will say Masato Tanaka's screeching in Japanese was really disconcerting and I would almost say disturbing. I felt really bad for him as he was just getting wrecked by the emotionless Hashimoto. At the beginning of the match Tanaka kicks the NWA belt away and Hashimoto will not stand for such disrespect and sends Tanaka running for the hill after beating him up in the corner. Tanaka's new strategy is to try to get toe to toe with Hash, but that works about as well as you think it would. The story of the match is that Tanaka would occasionally find an opening (lariat, forearms, attacking the knee), but could never string together any offense because well he is facing Hashimoto. The most entertaining moment of the match for me was when Hashimoto wiped out from a double stomp from the apron to the floor. Thankfully, he was able to catch the railing so he did not take a header into it. It is only funny because he did not get hurt. Boy, did he take out his embarrassment on poor Masato Tanaka with those kicks. It finally looks like Tanaka make actually make a run at Hashimoto by getting to his knee, but he just cant resist slapping Hashimoto, who responds with a punch that floors Tanaka. Tanaka tries to take down Hashimoto, but eats knee lifts before taking a DDT for 2. One last gasp for Tanaka who hits a roaring elbow and applies a choke, but as soon as Hashimoto stands up he just melts into a pool of defeated humanity. Brainbuster is the mercy killing for Masato Tanaka. The transitions for all the offense shifts were pretty bad. It felt like Hashimoto would let Tanaka do things and then he would just swat him from the sky. There was no heat. When you have a guy like Hashimoto it is always semi-entertaining to watch him just squash someone, but not a MOTYC in any way. ***

[Ditch]

I don't see it as a MOTYC, but it's on my bubble based on sheer ass-kicking.

[dawho5]

This was not a great wrestling match. Hell, in terms of wrestling matches it wasn't even that good. BUT it was all kinds of fun watching Hashimoto beat the shit out of Masato Tanaka. The pre-match stuff with Tanaka pissing off Hash was pretty helpful. because this match looks like Tanaka pissed off Hash and is getting the shit kicked out of him for it, plain and simple. He sells the beating really, really well too.

[Graham Crackers]

These matches are awesome. Hashimoto has brutal offense and Tanaka is good at taking brutal offense while looking stupid/tough. No one is more compelling picking apart their severely outmatched prey than Hashimoto.

[stomperspc]

Just watched this for the first time and thought it was awesome. The only major drawback to the match for me was the previously mentioned lack of heat. Otherwise, I thought it was a tremendously entertaining match.

 

The match was laid out uniquely, both in terms of the one sided nature of it and the run time (12 1/2 minutes). So many matches feel the same. 30 seconds into this one it felt different and special. They were able to carry that feeling throughout the rest of the match thanks in large part to it being such a one-sided beating. I guess the best contemporary comparison would be the Cena/Lesnar 2014 SummerSlam match. That match worked and was ultimately so memorable because it was one-sided. Not every match can be that way but when it is done with the correct guys and executed well, it really works.

 

Hashimoto was absolutely brutal. The two double stomps were nuts and looked great. All of the strikes looked incredibly painful. Tanaka is at his best taking a beating. He reacted like he was being tortured which he basically was. My favorite part might have been the late attempt at a roaring elbow and the immediate follow up to it. Hashimoto standing up and just shrugging off Tanaka's desperation submission attempt was perfect. Loved how they stayed committed to the one-sided ass kicking story of the match all the way through to the end. If Tanaka had made a sustained comeback at any point, the match would have suffered. They went just the right amount of time as well.

 

Maybe it just stands out to me now in comparison to the rather homogeneous modern day Japanese heavyweight matches but I thought it was a MOTYC for sure.

[Jordan]

Tanaka talked shit and gets completely mauled for it. I watch stuff like this and it really is clear that Joe's biggest influence from Japan wasn't really the moves he was doing but it was that Hash aura and way of carrying himself. This felt like one of those 2005 Joe X-Division demolitions. Watching somebody get destroyed by Hash is probably as entertaining as watching peak Shaq put every center in a body bag in the early 2000s.

[Matt D]

The biggest problem with this match, like pretty much everyone else has noted, is that Tanaka's roaring elbow, which in and of itself is perfectly fine (reversal out of a brainbuster attempt; explosive; means something to us given our past with Tanaka; quick, visually appealing pin for the nearfall), even really good, was met to near silence by the crowd. I was about to note that the second issue is that Tanaka just falling apart afterwards felt off/mistimed, but you know what? Forget it. If I hit a move like that and it's met with silence, maybe I'm ready to throw in the towel too? Because really, what's the point? I don't think Tanaka was at all some sort of babyface that needed the crowd's elation to register (in a way that let's say Ricky Morton could draw from them, kayfabe-wise), but the circuit was broken and he oozed to dust.

 

Anyway, the match itself was striking, I thought. I love how self-contained it was. I didn't need to know anything coming in, except for my own head-canon for what I know about Tanaka and Hashimoto. Tanaka's a guy who would tug on Superman's cape and spit in the wind. He's more fighting spirit than brains (and in fact, years of the former led to headshots that affected the latter). He wants Hashimoto unleashed so that he can test his mettle against him and kicking the guy's title belt to start the match is a hell of a way to do so. Hashimoto charges at him and basically never lets up after that. I'm higher on the transitions than Marty. I like how Tanaka, despite wanting to match him blow for blow or try to out-headbutt him, had to go to other avenues to get an edge, whether it be the spear out of nowhere or targeting the leg. Moreover, maybe because of my own mental image of Tanaka, I thought he was a threat throughout. The guy can absorb punishment and come back fighting. He has one of the most explosive weapons in the 95-05 period of wrestling with the roaring elbow. I didn't necessarily think he was going to win, but I never counted him out. I think that bore out in the match, even if it was a glorified squash in some ways.

 

There was such a sense of consequence in the selling to. I really loved the way Tanaka sold the belly after the second double stomp (though the first one was the more gruesome one). It meant that when he went for the desperation second spear, he had nothing in the tank and Hash caught him, kicked him three times in the guy, and DDTed him.

 

And in the end, none of this really mattered because the fans didn't buy into that roaring elbow in the least. I did, and usually that's enough, but here it was just too striking. I'm honestly not sure what the two of them could have done differently to make it work though (maybe teasing it earlier in the match? I don't even know). Good but unfortunate match.

[Victator]

Its likely more a credibility thing. Hashimoto is so much bigger than Tanaka as a star, he could never bridge the gap. He is Koko Ware challenging Ric Flair in Memphis. People knew why Koko was in there and the fans knew he was not winning.

From a story point, The Roaring Elbow was Tanaka's Trump Card, if this failed, he was finished. That happening finished off Tanaka. Hashimoto was not Hayabuse or Gannosuke or even Mike Awesome. Hashimoto was on a level Tanaka could not approach.

[Jetlag]

Tanaka disrespects the belt, and Hashimoto makes an example of him. This is among the greatest squash matches of all time, as Hashimoto looks like an unstoppable killing machine, and Tanaka looks like the gutsiest dude on earth for surviving. Tanaka is „deathmatch tough“ so you buy him surviving all the punishing blows and maybe decking Hashimoto with a potatoe of his own. Him being unable to hold on to a sleeper simply because he took a beating to every part of his body was pretty great aswell. Still this was all about Hashimoto destroying a poor fella. He may be the best ever at utilizing a basic karate chop to look like a badass.

[Calvin]

Hashimoto dishes out an ass-kicking in one of the better squash matches that you'll ever see. Lack of heat puts a ceiling on this, but this is mechanically and functionally on-par with any of post-MMA Brock Lesnar's extended squashes.