Shinya Hashimoto

[GOTNW]

I will also point out the legwork wasn't the body of the match like it is in say, a big Tanahashi match, and that I found the legwork engaging enough of it's own and didn't really need it to be intertwined with the body of the match to like it. But it was, and I loved the way they did it. There's also a point Ditch used to bring up that selling should be proportional to the amount of punishment received. It's not like Hase worked over Hashimoto's leg for twenty five minutes.

[JerryvonKramer]

I've seen people criticise Hase for the same thing (shrugging off an injury) very recently. Is it also invalid in that case?

[Clayton Jones]

He literally worked his leg over for 14 minutes of a 22 minute match. If you don't consider that the body of the match then you are wrong.

[GOTNW]

He literally worked his leg over for 14 minutes of a 22 minute match. If you don't consider that the body of the match then you are wrong.

That is probably somewhat of a mistake on my part looking at it now. I guess the beatdown is so entrenched in my memory I assumed it went on for longer. Somewhat of a mistake I say-because I've brough up earlier when Parv reviewed the match-there was double legwork early on. It wasn't one continous control segment by Hase. I'm too tired to go re-watch the match now and try to point to when exactly does the battle for the early holds and such turn into proper limbwork. But at one points Hashimoto does opt to move onto kicks and strikes and such while Hase continues focusing on his leg. Still 14 minutes of that match being Hase legwork is incorrect and I stand by my point, even with misremembering things a little bit (things that aren't of that big signifigance in our argument, in my opinion). It was justified in what they were going for.

[Bierschwale]

Choshu feud is my favourite feud ever, the WAR/Tenryu feud is amazing, the Naoya Ogawa feud is so so so so great in literally every aspect of it. Not just like matches you have Hashimoto hunting down Ogawa while he's NWA champ literally travelling to America to challenge him to a match and then you have press conferences where tables are flipped and Hashimoto completely changes his look and. Fuck. Do you people even like pro wrestlng.

 

Forget the other parts of the Ogawa EPIC, just Hash taking off the hachimaki before their first match is an amazing "things done changed" moment.

[GOTNW]

 

His stalling was also superb and it lead to outbursts of violent strikes which of course make for astounding pro wrestling.

I've touched on this already, but I though of it just recently-and Hashimoto really was an amazing staller. A lot of times stalling is there just for its own cause, and its amusing for what it is but the way Hashimoto used it was just brilliant. He'd have these amazing epic giant staredowns with small movements that were like a pastiche of two boxers looking for an opening and a long awaited confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist in an action movie. You could feel the crowd coming alive, and it would intensify and just as it would reach its climax and your suspense would be at maximum but before it reached overkill he'd explode and that right there is peak wrestling to me.

[Boss Rock]

I'm not sure if there's anyone who could bring the heat like he could. Guys like Hansen, Tenryu, and Jumbo could be absolutely relentless with their strikes, but Hashimoto was just...different. Almost unmatched in intensity. I'm not as crazy about his more "sporting" or ground-based matches, but he still knew how to make stuff like working an arm or headlock seem dramatic when most just use them for transitions.

[elliott]

Hashimoto was 24th in 2006. 23rd in 2016. Can we get him to 22? I love him in every setting. Has a really impressive and eclectic list of opponents he had great matches against when you think about it: Riki Choshu, Genichiro Tenryu, Victor Zangiev, Hase, Muto, Chono, Koshinaka, Fujinami, Liger, Vader, Ogawa, Takada, Tenzan, Regal,  Fujiwara, Yamazaki, etc. Underrated tag worker too. 

[Boss Rock]

Top 15 candidate. Could make any match feel like a big deal with a rather minimalist approach. The four-way iron match for the NWA title is one of my favorites of his as he pretty much holds the whole thing together.

[Phil Schneider]

1 hour ago, Boss Rock said:

Top 15 candidate. Could make any match feel like a big deal with a rather minimalist approach. The four-way iron match for the NWA title is one of my favorites of his as he pretty much holds the whole thing together.

I was at that show! Caught Hashimoto's bandana

[Boss Rock]

Nice!

[DylanZero]

The highlight of that match easily is the part where Steele gets Hash in the corner and basically hits him with the weakest, lamest strike forearm ever and Hash just rolls his eyes like "Are you serious?" And proceeds to turn the tables and show him how it's done/beat the shit out of him in which had to be a shoot. It was the most Hashimoto spot ever in wrestling and life and will always, always pop me greatly. 

[KB8]

He'll be top 10 for me in 2026, a few places up from last time (he was my #13 in 2016, I think). Of everyone I'll have in that top 10 he might be the one with the most scope to move up as well, just because it feels like there are still stretches of his career I haven't properly jumped into (Zero-1 era, mostly). I know nobody really does the extensive wrestler DVD comps anymore, but other than Tenryu he's probably the one guy who I wish got the goodhelmet treatment. 

[Jmare007]

Hash was top 10 for me in 2016. I wanna revisit him fully to see if he can keep that spot with a more critical eye. He's still one of my favorites but I wanna put him to the test just like Misawa.

[elliott]

I voted Hashimoto 11th in 2016. This is another one I think might be a little high but then when I think about his career and the things I value, Hashimoto at 11 feels good. Maybe even a little low. Hash was GREAT early. He stayed great. He was great at the sort of wrestling I really love. He has a shit load of great matches against a variety of opponents. He's awesome in singles and tags. He has that special aura. He's one of those folks I don't rank #1 but anytime I see someone put Hash there or around there I think "yes! This person has excellent wrestling opinions." Hash rules. 

[elliott]

*clears throat*

THERES A SHINYA HASHIMOTO EXPLODING BARBED WIRE MATCH AND I ONLY LEARNED ABOUT IT TODAY????

 

[Boss Rock]

Nice.

[KinchStalker]

Just to contextualize the bit with the container: this was booked to be Fuyuki's comeback match before his death, and Kanemura filled in. That container contained Fuyuki's ashes, and both men hurled themselves into the ropes to give him a pair of final symbolic victories. I know the video description has that info but I've always found it a really touching bit.

[Clayton Jones]

The DVDVR review of that match blew my mind at the time. No idea how it'd hold up now but that's one of those matches I immediately associate with them.

[El-P]

10 hours ago, KinchStalker said:

Just to contextualize the bit with the container: this was booked to be Fuyuki's comeback match before his death, and Kanemura filled in. That container contained Fuyuki's ashes, and both men hurled themselves into the ropes to give him a pair of final symbolic victories. I know the video description has that info but I've always found it a really touching bit.

It was totally surrealistic. The fact Hashimoto was having an affair with Fuyuki's wife I believe at the time he died made the whole thing even more WTF. 

[KB8]

Hashimoto was my number 9 in 2016 and he'll be top 10 again in 2026 (I actually thought he landed just outside the top 10 but clearly I was fulla shit). In terms of aura, I'm not sure there's anyone who was more compelling to me personally than Hashimoto. The staredowns, the milking of the big moment, the intensity, the grit. Nobody does "gritting teeth and fighting through the pain" better than Hashimoto, which routinely makes his strike exchanges amazing rather than rote (is this the part where the old folks yelling at clouds say nobody knows how to do strike exchanges anymore?). OJ has written has awesome stuff about Hashimoto before, about how he was a samurai, how he had bushido, and I love that because the guy just embodies all that cool shit about being a warrior. He would stand against the tide with nothing more than his honour and his conviction. Is it any fucking wonder the people embraced him? A truly wonderful pro wrestler. 

 

SHINYA HASHIMOTO YOU SHOULD WATCH:

v Victor Zangiev (New Japan, 4/24/89)

v Vader (4/24/89)

v Masa Chono (New Japan, 8/11/91)

w/Michiyoshi Ohara v Ashura Hara & Hiromichi Fuyuki (WAR, 3/7/93)

w/Riki Choshu v Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (WAR, 4/2/93)

w/Michiyoshi Ohara v Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (New Japan, 6/14/93)

v Genichiro Tenryu (WAR, 6/17/93)

v Genichiro Tenryu (New Japan, 8/8/93)

v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 6/15/94)

v Hiroshi Hase (New Japan, 12/13/94)

v Kensuke Sasaki (New Japan, 1/4/95)

v Steven Regal (New Japan, 4/16/95)

w/Junji Hirata v Masa Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan (New Japan, 6/12/95)

v Nobuhiko Takada (New Japan, 4/29/96)

v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 8/2/96)

v Tatsumi Fujinami (New Japan, 6/5/98)

v Genichiro Tenryu (New Japan, 8/1/98)

v Satoshi Kojima (New Japan, 8/2/98)

v Kazuo Yamazaki (New Japan, 8/2/98)

w/Takayuki Iizuka v Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami (New Japan, 1/4/00)

v Naoya Ogawa (New Japan, 4/7/00)

w/Yuji Nagata v Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (Zero-1, 3/2/01)

w/Naoya Ogawa v Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Scott Norton (New Japan, 5/2/02)

v Masato Tanaka (Zero-1, 11/7/03)

v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 2/22/04)

[Childs]

I'm right there with you. Had Hash at 10 in 2016, and he isn't budging. When I need to give a little spark to my wrestling jones, he's the guy I watch. His combination of spectacle (contender for best entrance music and gear of all time) and no-bullshit fire is ageless. There's a moment in every good Hash match when he ups the ante on his opponent and that "oh shit" feeling settles over the building. I was watching that 6/5/98 match against Fujinami recently, and Fujinami lured him into a little trap where he snared Hash's leg for a second. But that just pissed Hash off, and it was like, "Congrats, old man. You caught your grizzly. Now, what're you going to do?" Love that shit. 

[GOTNW]

It had been a while since I had watched a Hashimoto match until today, at least 2-3 years, if not more. For whatever reason, after getting some life stuff out the way and breathing a little easier, I decided to put on Hashimoto vs Tenryu (1994-2-17).

I hadn't really thought I'd ever need, much less want to post in this thread again, but when a match basically provokes me into a structuralist analysis, I almost have no choice.

 

Obviously, it's a great match. But what is crucial in making it great? Is it that Hashimoto and Tenryu hit really hard? Is it their body language and the way carry themselves? Is it that they intertwine their personalities with how they work and adapt it to this particular match-up?  Is it the choices they make in selling? Is it what transitions they chose?

The answer to all of those is obviously yes-but all things mentioned above are just parts of the greater sum.

 

What is most crucial in why this match works is its atmosphere and its rhythm. And really, they make a whole. This rhythm-atmosphere is absolutely the most important aspect of this match, and likely Hashimoto's (and probably not just his, but I'm not willing to make big arguments yet) work in general. It takes precedence over everything. It takes precedence over sense itself. Because fights don't make sense. They're not supposed to.

This is something that has shaped my view on e.g. limbwork. I don't care if limbwork is sold or not sold. It doesn't matter. Selling is not inherently good-it is only good if it results in good artistic work, and that depends on the wider context. This match, for example, had a little bit of armwork. It would have been absolutely moronic for them to turn armwork into the focal point of a heated brawl. Maybe not even that-it would have been moronic for them to do that in THIS heated brawl. This match was a war of attrition-a your turn/my turn, my beatdown/your beatdown slugfest of medium length, with focused exhaustion selling until someone finally succumbed. The last thing it needed was Tenryu holding his arm while going for a Powerbomb or a Lariat: the way they rhythmically set-up the match required them to clash over and over again, not work dramatic teases over whether something was going to happen. Maybe that would have fit a 30 minute match, but not here.

That Armlock is still needed: because the match needed a breath. Constant clashes can be cool too, but when you're trying to provoke emotions out of a crowd, milking rhythm changes is a much better option. You can guess whether it worked.

The presence of rhythm is absolutely holistic. It's why some sells need to be small, some need to be big. Sometimes a Tenryu Chop provokes a Hashimoto kick in response, sometimes it sends him to the floor (well, when it sends him to the floor it's likely it's aimed at his throat which is another layer to take in consideration, but you get the point). Some transitions are creative and unpredictable-some are not. But the predictable transitions took part in the middle of the match, during the building of the heat. They were like the punchlines at the end of a verse-you knew they were coming, but you wanted them anyway. However, when the closing of the match came along, you got to the creative work that kept you guessing and added to the dramatic finish (the corner struggle over DDT being a perfect example of that, and also of turning a spot you can imagine being an absolutely throwaway note in 95% of wrestling matches into an epic scene).

I said rhytm-atmosphere takes precende over sense itself, and here's another example to show you it does. Late in the match, Hashimoto falls down after a sequence in which he hits several moves on Tenryu. Yes, this is exhaustion selling. Yes, you can explain this by the fact him and Tenryu just went after each other's throat non-stop and there was enough violence prior to it to justify this sell. But it's not expected. We know how pro wrestling selling works: you don't sell after hitting your own move, and if you do, it's because you were hit with a move priot to executing your own. But Hashimoto falls down nonetheless: and it's crucial he does, because it intrigues the crowd. It helps build the atmosphere of tension and curiosity through another rhythm change. This artistic choice is no small feat to pull off: most wrestlers, some even great ones, would look silly if they tried to do it. Hashimoto CAN do it, because him and Tenryu have already created this atmosphere of a legitimate, incredibly violent battle. And now he can choose to take it to the next level by playing with logic itself. Like a wise man once said:

"Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them."

And this is why, to me, Hashimoto is, at worst, a top 5 wrestler of all time.
 

 

[MoS]

Absolutely fantastic post

[elliott]

Totally agree. Wonderful stuff @GOTNW