Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Alexander Otsuka (January 13th, 2001)

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1. The two biggest icons of 90’s Japanese wrestling collide!

   Honestly the thumbnail tells you all you should know: 90’s AJPW Ace and NOAH founder Mitsuharu Misawa stand across the ring for the first time against Shinya Hashimoto, 90’s NJPW Ace and Zero-1 founder, in this excellent tag match.

   Misawa is paired with his longest term partner and Rat Boy himself, Yoshinari Ogawa, while Hashimoto is teamed with MMA fighter and the SUPER bald Alexander Otsuka.

   Whenever Misawa and Hashimoto step into the ring together, it’s purely magic, with the crowd so damn hot to see these two share a ring and lock up; the exchanges between the two are everything you could hope for, in a battle of Misawa’s elbows and Hashimoto’s kesagiri chops; it’s clear that when Hashimoto finally throws a kick to Misawa, that Misawa is winded and perhaps didn’t expect the strength of the kick (Hashimoto may have had THE strongest kicks in wrestling); one bit of comedy is Hashimoto at one point completely ignoring Ogawa’s offense while staring a hole at Misawa, before chopping the life out of Rat Boy.

   These match would lead into an even greater tag match, with Misawa teaming with NOAH’s young Ace Jun Akiyama to take on Hashimoto and NJPW’s young Ace Yuji Nagata (this match is incredibly hard to find, especially the whole thing).