Examining the Hashimoto/Ogawa rivalry Pt.1: Shinya Hashitmoto vs. Naoya Ogawa (05-03-97)

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1. What defines Strong Style? What makes it different from Shoot Style or martial arts? Why would a company tear down its biggest star? These are the questions I intend to examine in this deep dive of mine on the infamous Hashimoto/Ogawa feud of NJPW.

   BACKGROUND:

   To first get into this feud, you have to go back to the beginning and examine the people and events that lead to it. First and foremost, Shinya Hashimoto was one of the greatest draws and IWGP champions in the history of NJPW, drawing record crowd and selling out multiple domes and stadiums in the 90’s. Hashimoto is most famous for being in a group of three men, along with Keiji Muto and Masahiro Chono, known as “The Three Musketeers of Fighting Spirit”, all three men who came up in the dojo at the same time and were destined/prepared to become main event players. Muto was the boyish, good looking high flyer who made the women swoon and was already a known wrestler in the States, where he performed as the Great Muta character. Chono was also quite handsome, but was a more straight forward technical wrestler, trained by the great Lou Thesz himself. Hashimoto was the youngest of the three, but in many ways had the best chance to succeed, coming from a martial arts/karate background, something which was always over with the NJPW audience. Muto and Chono would taste success earlier than Hashimoto, Muto becoming IWGP champ and Chono becoming the G1 champion and also holding the NWA championship; eventually tho, Hashimoto would take the reins of the company on his own hands, having the lengthiest title run in the company’s history to that point, at 489 days, a record only broken in 2017 by Okada’s 720 day reign.

   Naoya Ogawa was one of the greatest judo players in Japanese history, starting in his high school years, before becoming a world free class champion in his second year at college, becoming the youngest in the history of judo. He set a record of seven medals at the World Judo Championships, setting a record. Ogawa would become a silver medalist at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Ogawa was not without criticism however, as he practiced a rather slow and cerebral style of Judo, not being particularly aggressive with his opponents, which caused many to doubt his lack of heart and would go on to cause Ogawa to retire after the 1996 Olympics.

   Antonio Inoki, the founder and on/off president and chairman of NJPW, built his stardom off the back of “different style fights”, where he would challenge fighters of other disciplines, such as Muhammad Ali and William Ruska, to prove pro wrestling was the “Strong Style”. These “worked” fights were the precursor to MMA, and were what our Inoki on the map as both a national and worldly icon in pro wrestling. Several of Inoki’s students would go on to have their own “different style fights” in their own “Shoot Style” (named for being even better/tougher than Strong Style), chief among them being Akira Maeda, Satoru Sayama (Tiger Mask I), Nobuhiko Takada, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Masakatsu Funaki, and Minoru Suzuki. Shinya Hashimoto would officially takes up Inoki’s mantle of competing in these “different style fights” in the 90’s, facing such men as kickboxer Tony Halme. Inoki and Sayama would eventually come together to start an official MMA promotion known as UFO (Universal Wrestling Federation) and would build the promotion around Naoya Ogawa as its top star, who was trained by both Inoki and Sayama.

   This match I post here is technically not the first match between these two, as their first encounter was on April 12, 1997 in the Tokyo Dome; the original plan was for Ken Shamrock to debut in NJPW against Hashimoto in the main event, but negotiations fell through and Ogawa took his place. In a shocking upset, Ogawa would get Hashimoto in a rear-naked choke and submit him; this would then set up this match here, also in the Tokyo Dome, with the IWGP belt on the line.