Hashimoto in '97 (with Scott Norton! Meng! The Barbarian!)

Shinya Hashimoto & Manabu Nakanishi v Masa Chono & Scott Norton (New Japan, 2/8/97)

Manabu Nakanishi. Sometimes when you have more muscles than sense, loaded to the eyeballs with testosterone and MANLY RAGE, you might just be a little prone to doing some stupid shit you might've been better off not doing. Manabu Nakanishi, we call that. Manabu Nakanishi Manabu Nakanishi'd himself into a mudhole-stomping straight away here, jumping into the ring to get at Chono and Norton only to get swiftly walloped. Hashimoto displayed no such foolishness. He was only a couple years older than Nakanishi but he'd been doing this a good while longer, and he was also the Ace and not about to be trampled by people who willingly hang around with Buff Bagwell. The Hashimoto/Norton pairing is always top drawer and Norton looked like a giant barrel-chested juggernaut, hucking knife edge chops and smashing into Hashimoto with one of the best shoulder blocks I've ever seen. Clearly Hashimoto can hold his own against Norton, though. Clearly he can hold his own against Chono. We're just not sure he can hold it against both and at times he might need to, because we're VERY sure Nakanishi can hold his own against neither. At times you almost feel sorry for the guy because Chono was not above kicking him in the balls and Norton was just smashing him to bits. Norton threw a handful of chops that were honest to god as mean as I've ever seen. These things sounded like they cracked Nakanishi's sternum, not just from the THWACK but the THUNK. Eventually Hashimoto said enough is enough and came in to clean house like only he can, encouraging Nakanishi crawl to his own corner to make the tag. And then Bagwell got involved, tripping Hash as he hit the ropes for a home run shot. Norton trying to powerbomb Nakanishi through the mat was wild and that guy has to be one of the last wrestlers ever you'd try and fuck with. I want to re-watch every Norton/Hashimoto match immediately. 

Shinya Hashimoto & Kensuke Sasaki v Faces of Fear (New Japan, 3/8/97) 

You get an idea of how big Meng and Barbarian really are from this. Sasaki obviously isn't the tallest but he's a UNIT and the Faces of Fear make him look like a stocky child. Barbarian you always knew was huge. In the WWF Haku didn't look substantially bigger than anybody else and if nothing else appeared relatively small. Here he looked like a bouncer ejecting a couple big lads from the discotheque after they'd spent all day drinking cans at a wedding reception. When they tried their Meng backdrop into Barbarian powerbomb double team on Sasaki and it didn't quite come off I thought they'd maybe overshot on how easily they could throw throw around a THICK boy, but then Barbarian muscled him up like Sasaki weighted nothing and splattered him with ease. Meng has really nice chops and him and Hashimoto trading blows was great fun. Meng worked many a WAR show several years prior so these were steady waters for him. Hashimoto had also worked Scott Norton enough times to know he'd maybe need to lay it in to get a tune out of these WCW boys and as you can imagine he laid it in and a tune was gotten. The finishing DDT was of course a beautiful thing.