This was, for the most part, a "storyline" match for Hustle, which doesn't excuse it for being sort of flat, but conceptually makes sense.
During this run, Kawada was a well known curmudgeon and his showing up in HUSTLE was such a shock. A lot of his early run was based off of the idea that he refused to integrate into HUSTLE and found the concept ridiculous, even though his pal/contemporary Hashimoto was fine with it.
There's a clip going around of Taichi (who was his second here and while he's billed as a few of the other pillars' student, he stuck around in AJPW and hung with Kawada the most) backstage while Kawada prepped for this match and starts to do the Hashimoto HUSTLE dance and Kawada turns to him with an angry glare and stiffs him with a low kick that visibly pains him. It's been shared around even within the last year or so as one of those "they're more stiff in Japan/THIS is how you treat a young wrestler" types of things, but it was just a storyline thing. Obviously, if you find later Kawada HUSTLE clips he sings and dances and, effectively, makes enough money to open up his cozy lil ramen shop where he hangs out now.
This match disappointed the hell out of me when it first happened, though. Was really expecting more. This was also when Kawada was going harder on his singles matches ending by ref stoppage, either by rear naked choke or via his running face kick to a seated opponent.
I think what let me down was that the tone of the press conference suggested that this would be awesome, to the extent that I remembered the conference and not the match. It's weird, but this is the concept he'd later adapt to his feud against Flair, and that was a much more satisfying match, even if it also had its problems/featured two guys who were far more broken down than Foley was here.
This was, for the most part, a "storyline" match for Hustle, which doesn't excuse it for being sort of flat, but conceptually makes sense.
During this run, Kawada was a well known curmudgeon and his showing up in HUSTLE was such a shock. A lot of his early run was based off of the idea that he refused to integrate into HUSTLE and found the concept ridiculous, even though his pal/contemporary Hashimoto was fine with it.
There's a clip going around of Taichi (who was his second here and while he's billed as a few of the other pillars' student, he stuck around in AJPW and hung with Kawada the most) backstage while Kawada prepped for this match and starts to do the Hashimoto HUSTLE dance and Kawada turns to him with an angry glare and stiffs him with a low kick that visibly pains him. It's been shared around even within the last year or so as one of those "they're more stiff in Japan/THIS is how you treat a young wrestler" types of things, but it was just a storyline thing. Obviously, if you find later Kawada HUSTLE clips he sings and dances and, effectively, makes enough money to open up his cozy lil ramen shop where he hangs out now.
This match disappointed the hell out of me when it first happened, though. Was really expecting more. This was also when Kawada was going harder on his singles matches ending by ref stoppage, either by rear naked choke or via his running face kick to a seated opponent.
I think what let me down was that the tone of the press conference suggested that this would be awesome, to the extent that I remembered the conference and not the match. It's weird, but this is the concept he'd later adapt to his feud against Flair, and that was a much more satisfying match, even if it also had its problems/featured two guys who were far more broken down than Foley was here.