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AUG.26.2020

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Ace’s HIGH 18: From Ace to Zero (One?)

Hiroshi Tanahashi’s life story can now be told in this series of autobiographical interviews, available for the first time in English!

<–Ace’s HIGH #17 The impatient Young Lion

Ace’s HIGH #19  coming September 2! ->

–Last time you talked about playing the part of a Young Lion rather than being a Young Lion per se. Did you have much attachment to the famous black tights and black boots the Young Lions wear?

Tanahashi: No, not really.

–Oh you didn’t?

Tanahashi: I mean, you have to remember I was only in that gear for less than a year. I broke my hand in September (Sep.9 2000, in a tag match with Wataru Inoue against Kenzo Suzuki and Katsuyori Shibata), and was out for seven months. When I came back, it ws with the red gear and a different attitude.

–That injury had to come as a frustration to you.

Tanahashi: Yeah. It was a fractured metacarpal, I had a plate in there. It should have healed up in a couple of months, but I was impatient, trained to hard and reinjured it. 

–Ouch.

Tanahashi: It was so frustrating, it just wasn’t getting better, and when you re-break a bone while it’s healing that strength doesn’t come back as much. It took six months in the end.

–So you were in the Dojo all that time?

Tanahashi: Right. Stuck behind all the time. Back then this guy Futori-san was in charge of the Dojo, and all the cooking and whatnot, so it was the two of us spending a lot of time together. He was really nice, really understanding. I think he was used to that sight of a young guy getting injured and feeling bummed out. We’d go play pachinko together, stuff like that.

–I guess every day was leg day back then.

Tanahashi: You’re right. That was pretty much all I could work out. But i kept my weight up; I got to around 110 kg.

–So were you thinking at that point that you might be able to graduate when you came back to the ring?

Tanahashi: Well, I  figured if I had to take all that time off, then I should change something when I came back. Opportunity out of crisis, kind of thing. Usually guys wrestle for a year or two, go on excursion and come back without the black gear, but I just did it all on my own after a few months. No excursion, nothing. 

–Nothing about your early career was normal! (laughs). So why did you go with red?

Tanahashi: Honestly, it was just because nobody else was wearing red at the time. I started with the half tights and then went short tights.

–While you were out with your injury, Shinya Hashimoto left NJPW and ended up starting his own promotion, ZERO-ONE. Quite famously, Keiji Muto pushed quite hard for you to join All Japan when he moved there from NJPW in 2002. Did Hashimoto try to scout you as well?

Tanahashi: He did. That was when he just had his dojo set up, when it was actually going to be New Japan Pro-Wrestling ZERO. 

–Originally, Hashimoto’s plan was to start a new brand within NJPW and call it NJPW ZERO, but everything fell apart, and Hashimoto left New Japan in November 2000.

Tanahashi: There were a lot of whispers at the time that Hashimoto was going to go independent, and he came to me a few times saying ‘hey Tana, why don’t you come train with me?’

–Making a direct appeal.

Tanahashi: I brought it up with Black Cat and he said ‘don’t you dare go train with him’. I figured that yeah, it might not be the best idea. 

–Some interesting politics at play.

Tanahashi: I mean, he was a very impulsive guy, Hashimoto. He liked a spectacle. I would probably have gone to just train with him, and then all of a sudden he’d have photos in the magazines saying I’d signed with him or something (laughs). I wouldn’t put it past him. 

–What was your take at the time, of Hashimoto leaving NJPW?

Tanahashi: I don’t know if you can really apportion blame in that situation, but I think he was put in an unfair position. Anyway, he was my senpai, from my home town of Gifu, so we got on really well. It had to have been decades since he left Gifu, but he’d still make sure to talk to me in that thick Gifu accent of his. 

–He was a sentimental figure to you?

Tanahashi: Right. When I went to school in Kyoto, even for that short period, I took on that Kansai accent. Then when I came to Tokyo I could feel myself slipping into a kind of received Japanese. So when I heard Hashimoto speak, it was amazing to hear someone with such pride in their roots; I tried to get my Gifu accent back in there wherever I could. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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