Question about Hustle

[Masked Man of Mystery]

Okay, so over on Sledgehammer someone put up a match between Kawada and Mick Foley from Hustle, but before that, there's this thign with Japanese dude who looks like he's cosplaying as M. Bison and chomping on a cigar and saying something to the crowd on a mike. What, exactly, is up with dat?

[Guest JebusNassedar]

That would be Nobuhiko Takada, general of the Takada Monster Army.

 

As if he wasnt the man before.

[Slickster]

What? General? Army? HUSTLE pose? WTF?

[Guest Pariah]

http://www.angle-j.com/archives/images/040307Hustle2_1.jpg

 

Poster for the next show

 

General Takada

 

What is Hustle?

 

 

 

HUSTLE~!

[Guest Black Tiger]

With Zero-One shutting down. I wonder the future of the Hustle shows is?

[Guest JebusNassedar]

With ZERO-ONE folding, the effect is actually good. Larger chance to see people like Shinjiro Ohtani and Masato Tanaka and so forth there again. But, see, HUSTLE is almost completely seperate from ZERO-ONE. ZERO-ONE was a fed that had backing from DSE, but not much. HUSTLE is a big part of DSE, partially because it's actually drawing. Which is creepy.

[Guest Spunk]

Larger chance to see people like Shinjiro Ohtani and Masato Tanaka and so forth there again.

 

Lesser, actually.

 

But, see, HUSTLE is almost completely seperate from ZERO-ONE. ZERO-ONE was a fed that had backing from DSE, but not much. HUSTLE is a big part of DSE, partially because it's actually drawing. Which is creepy.

 

Not really, there isn't, or wasn't that much seperation at all. DSE near the end was the complete owners of Zero-One, with Hashimoto as the chairman of the company, and still responsible for all of the past debts. Zero-One for the past year or so has basically been to accentuate HUSTLE. Zero-One was their filler roster for HUSTLE shows, a way to get some gaijin involved (like Spanky, etc), and also a place for them to help further along storylines. If you watched any Z1 from this year, they'd have some HUSTLE stuff pop up right around the time when a HUSTLE show was coming up.

 

I mean, Hashimoto, Choshu, Sakata, Ohtani and a bunch of the rest of the 'HUSTLE Army' were big names in Zero-One. So whenever HUSTLE time came around, we'd see Geralissimo Takada's henchmen advancing on Z1 to pose threats to Choshu, Hash and whoever else was around at the time.

 

And actually, the first HUSTLE was pretty much based almost entirely off of Zero-One, so its hard to say they were at all seperate. Of course with Hashimoto closing down Zero-One, this relationship will most likely be over. Unless Ohtani and Nakamura are still taking funding from DSE, which is not likely, as Z1-MAX has no big name involved in it. Z1 had Ogawa and Hashimoto, two of probably the biggest stars in Japan (although near the end they couldn't draw for shit, and Ogawa got pulled from Z1 tours to preserve his name), Z1-MAX's biggest stars are Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka and Takao Omori. That isn't exactly what DSE is looking for, although they probably won't be happy about losing a good bunch of the HUSTLE Army, such as Sakata, Yokoi and like Hidaka.

[Toshiaki Koala]

Are there Hustle t-shirts available anywhere? 'Cause I really need to get one and wear it all the time.

[Guest Gary Busey]

This all looks really interesting. I need to start looking into Japanese wrestling more.

 

I second the request for Hustle merchandise.