Yoshi-Hashi

Nobuo Yoshihashi (吉橋 伸雄) is a Japanese professional wrestler.

He currently works for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) as Yoshi-Hashi (stylized in all capital letters), where he is a former IWGP Tag Team Champions with Hirooki Goto.

They have held the belt on three separate occasions.

as well as being a former NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champion with Hirooki Goto and Tomohiro Ishii, a team which holds the record for the longest reign with the titles.

Yoshi-Hashi appeared at The New Beginning and NJPW 40th Anniversary Show teaming with members of Chaos and won both matches.

On April 1, he was defeated by La Sombra in the first round of the New Japan Cup.

In 2005, Yoshihashi tried to earn a training spot in the New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) dojo but failed to pass an introductory test.

He was eventually accepted into the dojo, after passing the test on his third attempt, and made his professional wrestling debut on July 6, 2008, losing to Tetsuya Naito.

Although not competing in the 2008 G1 Climax, he did wrestle on many of the G1 Climax shows.

Yoshihashi did not pick up any wins in NJPW in 2008.

This is normal for rookies in the promotion.

However, on making his Riki Pro debut on November 3 he teamed up with Kazuchika Okada to beat the team of Kuniyoshi Wada and Yusaku Obata.

On February 12, 2009, Yoshihashi won his first match in NJPW by teaming with Hiroshi Tanahashi and Yuji Nagata and defeating Kazuchika Okada, Hirooki Goto and Shinsuke Nakamura.

After this, however, he lost almost all of his matches in 2009.

On November 4, Yoshihashi teamed up with Koji Kanemoto in a losing effort against then-IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Apollo 55.

In 2010, Yoshihashi began winning many more matches for NJPW.

He teamed up with Jyushin Thunder Liger to participate in the first Super J Tag Tournament, however, the pair lost in the first round and were eliminated.

He also participated in the 2010 Best of the Super Juniors tournament.

Though Yoshihashi picked up his first-ever singles victory in NJPW against junior legend Akira, he lost all of his other matches in the tournament and thus failed to progress to the semifinals.

His last match for NJPW before leaving was a loss with Liger against Davey Richards and La Sombra.

Yoshihashi joined Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in 2010 as a way to gain more experience and be exposed to a variety of wrestling syles.

His first match was a six-man two out of three falls match with La Ola Amarilla ("The Yellow Wave"; Okumura and Taichi) losing to El Hijo del Fantasma, La Mascara, and Máximo.

For the rest of 2010 and the entire year of 2011 Yoshihashi wrestled in six-man two out of three falls matches and rarely participated in anything else.

He lost most of his matches for CMLL in both 2010 and 2011.

Near the end of his stay in Mexico Yoshihashi started a storyline with CMLL mainstay Rush that started in six-man tag team matches and soon escalated to the point where the two agreed to both bet their hair in a Lucha de Apuestas ("Bet Match"), which in Mexico is more important than Championship matches.

On August 1, 2011, Rush defeated Yoshihashi and then forced him to have his hair shaved off as per the stipulation.

In late 2011, it was announced that Yoshihashi would be returning to NJPW on January 4, 2012, at Wrestle Kingdom VI in Tokyo Dome, now working under the ring name "Yoshi-Hashi" (stylized in all capital letters).

Prior to his return, Yoshi-Hashi announced that he had joined the Chaos stable due to becoming accustomed to portraying a rudo (a villain) in Mexico.

On January 4, 2012, Yoshi-Hashi was defeated in his return match by his old nemesis from his early career, Kazuchika Okada, who won the match in under five minutes.

At Wrestling Dontaku 2012, Yoshi-Hashi along with Jado and Tomohiro Ishii defeated Captain New Japan, Strong Man and Tama Tonga.

At Dominion 6.16, Yoshi-Hashi teamed with Tomohiro Ishii and Rocky Romero defeated Captain New Japan and Seigigun members Wataru Inoue and Yuji Nagata.

From November 20 to December 1, Yoshi-Hashi took part in the round-robin portion of the 2012 World Tag League, alongside stablemate Kazuchika Okada under the team name "Chaos Ride the Lightning".

The team finished with a record of three wins and three losses, with a loss to "Sword & Guns" (Karl Anderson and Hirooki Goto) on the final day, costing them a spot in the semifinals of the tournament.

Yoshi-Hashi and Okada reunited a year later for the 2013 World Tag League, this time finishing second to last in their block with a record of two wins and four losses.

On September 5, 2014, Yoshi-Hashi picked up a major win, when he led Chaos to a ten-man elimination tag team match win over their rival Bullet Club stable.

Following the win, Yoshi-Hashi was granted a shot at two different championships held by Bullet Club; the NEVER Openweight Championship and the IWGP Tag Team Championship.

On September 21 at Destruction in Kobe, Yoshi-Hashi and Kazuchika Okada unsuccessfully challenged Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson for the IWGP Tag Team Championship.

Two days later at Destruction in Okayama, Yoshi-Hashi also failed to capture the NEVER Openweight Championship from Yujiro Takahashi.

In November, Yoshi-Hashi once again teamed up with Okada for the 2014 World Tag League.

The team finished their block with a record of four wins and three losses, failing to advance to the finals.