At NJPW Destruction In Ryogoku 2023, El Phantasmo & Hikuleo teamed up to challenge BULLET CLUB War Dogs (Alex Coughlin & Gabe Kidd) for the NJPW STRONG Openweight Tag Team Titles.
The match was a hard-hitting affar to culminate the tag team rivalry between the two teams. ELP & Hikuleo were victorious in the bout, but not without some consequences.
Speaking to Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, ELP & Hikuleo were asked who has hit them the hardest when ELP revealed that Gabe Kidd choked him out during the match.
SEAN ROSS SAPP: “To that same point, Hikuleo, what’s the hardest you’ve been hit in the ring?”
HIKULEO: “Gabe Kidd hits pretty damn hard.”
SEAN ROSS SAPP: “He’s a charismatic dude, too.”
HIKULEO: “ We came up together in the L.A. dojo. Shibata was telling each of us to hit as hard as we could and he carried that over until now. Even our last meeting at Ryogoku, for some reason, I think his forearms just pack a punch. Those things always hurt so bad. So surprisingly, I say him or Fale. When we had Fale this past tag league, homie laid it in. I think, you know, a year off, you get kind of rusty and just lay that bitch in. So, yeah, every time I face Gabe, I’m like, ‘Shit. Here comes those stupid ass forearms.’”
EL PHANTASMO: “We have a crazy story from when we won the STRONG Tag Team titles off them. Gabe legit choked me out cold for the first time in my life. It was the craziest story. He did the choke on the turnbuckle and leaned back, and I don’t remember anything before that. I remember someone grabbing my balls. I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Someone’s grabbing my balls and I’m looking around and it’s like really silent. I just feel thousands of people staring at me and I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I felt like a mushroom trip. Like coming back and regaining consciousness in a match. So what had happened was, Gabe choked me out and then Coughlin picked me up in a deadlift doomsday device. That’s what was grabbing my balls. I looked down at his head, I looked up and there was Gabe Kidd and he gives me a top rope lariat doomsday device. I had no idea if I was dreaming. I had no idea if I was in a match. One, two, I automatically kick out. No idea what’s next. They pick me up, hit me with another move. One, two, I’m like, ‘Holy shit. I’m in a match right now.’ It was the most surreal feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”
SEAN ROSS SAPP: “Did you get to communicate to them at that point? Like, ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on.’”
EL PHANTASMO: “No. They didn’t know. I didn’t know what was going on.”
HIKULEO: “If you look at the video, when he’s on top of Coughlin’s shoulders, you see him snap out of it. He looks around, and then he looks and here comes Gabe with a clothesline. It’s funny, but it’s scary at the same time because it’s exactly how he described it. Snaps out of it, looks over and there comes Gabe with a line.”
EL PHANTASMO: “Yeah, it felt like ten minutes in real life. I don’t know if you guys have ever done magic mushrooms or LSD, not that I have, but if I would have done it before, that’s what it would have felt like. Being in this weird, surreal real life, not real life. Oh, man. It was crazy. I remember I came backstage and I was buzzing because I never had anything feel like that in my life.”
SEAN ROSS SAPP: “Yeah, and it’s so much different than like a concussion, obviously, because your brain isn’t necessarily hurt. But I’ve seen people that want to get choked out to see how far they can go in catch wrestling class. I’ll never forget one of the dudes in class woke up and immediately said, ‘I was flying through space.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ He’s like, ‘I was just flying through space where I was.’”
EL PHANTASMO: “Yeah. I was buzzing, man. The fact that we also won the titles and I had a red hot Ryogoku crowd going bananas for G.O.D. and E-L-P, that was awesome. As soon as I got through the back, I went to Jado-san and I was like, ‘What the fuck just happened?’ I didn’t know if there was any botches, I didn’t know if anything went wrong. I couldn’t remember what happened before the doomsday device. I just remember waking up. But anyway, that circles back to Gabe just relentlessly choking me out cold in a title match at one of the biggest shows of the year, just like how he hits hard, he chokes hard.”
As the victors, ELP & Hikuleo had the last laugh on the War Dogs.
ELP & Hikuleo will go for more gold at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 18 when they defend their NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Titles against Bishamon (YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto), who will be defending their IWGP Tag Team Championships.
NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 18 will be available through NJPW World. Fans can check out the lineup for the show by clicking here. Fightful will have coverage of the event on January 4.
Watch the full interview with ELP & Hikuleo in the video above.
