Trivia / Naoya Ogawa

• Creator Backlash: Rumoredly, how Ogawa sees his NJPW tenure, as he even pushed to have footage of his matches erased from official NJPW DVD.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ogawa was in talks to debut in All Japan Pro Wrestling, but negotiations fell off because Giant Baba, with the short-lived career of Anton Geesink in mind, didn't want to risk his money with a prospect which might not be as successful long-term.
  • Ogawa could have ended up fighting Rickson Gracie in two separate occasions. The first one even had the match signed up for a follow-up of the Colosseum 2000 event, with Ogawa preparing to forfeit the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in order to focus on preparing for the fight, but Rickson backed down due to the death of his son Rockson. The second time was years later, when Rickson returned to Japan by UFO's invitation and they talked of a match with Ogawa, but the thing fell off again.
  • He would also faced Yoshihisa Yamamoto in Fighting Network RINGS in a judo vs. judo match, but despite it was officially set, it never happened. The feud was later teased with again in NJPW, but it failed to take off a second time.
  • In 2004, Ogawa was going to face Shinsuke Nakamura at the NJPW Tokyo Dome show, having been brought to the event by Inoki as a HUSTLE representative, but he was instead placed in a tag team match along with fellow hustler Toshiaki Kawada against Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Hiroshi Tanahashi. According to Tadashi Tanaka's inside book, the change happened because Ogawa refused to work with Nakamura upon hearing that the latter wanted to shoot on him on revenge for the 1.4 Incident and had convinced some young lions to side with him in a possible brawl. Ogawa supposedly gave up half of his salary in order to be removed of the match.
  • Apparently, Keiji Mutoh of all people once challenged Ogawa to a vale tudo rules match, which Ogawa declined. This has been speculated to have been a promotional stunt, given Mutoh's infamous dislike of MMA, but the truth is unknown.