knee injury (kayfabe) by Kawada, which stunted his performance; this made them lose the titles against Erika and Margaret, as well as the finals of the Hustle King Memorial tournament. Enraged for the loss, Tenryu turned against him and left Sakata Army to join Monster Army, leaving the stable further depowered. In order to recover from those failures, Wataru introduced himself as a candidate to the new general manager job, which he shockingly won after a fan poll, and also enlisted the help of former GM assistant RG. However, Sakata was then challenged by Tokyo Gurentai and their associate Minoru Suzuki, who defeated Wataru and his group in Hustlemania 2006. Again, the loss made Sakata and RG break up, and they feuded with each other for some time with the help of Suzuki. In early 2007, after being repeatedly beaten down by Tiger Jeet Singh, Wataru finally came to his senses and re-joined the Hustle Army, bringing Ryoji Sai with him. Right after Sakata's return to the Hustle Army, its leader Naoya Ogawa was bribed by Generalissimo Takada into turning heel and joining him, so Sakata and HG worked to replace him. The same year, Sakata married to Eiko Koike, who was also introduced to Hustle as "Hustle Yosei". Sakata' and HG's first effort was put into their feud with "Fire Monster" ACHICHI, the evil version of Shinjiro Otani, as well as Giant Vabo, Scott Norton and the rest of Monster Army's gaijin mercenaries. However, Sakata's greatest moment would be when he volunteered to fight The Esperanza at the next Hustlemania. Although Wataru got outclassed and was about to be finished off, his wife Eiko intervened and weakened Esperanza with her magic powers, which allowed Sakata to hit him with a superkick and pin his foe. Wataru became the first Hustle Army member to defeat The Esperanza after HG and TAJIRI had failed in do so, thus solidifying himself as Hustle's top face. In 2008, Sakata participated in the Hustle Grand Prix, in which the winner could ask a wish inside the company, in order to wish for the disbandment of the Monster Army. Despite beating TAJIRI, Shiro Koshinaka and even the huge Bono-kun, he lost in the finals to Toshiaki Kawada. Depressed, Sakata left the company and secluded himself in a nattō field in order to meditate, later returning as a masked superhero-like character named Nattoman. He started to