Hidaka debuted for the Battlarts shoot style promotion in 1997 after training in the Animal Hamaguchi Dojo. He spent his rookie year venturing to promotions like Michinoku Pro Wrestling and Kingdom Pro Wrestling, sharing rings with names like Yuki Ishikawa, Daisuke Ikeda, Minoru Tanaka and Yoshihiro Tajiri. In 1998, he challenged for the vacated UWA World Middleweight Championship, but was defeated by Willow. Shortly after, he formed a tag team with Minoru Fujita, who was based in Big Japan Pro Wrestling, and they competed at the Tag League 98, where they managed to snatch a significant win over Masao Orihara and Takeshi Ono. They would team extensively in several promotions, but over time, conflicting schedules from competing for separate promotions limited their activity as a team. In November 1999, after several months wrestling for Battlarts alone, Hidaka was sent to America as a Battlarts representative for a learning excursion in Extreme Championship Wrestling. He competed mainly in cruiserweight matches against Yoshihiro Tajiri and Super Crazy, as well as Super Calo. His tenure was notable for commentator Joel Gertner constantly making racist remarks about Hidaka during his matches and nicknamed him "Pokémon" after the popular children's animated series. In 2000, Hidaka returned to Japan, now somewhat higher on the scale, and wrestled numerous matches for Battlarts with Mitsuya Nagai as his tag team partner. He wrestled for the promotion until its very end in late 2001.
In 2001, Hidaka entered Pro Wrestling Zero1 and began to battle the active junior heavyweight roster. For a while they were successful, winning the NWA International Lightweight Tag Team title once, but as Togo wanted to keep on wrestling other independents, their team broke up just in time as Minoru Fujita was returning from an overseas excursion. Hidaka and Fujita formed a team known as Skull and Bones and became prominent in the ZERO-1MAX/independent scene, even winning Pro Wrestling Noah's GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. Following a crucial loss to Minoru Tanaka and Masaaki Mochizuki, another team long "defunct before it even started" due to scheduling conflicts, Hidaka and Fujita turned on each other. On January 19, Hidaka beat Fujita to win the AWA World Junior Heavyweight title for a second time. He lost the title to Mochizuki on January 23, 2008. In 2002, Hidaka had his mixed martial arts debut for Deep as a Zero1 representative, pitted against his close friend Takafumi Ito. Although he lacked formal MMA training, he had some experience in shoot wrestling thanks to his time in Battlarts and routinely trained kickboxing under Satoshi Kobayashi and Naoyuki Taira, who cornered him for the fight. The slightly heavier and much more experienced Ito dominated the grappling exchanges, but Hidaka survived until the second round and held his own with some ankle lock attempts before losing by rear naked choke.
