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161-536: Atsushi Onita had formed ZEN in late 1997, which quickly removed W*ING and Funk Masters of Wrestling from FMW and absorbed the members of the groups into ZEN. Jealousy arose within the group on December 19, 1997, during the first show of the Super Extreme Wrestling War when Onita booked himself in the main event , which angered Mr. Gannosuke and Yukihiro Kanemura , who thought that their FMW Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship match deserved to be

322-435: A bona fide athletic contest or competition. Professional wrestling is not a combative sport. Wrestling constituting bona fide athletic contests and competitions, which may be professional or amateur combative sport, shall not be deemed professional wrestling under this Part. Professional wrestling as used in this Part shall not depend on whether the individual wrestlers are paid or have been paid for their performance in

483-605: A lumberjack match on December 20 and would continue to use this alternative character on several occasions. Onita lost the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship to Mr. Pogo's alter ego "Pogo Daiyo" on January 21, 1995. On February 24, Onita and his pupil Mr. Gannosuke defeated Pogo and The Gladiator to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship. They lost the title to Pogo and W*ING Kanemura on March 7. Speculation arose over

644-548: A no rope barbed wire electrified dynamite land mine time bomb death match , which stipulated that if Onita lost, he must retire and if Kanemura lost then W*ING Alliance would be forced to disband. Onita defeated Kanemura, forcing W*ING to disband. Onita became upset at the W*ING Alliance members Kanemura, Hideki Hosaka and Hido , who were upset as no group would accept them and he became enraged at FMW leaders Hayabusa , Koji Nakagawa and Masato Tanaka on their leadership of

805-415: A performing art evolved from the common practice of match-fixing among American wrestlers in the 19th century, who later sought to make matches shorter, more entertaining, and less physically taxing. As the public gradually realized and accepted that matches were predetermined, wrestlers responded by increasingly adding melodrama, gimmickry, and outlandish stunt work to their performances to further enhance

966-415: A professional wrestling exhibition. All engagements of professional wrestling shall be referred to as exhibitions, and not as matches. In the industry's slang, a fixed match is referred to as a worked match, derived from the slang word for manipulation, as in "working the crowd". A shoot match is a genuine contest where both wrestlers fight to win and are therefore "straight shooters", which comes from

1127-530: A tag team match and Yukihiro Kanemura lost to the departing Jinsei Shinzaki in Shinzaki's last FMW match and the team of Horace Boulder and Super Leather defeated ZEN's Tetsuhiro Kuroda and The Gladiator. Kodo Fuyuki defeated Atsushi Onita in a match where Onita put ZEN's existence on the line, forcing ZEN to disband while Mr. Gannosuke lost the Double Championship to Hayabusa. Gannosuke injured his knee during

1288-478: A weapons deathmatch to release Kuroda and Hosaka from TNR's slavery at Atsushi Onita Presents Liar, Liar . On August 21, Onita formed Team Zero and took on TNR in a street fight, which TNR won. Go Ito kidnapped Shoichi Arai's niece Kaoruko Arai and began brainwashing her to make her fall in love with him. At Welcome to the Darkside, Nakagawa defeated Darkside of Hayabusa with the help of Mr. Gannosuke, who appeared in

1449-492: A weapons deathmatch . On August 21, Onita formed a group called Team Zero with Kuroda, Hosaka, Yoshinori Sasaki and Mr. Pogo #2 and the group feuded with TNR throughout the fall of 1998. Onita's former rival Mr. Pogo returned to FMW and the two feuded with each other, with Onita defeating Pogo in a match on November 20 to end their rivalry in FMW once and for all. This would be Onita's last match and last appearance in FMW as he left

1610-464: A BJW event, with TNR winning the match for FMW. TNR turned fan favorites by siding with FMW to feud with Kodo Fuyuki's ECW Japan group. On April 3, Kanemura represented FMW against ECW Japan in a FMW vs. ECW series, losing to ECW Japan member Balls Mahoney. At Night in Shibuya Backdraft Eve , TNR lost the 6-Man Tag Team Championship to Kodo Fuyuki, Kyoko Inoue and Chocoball Mukai, but regained

1771-626: A Six-Man Tag Team Tournament. On July 31, Onita teamed with Mitsuhiro Matsunaga to defeat Mr. Pogo and Hisakatsu Oya to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship . Around the same time, Onita renewed his feud with Masashi Aoyagi, who had returned to FMW and attacked Onita after a match. Their rivalry culminated in a no ropes electrified explosive barbed wire barricade double hell match at Summer Spectacular , which Onita won. Onita defeated Mr. Pogo to win his sixth Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship on September 7. After

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1932-716: A TNR vs. ECW match. Kanemura lost the Hardcore Championship to Ryuji Yamakawa at a Big Japan Pro Wrestling (BJW) event on February 22. On February 25, TNR was split into two teams: Kanemura and Jado and Nakagawa and Gedo in a four corners match . Nakagawa and Gedo won the match by last eliminating Kanemura and Jado to become the #1 contenders for the Tag Team Championship, which they would win by defeating former TNR member Kodo Fuyuki and Kyoko Inoue on April 1. On March 2, Kanemura, Jado and Gedo represented FMW against BJW's Ryuji Yamazaki, Great Kojika and The Winger at

2093-413: A background in authentic wrestling no longer mattered. After this time, matches became more outlandish and gimmicky and any semblance professional wrestling had to catch wrestling faded. The personas of the wrestlers likewise grew more outlandish. Gorgeous George , who performed throughout the 1940s and 1950s, was the first wrestler whose entrance into the arena was accompanied by a theme song played over

2254-520: A carny term for a shooting gallery gun whose sights were not deliberately misaligned. Wrestling in the United States blossomed in popularity after the Civil War , with catch wrestling eventually becoming the most popular style. At first, professional wrestlers were genuine competitive fighters, but they struggled to draw audiences because Americans did not find real wrestling to be very entertaining, so

2415-513: A central authority. Nor could any of them stomach the idea of leaving the NWA themselves to compete directly with McMahon, for that would mean their territories would become fair game for the other NWA members. McMahon also had a creative flair for TV that his rivals lacked. For instance, the AWA's TV productions during the 1980s were amateurish, low-budget, and out-of-touch with contemporary culture, which lead to

2576-574: A champion that Curley put forth: Dick Shikat . The National Wrestling Association shut down in 1980. In 1948, a number of promoters from across the country came together to form the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The NWA recognized one "world champion", voted on by its members, but allowed member promoters to crown their own local champions in their territories. If a member poached wrestlers from another member, or held matches in another member's territory, they risked being ejected from

2737-479: A disguise as Jinsei Shinzaki. Team Zero defeated TNR in a street fight on September 1 and then crucified TNR's briefs to end the "Brief Brothers" gimmick. The original Mr. Pogo returned to FMW as "The Great Pogo" and attacked Onita and Pogo #2 in the parking lot, which led to the renewal of a feud between Onita and Great Pogo, allowing TNR to completely focus on feuding with Hayabusa and FMW. During this time, Masao Orihara and Takeshi Ono joined TNR. Nakagawa headlined

2898-404: A distinct vernacular . It has achieved mainstream success and influence within popular culture , with many terms, tropes , and concepts being referenced in everyday language as well as in film , music , television , and video games . Likewise, numerous professional wrestlers have become national or international icons with recognition by the broader public. In the United States, wrestling

3059-410: A fee, a visitor could challenge the wrestler to a quick match. If the challenger defeated the champion in a short time frame, usually 15 minutes, he won a prize. To encourage challenges, the carnival operators staged rigged matches in which an accomplice posing as a visitor challenged the champion and won, giving the audience the impression that the champion was easy to beat. This practice taught wrestlers

3220-404: A few appearances for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), in 1999, establishing himself as a heel, since he was a FMW employee, the crowd would not accept him on a NJPW ring, which prompted him to gain a lot of heat. During that time, he would cut promos insulting his interviewers (such as spitting water in their faces, physically assaulting and threatening them) and future targets. On January 4, during

3381-629: A few weeks after him. He was known as a loyal ring attendant to AJPW promoter Giant Baba , who had accepted him into the dojo despite not having graduated from high school. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he and Fuchi toured Memphis, Tennessee , winning the AWA Southern Tag Team titles three times. When the junior heavyweight wrestling boom started in Japan, originally in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) under Tatsumi Fujinami and

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3542-709: A hiatus as he was unhappy with his position in the company. He made an appearance for FMW's working partner Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) on June 26 by costing The Sandman and Tommy Dreamer , a match against Dudley Boyz to set up a no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch against Sandman in ECW but the match never took place as Onita returned to FMW on July 20 to rescue Shoichi Arai from an assault by Team No Respect. At Atsushi Onita Presents Liar, Liar on August 11, Onita released his former ZEN teammates Hideki Hosaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda from Team No Respect's slavery and saved Shoichi Arai's job as FMW President by defeating TNR in

3703-405: A legitimate sport. Firstly, wrestling was more entertaining when it was faked, whereas fakery did not make boxing any more entertaining. Secondly, in a rigged boxing match, the designated loser must take a real beating for his "defeat" to be convincing, but wrestling holds can be faked convincingly without inflicting injury. This meant that boxers were less willing to "take dives"; they wanted to have

3864-754: A match against Gus Sonnenberg in January 1929. Bowser then broke away from the trust to form his own cartel, the American Wrestling Association (AWA), in September 1930, and he declared Sonnenberg to be the AWA champion. This AWA should not be confused with Wally Kadbo's AWA founded in 1960. Curley reacted to this move by convincing the National Boxing Association to form the National Wrestling Association , which in turn crowned

4025-616: A match on August 20, with Fuyuki as the special guest referee. Later at the event, Mr. Gannosuke lost the Independent Heavyweight Championship to Masato Tanaka. At Goodbye Hayabusa II: Hayabusa Graduation Ceremony, Mr. Gannosuke and Jado defeated Flying Kid Ichihara and Naohiko Yamazaki and Sena Wakana was forced to remove her bra and panties due to the pre-match stipulation, which she did to reveal another pair of bra and panties. Masato Tanaka and Ricky Fuji defeated Kodo Fuyuki and Shoichi Arai while Koji Nakagawa and Gedo lost

4186-424: A more literal meaning in those places. A notable example is India's Pro Wrestling League . In numerous American states, professional wrestling is legally defined as a non-sport. For instance, New York defines professional wrestling as: Professional wrestling means an activity in which participants struggle hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators and which does not comprise

4347-624: A new WEW 6-Man Tag Team Championship and a tournament was set up for the title which Fuyuki, Nakagawa and Gedo won on July 31 by defeating Hayabusa, Masato Tanaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda on July 31. Fuyuki also forced Hayabusa to end the Hayabusa character and compete under his real name Eiji Ezaki after August 25. At Goodbye Hayabusa II: Haunted House, Jado defeated Flying Kid Ichihara in a match which stipulated that Sena Wakana must remove her clothes if Ichihara lost and Wakana undressed to reveal her undergarments. Gedo helped Shoichi Arai defeat Ricky Fuji in

4508-440: A new city, attendance was high because there was a waiting fanbase cultivated in advance by the cable TV shows. The NWA's traditional anti-competitive tricks were no match for this. The NWA attempted to centralize and create their own national cable television shows to counter McMahon's rogue promotion, but it failed in part because the members of the NWA, ever protective of their territories, could not stomach submitting themselves to

4669-528: A result, Onita reverted to being face along with ZEN. ZEN began feuding with the newly formed Team No Respect , which evolved from legitimate heat between Onita and Kodo Fuyuki , who was getting a lot of influence and booking power in the company. Onita wanted to return FMW to its old deathmatch style ideology while Shoichi Arai and Kodo Fuyuki were toning down the deathmatch content. On February 13, Onita, Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda defeated TNR's Mr. Gannosuke, Yukihiro Kanemura and Jado to win

4830-456: A short period, he brought back his Great Nita persona, facing Keiji Mutoh's, The Great Muta in a No Rope Explosive Barbed Wire Barricade Explosive Land Mine match (also dubbed Double Hell Deathmatch ) on August 28, losing the match after Muta used Nita's kama to knock him down. One year later, he challenged Riki Choshu to a barbed wire deathmatch on July 30, 2000: Choshu accepted and came out of retirement to wrestle him. Choshu defeated Onita in

4991-566: A squash after launching him in the explosive barbed wires multiple times, and making him pass out while locking him in his finisher, the Sasori-Gatame. In 2001, he returned to AJPW for one night only, at the Tokyo Dome, to team with Terry Funk against Abdullah the Butcher and Giant Kimala. Whereas AJPW fans had already known Funk and Abdullah's willingness to brawl, Onita also played a huge part in

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5152-556: A street fight. During this time, Onita also quietly ended his feud with W*ING Alliance as the group joined him in his feud with the Funk Masters of Wrestling. At the 8th Anniversary Show , the team of Onita, Masato Tanaka and W*ING Kanemura defeated Terry Funk, Cactus Jack and The Gladiator in a Texas Tornado Street Fight Deathmatch. Onita headlined the Fall Spectacular event on September 28, 1997, against W*ING Kanemura in

5313-405: A tag team called The New Footloose , a spin-off of Fuyuki's old tag team with Toshiaki Kawada called Footloose . Fuyuki began getting influential in FMW by getting the right to book his own matches and he made a match between TNR and ZEN on May 25, with the stipulation that if ZEN lost then TNR would pick a member of ZEN. ZEN lost and TNR picked Hideki Hosaka as their slave. The same stipulation

5474-402: A tournament for the vacant Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship, which they ended up losing to Masato Tanaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda in the final on May 3, 1999. TNR formed an alliance with Gannosuke's Outlaws to feud with Battlarts. Former tag team partners Jado and Gedo also began feuding as Jado was irate at Gedo for sticking with TNR and the two had a match on May 5, which Gedo won. Later at

5635-497: A typical American household only received four national channels by antenna, and ten to twelve local channels via UHF broadcasting . But cable television could carry a much larger selection of channels and therefore had room for niche interests. The WWF started with a show called All-American Wrestling airing on the USA Network in September 1983. McMahon's TV shows made his wrestlers national celebrities, so when he held matches in

5796-575: A victory for all the pain to which they subjected themselves. In the 1910s, promotional cartels for professional wrestling emerged in the East Coast (outside its traditional heartland in the Midwest ). These promoters sought to make long-term plans with their wrestlers, and to ensure their more charismatic and crowd-pleasing wrestlers received championships, further entrenching the desire for worked matches. The primary rationale for shoot matches at this point

5957-436: Is a form of athletic theater that combines mock combat with drama , with the premise that the performers are competitive wrestlers. Professional wrestling is distinguished by its scripted outcomes and emphasis on entertainment and showmanship . The staged nature of matches is an open secret , with both wrestlers and spectators nonetheless maintaining the pretense that performances are bona fide competitions, which

6118-469: Is a former All Asia Tag Team Champions alongside Yoshitatsu . Onita founded FMW in 1989, defeating martial artist Masashi Aoyagi under his own martial arts rules in the main event of the second night of the promotion 's inaugural event. FMW later emerged as a full-fledged touring organization, moving away from martial arts-inspired shoot style matches and moving toward the rasslin' -inspired deathmatch style – which became popular with Japanese fans. He

6279-410: Is a true sport. Wrestlers would at all times flatly deny allegations that they fixed their matches, and they often remained in-character in public even when not performing. When in public, wrestlers would sometimes say the word kayfabe to each other as a coded signal that there were fans present and they needed to be in character. Professional wrestlers in the past strongly believed that if they admitted

6440-427: Is generally practiced in an amateur context. No professional league for competitive wrestling exists due to a lack of popularity. For example, Real Pro Wrestling , an American professional freestyle wrestling league, dissolved in 2007 after just two seasons. In other countries, such as Iran and India , wrestling enjoys widespread popularity as a genuine sport, and the phrase "professional wrestling" therefore has

6601-470: Is likened to the suspension of disbelief employed when engaging with fiction . Professional wrestlers perform as characters and usually maintain a " gimmick " consisting of a specific persona , stage name , entrance theme , and other distinguishing traits. Matches are the primary vehicle for advancing storylines, which typically center on interpersonal conflicts, or feuds , between heroic " faces " and villainous " heels ". A wrestling ring , akin to

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6762-679: The Barbed Wire Deathmatch Tournament . During this time, Mr. Pogo left FMW and Tarzan Goto turned on Onita once again to renew their feud and became Onita's arch rival. Onita defeated Goto in the first-ever no rope exploding barbed wire steel cage deathmatch at the very successful 2nd Anniversary Show on September 23 at the Kawasaki Stadium in Kawasaki , which would become the venue for FMW's major events in future. Onita and Goto reunited once again and they participated in

6923-675: The Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) banner titled Grudge in Nagoya and Grudge in Tokyo in October and headlined both shows against Aoyagi. He lost to Aoyagi at Grudge in Nagoya and defeated him at Grudge in Tokyo . Onita shortly after developed FMW into a full-time promotion, originally basing it around shoot style matches before transitioning the company into being Japan's first death match promotion – taking inspiration from

7084-453: The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism . After retirement from politics, he lent his name and image to a Nintendo DS game, Atsushi Onita's Political Quiz . Sports entertainment Mid 20th Century 1970s and 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s and 2020s Professional wrestling (often referred to as pro wrestling , or simply, wrestling )

7245-609: The New Jersey State Athletic Control Board that professional wrestling is not a real sport because its matches have predetermined outcomes. Shortly thereafter, New Jersey deregulated professional wrestling. The WWF then rebranded itself as a " sports entertainment " company. In the early years of the 20th century, the style of wrestling used in professional wrestling matches was catch wrestling . Promoters wanted their matches to look realistic and so preferred to recruit wrestlers with real grappling skills. In

7406-577: The Street Fight Tournament with former rival Grigory Verichev on December 7. He ended his feud with The Sheik by defeating him for the United States Championship on January 18, 1993; Onita later returned the belt to Sheik saying that Sheik deserved the title for holding it for over a decade. This earned him Sheik's respect and both men ended their feud and became allies. Onita's success streak continued as he defeated Terry Funk in

7567-463: The Summer Spectacular show on August 22. Onita successfully defended the title against W*ING's former ace Mitsuhiro Matsunaga in a no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch at Year End Spectacular , and then the two men became allies to feud with Mr. Pogo and his entourage. On January 6, 1994, Onita lost the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship to Mr. Pogo in a street fight. After losing

7728-483: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship . On October 19, Onita and Yukihiro Kanemura defeated Mr. Gannosuke and Hisakatsu Oya to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship . Funk Masters of Wrestling came to an end as its leader Terry Funk left FMW, while the remaining members Mr. Gannosuke, Hisakatsu Oya and The Gladiator joined ZEN, which had now become the main villainous group in FMW against

7889-487: The World's Strongest Tag Team Tournament , which they won by defeating Grigory Verichev and Koba Krutanize in the final on December 9 to win the inaugural WWA World Martial Arts Tag Team Championship . FMW phased away the martial arts style and emphasized on the deathmatch wrestling as its key feature during this time. Onita lost his World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship to Big Titan on January 15, 1992. Onita and Goto lost

8050-596: The Wrestling World Tokyo Dome event, he faced Kensuke Sasaki , losing by disqualification after throwing a fireball to Sasaki's face. Then on April 10, he wrestled Masahiro Chono on a No-Rope Explosive Barbed-Wire Death Match, ending in no-contest after both Chono and Onita were knocked out. Shortly after that, Onita allied himself with Chono and his Team 2000 faction against the nWo Japan . On July 21, he, Chono and AKIRA defeated nWo Japan's Hiro Saito , Hiroyoshi Tenzan and their leader, Keiji Mutoh . For

8211-447: The deathmatch style in FMW which made the company successful while Fuyuki wanted to transform it into sports entertainment and had won the support of the majority of FMW's locker room, who were upset at Onita due to his egoism and selfishness. In early 1998, TNR introduced a new gimmick for TNR called "Brief Brothers" in which they would undress to reveal their briefs and held many hilarious pranks which would help TNR get over with

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8372-543: The independent circuit , to internationally broadcast events at major arenas. The largest and most influential promotions are in the United States , Mexico , Japan , and northwest Europe (the United Kingdom , Germany/Austria and France ), which have each developed distinct styles, traditions, and subgenres within professional wrestling. Professional wrestling has developed its own culture and community , including

8533-535: The shoot style promotion Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) but his challenge was rejected and he responded by taking on martial artist Masashi Aoyagi in a ( worked ) martial arts fight for the World Karate Association (WKA) on July 2, 1989, during which Onita was disqualified for using wrestling moves on Aoyagi. In the aftermath of his fight for the WKA, Onita personally promoted two wrestling shows under

8694-431: The spectacle . By at least the early 20th century, professional wrestling had diverged from the competitive sport to become an artform and genre of sports entertainment . Professional wrestling is performed around the world through various " promotions ", which are roughly analogous to production companies or sports leagues . Promotions vary considerably in size, scope, and creative approach, ranging from local shows on

8855-433: The "Hayabusa" attire to reveal his briefs. Kodo Fuyuki and Hido defeated Mr. Gannosuke and Yukihiro Kanemura to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship on March 29. They lost the title to Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka on April 17. TNR competed in five matches at FMW's first pay-per-view 9th Anniversary Show . Hido won the first match against ZEN's Hideki Hosaka . Jado and Gedo defeated Ricky Fuji and John Kronus in

9016-543: The 100th All Asia Tag Team Champions . Two days later, Onita announced he was planning to retire from professional wrestling at a special event at Kawasaki Stadium in October 2017. On May 10, 2017, Onita announced his retirement tour, which would conclude with his final match on October 31. Onita's plans for Kawasaki Stadium had fallen through and his final match would instead take place at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo. Onita claimed that this, his seventh retirement, would be his "true" retirement. On June 20, Onita and Fuchi lost

9177-577: The 1920s, a group of wrestlers and promoters known as the Gold Dust Trio introduced moves which have since become staples of the mock combat of professional wrestling, such as body slams, suplexes , punches, finishing moves, and out-of-ring count-outs. By the early 1930s, most wrestlers had adopted personas to generate public interest. These personas could broadly be characterized as either faces (likeable) or heels (villainous). Native Americans, cowboys, and English aristocrats were staple characters in

9338-400: The 1930s and 1940s. Before the age of television, some wrestlers played different personas depending on the region they were performing in. This eventually came to an end in the age of national television wrestling shows, which forced wrestlers to stick to one persona. Wrestlers also often used some sort of gimmick, such as a finishing move, eccentric mannerisms, or out-of-control behavior (in

9499-506: The 1990s, WCW became a credible rival to the WWF, but by end it suffered from a series of creative missteps that led to its failure and purchase by the WWF. One of its mistakes was that it diminished the glamor of its World Heavyweight Championship . Between January 2000 and March 2001, the title changed hands eighteen times, which sapped fan enthusiasm, particularly for the climactic pay-per-view matches. In professional wrestling, two factors decide

9660-510: The 6-Man Tag Team Championship while Yukihiro Kanemura failed to win the Independent Heavyweight Championship from Masato Tanaka and Mr. Gannosuke unsuccessfully challenged Hayabusa for the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship in Eiji Ezaki's last match as Hayabusa. After the match, Fuyuki came out to present Hayabusa with the flowers once again and then TNR attacked him and tore his mask and clothes. Shoichi Arai pleaded TNR to stop doing so but he

9821-643: The All Asia Tag Team Championship back to Aoki and Sato. Onita's retirement tour also took him to the United States, where he worked for Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) on August 5. Prior to his actual retirement, Onita retired the Great Nita character on August 27. On October 31, Onita's retirement took place in a six-man barbed wire match, where he teamed with Kai and Shingo Takagi to defeat Nosawa Rongai , Kazuyuki Fujita and Kendo Kashin by pinning Rongai. However, Onita came out of retirement,

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9982-507: The Apex of Triangle Championship at a show for Kodo Fuyuki's World Entertainment Wrestling (WEW), a replacement for FMW, which closed in 2002. Hido turned on Kuroda and helped the opposing team win the match. Hido reformed TNR with Fuyuki, Kanemura, Dick Togo and Orihara's Far East Connection group but the reunion did not last long as the group quietly closed in 2003 due to Fuyuki's death. The group performed TNR Dances on many occasions to pay tribute to

10143-641: The Atlantic Athletic Corporation (AAC). The AAC shut down in 1960. In 1958, Omaha promoter and NWA member Joe Dusek recognized Verne Gagne as the world champion without the approval of the NWA. Gagne asked for a match against the recognized NWA champion Pat O'Connor. The NWA refused to honor the request, so Gagne and Minneapolis promoter Wally Karbo established the American Wrestling Association in 1960. This AWA should not be confused with Paul Bowser's AWA, which ceased operations just two months prior. Gagne's AWA operated out of Minnesota . Unlike

10304-429: The Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship against Goto in the first-ever no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch at Summer Spectacular . After the match, Onita and Goto ended their feud by embracing each other and putting away their differences and then Onita began a legendary rivalry against Mr. Pogo, with Onita defeating Pogo in the first singles encounter in a street fight on August 25. Onita successfully defended

10465-517: The Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship against Pogo in a Texas Deathmatch at 1st Anniversary Show . Onita lost the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship to Grigory Verichev on February 27, 1991. Onita unsuccessfully challenged Verichev for the title in a rematch on May 5 and then received another title shot on May 29, where Onita defeated Verichev to regain the renamed World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship. On August 17, Onita defeated Jimmy Backlund , Ricky Fuji and Sambo Asako to win

10626-419: The Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship to Hayabusa and Daisuke Ikeda. TNR was successful on November 20 as Mr. Gannosuke returned to FMW under the guise of Jinsei Shinzaki at the event and defeated Tetsuhiro Kuroda. Yukihiro Kanemura asked him about his antics but Gannosuke refused to answer and walked out on TNR. Go Ito and Hido defeated Kaori Nakayama and Ricky Fuji in an intergender tag team match . Later at

10787-511: The Commissioner of the company. Later at the show, the FMW team of Masato Tanaka, Hayabusa, Hideki Hosaka, Hisakatsu Oya and Tetsuhiro Kuroda defeated TNR in an elimination tag team match. On June 13, Koji Nakagawa and Gedo defeated Tanaka and Kuroda to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship. On June 15, Sena Wakana walked out on Fuyuki and TNR by leaving with Flying Kid Ichihara, who had been beaten by Jado. Hayabusa, Tanaka and Kuroda defeated

10948-615: The FMW name with another promotion (called Onita FMW since he did not own the rights to the FMW name), but the promotion would fold after only three months. Onita would retire once again on September 23, 2003, losing a death match to The Great Sasuke , but this would not last long. Onita fought yet another retirement match on March 26, 2005, being pinned by Genichiro Tenryu . This also would be disregarded, as he would come out of retirement in May 2008 and would begin promoting his own cards again in July. In

11109-606: The FMW team led by Hayabusa. Onita and Kanemura were stripped of the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship in November due to Onita's inactivity and ZEN also lost the World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship to Hayabusa, Hisakatsu Oya and Masato Tanaka during the Super Extreme Wrestling War tour. During this tour, Mr. Gannosuke and Yukihiro Kanemura, along with Hido, grew upset at Onita for booking himself in

11270-421: The FMW team. On September 30, Onita held a press conference in which he publicly denounced himself as a FMW wrestler and formed a New World Order (nWo)-themed faction ZEN with W*ING members and FMW wrestler Tetsuhiro Kuroda . As a result, Onita turned heel for the first and only time in FMW history. On October 14, the team of Onita, Hido and Kuroda defeated Hayabusa, Koji Nakagawa and Masato Tanaka to win

11431-408: The NWA, at which point his territory became fair game for everyone. The NWA would blacklist wrestlers who worked for independent promoters or who publicly criticized an NWA promoter or who did not throw a match on command. If an independent promoter tried to establish himself in a certain area, the NWA would send their star performers to perform for the local NWA promoter to draw the customers away from

11592-477: The NWA, which only allowed faces to be champions, Gagne occasionally allowed heels to win the AWA championship so that they could serve as foils for him. In August 1983, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), a promotion in the north-east , withdrew from the NWA. Vince K. McMahon then took over as its boss. No longer bound by the territorial pact of the NWA, McMahon began expanding his promotion into

11753-431: The October 6 pay-per-view against Hayabusa for his Double Championship, where Hayabusa retained the title. The show also featured Daisuke Ikeda and Ricky Fuji defeat Gedo and Hido with the help of Kaori Nakayama , who prevented Go Ito from interfering. TNR defeated Hayabusa and Ricky Fuji in a handicap match when Fuyuki pinned Hayabusa to become the #1 contender for the Double Championship. On October 26, New Footloose lost

11914-681: The United States. At the press conference for FMWE it was also announced that the first show would be held on July 4, 2021, at Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetable Market in Yokohama City. On October 31, 2021, in Trenton, NJ at the Trenton Thunder Ballpark, Onita stepped into the ring again with Matt Tremont to have an Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch. The match was promoted by FMWE and Tremont's H2O Wrestling. Though he originally dropped out of high school, Onita returned to finish his education when he

12075-596: The WEW Tag Team Championship to Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Hisakatsu Oya. Yukihiro Kanemura lost to the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship to Hayabusa. Following the match, Fuyuki offered flowers and handshake to Hayabusa which the latter shook. At Goodbye Hayabusa II: Last Match, Jado defeated Flying Kid Ichihara once again with the stipulation that Sena Wakana had to strip her bra and panties and as she began to do it, Jado stopped it by saying that he did not want to see her naked anyway. The event also saw TNR retain

12236-521: The WEW World Heavyweight Championship to Masato Tanaka in a loser leaves FMW 13,000 volt electrical thunderbolt cage deathmatch , forcing Fuyuki to leave FMW. H defeated Hayabusa in the main event, with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee. H and Gannosuke reconciled after the match and formed a tag team, which led to Gannosuke turning fan favorite and leaving TNR. Following the departure of Kodo Fuyuki and Mr. Gannosuke from

12397-574: The World Martial Arts Tag Team Championship to Sabu and Horace Boulder in a no ropes barbed wire street fight deathmatch on May 7. Onita regained the World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship by defeating former boxing champion Leon Spinks in a cage match on May 24, which earned a rapid rise in popularity and stardom to Onita for having beaten a famous celebrity. A month later, Onita lost

12558-549: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship and regained it later in the night as Fuyuki, Kanemura and Nakagawa defeated Hayabusa, Masato Tanaka and Hisakatsu Oya to win the title. On June 19, Super Leather took on Hido in a loser leaves TNR match due to his recent losing streak and TNR helped Hido in beating Leather and then Go Ito publicly fired Leather from the group. Later at the event, TNR lost to FMW's Hayabusa, Hisakatsu Oya, Ricky Fuji and Daisuke Ikeda . TNR would then split into two rivalries and that were against FMW and

12719-406: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship at ZEN's promoted show on May 5. Onita's team would lose after Nakagawa suffered an injury. Nakagawa continued to fake injury and would ultimately be revealed as the man responsible for breaking ZEN after he turned on Onita during a Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship match against The New Footloose on May 31. After the breakup of ZEN, Onita took

12880-503: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship to Masato Tanaka, Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Hisakatsu Oya. A day later, Fuyuki replaced the Independent Heavyweight Championship and the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship with the WEW Single Championship and created a new WEW Hardcore Championship and awarded it to Yukihiro Kanemura, who changed his name to "Kintaro Kanemura". TNR brought a bag and revealed Shoichi Arai's body in

13041-438: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship to ZEN's Atsushi Onita, Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda . After the match, TNR attacked the match referee Go Ito, forcing him to walk on crutches. This turned out to be a ruse as Ito joined TNR by attacking Nakagawa with his crutch in the back to cost Nakagawa and Kuroda, a Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship opportunity against Gannosuke and Kanemura on February 19. Later in

13202-414: The World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship. Onita's rivalry with Fuyuki would lead to a match between the two at 9th Anniversary Show , which stipulated that Onita must disband ZEN if he lost. Onita lost the lumberjack match and was forced to disband ZEN but he said that he would break the group only if Kodo Fuyuki, Yukihiro Kanemura and Hido would beat Onita, Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda for

13363-568: The Year End Spectacular event, the FMW team of Onita, Pogo, Masato Tanaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda defeated Funk Masters of Wrestling's Terry Funk , Hisakatsu Oya and The Headhunters in a Texas Tornado Street Fight Deathmatch . Onita had supposedly returned to the company for only one match until he began working part-time for the company on March 14, 1997, by teaming with Koji Nakagawa , Masato Tanaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda to defeat The Headhunters , Hisakatsu Oya and The Gladiator in

13524-401: The arena's loudspeakers, his being Pomp and Circumstance . He also wore a costume: a robe and hairnet, which he removed after getting in the ring. He also had a pre-match ritual where his "butler" would spray the ring with perfume. In the 1980s, Vince McMahon made entrance songs, costumes, and rituals standard for his star wrestlers. For instance, McMahon's top star Hulk Hogan would delight

13685-418: The art of staging rigged matches and fostered a mentality that spectators were marks to be duped. The term kayfabe comes from carny slang. By the turn of the 20th century, most professional wrestling matches were "worked" and some journalists exposed the practice: American wrestlers are notorious for the amount of faking they do. It is because of this fact that suspicion attaches to so many bouts that

13846-550: The audience by tearing his shirt off before each match. The first major promoter cartel emerged on the East Coast, although up to that point, wrestling's heartland had been in the Midwest. Notable members of this cartel included Jack Curley , Lou Daro, Paul Bowser and Tom and Tony Packs. The promoters colluded to solve a number of problems that hurt their profits. Firstly, they could force their wrestlers to perform for less money. As

14007-464: The bag and then the group circled around it and urinated on it. TNR's Hayabusa began feuding with H while Fuyuki picked up a rivalry with Tanaka. Shoichi Arai helped Tanaka beat Fuyuki, Kanemura and Jado in a handicap match . TNR and their mystery partner Chocoball Mukai lost to H, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Flying Kid Ichihara and Yoshinori Sasaki in the main event. H and Hayabusa competed in an anus explosion match on October 29, during which Hayabusa tied H in

14168-424: The cartel grew, there were fewer independent promoters where independent wrestlers could find work, and many were forced to sign a contract with the cartel to receive steady work. The contracts forbade them from performing at independent venues. A wrestler who refused to play by the cartel's rules was barred from performing at its venues. A second goal of the wrestling cartels was to establish an authority to decide who

14329-418: The case of heels). The matches could also be gimmicky sometimes, with wrestlers fighting in mud and piles of tomatoes and so forth. The most successful and enduring gimmick to emerge from the 1930s were tag-team matches. Promoters noticed that matches slowed down as the wrestlers in the ring tired, so they gave them partners to relieve them. It also gave heels another way to misbehave by double-teaming. Towards

14490-423: The character in shows must be considered fictional, wholly separate from the life of the performer. This is similar to other entertainers who perform with a persona that shares their own name. Some wrestlers also incorporate elements of their real-life personalities into their characters, even if they and their in-ring persona have different names. Kayfabe is the practice of pretending that professional wrestling

14651-410: The children. This was all documented on film. Like fellow professional wrestler Scott Steiner , Onita has also claimed to have broken Wilt Chamberlain 's record of sleeping with 20,000 women. Coincidentally, his exit from politics was forced by a sex scandal in which he was alleged to have used government accommodations to host a threesome with a pornographic film actress and a female employee of

14812-508: The commission. The Commission did on very rare occasions hand out such authorizations, such as for a championship match between Jim Londos and Jim Browning in June 1934. This decree did not apply to amateur wrestling, which the commission had no authority over. Wrestling fans widely suspected that professional wrestling was fake, but they did not care as long as it entertained. In 1933, a wrestling promoter named Jack Pfefer started talking about

14973-454: The company after the match as Shoichi Arai refused to restore him as the promotion's ace due to Onita receiving backlash from FMW's roster due to his reputation as an egomaniac and selfish. He used the promotional names "USO" ( all caps version of the Japanese word for "lie"), "Jado" ("evil ways"; not to be confused with the wrestler of the same name ), "Onita Pro" and "Project X." Onita made

15134-764: The company in 1998 after disagreements over his position in the company. He held the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship a record seven times and headlined the first six editions of FMW's premier Anniversary Show event from 1989 to 1995. Onita was the first true graduate of the All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) dojo ( Jumbo Tsuruta had debuted first, but he had trained in Amarillo, Texas , with Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk ), debuting on April 14, 1974. In his early days he teamed with dojo classmate Masanobu Fuchi , who debuted only

15295-445: The corner and pulled down his shorts to place a firecracker in his G-string , which exploded. At 10th Anniversary Show , Koji Nakagawa, Gedo and Jado lost to Ricky Fuji, Flying Kid Ichihara and Chocoball Mukai in a ladder match for the vacant 6-Man Tag Team Championship. Later in the show, Hido lost a mixed martial arts match to Willie Williams . Kanemura retained the Hardcore Championship against ECW 's Balls Mahoney . Fuyuki lost

15456-540: The current fashion of wrestling is the universal discussion as to the honesty of the matches. And certainly the most interesting phrase of this discussion is the unanimous agreement: "Who cares if they're fixed or not—the show is good." Newspapers tended to shun professional wrestling, as journalists saw its theatrical pretense to being a legitimate sport as untruthful. Eventually promoters resorted to publishing their own magazines in order to get press coverage and communicate with fans. The first professional wrestling magazine

15617-405: The end of the 1930s, faced with declining revenues, promoters chose to focus on grooming charismatic wrestlers with no regard for their skill because it was charisma that drew the crowds, and wrestlers who were both skilled at grappling and charismatic were hard to come by. Since most of the public by this time knew and accepted that professional wrestling was fake, realism was no longer paramount and

15778-771: The event, Battlarts defeated TNR and Gannosuke's Outlaws in an elimination match. In the main event, Fuyuki retained the Double Championship against Tetsuhiro Kuroda and TNR reunited as Gannosuke and Jado rejoined the group and they did their signature TNR Dance to their theme song "Come Out and Play". TNR turned villains again and Fuyuki revealed that he had become the new FMW Commissioner and they reverted to feuding with Hayabusa and FMW. Following TNR's reunion, Kodo Fuyuki brought in porn star Sena Wakana as his valet and awarded his Independent Heavyweight Championship to Mr. Gannosuke and Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship to Yukihiro Kanemura. On May 31, FMW President Shoichi Arai joined TNR who had been brainwashed by Fuyuki into making him

15939-486: The event, Kodo Fuyuki defeated Hayabusa to win the Double Championship. Shoichi Arai stripped TNR off the World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship and awarded it to the departing Atsushi Onita as a tribute for setting up the company and making it very successful. An Over the Top Tournament was set up during which problems arose between the team of Ono and Orihara and the rest of TNR beginning with Hido beating Ono in

16100-724: The event, Kodo Fuyuki defeated Yukihiro Kanemura in a non-title match and then Fuyuki announced that TNR would no longer be looking for control over FMW. On January 6, Fuyuki retained the Double Championship against Hisakatsu Oya and then TNR officially turned fan favorites by quitting their villainous tactics. Jado and Go Ito disagreed with Fuyuki and quit TNR. TNR began feuding with Gannosuke's Outlaws and Fuyuki rescued Hayabusa from an assault on February 21 to end his feud with Hayabusa and form an alliance. TNR also began feuding with Battlarts group. During this time, TNR formed an alliance with Hayabusa's Team Phoenix to feud with Gannosuke's Outlaws and Battlarts. Hayabusa and Fuyuki participated in

16261-597: The facade of kayfabe as best as they could. In 1989, Vince McMahon testified before the New Jersey government that professional wrestling was not a true sport and therefore should be exempted from sports-related taxes. Many wrestlers and fans resented McMahon for this, but Lou Thesz accepted it as the smart move as it gave the industry more freedom to do as it pleased, and because by that point professional wrestling no longer attempted to appear real. The demise of WCW in 2001 provided some evidence that kayfabe still mattered to

16422-410: The fans. During one skit, they pulled a rag on their member Hido and had Jado portray Hido's wife Megumi Kudo as "Megumi Jado" and they conducted a "wedding" between Hido and Megumi Jado. On March 17, TNR mocked the fans into believing that Hayabusa had joined the group by having Hayabusa appear to join them and then he unmasked himself to reveal Yukihiro Kanemura in a Hayabusa outfit and then he removed

16583-470: The first place. "Double-crosses", where a wrestler agreed to lose a match but nevertheless fought to win, remained a problem in the early cartel days. At times a promoter would even award a victorious double-crosser the title of champion to preserve the facade of sport. But promoters punished such wrestlers by blacklisting them, making it quite challenging to find work. Double-crossers could also be sued for breach of contract, such as Dick Shikat in 1936. In

16744-598: The first time on January 17, 1990. Onita's first feud began in the summer of 1990 when Onita defeated Lee Gak-soo in a different style fight on May 19 and then the two showed respect to each other and teamed to defeat Mitsuteru Tokuda and Sambo Asako in a tag team match on June 2. Goto was irate at Onita for teaming with karate fighters and toning down professional wrestling and he brought in Mr. Pogo to FMW and Onita began feuding with Goto and Pogo. Onita defeated Goto in an empty arena match on June 24 and then successfully defended

16905-533: The first-ever no ropes exploding barbed wire time bomb deathmatch at the 4th Anniversary Show on May 5. Onita renewed his rivalry with Mr. Pogo, who returned to FMW in the summer of 1993 and the World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship was replaced with the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship. Onita defeated Pogo in a no ropes exploding barbed wire time bomb deathmatch to win the vacant Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship at

17066-469: The following year, on October 28, 2018, for Pro Wrestling A-Team. Onita fought Matt Tremont to a no-contest. Later, the latter wanted him to be his tag team partner against Masada and DJ Hyde. On May 6, 2021, Onita announced the formation of a new promotion that would focus on Explosion Matches. The promotion is called FMWE, and they plan to have events shown online for fans to see all over the world. Onita also hopes to finally bring real Explosion Matches to

17227-610: The game is not popular here. Nine out of ten bouts, it has been said, are pre-arranged affairs, and it would be no surprise if the ratio of fixed matches to honest ones was really so high. The wrestler Lou Thesz recalled that between 1915 and 1920, a series of exposés in the newspapers about the integrity of professional wrestling alienated a lot of fans, sending the industry "into a tailspin". But rather than perform more shoot matches, professional wrestlers instead committed themselves wholesale to fakery. Several reasons explain why professional wrestling became fake whereas boxing endured as

17388-455: The government. They pledged to stop allocating exclusive territories to its promoters, to stop blacklisting wrestlers who worked for outsider promoters, and to admit any promoter into the Alliance. The NWA would flout many of these promises, but its power was nonetheless weakened by the lawsuit. Paul Bowser's AWA joined the NWA in 1949. The AWA withdrew from the Alliance in 1957 and renamed itself

17549-454: The group for the rest of his retirement tour. As a result, Onita and Matsunaga broke up as a team and vacated the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship in October. On December 1, Onita debuted his alter ego "The Great Nita", which was based and stylized on The Great Muta . The team of Nita and Tarzan Goto defeated Hisakatsu Oya and Mr. Pogo in a no ropes exploding barbed wire double hell deathmatch. Onita would return as Nita to defeat Pogo in

17710-752: The group, TNR began to lose influence and main event status in FMW and were relegated to mid-card status and Kintaro Kanemura took over as the leader of the group. On December 11, Koji Nakagawa, Jado and Gedo defeated Ricky Fuji, Chocoball Mukai and Flying Kid Ichihara to win the 6-Man Tag Team Championship and Kintaro Kanemura successfully defended the WEW Hardcore Championship against ECW's Axl Rotten . On December 12, Hido left TNR and changed his ring name to "Willie Takayama" in honor of Willie Williams, to whom he had lost at 10th Anniversary Show. TNR defeated ECW's Yoshihiro Tajiri , Super Crazy and Hardcore Chair Swingin' Freaks (Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten) in

17871-454: The group. Atsushi Onita Mid 20th Century 1970s and 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s and 2020s Atsushi Onita ( 大仁田 厚 , Ōnita Atsushi , born October 25, 1957) is a Japanese actor, politician, and semi-retired professional wrestler . He is best known for his work in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) and is credited with introducing the deathmatch style of professional wrestling to Japan . He

18032-513: The independent. By 1956, the NWA controlled 38 promotions within the United States, with more in Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. The NWA's monopolistic practices became so stifling that the independents appealed to the government for help. In October 1956 the US Attorney General's office filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NWA in an Iowa federal district court. The NWA settled with

18193-471: The industry was anything but a competitive sport. The first wrestling promoter to publicly admit to routinely fixing matches was Jack Pfefer . In 1933, he started talking about the industry's inner workings to the New York Daily Mirror , resulting in a huge exposé. The exposé neither surprised nor alienated most wrestling fans, although some promoters like Jack Curley were furious and tried to restore

18354-487: The industry's inner workings to the New York Daily Mirror , maintaining no pretense that wrestling was real and passing on planned results just before the matches took place. While fans were neither surprised nor alienated, traditionalists like Jack Curley were furious, and most promoters tried to maintain the facade of kayfabe as best they could. Not the least interesting of all the minor phenomena produced by

18515-431: The late 2000s and early 2010s, Onita kept on bringing Death Matches, (though mostly six-man affairs with Ichiro Yaguchi as one of his frequent partners), to promotions such as Osaka Pro Wrestling , Pro Wrestling Zero1 and Pro Wrestling NOAH . On December 12, 2014, he returned to AJPW to team with Fuchi and defeat the promotion's current junior standard bearers, Último Dragón and Yoshinobu Kanemaru . In April 2015, FMW

18676-428: The main event match on December 19 against Masato Tanaka instead of booking Gannosuke and Kanemura's match. This exploded when the team of Hayabusa, Jinsei Shinzaki and Masato Tanaka defeated Atsushi Onita, Mr. Gannosuke and Yukihiro Kanemura in a WarGames match on December 22. After the match, Gannosuke and Kanemura attacked Onita and quit ZEN, along with Hido and Koji Nakagawa joined Onita as ZEN's newest member. As

18837-498: The main event of the show. They were irate of Onita's egoism and selfishness. On December 22, Onita, Gannosuke and Kanemura lost a WarGames match to Masato Tanaka , Hayabusa and Jinsei Shinzaki after Hayabusa pinned Onita. Gannosuke and Kanemura attacked Onita after the match and left ZEN, along with Hido . On January 7, 1998, Onita, Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda defeated the trio of Gannosuke, Kanemura and Hido at ZEN's first show. Kodo Fuyuki and Jado attacked ZEN after

18998-511: The main event, TNR achieved more success as Fuyuki defeated the company's ace Hayabusa in the first-time ever match between the two. Gannosuke demanded that Shoichi Arai set up a tournament to determine the #1 contender for his Double Championship. Kanemura and Jado were entered into the tournament and both men won their quarter-final matches against Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda on March 7 respectively, but lost to The Gladiator and Hayabusa in their respective semi-final matches. Hayabusa won

19159-415: The match and he was out of action for six months. Following Mr. Gannosuke's injury, Kodo Fuyuki took over as the leader of TNR. On May 5, Onita agreed to end ZEN if Fuyuki, Yukihiro Kanemura and Hido were able to beat him, Koji Nakagawa and Tetsuhiro Kuroda in a street fight for the World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship. TNR won the title, forcing ZEN to disband. On May 19, Fuyuki and Kanemura formed

19320-601: The match and joined Gannosuke and Kanemura in a meeting in their locker rooms, where Kanemura named the merger "Team No Respect". Gannosuke became the leader of the group as he was the company's top villain and the reigning Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Champion and Independent Heavyweight Champion . TNR primarily feuded with ZEN and FMW's team and TNR also got the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship held by Gannosuke and Kanemura. TNR's first match together took place on January 9, in which Gannosuke, Kanemura and Jado defeated Hayabusa, Jinsei Shinzaki and Ricky Fuji . On January 16,

19481-427: The match, Onita vacated the title due to his retirement from wrestling to pursue an acting career. During this time, he starred in the movie Dan Gan (Japanese for "bullet"), which would later be adopted as the nickname for Onita's pupil, Masato Tanaka . Onita's acting career flopped and he ventured a return to wrestling. After a sabbatical (getting his high school diploma, as he had dropped out of high school when he

19642-605: The match, and his team emerged victorious. In 2002, following FMW's closure Onita appeared briefly in WEW, run by Hiromichi Fuyuki. The storyline saw Onita blaming Fuyuki's "Entertainment Pro Wrestling" business strategy and supposed embezzlement of money for causing FMW to close, and appeared to be paving the road to an eventual match between Onita and Fuyuki before Fuyuki abruptly announced his retirement due to cancer that would eventually claim his life in March 2003. Onita attempted to resurrect

19803-443: The match, former W*ING wrestler Yukihiro Kanemura made his FMW debut and attacked Onita to avenge the demise of W*ING. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga visited Kanemura at hospital as Kanemura was getting treated for some burns which he had suffered during a past match. Onita accused Matsunaga of turning on FMW and mistrusting his loyalty and this angered Matsunaga, who then joined Kanemura and Mr. Pogo to form W*ING Alliance and Onita feuded with

19964-498: The members of wrestling cartels as the champion drew big crowds wherever he performed, and this would occasionally lead to schisms. By 1925, this cartel had divided the country up into territories which were the exclusive domains of specific promoters. This system of territories endured until Vince McMahon drove the fragmented cartels out of the market in the 1980s. This cartel fractured in 1929 after one of its members, Paul Bowser , bribed Ed "Strangler" Lewis to lose his championship in

20125-574: The money for their match against the Puerto Rican Army. Onita made his next appearance on October 28, where his former rival Mr. Pogo begged him to come out of retirement and team with him against the Funk Masters of Wrestling in Pogo's retirement match at Year End Spectacular . Onita initially rejected Pogo's request and then rescued Pogo from an assault by Funk Masters of Wrestling on November 26 and agreed to come out of his retirement to team with Pogo. At

20286-455: The new junior heavyweight ace of AJPW. On January 3, 1985, Onita retired for the first time due to accumulated injuries. After over three years recuperating from his injuries, Onita returned to the ring in December 1988 for Pioneer Senshi, an independent promotion , losing a martial arts –inspired bout to Ryuma Go . Following his return to the ring, Onita issued a challenge to the wrestlers of

20447-480: The opening round at ECW/FMW Supershow I . Orihara low blowed Hido during the quarter-final match at ECW/FMW Supershow II . Fuyuki also participated in the tournament but lost to Hisakatsu Oya in the opening round. On December 17, TNR let Orihara and Ono out of the group when Gedo caused them to get eliminated during a Come Out and Play match , which TNR eventually lost. Orihara and Ono gained their revenge on TNR by defeating Gedo and Hido on January 5, 1999. Later at

20608-519: The original Tiger Mask , Satoru Sayama , Onita was picked as the ace of AJPW's makeshift junior heavyweight division. Baba was able to get Chavo Guerrero , who had been an early rival of Fujinami, to jump over to AJPW's side, and Guerrero brought the NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship with him, effectively establishing it as AJPW's junior heavyweight cornerstone. Onita and Guerrero's subsequent feud over

20769-528: The original TNR members Mr. Gannosuke, Yukihiro Kanemura and Hido in a ladder match where Fuyuki would be forced to eat dog food if TNR lost. Fuyuki chewed a bit of it and then spit it on Hayabusa's face and a brawl took place between TNR and FMW. Fuyuki instituted a governing body for FMW called World Entertainment Wrestling (WEW) and renamed Nakagawa and Gedo's FMW Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship to WEW World Tag Team Championship . He slowly abandoned FMW titles and replaced them with WEW titles. He created

20930-417: The past. On March 30, Great Nita lost to Pogo Daiyo in a lumberjack match. Mr. Pogo refused to be Onita's opponent at 6th Anniversary Show and then Takashi Ishikawa was finally selected as the ace until Hayabusa interrupted Onita at a press conference and volunteered to be his opponent at the event as Hayabusa had been convinced by Shoichi Arai , whom Onita had sold the company around this time. Hayabusa

21091-472: The person to succeed Onita as the promotion's ace. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga had been the original choice but citing that W*ING had failed with Matsunaga as the ace, Onita had to change the decision and give the spot to Tarzan Goto, who would be Onita's opponent in his retirement match at the 6th Anniversary Show. Goto left FMW and took away his pupils Mr. Gannosuke and Flying Kid Ichihara as he was upset for putting over Onita again after having done it so many times in

21252-437: The platform used in boxing , serves as the main stage ; additional scenes may be recorded for television in backstage areas of the venue, in a format similar to reality television . Performers generally integrate authentic wrestling techniques and fighting styles with choreography , stunts , improvisation , and dramatic conventions designed to maximize entertainment value and audience engagement. Professional wrestling as

21413-714: The promotion's closing in 1991. In the spring of 1984, the WWF purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW), which had been ailing for some time due to financial mismanagement and internal squabbles. In the deal, the WWF acquired the GCW's timeslot on TBS . McMahon agreed to keep showing Georgia wrestling matches in that timeslot, but he was unable to get his staff to Atlanta every Saturday to fulfill this obligation, so he sold GCW and its TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). JCP started informally calling itself World Championship Wrestling (WCW). In 1988, Ted Turner bought JCP and formally renamed it World Championship Wrestling. During

21574-595: The returning Atsushi Onita. On July 10, Nakagawa pinned Hayabusa in an elimination tag team match and Hayabusa wanted retribution by demanding a match with Hayabusa. On July 20, New Footloose defeated Yoshinori Sasaki and Mr. Pogo #2 and then attacked Shoichi Arai until Onita made the save and Go Ito suggested that he, Fuyuki, Nakagawa and Kanemura face Onita, Pogo #2, Sasaki and Arai in a match which stipulated that if TNR won, Arai would lose his presidency and if Onita's team won, then Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Hideki Hosaka would be freed from TNR's slavery. Onita's team defeated TNR in

21735-409: The scores and then Onita debuted his "Mr. Liar" character by saying that he was not going to retire immediately and that the retirement stipulation would take place a year later. Onita began his retirement tour which would conclude at the following year's 6th Anniversary Show . Onita reunited with Tenryu as the two teamed with Crusher Bam Bam Bigelow at WAR's 2nd Anniversary Show and the trio won

21896-440: The stamina for an hours-long fight. Audiences also preferred short matches. Worked matches also carried less risk of injury, which meant shorter recovery. Altogether, worked matches proved more profitable than shoots. By the end of the 19th century, nearly all professional wrestling matches were worked. A major influence on professional wrestling was carnival culture. Wrestlers in the late 19th century worked in carnival shows. For

22057-523: The style of matches he had seen during his earlier stay in Memphis. Even as the deathmatch wrestling style become the main trademark of FMW, the promotion would continue to hold shoot style matches. Onita would bring in numerous karate and martial arts fighters to be part of the FMW roster in the early years of the promotion. The first street fight of FMW took place on December 4, in which Onita and Dick Murdoch defeated Jos LeDuc and Masanobu Kurisu. Onita

22218-426: The territories of his former NWA peers, now his rivals. By the end of the 1980s, the WWF would become the sole national wrestling promotion in the U.S. This was in part made possible by the rapid spread of cable television in the 1980s. The national broadcast networks generally regarded professional wrestling as too niche an interest, and had not broadcast any national wrestling shows since the 1950s. Before cable TV,

22379-801: The title on May 3. At 11th Anniversary Show , Kanemura defeated Ryuji Yamakawa to win the Hardcore Championship while Gedo, Jado and Nakagawa retained the 6-Man Tag Team Championship against Willie Williams, former TNR member Willie Takayama and Williams' students Bouzu and Megane. On May 28, Nakagawa turned on Jado and Gedo during a 6-Man Tag Team Championship defense against Kodo Fuyuki, Kyoko Inoue and Chocoball Mukai and left TNR to join Fuyuki's Shin Fuyuki-Gun group. This forced Kanemura to finally disband TNR on June 16 as he joined Shin Fuyuki-Gun. On September 14, 2002, Hido, Tetsuhiro Kuroda and TAKA Michinoku took on Dick Togo , Kintaro Kanemura and Masao Orihara for

22540-564: The title spanned three promotions (AJPW, Jim Crockett Promotions , and Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre ), and, while not as spectacular as NJPW's junior heavyweight division, provided a solid alternative to heavyweight-style wrestling for AJPW fans. Onita took a hiatus from wrestling due to injury in April 1983. He attempted a comeback in May 1984. His last match prior to his retirement occurred on December 2, 1984, against Mighty Inoue. He would be replaced by his former tag team partner Masanobu Fuchi as

22701-428: The title to The Sheik on June 25 because of an injury sustained from an attack by Tiger Jeet Singh before the match. Sheik would later reward the title to Singh. Onita lost to Singh in a jungle deathmatch on June 30, before defeating him in a no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch to win his fourth World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship at the 3rd Anniversary Show . Onita continued his success by winning

22862-432: The title, Onita began his next feud with Genichiro Tenryu after the team of Onita and Tarzan Goto defeated Tenryu and Ashura Hara at Wrestling and Romance 's Revolution Rumble when Onita pinned Tenryu. Onita and Tenryu competed in a no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch at 5th Anniversary Show on May 5, which stipulated that if Onita lost, he must retire from professional wrestling. Tenryu defeated Onita to even

23023-444: The tournament to become the #1 contender to Gannosuke's title. On March 13, Horace Boulder was brought in as TNR's newest member alongside Hido, Gannosuke and Kanemura during a street fight against ZEN, which TNR won. TNR and ZEN's feud would also develop a singles rivalry between Kodo Fuyuki and ZEN leader Atsushi Onita, stemming from the legitimate backstage conflict between the two on the control over FMW. Onita wanted to maintain

23184-505: The trial, witnesses testified that most of the "big matches" and all of the championship bouts were fixed. By the 1930s, with the exception of the occasional double-cross or business dispute, shoot matches were essentially nonexistent. In April 1930, the New York State Athletic Commission decreed that all professional wrestling matches held in the state had to be advertised as exhibitions unless certified as contests by

23345-431: The trio defeated Hayabusa, Hisakatsu Oya and Masato Tanaka to capture the World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship , the first title that was won by TNR. As a result, Gannosuke held all major FMW's men's titles. TNR soon gained more members as Fuyuki-Gun member Gedo returned to FMW and Super Leather joined the group and TNR's ally Hido also became an official member. On February 13, Gannosuke, Kanemura and Jado lost

23506-471: The truth, their audiences would desert them. Today's performers don't "protect" the industry like we did, but that's primarily because they've already exposed it by relying on silly or downright ludicrous characters and gimmicks to gain popularity with the fans. It was different in my day, when our product was presented as an authentic, competitive sport. We protected it because we believed it would collapse if we ever so much as implied publicly that it

23667-535: The way of proceedings: the "in-show" happenings, presented through the shows; and real-life happenings outside the work that have implications, such as performer contracts, legitimate injuries, etc. Because actual life events are often co-opted by writers for incorporation into storylines of performers, the lines between real life and fictional life are often blurred and become confused. Special discern must be taken with people who perform under their own name (such as Kurt Angle and his fictional persona ). The actions of

23828-420: The wrestlers quietly began faking their matches so that they could give their audiences a satisfying spectacle. Fixing matches was also convenient for scheduling. A real ("shoot") match could sometimes last hours, whereas a fixed ("worked") match can be made short, which was convenient for wrestlers on tour who needed to keep appointments or share venues. It also suited wrestlers who were aging and therefore lacked

23989-425: Was Wrestling As You Like It , which printed its first issue in 1946. These magazines were faithful to kayfabe . Before the advent of television, professional wrestling's fanbase largely consisted of children, the elderly, blue-collar workers and minorities. When television arose in the 1940s, professional wrestling got national exposure on prime-time television and gained widespread popularity. Professional wrestling

24150-446: Was 16), Onita made a surprise return to FMW on March 15, 1996, along with his former rivals W*ING Alliance to rescue FMW's team from an attack by the Puerto Rican Army. He convinced the FMW wrestlers to challenge Puerto Rican Army at the 7th Anniversary Show and announced that he would be present in the crowd at the event. He also sold off his jacket that he wore for his retirement match at the 6th Anniversary Show to assist FMW team get

24311-671: Was again resurrected with Onita as its central wrestler. On July 11, 2016, Onita announced the foundation of a new promotion named Fire Puroresu, which was set to hold its first show on August 26. On July 24, Onita fractured his right arm in a match, where he lost the Bakuha-ō Championship to Masakatsu Funaki , putting his participation in Fire Puroresu's inaugural event at risk. On November 27, 2016, Onita returned to All Japan, where he and fellow first class graduate Masanobu Fuchi defeated Atsushi Aoki and Hikaru Sato to become

24472-413: Was attacked as well, thus leaving TNR. Hayabusa would then go by the ring name "H". On August 27, H eliminated all the members of TNR in an elimination match and re-injured Gannosuke's knee by dropkicking him in the same knee which H had injured a year ago. On September 3, Gannosuke attacked H under a Hayabusa disguise and said that he would compete as Hayabusa from then onwards. On September 23, TNR lost

24633-488: Was challenges from independent wrestlers. But a cartelized wrestler, if challenged, could credibly use his contractual obligations to his promoter as an excuse to refuse the challenge. Promotions would sometimes respond to challenges with "policemen": powerful wrestlers who lacked the charisma to become stars, but could defeat and often seriously injure any challenger in a shoot match. As the industry trend continued, there were fewer independent wrestlers to make such challenges in

24794-647: Was featured as the company's main star and the top fan favorite and headlined every show. His first Barbed Wire Deathmatch took place at Battle Creation as he teamed with Tarzan Goto to defeat Jerry Blayman and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga . After being eliminated by his frequent ally Tarzan Goto from the Battle Resistance tournament , Onita defeated Beast the Barbarian to win the WWA World Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship for

24955-548: Was for the next night and TNR won again with Tetsuhiro Kuroda being forced to become TNR's slave. On May 27, New Footloose defeated Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka to win the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship. On May 31, New Footloose defended the title against Atsushi Onita and Koji Nakagawa, during which Nakagawa turned on Onita by hitting him with a crutch to end Onita's alliance and joined TNR. TNR misused Hosaka and Kuroda and Nakagawa would often beat and attack his former ZEN teammates to prove his loyalty to TNR. On June 1, TNR vacated

25116-556: Was in his late thirties. In 2001, he won the 19th House of Councilors election as a representative of the Liberal Democratic Party , following Antonio Inoki and Hiroshi Hase to a seat in the Japanese Diet . One of his first major acts in office was to launch a post- 9/11 humanitarian mission to Afghanistan , where he performed professional wrestling matches in crudely constructed rings made of sticks and rope, to benefit

25277-636: Was previously considered a niche interest, but the TV networks at the time were short on content and thus were willing to try some wrestling shows. In the 1960s, however, the networks moved on to more mainstream interests such as baseball, and professional wrestling was dropped. The core audience then shrunk back to a profile similar to that of the 1930s. In 1989, Vince McMahon was looking to exempt his promotion (the World Wrestling Federation ) from sports licensing fees. To achieve this, he testified before

25438-415: Was something other than what it appeared to be. I'm not sure now the fear was ever justified given the fact that the industry is still in existence today, but the point is no one questioned the need then. "Protecting the business" in the face of criticism and skepticism was the first and most important rule a pro wrestler learned. No matter how aggressive or informed the questioner, you never admitted

25599-417: Was the "world champion". Before the cartels, there were multiple wrestlers in the U.S. simultaneously calling themselves the "world champion", and this sapped public enthusiasm for professional wrestling. Likewise, the cartel could agree on a common set of match rules that the fans could keep track of. The issue over who got to be the champion and who controlled said champion was a major point of contention among

25760-418: Was the promotion's top star, wrestling in main event matches at sold-out events, making FMW a financially successful company, particularly for a Japanese independent promotion . Onita sold FMW to Shoichi Arai and retired from wrestling in 1995 to pursue an acting career, which was unsuccessful, forcing him to return as a wrestler in 1996. After returning to FMW, he led stables ZEN and Team Zero but departed

25921-428: Was ultimately selected to be Onita's opponent in his retirement match. Just one day shy of his retirement match, Onita defeated Pogo in a barbed wire double hell deathmatch to win his record-setting seventh and final Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship on May 4. The following night at the 6th Anniversary Show, Onita successfully defended the title against Hayabusa in a no ropes exploding barbed wire deathmatch. After

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