Super World of Sports, more commonly known as SWS, was a Japanese professional wrestling promotion from 1990 to 1992. Its motto was "Straight and Strong".
Takao Yoshida , better known by his ring name Taka Michinoku, is a Japanese professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist. He currently appears for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where he is a member of the Just 5 Guys stable. From 2011, he was a member of Suzuki-gun, until the faction's disbandment in 2022. Michinoku also is the founder and regularly appears for Just Tap Out (JTO), which was founded in 2019.
Yoshihiro Yamazaki is a Japanese professional wrestler, best known for being the fourth man to portray Tiger Mask. He currently works for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) where he is a former 6-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion and 2-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion. Having competed as Tiger Mask since 1995, he is the longest tenured incarnation of the character.
Yoshinari Ogawa is a Japanese professional wrestler who currently works for Pro Wrestling Noah. He has earned the nickname of "Rat Boy" from the English-speaking Puroresu fanbase due to his sneaky, clever in-ring tactics and baiting his opponents into quick pins, as well as the disheveled, greasy appearance he cultivated during the late-90's..
Kōji Kitao was a Japanese professional sumo wrestler and professional wrestler, born in Mie. As Futahaguro Kōji he was sumo's 60th yokozuna, and the only one in sumo history not to win a top division tournament championship. He was forced to leave sumo at the end of 1987 after a falling-out with his stable master Tatsunami, and became a professional wrestler in 1990. He also had a short film career as an actor, portraying a sumo wrestler in Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1996 martial arts film The Quest.
Satoru Sayama is a Japanese professional wrestler, mixed martial artist, MMA and wrestling promoter and writer, best known as the original Tiger Mask. He has wrestled under his real name as well as the names Sammy Lee, and masked Super Tiger, Tiger King, Tiger Mask and The Mask of Tiger. He is the only man to hold the WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship and the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship simultaneously. Sayama has the distinction of being a competitor in the first 5 Star Rating awarded for a Match by Dave Meltzer, for their NJPW Sumo Hall Show 1983 match. This is thought of very highly in the industry.
Kuniaki Kobayashi is a Japanese retired professional wrestler, most notable for being the generational rival of the famous Tiger Mask character in Japanese puroresu. He wrestled numerous acclaimed matches against the first two Tiger Masks: Satoru Sayama and Mitsuharu Misawa.
The Bruiser Brody Memorial Show was a professional wrestling supercard held by Giant Baba and All Japan Pro Wrestling as a tribute to wrestler Bruiser Brody at Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan on August 29, 1988. His wife and son were present at the event and his widow, Barbara Goodish, presented her late husband's chain to Stan Hansen so he could wear it in remembrance of Brody during his matches. The show received much attention from the Japanese press and, according to the Wrestling Observer, the media coverage "turned into almost an Elvis Presley type of thing as the magazines are still filled with Brody photos four weeks after his death and on Baba's show they mention his name dozens of times each hour". The show was attended by 16,300 fans and raised $70,000, most of which were donated to Brody's family.
The Rikidozan Memorial Show was a professional wrestling event held in 1996, and again in 2000, as a tribute to "the father of puroresu," Rikidozan. Both shows were considered major events in Japan and had involvement from virtually every major wrestling promotion at the time. The first show was held in Yokohama, Japan at the Yokohama Arena on June 30, 1996, with 16,000 in attendance. The show featured interpromotional matches of wrestlers from All Japan Pro Wrestling, Big Japan Pro Wrestling, Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, IWA Kakutoshijuku, International Wrestling Association, Japan Pro Shooting, Kitao Dojo, Michinoku Pro, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Professional Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, Samurai Project, UWFi, Wrestle Association R and joshi promotions GAEA Japan, JWP Joshi Puroresu and Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling. In the main event, Genichiro Tenryu (WAR) and Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW) defeated Koki Kitihara (WAR) and Riki Choshu (NJPW) in a tag team match. On the undercard, Keiji Mutoh & Kensuke Sasaki defeated Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata and a "PWFG vs. UWFI" match between Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Yoji Anjoh resulted in a double-countout.
Tiger Mask is the persona of several Japanese professional wrestlers. The persona was inspired by the title character in Ikki Kajiwara's and Naoki Tsuji's 1968 manga series, Tiger Mask about a professional wrestler who was a feared heel in the United States, but became a face after returning to Japan when a young boy said that he wanted to be a villain like Tiger Mask when he grew up. As of October 2018, eight professional wrestlers have used the Tiger Mask persona during their careers.
All Together was a series of two professional wrestling events organized together by Japan's three biggest promotions; All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and Pro Wrestling Noah, in response to the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The first event was held in Tokyo on August 27, 2011, and the second in Sendai on February 19, 2012. All proceeds from the events were donated to Japanese Red Cross. The events featured no storylines or championship matches, instead they were booked as "supercards", putting together combinations of wrestlers from the three promotions that fans would normally not see.
The New Beginning (2011) was a series of two professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) events promoted by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). The events took place on February 15 and 20, 2011. The first was held in Tokyo at Korakuen Hall and the second in Sendai, Miyagi, at the Sendai Sun Plaza Hall. They were the first events held under the New Beginning name.
NEVER was a series of professional wrestling events held by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) between August 2010 and November 2012. On July 12, 2010, NJPW officially announced the NEVER project, which was to highlight younger up-and-coming talent and outside wrestlers not signed to the promotion. It was explained that the name of the project was an acronym of the terms "New Blood", "Evolution", "Valiantly", "Eternal" and "Radical". For the events, NJPW recruited several freelancers as well as wrestlers signed to promotions such as DDT Pro-Wrestling and Kaientai Dojo. Some outsiders who became NEVER regulars included Daisuke Sasaki, Kaji Tomato, Madoka, Ryuichi Sekine and Shinobu. Kushida, who entered NEVER as a representative of the Smash promotion in February 2011, signed a NJPW contract the following month and returned to the project the following September, now representing NJPW. Three NJPW trainees; Hiromu Takahashi, Sho Tanaka and Yohei Komatsu, made their professional wrestling debuts at NEVER events. Takahashi, who debuted at NEVER.1, was the only wrestler who wrestled on all thirteen NEVER events.
Lion's Gate is the developmental branch of professional wrestling promotion New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), which holds events under the banner of Lion's Gate Project. The branch was officially announced on July 18, 2015, and held its first show on February 25, 2016. In addition to NJPW wrestlers, the Lion's Gate Project shows also feature wrestlers from other promotions, resulting in unique cards.
Super J-Cup: 3rd Stage was the third Super J-Cup professional wrestling tournament, it was hosted by Michinoku Pro Wrestling (MPW). The tournament was a single-elimination tournament of four rounds and was a two-night event featuring junior heavyweights from various Japanese promotions. The first round of the event was held on April 1, 2000 at Sendai City Gymnasium in Sendai, Japan and the final three rounds were held on April 9, 2000 at Sumo Hall in Tokyo, Japan, which had been the site for the previous two tournaments. This event marked the first time that the Super J-Cup was held at an additional venue rather than Sumo Hall.
WAR Anniversary Show was a professional wrestling event produced by the Japanese professional wrestling promotion Wrestle Association R (WAR) to commemorate the anniversary of the promotion's founding by Genichiro Tenryu in 1992. The event to celebrate its anniversary was held between 1993 and 2000.
The Wrestling Summit was a professional wrestling pay-per-view event that was produced and scripted collaboratively between the US-based World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and the Japanese All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) promotions. The joint venture show took place on April 13, 1990 in the Tokyo Dome, in Tokyo, Japan and reportedly drew 53,742 spectators. The event was the only time the three promotions produced a joint show, although NJPW and WWF had previously worked together in the 1970s and '80s.
Pro-Wrestling Summit in Korakuen was a Japanese professional wrestling event co-produced by Apache Pro-Wrestling Army, Big Japan Pro Wrestling (BJW), DDT Pro-Wrestling (DDT), International Wrestling Association of Japan, Kaientai Dojo (K-Dojo), Michinoku Pro Wrestling (M-Pro) and Osaka Pro Wrestling (OPW) on December 31, 2007 at Korakuen Hall, with the participation of wrestlers from All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), Battlarts, Dragon Gate (DG), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), Pro-Wrestling El Dorado, Pro Wrestling Zero1-Max, Toryumon Mexico, Union Pro-Wrestling, Wrestling Marvelous Future (WMF) and Wrestling of Darkness 666.
