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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".
Mitsuharu Misawa was a Japanese amateur and professional wrestler and promoter. He is primarily known for his time in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), and also for forming the Pro Wrestling Noah promotion in 2000. In the early 1990s, Misawa gained fame alongside Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Akira Taue, who came to be nicknamed AJPW's "Four Pillars of Heaven", and whose matches developed the ōdō style of puroresu and received significant critical acclaim. Despite never working in the United States during the 1990s, Misawa had significant stylistic influence upon American independent wrestling, through the popularity of his work among tape-traders in the country. Misawa is widely regarded as the one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. However, the physical demands and consequences of the style in which he worked and the circumstances of his death have made his legacy, or at least that of ōdō, somewhat problematic.
Genichiro Shimada, better known as Genichiro Tenryu is a retired Japanese professional wrestler and professional wrestling promoter. At age 13, he entered sumo wrestling and stayed there for 13 years, after which he turned to Western-style professional wrestling. "Tenryu" was his shikona. He had two stints with All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he spent the majority of his career while also promoting Super World of Sports (SWS), Wrestle Association R (WAR) and Tenryu Project. At the time of his retirement, professional wrestling journalist and historian Dave Meltzer wrote that "one could make a strong case [that Tenryu was] between the fourth and sixth biggest native star" in the history of Japanese professional wrestling.
Kensuke Sasaki is a Japanese retired professional wrestler, mixed martial artist, and founder of the now-defunct wrestling promotion Diamond Ring.
Akira Taue is a retired Japanese professional wrestler. He is also a former AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, a former GHC Heavyweight Champion and has had fourteen 5 Star Matches as awarded by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Yoshinari Ogawa is a Japanese professional wrestler who currently works for Pro Wrestling Noah. He has earned the nickname of "Rat Boy" due to his sneaky, clever in-ring tactics and baiting his opponents into quick pins.
Toshiaki Kawada is a Japanese semi-retired professional wrestler best known for his work in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), whom he worked for from his debut in 1982 up until 2008. In All Japan, he was a 5 time Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, a 9 time World Tag Team Champion, three time winner of the Real World Tag League and a two time winner of the Champion Carnival. He was also recognised as the ace of the promotion from 2000–2005.
Tomomi "Tommy" Tsuruta, better known by his ring name Jumbo Tsuruta, was a Japanese professional wrestler who wrestled for All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) for most of his career, and is well known for being the first ever Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, having won the PWF Heavyweight Championship, the NWA United National Championship, and the NWA International Heavyweight Championship, and unifying the three titles. He is also known for being one-half of the first World Tag Team Champions with Yoshiaki Yatsu, having won the NWA International Tag Team Championship and the PWF Tag Team Championship, and unifying the two titles.
Shiro Koshinaka is a Japanese professional wrestler who has competed in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and Wrestle Association "R" (WAR) during the 1980s and 1990s. He was also the first IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.
Masanobu Fuchi is a Japanese professional wrestler currently signed to All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he is also a director and the co-head booker. Fuchi has exclusively worked for All Japan since his debut in 1974, and holds the record for the longest World Junior Heavyweight Championship reign at 1309 days. Fuchi became a freelancer in 2009, but officially re-signed with AJPW in 2013 as both a director and wrestler, making him the longest tenured member of the All Japan roster.
Hiromichi Fuyuki was a Japanese professional wrestler and promoter better known by his ring name Kodo Fuyuki best known for his time in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), Wrestle Association R (WAR) and other Japanese and international promotions during the 1980s and 1990s as the leader of 6-man tag team Fuyuki-Gun with Gedo and Jado.
Footloose was a professional wrestling tag team consisting of Toshiaki Kawada and Ricky/Samson Fuyuki.
Susumu Hara was a Japanese rugby player and professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Ashura Hara (阿修羅・原).
Tatsumi Kitahara is a Japanese retired professional wrestler better known by his ring name Koki Kitahara.
Fuyuki-gun was the name of Japanese professional wrestling stables led by Hiromichi Fuyuki in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) and Wrestle Association R (WAR) during the 1990s. Fuyuki-gun was originally founded by Fuyuki in WAR in 1994 and they became the first WAR World Six-Man Tag Team Champions, winning the title a record five times. They left WAR in 1996 and competed as freelancers before being signed by FMW to a full-time contract, where they held the FMW World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team Championship. The group would merge with the trio of Mr. Gannosuke, Yukihiro Kanemura and Hido to form Team No Respect. Fuyuki-Gun disbanded after Fuyuki left FMW (kayfabe) due to losing a match to Masato Tanaka at the 10th Anniversary Show. Fuyuki formed a new offshoot group called "Shin Fuyuki-Gun" which lasted until 2001.
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.
Revolution Rumble '94 in Ryōgoku Kokugikan was a major professional wrestling supercard event produced by Wrestling and Romance on March 2, 1994 at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, Japan. The event was a success as it drew a crowd of 11,000 fans.
The 2000 All Japan Pro Wrestling mass exodus was an incident in the Japanese All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) professional wrestling promotion that took place throughout May and June 2000, and culminated in 24 of the 26 contracted native wrestlers leaving the promotion. Led by Mitsuharu Misawa, they later formed their own promotion, Pro Wrestling Noah.
Do Judge!! was a major professional wrestling event produced by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). The event took place on October 9, 2000 at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan. It marked the first major cross promotional matches between New Japan Pro-Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) after the two had entered into a working relationship in August.
The Wrestling Summit was a major professional wrestling supercard show 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. Highlights from the show aired on Japanese television, but due to various ownership issues the full event has never been shown in its entirety.