The original Japanese-based Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) was a Japanese professional wrestling promotion from 1984 to 1986, formed by wrestlers who had left New Japan Pro Wrestling. It was revived as the Newborn UWF in 1988. Puroresu is an abbreviated term of purofesshonaru resuringu (プロフェッショナル・レスリング[Western-style] professional wrestling in Japanese). ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... New Japan Pro Wrestling (新日本プロレス, shin nihon puroresu) is a major professional wrestling federation in Japan, founded by Antonio Inoki in 1972. ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Original UWF

The original roster included Rusher Kimura, Akira Maeda, Ryuma Go, Mach Hayato, and Gran Hamada. Soon, however, they were joined by Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Nobuhiko Takada, Satoru Sayama (the original Tiger Mask) and Kazuo Yamazaki, and this changed the orientation of the UWF's wrestling from the traditional style to a more martial arts oriented style. Maeda, Fujiwara, Takada, Sayama and Yamazaki had been martial artists before joining New Japan Pro Wrestling, and they began incorporating realistic moves, including submission holds and kickboxing-style kicks, which created a new form of puroresu called shoot-style. Kimura, Go, and Hamada, unable to cope with the new style, decided to leave and join All Japan Pro Wrestling instead. Akira Maeda is a Korean Japanese professional wrestler, also known as Kwik-kik-Lee for his time on the British Wrestling show World of Sport . ... Gran Hamada (real name Hiroaki Hamada) is Japanese professional wrestler, the first to adopt the high-flying Mexican lucha libre style. ... Yoshiaki Fujiwara applying the Fujiwara armbar Yoshiaki Fujiwara (藤原喜明 Fujiwara Yoshiaki) is a Japanese professional wrestler who has worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling ZERO-ONE, and UWF. // Career Fujiwara was the first graduate of the New Japan Pro Wrestling dojo (Mr. ... Satoru Sayama is a Japanese professional wrestler, best known as the original Tiger Mask. ... Tiger Mask is the name of a masked Japanese professional wrestling character in an eponymous manga series, also adapted into a televised anime series in 1969, and later a gimmick used by a succession of real-life pro wrestlers. ... Hawaiian State Grappling Championships. ... Professional wrestling holds include a number of set moves and pins used by competitors to immobilize their opponents. ... Kicking to left side Kickboxing is a generic term for a sporting martial art that, while similar to boxing, uses the feet as well as the hands for striking. ... Shoot wrestling is a general term that describes a broad set of unarmed fighting styles that originated in Japan in the late 1970s, in close association with Japanese professional wrestling. ... All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) (全日本プロレス, zen nihon puroresu) is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion established in 1972. ...

In 1985 another former New Japan wrestler, Osamu Kido, who had trained under Karl Gotch, joined the UWF. But just as the promotion fledged, Maeda and Sayama, the top two stars, began bickering with each other over the shoot-style's essence. Maeda wanted to focus the matches on submissions, while Sayama, a former kickboxer, wanted to focus on kicks. This came to a head in a brutal match in late 1985 when Maeda did not pull a kick and instead kicked Sayama hard in the groin, causing a disqualification. This article is about the year. ... Categories: American professional wrestlers | Professional wrestling stubs ...

Sayama, embittered with puroresu after this match, left the UWF and was not heard from again in the puroresu world for 11 years. The promotion dissolved and the rest of the roster went back to New Japan where they formed a stable and feuded with New Japan's top stars of the era in an "invasion" angle, which later inspired the WCW's nWo. In professional wrestling, a stable is a group of wrestlers within a promotion who have a common element -- friendships, either real or storyline, a manager who manages all of them, or a common storyline, which puts them together as a unit (recent examples include Evolution, La Résistance, The Cabinet... In professional wrestling, an angle is a fictional storyline (the wrestler Kurt Angles name is a coincidence). ... WCW logo until 1999 World Championship Wrestling or WCW, was a professional wrestling promotion that existed from 1988 to 2001. ... The nWo (New World Order) was both a professional wrestling storyline and the stable of wrestlers who were its central players. ...

Newborn UWF

Most of the original UWF roster left New Japan yet again in 1988 to reform the UWF as the Newborn UWF. After Akira Maeda was suspended without pay and eventually dismissed from New Japan for intentionally shooting on Riki Choshu, Takada, Yamazaki, Yoji Anjo, and rookie Tatsuo Nakano agreed to leave the promotion in February 1988. The Newborn UWF actually started in March, with a superb card that set the standard for shoot-style puroresu to follow. Because clean finishes (as in, submissions or knockouts in the middle of the ring) were used, so the fans could see clear-cut winners and losers, it was more accepted as "real fighting" than New Japan or All Japan, which at the time were still using the American-originated standard of countouts and disqualifications. 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mitsuo Yoshida(吉田光雄), better known by his stage name Riki Choshu(長州力), is a Japanese professional wrestler who is most known for his longtime work in New Japan Pro Wrestling as a wrestler and a booker. ... 1988 is a leap year starting on a Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Shortly after the death of Japanese Emperor Hirohito in early 1989, Maeda held a meeting with New Japan promoter Antonio Inoki, in which they agreed that Fujiwara, who had remained in New Japan but now wanted out, would be allowed to rejoin UWF and bring two of his disciples, Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki, with him. That year also saw the debut of Kiyoshi Tamura, who is still recognized as one of the eminent shoot-style pro-wrestlers in Japan. Hirohito ) (April 29, 1901 – January 7, 1989) was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from 1926 to 1989. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Antonio Inoki (アントニオ猪木), real name Kanji Inoki (猪木寛至 Inoki Kanji, born February 20, 1943) is a retired Japanese professional wrestler who now resides in New York City. ... Masakatsu Funaki is a well-known Japanese professional wrestler who performed in New Japan Pro Wrestling, PWFG, as well as the UWF and its later incarnation, the UWFi. ... Minoru Suzuki is a Japanese professional wrestler and mixed martial artist. ... Kiyoshi Tamura (born December 12, 1969) is a Japanese middleweight professional Wrestler and Mixed Martial Arts fighter. ...

1990 saw many ups and downs in the short story of the Universal Wrestling Federation. Future stars Masahito Kakihara and Yusuke Fuke debuted, and a new rulebook was devised in which the first person to score 5 knockdowns (in which the opponent could not get back up at once, similar to boxing knockout attempts) would win, giving the 5-knockdown situation the same weight as a submission. Shinji Jin, a non-wrestler who had taken over for Maeda as promotion president the previous year, wanted to co-promote with other federations and styles, particularly SWS and Hamada's Universal Lucha Libre, but Maeda, resenting other forms of professional wrestling from his New Japan days, decided to put the idea off. This, and the general Japanese economic downturn of the era, prompted UWF to close its doors with a farewell card on December 1, 1990, in Matsumoto, Nagano. This article is about the year. ... Professional boxing bout featuring Ricardo Dominguez (left) vs. ... Super World of Sports, more commonly known as SWS, was a Japanese professional wrestling promotion from 1990 to 1992. ... Universal Lucha Libre (Universal Pro-Wrestling until 1991; Federación Universal de Lucha Libre afterwards) was a professional wrestling promotion in Japan from 1990 to 1995. ... December 1 is the 335th (in leap years the 336th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... Matsumoto (松本市) is a city located in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. ...

The UWF wrestlers thus went their separate ways. Most of the roster (Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, Nakano, Tamura, Kakihara, and Shigeo Miyato) founded UWF International, while Fujiwara, Funaki, Suzuki and Fuke founded Fujiwara Gumi, which made Jin's co-promoting idea into reality. As for Maeda, he, some rookies from the former UWF dojo, and foreign fighters Chris Dolman and Dirk Vrij founded Fighting Network RINGS, which would dedicate itself to pure shoot-style wrestling without actually billing itself as wrestling. Union of Wrestling Force International, better known as UWF International or simply UWFI, was a professional wrestling promotion in Japan from 1991 to 1996. ... Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Group (Purofesshonaru-resuringu Fujiwara-Gumi, プロフェッショナルレスリング藤原組) was a shoot style professional wrestling promotion based in Japan, operating from 1991 to 1995. ... A ring is usually anything resembling a circle, or a noise that cycles rapidly. ...

Legacy

As the only form of puroresu to actually originate in Japan, the UWF was a pioneer. Although its roots were Antonio Inoki's wrestling style (in fact, Maeda, Sayama and Takada credit Inoki as their inspiration to become wrestlers), UWF made puroresu realistic and forced other promotions to follow. In fact, All Japan starting in 1989 abandoned countout and disqualification finishes, which enabled its Triple Crown championship to arise. 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The UWF's wrestling style has made inroads in its root promotion, New Japan, where natives Yuji Nagata, Koji Kanemoto, and Katsuyori Shibata use UWF-style kicks despite having never competed in a shoot-style promotion as their peers Minoru Tanaka, Masayuki Naruse, and Kakihara (who joined New Japan in the early 2000's) have. Other natives who turned to martial arts fighting such as Tadao Yasuda, Kazuyuki Fujita and Kendo Ka Shin also have UWF inspiration. Above all, however, UWF made it possible for mixed-martial arts circuits to exist and be viable. Yuji Nagata Height: 60 (183cm) Weight: 238lbs (108kg) Date of Birth: 4/24/68 Place of Birth: Togane City, Chiba Debut: September 14th, 1992 (vs. ... Kōji Kanemoto is a Japanese professional wrestler. ... Minoru Tanaka (田中稔, Tanaka Minoru) is a Japanese professional wrestler. ... Kazuyuki Fujita (Japanese: 藤田和之, October 16, 1970-) is a Japanese mixed martial arts fighter. ... ...