Mitsuharu Misawa

Mitsuharu Misawa (三沢 光晴) was a Japanese professional wrestler and promoter.

Wrestling at 187 pounds (84.8 kilograms), Misawa won the national high school championship in 1980, and in the same year he placed fifth at the freestyle World Championships, competing in the junior age group.

Despite his success, Misawa disliked amateur wrestling, and only saw it as a means to an end for a career in professional wrestling.

Debuting in 1981, Misawa became the second incarnation of the Tiger Mask gimmick in 1984, which he wrestled as, through to the decade's end.

Misawa entered the All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) training camp in March 1981, and was trained mainly by Kazuharu Sonoda and Akihisa Takachihō, though he also received training from Dick "The Destroyer" Beyer, Shohei Baba, Dory Funk Jr.., and eventually Lou Thesz.

He made his professional debut on August 21, 1981, where he lost against Shiro Koshinaka in an outdoor show in Urawa.

After losing his first seventeen consecutive matches, Misawa had his first win on October 9 in a tag match with Mitsuo Momota against Hiromichi Fuyuki and Nobuyoshi Sugawara, and won his first singles match against Sugawara four nights later.

In April 1983, Baba held a round-robin tournament for AJPW's lower-ranked wrestlers called the Lou Thesz Cup, and Misawa entered the tournament alongside Koshinaka, Fuyuki, Mitsuo and brother Yoshihiro Momota, Sugawara, Kawada, and Tarzan Goto.

Misawa reached the finals, and on April 22 in the Nakajima Sports Center, Misawa made his televised debut in the final match for the Lou Thesz Cup (which Thesz himself refereed), again wrestling Koshinaka to a loss.

Baba had intended to send the tournament winner on a foreign excursion, but while Misawa lost the match, he was perceived as the superior talent, despite Koshinaka being three years his senior, so Baba decided to send them both.

Misawa had his first title match on May 20, when he and Koshinaka unsuccessfully challenged Mighty Inoue and Ashura Hara for the attende.

Misawa and Koshinaka arrived in Mexico on March 16, 1984, where they wrestled for EMLL as a tag team under the names Samurai Shiro and the Kamikaze (or Kamikaze Misawa).

Misawa improved his aerial skills under the guidance of La Fiera, and on April 5, Misawa had his first major singles championship match, headlining Arena México and wrestling NWA World Middleweight champion El Satánico to a loss.

This excursion was meant to last one year, but Baba called Misawa and asked him if he could "jump from the corner post", and when Misawa replied that he could, he was called back.

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 (王道, "King's Road") style of puroresu and received significant critical acclaim.

Despite never working in the United States during the 1990s, Misawa had a significant stylistic influence upon independent wrestling, through the popularity of his work among tape-traders worldwide including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

After the departure of Genichiro Tenryu, Misawa unmasked mid-match in May 1990 and began a rivalry with company ace Jumbo Tsuruta.

Misawa's victory over Tsuruta on June 8, 1990, led AJPW to sell out every Tokyo event they held into early 1996, and as Tsuruta receded from the main event due to hepatitis, Misawa was cemented as AJPW's ace when he won the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship from Stan Hansen in August 1992 and held it for the longest reign in the title's history.

Misawa remained atop the company throughout the 1990s, and following the death of president Giant Baba in 1999, Misawa inherited his position, but conflicts with widow and majority shareholder Motoko Baba led to his removal in May 2000.

After this, Misawa led a mass exodus of the promotion's talent to form Noah.

His match with Kawada on June 3, 1994, which has been specifically cited as one of the greatest professional wrestling matches of all time.

Misawa was born in Yūbari, Hokkaidō, but the family moved to Koshigaya, Saitama as the coal mine where his father worked declined.

Misawa had an older brother, who was favored by his father.

According to Misawa, his father was violent towards his mother, and once stabbed her with a kitchen knife; they divorced during his first year of elementary school.

Misawa won a long jump competition held by Koshigaya in elementary school, and joined the gymnastics club in junior high.

Misawa was a fan of professional wrestling, especially All Japan Pro Wrestling, from an early age, and his first favorite wrestler was Horst Hoffman.

Hoffman's emerald green trunks would later be emulated by Misawa.

Misawa had wanted to pursue a vocation as a professional wrestler since he was 12, and planned to do so after completing junior high, but his mother and teacher persuaded him to continue his studies so that he could attend a school with a good amateur wrestling program.

Misawa attended the high school at the Ashikaga Institute of Technology in Tochigi on a scholarship, alongside Toshiaki Kawada, who was a year below him.

They shared an interest in athletics and professional wrestling before they became professional wrestlers themselves.

Misawa wanted to drop out in his second year to begin training, but during an encounter with Tomomi "Jumbo" Tsuruta, he convinced Misawa to complete high school education, and to concentrate on amateur wrestling if he was serious about professional wrestling.

Misawa was named Wrestler of the Year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter on three occasions (1995, 1997 and 1999), and at the time of his death held the record for most WON five star matches, with 25, including one as Tiger Mask, a record since broken by Will Ospreay and matched by Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega.

He is primarily known for his time in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), and also for forming the Pro Wrestling Noah promotion in 2000.

Noah was successful in the first half of the decade, but as business declined and top star Kobashi left in 2006 for cancer treatment, Misawa continued to work a full-time schedule, despite mounting injuries, for the company's survival.

On June 13, 2009, during a tag match in Hiroshima with Go Shiozaki against Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith, Misawa accidentally died after a botched belly-to-back suplex from Saito; his death was attributed to his numerous injuries that he had received for years before his death.

Misawa is regarded by some as the greatest professional wrestler of all time.

The physical demands and consequences of the style in which he worked and the circumstances of his death, however, have made his legacy, or at least that of ōdō, somewhat problematic.

Misawa was an eight-time world champion, having won the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship five times and the GHC Heavyweight Championship (which he was the inaugural holder of) three times.

He was also an eight-time world tag team champion.

Fifty-three of the sixty-nine events at the Nippon Budokan that Misawa headlined were sellouts, a drawing record that has been compared to Bruno Sammartino's run at Madison Square Garden.